simgunz's Blog

CineDual: From Zero to Hero Project in a Day with AI

Sun, 27 Apr 2025 21:34:22 +0200

For years, I’ve had this idea simmering in the back of my mind: a simple way to watch a movie with two different audio tracks playing simultaneously on separate devices.

Automatic help for your shell aliases

Thu, 23 Nov 2023 18:03:42 +0100

A few days ago I have discovered dotree , a nice litte tool that “wants to be a better home for your aliases and bash functions”. This made me think: do I really need another tool or can I obtain a similar result with a zsh function? So armed with impatience I have asked ChatGPT to write the al function. After a bit of tweaking the resulting code is fairly decent and does the job.

Boot a windows partition from linux using KVM

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 08:03:42 +0100

This guide explains how to boot a physical Windows partition inside linux using qemu/kvm and virt-manager. It extends the three tutorials (in particular jianmin’s tutorial) linked in the references section below and tries to provide more detaild step-by-step instructions.

Anki add-ons bulk update

Sat, 11 Dec 2021 14:42:32 +0100

In the last months I have updated all my anki addons to make them compatible with the newer versions of anki, here is a recap of the changes.

About

Sun, 22 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

My name is Simone Gaiarin and I am a telecommunications engineer, software developer, and open-source enthusiast. I started using GNU/Linux in 2006 and quickly began to enjoy it. In time, I began to hack around with the system, writing scripts and finally, I begin to program non-hello-world software. Now I contribute to the KDE project. I also have many computer-unrelated interests, such as reading, hiking, traveling, experimenting, and in general, I am always looking to learn new things and try new experiences.

Activity Manager Wheeled

Sun, 22 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Activity Manager wheeled is plasmoid that allows the user to manage the KDE Plasma desktop activities effectively. It can start, stop, add, edit and remove activities and switch between them. In the current version of Activity Manager I’ve only added the support to change activity by scrolling the mouse wheel over the widget. I’ve called this version “Activity Manager Wheeled” to distinguish it from the vanilla version, since the author didn’t include my patch in his version.

Redshift plasmoid

Sun, 22 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Redshift Plasmoid provides a graphical configuration interface to redshift, and it allows the user to start/stop the redshift daemon. The program automatically retrieves the user coordinates from the KDE settings, permitting redshift to determine the current position of the sun, needed to perform the color regulation. The program extends the original redshift with the following extra features: KDE activities support A different behavior of redshift can be set for different activities.

Timekpr KDE

Sun, 22 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Timekpr allows the user to limit the computer daily usage based on allowed login time window and on the login duration period. The application can be used as a parental time control to limit child access time (or as a self limiting program to spend less time on Internet and enjoy the open air). Timekpr comes with a configuration module in the KDE settings page, where it is possible to set the allowed time window and the session duration limit either on a daily basis or globally.

Fluent Forever vocabulary deck builder pre-alpha release

Mon, 18 Sep 2017 13:19:28 +0000

After more than two years of silence, here I’m back again. Today I’ve pushed to github the fluent forever vocabulary deck builder for anki.

Support Openwords indiegogo campaign

Sat, 28 Jan 2017 11:13:27 +0000

My friends of the openwords project are trying a new crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. I’ve talked about openwords in a previous post . I think that their project is very interesting and being opensource I think it can contribute in making it easier to learn a new language for anyone. I think it deserves some support from whoever is interested in language learning.

Robochameleon: an optical communication systems simulator and data processor

Sat, 05 Dec 2015 14:21:14 +0000

Robochameleon is a coding framework and component library for simulation and experimental analysis of optical communication systems. It has been developed by the members of the DSP section of the High Speed Optical Communication group of the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), which I’m currently part of.

Redshift Control for Plasma 5

Mon, 27 Jul 2015 20:06:40 +0000

Just a quick update to inform you that today a user called clearmartin released a plasmoid called Redshift Control for Plasma 5.

Fluent Forever vocabulary deck builder progress update

Wed, 15 Jul 2015 21:55:17 +0000

In the last months I’ve been working on the implementation of the Fluent Forever anki add-on, which I first introduced as a mock up in a previous post . The work has progressed, and now I have a working version with some features, here listed.

KTouch lessons generator

Sun, 12 Jul 2015 14:30:09 +0000

Recently I’ve decided to learn how to type with 10 fingers, so I’ve started using KTouch for learning it. I chose the predefined lesson for the Italian keyboard, and I really enjoyed it. On average, it took about one hour for passing one lesson (two new letters), which I think is a pretty reasonable time.

