Argh!

Right, the time well and truly has come for me to figure out how to synch my iPod with Ubuntu (and yeah, I have links and stuff, I know, I know) because (a) I am not really up for installing a dual boot of Windows and Ubuntu on my netbook, and (b) Windows just had one of those regular little spectacular implosions on my “desktop” machine, which is a dual boot. (The desktop machine is in fact a laptop, but it lives on and stays on my desk.) The recovery process? Ain’t workin’ for me. No at all, at all. …

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Word Processing in Ubuntu in Korea

I used to have a lot of trouble opening files, as the two favorite formats among students are .docx (What do you mean you can’t open it? It’s MICROSOFT!) and .hwp, the propreitary file format for the word processing application most widely used among Koreans… but used by nobody else on earth. (What do you mean, you prefer formats used globally and accessible from multiple programs?) I’m running Hangeul 2005, but there are instructions for the 2008 version here (or here, recommended at Marmot’s), and as for .docx files, a simple tweak should render your OpenOffice capable of opening those …

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Fsck It

One nice thing about using Ubuntu is that even when things go a little haywire, it’s usually possible to back up all the important files and then just reinstall. Reinstallation is so fast — at least, compared to the plodding installation process on Windows — that it almost always is like visiting the dentist: great dread before, not so bad once you’re there.

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Linux/Nethead Injokery

I haven’t actually been working on “A Killing in Burma” lately — the semester has kind of turned into a swarm of bumblebees and I haven’t had much time to do anything besides school stuff — but I did get a little work done on my draft of “Ten Spikes and a Hammer,” a story I’m working on about, well, more WWII-era geomantic warfare as remembered by an old man in the late 80s in a rather different American from the one we all remember. (Or don’t remember, as the case may be.) But when Lime and I were puttering …

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