Recently, I failed to boot into my laptop. I was shocked.

home contains a file system with errors, check forced.
home: Inode 12976129 seems to contain garbage.
home: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY.
        (i.e., without -a or -p options)
fsck failed with exit status 4.

Then not able to mount the home partition, I was prompted to login as root. However, I was too nervous, I forgot what is my root password.

Recently updating my hobby project Med, memory editor for Linux, still under heavy development with various bugs.

In this project, I use several C++1x features (compiled with C++14 standard). Most recent notable feature is multi-threading scanning. In memory scanning, scan through the accessible memory blocks sequentially is slow. Therefore, I need to scan the memory blocks in parallel. To implement this, I have to create multiple threads to scan through the memory blocks.

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?

Linux, git, ssh, and Docker.

Linux is the most flexible OS kernel in the world right now. It is used in supercomputer, personal computer, server, embedded system like smart vacuum cleaner, mobile phone, smart TV, etc. Firstly because it is open source, everyone can study it, modify it, and redistribute it. Secondly, thanks to GPL (license). Because of GPL, anyone who use Linux need to open source their code. Those bossy people who knows Windows only and like to earn money without paying any efforts, and never understood programming and programmers, they will never understand the power of Linux and GPL.

The best desktop environment I mentioned here, doesn’t mean the DE such as KDE, GNOME, Xfce, LXDE, etc. The purpose of this post is to express the best desktop environment, that is, the features and functionalities.

You can called me old fashion, does not able to follow the latest technology. Whatever it is, the followings are my opinions on the features:

Taskbar as in Windows XP, or task list as in Xfce.

The taskbar in Windows 7, which groups them all, not user friendly for me. At least two actions needed: mouse over (or click) to show the whole group, then click again into the window of interested. The best is ungrouped, zero level, all windows showed. The sorting can based on time or window name, at least the users will know how to find the window based on some rules. The DE like GNOME 3 or Unity are too bad for me. Group the windows or applications in workspace, difficult to switch between the windows.

Previously I mentioned about playing games in WINE and enabling Ibus input and CJK fonts. Recently, I solved another problem, that is installing the game with ISO images.

We know that, in Linux, we can mount the ISO image easily. However, some old games will need to install with several discs, that means we need to change discs during the installation. When my disc 1 was completed, I tried to unmount, it failed. Even I tried with symlink, the disc 2 with the symlink is not detected by the installer, failed also.

I like FreeFileSync, a syncing utility. There are several reasons for me to consider it is a good syncing utility,

• Allows preview
• Mirror, destination exactly as source
• Update, update destination based on source, no deletion
• Sync, allows propagate deletion, detects conflicts.
• Delete to Trash can (or Recycle bin)
• Multiple pairs of folders
• Swap directions
• Allows to edit the direction of specific files, or ignore the files.

All the bold features are which I prefer the most, especially the last one. That means, after the preview (or comparing), I can decide to change the direction of the files to be copied, left-to-right or right-to-left.

I tried to find some good games in Linux, since there is not much game development in Linux. Recently, I played Cave Story. The drawing is looking old, but the storyline is good, just like an expected Japanese game. And there are 3 different endings.

The game is not easy to play. So, I finally, try to game hack it using GameConqueror. Then, these are the memory address:

81c8614    HP 
81cce84    Polar Star / Spur Lv 
81cce98    Missle Lv 
81ccea4    Missle bullet
81cceac    Fireball Lv 
81ccec0    Bubbler Lv 
81ccecc    Bubbler bullet
81cced4    Blade / Nemesis lv

Unfortunately, GameConqueror cannot save and open the address list.

When downloading the files contain Chinese or Japanese characters using JDownloader in Linux (for my case, Arch Linux), I found that all the Chinese or Japanese characters are shown with boxes. There are a lot of suggested solutions I found from Internet, especially adding !font=Dialog to the language file. I also tried to edit the fontconfig.properties file, adding path to JAVA_FONTS, etc. But all the solutions do not work.

So, my solution is, just change the user interface style to non-Synthetica style, eg, Substance or Light. Both types of style work well, allow me to see the file names with correct characters. Problem solved.