[geeks] Desktops

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Thu, May 09, 2002 at 10:40:27PM -0500, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> On Thu, 9 May 2002, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> 
> > Sparc plug as workstation?  How did you give it a head?  I suppose one
> > could use it with an X-Term and still call it a workstation.
> 
> A SPARCplug has one mbus slot, one sbus slot, a power connector, a
> multiport connector, and a scsi connector.  The multiport breaks out into
> a keyboard port and two serial ports.  Drop it in a minitower case and
> it's a perfectly usable workstation, especially with TGX+ framebuffer and
> a HyperSPARC 200 under the hood.  Keeping it cool/happy was a challenge.
> 
> > I use dia for diagramming things.  It works well on linux, probably OK on
> > Solaris, and probably pretty badly on irix though.
> 
> Dia looks okay, but I've wrapped by brain around xfig and rather like its
> perversions.
> 
> (looks at webpage)
> 
> Damn, it's advanced a -lot- since the last time I looked at it (v0.2 or
> something).  I might have to give it a spin again.  So long as it can
> export to EPS (preferably vector EPS instead of raster), I'm happy.

I always export from dia to eps, and I'm pretty sure it is vecotr
 
> > If I needed to actually put together a presentation, I'd probably either
> > go to the Mac or use the GIMP.  But, as far as I know, nobody has made
> > a decent program for controlling slide style presentations.
> 
> What's wrong with Netscape?  <center><img src=foo><br>caption</center>
>
> Add "previous" and "next" links at the bottom--what more could you want?
 
Eek.  If I wanted that, I'd just use WimpyPoint.  I want something a bit
more sophisticated that can do forward, back, jump to number, and provide
previews of both the current and next slide on seperate monitors.

And it needs to preload the images for fast, seemless transitions.  One
must have a sense of pride in the polish of their presentations.

> > In one of the later chapters, it teaches you to write your own
> > deriver.
> 
> Yes, it shouldn't be that hard.  I just haven't done it yet.  I don't do
> calculus on a daily basis--only when I need to prove something, so it
> doesn't seem to be work the time.

If I can find it, I have some symbolic math stuff I wrote in elisp.  
Nothing great, mind you.
 
> > It doesn't talk about integration, but numeric integration is
> > easy, and symbolic is done unbelievably badly by both Mathematica and
> > Maxima, so why bother?
> 
> It does it better than I do.  At least their solutions (no matter how
> grotesque) do work consistently.  My fiancee is the math brain in this
> relationship--I just know enough to get work done.

I have seem mathematica's symbolic integration solutions be spectacularly
wrong.  It all depends on what you are doing though.  Some things would
probably be pretty easy to code.  Might take a stab at it sometime.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd

Social Security - I have greater faith that Elvis is alive
and programming VAX assembler than that I will ever receive
a dime from it.  --  Patrick Giagnocavo