Personal Web Server(?) age

When I was doing web development, that time was mostly static pages, with no CSS, a little JavaScript. The only interaction was CGI form. Then I learnt VBScript for ASP and Microsoft Access and used Personal Web Server.

Designing page layout was like hell, everything was using table. The font style was hard coded. So, the HTML source is too messy.

LAMP age

Then, from Personal Web Server, the web server was upgraded to IIS. Next was XAMPP on Windows, using all open source solutions: Apache, MySQL, and PHP. That was a great solution. Unlike ASP, PHP has more functions, more libraries, supports object oriented, syntax similar to C and C++.

Introduction

There was a wonderful memory editor in Windows, that was Game Master. But it was not a freeware. And there is a freeware memory editor, it is ArtMoney. But it is also for Windows only. In Linux, there is only one memory editor, scanmem with GameConqueror as the GUI. However, there are some limitations from scanmem and GameConqueror. Thus, that is why I decided to create another one which can fit my needs. Therefore, I recently spent some time to develop this memory editor, namely Med.

又一篇用中文写的。因为这篇反正就是关于中文输入法引擎——RIME中州韵输入法引擎——而写的。这中州韵输入法引擎是从Arch Linux的维基那里看到的。它是一种非常奇特的输入引擎。因为它可以让使用者简单地自制理想的输入法。

在Linux，有好几种中文输入法，谷歌拼音、搜狗拼音、SunPinyin等。其它非拼音输入法也有，如五笔输入法、仓颉输入法。本人虽曾经想学仓颉输入法，但因为太难记难用，最后放弃。因为有些生字不晓得如何读，拼音是没用的，所以最后就学了五笔输入法。

五笔输入法，只要懂得字形就可以输入了。因此用五笔输入比拼音来得准确。比如输入名字，用一般的拼音会出现很多选择，而这些“候选字”要一一看过，是相当的累。而若用五笔输入法，就可以把“候选字”减少到一两个罢了。但本人因为不熟悉五笔输入法，尤其在跟朋友在线对话时，拼音会是基本的思考方式，所以本人用拼音会比五笔来得快。因此，五笔和拼音两种输入法一起使用的话，对我来说就会出现因切换输入法而迟缓和多余动作的问题。因此，最理想的方式就是将两种输入法融合，不需要切换，以五笔为优先，因为五笔输入后，候选字词会比拼音来得少。能够达到这种理想输入法的，就是这个中州韵输入法引擎。

这中州韵输入法引擎，在我用的时候发现有一个字，因为台湾繁体和大陆简体有一些差别，所以中州韵输入法引擎本身的有些字用了不太一样的代码，就是“々”和“𠚤”。但中州韵输入法引擎可以用简单的方法让我解决这个问题。不仅如此，我还借此机会加入“绘文字”。因此，我就先制作了自用的五笔输入法。用这个的话，就可以轻松的输入我要的表情绘文字了😁。

但融合两种输入法，说容易也不是很容易，因为没有完善的说明书。因此本人就在百度贴吧里询问了。经过高人指点，后来就尝试融合。起初有几个问题无法解决，但勉强还是可以使用。后来根据苍颉检字法的制作，终于完成“五笔朙月流”输入法了。用这个输入法，就可以拼音加上五笔，输入人名和跟朋友对话都不成问题了。而且还可以反查五笔代码，即在不知五笔的代码是什么的情况下，还可以反查，这样的话就可以同时学习五笔输入法了。强！

这“五笔朙月”和“五笔拼音”是不同的。五笔拼音无法用拼音输入句子，而这“五笔朙月”就可以做到这点。

源码可在此处下载。

Long time ago, I was learning CakePHP, then followed by CodeIgniter. Due to the restrictions using the framework such as naming convention, strict function calling based on MVC model, I decided to write my own personally framework from the scratch. The experience was very nice. Because I learnt about the caching, MVC architecture, function arguments in PHP, etc. But the development became gradually inactive.

After several years, recently I am trying back CodeIgniter, and now I conclude that, framework, though it is not required, it is strongly recommended. Why?

Recently I found that, even the packages in the AUR are renamed, the AUR helper such as yaourt also cannot solve. When I prepared to ask for some solution in the Arch Linux BBS, I just think that it is possible to solve it myself. Finally, I come out with the following script,

[code language=“bash”] #!/bin/bash # # @author Allen Choong # @date 2014-09-04 # @version 0.0.1 # # This script is to identify the installed AUR packages, to check whether they are still # available in the AUR. This is because some packages are renamed or removed.

Recently, when I was using TrueCrypt in Arch Linux to mount a truecrypt container file, it was very slow to mount the container. Furthermore, I also read that the TrueCrypt is discontinued.

Therefore, I decided to use the tcplay. However, it is a command-line. Arch Linux wiki page shows a good tutorial on how to use tcplay.

When using tcplay in Linux, unlike mounting the folder like encfs, tcplay requires losetup for loop device. Thus, it involves 3 steps to mount a truecrypt container: i) setup loop device, ii) setup device-mapper with tcplay, and iii) mount. Consequently, to unmount the truecrypt containter need to reverse these 3 steps.

Recently, I tried to play Tecmo Koei Sangokushi 12 PK Traditional Chinese version (三國志12威力加強版繁體中文) on WINE using PlayOnLinux. It works fine, but there is a problem that is the game can only be run in LANG=zh_CN.UTF-8 locale instead of zh_TW.UTF-8 locale (there are some reasons behind). As a result, if I enter some Chinese characters using fcitx, the output will be converted. Such as 一 becomes 珨. This is because when using fcitx in the zh_CN.UTF-8 locale, the character will be encoded as zh_CN.UTF-8. However, because the game itself is Traditional Chinese, the output will be encoded as possibly BIG5. This can be proved by using iconv with the following command,

Have you downloaded the videos online, such as Youku, Tudou, or even YouTube? Have you downloaded the videos which the uploaders split the them into several parts?

Whatever your answer is, you may face the same problem as me.

I downloaded the videos to watch later. But the videos are split into several parts. I wish to watch it as a whole (because it should be one big file). So, I created this script to solve the problem. This script requires MP4Box (in the gpac package) and FFmpeg.

C

After many years of experience in programming, gradually I have newer perspective towards the programming languages. Previously, I was fervent in C language, which I assumed as a low level, powerful programming language. The OS kernel such as Linux is written in C language. To use C language, we need a lot of computer science knowledge, such as pointer, memory buffer, linked list, and so on. Furthermore, there are a lot of libraries supported in C, and C libraries can be ported to C++. That is why I liked C so much. Moreover, the library such as “glib” can make C written in object-oriented. By the knowledge of C language, learning other programming languages will be easier.

This is an interesting thing. I love the tree so much. The Knowledge Tree here I mean is not referring to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad.

Tree is a graph theory. The powerfulness of tree, is that almost any data structure can be represented into the tree. In order to store the data, we can use a single variable, for a single data. In order to store a list of data, we can use array and associative array (or hash, map, dictionary), list, vector, and others. Another powerful data structure which I like is the 2D array, especially used in matrix calculation. The 2D array represents the data in the table form. It is very useful in database. An image can also be treated as 2D array. Comparing the tree to the matrix, the tree is possible to represent the matrix (though it is not preferred).