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      4     <title>Howto on Chris Bracken</title>
      5     <link>https://chris.bracken.jp/tags/howto/</link>
      6     <description>Recent content in Howto on Chris Bracken</description>
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      8     <language>en</language>
      9     <lastBuildDate>Tue, 10 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://chris.bracken.jp/tags/howto/index.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
     10     <item>
     11       <title>Moving to the US: Importing a Canadian Vehicle</title>
     12       <link>https://chris.bracken.jp/2011/05/moving-to-us-letter-of-compliance/</link>
     13       <pubDate>Tue, 10 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
     14       
     15       <guid>https://chris.bracken.jp/2011/05/moving-to-us-letter-of-compliance/</guid>
     16       <description>&lt;p&gt;A big difference between the last time I moved to the US and this time is that
     17 this time, I&amp;rsquo;ve got a lot more stuff. One of those things is a Nissan Rogue
     18 that&amp;rsquo;s been quietly living its life in Canada. Faced with the prospect of
     19 selling the car and buying a new one, I chose instead to import the one I know
     20 and love.  Here is my story.  But be forewarned, it is not for the faint of
     21 heart.&lt;/p&gt;
     22 &lt;figure&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chris.bracken.jp/post/2011-05-10-futile.jpg&#34;
     23     alt=&#34;Scrawny kid vs sumo wrestler&#34;&gt;
     24 &lt;/figure&gt;
     25 
     26 &lt;p&gt;To import a vehicle to the US from Canada, you need to undertake a series of
     27 quests. These are detailed on the &lt;a href=&#34;http://stnw.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/import/&#34;&gt;NHTSA website&lt;/a&gt; under the heading
     28 &lt;em&gt;Vehicle Importation Guidelines (Canadian)&lt;/em&gt;. As of May 2011, you need the
     29 following items in increasing order of difficulty:&lt;/p&gt;
     30 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[easy]&lt;/strong&gt; The following information about your car:&lt;/p&gt;
     31 &lt;ol&gt;
     32 &lt;li&gt;VIN&lt;/li&gt;
     33 &lt;li&gt;Make/Model/Year&lt;/li&gt;
     34 &lt;li&gt;Month/Year of manufacture&lt;/li&gt;
     35 &lt;li&gt;Registration &amp;amp; ownership information&lt;/li&gt;
     36 &lt;/ol&gt;
     37 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[easy]&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;http://www.epa.gov/oms/imports/&#34;&gt;EPA Form 3520-1&lt;/a&gt;. You will likely be importing your
     38 vehicle under &lt;em&gt;code EE: identical in all material respects to a US certified
     39 version&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
     40 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[easy]&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/import/&#34;&gt;NHTSA Form HS-7&lt;/a&gt;. You will most likely be importing your
     41 vehicle under box 2B, for vehicles that complied with Canadian CMVSA
     42 regulations at their time of manufacture and where the manufacturer attests
     43 that, with a few exceptions, it meets US regulations; see final item.&lt;/p&gt;
     44 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[medium]&lt;/strong&gt; A letter on the manufacturer&amp;rsquo;s letterhead from the Canadian
     45 distributor, stating that there are no open recalls or service campaigns on the
     46 vehicle. I&amp;rsquo;m not sure if this is required, but Nissan Canada thought it would
     47 be.&lt;/p&gt;
