Finally, threaded comments supported out of the box! The plugins available to do this were incredibly difficult to setup and changed the database more than I was comfortable with. Of course, my theme doesn’t work with this new feature so I’m back to the default theme for now. The default theme is horrible and really needs an update. This is important since your favorite themes are often unmaintained and will not support newer features. I’ll be hunting for another one in the coming days.
As for the new admin interface, it’s OK but I don’t really care too much as long as I can get stuff done. The old one worked and so does the new one. It’s more customizable, which is cool. I don’t like the bulk action dropdown since I’m forced to choose an action instead of just hitting the appropriate button. It adds two more clicks: 1 to click the dropdown and 1 to select the action.
Time will tell whether the automatic upgrading will work ok without having to fudge around with chmod and directory permissions.
Update: Couldn’t stand the default theme anymore. I don’t really much like this one either but it seems to work. I hate fixed-width, it’s such a waste of valuable screen space. The theme search continues…
Update 2: I’ve decided to drop the threaded comments stuff. Personally, I don’t like how it’s difficult to figure out which comments are new since it’s no longer sorted by oldest first. Can’t do much about the fixed-width. It seems to be all the rage with the better looking themes.
Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog but what you haven’t seen (or maybe you did briefly) is all the stuff I had to do just to keep it the same.
Some of you may have briefly seen the navigation menu oddly placed. That was because of countless invisible spam links inserted into one of my posts. Since my WordPress installation is always up-to-date, I’m thinking it’s probably a sql injection vulnerability in one of my plugins. I’ve been reactivating them one by one and now I’m reasonably sure which one was the culprit. I might reactivate it and combine it with the bad behavior plugin to see what kind of shady logs I get. Maybe later.
Or maybe it was a mysql security hole. I haven’t had any more attacks since my provider recently applied a security update to the database. But that somehow managed to mangle all my non-English text so I had to rebuild the blog from scratch with an export from the old database. As a result, you might have experienced a brief period of complete 文字化け.
So I’m finally in the last week of my online class for Project Management and assuming that I pass the final, I’ll be free at last to pursue other interests! I have a special project in mind which I’ll write about very soon.
I was brushing up my Kanji skills lately with a couple of those Kanji Nintendo DS games like ２００万人の漢検 (crap, they have a newer version already). In the process, I thought about why the DS was such a great platform for learning Kanji because of the stylus touch screen. The idea then hit me that there was a completely new touch screen platform ripe for the picking: the iPhone!
When the iPhone was originally announced, there were many skeptical on how Apple’s very first phone would do especially with the radical touch screen interface. With millions already sold and a new 3G version selling like hotcakes, I’m sure nobody would contest the fact the iPhone is a screaming success even in Japan where people are already used to highly sophisticated phones.
With the new App Store, it’s even easier to sell software for the iPhone than it is for the DS which requires a physical cartridge. With the iPhone, people can simply download your app and send you the cash! This is a boon for small and independent developers because they don’t have to worry about packaging and distribution. It’s just pure $$$ for every copy sold (minus Apple’s cut). Super Monkey Ball is already making millions!
Here’s what you would need for a great Kanji game.
Handwriting Recognition Technology for Kanji and Kana
Lots and lots of example sentences and 四字熟語 converted to Kanji problems
Some kind of reward/review/SRS system and various levels of difficulty
Some cool graphics
???
Profit!
So there’s an idea for you guys. Good luck! It’s only a matter of time before somebody makes a Brain-Age game for the iPhone and starts raking in the dough.
Update
Elliott also pointed out that you can buy stylus pens for the iPhone. The software could be a great opportunity for up-sell or you could even make a deal to package it together somehow!
Ok, I have to vent a little bit here on something that’s been annoying me lately.
Dear Internet,
Please stop using Snap Shots for your links. When I’m moving my mouse cursor over a link, it’s because I want to actually click on the damn thing. I do not want an annoying pop-up preview box that is completely useless to me and too small to actually see anything. What is the preview box for? So that I can admire the general theme and color scheme of the website?
