10/06/2009

托福一战,写写经验

  原文地址:http://shuqinzhai.blogspot.com/2009/10/blog-post.html

  我是 9 月 20 日考的托福一战,比较晚了。分数出来了,就不说了,还是比较满意的。(提示:105+,MD5 是 a3c65c2974270fd093ee8a9bf8ae7d0b。)

  没看机经,没背模板。鉴于基本上没怎么准备,所以写一下经验,供后来人参考。

  虽说考前没怎么准备,但是平时的功夫是不能忽略的。一分耕耘,一分收获,就是这个道理。下面来具体分析一下这个问题。

  我们的任务,是要在托福考试中获得高分,这样就有两条途径——学习英语和准备考试。这两条途径,只要有一条牛 X 了,就可以获得高分。如果你把英语学得比 native speakers 还好,那直接去考试,就有 110+;如果你英语很烂,但是题库的所有题都做过,你至少可以考 100+。

  显然,对于大多数人来说,英语不可能学得那么好,也不可能有时间做完题库,所以这两种选择是愚蠢的。

  因此很自然的,适合我们的方法是,两者兼顾。这样就又出现了两种选择,侧重学习英语,还是侧重准备考试。我选择了前者,因为前者的长期利益更大。

  到底选择哪一种,取决于你的实际情况,例如你对英语的喜爱程度,你所拥有的时间,你的信仰,你的民族,等等。因为做这样的决定,不可能是在临考的时候,而是在小时候。下面我把两条途径介绍一下。

学习英语

  如何学好英语?按我自己的经验,就是一句话:

Live like an American.

  十余年来,我从来没有专门准备过单词、听力、写作等等,我所做的,就是上面这句话。

  如何 live like an American?首先必须 love Americans。有人说,我不 love Americans,那就不行。你必须 love them,因为你要 live like them,你要学好英语。你要学好一群人的语言,你就要爱他们,你就要对他们产生兴趣,不然你就不想学习他们的语言,你就不会学好他们的语言,OK?

  好,具体方法。

使用英文界面

  买新电脑了?拿回来,赶快把中文系统格式化,装英文。你害怕?刚才说,你要爱他们,现在你不爱就算了,你竟然怕,这能行吗?

  所以,改语言吧。然后检查一下浏览器的语言设置,确保第一语言是 en-us,你就会发现,当你尝试上 google.com 的时候,你不再被绑架到 google.cn。有的软件会根据你的区域设置,自动切换到中文界面,还有的网站会根据你的 IP 给出中文,怎么办?赶快找,找 English (US),找到了就点,点了就好了,成 American 了。

  训练能力:阅读。

查英文资料

  做数学作业呢,不记得 p-级数的收敛条件了,打开 en.wikipedia.org(你要是第一反应是打开 zh.wikipedia.org,那么自己老老实实去厕所面壁十分钟),敲入“p-series”,顿时豁然开朗。

  数学作业做完了,做物理作业。要用正则系综,不记得了,也不知道怎么用英文说。这个时候,允许你上 zh.wikipedia.org。敲入“正则系综”,然后,然后,克制,冲动是魔鬼。克制住别看,在左边找 English,赶快点。然后就进入了“canonical ensemble”页面,这才是你该看的。

  如果没有对应的中文页面怎办?那就用最后一招,用 translate.google.com 翻译,然后去查 en.wikipedia.org。

  训练能力:阅读。

与老外交流

  你经常上 Xiaonei,Kaixin?Stop it! It's dangerous! It's a total waste of time! 你应该上 Facebook,Twitter。人都有交流的需求,当你有的时候,可以找中国人发泄,也可以找老外发泄。我们选择找老外发泄。

  上面是开玩笑的。让中国人融入 Facebook,Twitter,是一个长期战略,现在还不太现实,我自己都不是经常上。

  我自己经常干的,就是泡坛。我长期泡在英文论坛里面,看帖,发帖,回帖,已经 n 年了,而我自己没有意识到。直到有一次同学提醒,我才发现,获得的收益是不小的。

  训练能力:阅读,写作。

听老外所听,看老外所看

  听广播是个不错的选择,既可以练听力,又可以知道这个世界上正在发生的事情。我自己经常听 VOA。我这里是收不到 VOA 的,但是 VOA 很好,所有的节目都是存档的。访问一下以下的 FTP archives 就知道了:

ftp://8475.ftp.storage.akadns.net/mp3/voa/
ftp://8475.ftp.storage.akadns.net/mp3/voa/english/spec/

