i-sako.com

I’ve been giving a bit of thought lately to the idea of starting a blog in Japanese. If nothing else, it would be good writing practice, which I sorely need. Ever since our workgroup lost Ricardo, I’ve been getting all of the requests for English-to-Japanese translation that he used to handle. In some cases, this is fine, but my Japanese writing ability is pretty field-specific; I’ve been meaning to work on that.

I think it would focus mostly on technical writing and translation issues. In most cases, it would deal with things that I would like to convey to the people I work with (or to Japanese companies in general), but never actually get around to. I would like to explain the various benefits of Firefox (if you are not already using this browser, go get it!), for example, or why Microsoft Excel should not be used as a DTP/word processor/project management/do-everything application (which seems to be a common practice in many companies), or even why style guides are an essential tool for efficiently managing multilingual content (which seems to me like a no-brainer, but style guides seem to be a non-concept to many managers).

The major problem, of course, is finding time to actually do it. My readers have no doubt become accustomed to infrequent posts even in my native-language blog; it’s hard to imagine that I would be prolific in a language that is much more difficult for me to write. I would like to think that one entry a week would be a reasonable goal, but I don’t even accomplish that consistently in English, plus I would also have to factor in the time it would take to have a native Japanese speaker (probably my wife, which would rule out political topics—she’d never read them) look over it for me. Twice a month, maybe? I suppose that would be okay, but that doesn’t exactly amount to a lot of practice, which was the whole point of the idea in the first place.

There’s got to be a good way of going about it. Anyone else out there blogging in two (or more) languages? Suggestions are welcome.

Update: An excellent example of what I have in mind is, of course, something like Joi Ito’s blog, although there is simply no way I could ever even hope to keep up with his pace. 

As a way to get over my disappointment with the results of the presidential election, I have volunteered to beta-test the latest version of ExpressionEngine, the blogging tool I use to run this site. If you are also an EE user, you might consider doing the same.

I have just finished the version 1.2b update (which was painless, as EE updates always are) and have started trying out the new features. Of these, the new Image Gallery Module looks interesting, but I doubt I will use it much for this particular site because I already source my images from smugmug.com. It will no doubt come in handy at other sites I use EE for, though.

I’m glad to see that EE has put some effort into this, because the topic of incorporating image galleries into weblogs has become a common topic on a number of Web development-related mailing lists.

If you happen to notice any strange behavior at this site over the next few days, dear readers, please let me know. I doubt there will be any problems that do not stem from errors on my part, but any feedback will be appreciated. 

Every once in a while, I get the urge to redesign my site (which is probably a bad thing in terms of “branding"), and now just happens to be one of those times. An upgrade for ExpressionEngine was released not long ago, so I took advantage of the the opportunity to update the both the appearance and the inner workings of this blog all at once. Many things are still rough, but I’m more pleased with this design than I was the last one. Any and all feedback appreciated. 

It seems like just about all of the Movable Type bloggers are getting really, really fed up with comment spam. Luis, Jeremy, and MJ (just to name a few) have all had posts about it recently. There’s a simple solution to this problem, folks: Switch to ExpressionEngine! This site has been comment-spam free ever since the EE upgrade. EE comes with a number of features that all but guarantee that comment spam is not a problem.

Go ahead, broaden your blogging horizons. It won’t hurt. You might even like it.

Golden Week is now upon us—and not a moment too soon! The last six weeks or so have been incredibly busy, so I’m glad to have a few days off.

My wife would willingly attest to the fact that holiday seasons in Japan used to bother me a lot. It’s true. I used to hate Golden Week in particular, partly because it took a big bite out of my pay (when you’re working on a contract basis, a week without work is a week without pay), but also because I thought it was dumb for the whole country to go on vacation at the same time (anywhere you go—no matter where, be it the beach or just the local convenience store—you find everyone else is already there). This year, though, I’m really looking forward to it. Perhaps this is a sign that I am growing too accustomed to life in Japan? Perhaps.

One thing that I’m really looking forward to, though, is getting caught up on a number of pet projects. Among them is one that I’ve been meaning to get around to for quite some time, moving this site to a new server. That said, the site may be down for a day or two while I make the transition. (My e-mail may also be temporarily disrupted, so let me know if you are expecting a response from me—I may have missed your message.)