Recently I read some reviews saying the Google Chrome uses a lot of RAM, and some even prefer Firefox on Android rather than Google Chrome. Nonetheless, recently I am using Chromium for browsing more frequently than Firefox. Then I found there are a lot of differences which make me feel that each of them has its uniqueness and advantage. Depending on the users need, each browser can do the things that are totally different.

Using a good text editor during development is very important, as it can ease the job. There are two powerful and old text editor: Vim and Emacs. They can handle large files, split window, indent smartly, highlight syntax, work in console (without GUI). However, both text editors have steep learning curve. Users have to memorize a lot of hotkeys if possible.

My primary text editor is jEdit. It also provides approximately unlimited window splitting. jEdit can also installed with multiple plugins. Users can also create their own macro script using Java language. And it is cross platform. Similar to jEdit, Kate also works with window splitting.

Online video streaming is a very common activity for the current availability of the Internet service. Downloading the video from the web service such as YouTube is one of the common activities among the Internet users.

There are two powerful tools I am using for downloading these videos: youtube-dl and Video DownloadHelper.

youtube-dl is a command-line utility which allows to download various formats of the video available on the webpage; Video DownloadHelper offers similar feature as youtube-dl, yet it is a Firefox addon. Both tools support various websites, not only YouTube alone.

Previously, I used Zotero to take note all my favourite quotes, academic studies, and some other information discovered when surfing net. Recently, when using Zotero in my academic writing, I found that it is messy due to those non-academic notes. This makes me feel that my Zotero is not purely academic. As a result, I want to purge my Zotero notes to make it purely academic for citation. In order to achieve this plan, I have to move my non-academic notes to somewhere which is similar to Zotero that allows synchronisation, taking note from the web (using web browser), automatically stating date and time, URL, and allows writing extra notes. At the end, I have no better choice but Evernote.

Recently using MIUI 5. Then I personally feel that it has more features that I like comparing to CyanogenMod and Namless ROM. In my opinion, the worst is Samsung stock ROM. Because it has a lot of unnecessary apps.

Previously I used CyanogenMod, installed it in a Samsung phone. It is clean and rooted and busyboxed. That is why I can enjoy the power of root.

Due to another device not supported by CyanogenMod, Nameless ROM was installed. In my opinion, Nameless ROM is very similar to CyanogenMod, just it is less popular and under development stage. Yet it supports some devices not supported by CyanogenMod, such as Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Flowchart is most frequently used as I am a programmer (though not as my career). If using Microsoft Office, it provides drawing tool for preparing flowchart. It is easily to be used. Since my primary office suite is LibreOffice, I frankly admit that drawing tool in LibreOffice is not satisfying to complete my work. This is because, preparing the graph or diagram, using a paper layout is not convenient, because I have to make sure that my flowchart is within the paper.

Recently, I subscribed the news feed of ArchWiki (Arch Linux Wiki) New Pages with Feedly. This allows me to know what is new about Arch Linux in some sense. Then, I found this, Rime IME. In Windows, I used Sogou Pinyin Input which is very nice, because it intelligently solve the sentence problem.

In Linux, previously I used IBus input. Due to the buggy upgrade of IBus in Arch Linux previously, then I switched to Fcitx. Fcitx has cleaner interface and configuration. The default Pinyin input method works well. However, the Pinyin using Fcitx or IBus does not work intelligently like Sogou Pinyin. Other than default Pinyin module, I have tried Google Pinyin, Sun Pinyin, libpinyin, and even Sogou Pinyin modules of Fcitx. I can’t really differentiate the advantages or disadvantages between these Pinyin input method, except the configuration interface. Yet, Sogou Pinyin does not work well in my computer.

With the recent update of Pale Moon, I found a trouble with Pale Moon. That is the problem of FoxyProxy Standard addon on Pale Moon. Actually it is a known issue of the incompatibility. Thus, I think soon I will stop using Pale Moon.

Similarly, GNU IceCat (in Arch Linux) has a little difference from Firefox. It can be obviously noticed when using Google Search, there is no instant search. This is because of the user agent showing that the browser is IceCat instead of Firefox. By changing the default user agent to Firefox, then IceCat can use the Google Instant Search. However, with the recent update (in Arch Linux AUR), IceCat user agent is now Firefox.

Google Drive in Linux is really a pain. Because there is no Linux support from official Google Drive, but only Windows and Mac. In order to use Google Drive to synchronise to the local computer like Dropbox, I have tried several solutions. None of them is satisfying, yet Grive is the best among them so far.

Insync

In Linux, there are some solutions as mentioned in Wikipedia and also Arch Wiki: google-drive-ocamlfuse, Insync, and Grive. In the perspective of usability, Insync is the best, because it provides easy GUI to setup the synchronisation. Yet, the drawback is the 15 days trial only. This is seriously impracticable for a free and open source supporter. If there is any other solution, surely the user will tend to the solution.

My primary terminal emulator is Xfce4 default terminal emulator (xfce4-terminal). But there is a drawback, that is, the menu bar problem. If using the “mc” (midnight commander), pressing F10 will invoke the menu bar instead of running the command in the “mc”. Other than that, if using the emacs, the alt key will correspond to the menu bar instead of the emacs hotkeys. Thus, I would like to look for an alternative.