Andrew D. Anderson » Blog » Technology

The title says it all. If you’ve been waiting to tether your Sprint Samsung Moment to your laptop, the wait is over. Well, assuming that you have root access. You can read about rooting and wifi tethering over at http://www.sdx-developers.com

Specifically, if you are already rooted and looking for this EASY way to get tethering online see the thread here: moment wifi tethering how-to

I’ve personally followed the instruction and everything works without a hitch, although it is currently being *tested* so… ymmv. Many thanks to the guys over at SDX!

Partly as a note to self and partly as an effort to help someone else, go here:

http://vikram.eggwall.com/computers/nxt.html

for tips about getting bluetooth, usb, and nxc to work the NXT under Ubuntu 9.10.

It all worked well for me. I’ll likely be doing some of my own write-ups on Linux and the NXT robot, so if you’ve got questions… leave them.

It’s very handy to be able to spell-check your Spanish homework, and OpenOffice lets you do just that. To get it working, first you need to install the Spanish lanaguae dictionaries by running:

sudo apt-get install myspell-es

Then, in your document, just go to Tools > Language and pick Spanish for the line, paragraph, or all text – if you don’t see Spanish as an option, then click “more” and change the default language for the document. Ok?

Bien. Adiós.

For some reason I consistently forget how to do this… so I’m jotting it down. You can manage all your machines with an X11 gui from one machine via ssh forwarding.

First, jump into a terminal using ctrl+alt+Fx (where x= 1-6 on ubuntu).
Start a new X client session using xinit — : x vtX (where x = a number > 0 that is not already in use for an x display, and X equals 11 or 12… this allows you to switch to the new gui using ctr+alt+X)
Next, you’ll be on a blank screen with a terminal in the upper left. ssh while forwarding the remote x via ssh -X user@host
you’re set! you can start your window manager or individual programs now.

Now… there… I’ll remember.

You know, the operator of a website has a great deal of information about the people that visit his site. How long they hang around, how they get there, what operating system they use, what city they are visiting from – what they are looking for when they land on his site. It’s nifty really – and sometimes disheartening. This little blog of mine only gets about 20 visitors a day, not too bad – certainly not enough to feed myself on (thank goodness that was never its intention). What’s a bit disappointing is this website’s “bounce rate” – the number of visitors that visit just long enough to  click their browsers’ back buttons. The bounce rate here is high, really high.

So, I took a look at a few other personal blogs for comparison. I’ve certainly found a few differences. My posts are relatively long, my content rarely (if ever) mentions pop-culture, and it is almost completely text.

I’ve decided to make a few decisions based on my findings, and I’m basically noting them here so that I remember them.

• No more ads. No sense is bothering the twenty-one of us that look at this website every day.
• I’m going to make an effort to include a bit more media. Pictures, short videos, online books – they are sometimes helpful for illustrating an idea or sharing a view of the world.
• I completely and utterly refuse to include any more pop culture than I already do.

Aside from these things… I’ve received plenty of complaints about the lack of personal information on this (personal) blog. Looking for Andrew D. Anderson, how can you be sure you’ve got the right one – I’ve no picture! Want to know more about my family background or socio-economic history – there’s not much information here. Where do I travel, and how often? What do I do with my free time, and how much do I have? Yeah, I know, I don’t really talk about it. And, yes, sometimes this leads to false assumptions or misreadings.

However, I don’t really intend on addressing that “issue” – mainly because it’s not really an issue for me at all. It’s by design. I try to think outside these personal limitations… and truly believe that ideas are the only interesting things we humans have to share. I don’t really care about your trip to visit your Aunt Ethel – outside of your motivations and interpretations of the event, your physical experience is unimportant to me. As a result, I strive to distill my own experiences into bundles of thoughts, and spare you the boredom of particulars. If you like to get all wrapped up in trivialities… well, this isn’t ever going to be the blog to read. If you think that ideas are actually the boring part of life… well… in a different context, I agree. Believe me, I’m not a fan of idle theory… but we can not actually experience things for our fellow humans. No sense in trying. I do what I can.

That’s the end of the administrative memos. I think.