converting text to binary and vise versa
Today I found an interesting fact: the number of the ANSCII character with the base of 10, is it’s corresponding binary with the base of 2.
Now this might be overwhelming with the first look, but take a look at this chart. If you take a character ( preferably your favorite character ) and look up its ANSCII number, then convert that number to base 2 ( I hope you have learned how to do it in school ), there you have the binary! I won’t explain how you convert a base 10 to base 2, but the base 2 number you get, must be 8 bytes ( 8 ones and zeros beside each other ) and that makes up a ANSCII printable character.
for example, if you want to type ‘NAME’ your numbers according to that chart would be: 78 65 77 69 Now take this number and convert each of them into base 2 with 8 bytes: 01001110 01000001 01001101 01000101 YAY!!! THIS IS THE BINARY!!!
footnote: cheating is not generally good, but you can just copy the corresponding binary code for each character from the chart 
Fedora 9 Beta review
In one sentence: so far so amazing! It’s now stable and completely usable. I now have a workable F9 system ( rawhide ) which I use daily. No more F8!!! Though we have yet ( one week ) to see the final artwork, but it’s still amazing. Some of the things I really like about F9 are:
-PackageKit: an amazing and fast front-end for yum. Specially mixed with yum 3.2.13, which has a policy that can be set to only download the best possible architecture for you beloved CPU 
what are those junk i386 packages when you can have the x86_64 ones? And I love the Package-Kit applet which shows up in the panel so you don’t have to worry about when something is finished or even worse, having some windows open while you don’t need them ( update windows ) It will notify you when the thing you’re doing is finished!
-Firefox 3: very natural look, I just love it. Bookmarking couldn’t get easier, especially for a bookmark-worm like me! And it’s faster, but the downfall is that it’s still Beta 5, not final!! but on the hand, it’s stable
-World Clock applet: Now I can easily have different time zones in my hand. It’s very handy when you want to call somewhere you have no idea what the time zone and you don’t have enough time ( lazyness? ) to look it up!
-New artwork ( seen this one but still out of rawhide ): Simply I like the Sulphur ( ph not f ) artwork, it looks nice
P.S. and I might not have cleared myself, but you have the choice of policies in yum whether you want the best possible architecture only to be installed or all of the architectures to be installed!
Inkscape .46 released
I think I’m a little bit too late. It’s already 4 days that it’s out but I was too busy testing Fedora 9 beta and I for a side note, I should say, it’s stable. Anyway, getting back to the inkscape, .46 version has a lot of new features which make life even easier for newbies like me! one of the new features I like is ‘markers’ you set an object as a marker, set a path and tell the path to put one of those markers you created in each of its segments. This tutorial shows you how it works. ( it would make a good background wallpaper by the way )
The packages for Ubuntu and Fedora 9 are ready, but I’m not sure about others, ( e.g. windows, *BSD, OS X, other distributions of linux ). You can go to inkscape.org and download them now, or just refer to your local packages! simple and easy as always (TM)
-footnote: ’simple and easy as always (TM)’ is a trademark of linux community ( just kidding )
moving files through SFTP
SFTP is the brother of SSH, it transfers your files securely through an FTP port. One computer is client and another one server. To use SFTP on a linux system simply just type:
$ sftp username@ipaddress
for example, it would look like this: $ sftp johnsmith@127.0.0.1
Then just press enter and enter the remote password and log in. you can find some of the useful SFTP commands here.
If you are trying to connect to a windows server ( SFTP to/from a windows system ) you should first setup openssh on your system. The guide on how to setup openssh on a windows machine is in the previous post ( see the P.S. section of the previous post ). After setting that up, everything will be the same: $ sftp username@ipaddress and done!
leave comments if you were successful in SFTPing to your machines!
setting up SSH on windows
Some useful terminal programs
Lynx:
Lynx is a console web browser. Very simple and easy to use, just press and type a URL to go to that URL. press d to download the target. But the downfall is that it doesn’t show images ( because it’s console-based ) and therefore some websites ( e.g. facebook ) do not support it.
An email client. Yes, that’s right, a console-based email client. You can setup IMAP and POP access to your favorite mail service provider.
SSH:
With SSH service you can connect remotely to other SSH-enabled computers ( e.g. linux system ) very securely. In terminal, just type: ‘$ ssh -l login host’ while ‘login’ is the remote login/username and ‘host’ is the IP address or host computer address.
united windows and linux screenshots
ok, I finally tried to unite my fedora system with windows XP pro SP2 ( fancy name ) and it worked. Thanks to softpedia.com for the great tutorial and thanks to virtualbox for making it possible. By the way, today I saw that Sun Microsystem has acquired Innotek.
Anyway, these are the screenshots, I just followed the tutorial ( refer to second previous post for that ):
FreeRice.com
Http://www.freerice.com
It’s a website that in fact is a word game. By doing the word game ( more specifically, vocab test ), you will donate 20 grains of rice to a hungry child. By answering each question correctly, UN will donate 20 grains of rice to poor countries. Check it out when you don’t have anything else to do, or you’re bored. It’s so easy sometimes to help people.
Unite windows and Linux peacefully
The point is, you can have windows and linux running at the same time on one screen and work with both of them at the same time! Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Doing it is very easy, just get the virtualbox into ’seamless mode.’
To do this, you need to install VirtualBox and have a legitimate copy of Windows, whether windows XP or Vista doesn’t matter, something that works ( which unfortunately is not the case with any of them ). Now, configure the virtual machine which is a virtual windows, like this:
1) On the ‘General’ section drag the “Video Memory Size” slider to 64.
2) On the ‘Audio’ section check the “Enable Audio” box.
3) On the ‘Remote Display’ section check the “Enable VRDP Server” box.
Now, run the virtual machine and install the guest additions.
Go to machine > seamless mode and you’re done 
And don’t forget to leave comments if it worked for you
For very detailed walkthrough, click here.
VIM revealed
VIM ( Vi IMproved ) is a simple but very powerful text editor which you can use it to write scripts and generally anything. It’s just a text editor which happened to be so powerful. You can use it inside the terminal which gives you the ability to use it in a non-GUI interface ( which I’m going to try now ) and it has its OWN shortcuts. Weird but understandable shortcuts which are again, easy to get used to. Editing is efficient in it, as I found it more efficient in writing C++ codes.
Anyway, for more information you can see www.VIM.org
For downloading it, if you use linux ( at least one of the most popular distros ) you just need to search in your package manager. For example, in case of fedora, the package is: VIM-X11
now, some quick tips to get started:
- if you want to get started, in terminal, type: $ vimtutor
- with ESC key, you go to the normal mode.
- with ‘i’ key, you can start inserting code.
- for saving: go to normal mode and type ‘:w’ without quotations
- for exiting VIM, go to normal mode and type ‘:q!’ without quotations
There are a lot of useful shortcuts which you can learn through VIM tutor ( vimtutor ). Also there is an IRC channel, #vim, if you would like to join and learn more about VIM through live talk.
Leave comments on whether you liked VIM or not
