Simple is better than complex.

Latin Characters in xterm

Pressing the ALT key and pressing the key gives the Latin characters



A - á  Á
B - â  Â
C - ã  Ã
D - ä  Ä
E - å  Å
F - æ  Æ
G - ç  Ç
H - è  È
I - é  É
J - ê  Ê
K - ë  Ë
L - ì  Ì
M - í  Í
N - î  Î
O - ï  Ï
P - ð  Ð
Q - ñ  Ñ
R - ò  Ò
S - ó  Ó
T - ô  Ô
U - õ  Õ
V - ö  Ö
W - ÷  ×
X - ø  Ø
Y - ã  Ù
Z - ú  Ú

Martin Vön Löwis
Résumé

float.as_integer_ration

From python2.6, you can get a the integer ratio of a float.


$ ./python 
Python 2.7b1+ (trunk:80674M, May  1 2010, 08:23:48) 
[GCC 4.4.1] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 3.14.as_integer_ratio()
(7070651414971679, 2251799813685248)
>>> x*1.0/y
3.14
>>>

Posting this via Jabber, that is LJ talk. Noticed today that Live journal user page has a forceful ad serving. You got to wait and press on the top right x to close it and then access your account page.

Video Chat on Ubuntu

If you would like to do a Video Chat on Ubuntu, then
1. Install Skype 2.0 on Ubuntu.
2. Follow the instructions mentioned here to make the Video option work fine.

How to Use Math Symbols in gnome-terminal

HOLD CTRL+SHIFT + U + CODEPOINT. That's it.

For e.g. CTRL + SHIFT + U + 2200 will output ∀ After typing CTRL + SHIFT + U,
when the terminal identifies that what follows is unicode, you might leave the
keypresses and just type the codepoint.

∀ U2200
∁ U2201
∂ U2202
∃ U2203
∄ U2204
∅ U2205
∆ U2206
U2207
U2208
∉ U2209
∊ U220A

C++0x support in gcc

http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx0x.html

Some of the features are already available in gcc.

Python Strings as Comments

The question was:

In Python we can emulate multiline comments using triple-quoted
strings, but conceptually strings and comments are very different.
I.e. strings are objects, comments are auxillary text discarded at
compile time. Strings are objects created at runtime, comments are
not.

The answer from Steven D'Aprano:

Guido's time-machine strikes again.



>>> import dis
>>> def test():
...     x = 1
...     """
...     This is a triple-quote comment.
...     """
...     return x
...
>>> dis.dis(test)
  2           0 LOAD_CONST               1 (1)
              3 STORE_FAST               0 (x)

  6           6 LOAD_FAST                0 (x)
              9 RETURN_VALUE

String literals -- not just triple-quoted strings, but any string
literal -- that don't go anywhere are discarded by the Python compiler,
precisely so they can be used as comments.

ln explained best

At this article titled Demystifying the Natural Logarithm

His entire series of get an intuition articles on Maths is very good.

Pell's Equation

x^2 - n y^2 = 1

(Pell's equation) which is named after the English mathematician John Pell. It was studied by Brahmagupta in the 7th century, as well as by Fermat in the 17th century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pell%27s_equation

8 Bit Byte

Factors behind the ubiquity of the eight bit byte include the popularity of the IBM System/360 architecture, introduced in the 1960s, and the 8-bit microprocessors, introduced in the 1970s. The term octet unambiguously specifies an eight-bit byte (such as in protocol definitions, for example)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte

Otherwise, people have tried with 12 bit byte. Varying byte length in PDP 10. 6, 7 and 9 bits in Univac computers.