Year: 2009

Technology In The Hawaiian Language Revitalization Movement

I was honored to be asked to speak to the Big Island Internet Society’s meeting yesterday, and was asked to put together a list of links to pages and articles that provided more information on these topics. So here are a few: Wired Magazine artice on our early efforts to establish Leokī Kualono – website of Ka Haka ‘Ula College of Hawaiian Language Ulukau– the Hawaiian Digital Library ‘Aha Pūnana Leo’s Niuolahiki online class website Unicode and Hawaiian Language ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i – A Rich Oral History, A Bright Digital Future – Article from Cultural Survival Quarterly Leokī: A Powerful Voice…

Dell Mini 9 Hackintosh

My wife has been having issues with her older Mac laptop, and and examination determined that it was indeed on its last legs. Not being able to afford to buy her a new Mac laptop right now, I looked around for options. Getting her a Windows or Linux box was not at option, so began to explore the possibility of building her a Hackintosh – a netbook that would normally run Windows or Linux, but was capable of running OS X as well. Boing Boing has a chart comparing various netbooks and what functions worked and did not work when…

Hawai‘i Has No Beer?

The folks at the Aloha IBU blog have an interesting post with links to videos of people in Germany during Octoberfest, and they are lamenting the lack of beer in Hawai‘i. Not only ignorant but insulting. They asked for a Hawai‘i version to respond to it, so I offer a verse: Updated: Verse: He Guiness ko ka ‘Ailiki                     The Irish have Guiness No Holani ka Heineken                      And Heineken is from Holland He pua Tahiti ka Hinano                    Hinano is a Tahitian flower He aha ko Hawai’i nei?                       What does Hawai’i have to offer? Chorus He mau pia no ko Hawai‘i                 …

Google, Hawaiian and “Native American” Languages

I’ve received a lot of great feedback and compliments from people regarding the development of the Hawaiian language interface for Google. Mahalo to everyone who sent notes of congratulations for the accomplishment and recognition from the Governor’s office. I would like to address one element that came out in several stories, including the announcement by the Governer’s office, on this development. In these stories, it was stated that “Hawaiian has become the first native American language available through the “Google in Your Language” program”, or something similar. Hawaiian is not a native American language, and in the press release that…

Connectivity Issues, Part Deux

About two years ago I blogged about the connectivity problems we had at our home in Kurtistown, and how we came across a wireless provider that solved our issues, Advanced Wireless Systems Hawai‘i, and showed what lengths it took to get wireless to our home (see picture below). All was well for the first 18 months of use, and about 6 months ago we began to experience slower connectivity, which eventually devolved into sporadic connectivity with periods of nothing but message os “cannot reach server”. After putting up with this for a few months I finally called AWS, and after…

WordPress WierdNess

Aloha gang, my apologies for the boring theme and lack of activity. I’ve been experiencing a lot of behind-the-scenes issues with WordPress since upgrading to 2.8.4, and have been unable to resolve it. It’s starting to look like a configuration issue on my ISP’s server. He’s looking into it and hopefully it will be resolved soon so I can resume providing you with mind-numbing updates that will help solve your insomnia.

Getting Online Locally

This past Saturday I met for the first time in person with a group that calls itself the Big Island Internet Society. I came across a few of the folks on Twitter, and you can follow some of the planning and conversations using Twitter hash tags #bialoha. Many of their blogs can be found linked at Damon Tucker”s excellent FBI (From Big Island) blogs website. I found this interesting as I first got involved with Twitter after learning about it from some of my Ireland friends. I later found some O‘ahu-based friends using it, and only recently came across this…

Kaua‘i Music Festival Was Outstanding

I had the privilege of being one of the instructors at the Kaua‘i Music Festival last week. The five day event brought together instructors from Hawai‘i and the mainland to talk about songwriting, the business of the music industry and related topics. Some big-name composers included Jason Blume, David Pack (at left with me), Kevin Griffin, Marti Frederiksen, Jeff Dayton, Shelly Peiken; Hawai‘i representatives included yours truly, Kenneth Makuak?ne, Keale, Charles Michael Brotman, Jake Shimabukuro and Paula Fuga. Mahalo to BMI and the KMF staff for pulling off such an outstanding event. I can’t begin to tell you how valuable…

From The “Small Word” Dept.

A few weekends ago I was in Honolulu for the Mele Songwriter’s Conference. On Friday evening, after the conference events wound down, my buddy Tarvin Mākia and I headed to the Tapa Bar at the Hilton Hawaiian to listen to Jerry Santos. Jerry was on a break and talking with some visitors, so I snuck up behind him and waited for him to finished. After we chatted I turned around and there was a Japanese woman in front of me who asked, “Do you know O___  H_____?” I was flabbergasted, and all I could muster was “Excuse me?”  She repeated,…

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