Fran's blog

I’ve obtained the green belt -obi- last Thursday. My exam was some kihon followed by Heian Godan kata and just a minute of kumite. I’m a bit dissapointed, since I’ve obtained just 7 points on 10, while on orange belt exam I got 9 on 10.

Last two weeks I did not train because I’ve a backache, so I was very tired just after kihon and had some difficulties to perform my kata with low positions and real kime.

Last month I’ve been studying a lot for UNED’s access course that I started last year. I’ve made them reasonably well, although in spanish language I expected to get about an 8 –on an scale of 10– and I did get just 6.95. Anyway I’ve got 9 of 10 on both english and maths.

I’ve to wait anyway to know my qualification on other three subjects about a month or so: Sociology, Introduction to Polictial Science and Text Comment. I hope to get about 6 at least on each.

Anyway its sure that I’ve passed the exams and, therefore, the course. Pretty nice, isn’t it?

This is the kata I’m currently working on. It’s rather long and has some complex movements for me. It’s a very advanced kata for an orange belt. I just need to known til Heian Godan for the next “upgrade” to green belt.

A very simple script for restarting NetworkManager on kubuntu 9.04:

#!/bin/bash
killall NetworkManager
sleep 2
/usr/sbin/NetworkManager --pid-file /var/run/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.pid


Remember that you need root priviledges for executing it, so invoque it through sudo.

This script may be useful if you have problems with NetworkManager like me. I’ve had problems in the past with iwl3945 driver that comes with kubuntu 9.04, but those problems dissapeared just compiling latest driver available. But NetworkManager gives me some problems yet, for example, if I do not answer for the password of the KDE Wallet while NM is waiting for in a long time, NM will not be able to connect to wifi network until I restart it.

If you plan to use firefox as default browser on kubuntu, you should go to “System Settings/Predefined Applications/Web Browser” and add:

/usr/bin/firefox

As web browser.

But if you want to open URLs also in a new window, you should use instead:

/usr/bin/firefox -new-window

This is a good idea if you use Show Desktop functionality, otherwise if you go to the Desktop for opening an URL that you’ve there, the URL will be openned in a tag of an existant firefox window, and every other windows will not be restored.

I’ve an ACER Aspire laptop, but I usually use it with an external keyboard and mouse. However sometimes I need to use its builtin keyboard, and I had having problems with numeric keypad in Kubuntu for a long time. Now I’ve found the solution:

shift+ctrl+numlock

With that, the function “keyboard cursors” -that I think is for moving mouse with keyboard- that conflicts with the normal use of keypad can be dissabled.

I think this option should be dissabled by default after a fresh installation, but it is not… anyway I publish this for the record and for others with the same problem.

As I told in previous entry, I should downgrade to kubuntu 9.04 after an upgrade to 9.10 due several problems with nvidia drivers. Although one thing that I’ve found better in 9.10 than in 9.04 was the iwl3945 driver for my wifi hardware. In 9.04 the driver is flawly and gives a lot of problems, losing connection from time to time, and needing user intervention to reconnect, that’s a real pain if you plan to do an unnatended download for example.

Appart from my experience, I’ve also read about other people that find the driver works better on 9.10. Some of them doesn’t want to upgrade to 9.10 by some reason neither, so they’ve just upgraded the linux kernel to 2.30 series, therefore upgrading also iwl3945 drivers.

But I do not want neither upgrade to 9.10 or to kernel 2.30, since my problems with nvidia drivers was surely not directly with kubuntu 9.10, but with the kernel it has.

So I’ve found and easy manner to have last iwl3945 drivers without upgrading neither on the kernel or the distribution.

The answer to this problem is here:

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Download#Download_latest_Linux_wireless_drivers

You need to download the drivers, compile them, remove the older and load the newers. It’s very well explained there step by step.

I’ve installed last drivers from there last night and my wifi connection has no failed again in more than 24 hours.

I upgraded my Acer laptop from kubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 some weeks ago, and since them I was having lot of problems, some minor ones, but other actually serious: random hangs, devices that dissapear (specially sound ones but also wifi), and returns again after next reboot, keyboard that does not work anymore, etc.

This morning my patiente runs out after about half of an hour trying to boot the system with everything working without success, so I decide to do a fresh install of 9.10, as sometimes in the past I’ve had problems also with direct upgrades.

Everything was working fine until I installed nvidia drivers, then everything started to fail again.

I’ve no more time to spent with that and actually I do not need to have 9.10 if I can have a 9.04 working as I did. So I simply reinstall 9.04 from its CD.

Now I’ve a strong and stable system AGAIN.

The lesson it’s a classic: if it works, dont fix it. But we forget it from time to time…

I’ve started today with Tekki Shodan kata. It seems not difficult, as there’s just a movement a bit complicated. The kata seems to be quite short, and the second part is the first one “mirrored”.

I’ve found next execution more original than those more classic from sensei kanazawa, that I used to publish here, so I published this instead.

Yesterday I passed my examination for orange belt easily at my karate dojo. My Sensei told me that “If you continue training so hard, you’ll soon remove me from my post.” He also said that I did it with real kime, that’s really good. So I’m very happy with the results.

My exam consisted in some theory questions, some basical movements: displacements, kicks, punches and defenses, and Heian Sandan kata. I correctly answered nine of the ten theory questions, and I did fail just on the name of Funakoshi’s son: Yoshitaka. On the kata my kokutsu dachi is still far to be perfect. So I’ll work on it next training days.

It was a little embarassing because the other guy that did the exam with me, for blue belt in his case, was very criticized by Sensei because he didn’t a good exam. Despite this, he give him the blue belt anyway, but as a Senpai told me in our way to home, he’ll have serious problems to get the black belt in the future if he wants. Anyway I think he do not mind a bit about that…