其中第二个是最常用的 VOA Special English,所谓慢速英语。

  然后,就是看电影。我自己喜欢的方法是这样的。首先,一定要找没有硬字幕的电影,然后挂上英文字幕。看的时候,把字幕关掉,认真听,没听懂,倒回来,再听,实在听不懂,再开字幕。

  播放器,我推荐 SMPlayer,免费,快捷键很强大,可以用键盘倒退 5 秒,10 秒,30 秒,开关字幕,等等,很适合上面的方法。

  训练能力:听力。

小结

  以上的这些思路,仅供参考。要学好英语,选择适合自己的方法,贵在坚持

准备考试

  如前所述,即使英语学好了,也要专门为考试做准备。这部分我不太熟悉,就说说我干了什么。

  

阅读

  没说的,做题。

  我自己觉得巴朗的阅读最好,有一定难度。我的方法是花 8 分钟认真读文章,然后基本就不用看了,即使是最后一题主旨题。好不好自己斟酌。

听力

  没说的,做题,同样推荐巴朗。巴朗的长篇听多了,一上考场,如释重负。

  大多数人是听力加试,认真做,理由后面再说。

口语

  看了新东方网络课程,觉得口语部分讲得不错,推荐看。我要说的是,一定要大胆练,旁边有人,只要不影响别人,照样练,不要怕笑,怕笑得不了高分。而且一定要限时+录音,缺一不可。只有限时,才能锻炼出速度;只有录音,才能发现,你的发音是多么的丑陋。如果你觉得自己的录音不丑陋,那么有两种情况:一种是你的发音确实不错,另一种是你产生了幻觉。

  录音软件我用的 Audacity,免费,而且有限时录音功能。不要装 Cool Edit 了,old dinosaurs。

  至于练习题,我就练了一些网络课程之中的题。口语题确实不好找。

  注意口语是考查语言,不是做调查。因此回答不一定要真实,而是要说自己熟悉的。学了三年物理,问你最想上的选修课,就说 physics;问你最想去旅游的城市,就说自己家乡;问你最想去旅游的国家,就说 China;问你最喜欢的书,就说 The Official Guide to the TOEFL iBT!

  在托福考场上,没有人知道你是条狗。

写作

  综合写作比较简单,我练的高分 120,巴朗的作文确实不好。

  独立写作,照官方指南上面的题库练几篇。练完一定要 review,要总结,不然白练。先复制到 Word 里面 debug,然后再想想思想是否全面,有没有深度。

  不过根据我自己的这次考试,我觉得思想不太重要,主要是语言要好。关于语言,我知道的不多,简要说几条我喜好的。

  1. 长短错落
  2. 主动被动错落:scientists say => it is said
  3. 形容词名词化:be important => be of importance
  4. 使用否定词:not convenient => inconvenient
  5. 自问自答
  6. Come on, baby!(谨慎使用)
  7. 回忆童年……

  这些都很简单,但是你上了考场不一定有意识用。一定要有意识,不能上了考场就失去了自我,出卖了灵魂,那是不对的。

  另外,考试的作文题不一定是官方指南题库里面的

关于惨案

  惨案比较常见的是听力个位数,据我所知,这多半是加试胡乱做导致的。官方指南上面说了,加试不算分,怎么还会导致惨案呢?ETS 自然不会骗人,不过 ETS 说了,考生不会被告知哪些是加试。于是人们归纳出所谓的“经典”加试。好了,哪儿出了问题?

  福尔摩斯说过,一旦你排除了所有不可能的事实,那么剩下的,不管多么不可思议,那就是事实的真相。太傻上有人发帖说,自己听力的非加试部分出现了所谓的“经典”加试。这可能就是真相了。

  最后说一下,惨案有很多原因,但是不可能是因为没有按 Continue。我这次考试基本都是等时间自己走完的。

关于机经和模板

  由于和自己的信仰相悖,没有用过,没有资格评价。

技术细节

  考试程序是用 Java 语言编写的。

总结

  托福不是结束,是开始。准备托福,就是为美国校园生活做准备,做了这么多题,该看出用意了吧。要爱她,爱她才能考好。因为——

哥考的不是试,是寂寞。

8/04/2009

HOWTO: Creating a Cloning Edition of Microsoft Windows XP

Rationale

Different from Windows XP, Windows Vista introduces a new installation method, the image cloning method. During the installation procedure, the whole file system will be "cloned" to the target partition, which is much faster than the file-by-file copying method used by Windows XP. Windows 7 inherits that feature.

However, at the present, it is still a safe conclusion that it is impossible to completely abandon Windows XP. Many computers, especially those "living" in developing countries, equipped with a CPU of about 1.5 GHz and RAM of about 512 MB, are powered by Windows XP, to better serve people. And the installation process is a disaster.

