Jason’s Random Thoughts

Unless you happen to be some sort of linguistic genius, a talented musician, or some unfair combination of the two, chances are you will have trouble learning a new language and the little nuances required for accent-free pronunciation. I’m lucky enough to have my very Japanese wife to help me with pronunciation, but there’s something far more difficult that stands between me and Japanese competency: vocabulary.

Studying a foreign vocabulary has been difficult for me since college, as my brain tends to ignore things it cannot immediately use, catalog and compare (this doesn’t explain my encyclopedic knowledge of Simpson’s, Futurama, or Family Guy). That said, I have had some great success using flash cards to retain information. This is how I finally mastered the hirigana and katakana character sets, and it’s been quite useful in mastering the basic Japanese words one might hear at home. There is one problem with using flash cards, though: they’re difficult to transport.

This is where SuperMemo fills the need. For the low price of $19.90 USD, you can purchase a full licence for the application granting the ability to use databases with more than 30 items. There’s just one problem, though: there’s no point buying a licence. But I’ll give more details about this later.

Who or What is SuperMemo?

SuperMemo is a small application that can run on a pretty wide range of platforms such as Windows, Mac, Symbian (used on mobile phones) and Windows Mobile. It works with a database we either download or construct, and functions similar to a flash card system, but with an important difference: it remembers the questions we have troubles with.

Using an algorithm devised by Apple’s Steve Wozniak, SuperMemo will compile a list of the words we have trouble with the most and present them at specific intervals that have been proven to be the best times to review. Within the space of a few weeks, hundreds of words could be assimilated and put to use in our conversations. I’ve been using it in the unregistered form for just over two months and have found it to be quite useful when drilling new vocab.

So why am I suggesting that people not buy the full version? It turns out the people that used to perform all the administrative duties for the developers have all disappeared.

A Month of Nothing

I bought a license for SuperMemo on July 2nd this year through the Yahoo! Market Store linked on their site. The money was immediately deducted from my PayPal account and a confirmation was sent to my email address telling me that the purchase went through and I would receive an activation code within a few business days. Two days passed and I heard nothing, so I sent a quick email stating the receipt number, my iPaq’s info, and politely asking for a registration code. 10 days later I received a reply from someone asking for the very same info I had sent on the previous email. To make matters worse, they were replying to the email I had sent which already included the information they sought.

So WTF?

Deciding it was easier to just resubmit the info, I replied with the data and waited. And waited. And waited some more. After another 10 day silence I submitted a claim with PayPal to get my money back. To heck with SuperMemo and the poorly maintained organization that spawned it. I can understand if the application is no longer being actively maintained, and I can understand if people are on vacation. But how hard is it to set up an auto-responder or to remove an item from a Yahoo! Store?

The lack of communication and excessive wait time is unacceptable for the purchase of a digital product.

Waiting on PayPal

I’ve decided to give the company 7 days to respond to my demand for refund before escalating the matter with PayPal, and this leaves little time for the company to answer. I’m no longer interested in obtaining a licence key for my iPaq, even though I could put the application to good use. Instead, I’d much rather get a refund and go back to studying Japanese with my PDA-optimized Excel macro. It’s not as mathematically pretty as SuperMemo, but it gets the job done.

Have you used SuperMemo to study a subject? Was registration just as slow?

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Hayao Miyazaki’s (宮崎駿) latest film hit the theatres this weekend.  His first in four years, the tale of 崔の上のポニョ (Gake no Ue no Ponyo — Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea) end the speculation that the animation great had made his last movie.  Reiko and I took advantage of the half-price movie tickets at Kakamigahara Jusco today, and we’re glad we did.  The movie was great.

The movie is said to be inspired by the Hans Christian Anderson classic, “The Little Mermaid,” but there will be very few similarities between the original story or the Disney re-telling.  The story’s main character, Ponyo, wants to see more of the world and escapes her home on a jellyfish.  After running into some trouble with the excessive amount of man-made garbage in the oceans, a boy named Sosuke helps her out and vows to protect the girl from harm.

I won’t go into too much detail, as that would spoil the fun of the movie, but it’s one of those films that people will think of as an instant classic the moment they see it.

