Regular visitors might have noticed that I’ve been in the process of moving house most of this year. Having spent the entire summer and most of the autumn living at temporary addresses, we have — finally!! — moved into the place we wanted.
Here’s the new address:
6 Herbert Road, Exeter EX1 2UQ
Tel: +44 (0)1392 202673
OmegaT is a free, open-source, cross-platform computer-assisted translation tool. One of its useful features is an interface to the Google Translate API that enables it to provide a (somewhat helpful) machine translation of each chunk of text as it is being translated. Earlier this year, Google announced that its free translation API is to be replaced with a paid service, and will stop altogether on 1st December 2011.
Recent versions of OmegaT are compatible with the paid service (Google Translate v2), but before you can use it you have to set up an account with Google and give them your credit card details. In return, you’ll get an identification code called an API key that OmegaT will need when interacting with Google. However, the OmegaT developers haven’t yet made it very easy to enter this key.
Windows users can provide this information by adding the following line to the OmegaT.l4J.ini configuration file (replacing “xxxx” with your actual API key):
-Dgoogle.api.key=xxxx
On other operating systems, the API key has to be provided as a command line argument when the OmegaT Java application is started up. Which is a nuisance, because there’s no way of adding command line arguments when you start an application by clicking its icon.
This can be remedied with a bit of AppleScript and Unix scripting. Copy and paste the following code into AppleScript editor (not forgetting to replace “xxxx” with your API key), then save it as a run-only application. Don’t call this file OmegaT.app; any other name is fine.
set apikey to "xxxx" as string
set ss to "java -jar -Dgoogle.api.key=" & apikey & " $(ls -ptd $(find " & ¬
"/Applications -name \"OmegaT.app\" -maxdepth 2 -type d |xargs) " & ¬
"|head -1)Contents/Resources/Java/OmegaT.jar >/dev/null 2>&1 &" as string
do shell script ss
You can then drag this file to the dock and run it with a single mouse click. It works by searching for a file called OmegaT.app inside your Applications folder, digging down to the Java application inside it, and then launching this application with your API key as a command line argument. If you have more than one version of OmegaT installed on your computer, this script will run the most recent one it can find.
Jean-Christophe from the OmegaT team just informed me that there’s another way of providing a Google Translate API key, which involves adding a google.api.key item under Java > Properties in the info.plist file inside the OmegaT application bundle. This is definitely a neater solution, but will have to be repeated every time you upgrade OmegaT, unfortunately.
Here’s a screen capture to show you how it’s done. The green blobs are left-clicks, and the expanding circles are right-clicks.
Thanks, Jean-Christophe.
How to add your Google API key to info.plist in OmegaT
QR codes are continuing to grow in popularity across Europe and the United States, according to a report by 3G Vision (Global Growth in Mobile Barcode Usage – Q2 / 2011). I’ve been suggesting for a long time that it might be worth adding one when you get your business card translated into Japanese. Well now it seems that you should maybe have one on your English business card already.
On a related note, last weekend’s newspaper carried an advert for the 20th anniversary edition of Nirvana’s groundbreaking album Nevermind:
It might not look like it, but that yellow blob at the bottom right is a QR code. Unfortunately the designers of this advert have mangled the thing up so much that it’s unlikely anyone will be able to scan it successfully. The inventors of QR codes (a Japanese company called Denso Wave) clearly state in their specifications that codes should be surrounded by a clear margin of at least four dot-widths (or “modules”). Without this margin, your scanner will probably be unable to locate the QR code at all, let alone decode it.
To make matters worse, the designers have also pasted a doodle of a stoned-looking smiley face right in the middle (yes, that’s really classy). Although QR codes are capable of withstanding a certain amount of degradation before they become unreadable, this really isn’t going to help.
Here it is, anyway. Let me know if your mobile manages to decode it. Hey, you might even win something. Apparently.
We have now arranged the purchase of another house in Exeter. Unfortunately we won’t be able to move in before the end of the temporary lease on the house where we are currently staying. So from Thursday 25th August, we will have another temporary address, which is as follows:
48 Polsloe Road
Exeter
EX1 2DS
If you need to contact me by telephone, please use the mobile number: +44 (0)754 683 1591.