Also, do you know why the CSS tool tips built in most browsers wait until you hover a bit before showing up? It’s to prevent them from ambushing your cursor when it’s trying to go somewhere else!
Internet, people built pop-up blockers for a very good reason and I don’t think it was so we could descend to the level of mini pop-ups that jump out as you’re trying to move your damn mouse!
Regards,
Tae Kim
I can’t believe anyone would voluntarily install this thing on their site. Is there some kind of ad/affiliate revenue generating scheme in there somewhere I’m not aware of?
With the Olympics going on in Beijing, I’m finally seeing some programs about China on the major TV networks. It seems like it takes a big event like the Olympics or major disasters to get traditional TV to actually take even a cursory look at anything outside the US borders. However, a lot of the stuff is rehashed and almost seems like a collection of whatever they had lying around that had the word “China” in the title.
The problem with TV is that it needs to cater to a large audience and hence the lowest common denominator. With the increasing number of stupid reality/game shows and absolutely no in-depth coverage of any issues that actually require thinking (for example, telcom immunity), the intellectual level of TV seems to be getting lower and lower.
Fortunately, with buzzwords like Web 2.0 and the Long Tail, decentralized media can cater to people even like me who are interested in getting a candid look at China and maybe even a little listening practice from Chinese speakers. With subtitles, that means you might have to actually read something. OMG! Real Americans don’t want to read!
For comparison, watch SexyBeijing.TV’s video about McDonald’s in China versus CNBC. The first difference you’ll notice is that I couldn’t embed the CNBC’s version so you’ll just have to go to their site.
The CNBC’s version is only about a minute long but I watched a longer program on TV (I don’t remember which channel it was) about China and McDonald’s and it was pretty much the same kind of deal so I think this is a reasonably good comparison.
While traditional media has much more influence and can talk to, for example, the CEO of McDonald’s in China, they seem to avoid talking to anybody who can’t speak English. I don’t recall having to read a single subtitle in the program. Even if they did interview a local, you’ll get the customary and absolutely horrible dubbing they do for any foreign language speakers.
In contrast, SexyBeijing’s version has some very funny dialogue with real people such as asking a fat kid whether he thinks eating at McDonald’s makes people fat. The one guy who is stuffing his face and goes to McDonald’s everyday is absolutely hilarious. Since his mouth was constantly full of food I had trouble making out what he was saying but the translation is a riot!
Thanks K and safarinew for helping me figure out what he said. Native ears sure are awesome!
你最喜欢吃的是什么？ – What’s your favorite thing to order?
汉堡啊。大个巨无霸跟我体型差不多。 – I like the Big Mac. It’s big, like me.
Personally, the SexyBeijing’s version seems more entertaining, informative, and real rather than some American dude narrating a digested version of the story on a background of related images from China. The CNBC’s version might be more informative with statistics of this and that but I don’t really care how many billions or dollars McDonald’s rakes in every year in China or how many hundreds of stores they recently opened.
The traditional media will be around for a while but I’m glad that the internet has allowed new and decentralized channels for content distribution. Let’s just hope they don’t take control (Net neutrality) or shut it down (Usenet) with scary tales of pirated movies and child porn lurking everywhere.
Check out SexyBeijing.TV for more interesting videos! Let’s hope Youtube starts rolling out the higher quality versions. Here’s the Youtube page.
I just installed WPtouch on this blog for you iPhone users. Personally, I would never spend that much money on a phone every month. It would definitely fall under the “Latte Effect” on my budget. But I thought it would be a nice touch for those of you who can afford it. Now you can read my pointless ramblings with ease wherever you go! Yay!! ＼(^〇^*)／
So if you’re reading this from an iPhone, how’s it look? I tested it out using iPhoney (OS X only) but it only works so-so. Maybe I’ll try it out on an real iPhone the next time I visit the Apple Store.
