குறிப்புகள் எழுதுவதற்கு வார்ட்ப்ரெஸ் என்னும் மென் பொருளுக்கு மாறி விட்டேன். கிட்டத்தட்ட பழைய மென்பொருள் போல தான் இதுவும். அதை விட கொஞ்சம் வேலைப்பாடு அதிகம் இதில். மாற்றுவதில் எந்த பிரச்சினையும் வரவில்லை இது வரையில். தமிழ் யுனிகோட் சரியாக தெரிவதற்காக ஒரு சில இடங்களில் லேசாக மாற்ற வேண்டியிருந்தது.
நான் உபயோகப்படுத்தும் சிம்ரிடோ எடிட்டரை நீங்கள் உபயோகிக்க விரும்பினால் அதை இங்கே இறக்கம் செய்து கொள்ளலாம். அதற்கான சோர்ஸ் கோடும் இங்கே இருக்கிறது. உபயோகிக்கும் பொழுது ஏதாவது பிரச்சினை வந்தால் எனக்கு இந்த வலைக்குறிப்புகளில் தெரிவிக்கவும். இந்த எடிட்டர் முதலில் எழுதியது கிளெவ் லெண்டன் என்பவர். இதன் மூல பதிப்பு இந்த பக்கத்தில் இருக்கிறது.
Since I waste lots of time by playing online chess, I thought I would spend little more by writing about it also. So a new chess category in my blogs. After work, in the evenings at home most of my time is spent by playing chess at online chess server called FICS. FICS stands for free internet chess server. It is a nice place where normally you can expect to see around 200 players or more at any given time.
For playing in that server one needs to install a separate chess interface. I use winboard. You can compare the server to something like a shell interface. You need to know a few commands to start. For example ‘who’ command lists all players, ‘match playername’ challenges playername for a chess match. There are also graphical interfaces with more buttons and menus which needs less number of commands to remember. But winboard is the oldest and I am used to it since I started using it in 1998 April.
You can use the server as a chatting place also. One can easily get good friends all over the world. And you already have a common interest, chess. After using fics you will never go back to yahoo chess or msn chess. Those small java interfaces on pages filled with ads can not beat the clean and nice fics interface.
Besides the server, I play in a local club called Metrowest Chess Club. This club conducts monthly tournaments and meets every Tuesday.
I will write more about the club soon.
I came back after a month’s vacation and tried to use my pc. Somebody else had tried to use it in between. While browsing, there were all kinds of pop-ups from unrelated sites. I have to see what was wrong, when pop-ups come up while searching on Google. I tried Ad-Aware. It found some tracking cookies but nothing was wrong. I tried one another similar program whose name I forgot. That too failed to find anything fishy. Then I tried SpyBot. This one was excellent and caught the problem software. Google toolbar takes care of the pop-ups from some sites and I am pop-up free as of now.
3-4 years ago I used to try out a lot of freeware. Nowadays it is scary to install any freeware on my PC. Many of them come bundled with some tracking spyware or adware along with them. Once installed, they can practically send any information from your PC to its home. So I very rarely install new free programs these days. Cookies does not annoy you directly. If you browse Amazon you can feel like it is a bit overused. Click on a few articles/items and then wherever you go on Amazon the items will follow you in different forms like related items and ads. I have to switch off cookies once and see how Amazon looks.
Some freeware stuff I find useful are,
1. VIM text editor. I do not care whether any other editors are available or not, this has to be there on the PC. On other editors my hand itches to press esc key. I do all my programming as well as simple text editing on VIM.
2. Winboard for playing chess online.
3. Winamp.
4. WordWeb a nice easy to use dictionary.
5. GIMP GNU image manipulation program.
6. Adobe reader and GSview.
7. SpyBot and Ad-Aware for removing spyware and adwares.
There are also some others which I use sparingly.