Friday, June 19th, 2009 | Author: nico

It’s been quite some time, but today I feel like showing my Ubuntu desktop in my lab’s PC :D Before that, here is some tips and tricks you might find useful:

  1. If you’re using cairo-dock, you might want it to be appear and accessible all the time to show it off :P or so that you can access it easily. Setting it always on top sometimes not a good solution because sometimes you need to click something on the bottom of the window application but cairo will be on your way. One solution I like is to make cairo behave like mac’s dock: Applications always open above the dock. This can be easily done by
    Right click on the dock -> Cairo Dock -> Configure. Use the Advance Mode. In the Position category -> check "Reserve space at the edge of the screen of the dock" -> Apply ->OK.
    That’s it! Now you can maximize your application window without covering cairo-dock.
  2. If you’re using screenlets, you might realize that everytime you do “Show Desktop” the screenlets will also go minimized. In this PC I don’t want to treat the screenlets as widgets like I did in my laptop, but the minimized behaviour’s quite annoying. Here is the solution:
    Open gconf-editor (from terminal) -> then go to /apps/compiz/general/allscreens/options/ -> Uncheck "hide_skip_taskbar_windows". That’s it!
Cairo-Dock

Cairo-Dock

Screenlets

Screenlets

Desktop Cube

Desktop Cube

Crunchbang Linux Inside Ubuntu

Crunchbang Linux Inside Ubuntu

Thursday, June 18th, 2009 | Author: nico
SpellBreaker Behemoth

SpellBreaker Behemoth

Since I started playing magic here in Japan, i’ve been longing to create my own strong deck. But apparently, mtg is not that easy. You cannot just pick strong creatures and put into your deck. You need to study many things, like mana curve. Reading mtg related articles also help a lot to give you insight of what popular cards or decks are out there. Deck building is one of the point where strategy comes into play.

The appearance of Alara Reborn with its new mechanism, “cascade”, really change the flow of standard format. I know I’m not an expert at all with mtg, heck I’m still a noobie, but the feeling of playing the game before and after the release of ARB is so different. Reading articles here and there, I found out that Faeries deck is (or was) the strongest in standard. With its so many counter spells, Faeries deck set the bar for every other deck. “If you create a new deck, try it against faeries. Lost? Create another one.”, that’s what my friend said before.

So after experimenting with almost all color combinations including ARB, I finally decided that the following deck is strong!

// Lands
4 [ALA] Savage Lands
6 [ALA] Forest (4)
5 [ALA] Swamp (2)
5 [ALA] Mountain (2)
2 [CFX] Ancient Ziggurat

// Creatures
4 [ARB] Bloodbraid Elf
4 [ARB] Spellbreaker Behemoth
4 [SHM] Farhaven Elf
4 [ALA] Sprouting Thrinax
4 [ALA] Broodmate Dragon
4 [SHM] Kitchen Finks
3 [ARB] Lord of Extinction

// Spells
4 [ARB] Bituminous Blast
4 [ARB] Maelstrom Pulse
3 [ALA] Infest

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [CFX] Volcanic Fallout
SB: 4 [ARB] Anathemancer
SB: 3 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 4 [CFX] Banefire

As you can see I chose RGB colors, Jund. Why? Because Maelstrom Pulse is very good and Bloodbraid Elf is insane. These two cards are a must. So I was thinking how to create a good deck that includes these two cards. Maybe someone else already invented my way of thinking, but anyway, here is how I decided the creatures. First, I considered three phases of the game: early stage (around turn 2-3), mid stage (turn 4), and latest stage (turn >5 ). Assuming I can put land every turn, I will have 3 lands in early stage, 4 lands in mid stage, and more than 5 lands in latest stage. Second, I chose creatures on each stages. And these creatures need to be useful (doh). So I decided to pick these creatures:

  1. Early stage
    • Farhaven Elf: The problem with playing more than two colors deck is mana. This creature can solve that problem most of the time.
    • Kitchen Finks: Finks just very good. Persist, gain life, no way you’re not using it
    • Sprouting Thrinax: With its ability to give birth to tokens when it dies, this guy definitely needs to be in the deck.
  2. Mid stage
    • Bloodbraid Elf: Like I mentioned, this girl has to be there.
    • Spellbreaker Behemoth: 5/5 creature for only 4 manas, how can you Not?! And it can’t be countered!!
  3. Latest stage
    • Broodmate Dragon: 4/4 flying dragon that comes with a best friend, hard to resist.
    • Lord of Extinction: Now this last spot actually still open for public. I was thinking, I need a creature that can give a big pressure to the enemy. So I chose this guy. It can be really huge, and it sounds scary :P

Now let’s go to the instants and sorceries. Only three: Maelstrom Pulse, Bituminous Blast, and Infest. Maelstrom Pulse is a must. I chose Bituminous Blast over Terminate because of the cascade thing. Just imagine, play Blast, then cascaded into Bloodbraid, then cascaded into Maelstrom :D  Infest can handle those annoying tokens.