The plugin seems to work pretty well but I don’t know why Pages don’t have comments despite the fact that they’re enabled (this has now been fixed). Also, I wish there was a way to get the Archive Page on the iPhone version only and without having to manually hack the Theme. Finally, it doesn’t work with WP Super Cache yet so I had to disable it. Oh well, it’s not like the meager traffic on my blog is going to put any kind of strain on a server that also runs Groklaw and Project Gutenberg (both directories are next to mine under “g”).
I don’t know when this was released (couldn’t find any announcement on the Google Japan Blog) but it looks like Google finally introduced street view for Japan. I suppose it was only a matter of time once they figured out how to censor people’s faces automatically. They covered an amazing range of streets for Osaka and Tokyo and partial areas near there such as Kyoto, Saitama, and Chiba. Smaller areas are also viewable in Sendai, Hakodate, and Sapporo. I can’t even imagine how many hours it took to drive through all those tiny little streets!
Hopefully, with the ability to actually see where you want to go, this will become another tool in our arsenal to navigate the crazy no-name streets of Japan. Although without any street names, it’s almost impossible to even know where to put the little yellow guy. But with a little bit of searching, you can at least use it to show your family where you lived or are living in Japan!
For instance, if you work for Hitachi, you might end up in their 第二志村寮 like I did. And here’s the crappy old building I used to work at before they moved their headquarters to the fancy and new ダイビル in 秋葉原. Before that, I worked briefly at the ironically named 新丸の内ビル near Tokyo station just before it was torn down to be rebuilt. (I wonder if it’s already been rebuilt and reopened?)
If you have never been to Tokyo or Osaka before, the first thing you’ll probably notice is the never-ending spans of concrete with the occasional tree or bush here and there. It gets pretty hot once all that concrete and metal starts baking in the summer. Who says we need nature? Ha!
I wrote my original grammar guide in clean XHTML by hand. The beauty of XHTML validation is that it’ll easily catch your boneheaded tag errors automatically. Also, I was already comfortable with HTML, CSS, DOM, and Javascript and so I could easily tweak the content exactly how I wanted it including mouse-over popups and practice exercises. Finally, having it all in XHTML made it incredibly easy to move around and share. No database or language runtime to install, all you needed to do was put the files on a web server. The clean markup made it easier for others to modify for the language translations as well.
The only drawback is that it is not easy to port into other formats. The pdf version is not very good and RTF is pretty much out of the question. But it’s ok because it was pretty much built for the web anyway and that’s where it will stay.
For the textbook, I wanted it to be not just for the web but for a variety of formats, including (as the word “textbook” suggests) a printed book. That’s why I went with DocBook, which seemed to serve my purposes. Unfortunately, now I need an XSLT processor and have to mess with XSL to make any kind of major tweak which is a huge pain. Still, since the original document is XML, it’s still portable and shareable. I also really enjoy the ability to easily reorder content around because I’m still trying to figure out how to arrange everything.
Unfortunately, I’m finding some annoying issues with DocBook that lies with the purist mentality that absolutely no formatting should be in the document itself. Can you believe that there is no built-in support for freakin’ line breaks?? So when I want to write a dialogue, I either have to use “literallayout” which means I have to mess with the whitespace therefore completely ruining my prettily formatted xml or I have to add my own custom tag and XSL template, which means it’s no longer docbook and I have to carry around my customized XSL forever.
Another example is the complete lack of support for strike-through text. Apparently I should use subversion or something to track revision changes. This is a perfect example of purists thinking they know better than you. But have they considered that maybe I want to show readers what doesn’t belong in a sentence and should be deleted? Nobody can imagine all the uses people have for various formatting so they shouldn’t try to second-guess what you need them for.