That said, perhaps due to my limited Japanese skills, there are some areas that are difficult to understand.  The comments about the proximity of the Moon and how most of an island was completely drowned by the ocean continues to leave me perplexed.  Yet despite the slight confusion, the 110 minute journey into the life of Ponyo and her quest to grow up is a great story for anyone regardless of age or linguistic ability.

Not Miyazaki-sensei’s Last

I’ve had the opportunity to enjoy most of Miyazaki’s works, with the first being Nausicaa.  He’s been said to be one of Japan’s biggest cultural exports and his last film, “Howl’s Moving Castle,” broke box office records in Japan before winning a following among anime affectionados around the world.  What’s interesting, though, is that he has stated repeatedly that he’d like to retire.

Viewers of Gake no Ue no Ponyo will probably notice that there is absolutely no computer animation involved in the movie.  Miyazaki has said that using pencils will be the only way for the Japanese animation market to stay alive, as it sets them apart from the rest of the world.  Regardless of how accurate the statement might be, the hard labour involved to create this motion picture classic can certainly be appreciated.  170,000 hand-drawn pictures were used to animate characters and objects.  A record number for anything done by Miyazaki.

There are also a number of manually drawn pictures as the background, which can be seen with every scene where the small town (possibly in Kobe prefecture) is visible.

Mr. Miyazaki is getting close to 70 years of age, but I certainly hope he doesn’t give up his art.  The man does deserve a rest and to enjoy his remaining  years on the Earth but, at the same time, he clearly loves his craft and it would be a shame if the youthful wonder he adds to the films were to be limited.

If you get a chance, go see Gake no Ue no Ponyo.  Young or old, married, single, other … it doesn’t matter.  The movie is a timeless classic that can be enjoyed by all people, regardless of what moment in life we happen to be in.

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It’s almost that time of year again. The developers at Automattic and elsewhere around the world have been putting together the latest version of WordPress, a blogging platform used on this and a billion other sites, and it’s just about ready for release. Dubbed WordPress 2.6, this next version of the popular software is certainly due to make waves. It’s quick, smooth, more secure, the media gallery is easier to use … this release has so many things going for it.

So why aren’t we hearing the typical tripe that we should all be upgrading the second it’s released to the interwebs?

Convincing the Dubious

I am currently responsible for the maintenance and well-being of 21 different websites, 19 of which are WordPress related. While this is hardly a large number, it can be quite a headache to upgrade all of these sites to the latest release of WordPress. Everybody has their various plugins that are and aren’t compatible with specific releases of the blogging software and, naturally, there are quite a few database considerations that need to be taken into account. Will the upgrade damage the database? Will weird characters replace the ampersands and apostrophies?

Well … there’s only one way to find out: testing.

One of the sites that I look after is still running WordPress 2.1. Of all the sites to upgrade, that one would be the most difficult. It has an un-supported image gallery with close to a thousand pictures, captions and everything else, not to mention lots of site-specific customizations to the base code which may or may not be possible with the new releases of the code. Because of this, when it comes time to test upgrades, this is the site that I try to bring up to code.

In a development environment, of course.

A Flawless Upgrade?

Thanks to the Japanese Summer, my bouts of insomnia have become much more frequent. While this does have a pretty bad impact on my performance during the day, I can get quite a bit of stuff done at night. This was definately the case for me yesterday when I installed the Release Candidate of WordPress on my development site and started to slowly go through the trouble of upgrading the two year old website. After 40 minutes of installation, plugin upgrades, theme modifications and importing data through the XML data import screens (which I find is much better than simply upgrading a database), I was 90% complete and had only dealing with the massive image gallery remaining, as well as pulling in lots of the data collected by various plugins over the years. But most of this could be done through MySQL Query Browser.

Could it have been a flawless upgrade?

I quickly clicked through the site and looked for any signs that the content was changed or otherwise damaged through some weird type of UTF/Non-UTF issue, but there were no problems that I could find. It seems that the install went flawlessly.

Not wanting to get my hopes up too high, I then went to do something that has been a bone of contention for quite some time: writing a post using Opera.

