(Photo source: a guy’s blog)

This is a highly specific tutorial — intended for people running PC with Japanese-language Windows 7 who wish to install a JIS Mac Wireless Keyboard. If that describes you then you have come to the right place!

The Japanese Apple Wireless Keyboard will work on a PC, but it has some serious limitations from the outset that I will get into. Even so I am a big fan, mostly because it is comfortable to type on and does not take up much desk space. Another perk is I can take it with me and use it as an iPad keyboard when traveling. One neat thing worth noting is that in six months of use the batteries that came with it are still working.

I held off on purchasing one for a while because the people at the Apple area at Yodobashi Camera flat-out told me the Mac Wireless Keyboard won’t work on a PC. When I finally got around to googling it, I realized they had lied to me — it works, there are just some significant differences with the key layout.

To get started I bought the keyboard itself plus a Bluetooth adapter for my PC (via Amazon because screw those liars at Yodobashi). Setting up the keyboard was easy — the Bluetooth installed automatically and easily recognized the keyboard.

Upon installation, you will notice that the keyboard is not exactly fully functional. The Fn button does not work, nor do the 英数　and かな buttons. Also, the Caps Lock key (inconveniently located in the lower left-hand corner) serves as the equivalent of the 半角 / 全角 button, and the Command buttons work as Start buttons. Even without customizations, however, it is still pretty serviceable.

I half-heartedly looked around for ways to customize this but didn’t really come up with anything for the first few months. Then this morning I tried again and found a three-step solution that meets my needs pretty well, at no extra cost whatsoever.

1. Install Apple Keyboard Bridge (link)

This is a Japanese-made program specifcally made to enable the Fn key on Apple Wireless Keyboards running on Windows. The defaults are close to what they do on Macs, but you can customize the functions a bit. It is a stand-alone program, so you will need to place a shortcut in the Startup folder and accept that it will eat up a modest amount of memory.

2. Edit the IME settings to use 英数 and かな buttons to switch input language

This would be easier to explain with screenshots, but I am feeling kind of lazy. Basically, go to the IME settings and find where you edit the shortcut keys. Click “Add a key” (キーを追加）, hit the 英数 key, hit OK, then edit its function and change it to オン・オフにする. Repeat the process for the かな key. This means that hitting either key will switch between Japanese and English, which is different from the Mac but hey, this works fine and it’s the closest I could get.

If you are like me and use a USB keyboard as a backup, make sure not to remove the functionality of the 半角 / 全角 button, otherwise it will not be able to easily switch between Japanese and English.

3. Use a key reconfiguration program to reassign the Caps Lock key

Be careful with this step because it involves editing the registry. You can’t easily undo changes once they’re made.

Install one of the many key remapping programs out there (I used this one) and reassign the Caps Lock key to Left Ctrl. This will require a restart for the registry edit to take effect. Unless you actually use the Caps Lock key this should only benefit you. This does not replicate the Mac functionality per se, but having a Ctrl key in that location is what I am used to on Windows and much preferable to the previous situation where I kept accidentally hitting it and switching languages.

And that’s it! At this point you should have a comfortably functioning Mac Wireless Keyboard on your sweet Win 7 machine. Enjoy!

(This Japanese blog post was especially helpful for part of this process)

If you are around my age (31 in 2013) you might remember seeing this VHS tape sitting in the video store, you know, the one with Ralphie from A Christmas Story riding a dirtbike. I never rented it because I thought it would be a cheesy piece of crap, but now that I have watched it for free on YouTube (via Reddit), I can now say that my original instincts were only half-correct. It was cheesy, but I still kind of enjoyed it. I was looking for something uncomplicated that I could watch to help unwind after a long day at work. It did the job perfectly.

This is not a good movie in terms of acting, effects, screenwriting, or especially plot (save the struggling hot dog place from getting foreclosed on!) but there is still a lot to like. It is very 80s, made most evident by the the synth-heavy soundtrack. Also the whole “extreme” attitude is in full effect toward BMX bikes and dirtbikes and other radical tubular things.

The movie has a lot of memorable moments. My favorite: the local bank sponsors a little league team and then extorts the umpire into calling games in the team’s favor because the bank has his mortgage!

Right from the start, I had a hard time separating the kid’s character in this movie from his role as a wide-eyed youngster in A Christmas Story. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that he plays both parts exactly the same — with manic boyish enthusiasm. In many ways they could be the same kid just in two different time periods.

The plot is your typical stuff, but there was one interesting departure — the kid did not have a love interest. They saved all expressions of heterosexuality for the kid’s best friend. In fact Ralphie might have been dirtbike-sexual for all we know. I guess the filmmakers were aiming the movie at young boys who haven’t discovered girls yet.

The kid’s crazed look at the beginning of the film made me think of alternate interpretation: Ralphie is a poor child of a single parent. A kindly old man offers to sell him a dirtbike yet there is no way he could afford one in a million years. Rather than accept the reality of his destitute situation, Ralphie constructs a fantasy world where he is a hero kid with a magic bike, a starting position on the little league team, a smart-aleck womanizing best friend, and virtuoso computer hacking skills.

So all in all it was worth it to watch this so many years after glancing at it in the video store. It probably would be better to watch this in a group so you can make fun of it together.

The perfect smart watch design

I have been seeing the headlines about various smart watch projects and Google Glass. I want the functions of both these things because I can see the utility. With a smart watch I can see my notifications without pulling out my phone, and Google Glass is a whole new frontier of things to do — heads-up directions, instant googling, ultra-instant photos, you name it. 

The problem I have with these though is the designs. They are way too futuristic looking and distinct.

I have seen people wearing those square iPod nanos as watches and they inevitably look like total losers. In particular I saw one guy at the airport. He was a chubby middle-aged white dude berating his foreign Asian wife for not getting him the right airport meal. And all the while he was wearing this dumb-looking watch.

I think the problem is I am myself a dorky-looking white guy, so I don’t want to be caught wearing some device that makes it look like I am playing with grown-up toys.

So please, designers of these things: make them look completely like normal watches/glasses! If a device outs me as a gadget nerd, then I am not going to wear it. And I don’t think the masses will either.

Of course this could change over time. I am sure there was a time when it looked out of place to use a mobile phone, but now it is the coolest thing in the world to whip out an iPhone (I think?). But for now, please let me stay normal-looking while trying out new tech gadgets.  

I am restoring my iPhone 4S to factory settings for the second time in 2 weeks. I waited until a jailbreak was available before upgrading to iOS 6, but it seems to have slowed down my network connection (either that or I am being throttled for overusing the network, not sure yet). So now that Apple has come out with 6.1.1 to fix that issue, I need to upgrade again. 

But if you jailbreak, every time you upgrade it requires you to restore to factory settings. That means reinstalling all apps, reentering passwords, and all that. I even lost all my progress in Puzzle & Dragons :O 

Kind of a pain. But I prefer having a jailbreak to enable tethering, so I might be stuck in this loop for a while…