For now, I’m not going to let it bother me and just concentrate on the content. Worst case, I can always port the stuff to whatever I want by hand. Or maybe I can just run a cleanup perl script at the end. I don’t even want to think about PDF conversion right now. I evaluated FOP at Hitachi when they needed documents with dynamic data and format customized for each company. I told them to forget about it and go with Big Faceless Java PDF Library. Even with a crazy name like that, it’s probably the smartest thing I ever did there. The funny part is that took a multimillion dollar company MONTHS to license something that costs several hundred dollars. We almost released the tax modules with “DEMO” written in large letters across the back of all the documents.
I don’t know. Maybe I should try LaTeX or something? I know next to nothing about it except that you have to compile your document!
Encouraged by your comments about getting CJK input to work in Linux, I decided to give it another shot over the weekend. I was pleasantly surprised at the much improved support since my last attempt (ver 7.10). Check out this SCIM documentation and compare the instructions for 8.04 vs 7.10. In the newest version, everything is done via the Language Support menu in a few clicks. In prior versions, you had to manually install packages and edit config files by hand. Pretty much where I failed last time.
So I have to give Ubuntu credit here. It really is turning into a fully-featured and intuitive OS with every new release. Now they just have to do something about the default fonts. I wished I saved a screenshot but the Japanese fonts out of the box really are horrendous. The kana and kanji don’t even line up properly! So unless you want to punish your eyes, you still need to download Microsoft fonts as described here. If the fonts are freely downloadable, you would think including them in the distro would be the easiest thing in the world. Maybe there are distribution issues or the developers don’t know enough about Japanese to see how bad the fonts currently are.
So I’m using all three OSs now! Here’s my current setup:
Dell Inspiron 530: Windows XP Home and Ubuntu 8.04 dual boot
Panasonic Let’s Note Light W5: Windows XP Professional (Japanese)
MacBook Pro (Loaned from work): OS X 10.5
By the way, the mouse precision and acceleration is horrible in OS X. I just stick to the trackpad because the mouse feels like it’s moving through molasses.
This post has almost nothing to do with Chinese, Japanese, or Korean but hey, it’s called “Tae Kim’s Blog” remember? I can write whatever I want, Ha Ha!
OS X
I requested and recently finally got a Macbook Pro for my work laptop and so far I’m really liking it! I especially like the fact that I can automatically rotate all my Suzumiya Haruhi wallpapers every hour.
I just wish uTorrent and Notepad++ were available for OS X. I suppose I can just use vim for general text editing. I haven’t used XCode extensively yet but at first glance, it looks like it has a ways to go before it can compete as an IDE.
Linux
I tried Ubuntu briefly and it was nice and all but I refuse to use an OS that has such poor multilingual support and ugly Asian fonts. I guess there are not many Linux users who need to use English and another CJK language at the same time. Vote for my “Better Multilingual support and CJK fonts” idea on Ubuntu brainstorm if you’re in the same boat as me.
In any case, until I can just add the languages in a menu, have an input editor that doesn’t drive me insane, and fonts that don’t make my eyes bleed, I’m not switching.
Windows
Windows 2000 was my favorite version and I reluctantly switched to XP when my newer computers didn’t have compatible drivers. XP is not glamorous but it certainly does everything I need especially with Google Pinyin. My favorite Windows-only apps include: uTorrent, Notepad++, WinSCP, K-Lite Codec Pack, WinRAR, ImgBurn, and DVD Shrink. I recently bought a Dell desktop with XP while they were still offering the option and so it will be my main OS for many more years.
I haven’t tried Vista yet and have no plans to unless my work requires it. I refuse to use an OS that requires at least 1gb of ram and 40gb of hard disk space on my current systems. I mean you can’t even use more than 2gb of ram with 32-bit Windows!! (And I hear 64-bit is a whole another can of worms.)
Which OS are you currently using and any thought of switching? According to Google Analytics, 86% of you use Windows, 8% Mac, and 5% Linux. Among Windows users, 78% use XP while 19% use Vista.