I love using the Opera browser. The caching is great. The language support is great. Heck, everything about the browser is great. That said, it’s been next to impossible to write pages and posts through the WordPress admin screens because of an issue with the TinyMCE editor. After writing a paragraph or two in the editor, the wrapping would begin to fail, causing an entire paragraph to appear in a single line. This problem isn’t just limited to the editor, though, as if we were to post something with this problem, the front page would also show a single line. For this reason alone, I’ve had FireFox installed on my system. The other browser is used only to write content and Stumble sites (which is something else that Opera can’t easily do).

So, with better Opera support being one of the advertized features, would the Release Candidate finally give me the opportunity to use my preferred browser? In a word: yes. There are no problems when writing a page or a post in Opera.

How about the media browser? The issues that I had faced with version 2.5 and 2.5.1 seem to have been resolved.

The plugins? These seem to have no trouble after being updated to the most current release, either. I’ll need to modify the Social Bookmarking Reloaded to include the JapanSoc link and image, but that’s such a small thing that I wouldn’t even call it a hassle.

How about Embink? Yes … Embink will work nicely with 2.6. There’s nothing that I need to change for the initial alpha release of my software (which I’m thinking about releasing on August 2nd, to mark the 1st year anniversary of moving to Japan). The one thing that people will need to remember, though, is that XML-RPC (the publishing protocols) are now disabled by default. That said, if you’re upgrading, they will continue to be active. Otherwise, you’ll need to go into the Options / Writing tab, and enable the XML-RPC option.

The Verdict

All in all, I think that 2.6 is going to be one of the nicest releases since 2.1 came by to overhaul the 2.0 line. The system is smooth, responsive, and plays nice with others.

Word has it that WordPress MU 2.6 will also be released in the near future. I haven’t had the opportunity to play with the new version of MU but, if it turns out to be just as useful and powerful as the standalone 2.6, I think I’ll put all 19 WordPress blogs under the same tent.

You can download this latest RC release of WordPress from the Release Archive.
Are you looking forward to the next release of WordPress? Will you be upgrading sooner rather than later?

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A few weeks ago I had tested a possible solution to display Japanese characters on my Worldwide English-version of Windows Mobile 6. Although it didn’t quite work the way I wanted, it provided a little hope for the future, as it’s rather important for me to display the three character sets (four, if you include Romaji — the standard alphabet) used in the Japanese language. So it came as a pleasant surprise when I learned about another option for displaying, and entering, Japanese on my HP iPaq 211.

The program is called CE-Star, and it’s put out by the people at Mobem. It’s certainly not free, but they do offer a limited trial of their language packages. What’s interesting is that CE-Star can be used to add support for the Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese languages on a variety of platforms. After using just the Japanese component for three weeks, I can sum up the experience with just one word: smooth.

Japanese Character Display

Being able to clearly see something as complex and intricate as the Kanji character system is incredibly important if I expect to use the small computer as a learning tool. Luckily, CE-Star has no trouble working nicely with ClearType. On top of this, it’s incredibly fast.

I’ve been using this application for just over a month now and, in that time, it’s been working like a charm (aside from the little issue I had a week back). Sites look great in their native fonts and, best of all, I can actually read Japanese emails that are sent from work or Reiko on the PDA.

Japanese Character Entry

This is one area I’m not too impressed with, however, it’s not something that most would complain about. When it comes to data input on mobile devices, I’m all for handwriting recognition or something akin to Graffiti (a.k.a. Block Recognizer on Windows Mobile devices). Little keyboards are ugly, imprecice, and scream inefficiency at every turn. Sure, some may be pretty quick with the tiny keys and pen, but who ever heard of using a pen on a keyboard?

That said, CE-Star uses a standard on-screen Querty keyboard to receive input and shows both the hirigana as well as the possible katakana/kanji spellings that can be used. What I’m not too impressed by, though, is the poor accuracy of kanji characters when spelling various words.

Kanji is not my strong point, but I am getting a bit better at reading the complex writing system. My cell phone is pretty good at determining what characters I need, so it’s a bit of a disappointment when I see 搗き交ぜる offered when trying to spell 着きます. That said, I shouldn’t be too reliant on a computer’s kanji suggestions if I can’t properly read them.

Advantages Over Competition

• buttons still work
• minimal effect on system performance

Disadvantages?

• some menu items to JP (Regional Settings)
• WiFi manager in JP (Regional Settings)
• 15 day trial version will make email, SMS, and (potentially) Excel unusable on the PDA after expiration

Overall?

