Scott Hanselman

A lot of people don't realize that Windows supports a LOT of different languages out of the box. After Windows 7 and now with Windows 8 and 8.1, you can add keyboards to dozens of languages without buying or downloading anything. You have non-English keyboards now, today! Even if you just have English Windows out of the box, you can add a Japanese Input Method Editor (IME - a way to enter kanji), or any of a dozen other methods for entering non-English text on an English Keyboard. This is great for writing family back home, letting your teen write reports for Chinese class in Word, and more.

If you know someone who could benefit from knowing this, tell them! I met a woman from Ethiopia who spoke Amharic recently and somehow we got to talking about the unique syllabary (an alphabet of symbols) that one uses to write Amharic/Ge'ez using Fidel (their lettering system). She had used Windows for 10+ years and had NO idea she could write emails, make web pages, and write Word documents in her native language FOR FREE. She had this feature in Windows and never turned it on.

In Windows 8 or 8.1, press the Windows key and type "Add language."

Select one of these options (doesn't really matter which) and then select the language you want to add. There's a lot.

I'm selecting Amharic. Note that I could also select Tigrinya as well.

I'm just adding the Keyboard so I can write letters, but many languages also have a Language Pack where I could change the look and feel of Windows itself. This could make Windows more comfortable for the grandparents, so experiment with this and their settings.

An Input Method Editor lets you type English/Latin letters and output non-Latin characters. For example, I'll L-A-space, and get ላ or H-I-space and get ሂ.

Typically as you type a list of options appears and is narrowed down by your choices. Sometimes these are phonetic (they sound like the language) and sometimes they are just letter combos you'll learn.

The results are awesome though, and it makes Windows just that much more usable for folks who regularly need to switch between languages.

Use the Hotkey "Windows Key + Space" to toggle keyboards, or just press the keyboard that appears in your Taskbar.

Now, go tell your family and setup alternate languages on their PC! I can speak from experience that a great way to make a computer more accessible for a relative (and get a smile) is adding support for their native language(s).

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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The wife and the boys and I are often in the car for 30 minutes or more, heading off to various activities or events. We live pretty far outside of town, and when we need to head into the city, it's almost an hour. While we have lots of music, discussions, and what not, the boys aren't quite ready to listen to the unfiltered news.

My wife, out of nowhere: "Is Dagobah in Rivendell?" Me: "We made need to get a divorce."

— Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) November 19, 2012

My buddy Dennis Petersen from LEGO recommended Star Wars audiobooks as a great way to pass the time as a family. I was a little suspicious, as I've listened to a lot of Audible audiobooks and it's been hit or miss. It all comes down to having a good narrator. Also, has the producer of the audio book decided that this would be a voice actor just reading the book or is this a radio production with music, voices, and sound effects.

The Star Wars Random House audiobooks with narrator Marc Thompson are AMAZING. My family and I have listened to nearly 50 hours of them and we still have a dozen and a half to go. These audiobooks strike a great balance between a dry reading (bad) and a the sounds of a movie (over the top). Marc Thompson does ALL the voices himself, and they are spot on. From Jabba to Boba Fett, C3PO to Darth Vader, we are consistently blown away by the quality of the voices. It's not distracting at all and it makes it much easier to follow the story.

You can buy any of the Star Wars audiobooks in Audible format at Amazon or as Audio CDs. You can also get them at iTunes. I recommend starting with the Star Wars: Legacy of the Force Series. The first book is #1 Betrayal. This starts 40 years the battle of Yavin when the first Death Star was destroyed. Leia and Han are married, they have two kids, and there's bunch of cool stuff going on.

Now at this point in the post, the non-Star Wars aficionados amongst you may have already checked out. But let me tell you this. My wife is NOT a Star Wars person. She couldn't care less. She slept through the movies. BUT, she loves these books. We'll get home from somewhere and she'll insist we sit in the driveway and finish a chapter. It's amazing.

The whole family has been having fun with these. It's much better (IMHO) than giving the kids an iPad or a DVD player on a long trip, and it's got us pausing the book and discussion galactic affairs with the 6 year old (who has turned out to be quite the the strategist).

Check out this YouTube video for a sense of the quality of narator Marc Thompson's amazing range. We've gotten to know him very well as a family, we think, while listening to these books.

Related Links

• The Nerd Parent's Guide: When and how to introduce your kids to Star Wars

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About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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There's an ancient cliché that drives a lot of my thinking about personal productivity. "Excessive busy-ness is a common form of laziness."

