Americans And Their Cars

I wanted to bring this up because I have some opinions about Americans and their cars.
No offence to those Americans who have enormous cars, but I have some problems with these things.

Why do Americans drive ridiculously large cars? And why do American car companies glamorize the giant gas-guzzler? So what if your pickup can tow 600 million pounds? When the hell are you ever going to use that? In fact, if you really think about it, are you ever going to tow more than maybe a beer cooler and a couple of hunting rifles? Unless you either are in the construction industry or you have a very heavy mobile home, YOU DON'T NEED A GIGANTIC PICKUP.
And you with the SUV, how often do you really carry 7 people in your car and a trunk full of stuff at the same time? Maybe you do often, in which case that's fine. But if it's around once a year or less (which it most likely will be), then YOU DON'T NEED AN SUV.
Now as for Hummers, I have one thing to say to you: YOU DON'T NEED A HUMMER, FOR ANY REASON, EVER.

If you legitimately need a large car for your business or you have a family of like 8 that you frequently carry around, than this doesn't apply to you, but if all you use your car for is a 45 minute drive to work and back and to pick up pizza, then GET A FRICKIN' SEDAN, or even better, A SMARTCAR. Or if you want to go extreme, get this.

This post is dedicated to American personalities Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and Billy Mays, who all died this week. Stop killing off your celebrities, America!

Firefox Plugins I Couldn't Live Without (for me, at least)

There are a certain few plugins for Firefox that I just love. Let's go over them:

1. Perapera-kun: A very useful and handy popup translator/dictionary/kanji lookup for Japanese text. Works much better than translators. A Chinese version is available too. The homepage can be found here. Requires dictionary found here, download the dictionary/ies of your choice.

2. Babelfish Instant Translation: A little app that translates selected text using GoogleDic, Google translator, or Yahoo translator into or from any of the supported languages. Homepage here.

3. Download Statusbar: Replaces that bulky download box thing in Firefox. Homepage here.


4. Video DownloadHelper: Makes it really to download about any video media embedded on a site, such as Youtube, or my personal favourite, ニコニコ動画. Homepage here.

5. Flagfox: Displays a country flag next to the URL of a site or on the status bar, and clicking on it will give you complete information of the server's location. Homepage here.

6. Personas for Firefox: Makes Firefox look a hell of a lot nicer. My personal favourite is the "Foxkeh" category. Homepage.


7. Scrapbook: Allows you to save an entire webpage to your computer, or even a whole site, and much more. Homepage.


8. StumbleUpon: The toolbar for the popular service, which opens a random high-rated site based on your interests. Terrific when you're bored. Also integrates with Google, etc. Homepage.

That about covers most of my plugins. Hopefully you will find some of these useful as well.

こんばんは！

You may have noticed that my header (as of posting this) has some Japanese subtext to it. Most of my readers probably do not speak Japanese, so the text is the following:
私たちは日本語も話せます。ちょっと。

If you can read or translate Japanese, all the better for you (and if you can, please tell me if my grammar is decent!) ┐('～`；)┌

But why did I make my header in Japanese? Well, because Japanese is an amazing language. It is simple, logical, expressible, and fun to read and write. Japanese culture is also very attractive to me. Unfortunately, as of now, I can only fluently speak English (obviously) and Spanish, to a degree. Pero el español, no es muy exótico en comparación con japonés. Chinese is alright, but I'm not as much of a fan of the culture (or government...) and that there exist none (that I know of) strict syllaberies whereas Japanese has two, and Korean hangeul is a little too simple (although I have yet to learn it). The Indic languages are really interesting, but a bit too complicated and of more limited use for me. Middle eastern languages I may toy with eventually, although I'll likely get put on an FBI watchlist. And Cryllic languages... well, I'll get to them soon enough (Russian, anyone?)

Some examples of each. If you can't see some of the characters, then your computer sucks. On Windows, get the respective language packs installed, on Linux do the same (in Language Support), and Macs should already have them all, but I wouldn't really know:

An example of the Japanese language. 日本の言語のサンプル。
An example of the Chinese language. 一個例子中文。
An example of the Korean language. 한국의 언어의 예.
An example of the Hindi language. हिंदी भाषा का एक उदाहरण.
An example of the Arabic language. مثال على اللغة العربية.
An example of the Russian language. Пример из русского языка.
And my favourite, the Tibetan script (not sure what language or what it says):
།དས་ཀ་རད་པ་ཞ་བའ་སན་ལམ་

I Love Linux, But It's a One-Sided Relationship

So I love Linux (specifically Ubuntu), but it can be a pain in the arse, a lot. Its beauty, power, and price are unmatched by anything else I have ever seen, including Windows and Mac. But its complexity rivals that of good jazz music. However, I can always forgive it :D
Linux comes with a massive userbase within its network of forums and how-to articles and wikis. It's all about searching for the right info, and you will find what you need. Hint: Google is my best friend.
Today Compiz, Ubuntu's manager of all its awesome beauty and special effects, is bothering me. It won't save my custom profile! But that's what the Compiz forums are for! I bet I'll have it fixed faster than Steve Jobs can put on his turtleneck.
EDIT: Yep, fixed it. Thank His Holy Noodliness for those who volunteer their time and skill to help others.

Here's an example of what Compiz can do. Of course, you'd need much more than 2:25 to show all its powers. The potential is astronomical. Thinking of switching yet?

Welcome to my new blog, mina-san!

The first question you may be asking (or the last, if you're reading this blog newer -> older), is what the hell does Fordnam's Window even mean? And obviously my real name isn't "Ermine Fordnam", so where did that come from? Well, my friend, I'm not going to tell you. Only a select few close collaborators with yours truly will ever have that special opportunity. For now, at least. I'm always changing my mind.

So I do hope you enjoy (or have already enjoyed) my blog. I will/ will have try/ied to do my best to check and publish somewhat regularly. And as for the topic, I will keep it my most steadfast rule never to follow one.