Anki add-on: Fast cards reposition

Sun, 10 May 2015 12:41:08 +0000

Here’s another Anki add-on I’ve implemented recently. This add-on allows users to reposition new cards (changing the due field) in a fast way from the browser view, without using the reposition tool, which I’ve always found a little cumbersome.

Support Openwords kickstarter campaign

Tue, 05 May 2015 15:52:35 +0000

Few days ago I’ve found an interesting project on Kickstarter called OpenWords . It is a learning language app based on open data, mined from Wikitionary and other resources. The aim of the project is to provide a more general tool for language learning which will cover the majority of the languages in the world.

Fluent Forever vocabulary deck builder for Anki

Sat, 25 Apr 2015 10:30:43 +0000

In a previous post I’ve discussed about two problems of the Fluent Forever method. Here I present the idea I had to try to solve the second one, i.e., how to build vocabulary decks in a faster way.

The basic idea is to create an Anki add-on that automatically searches and downloads all the media we need to create our cards.

Anki add-on: Maximum height for images in deck browser

Sun, 12 Apr 2015 15:02:35 +0000

Today I was working on a deck when finally I’ve decided to solve an annoying problem who was nagging me since long time.

The problem is that in the the Anki card editor the images are displayed at full size, so that if the card has many fields it’s not possible to see them all at a glance, but it’s necessary to scroll in order to look at the ones at the bottom.

Fluent Forever: two possible improvements

Thu, 09 Apr 2015 06:33:15 +0000

In the last few months, I’ve spent some time in finding an effective and time efficient method for learning languages. After some research I’ve found a method called “Fluent Forever” formalised by Gabriel Wyner. This method is based on the spaced repetition software Anki.

On the state of Activity Manager

Fri, 03 Oct 2014 08:06:58 +0000

As is written in the project page of Activity Manager, “I’m currently rewriting it from scratch in QML to improve it and to add some missing features, like the ability to add a new activity from template”. Actually, after trying different way to interact with the KDE activities I’m stuck.

From Chakra to Manjaro

Thu, 02 Oct 2014 16:42:59 +0000

I’ve recently moved from Chakra Linux to Manjaro Linux. Here I’m not going to explain why Manjaro and all the Arch-based distro are so fantastic, but I only want to point out why for me Manjaro it’s a better choice than Chakra.

Redshift plasmoid 1.0 released

Sat, 02 Aug 2014 11:56:25 +0000

In this release the code has been cleaned and commented with doxygen style comments, the files hierarchy has been changed to make everything more clear, the README has been updated and ported to markdown syntax. Because of all this changes the code is now supposed to be easily maintainable.

Minix Neo X7 DIY VESA mount

Sat, 17 May 2014 12:18:48 +0000

In this post I’m going to show you how to build a TV VESA mount 200 x 200 for the Minix Neo X7 for few euros. The mount is used to hang the Neo X7 and possibly a 2.5" hard drive behind the TV in order to hide them. Notice that this solution won’t allow to use the Neo X7 remote anymore, because there won’t be the line of sight between the IR receiver and the remote. In any case the RKRemoteControl App or any Airmouse will still work.

Minix Neo X7: Make smart your Dumb TV

Sat, 17 May 2014 12:16:10 +0000

I recently bought a Samsung Smart TV but as I expected it is not smart at all, but I consider it pretty dumb. Actually is not the TV that is stupid, but the the real stupids are the Samsung developers and managers.. but this is another point I may analyze in depth in another post. So to add some grey matter to my TV I decided to buy a mini PC.

Persistent Okular review tools

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 08:53:27 +0000

As we all know, Okular is a great piece of software. One of the feature I most like in Okular is the review tools, a system that allows to make any kind of annotation in the document. When I’ve begun using it, I noticed that after selecting a tool and using it once I needed to reselect it for every next annotation I wanted to make. Of course, I’ve found this very frustrating.

Redshift plasmoid 0.6 released with a brand new OSD

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 09:47:56 +0000

In this new version of redshift plasmoid I’ve added a simple OSD that displays the current color temperature when in manual mode. The displayed information can be used to set a correct day and night color temperature in the settings page. Moreover, thanks to the contribution of some users, redshift plasmoid is being translated in different languages.

Redshift plasmoid 0.5 released

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 09:26:09 +0000

Finally I found some time to update redshift plasmoid.

The major change in the new version is the possibility to set the temperature color manually, a.k.a manual mode. To do so you just need to scroll the mouse wheel over the widget and immediately it switch to manual mode, starting to set the color temperature you desire.

Grand opening

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 20:27:36 +0000

Finally, after a lot of hard work simgunz’s Blog is up and running.

I’ve made this blog mainly to provide a homepage for my projects, so that I can share news about them and receive feedback and ideas from the users (I hope).

Contact Me

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000