Essential Add-Ons for Firefox

Things have been pretty low-key around here lately. Fun enough to live, but not a lot to write home about. So here's a post about Firefox. Looking at the stats, a surprisingly large number of people that come here use Firefox or Safari over Internet Explorer, but just in case you're still not one of them, here are the reasons you should switch right now. And if you have, maybe reading this will let you in on some essential add-ons you hadn't heard about yet.



A while ago someone asked me what the difference between Firefox and Internet Explorer was. As far as she could tell, they were more or less the same. Aside from being faster, more secure, having tabs and a spell-checker for when you write online, the main difference is that Firefox makes their code freely available, allowing anyone to write extensions for it that add new features. The result is a better browser. Here's my own, and a quick look at all the features I've added. In most cases, finding these extensions was just a matter of thinking, "wouldn't it be cool if you could...?", and then doing a quick google search with the word "Firefox" thrown in, only to find that someone, somewhere, and sometimes even many people, had already made Firefox add-ons doing just that.

1. Drop-down Feed menus- (Not really an add-on, I know, but...). You know how you sometimes come across a website that seems interesting, but may not be up your alley enough to become something to check regularly? It happens a lot. If you checked on every mildly interesting website you knew of every time you went online it would take a good half-hour to sort through.

With feeds, you can add drop-down menus of new stories on all your favorite websites to the firefox toolbar, and browse them the same way you would browse your bookmarks. If you see a story that looks interesting, click on it and it'll take you right there. It's easy to do, too- all you have to do is click the little feed symbol to the right of the web address (it's usually located where the picture of the lock is on this webpage). This way, taking a quick look at all the new stories on the websites you read takes literally a few seconds. I think it's a lot more convenient than Google reader.

You'll notice I have MiniNova added to my feeds. When I click on it, it gives a list of all the American TV show torrents that have come online recently (Since I live in Japan, my laptop doubles as my TV if I want to watch something in English). If I see the Daily Show, I click on it and it downloads

2. Google Web Accelerator- You know how sometimes if a website is slow or down, you can use the "cache" link on google to link to their faster backup? Web Accelerator harnesses this power to speed up your web browsing. Apparently, it's saved me about 24 hours of time since I started using it. Eek. (IE version available too for this one).

3. Google Broswer Sync. Do you have two computers, say a work PC and a laptop at home? If so, it's probably a pain tracking stuff you did online on one with the other. Bookmarking a useful site at work is no use when you get home and vice-versa. Firefox stores and auto-fills all your online passwords and logins, but when you go to work it might not have that, and you actually have to remember them all. It's just as bad if you have a Mac with a windows partition. When you switch to the other, you have to start all over again.

Browser Sync takes care of all of that. As soon as you change computers, it updates the browser with all your activity from your last session, even the history. When I get a new computer there's no "rebuilding" to do- I just download browser sync, log in with my google account, and I'm good to go.

4. AdBlock Plus. You know all the crap on the net these days? The pop-up windows, the annoying ads, the flashing banners asking you to spank George Bush to win an ipod? I don't, at least not anymore. All I ever see on the web is the content. The only time I even hear about that stuff is when other people that go to the same websites I do complain about it. I listen, but I can't relate.

5. ScreenGrab! can take a picture of any site, either the entire page, or any portion you select. This is great if you want to save a graph or other visuals that won't copy.

Also (unseen)- Image Zoom- allows you to enlarge pictures you see on the web

6. Greasemonkey- As if altering your browser isn't enough, you can even alter the web pages you read. Greasemonkey allows you to make changes to what your broswer displays when you visit certain sites. For example, one website I went to kept having stories about Ron Paul, and it was getting on my nerves. So I added a script that hides any stories that so much as mention him in the title. You don't have to be a programmer to use it, either- You can find literally hundreds of scripts for every major website.

7. Gmail Notifier- I just added this one. As soon as a new message comes into Gmail, a little notice pops up in the bottom of the screen. You can even add a sound of your choice to play when it happens, like a little gmail ringtone.

8. Rikaichan- and finally, a must-have for anyone living in Japan. If you're reading Japanese and see a word you don't know, just hover your mouse over it, and Rikaichan will give you a definition in English. There are a lot of translation tools online that look promising, but fail to live up to expectations in practice, but Rikaichan is the real deal. It's extremely fast and useful.

