Category: General

So Microsoft, MSN, Hotmail – are playing catch up, promising share holders to catch up to Google in no time. Advertising-wise they are doing a great job (Facebook is an MSN advertising property), but Hotmail, is not.

Hotmail upgraded its interface, increased storage size, but its core is still the same old silly service that you left behind and use only because you occasionally use MSN / Windows Live Messenger. Case in point: Junk mail filter. My mailbox is set to standard filtering, which says:
“Most junk e-mail is sent to the junk e-mail folder.” Nonetheless, it appears the f- word, f-buddy, and Viagra are all not obvious words for Hotmail’s junk mail filters.

Not sure if there is a Windows port for it, but Spam Assassin is free and the fine women and men of Hotmail will be smart to change their spam filters to use it. Until then, it is the same dinky silly webmail site that you used to use but never do anymore.

At present, I think of these as the best songs ever. I am fickle. This may change tomorrow. Order does not count.

• Soundgarden – Jesus Christ Pose
• Helmet – In the meantime
• Cypress Hill – How I could just kill a man
• Gin and Juice – Dr. Dre / Snoop
  Anything on ‘The Chronic’ is the best song ever, really
• The Boss – James Brown
• Thunder Kiss ’65 – White Zombie
• Live for this – Hatebreed
  Nothing is more intense.
• Blues from a gun – The Jesus and Mary Chain
  ‘Automatic’ used to be perfect. Impossible to be more perfect than ‘The Chronic’
• 100 Miles and Runnin’ – NWA
• Movin’ on up – Primal Scream
  My first choice for a song to get married to. Inappropriate, really.
• Sweet Potato Pie – Domino
  Pop rap perfection. Domino never reached anything near this.
• Harry – Melvins
  Guitars too thick to waste words on.
• MDMA – Love 666
  Also thick with noise, anthem style
• Monster Magnet – Negasonic Teenage Warhead
• CNN – Young, White, Stupid
• Ice Cube – Wicked
  The one truly remarkable song he ever put out. Flea in the video was cool, too.

My taste. Not your taste.

This was apparently a challenge because the documentation is pretty scant.

I am now using Ubuntu 7.04 (so fresh) but regardless, could not find for the life of me how to edit a Word document in Hebrew using an OS that is all about being international (edit was supposed to be done in OpenOffice).

There are two steps – the first is the most logical and important, the second silly but crucial. So here goes:

1. Set up Hebrew in Ubuntu

From the System menu, select Administration and then Language Support. There, add your language(s) of  choice. Once you click OK, Ubuntu will download the additional fonts and whatever it needs to support the use of the additional language.

2. Add the *Keyboard Indicator* to the panel

Unlike Windows, which adds the language switching to the taskbar, Ubuntu leaves that for you to do. Not that I knew about it until I found a reference to a ‘Keyboard Indicator’ applet which does the exact same thing. To add it to your Ubuntu panel, right click the panel and select ‘Add to Panel’. From the list that appears, select ‘Keyboard Indicator’, which will now display the languages available for your use.

What is interesting is that Ubuntu offers two keyboard layouts for Hebrew: Lyx – which is the standard Hebrew layout (Mem sofit on separate key) and phonetic (Mem sofit as shift-Mem). Cool stuff when you get it to work…