Synergy

Synergy is really cool. If you don't know what it is, and you have at least two computers, it's a way that you can share one of the computer's mouse and keyboard with the other computer(s), and also it combines your monitors onto a shared desktop so you can scroll off the edge of one computer's screens onto the other. If you don't have at least two computers, you should really get another so you can use Synergy with them. Oh, Synergy is cross platform, too, so you can use your new and cool Mac with your old windoze box. And it's cool.

Anyway, the Windows interface is a little clunky, but head over to http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ and grab the windoze installer (SynergyInstaller-1.3.1.exe) for your windoze box, and for Mac you would get synergy-1.3.1-1.OSX.tar.gz version.

On a sidenote, if the mac version didn't just come with a couple files and "synergyc" and "synergys" (one for client, one for server), you downloaded the wrong file. I can say this because I did it, and was having a heck of a time figuring out what I did wrong.

For my setup, since my windoze machine is the desktop with a keyboard and mouse attached, I made it the server. The windoze version seems to have an interface that is at least semi-usable, where I couldn't find an interface for the mac version. This is OK because after telling the windoze machine what computer name to expect (It ended up being nickwhipple.mac_123 or something really dumb and long like that), all I had to do on the Mac was run "synergyc -f windozecomp", with windozecomp being the name of my windoze computer. Mine is named beast.

Actually, if you open synergy from the windoze computer I think you can simply put it in test mode, and then run synergyc -f windozecomp from the mac, and the windoze machine should find the name of the mac computer. Then you can add that to your windows machine, along with settings on what side of what screen should go to what.

That's all for now. But if anyone reads this blog and finds this a big confusing, let me know, and I'll put up some screenshots.

Update:
Yeah, SynergyKM for mac is way better than plain synergy, because it has a graphical user interface. So if you are using a mac definitely go for that. Its naming scheme is a little bit different from the other synergy so if you have already been messing around with one you may have to re-do some of your settings.

Honcast.com

So, I've ranted a couple times about Heroes of Newerth, and how so many people are bad at it. But really, the game does make sense a lot. If a team gets a nice early lead, it's very likely they will keep building their lead and win by mid or late game. Unless the other team does decently early/mid game and picked heroes that have a much stronger late game.

Anyway, Honcast.com has been a nice way to pick up on some good strategies, but more importantly to get an objective view on how games are won or lost. It's taken my nerdrage factor down by about 300%! I recommend you check it out if you are a HoN player. And if you're not, you may as well check it out too, and then go play yourself some HoN.

Week 4

I got sick of cut/pasting these so I finally turned on Japanese input method. I'm trying to figure it out.
64．校
６５．母
６６．毎
６７．気
６８．水
６９．火
７０．父
７１．生
７２．男
７３．白
７４．百
７５．目
７６．社
７７．空
７８．立
７９．耳
８０．聞
81．花
82．行
83．西
84．見

Week 3

There is a week three, and I'm still studying! I've just been a little busy so far this week(end). I'll list them soon!
43. 子
４４。学
４５．安
４６．小
４７．少
４８．山
４９．川
５０．左
５１．年
５２．店
５３．後
５４．手
５５．新
５６．日
５７．時
５８。書
５９．月
６０．木
６１．本
６２．ライ
６３．東　

Kanji Week two

These are already looking more difficult that the first week. Here they are:

22. 分
23. 前
24. 北
25. 十
26. 千
27. 午
28. 半
29. 南
30. 友
31. 口
32. 古
33. 右
34. 名
35. 四
36. 国
37. 土
38. 外
39. 多
40. 大
41. 天
42. 女

New Year's Resolution: 2048 x 1152

Well, I saw this clever signature somewhere that said his New Year's Resolution was 1900 x 1200, and I was planning on buying a bigger widescreen LCD for my computer, but when I went to check on the one I had my eye on, it's no longer available from Newegg! So now I have to find out if the monitor is just so good they are out of stock, or so bad that they don't carry it anymore, or if it was just a random decision? But now I hear there is something called OLED (Organic LED) that is coming out "soon" that is going to make the old LCDs seem obsolete. I guess that's par for the course though, right?

Stay tuned.

Kana fun and Week one!

So we both went over our Kana today. Apparently I was a little more rusty than I thought up front, mainly because I could recognize stuff but there were about 10 that I had trouble remembering when it was time to write them from stratch. But we got through it and are very freshed up now!

We then decided we may as well start in on the fun stuff. I decided that doing 3 a day would be pretty dang borish, and it would be more fun to get 21 at a time to work on during the week. At least so far it's pretty fun. We decided to work on the Kun readings and later in the week do the On.

This week's characters:

一 one
七 seven
万 10,000
三 three
上 up
下 down
中 middle
九 nine
二 two
五 five
人 person
今 now
休 rest
会 meet
何 what
先 before
入 enter
八 eight
六 six
円 circle
出 exit

So far we have written each one out a bunch of times, and done flash-card quizzes and writing quiz (one person read and other person writes them).

Anyone know where I can get a good gridded writing tablet for practicing? I kind of like boxes that are a little bit bigger because my handwriting is terrible.