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…
Post Primary Gaelic-medium Education in Ireland
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,…
State Tax Policy FAIL
I just got this via email from Amazon.com: “We regret to inform you that the Hawaii state legislature has passed an unconstitutional tax collection scheme that, unless vetoed soon by Governor Lingle, would leave Amazon.com little choice but to end its relationships with Hawaii-based Associates. You are receiving this e-mail because our records indicate that you are an Amazon Associate and resident of Hawaii. Please note that this is not an immediate termination notice and you are still a valued participant in the Associates Program. All referral fees earned on qualified traffic will continue to be paid as planned. But…