For sideboard, Anathamancer and Fallout are the only ones I think I need. Banefire and Relic only there to fill the spots until I find a good side to fill that spot. Anathamancer is natural enemy for 5CC or any decks that uses so many non basic lands. Fallout is there to support Infest to fight tokens.

At first I didnt use Ancient Ziggurat.  But it was so hard. I tried to keep the nonbasic lands minimized. Adding two Ancient Ziggurat was unexpectedly change the flow. I think it’s because many creatures in this deck.

So that’s it! I tried it online, and the result was unexpectedly good! Although it’s not really a thorough experiments, I mean I just fought people randomly but I had a chance to fight against faeries, 5CC, Doran, tokens, and RB Burn deck. This deck can really compete with them. Give it a try! Comments and feedbacks are always welcome :)

Saturday, June 06th, 2009 | Author: nico
Silhouette enhancement

Silhouette enhancement

To be honest, I don’t really like editting picture I took more than just watermarking or resizing. But after playing around a lil bit with my ‘Over the Sun‘ picture, I found it fascinating :D A silhouette enhancement (or so I called) like the one above can be done easily in Ubuntu (or any other Linux) using gThumb and GIMP. Well maybe you can do everything with GIMP only but since I was playing around with both I will show you here how to do it with both.

  1. Install gthumb and gimp first if you don’t have them yet.
    sudo apt-get install gthumb gimp
  2. Open the picture you want to enhance using gThumb.
  3. Image -> Equalize

    Equalization Using gThumb

    Equalization Using gThumb

  4. Save the image
  5. Open the image using GIMP
  6. Colors -> Levels

    Levels...

    Levels...

  7. Then just adjust the input levels triangle anyway you like.
  8. Save the image. That’s it!

00596e

FYI, I’m a complete newbie in this image manipulation thing, so if you don’t like it just ignore it. If you find it wrong or you know a better method to do this, then please kindly correct it :D

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | Author: nico
Dangerous Hello Kitty

Dangerous Hello Kitty

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 | Author: nico

over the sun

Category: Shots, 日本での経験  | Tags: ,  | One Comment
Thursday, May 21st, 2009 | Author: nico

myscreenlets

I like the look of dashboard in mac with all the widgets. After searching here and there, I found out that we can achieve almost the same thing with Ubuntu. What you need to do is:

  1. Install screenlets
    sudo apt-get install screenlets
  2. Install compiz config setting manager (if you haven’t)
    sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
  3. Run Compiz config manager
    System -> Preferences -> Compiz config setting manager
  4. Go to catagory Desktop then enable widget layer
  5. Close Compiz config
  6. Open screenlets
    Applications -> Accessories -> Screenlets
  7. Start the screenlets you want to use
  8. Go to the properties of all running screenlets -> Options -> Check the “Treat as widget” checkbox
  9. Now you can look at your dashboard by pressing F9

If you have problem with the weather screenlet, check this out, maybe it can help.

Thursday, May 07th, 2009 | Author: nico
Can you see the difference??

Can you see the difference??

I dont know if anyone has ever noticed this too, but can you also see the resemblence between them?? Sorry Paula, sorry michael, no intention to insult you, just a thought :P

Wednesday, May 06th, 2009 | Author: nico

On May 5 2009, I, nyaw, and Erlyn went to USJ to meet their friends from Japanese language class. So it was kind of like a reunion. Unfortunately for us, we couldn’t use our special one year pass on that day that we bought at the beginning of this year. So we just met them outside the gate of USJ.

Not being able to get inside and drizzling day didn’t stop me of taking this chance to take pictures of surrounding :p So I took some pictures of people posing in front of the Universal Globe. Quite amusing actually, some posed alone, some with family, some with friends, and some with their partners. Some smiled happily, some just looked so bored. The Globe is really a must spot to take picture at.

Category: Shots, 日本での経験  | Tags: ,  | Leave a Comment