Holizz versus the Web

Something really bad has happened to… something related to my blog. It appears that everything posted in the past has had everything replaced with broken characters, and everything posted from here on has the non-ASCII stuff replaced with question marks.

I can’t get the exported database to convert to UTF-8. It looks like it might be a database issue.

??????????????

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今日ね、いいことあった。道を歩くながらOxfamを見て「あ、行こう」と思った。外国語小説の部分あって「日本のはないはずだ」と思ったが一書あったよ！このブラッドフォードのOxfamはBordersやWaterstonesよりいい本屋だ。Oxfamの外国語の部分は多分リーズのあるBordersとWaterstonesの外国語の部分より本が多いだった。ある日リーズのBordersで「外国語の本はどこにあるか」と聞いた。外国語の本は一棚だけだった、そして一杯じゃなかった！

Today, a good thing happened. While walking down the street I saw an Oxfam and thought “ooh, let’s go in!” [where “let’s” is singular]. There was a foreign language fiction section, but I didn’t expect there to be any Japanese books, but there was one! This Oxfam in Bradford is a better book shop than Borders or Waterstones. Oxfam’s foreign language section probably had more books than Borders’ and Waterstones’ put together. One day at a Borders in Leeds I asked where the foreign language books were. The foreign language books only covered one shelf, and it wasn’t even full!

I like the Google translation of the final sentence:

最後の文のグーグルの翻訳は好きだ：

The book of foreign language was just one shelf, and all the way it was not!

昨日、恐ろしいことをしました。YouTubeでアニメ等を観る為にアドビ・フラッシュをインストールしまいました。ノンフリーソフト（自由ないソフト）をインストールとはとても恐ろしいことです。申し訳ございません。

Yesterday I did a terrible thing. In order to watch anime and such on YouTube I installed Adobe Flash. It is a terrible thing to install non-free software. I have no excuse.

まあ、Ubuntuはノンフリーソフトをデフォルトにインストールするからそんなに悪いのか。

Well, Ubuntu installs non-free software by default, so perhaps it’s not so bad…

フラッシュをインストールしてノンフリーソフトの弱点をすぐに気づいた。その弱点はノンフリーソフトがあまり良くないと言うことだ。二度ビデオを観るとFirefoxがすぐに凍結する。誰もソースを編集できないから改良できない。バカらしいなと思うけどYouTubeはBitTorrentより早くダウンロードし、YouTubeのは字幕ないから。

Once I installed Flash I immediately realised one of non-free software’s weak points. That weak point is that non-free software isn’t very good. If I watch videos twice, Firefox immediately freezes. Nobody can edit the source so it can’t be improved. I think it’s stupid, but YouTube is faster than BitTorrent and YouTube’s videos don’t have subtitles.

ああ、そう言えば、YouTubeには手話のビデオが一杯あるらしい。ASLとBSLと日本手話とか。小さいころから手話に興味があった。練習のビデオもある、また習おうと思ってる。

Ah, speaking of which, YouTube seems to have lots of sign language videos. ASL, BSL, JSL, etc.. Ever since I was little I’ve had an interest in sign language. There are educational videos too, I wonder if I should try learning again.

Artimus Veras:

I have a proposition for you.

If you give us your two sons [one of whom stole a lot of money from an ally] to be trained in the ways of evilness, I will not kill them both.

Mother slaps Veras (critical, take off four HP).

Artimus Veras starts to cast Scorching Ray.

Dom and Andy (whatever their characters are called) start attacking me, and I lose my concentration.

A mob appears.

Dom plays his lute to inspire the crowd (to kill me).

I run away.

I keep running.

I stop to explain to my two horse-mounted travelling companions exactly why I was trying to cast Scorching Ray on the old lady, and get beat unconscious by the crowd.

I have been advised to tone down my evilness and my chaoticness for my own benefit.

先日、またDebianをインストールした。でも、フォントはあまりきれいじゃなかった。アンチエイリアスの問題だと思った。一杯システムの設定を変更したりしたけどまだ下手にレンダリングをしていた。

The other day I installed Debian again. But the fonts weren’t very pretty. I thought it was an antialiasing problem. I changed a load of system settings but it was still rendering poorly.

Firefoxはきれいにアンチエイリアスしていたが他のアプリがまだ変だった。

Firefox was anti-aliasing, but other applications were odd.

まぁ、結局フォントは問題だった。新しい日本語のフォントをインストールしてXを再起動してきれいになった。

But, in the end it was a problem of fonts. I installed a new fonts, restarted X and it became pretty.

フォントはttf-vlgothic。何とかFirefoxがさざなみや東風のフォントをアンチエイリアス出来るけど、他のアプリは出来なかった。パン語は変な魔法を使ってるようだ。

The font was ttf-vlgothic. For some reason Firefox could anti-alias さざなみ (Sazanami) and 東風 (Kochi) but other applications couldn’t. It would appear that Pango is using strange magic.

I discovered the wonderful little Sonata the other day, and to make a short story even shorter, it now has a 0install feed.

Then I thought but what about Emacs?, checked for a binary package from GNU and decided to have a play with 0compile, and the end result is yet another 0install feed. It doesn’t appear to work with the -nw option. I’m not quite sure why that is.

The service is not currently available using Macs or other Unix based systems even though you may be able to input information.

From: DWP - Services and benefits online - What do I need?

Well, I’ve input enough information from this RHEL machine in the lab for it to work, and somebody apparently will phone me about my Job Seeker’s Allowance. Since I the service wasn’t available to me, I just input information.

I noticed I could apply online, so I did that rather than locating the Job Centre (Davina says it’s near the T&A, and although it’s in the centre of town I have no idea of the street names so Google Maps was no help).

0install feeds for Firefox

Yay! Feeds for every language of the latest version of Firefox.

It took ages to get all the scripts doing what they should be. I have version 2.0.0.6 and 2.0.0.5, and it’s fairly straightforward to add new ones (see the scripts directory).

0install is a cool little system which I like a lot. I made a Firefox feed before, for 2.0b1, but that was just for en-GB. It’s very easy to make feeds, but obviously Firefox and its 44 localisations requires something a little different. There’s a Debian (and Ubuntu) package: zeroinstall-injector.

To run Firefox:

0launch http://holizz.com/software/0install/Firefox/ja.xml

To make the command “firefox” run Firefox:

0alias firefox http://holizz.com/software/0install/Firefox/ja.xml

You can also drag and drop the URL onto XFCE’s “Program Launcher”, and there appears to be a Zero2Desktop application for adding 0install applications to GNOME/KDE menus. But my favourite method is using ROX’s AddApp.