Japanese Only

The above is a map of shops and establishments in Japan that bar entry for foreigners, a practice which is not illegal here. It comes from Aruto Debito, perhaps Japan's most famous civil rights activist. Aruto was as far as I know the first, and perhaps is still the only, North American to have full Japanese citizenship. He made headlines several years ago by suing an Onsen in Hokkaido that barred entry to foreigners, and has been holding up the cause ever since.

In discussing problems such as the one above, he touches on some very serious issues regarding the influx of immigrant labor to Japan, such as unskilled workers that are lured here with money, only to have their passports confiscated, and made to work in sweatshops and endure all kinds of indignities and violations, up to and including rape (Human rights violations of immigrant labor is a dirty little secret of many first world countries right now, including the US and parts of Europe). And it's great that someone is speaking up for these people in a country where so many controversies get swept under the rug. If the law doesn't even allow for prosecution in such cases, what hope can people in such situations have?

Still, I can't help think that the causes he champions the most (the "Japanese Only" signs, fingerprinting upon re-entry, etc) tend to be
1) Conditions that bother not just second-world workers, but white, English-speaking, relatively well-off foreigners such as ourselves, and
2) Are very minor indignities in comparison.

Now to be fair, I met Debito at a teacher's conference last year, and he didn't seem anywhere near as bitter as his image might make him appear. He was pretty upbeat and cheerful, all considered. Second, he hails from Hokkaido, and if I lived up there, I might well be picketing along with him. I was hitch-hiking up there the year before last, and I was amazed at how unfriendly people could be. I wasn't barred entry into any stores, but when I tried to ask a question or get service, the staff would drop everything and tend to me in a state of semi-terror, as if one false move or bad answer might send me into a rage, destroying their store. It was amazing how people so technically unfailingly polite could make me feel so profoundly unwelcome. After a while I almost felt ashamed just for my presence, as if it was a horrible intrusion on them.

All that said though, I just don't think the injustices we face as Westerners really hits on the same level as the discrimination faced by other minorities. In my all my time in Japan, I've been barred (or faced attempts to be barred) from maybe five or six stores, hotels and bars. But here's the thing- with the exception of the owner of a bicycle shop across the road from Takamiya Station (who, I should add, is a total asshole), every one of these people that tried to stop me from entering struck me not as a racist, or even a jerk trying to be rude. For the most part it wasn't a matter of disrespect, it was a matter of them seeming utterly terrified of foreigners in general. They don't speak any English, and it doesn't seem to occur to them I might speak Japanese. They literally don't seem to know what to do when I arrive.

Now like I said above when I mentioned my trip to Hokkaido, facing that attitude all the time isn't much fun, and after a while it can even get you angry. But it's not racism in the bluntest, most destructive sense. It's the kind of thing you can prevent with a smile, a non-threatening attitude, some Japanese and a little communication.

Here's a good example, which to Debito's credit he posted about- some foreigners got a fish market owner to take down a "Japanese Only" sign, not with threats of civil action, but just by talking to the owner. As it turns out, the owner was something of a Fish Nazi, and The "Japanese Only" notice was only one of about a trillion rules he had laid out for all his customers (Japanese can get the boot too). Apparently, one too many foreigners ignored (or couldn't read) the rules, and unable to communicate with them, he just threw up his arms and added them to his list. After some discussion he apologized, said he didn't mean it personally and racially, and they worked out a new way for him to run his store like a Nazi and bar customers that displeased him without technically coming off racial about it.

Once again, catch me on a bad day, and I might not sound so upbeat. But being tall, blond-haired blue-eyed with a cushy job in Japan isn't all that bad. Frankly, I encounter more assholes in North America and Europe than I do here, so I can tolerate the odd genuine slight here once in a while. And for the most part, the irritations I do face are probably best resolved by helping promote a greater awareness of foreigners, by being polite, gentle and evenhanded with them, not scaring them more than they already are.

Video: Obama and McCain Speeches

Here's the multi-media for the speeches I wrote about yesterday. Now that Obama is sweeping this I'm finding myself glued to the US Primaries. This really could be not just the end of Bush, but the beginning of a really good presidency. I keep hedging that Obama may not be what he's cracked up to be...but his ability to smash McCain is not. He could landslide this election.

The Republican strategist Lee Atwater predicted a way Democrats could finally beat the Republicans, and that was through "Class Warfare", a populist platform that identified that the Republicans were the party of the rich and started an everyman uprising against them.