CE-Star is a great addition to any PDA that needs to display or regularly enter non-Roman characters. For $42 USD, I’ve been able to add much more functionality to my Windows Mobile device which, in turn, makes the little computer a great tool in my quest for better Japanese speaking and reading ability. There is a cheaper option available for $28 USD, and this will certainly do more than enough for 90% of us who need Japanese, Chinese or Vietnamese language support on our mobile devices. Heck, thanks to this small application, it’s now possible to use and update Super Memo, as well as write notes and simple articles, in Japanese.

I’ll write more about SuperMemo and its uses in the near future.

Have you used CE-Star on any of your mobile devices?

This post was published using Embink 0.1 Alpha-1.

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With all the competition in the web hosting market, you’d think that companies would be working tirelessly to maintain a 99.9% uptime and offering superior services for rock bottom prices. However, for reasons I can’t understand, most hosting companies lean more towards offering sub-par services for premium prices. Luckily, there are some companies that recognize the importance of the service-to-price ratio. Canadian Webhosting is just one example of this.

Before going too far, I should tell you that Canadian Webhosting has asked me to review their site and, after a quick glance at their offerings, I’m quite happy to promote a Canadian business. Although I am Canadian, my web server is located in Chicago. Why? Because Canadian hosting companies are notorious for overcharging their customers. If I were to host my sites on a server within my home country, it would be 60-150% more expensive than the American competition. However, it seems that Canadian Webhosting is not like the home-grown competition … they can actually compete with the world.

Verifiable Uptime

Uptime can make or break a website, which means that this alone should be the top consideration. Price is pointless if your site has fallen off the internet, as are other benefits such as storage space, data transfer, databases and subdomains. Customers need to pay close attention to uptime guarantees and verify any sales pitch that sounds too good to be true. Some hosting companies will promise a 99.9% uptime, but fail to tell us that uptime is defined as “a server is running.” If the server is functional, but it can’t access the internet, the site is down. Period. Canadian Webhosting understands this.

I’ve checked around for reports of downtime with this company, but there isn’t one negative word about them. You’d think there’d be one complaint after ten years of business, yet there isn’t a peep. This alone sounds too good to be true but, when a company has great people, machines rarely have major problems.

Service-to-Price Ratios

As with any business, the cost of a service and value-add options can make or break you. Most of the better quality providers online are currently offering decent starter packages in the $8/month range, and Canadian Webhosting is no different. What is different, though, is the package detail.

For $8.95 CDN a month (when prepaying for 2+ years), site owners can host an unlimited number of websites, MySQL databases, and subdomains. Email packages come equipped with spam filtering at no extra charge, and can be accessed via your preferred POP3/IMAP client, or online through a web client of your choice. To sweeten the deal, you receive a $25 Google credit, and access to 50+ preinstalled scripts. This makes setting up new sites a snap for anyone that might not have extensive knowledge setting up a PHP/MySQL site “the hard way.”

Of course, cheaper plans are available but, for the sake of a few dollars a month, customers have a Terabyte of transfer every month, and 125 Gigs of storage available. If you opt for a bigger package, you get 3.5 Terabytes of transfer, 300 Gig of storage, a dedicated IP and support for Ruby on Rails.

Want something a little more Microsoft? They have Windows Server-based solutions available as well. I spent quite a bit of time looking at all the different offerings. Believe me, you won’t be disappointed.

Home Field Advantage

The .ca extension isn’t too popular for obvious reasons, but it seems to be incredibly difficult to obtain when working with a foreign web host. I have several .ca sites, and I can say with absolute certainty that most ordinary people will not go through the hassle of buying one and setting it up unless it’s part of a package deal. Luckily, the great people at Canadian Webhosting can do this for us.

To be completely honest, I’m really impressed with Canadian Webhosting. This is a Canadian company that is actually able to compete with web hosts in other nations. Considering the number of sites I have with .ca extensions, and how many more I’ll likely have by the end of this year, I’d be daft to ignore this company. They do offer free site transferring, which would be a great time saver if it means I don’t have to transfer MX records and upload 18 gigabytes of data across 12 websites and 19 subdomains.

If you’re looking for a great webhost, want something hosted in Canada, or some combination of the two, be sure to give Canadian Webhosting a go.

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