So I stopped tinkering around with such things ages ago, but it just occurred to me, as I browsed through customize.org and similar sites with renewed interest, do any RTKers here go that extra mile and customize their machine? If so, in what ways do you incorporate Japanese, if at all? I'm talking aside from being hardcore and changing your OS to Japanese. ;p

ruiner Wrote:changing OS to Japanese

Already done.
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/3929/esrgdhfjgk.jpg
(You can change the entire OS operating language to Japanese in Vista and 7)
お陰で「検索」とか「電卓」とか「削除」、もう絶対忘れられないでしょうね。

Same in OS X and Ubuntu 9.10 (significantly better than 9.04).

I'm one of those people who's mood and productivity depend on the visuals really much, so I'm not sure I really want to count how many hours of my life were wasted on customizing Windows. I've been doing it for over 10 years and got to the point when people would see my machine and ask 'What kind of computer is that? How do I use it?'. I stopped worrying about it that much since switching to Mac because it kind of looks fine right out of the box. I can't say I'm 100% happy with everything but it feels comfortable enough and I don't get those urges to change things anymore. I've never got to use Vista or Windows7 by the way, so I have nothing to say about visuals of these systems.

I've changed my OS to 100% Japanese some time ago (it's a matter of seconds in OSX) and had a couple of really fun adventures trying to figure out some advanced functionality of the software I was not familiar with But then I've hit a point in my life when I just couldn't afford spending so much time on simple things and I switched back to English till better times. There are a lot of artifacts left from that period like Japanese Time & Date, names of the contacts in my messenger being written in kana, aliases (shortcuts) created back then and so being in Japanese. Right now my system is a bit of an English-Japanese-Russian mess. I actually still need a printed out kana cheat sheet to decode some of it as I'm still somewhat shaky when it comes to katakana. I also use RTK wallpaper on my second screen. I must admit it doesn't add anything to my Japanese studies though. It just makes people doubt my sanity a bit more than they usually do

ocircle Wrote:

ruiner Wrote:changing OS to Japanese

Already done.
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/3929/esrgdhfjgk.jpg
(You can change the entire OS operating language to Japanese in Vista and 7)
お陰で「検索」とか「電卓」とか「削除」、もう絶対忘れられないでしょうね。

I've been looking for a way to do that. Does that only come in the Ultimate version? Cause I just got 7 Home Premium.

intermu Wrote:

ocircle Wrote:

ruiner Wrote:changing OS to Japanese

Already done.
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/3929/esrgdhfjgk.jpg
(You can change the entire OS operating language to Japanese in Vista and 7)
お陰で「検索」とか「電卓」とか「削除」、もう絶対忘れられないでしょうね。

I've been looking for a way to do that. Does that only come in the Ultimate version? Cause I just got 7 Home Premium.

There is help!
http://www.froggie.sk

Quote:intermu wrote:

ocircle wrote:

ruiner wrote:

changing OS to Japanese

Already done.
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/3929/esrgdhfjgk.jpg
(You can change the entire OS operating language to Japanese in Vista and 7)
お陰で「検索」とか「電卓」とか「削除」、もう絶対忘れられないでしょうね。

I've been looking for a way to do that. Does that only come in the Ultimate version? Cause I just got 7 Home Premium. sad

There is help! wink
http://www.froggie.sk

Dammit you beat me to it! Just found out about that site yesterday, worked like a charm on my Vista SP2 (use the internal function though - express can be a pain later on). Anyone tried it on Windows 7?

thorstenu Wrote:

intermu Wrote:

ocircle Wrote:Already done.
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/3929/esrgdhfjgk.jpg
(You can change the entire OS operating language to Japanese in Vista and 7)
お陰で「検索」とか「電卓」とか「削除」、もう絶対忘れられないでしょうね。

I've been looking for a way to do that. Does that only come in the Ultimate version? Cause I just got 7 Home Premium.

There is help!
http://www.froggie.sk

you little legend! Worked like a charm and I'm feeling good about the change. It's not that major really.

iAurora Wrote:Right now my system is a bit of an English-Japanese-Russian mess. I actually still need a printed out kana cheat sheet to decode some of it as I'm still somewhat shaky when it comes to katakana. I also use RTK wallpaper on my second screen. I must admit it doesn't add anything to my Japanese studies though. It just makes people doubt my sanity a bit more than they usually do

Mind sharing a rundown of the apps in the status bar and dock? I'd be quite interested

Nooo, didn't mean for this to turn into a 'change your OS to Japanese' thread! Don't want to encourage that kind of Khatzu-like behaviour.

iAurora, that's cool, I used to be like that as well, then I switched to ultra ultra minimalism. That was a while ago. Now I've started getting into it again, so far I haven't bothered integrating any kind of self-study or Japanese apps. I'm beginning to think it's not really necessary again. Will just stick with a pretty wallpaper.