Busy-ness in the Tibetan tradition is considered the most extreme form of laziness. Because when you are busy you can turn your brain off. You’re on the treadmill. The only  intelligence comes in the morning when you make your To Do list and you get rid of all the possible space that could happen in your day. - Elephant Journal, 2008

The Tibetan term lelo, as I understand it, begins to describe this kind of laziness.

Kausidya (Sanskrit; Tibetan Wylie: le lo) is a Buddhist term translated as "laziness" or "spiritual sloth".

Alan Wallace explains that kausidya (lelo in Tibetan) refers to a very specific type of laziness, that is concerned only with virtuous activity. Wallace explains from Wikipedia:

[...] lelo in Tibetan, is often translated as ‘laziness,’ but it is much more specific. If a person is working sixteen hours a day, hellbent on earning a whole lot of money with absolutely no concern for virtue, from a Buddhist perspective you could say that person is subject to lelo. A workaholic is clearly not lazy, but such a person is seen as lelo in the sense of being completely lethargic and slothful with regard to the cultivation of virtue and purification of the mind. Our translation of this term is ‘spiritual sloth,’ which we have taken from the Christian tradition, where it is very comparable to the Buddhist notion.

I'm not saying you're lazy so don't get mad quite yet. I'm saying that using "I'm too busy" as an excuse or a reason to not do something important to you, then you might want to give your situation a closer look. I'm saying that sometimes we are busy with work, but not the kind of work we should be busy with.

Sakyong Mipham states: "Speediness is laziness when we use it as a way to avoid working with our minds."

Of course, there's busy people who are literally on fire and being chased by ninjas, I'll give them a pass. But when someone says "I'm too busy" perhaps they are letting you know they are too important to talk to you, or they are just using it as an excuse to not engage. Often I've said in the past that "I'm busy" when I really mean "I'm not really that into your idea to take the time to think deeply about it."

So when we say "being busy is a form of being lazy" we're saying think about what's important, and think about the work you're doing. Is it moving the ball forward? Is it moving YOUR BALL forward. The Ball that you care about?

I have an hour set aside once a week that's for a meeting. The meeting is with myself. No one else comes to this meeting but me. I think about what I'm doing, where I'm going, and what I need to be working on. I use this meeting to think about the business and busyness of my previous week. I think about what busy work I did that was a waste of time, and try to setup myself up for success in the coming week.

My parents and brother are convinced that I'm too busy to hang out or have lunch. I constantly hear "Well, we didn't want to bother you." I'm never too busy for them. Time can be made. It's amazing how quickly a day of meetings (or a half-day) can be cancelled or moved. Days can be cleared and time can be made.

It's easy to get caught up in the chaos of business. It's fun to play Tetris with your Outlook calendar. It's satisfying to pack those productive meetings in and feel important and urgently needed. It's cathartic to delete email and think that getting rid of that email is moving my life forward, but often it's not. Often I'm just on a treadmill, running to keep up. I know this treadmill and my inertia keeps me going.

The hard work is to consciously step off the treadmill, step away, turn around and look at it. What can be removed? What can be refined? In what ways have we taught our bosses or co-workers how to treat us and our time?

I was in Egypt once and the hosts wanted to take me to the Sphinx, but I didn't want to miss a weekend with my sons. They may have thought me rude, but it was about consciously choosing one priority over another. I knew my time and my priorities and made a conscious choice on how I was going to spend it.

In what way are you buying into the idea of being always busy? What are you doing to find balance?

Sponsor: Thanks to friends at RayGun.io. I use their product and LOVE IT. Get notified of your software’s bugs as they happen! Raygun.io has error tracking solutions for every major programming language and platform - Start a free trial in under a minute!

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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I have a "whenever I get around to doing it" Newsletter of Wonderful Things. Why a newsletter? I dunno. It seems more personal somehow. Fight me.

You can view all the previous newsletters here. You can sign up here to the Newsletter of Wonderful Thingsor just wait and get them some weeks later on the blog, which hopefully you have subscribed to. If you're signed up via email, you'll get all the goodness FIRST. I also encourage you to subscribe to my blog. You can also have all my blog posts delivered via email if you like.

