Pound sterling and Euro sign and Indian Rupee symbol on a UK keyboard

Well,
         I am in UK right now and I am going to be here for quite some time. One thing annoying about being in UK is UK keyboard. Especially once you have a habit of using a US keyboard. Thankfully, I have brought my ergonomic US keyboard with me over here. But then the trouble is what do you do if you want to type £ ? If you are a linux person like me, this is what you should do.

Create a file named .Xmodmap in your $HOME.
Put the followings in the file

add mod3        =       Mode_switch
keysym  Alt_R   =       Mode_switch
keycode 26 = E NoSymbol EuroSign cent
keycode 46 = L NoSymbol sterling cent

keycode 27 = R NoSymbol U20b9 NoSymbol

What it does is that it assigns ALT_R (Right Alt)+e to €, ALT_R+SHIFT+e to ¢, ALT_R+l to £, ALT_R+SHIFT+l to ¢ and ALT_R+r to ₹. For more details refer to 'man xmodmap'.

Now, either you logout and log back in or run

 xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap

and Voila!! You have pound sterling , euro, cent sign and Indian rupee symbols available at your finger tips!! Literally!!

Tools for teaching programming

Hi,
     I read a couple of articles at linux journal. Two programming environment, especially meant to teach programming in a very interesting way. Namely, Alice and Scratch. The reviews at Linux Journal are here and here.

Fatal Attraction

Well,
don't get any ideas from the title. This title is given to an incredible chess game that happened between Edward Lasker and George Alan Thomas. Here is the link. Observe, how every move after the Queen sacrifice is forced :-)

Mitti Cool Refrigerator

Well,
Innovation is not the monopoly of so called highly educated scientist. Innovators and creators walk among us as a common people with not so common talent.

Read about mitti cool refrigerator . We should encourage and nurture more and more such innovations and innovators.