I figured I could make one more widget for use on the OS X Dashboard. I promise that it’s the last one. Ha ha. Here’s a widget that will let you search the Swicki-powered search engine customized at Nipponster. They’re also behind the Daily J blog. Dunno if anyone will find this useful, but there it is! Think of it as a thank you to Tori and the gang for trying to stimulate the Japan-related blogging community, and as part of my contribution to that effort. I’m not really big on Wiki type stuff myself, since I’m more of a blogging curmudgeon, but I surely appreciate the enthusiasm that they display. Ha ha. Ok, the week of widget madness is over. Fear not. 
And, as before, here’s a quick video clip of the widget in action. Back to your regular “Customary Drivel” blogging next week.
Deas Apple, Customary Drivel
More! Why? I could tell that the first batch of Japanese Lolcats just wasn’t enough. This round is stranger, slightly more cinematic, and involves some other lolspecies. If you hate these in English, you’ll loathe them in Japanese. And if you like them in English, you’ll be surprised by my completely inadequate translation attempts. What can I say? I was half asleep.
Original 2001: A Space Lolcat by ICHC. Original photo by Kristina Buceatchi.
Original vampire lolcat by ICHC. Original photo by *Zig*.
Original JAWS-style scene with lolshark by ICHC. Original photo by Thomas Peschak.
Original organizer lolcat by ICHC. Original photo by reihime.
Original hungrily confused lolcat by ICHC. Original photo by fishbone.
Original receptive lolbunny by ICHC. Original photo by Sjaek.
Deas Customary Drivel, Humor, Media, Photos
As upset as I sometimes get over discovering “Foreigner” costumes for Halloween on sale in stores, or various shows that pull the classic tengu style “Western” proboscis stereotypical gag make-up out of their hats (回転SUSHI on はねるのトビラ for instance), and when my students mock my native tongue (or my attempts to speak in Japanese). There are some things that I can laugh about pretty easily – I’m not an uptight person about this stuff most of the time. Having said that, some things, like the above mentioned items, really rub me the wrong way. I recently came across a few videos of American made commercials that made me shake my head. I’ll host them here, like I’ve been doing recently. Read on for the videos. Read more…
Deas Customary Drivel, Media, Unsolicited Commentary, Video
I whipped up an OS X widget to display the five most recent top stories AND allow me to submit new stories to JapanSoc directly from my Dashboard. I tried to keep the colors consistent with the actual site as well. If you are a JapanSoc member, or looking to be one, maybe you’ll find some use for it?
JapanSoc, for those who haven’t discovered it on their own yet, is a socially promoted link aggregation site similar to Digg or Reddit. Users submit links to blog posts, news stories, videos, you name it – as long as it is Japan-related. When an upcoming story gets the appropriate number of “Soc’s” it is placed on the front page as a Top Story. It’s a great way to share quality things*. Sign up! Get on the bandwagon. The site has a lot of promise – but it requires us to do the submission and weeding.
Here’s a quick video clip of the widget in action.
*If the quality is lousy – for instance, someone spams links to their blog a lot, or posts things uninteresting to a broad audience, do as I do and bury them then just don’t promote them! Let the lame stuff settle into the auto-delete queue never-to-be-published abyss. We want high the site to maintain a good reputation. (Edited according to Nick’s comment below.)
Deas Apple, Customary Drivel
Anyone with information on Malaysia and / or Brunei, hit me. I’ve gone to most of the major government sponsored and private tourism sites, tapped a friend or two for info, and am now in the middle of the research. Looks like a week to a week and a half trip upcoming, end of March and into April. Anyone got any “definite do” or “don’t miss” type things? Anybody got any “stay as far away as possible from” or “lousier than expected” or “avoid at all cost” type things? Any advice about transport? (I’m especially curious about road and boat transport in Peninsular Malaysia – or West Malaysia, whichever, same thing.) Any advice on non-Mutiara lodgings near the Taman Negara rainforest area? On the Borneo side of things – any advice on transport between Brunei and Sarawak or Sabah? (Sabah seems to be easier to fly out of, with more to do…?) Show me some love.
Deas Customary Drivel, Trips
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You may be wondering why the photo content on this blog has been…lacking, lately. Well, part of it has to do with my method for uploading pictures. I made some workflows using Automator so that I basically dropped raw photos in a folder on my desktop, ran the custom application, and uploaded the contents of the output folder to my server space. It automatically resized, duplicated, made thumbnails, renamed everything sequentially, and dropped the extension to lowercase (just a nitpick that I prefer). Well, the RENAME function is now busted on Automator, provided you want to specify the name you are changing the file to at the time you’re changing it…which is sort of the point for me. And that’s a ridiculously simple thing to be broken. It’s an insanely basic function. I thought it was strange…until I ran some searches that turned up two threads (here and here) on Apple’s discussion boards. Sheesh. The best thing? One of the users contributing pointed out that Apple has acknowledged the problem – that they are aware of it. Seriously – go look at the official downloads page for Automator. See that on the right? Yes – it’s the same disclaimer I’ve reproduced here. Unbelievable. The rename function is busted. Sad.
On a positive note, a few minutes of tinkering led to the first Rocking in Hakata Widget! Ha ha. Yay! Click for the full size previews, like normal.
Anyone who has Mac OS X Tiger or Leopard and knows what the dashboard is and how to use it, and who also feels like downloading and installing the widget for use, be my guest! (DOWNLOAD!) I think that simply subscribing to the RSS feed is easier, though. 
But it was still cool to make a widget.
Deas Apple, Customary Drivel, Unsolicited Commentary
