bworld

Space between lines (height) in Netbeans

borisjansen — Tue, 26 May 2009 06:31:31 +0000

Installing netbeans on Ubuntu 9.04, results in a space between lines that is too big. How to solve it can be found here .

Scim issue : keyboard becomes unresponsive in Opera

borisjansen — Fri, 15 May 2009 05:40:56 +0000

The following post (workaround 2) fixed my annoying issue that my keyboard became unresponsive in Opera running on ubuntu 8 and 9.

Unfortunately, this seems to have removed my ability to type Japanese in Opera as well

Scaffoling in Rails 2.0

borisjansen — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 15:00:41 +0000

Here is how to scaffold in Rails 2.0.

Rotate screen at startup.

borisjansen — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 07:20:47 +0000

I’m able to rotate my screen on my (X)ubuntu box by simply running :

xrandr -o left

I use GDM as my graphical login program. By adding the command at the end of /etc/gdm/Init/Default my screen is rotated before logging in.

Autostart Apps on Xubuntu (XFCE)

borisjansen — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 06:17:55 +0000

Xubuntu is the Ubuntu flavor running the lightweight XFCE desktop. To ease your life, use the following command to configure which apps to start during logging in :

xfce4-autostart-editor

Striking Opportunity from Close Distance

borisjansen — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 05:37:27 +0000

In kendo, often the situation occurs where two opponents are at a distance that is somewhere between issoku-itto-no-kamae and tsuba-zeriai. At this distance, there is not much space to hit either kote or do. Most attacks, if they take place, are men.
In kihon, we hardly practice techniques from this close distance. We practice techniques from issoku-itto-no-kamae and tsuba-zeriai. Edo-sensei has told many times that if you don’t practice certain techniques in certain situations during kihon or keiko, you should not expect to deal with these situations correctly in shiai.
On top of that, even techniques performed from this distance are often not acknowledged by shinpan in shiai.
As a result, a lot of kenshi have the habbit to raise their hands protecting themselves against a possible men-attack and at the same time moving forward to close the gab towards tsuba-zeriai. Or they break the kamae and start over from issoku-itto-no-kamae.

Knowing this, how can we make more out of the situation? First of all, we still need to analyse the opponent’s response in these kinds of situations. However, if we can force the opponent to become defensive, then we have a free striking opportunity. This holds in general, whenever a kenshi feels all he can do is to try to block a possible attack, there is an opportunity to perform an attack without being too worried about any counterattack. Investigate the following opportunities in close kamae :
1) Enforce the opponent to be defencive followed by an attack. One way to achieve this is to hit on the opponent’s shinai from above multiple times quickly. This will likely make the opponent move his hands upwards because the shinai is supressed, creating an opportunity to strike kote or do. Or the opponent will fight the reaction to raise his hands, creating an opportunity to strike men. If you study Miyazaki’s shiai, you will see that he often applies this “trick” and is able to score from this situation.
2) Because the opponent may be defensive at this close distance, uchi-otoshi or maki-otoshi may be effective.
3) If the opponent has the habbit to raise his hands in this situation, hit do or hiki-do. Especially, by raising your own hands, you may force the opponent to raise his hands as well and at the same time be able to prepare for do.

Convert AVI to MP4

borisjansen — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:17:52 +0000

To convert AVI movies to the MPEG-4 format (supported by the iPhone) I use the following command (on my linux box) :

ffmpeg -i input.avi -acodec libfaac -ab 128kb
             -vcodec mpeg4 -b 1200kb -mbd 2
             -flags +4mv+trell -aic 2 -cmp 2 -subcmp 2
             -s 480x320 -title 'whatever' output.mp4

Another option is to use vlc (not tried).