Surprisingly though, that never happened. The republican party remained the party of joe sixpack, and guys like Bush managed to be the guys that you'd want to have a beer with, while guys like John Kerry and Al Gore, who actually wanted to do things to help the country, came off as snooty ivy-league intellectuals that were out of touch with the common man. It was mind-blowing. When Clinton won in '92, it wasn't with Atwater's anti-strategy, but with a more or less overt admission that the Republicans controlled the field, and kow-towing to them. The few democrats that do try it (Edwards), often get portrayed as "adding to bitter partisanship"...which ignores that they're not the ones that started it.

Amazingly, Obama seems to be able to have his cake and eat it to. He's seen as a moderate willing to reach out by the right, more progressive and willing to fight for liberal ideals by the left, and on top of all that, he's giving speeches that are more rousing and populist than Hillary Clinton would ever dare give. This guy is the best Democrat candidate I've ever seen.

Here's the whole speech I was talking about the other day. This version actually doesn't capture the mood, because it never pans out to the packed stadium of 20,000 strong. Listen to it and compare it to John McCain's speech at a Holiday Inn from the same day. He's going to bury McCain.

Part 1:

Part 2:


McCain, same night. He goes on a bit at the beginning. Cut to the 3:50 mark for the actual speech.

Bullshit Top Issue for Voters

From The Onion-

Obama vs. McCain

Obama has swept Virginia, Maryland and DC in staggering 2 to 1 and 3 to 1 contests, and has now outstripped Hillary Clinton in delegates. What's really staggering is the margins, and the degree to which he's beginning to flood out everyone else in this race, blue and red alike. As his cheerleaders at DailyKos pointed out tonight, he didn't just beat Hillary in Virginia, or even just get more votes than the likely Republican contender, John McCain. In a red state, he got 142,000 more votes than all the Republican Candidates combined. Even Clinton got more votes than the Republican McCain...and she lost to Obama by 27 points.

Cut to McCain's victory speech. The crowd is enthusiastic, but finite. The ceiling of the room seems to loom just a few feet above McCain's head, boxing them in. McCain and his people enter the stage, all suit and shiny white hair. Weary from the hard work of campaigning, McCain appears to be all of his 71 years.

McCain has Bush's backing, and he has pledged to stay in Iraq another 100 years if need be. In his view, Bush did things right, and America needs him to continue Bush's legacy. What about the new choice, Obama? Don't believe him, McCain says. Nothing they can do will work. He dictates his speech about him seemingly verbatim, like he's doing a bad recording for a book on tape. The only time his voice shows emotion is when he describes the other side's slogans in a dour, dismissive sing-song-

You know, they're going to promise a new approach to governing, but only offer the policies of a political orthodoxy that insists that the solution to government's failures is to simply make it bigger. They will appeal to our dreams of a better future for our ourselves and our families and our children and our country, but they take from us more of the wealth that we have earned to build those dreams and assure us that government is better able than we are to make dedications and decisions about our future for us.

So that's what a McCain rally looks like. Cut to Obama. This is what his rally looks like-

His has 20,000 people packed into a stadium with the energy of crowd whose home team is in the world series. "The last thing we need is the same cast of characters, playing the same old games, and somehow expecting that this time we'll get different results", he explains to uproarious cheers. Every pronoun he uses is we. We won tonight. We still have a long way to go. We can do it it.

And the crowd chants: "YES! WE! CAN! YES! WE! CAN!"

I don't think people want to hear what John McCain has to say. Obama is making them feel good, and McCain is telling them to snap out of it, to realize that the way things are now is the only way they can be. They don't want to hear that Government can't work, and that therefore Obama -and by extension, they- can't do anything to help the country.

Republican strategists say that the best way to finish off an opponent is to go after his greatest strength. That's why the Swift Boat Veterans attack was so effective on war hero John Kerry. But Obama has no such accomplishment in his past to cast doubt on. His greatest strength is offering people hope and change, and woe become any opponent that seeks to destroy that advantage by becoming the anti-hope and anti-change candidate.

I still have my doubts about Obama. I'm not entirely sure he'll turn out to be that different than Clinton would have been, or even be as good. But while whether or not he truly is a different kind of candidate remains an open question to cynics such as myself, it is now absolutely clear that he is a very different kind of campaigner. And the results are beginning to speak for themselves.

So I passed the Japanese Proficiency Test

My language ability is now scientifically proven.

Too good a thing to stay a secret

Our best and brightest have a tendency of tracking down great jobs and taking them for themselves. About 50 years ago, Journalism was seen as something of an offbeat profession for people that wanted to trod down a different path. In his book Spin, Michael Ovitz detailed the typical characterization of Journalists a generation ago: Hard drinking, dishevelled, cynical louts that could never endure the tedium of a regular job, just the type of thing a colorful character with ideas, opinions and an evasion to routine would want to go do, and just the sort of thing a more security-minded and ambitious person would likely avoid.