     48 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[hard]&lt;/strong&gt; A letter from the vehicle’s original manufacturer, on
     49 the manufacturer’s letterhead identifying the vehicle by vehicle identification
     50 number (VIN) and stating that the vehicle conforms to all applicable FMVSS
     51 &amp;ldquo;except for the labeling requirements of Standards Nos. 101 &lt;em&gt;Controls and
     52 Displays&lt;/em&gt; and 110 &lt;em&gt;Tire Selection and Rims&lt;/em&gt; or 120 &lt;em&gt;Tire Selection and Rims for
     53 Motor Vehicles other than Passenger Cars&lt;/em&gt;, and/or the specifications of
     54 Standard No. 108 &lt;em&gt;Lamps, Reflective Devices, and Associated Equipment&lt;/em&gt;,
     55 relating to daytime running lamps.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/p&gt;
     56 &lt;p&gt;Items 1-3 are left as an exercise to the reader. I will focus here on items 4
     57 and 5 to save you the 14 hours of accumulated hold time and multiple phone
     58 calls. Prepare yourself friend, for here begins a journey of hurt and
     59 frustration, but you will prevail.&lt;/p&gt;
     60 &lt;p&gt;Let&amp;rsquo;s start with item 4. I gave &lt;a href=&#34;http://www.nissan.ca/common/footer/en/contact.html&#34;&gt;Nissan Canada&lt;/a&gt; a ring at
     61 1-800-387-0122 and managed to make it through the phone navigation system to a
     62 human operator. I told them I was importing a Canadian Nissan into the States
     63 and needed a &lt;em&gt;Letter of Compliance&lt;/em&gt;. After a bit of digging, they stated that
     64 such letters are only provided by &lt;em&gt;Nissan North America,&lt;/em&gt; but they would
     65 instead mail out two other letters on Nissan letterhead:&lt;/p&gt;
     66 &lt;ol&gt;
     67 &lt;li&gt;A letter stating the VIN and that the vehicle has no pending recalls or
     68 service campaigns on it.&lt;/li&gt;
     69 &lt;li&gt;In place of a &lt;em&gt;Certificate of Origin&lt;/em&gt; (which Nissan Canada does not
     70 provide), a letter stating the VIN and that the vehicle was manufactured for
     71 sale in the Canadian market and complied with all safety and emission
     72 regulations at the time of manufacture.&lt;/li&gt;
     73 &lt;/ol&gt;
     74 &lt;p&gt;We&amp;rsquo;re almost there, but your next and final mission is also the most
     75 challenging: the &lt;em&gt;Letter of Compliance&lt;/em&gt;. Call &lt;a href=&#34;http://www.nissanusa.com/apps/contactus&#34;&gt;Nissan North
     76 America&lt;/a&gt; Consumer Affairs Department at 1-800-647-7261. Navigate
     77 through the phone system to an operator - get their name and extension. They
     78 may ask for your VIN only to find it&amp;rsquo;s not in their system. Canadian VINs are
     79 not in their system. Some operators thought they were, others were sure they
     80 weren&amp;rsquo;t. They&amp;rsquo;re not. Many operators tried and failed to find it. Ask them to
     81 open a file, give them the vehicle information and your info and get the file
     82 number. Use this number whenever you call.&lt;/p&gt;
     83 &lt;p&gt;Here are the five steps to success:&lt;/p&gt;
     84 &lt;ol&gt;
     85 &lt;li&gt;Tell the operator that you&amp;rsquo;re importing a Canadian Nissan vehicle to the US
     86 and that you need a &lt;em&gt;Letter of Compliance&lt;/em&gt; stating the VIN and that the
     87 vehicle was built to conform to Canadian and United States EPA emissions
     88 standards and all US Federal motor vehicle standards except for daytime
     89 running light brightness. There is a very good chance they&amp;rsquo;ve never heard of
     90 this. Get them to talk to their supervisor, and their supervisor. Anyone.