The Genbaku Dome (原爆ドーム) in Hiroshima (photo: Michael Helmer)
One of the unmistakable features of the Hiroshima skyline is the shattered remains of the dome structure at the top of what used to be known as the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. This building lies almost directly at the hypocentre of the atomic explosion that devastated much of the city 66 years ago yesterday (August 6th 1945).
Today, the locals call it the A-bomb dome (原爆ドーム; genbaku dōmu), although it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is officially known as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (広島平和記念碑; Hiroshima heiwa kinenhi).
The building isn’t normally open to the public, so can only be seen from the outside. However, Google Japan announced on Friday that they had added the site to Google Maps (Google 日本 Blog; Japanese only). So now you can take a virtual walk around the ruins whenever you like.
The company hosting this website will be updating their network switches later today. As a result, this site will be temporarily offline between 23:15 and 00:45 BST tonight (22:15 and 23:45 GMT).
If you’re in Japan, that means the site will be unavailable between 07:15 and 08:45 tomorrow morning (August 3rd).
Apologies for any inconvenience.
The latest invention from Japan is a headset that monitors the wearer’s brain activity and moves a pair of furry cat’s ears to reflect what the wearer is thinking.
The product is called necomimi, which translates directly as “cat’s ears” (猫耳; ねこみみ). Its developers hope to have it on sale by the end of this year. Their website has all the latest news.
I have to admit I thought this was all a hoax when I first heard about it, but a recent news article on the BBC website has another video that shows the product being tried out by ordinary members of the public.
I’ve just sold the house on Hamllin Lane where I was living for the last few years. Hopefully I will be buying another place in Exeter some time soon. In the meantime, I will be renting a property at the following address:
20 Commins Road
Exeter
EX1 2PZ
The phone number has also changed. Assuming Virgin Media are able to hook us up tomorrow as planned, the new number will be +44 (0)1392 678269. (2/Jun/2011: The phone line is now operational.)
Please update your address book.
I recently set up a new website for the Exeter Japan Earthquake & Tsunami Appeal, which is a fund-raising effort that will form part of this year’s Exeter Respect festival in Belmont Park over the weekend of 4th-5th June 2011. Preparations are still under way, but there should be something for everyone, including plenty of Japanese food. There will also be a performance by Kagemusha Taiko (Saturday 6:15 – 7 pm).
Please come along if you are able. Entry to the park is completely free. Here’s the link:
On May 26th 2011, a half-baked piece of EU legislation called the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 is going to become part of UK law. This means it will essentially become illegal for a website to set a cookie in your browser without your explicit consent.
Unfortunately, the only reliable way for a website to store visitor preferences is by setting a cookie. So if you don’t consent to these cookies, then every time you visit a website that uses them, you will be shown a message asking you to enable cookies in your browser. This message will most likely appear on every single page, and the nagging will not stop unless and until you give permission for the site to set cookies. You may even be completely denied access to some websites until cookies are enabled.
The legislators also seem to have overlooked the fact that it’s already possible for users to control the use of cookies within their own web browsers. If you need help with that, click the name of your browser in the list below:
The U.K. Information Commissioner Christopher Graham has vowed to go ahead and ensure that this law is enforced, but with just over two weeks to go until the deadline, his own website is still setting cookies without permission:
~ phil$ curl --head http://www.ico.gov.uk/ HTTP/1.1 200 OK Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store Pragma: no-cache Content-Length: 22898 Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Expires: -1 Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5 X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727 Set-Cookie: ico62#sc_wede=1; path=/ Set-Cookie: ASP.NET_SessionId=jyszcua2f02nrz455i23ro45; path=/; HttpOnly X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 15:02:50 GMT
The ICO also uses the popular Google Analytics toolset to monitor traffic through their website. It’s no surprise really. About half of the web’s most popular sites also use Google Analytics. I’m using it on this website too. But it won’t work without cookies, so that’s another thing that will become illegal in a couple of weeks.
This website should work just fine without cookies (unless you want to comment on blog posts), so go ahead and disable them now if you like. I won’t nag you to turn them back on again. But after May 26th I might have to.
P.S. Sorry for the lack of Japan-related information in this post. Here’s an interesting thing: fortune cookies weren’t invented in China, as most people assume, but were actually invented in Japan.
▲ Header image: Close-up of a lotus (ハス) leaf and petal. Photo: Frank Gualtieri.
©2004-12 Philip Ronan / japanesetranslator.co.uk
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