I do tons of customization to my desktop everywhere I go, but never really focused on Japanese. (I guess in part because I study a bunch of other languages as well.) The big one that I must have on any desktop is a quick-launcher: Gnome-Do on Ubuntu, or Quicksilver on the Mac (I think ActiveWords does something similar on the PC).

The only thing I did on my mac was put in "Hyperspaces" so I could have 4 different screen savers (different seasonal color themes of Japaneseness). I'm also a super aesthetic minded person, so I really enjoy this. I kind of use each space for different stuff - 1 is for anki - 1 is for itunes - 1 for the internet - 1 for other ishh...

If I knew more about computers, I would love to make it more bad ass.....

TaylorSan Wrote:The only thing I did on my mac was put in "Hyperspaces" so I could have 4 different screen savers (different seasonal color themes of Japaneseness). I'm also a super aesthetic minded person, so I really enjoy this. I kind of use each space for different stuff - 1 is for anki - 1 is for itunes - 1 for the internet - 1 for other ishh...

If I knew more about computers, I would love to make it more bad ass.....

Whenever I ran multiple desktops in the past, I'd end up with 100 apps open and bogging down my computer. However, perhaps they've evolved since then, have some kind of program hibernation that you can deactivate? Kind of like automated batch files that 'save' the last accessed settings?

Speaking of Hyperspace (openGL screensaver that's very trippy), now I'm looking into screensavers, since my LCD doesn't like it when I turn it off and I'm not fond of image persistence--something that uses Google Maps for Japan, perhaps, or something that combines graphics and timing and 日本語?

ruiner Wrote:iAurora, that's cool, I used to be like that as well, then I switched to ultra ultra minimalism...

I'm not a big fan of flashy stuff myself actually. Most of my customization efforts were directed at making my system look as simple and clean as possible. I was using light minimalistic Windows theme (OS was patched to accept it as native, so no heavy software was required to handle it). Here's one of my old screenshots for example. Looks quite simple, doesn't it? Sometimes I'd use no shortcuts at all (I was using interactive wallpaper instead, like the butterfly of the screenshot is actually a shortcut to 'My Computer') and set the task bar to 'autohide' (no one was looking for it up there and I always found this position much more ergonomic), so my desktop looked like static screensaver that wouldn't go away no matter how fierce your mouse movements were – absolutely not usable for anyone but me Could it get any more minimalistic than that?

angerman Wrote:Mind sharing a rundown of the apps in the status bar and dock? I'd be quite interested

Sure

Status bar (right to left):
Sportlight (OSX)
Input Language Switcher (OSX)
iStatmenus for Date & Time + Disk Usage stats a bit further (can show much more data)
Volume Control (OSX)
AirPort (OSX)
Bluetooth (OSX)
Spaces (OSX)
LittleSnitch - controls outgoing connections by various applications
Caffeine - toggles Mac's ability to fall asleep
WeatherBug - temperature/severe weather alerts
Awaken - advanced alarm clock
StuffIt - deals with archives
xScope (7 icons) - screen rules, color picker, zoom etc
Delibar - direct access to Delicious bookmarks
Dropbox - online backup & easy sharing of data
Tweetie - Tweeter client
Skitch - fast screenshots & hosting
Xmarks - syncs bookmarks between different browsers
MainMenu - takes care of the system

Dock:
Finder (OSX)
Mail (OSX)
NetNewsWire - RSS reader
FireFox - I bet you know
Safari (OSX)
iTunes (OSX)
CoverSutra - iTunes controls, Sportlight-like music search, album cover display, Last.fm etc
Transmission - torrent client
Adium - icq, msn, gtalk, etc messenger
Tweetie (see status bar)
TaskPaper - very simple To-Do list
Minuteur - digital egg-timer
Skitch (see status bar)
Dropbox (see status bar) droplet - drag&drop a file and get sharing link in the clipboard
xScope (see status bar)
Preview (OSX)
Dictionary (OSX) [including Japanese]

These are general use / open at login kind of applications plus ones I had open at the moment of taking the screenshot. I also have 3 specialized stacks of applications in the dock (work & study, misc and service). Some of the general use apps among those would be: Adobe line, few more browsers, Anki, Cyberduck (FTP), OmniGraffle (diagrams, schemes, etc), LittleSnapper (screenshots & site archive collections), TextMate (uber notepad), Audio Hijack Pro (record live audio from applications, devices etc), HandBrake (video converter), Max (audio converter), Skype, Toast Titanium (CD/DVD burning + converting), VLC (media player) + in-built OSX applications and iWork.

