Wednesday May 14
10:26
British Engish Dictionary - Not Compatible With Firefox?!
Just downloaded Firefox 2.0.0.14, British English. After installing it gives the option to install the Firefox British English dictionary. They obviously didn’t test it out though, because after installing, I get this error:
British English Dictionary 1.19
Not compatible with Firefox 2.0.0.14
The dictionary is compatible, the .xpi file just contains the wrong “maxVersion”.
To fix, install the Mr Tech Local Install addon. It give the option “Override ‘maxVersion’ compatibility checking” when downloading the dictionary.
Tuesday May 13
13:41
Please do it at home.
Please refain from snotting in the sink.
Some people are so disgusting. I’ve just seen a (Japanese) guy blow his nose into the sink in our company washroom. Not using a tissue - but leaning over the sink and giving it a damn good heave. Over and over. Gross.
Current Tokyo subway poster: “Please do it at home. Please refrain for putting on make-up in the train.”
Suggested toilet poster: “Please do it at home. Please refain from snotting in the sink.”
Tuesday May 13
00:18
New Toy
The only way I could be sure to get a PC that will run XP: buy a Mac. In this case, the top of the range iMac: 24″ widescreen, 3.06Ghz Dual Core 6MB L2 cache, 500 GB Hard Disk, 512MB Nvidia Graphics Card, 4GB Memory. Just a sliver under a whopping 270,000 yen.
I know I swore I’d never get another Nvidia again, but the only way I could get a 500GB hard drive in the Apple store was to go for the top of the range model - with Nvidia. However, since Apple gives a guarantee that they have prepared all the drivers to get the machine working under XP and Vista (”Everything you need to make your Mac work with Windows is right there.” on the Bootcamp page), I decided to take the risk.
Buying this machine once again raised the horrid issue of bad LCD pixels. My Nikon D40x has one bad pixel on the LCD screen. It annoys me and I wish it wasn’t there, but I accepted it because the body plays so nicely with my Sigma F1.4 lens I have. That lens is known for back focus issues, and you really have to luck-out and get a body which matches the lens. While the shop agreed to swap my D40x for another, when I tried the replacement with the Sigma, it had backfocus - possibly a different batch of cameras. So in the end I kept the bad pixel, since I’d rather have the body working with my lens.
So on something cheap, or where the LCD is not of primary importance, I could potentially accept a bad or bright or dead pixel. Even if I bought a PC which had a monitor with a bad pixel, at a push I could accept it - because I could always replace the monitor later.
But spending over 2000USD on an iMac, I wanted to be sure it had no bad pixels. I would feel so crap if I spent that much money, switched on my iMac, and found a white dot slap bang in the middle of the screen. There would be nothing I could do about it - Apple’s policy, so I’m told, is that they don’t replace screens with just one bad pixel.
Apple, etc, say that it would be unrealistic to expect every monitor to be perfect, but, to be honest, I can’t understand that stance. In Korea, almost every manufacturer gives you the choice of “guarantee of no faults” and “you take your chances” - the latter being about 10-20USD cheaper. It seems like a much better way to do things rather than forcing you to take the risk.
In Hong Kong and Korea, when I bought a laptop, the shops always let me test to see whether there were defective pixels. In Japan, that seems to be impossible. Nowhere would let me test, and nowhere would replace if there was a problem.
In the end, after trying other places, I went to the Apple store and I lucked out. By sheer fluke, the guy I talked to was the store manager, and he was quite happy to let me test the machine before buying. I was told later, by another staff member, that usually such tests are not allowed, and it was only because I’d talked to the store manager that it was possible.
For anyone buying a Mac in Japan, the other staff member (ie. not the store manager) also let slip something else interesting. He said that if you buy from the Apple Store and there’s a dodgy pixel, because you bought from that Apple store, you’re much more likely to get an on the spot replacement. If, I was told, you buy from a reseller, they’re much more likely to just send you away with an “it’s in normal limits” explanation.
So I lucked out - and I have a perfect iMac. In honestly, if they had not let me test the screen, I wouldn’t have taken the risk in buying. I’d have built my own PC instead, and run OSX on that. I’ve seen it done. I’ll probably do it on my LG.
It’s fantastic to have a Mac again - and even better now that I can use Mac OS but still have a window open which has an XP desktop, thank to VMware Fusion. So the few things that I can’t do on a Mac - such as Video Chat on MSN Messenger and use Korean websites - I can do within an XP desktop from within Mac OS. Splendid.
Monday May 12
02:11
What I Want To Be
It’s taken me a long time to realise it, but tonight after watching The Apprentice USA Season 2 I can be sure: I want to be a big breasted kept woman married to a rich billionaire.
Life is so easy if you’re a woman: If you’re ugly - plastic surgery; if you have small breasts - plastic surgery; if you want to get laid/have no money and want to drink alcohol/bored of an evening - go to nearest bar and shout “who wants to buy me a drink?”
Thursday May 8
23:34
Sleep N Shake
Last night was the worst earthquake I’ve felt in Tokyo. Again, it was during the night and it woke me up - and it seemed to last forever. Just when I thought it had stopped, a few minutes later it would start back up again. It was very scary.
My computers seem to be having similar ups and downs. After the problems with the Acer, today I was playing with my Kohjinsha SA1 - increasing the Video RAM in BIOS and plugging in an external monitor - and I managed to bluescreen it. Continually. As soon as Windows started, it would find a new USB peripheral (why?!), then crash. Thankfully after switching it off and leaving it cold for 15 minutes, it recovered. I guess after allocating more memory to the graphics card in bios, some garbage must have been left in memory somewhere that caused problems. Who knows.
Then I came home, and as I was playing with my LG laptop (LW25), I noticed that the fan wasn’t on. I tried toggling the fan speed and no joy, so I turned it over and looked at the fan. There looked to be a little bit of dust, so I got a toothpick and pulled out… what can only be described as a hairball.
There’s a cat living inside my LG.
The fan started to whizz away again. I wonder how long it has been like that? I noticed it had been getting hot lately, but I thought it was just normal heat from being switch on all the time. Now that I feel the laptop being cool again, I wonder what damage I - or the cat - has done.
Spurred on by a bit of success, I decided to take a big risk. My LG has 2GB of memory - 2 x 1GB. According to the online documentation and everything that I can find on the LW25 on the internet, the maximum memory is 2GB - but then again, the online documentation says my computer has a Pentium M, and that’s poppycock. It has a 2GHz Core Duo.
I read elsewhere that some manufacturers specified “maximum RAM” not by what the BIOS or motherboard actually allows, but by what chips were available at the time of machine launch. Since I have a 2GB module hanging around from the Acer - the one that I bought to put in the Acer - I thought I’d whack it in the LG and see what happened. If all went well, I’d have 3GB (2GB + 1GB). If all went tits up, I’d have a burning mess.
With my luck with computers lately, it probably wasn’t a good thing to experiment with - potentially blowing up my long-time-reliable PC - but it worked. I now have 3GB running quite happily. It’s also a relief because I did wonder whether the 2GB card was dodgy and had caused the Acer problems, but since it’s working fine in the LG, I know that the card is OK (I also used ran the Microsoft memory test program that comes on the Vista DVD to verify the chip was OK in the Acer and it gave no errors - but I still had slight worries until now).
My experience with the Acer was annoying - I thought I’d be left with a non-refundable 2GB memory chip, as well as the time I wasted - but as things have turned out, it’s thanks to the Acer that I realised I could upgrade my LG to 3GB, and my Kohjinsha to 1GB. So even though I lost 3+ days out my life, I’ll hopefully gain them back slowly through increased computer performance ;)