But slowly that changed. Writing about world events for a living is a lot more rewarding than counting beans at a bank, and gradually people realized that, and the prestige of the job increased. By 2000, merely getting into a good journalism school became difficult. One over-achiever I know from highschool went to a swanky private school for her senior year and wound up with a high level job at the biggest advertising company in Canada at the ripe age of 24. But the work was stressful and not what she wanted to do with her life, so she quit it all and went to Journalism school, and finished at the top of her class. And she still couldn't find a full-time job in her area. It had become a buyer's market, and even the best had to wait in line. These days, it can be tough just to get an unpaid internship at a free alternative weekly such as the Village Voice. Gradually, it became a coveted field.

Then I think about Academia. The whole concept of the "absent-minded professor" springs from generations ago. Being absent-minded wasn't just a sign of intelligence, it was a sign of having your head in the clouds. The reality is generations ago, college jobs were a lot easier to get, and were often filled with offbeat types and eccentrics. If you were an ambitious person and wanted to succeed in Academia, it wasn't too hard to make a good life for yourself within it.

My father came to Canada from Scotland in the 60's with nothing more than a B.A in English. At the time, a B.A from the U.K was seen as the equivalent of a masters degree from Canadian university. So he got a job at a Canadian university just like that, and didn't even get his MA until he was already working here.

Today? Forget it. Being a Professor means almost complete creative freedom within your field of interest with only minimul responsibilities and supervision, a professional income and vacation and benefits that people in most industries can only dream of. You may not get rich doing it, but as far as standard salaried jobs of 100k a year or less go, its great, and the competition for them reflects that now. A Phd is an absolute must, and even then getting a job and then tenure is a bitter fight, with many pitfalls along the way. I met a professor from the University of Central Florida in Osaka last month, and he was breaking it all down- the struggle to publish, publish publish and the various hoops everyone has to jump through. If you get into Academia, you're going up against some smart, ambitious cookies. You'd better be very good at what you do.


When I think of all this, I think about the situation in Japan.

In some ways, Asia is the frontier of this generation. Coming out to Asia is seen as something of an off-beat, wacky thing, not the path of the straight and narrow. There are smart, ambitious people that come to Japan, but they're seen as colorful characters doing unusual things and taking funny risks.

And because of that, there's often a shortage of competition in some job markets here. The days of the instant-celebrity foreigner are over, but the fact remains that if you have some basic qualifications, speak Japanese reasonably well and enter a field that welcomes foreigners, in some areas you can still do a fair bit better here than you likely could back in North America. Like my father a generation ago coming to a Canadian university with just a B.A, I managed to get a full-time University job in Japan with just an MA and a few publications. A higher bar, but still low compared to back home.

But I look around and wonder...how much longer will that last?

Around town, among foreigners I know more Grad students studying overseas than I do wacky people sliding in to town just to make a buck teaching a little English. And even the English teachers I know that are coming now are pretty on the ball. One guy I know is 24 and just passed the highest level Japanese Proficiency Test. I know another young guy that applied to the JET program with a black-belt in Karate, basic Japanese skills, and a letter of recommendation from the very founder of the JET program...and he still got turned down, and wound up working at Nova. He got his MA at the same time as me, and told me that when he left his underpaying high school teaching job for part-time university work, the guy replacing him was even more qualified than he was.

Japan just isn't that wacky or unknown anymore. A lot of people take Japanese in high school and college. The different culture is seen as a drawing point rather than the drawback it was for the clueless foreigners that came here and fiddled with chopsticks in the 80's. With Skype, email, and the internet giving you all the news, TV, movies and music from America, home doesn't seem so far anymore. You've got McDonalds, Wendys, even Costco.

I look around town. Beautiful beaches, lush mountains, warm winters, a low cost of living, despite the stereotype of yesteryear of Japan being ridiculously costly. And on top of all that, even if moving does still seem like a sacrifice, with a good job, you can get 5 months vacation a year to spend back in your home country.

I consider all that, and I wonder...how long will it be before living in Japan stops being this offbeat thing that only the most colorful and adventurous of people risk trying out? How long before the really ambitious people figure out what they're missing, and it becomes just as hard to live a life as good as the one you can have here as it is to get such a good opportunity anywhere else in the world?

