Machine learning is one of my favourite studies (though I am not very knowledgeable in machine learning). It impressed me very much during my first time entering the lecture of the course. I was wondering how can a machine learn? I know how searching and optimisation work, they are just trial-and-error to get almost all the possibilities. But how a machine learn?

How does it work?

The simplest example is using the perceptron. It is a very basic Artificial Neural Network (ANN) concept. It can be used to learn a very simple pattern. (All the learnings are related to the pattern.) Perceptron simulates the neurons of the brain. In human, when we learn something, the connections of the neurons become stronger. In perceptron, the connections of the neurons are represented as the “weights”. The stronger the weight, the stronger the connection.

Due to a recent Q&A from DistroWatch.com, I am considering the advantages of using the scheduled-release or fixed-release distros, especially Debian which is famed of its stability. The following is the quote from DistroWatch.com,

Rolling releases do tend to have their downsides though. For instance, it is difficult for third-party developers to create software for rolling-releases as a rolling-release distribution is a moving target. It is difficult to target and support an operating system which is changing on a regular basis.

I have come across with this problem for quite a long time. Whenever I elinks to a website, such as google.com or yahoo.com, it shows the message “Host not found”. I tried to google about the “elinks host not found”, “elinks resolve problem”, etc, none of them are relevant to my problem.

I thought it is the package error. But when I come across installation of the Arch Linux on a fresh computer, the elinks works fine.

Previously, I wrote my experience about installing CyanogenMod on the old Samsung phone. There are something worth to know before flashing, other than backup the precious data, download the ROM and tools, and take for any risk.

In my experience, it is best to get the stock ROM (that is the original ROM or firmware). This is to prevent some unexpected outcomes. With the stock ROM, at least we can recover to the (true) factory setting.

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, my phone (3 years old) is slower and slower. This causes me frustrated, especially if I want to use it to call urgently. Interface changed slowly, the contacts listed slowly, and my urgency becomes meaningless. So, the phone is either to be replaced with a new phone, or hack it!

My old phone, namely Samsung Galaxy S (i9000), to make it reborn, I decided to install CyanogenMod. CyanogenMod is well-known of its performance and reliability. The installation steps can be found in the wiki page.

If you are using Linux, then you are involved in the Linux community. As in the Linux community, most of the software are open source software, which is about sharing and distributing the source code among the community.

As a Linux user, I am not just learn to use the free software happily without paying money. Using the Linux is more benefit than just saving the money.

As a Linux user, I know that reading manual/documentations is important. There are a lot of questions are mostly answered in the documentations or manual. In order to find the answers, we should read the manual. If the answers are available in the manual, yet a newbie is asking in the forum, he or she will be asked to RTFM.

We can produce our own LiveUSB manually. The following are the steps that based on Arch Linux distro.

1. Build a kernel that supports AUFS, SquashFS, and optionally vfat support. So that we can mount these filesystems. In Arch Linux, we can build linux-pf for these supports. This package can be found from AUR.

2.  Then we can generate the initramfs. In Arch Linux, we can use mkinitcpio to create an initramfs image. For instance,

These days, want to compile old projects. Firstly, I compiled all my code using Arch Linux. Then I decided to install my project to a LiveUSB, so that I need not to partition or use virtual machine on the target computer.

So I planned to use KNOPPIX.  I tried Linux Mint in VirtualBox, since it is based Debian, but failed to compile my code due to the CEGUI version is not the latest as Arch Linux.

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,