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Computing

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Saved by Philip
on August 27, 2008 at 3:36:35 am
 

Tips

 

Legalizing your stay

 

While in America

  • If you are applying for a special visa, make your application for whatever background check (sheriff, FBI, etc) the consulate requires early. FBI checks, for example, can take up to four weeks and as of this writing could not be expedited.
  • Stay in regular contact with the consulate, because it\'s not over until you have the visa pasted onto your passport. Their requirements can and likely will change without warning, depending on the day of the week, who you are speakling with, and how that person\\\'s favorite Greek football team is doing.

 

While in Greece

  • If you think you know something about the law that the people behind the desks do not, you may very well be correct. Don\\\'t be afraid to stick to your guns, particularly if you are following a path already trod by others.

 

Residence Permit (Άδεια Διαμονής)

  • If you live in Thessaloniki proper, the address of the office (Τμήμα Αλλοδαπών) where you apply for a residence permit is Οδυσσέως 19. Go to Πλατεία Δημοκρατίας, then head north-west on Λαγγαδά. When you see a Champion grocery store on your left, go behind it and look for number 19, on your left. The stairway is hidden (yes) down a passageway, toward the back-left. The office is on the second or third floor.

 

  • There seems to be a convenient recent change in the requirements for proving that you have the financial means to support your stay here: it used to be required to prove that you had 6000 euro in a Greek bank. Now you needs merely to declare, with an υπέυθυνη δήλωση — available at a street-side kiosk, that you will have the ability to put 500 euro in the bank each month.

 

 

Computing

 

Hardware

 

  • For what to bring, look over the technology-related notes elsewhere on the site.
  • PC warranty repairs can be difficult here. Dell in Greece, for example — unlike local Dell representatives all over the world — does not honor American Dell warranties. You\\\'l have to deal with Dell in America directly (who, incidentally, will probably be surprised to hear about the Greek policy).
  • Mac warranty repairs used to be limited to Rainbow Computing, a company so useless as to inspire public protest from Greek Mac users. Let us reiterate: do not do any business with Rainbow if you value your sanity. Thankfully, times are changing. Elite Computers in central Thessaloniki should be able to take Apple warranty repairs starting in September or October 2008. Note that not all Apple products come with worldwide warranties. iPods, Mac laptops, and some Apple peripherals do, but desktops historically have not.

 

Software

 

  • The following dictionary programs have been reccommended to us. These are all written for Windows; Mac users can run them using Parallels or VMware Fusion. (We are curious to know if they can also be run using CrossOver, which does not require purchasing or running WIndows.)
    • [coming soon...]
    • We know of only one Mac dictionary product, Magenta Gold Version 2007. We can\\\'t particularly reccommend it, though: it\\\'s painfully slow and not at all Mac-like.

 

  • Greek spell-checking for both Windows and Mac is available from Neurolingo, in the form of proofing tools for Microsoft Word or OpenOffice (and NeoOffice and StarOffice). The software also includes a thesauraus and a hyphenator. The company plans to release a stand-alone spell-checker and hypenator for the Mac (developed using Cocoa) by the end of 2008.

 

Typing

 

Arranging to type in Greek is actually pretty easy: all modern computers ship with several fonts that include Greek characters, and handy Windows and Mac instructions for producing them are available online. (Incidentally, you may want to learn just a little about what Unicode is since that\'s what makes it all work.)

 

Mac

  • You might find it convenient to add the Character Palette and Keyboard Viewer to the input menu.
  • Normally, you\'ll be typing monotonic Greek. Typing polytonic Greek is more difficult, considering the number of key-combinations involved, so for that you might want to consider the free SophoKeys software. It includes a keyboard layout intended to be easier-to-use than the built-in one. Also, it includes software that enables you to generate Greek characters by typing in Beta Code (the method that Thesaurus Linguae Graecae uses to encode Greek).
  • If you aren\'t satisfied with the existing keyboard layouts, you can try creating your own using a free keyboard-layout-editor called Ukelele.

 

Windows

 

Fonts

  • There are many sites offering free Greek fonts. The most complete such font that we know of is New Athena Unicode, produced by the American Philological Association. The most attractive we\\\'ve yet seen are generously distributed by the Greek Font Society.
  • Fonts produced by Cannibal are not free; in fact, they\'re rather expensive. They are, however, awesome.
  • All these fonts (like all modern fonts in general) work with both Windows and Mac.

 

 

Contributers: add another category of tips here!

 

  • ...and make each individual tip a bullet-point (click on the bulleted-list icon located just above the \"Format\" menu). For main categories (\"Legalizing your stay,\" \"Computing,\" etc), choose \"Heading 1\" from the \"Format\" menu. Choose \"Heading 2\" for subcategories (such as \"While in America\" and \"While in Greece,\" above).

 

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