Game Review: Super Smash Bros. Brawl/Dairanto Smash Bros X (大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズＸ)

So my girlfriend bought me the new Nintendo Wii video game Dairanto Smash Bros. X, better known as Super Smash Bros Brawl in the USA, for my birthday. As you can see from the 5 different commercials above, there's been quite a media blitz here. She went to the store to get it not realizing it wasn't out yet, which was fortunate, because that led to her getting a reservation, which is the only reason she managed to get a copy at all this weekend. Apparently it was sold out everywhere, and can be sold for double the already-too-high retail price on ebay, and that's just in Japan. I can't imagine what it would go for in the US, where it hasn't even come out yet.

I don't plan on making video game commentary a major theme on this blog, but there's so much interest here I thought it was worth a mention and a quick review. Chalk it up to a national cultural event.

You might remember the 2-player fighter video games Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II from about ten years ago, which attracted so much negative attention for its violent game play and "finishing moves", where you do things like rip your opponent's spinal cord out of their body for the final blow. Smash Bros serves a s light-hearted, G-rated send up of that style of game, and features every imaginable Nintendo character, even ones that have nothing in common with one another. The whole thing has a bizaare, mash-up feel to it with little rhyme or reason. You can pit Mario against a cyborg wearing a battle suit, and have them fight in front of a medieval castle, and so on.

It is fun. The time passed very quickly playing it. The timer is adjustable, which is nice, because otherwise we would have spent the two minute bouts just trying to figure out what to do and how to move. Instead we just set the timer to 30 minute intervals and just pummeled each other indefinitely. Some thoughts-

-Unlike most Wii games, it's difficult to play and involves some expertise. There are like ten different buttons that come into play and work in various combinations. We had to really sift through the controls and practice a lot.

-The Wii controls are a letdown. The creator himself says that the game is best played with the old, conventional Game Cube controller and its 8 Jillion multi-colored buttons. the Wii Remote doesn't seem to make use of any of the motion controls that made the system so popular, and I can't help feel they could have done more with it if they had really tried. For example, you could activate certain moves by holding down B or A and swinging the remote to the left or right, or shaking it up and down.

-If you have friends that like games, its great and a ton of fun. But as a one player game you will probably tire of it very quickly. I beat the entire one player mode at normal difficulty in one quick stretch while my girlfriend took a break to eat the pizza , and I'm no expert. There are greater difficulty levels, but they all look the same, just harder.

Edit- There actually is a way to have a good one player game. Super Smash Bros. Brawl's multi-player mode is up to 4 players, and if you don't have enough people you can make one the computer. But if you want to you can make it just you versus the computer. Go to two player. but then on the second player data screen press the "A" button to select a computer opponent. You can adjust the difficulty level. This way, you can choose exactly who you fight against, and where.

-Brawl an adventure mode that tries to turn the game from a single-screen fighter into a more epic, interactive experience. But its not so fun. The major upside is that by playing it you can unlock new characters, up to 35 in total. Here are some videos by Japanese players showing where to find them and how to get them- but only after you complete the Sub Space Emissary adventure mode.

How to unlock Jigglepuff (Purin)


How to unlock Toon Link


How to unlock Wolf


It took gamers here all of about 5 days to figure that stuff out. Can you believe it?

Chocolate Potato

When I was a kid my sixth grade teacher told me that chocolate potato chips and been field tested, but rejected as disgusting. But apparently the idea finally got off the ground.

Here is my nuanced translation of the above-

Chocolate Potato?

CHOCOLATE POTATO CHOCOLATE POTATO CHOCOLATE POTATO CHOCOLATE POTA-TO!
CHOCOLATE POTATO CHOCOLATE POTATO CHOCOLATE POTATO CHOCOLATE POTA-TO!
SWEET! SALTY! SWEET!! SALTY!!
(bites into it)
Delicious!

Contact Lens Internal Video

You ever get a weird idea for some invention that you'd wish would get made, but seems like at least 50 years from being a reality?

Lately I was daydreaming about video-equipped contact lenses. You could see the web or any other type of visual info through the lens on a translucent display, which would clear up if motion was detected behind them. You could even have a visual keyboard that appears in your lower field of vision, that reacts to the movements of your fingers via say, a ring equipped with an accelerometer.

That way, you could get info from a car without ever having to take your eyes off the road. Glancing at the info could be like seeing a road sign on the side of the highway. And if you got stuck in an extremely boring meeting, you could idly surf the web while it was going on, and no-one would be the wiser. If anything, it would make you look like you were paying rapt attention, because you would appear to be staring straight at the speaker.

Pretty whacked out, right? Only it turns out that someone is actually doing that.