Imagine how many employees in small companies still running Windows XP are suffering from slow installation, and how many children who cannot afford to buy a new laptop to run Windows 7 are frightened by the reinstallation catastrophe again and again.

So, if a cloning edition of Windows XP is available, people will be happy. And I will tell you that, it is possible. Do you think I'm over talkative? You've got the point.

Let's hark back to the subject. The Sysprep utility, officially provided by Microsoft, is designed to meet the demand for mass deployment. And we will take advantage of that tool.

In the end, keep in mind, never, never make pirated software.

Prerequisites

  • A computer (will be called the reference computer, and can be a virtual machine)
  • A genuine copy of Windows XP Professional (Home Edition is not supported)
  • A cloning program
  • A person with firm determination and strong confidence to create a cloning edition of Windows XP (Don't punch me. I won't blah any more again!)

Procedure

  1. Install Windows XP on the reference computer.
  2. Log out to the welcome screen. Press Ctrl + Alt + Del twice, and log in as Administrator, the ultimate ruler of this computer.
  3. If you have created accounts other than Administrator and Guest, delete them, as well as their account profiles.
  4. (Optional) Install applications that you wish to include in your cloning edition.
  5. Download the deployment tools here.
  6. Extract the archive to C:\Sysprep, since those tools are useless to end users and that location will be automatically deleted during the first boot of the new system.
  7. Run Setupmgr to create an answer file, i.e. Sysprep.inf. Information omitted in that file will be retrieved by querying the end user during the first boot.
  8. Run Sysprep. Remember to enable mini-setup and non-PnP detection, and set the computer to shutdown after the reseal procedure. Finally, click "Reseal".
  9. (Optional, but recommended) Boot the computer with another operating system. Delete the page file, hibernation file and the account profile of Administrator.

The remaining work is a simple imaging task. Use your favorite imaging software to make an image of the system parition. It's great! Now you can clone this Windows XP to any computer.

(Actually not all computers will successfully boot after the cloning. The target computer is required to be "HAL-compatible" with the reference computer. However, most desktop computers fulfill the requirement.)

Troubleshooting

MBR Problem

The MBR is the first 512 bytes of a hard disk, of which the first 446 bytes are booting code, the following 64 bytes the paritition table and the last 2 bytes the signature. When restoring the image to the target computer, the cloning program may or may not restore the MBR, while in both situations problems could occur.

If the user buys a new computer without an operating system and the cloning program does not restore the MBR, the computer cannot boot, though there is a complete Windows XP on the system partition.

If the user installs Linux on the computer and the cloning program does restore the MBR, the computer boots directly into Windows XP. Linux becomes inaccessible.

The problems in both situations can be fixed in a minute, but it is unsound to expect all end users to have that ability.

So what should we do? Nothing. Because the MBR problem is caused by the intrinsic deficiency of the design of the ancient MSDOS partition scheme, which we are still using.

However, some cloning programs are able to settle that problem parcially. For instance, partclone puts different booting code into the MBR depending on whether it detects GRUB or NTLDR.

Active Partition Problem

The active flag, or sometimes called the boot flag, is a flag set to the partition containing the Windows operating system. On an occasion that the image is cloned to a new computer, and the cloning program does not set the target partition active, the computer will fail to boot. You need to set that manually.

5/16/2009

HOWTO: Add Launchpad's PPA APT Repository and Install Software from PPA

What is a Launchpad's PPA?

By giving developers a place to store their code, help compile it to Debian packages and organize those packages to an APT repository, the Launchpad's PPA considerably accelerates and simplifies the procedure to deploy latest software to end users, while maintaining the stability of the official repository.

Let me make an explanation on the above obscure summary. Ubuntu is a Linux distribution, an operating system assuming heavy responsibility of users' everyday work. Therefore, stability is more important than novelty. Typically, after a new final release, the official repository corresponding to that release is "frozen". During the freeze, only indispensable changes are allowed. In a word, for most software in the official repository, the version number will never increment.

However, in some cases, some new features from newer versions are indeed required to accomplish daily work. Users who have that requirement can add the PPA APT repository to their repositories, and the package manager will update the software to the latest version.

In another situation, users might wanna use, test or just preview newly created software of absence in the official repository. Once the corresponding PPA APT repository is added to the repositories, the package manager will show new packages containing that piece of new software ready to be installed.

