Twenty six year old Aaron Swartz took his own life on January 11, 2013. He did so after facing the possibility of spending 35 years in jail for what could be characterized as the digital equivalent of borrowing too many library books at one time(1). I never met Aaron, read of his exploits, and first learned of his prodigious talents and voracious curiosity via Dave Winer during a period where I followed Dave’s work closely and used several of his programming and web content tools. I believe it is time that we in academia rethink our role in a system so perveted…
Attacking The Electric Bill, Pt. 2
When my wife and I moved from Hilo back to Maui, we looked into buying a house, but settled on a nice townhouse condo at Ho‘ole‘a Terrace, just outside Wailuku on the road to Waikapū. One of the few drawbacks of this choice (see one view to the right) is that we don’t have the option to add photovoltaic or solar water heating panels. I have written previously about our attempts to get our electric bills under control in our old home in Kurtistown, and these limitations proved to be motivation to find other ways to lower our electric bill.…
New Windows 8 Operating System Supports The Hawaiian Language
While still a devout Macintosh user, I’m extremely grateful for friends at Microsoft who shepherded this project through to completion, and saw that the work we did stayed embedded as Windows 8 was being developed. I’ll be documenting how to activate the keyboard and type the ‘okina and kahakō later, but if you have Win 8, please feel free to explore and experiment. And I would like to ask my fellow Macintosh aficionados to refrain from the normal litany of Windows bashing. This is significant development for the language that will help other important projects move forward. I’m cautiously optimistic…
Maui Here We Come!
It’s official: I will be joining the faculty of the music department at University of Hawai‘i Maui College this summer. Marie and I are going home after 18 wonderful years in East Hawai‘i, and for me, 18 years at UH-Hilo. We leave with lots of great memories, some not so great, but all in all I don’t believe I could have been better prepared for the challenges of my new position, helping to move the Institute of Hawaiian Music forward, and working with the staff and faculty at UH-MC. The adventure begins August 1. E ho‘i ana mākou i ka…
A Hunter’s Christmas Lament
My sister June Donaghy Kramin (AKA, Aunty Bug) and her husband Thomas Kramin live in Minnesota. He liked my little TSA Christmas Carol, and challenged me to come up with one for him. He’s an avid hunter, and once I got rolling on this I couldn’t stop. Took all of 10 minutes: (Sung to the melody of “A Christmas Song”) Tom’s nuts roasting on a barbeque ‘Cause he pissed off Aunty Bug He shot at a deer but his aim was untrue Now there’s one less cat for her to hug The ground’s too hard for him to dig a…
Call For Help With Hawaiian Braille!
Aloha kākou. Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani, our College of Hawaiian Language at UH-Hilo, is having a new building constructed on the UH-Hilo campus. Some of the foundations and concrete columns are already done, and we are anticipating the building’s completion in December of next year. We are having one issue that I would like to get out there and seek some advice and/or help. As our college functions in Hawaiian, we are very picky about language use in the new building. Most of the office and other signs in the complex will be either Hawaiian-only or perhaps Hawaiian and…
I Love It When A Plan Comes Together: More ‘Ōlelo Support in iOS
A new iPhone was announced today, the iPhone 4S, and the response to Apple’s press conference was a bit lukewarm. Many were expecting the iPhone 5 and/or iOS5 today. But one of the more exiting developments for us was found on the specification sheet for the phones (tip o’ the cap to Joseph Erb for the heads up): there will be a Hawaiian keyboard and spell-check document included. Yes, we’ve had support for the ‘okina and kahakō in the iPhone and iPad for a while; however, while you can generate them from the soft keyboard by long-holding your finger on…
My Relationship With Beer? It’s Complicated
For all of the comments and jokes I post about Guinness on Facebook, I never was much of a beer drinker. When I turned 18 (back when the drinking age was still 18), my best friend bought me a six pack of Heineken. On my 21st birthday, I gave the last four bottles away. Didn’t care for it at. Over the years I tried a number of different beers, mostly of the mass-produced variety, and didn’t care for any of them either. I recall a conversation I had with a bartender in Ireland during our 2002 trip there. He asked…
Attacking The Electric Bill, Pt. 1
With electric costs soaring, we started to take steps to reduce our electric bill as best we could. Several years ago we replaced the bulbs in all of our most-used incandescent light fixtures to CFL (compact florescent lights). We also put most of the electrical devices I know use power when they are plugged in – whether or not they are in use. This included my computer equipment and our media system (TV, satellite receiver/DVD, Wii, audio receiver, etc.). When they are not in use, they are all switched off. It helped us cut down on our power use about…
Online Hawaiian Dictionary For Android Users
Last year we launched a mobile interface for the Hawaiian dictionaries on Ulukau. The system should detect all mobile devices automatically, and for those that it doesn’t, you can simply go to m.wehewehe.org to see the mobile interface. The one limitation of this system is for Android users: Android’s default font does not have a glyph in the correct location, so Android users see a box instead of the ‘okina. We’ve looked into fixing this, but found that it would be costly to do the recoding necessary to make this work under Ulukau as it currently stands. I have been…