Prelude

Last weekend was a long story, that I my Xiaomi Mi 3 is screwed! It happened like this.

I was in the car, using the phone to surf net and go through the social networks. Then suddenly, it popped up a notification saying that my phone is too hot, asked me to cool down, with a system button “Cool Down”. I cannot guarantee that this is not a virus, but I believe that my phone doesn’t have virus. (I can hardly find the Cool Down feature online, this is the only one.) So, I pressed the Cool Down button. With this press, sorry my phone. You got a stroke, and never overcome. Bye-bye!

Just now was trying to boot into Windows, by plugged in the HDMI cable, which supports for video only. But then, I rebooted into Linux without plugged out the HDMI cable. Then, it caused no sound in Linux.

Try 1: I killed the pulseaudio, then delete the ~/.config/pulse, and rebooted Linux. Failed.

Try 2: Run alsamixer, turned on everything, and do Try 1 again. Failed.

Then I guessed it was caused by the HDMI cable, which the Windows may assume there is audio, then caused my computer somehow ouptut the audio through the HDMI, even I rebooted into Linux.

Today, when I updated Arch Linux as usual, then suddenly it brought me to the TTY, which didn’t allow me to change to other TTY (due to NVIDIA graphic card issue which has been attached with my laptop for quite a long time.)

Because I could do nothing, and not sure whether the upgrade was completed, so I made a hard reset.

Then I boot with fallback initrmfs just in case has any error. Luckily, there was no problem to boot.

Different social media usage:

Facebook - Family and friends status.

Google+ - Official tech news or blogs.

Twitter - Celebrities personal status.

Weibo - China celebrities personal status.

Instagram - Celebrities’ photos.

Reddit - Community and specific topic discussion.

WordPress - Nothing but blog posts.

I liked C programming, as it is low level and the compiler is widely available. Using C language can demonstrate the understanding of pointer and memory. You can implement a linked list or a hash table by using C. So that you can understand better how the linked list and hash table work.

But as long as you want to build some end user applications, C language is never a good choice. Choosing a language for our product is important. We do not develop a web application using low level programming language. It is totally impractical.

Previously I was using Xfce4. Then, because of the heavy working environment, I tried the lighter desktop environment, LXDE. But still, it has some limitations that made me choose to use Openbox window manager only.

Pros and cons of Xfce4

Xfce4 is lightweight comparing to GNOME or KDE. I like it, because of the conventional design like the task manager. Furthermore another thing I like is the “aerosnap” feature like Windows, which I can view the two windows side by side. However, when running Windows in VirtualBox and other applications, I can feel the obvious slowness in the computer. It is really reducing my working performance. That is why I decided to change to LXDE.

Cloud9 is a web-based IDE good for collaboration and online development. You can store your large project on the remote server, and use any computer including netbook with a web browser to develop your system.

Now, the problem I faced when using C9 on my Chromium. Firstly, the address bar, tabs, and bookmarks occupy some space in the window. This results a non-editor look and feel. This makes me feel lacking of something. Secondly, the worst part is the shortcut key like Ctrl+W. By pressing this shortcut key, it will invoke the web browser closing window instead of the C9 shortcut key. Meaning, the shortcut key of the web browser has higher precedence than C9 itself.

Because of the new working environment, I cannot use my favourite customised Emacs to work. So, I have to adapt with the new text editor. Luckily, vim is available in the remote server. That means I can use SSH to run the vim. And, even Emacs is available, I feel difficult to customise and install the packages I need, because I don’t have experience installing Emacs’ packages using text-based UI. (But if it is available, I may make a try.)

I have an HP 1T external HDD. It is dying. Sh*t!

So, I made my final struggling onto it. Though it is not 100% work as planned, I still have around 320G usable space.

Symptoms

Firstly, I found that some files cannot be deleted, I had no choice but plug out the USB cable manually. Try to chkdsk with Windows since it is NTFS partition, but the chkdsk stopped and no response during the progress. Then I know, these were the bad signs. So, have to avoid using it and get a new HDD, and move whatever files able to be moved.

Since I am working as freelance developer, I spent most of my “otaku” time with Animenfo Radio. Now, when listening with some nice songs you like, and you would like to know what the song is, then you can use Shazam to detect it. But using Shazam requires you to turn on your volume and use your mobile phone to detect it.

What if, you are listening the songs with your ear-phone?