Here's the Newsletter from June. Subscribers get the new one first. ;)

• There's lot of code to generate a random color. But this snippet generates a random *attractive color.* Take that.
• URL shorteners are officially out of control.
• How to tell someone's age when all you know is their name.
• Bane Cat is going to kill you.
• The new Hello Kitty Avengers.
• Penny Arcade on the new Surface Pro 3
• Do you know when to use a JPG and when to use a PNG?
• Bubble Maps are intimidating, but they are easier than you think with D3.js
• The sitcoms of the past would be better with Drake, right?
• My full length movie with Rob Conery "Get Involved in Tech" is now free to watch!
• What are the truly GREAT works of software?
• DuckTales had a great theme song. What if we slow-jammed it?
• What it really means to be a junior developer
• Diabetes aren't waiting for an artificial pancreas. I met this couple in Seattle, they are making their own.
• Kerbal Space Program - Manage your own NASA
• One Man's Attempt to save the ST:TNG Bridge.
• Windows Phone 8.1 has my attention now.
• Kernal 101 - let's write an operating system Kernal.
• The voice of Winnie The Pooh reads Darth Vader's lines.
• Screenhero - screen sharing with multiple mice over the web
• CSS Diner - Amazing interactive tutorials for CSS and selectors
• ASCII Flow - Basically VISIO but on the web and for ASCII Art.
• SuperHeroJS - Giant Link List of great articles for making and testing large scale JavaScript Applications
• Andrew Huang raps using just one vowel.
• Neil deGrasse Tyson and Stephen Colbert
• Iconic - a new way of thinking about Icons
• The system from Jurassic Parks is online and ready for you. It's a Unix machine. YOU KNOW THIS.
• Finally, Flappy Bird for Commodore 64.
• Young People swap clothes with their Parents
• Playing Pokemon with 70,000 friends.
• Greek Tragedy: The True Paternity of the Girls on Full House. I knew it.
• Star Wars: 80s High School.
• Bathtub Michael McDonald
• Kellabyte's home test lab is better than the one at your company.
• 33 interior decorating ideas for your house
• This dad and his 5 year old daughter recreate famous art of the Old Masters
• "How you look when you've reached the pinnacle of Maslow's hierarchy of needs"
• Lupita has joined the cast of Star Wars VII!

Again, this the newsletter from June. There will be a new issue, very soon.

Sponsor: Thanks to friends at RayGun.io. I use their product and LOVE IT. Get notified of your software’s bugs as they happen! Raygun.io has error tracking solutions for every major programming language and platform - Start a free trial in under a minute!

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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I have an iPhone 5s and every once in a while my wife and would be texting and I would send her a and she would be like "why you sending me a square?" Then later she got a Nokia 1020 and then we could send each other Emoji's back and forth 😄 😃 😀 😊 ☺ 😉 😍.

Today you can use Emoji pretty much anywhere, be it mobile or on the web with most modern browsers. Windows 8 has an on-screen keyboard that you can use to type Emoji, even if you use a regular keyboard and mouse.

Perhaps you think Emoji are silly? Did you know that Twitter actually makes sure Emoji work in all browsers by swapping them out for their own Twitter-custom images? The people LOVE them some Emoji.

Right click in the Taskbar and make sure you have the Touch Keyboard checked:

You can see it there in the Taskbar. Click it.

Now, click the Smiley.

It's important to note the Arrows on the left there, as well as the categories on the bottom. ALL the Emoji are there.

Even U+1F4A9 PILE OF POO. So that's 💩

Also noticed that Emoji are in COLOR in Internet Explorer. Here is the GetEmoji site with Chrome on the left and IE11 on the right. I've zoomed in on IE to show that the font scales.

There's an amazing article by Ralf Herrmann on Color Emoji in Windows 8.1—The Future of Color Fonts? that I recommend you read immediately. I've taken part of his image below to show one of the main points of his articles. The Emoji in Windows 8.1 are inside of the Segoe UI Emoji font, and are NOT PNGs (as on other systems) which allows them to scale. Instead, they are layered and each layer has a color. So cool.

I'm going to hack around and see if I can change the color of each individual layers. "Diversified Emoji" is a big topic right now, as not everyone wants a yellow LEGO head. There's lots of quasi-Emoji chat apps on all phones with afrocentric or other kinds of emojis. I wonder if a layering system like this would be way to create infinitely diverse emoji?

NOTE: I have NO idea what I'm talking about here, just thinking out loud.

It doesn't seem like Window's built in CharMap.exe supports newer Unicode 7 (?) but BabelMap is a fantastic Extended Character Map that will let you explore all of your choices in a font like Segoe UI Emoji.

Now I need to think about how unprofessional it will be to include Emoji in all my work email. And, more importantly, if it'll all just turn into a "J" in Outlook. ;)

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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