Yes, I was big on the minimalist themes, too. Then when I went ultra ultra minimalist, I removed everything--sounds already turned off, but then I also removed the wallpaper and went with a light gray colour for my default desktop colour, no icons, auto-hide taskbar, plain white window colours, and that's it. For me I suppose it was more mental, I got tired of applying my aesthetics to my desktop and stopped so I could focus on what the desktop-as-window was pointing at. Otherwise I would've spent all day just staring at my wallpaper and widgets, et cetera. I'm confident I can do both now, though. Well, after I minimize this window and check out my new theme some more....

I don't know how difficult it is on recent versions of Windows or linux, but changing the OS language is just a few clicks away on OS X. I don't think it's hardcore because you can always revert back to your mother tongue in a flash.

I love DictionarySearch for Firefox:



It can handle various websites from Wikipedia to google to less dictionary-like sites as long as they don't use peculiar urls for entries. I'm guessing you can also use it for yahoo J-J/J-E/E-J dics etc. in conjunction with rikaichan. I don't know if there is a Japanese version of the pronunciation add-on, but if a free Japanese database is available on the internet, it seems pretty easy for a skilled programmer to code a simple click->pronounce add-on/program.

As for cosmetic customization, I've been using the same skin, icons and whatnot for more than 6 months:

http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?...1240578523

I'm happy with Stardict for Japanese, but it would be cool to integrate it or something like it with Breen's/JPod's audio pronunciations that were relatively recently added to their dictionary.

Magamo, what Japanese fonts do you use, primarily?

ruiner Wrote:Magamo, what Japanese fonts do you use, primarily?

I don't change Japanese fonts and use the default character sets most of the time. I use different English fonts for different purposes, but that's because 99% of my writing/reading on computers is in English now. I rarely use Japanese for work.

I was learning Japanese calligraphy when I was a kid, so most of the standard Japanese fonts aren't aesthetically pleasing to me. It'd be nice to use beautiful Japanese fonts, but handwriting fonts aren't very practical for general purposes.

ruiner Wrote:Yes, I was big on the minimalist themes, too...

-)) Ok, you win. I don't think I'd survive plain light gray color as my background for more than 15 minutes. It would make me feel depressed in no time. I find darker wallpapers with just a bit of texture most comforting and least distracting for me. I keep my current one for about a year already and don't feel like changing it at all.

magamo Wrote:...
I love DictionarySearch for Firefox
...

Looks like a really useful add-on. I wish it worked on Safari -( I find in-built OSX English dictionary enough most of the time though. I hope all RTK-ers that use Mac know you can have Japanese dictionary enabled in Dictionary app settings once you change your OS language to Japanese (you can change it back to English after that). It can also work as desktop Wikepedia in different languages. I personally didn't realize it for a long while.

Ha, I just reverted back to the non-themed desktop I've had for 5 years now. I was getting depressed without it, haha. Ah, soothing and clean, this silent, blank gray and white.

@Magamo I see, I was just wondering because your font looked like it had that ClearType style (well, ClearType for Windows, guess Macs have something else), and I found that only Meiryo looks good on my PC if I turn on ClearType rather than standard font, but Meiryo is ugly. I'm a fan of MS PMincho, myself--but I never have ClearType enabled... when it's enabled, ironically MS PMincho looks aliased and ugly.

wow, that Mac dictionary looks pretty frickin' sweet... makes me wish i had a Mac... I hope if they ever end up releasing the iTablet, it will have a dictionary too

Love the Mac Dictionary with Japanese - Mostly all I use right now.

ruiner Wrote:@Magamo I see, I was just wondering because your font looked like it had that ClearType style (well, ClearType for Windows, guess Macs have something else), and I found that only Meiryo looks good on my PC if I turn on ClearType rather than standard font, but Meiryo is ugly. I'm a fan of MS PMincho, myself--but I never have ClearType enabled... when it's enabled, ironically MS PMincho looks aliased and ugly.

OS X has an arguably much better anti-aliasing rendering engine that works very well for Asian languages. Also it uses a famous commercial Japanese font family called Hiragino, which won a Japanese font prize. So some people including me prefer mac's default rendering over ClearType'd Meiryo, though it's definitely a matter of preference.

If I remember correctly, some versions of Japanese Windows can't do proper anti-aliasing to non Meiryo Japanese fonts and require a little hacking. If you installed fonts on different language Windows, maybe Japanese font rendering has been screwed even harder. I read some blog posts about how to install fancy Japanese fonts and properly anti-alias them on XP and Vista, but none of them assumes users using a non-Japanese Windows system.

@iAurora and everyone who are interested in OS X built-in dictionaries

It seems you can add any kind of dictionary including Stardict dictionaries to the built-in app by using DictUnifier. Here's a step-by-step instruction:

http://davidtse916.wordpress.com/2008/01...n-leopard/

magamo Wrote:OS X has an arguably much better anti-aliasing rendering engine that works very well for Asian languages.

I agree with you but there is a strange thing happening on all my Macs: the fonts are too "bolds" with Firefox and Safari. For some reason, some Japanese web sites are more readable with the Opera web browser.