Adding a PPA APT repository

Now let's take the OpenOffice.org Scribblers' PPA as an example. That PPA's overview page is located here:
https://launchpad.net/~openoffice-pkgs/+archive/ppa
Browse to the above URL, the page tells you how to add the PPA APT repository to repositories.

Assuming you are running Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope", just add the following line to repositories:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
Then refresh the local cache, from the package manager, packages of the latest version of OpenOffice.org will be seen! And the package manager will prompt you to update OpenOffice.org to the latest version!

Adding a PPA's keys to your system

Perhaps you will never ever think about the risk that there are possibilities that packages from a PPA are modified by some bad guys to achieve their evil goals. But developers will.

To ensure that packages are transfered to you without being altered illegally, you need to add the PPA's keys to your system, and your package manager will authenticate incoming packages.

Browse to the overview page again. Find a sentence like this:
This repository is signed with 1024R/247D1CFF OpenPGP key.
Click the link. Within the URL, look for a long number, like:
D2BB86E0EBD0F0A43D4DB3A760D11217247D1CFF
OK! You have got the fingerprint of the key.

Now run the following command in a terminal:
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com D2BB86E0EBD0F0A43D4DB3A760D11217247D1CFF
And it's done.

Living in China?

Now comes a special trick for users in China. It has been reported that in most areas of China, connection to Launchpad is very slow, thus making installing software from Launchpad PPAs very time-consuming.

To settle that problem, the Chinese Ubuntu community has prepared a whole mirror of all Launchpad's PPAs! Again for the OpenOffice.org Scribblers' PPA, just add the following line instead:
deb http://archive.ubuntu.org.cn/ppa/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
For other PPAs, it is the same. Just do the following replacement:
"http://ppa.launchpad.net/" -> "http://archive.ubuntu.org.cn/ppa/"
And enjoy the high speed.

5/05/2009

Install Ubuntu Studio, Mythbuntu, Fedora Themes on Ubuntu

Do you like the look of other Linux distributions, but cannot afford the disk space for more than one systems? In fact, it is no necessity to install a whole system to have its look. You can have all of them on Ubuntu!

Just install the following packages:

  • ubuntustudio-look
  • mythbuntu-gdm-theme
  • gtk2-engines-mythbuntu
  • gtk2-engines-nodoka

And you will get the following:

  • Ubuntu Studio: GTK and Metacity Theme
  • Ubuntu Studio: Wallpapers
  • Ubuntu Studio: GDM Theme
  • Ubuntu Studio: Icon Theme
  • Ubuntu Studio: GNOME Audio Theme
  • DMZ Cursor Themes
  • Mythbuntu GDM Theme
  • Mythbuntu GTK Theme
  • Nodoka GTK Theme (The Default Theme for Fedora)

You see, we benefit from free software. Free software developers won't bother allowing us to use features of one particular system on other systems, if only compatible. Would Microsoft allow you to have the Windows 7 theme on Windows Vista? Never.

4/23/2009

Five Years' Fight for Freedom, Tenth Generation of Ubuntu

I finishing the examination of thermodynamics, Ubuntu 9.04 comes!

After five years' fight of the core developers, MOTUs, and the community for freedom of operating systems, the world has been dramatically changed by this great team work, Ubuntu!

Everyone should try Ubuntu. It is easy to get, easy to use. It is both powerful and good-looking. The most important is, it is free, free as free in free beer as well as in free speech. It is driven by people's belief in individual freedom. Ok, let's start off!

4/03/2009

Return to Home during the Qingming Festival

We've got three days off during the Qingming Festival. So I pulled my luggage and went home. Now I am sitting on my chair comfortably in front of my computer and compose this post. Yes, what seems incredible is the fact that I was at my university just several hours ago. Thanks to the multiple-unit train!

The multiple unit is a self-propelling train unit capable of coupling with other units of the same or similar type while still being controlled from one cab. A multiple-unit train consists of multiple units. Compared to the locomotive-hauled train, the multiple-unit train features higher velocity, acceleration and energy efficiency.

I took the multiple-unit train of D3053, which launches in Hefei at 14:49 and lands in Hankou, Wuhan at 16:43. I was filled with excitement when I was waiting on the platform for the train to come. Finally, it showed. It's really handsome! On its face, wrote the Chinese Hexie Hao, which can be translated as the train of harmony. I hurried into the train, found my seat and sat down. It's quite commodious!

The whole trip was pleasant and short. I really love it.

First Post

I have started this blog for my being attracted by the features Blogger provides. It is really great, not like many other blog service providers persisting in considering users as fools and providing many useless functions instead of giving all advanced and professional functions to users generously.

If I feel well, I may discard my previous blog and live here.