     91 Someone will know.&lt;/li&gt;
     92 &lt;li&gt;They will tell you that the vehicle needs to have its daytime running lights
     93 disabled before they will issue the letter of compliance. All the government
     94 rules seem to specifically exclude the daytime running lights, and the
     95 letter they issue even states that the vehicle doesn&amp;rsquo;t meet that standard,
     96 but for whatever reason they want a copy of a work statement showing the
     97 work was done. Remember to get the operator&amp;rsquo;s name and extension and the
     98 fax number for the work statement before you hang up.&lt;/li&gt;
     99 &lt;li&gt;Get the daytime running lights disabled. It&amp;rsquo;s a setting change in the
    100 on-board computer; your local dealer will do this in under 30 mins for $50
    101 or so. &lt;/li&gt;
    102 &lt;li&gt;Fax your the work statement and put your name, return fax number and a
    103 request for the &lt;em&gt;Letter of Compliance&lt;/em&gt; on the cover sheet. Phone Nissan
    104 North America Consumer Affairs back. The phone navigation system will give
    105 you hope that you can input an extension directly, only to find it only
    106 accepts 5-digit extensions but your rep has a 6-digit extension. You&amp;rsquo;ll end
    107 up back in the queue. Ask whoever you get to put you through to your
    108 previous rep, by extension. When you get through, say that you sent the fax
    109 and request the letter. Ask them to phone you back when they&amp;rsquo;ve faxed it.&lt;/li&gt;
    110 &lt;li&gt;You&amp;rsquo;ll get the fax eventually - &lt;em&gt;check the information!&lt;/em&gt; On my letter, the
    111 year, model and VIN were all incorrect, though they got my name right. If
    112 it&amp;rsquo;s incorrect, try again.&lt;/li&gt;
    113 &lt;/ol&gt;
    114 &lt;p&gt;You now have everything you need to import your Nissan to the States. Good
    115 luck my friends, I don&amp;rsquo;t envy you, but know that I am with you and that victory
    116 will someday be yours too.&lt;/p&gt;
    117 </description>
    118     </item>
    119     
    120     <item>
    121       <title>Installing Mozc on Ubuntu</title>
    122       <link>https://chris.bracken.jp/2011/04/installing-mozc-on-ubuntu/</link>
    123       <pubDate>Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
    124       
    125       <guid>https://chris.bracken.jp/2011/04/installing-mozc-on-ubuntu/</guid>
    126       <description>&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;rsquo;re a Japanese speaker, one of the first things you do when you install a
    127 fresh Linux distribution is to install a decent &lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_IME&#34;&gt;Japanese IME&lt;/a&gt;.
    128 Ubuntu defaults to &lt;a href=&#34;https://sourceforge.jp/projects/anthy/news/&#34;&gt;Anthy&lt;/a&gt;, but I personally prefer &lt;a href=&#34;https://code.google.com/p/mozc/&#34;&gt;Mozc&lt;/a&gt;, and
    129 that&amp;rsquo;s what I&amp;rsquo;m going to show you how to install here.&lt;/p&gt;
    130 &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Update (2011-05-01):&lt;/em&gt; Found an older &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfgjTCXZ2-s&#34;&gt;video tutorial&lt;/a&gt; on YouTube
    131 which provides an alternative (and potentially more comprehensive) solution for
    132 Japanese support on 10.10 using ibus instead of uim, which is the better choice
    133 for newer releases.&lt;/p&gt;
    134 &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Update (2011-10-25):&lt;/em&gt; The software installation part of this process got a
    135 whole lot easier in Ubuntu releases after Natty, and as noted above, I&amp;rsquo;d
    136 recommend sticking with ibus over uim.&lt;/p&gt;
    137 &lt;h3 id=&#34;japanese-input-basics&#34;&gt;Japanese Input Basics&lt;/h3&gt;
    138 &lt;p&gt;Before we get going, let&amp;rsquo;s understand a bit about how Japanese input works on
    139 computers. Japanese comprises three main character sets: the two phonetic
    140 character sets, hiragana and katakana at 50 characters each, plus many
    141 thousands of Kanji, each with multiple readings. Clearly a full keyboard is
    142 impractical, so a mapping is required.&lt;/p&gt;
    143 &lt;p&gt;Input happens in two steps. First, you input the text phonetically, then you
    144 convert it to a mix of kanji and kana.&lt;/p&gt;
    145 &lt;figure&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;https://chris.bracken.jp/post/2011-04-22-henkan.png&#34;
    146     alt=&#34;Japanese IME completion menu&#34;&gt;
    147 &lt;/figure&gt;
    148 
    149 &lt;p&gt;Over the years, two main mechanisms evolved to input kana. The first was common
    150 on old &lt;em&gt;wapuro&lt;/em&gt;, and assigns a kana to each key on the keyboard—e.g. where
    151 the &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; key appears on a QWERTY keyboard, you&amp;rsquo;ll find a ち. This is how our
    152 grandparents hacked out articles for the local &lt;em&gt;shinbun&lt;/em&gt;, but I suspect only a
    153 few die-hard traditionalists still do this. The second and more common method
    154 is literal &lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapuro&#34;&gt;transliteration of roman characters into kana&lt;/a&gt;. You
    155 type &lt;em&gt;fujisan&lt;/em&gt; and out comes ふじさん.&lt;/p&gt;
    156 &lt;p&gt;Once the phonetic kana have been input, you execute a conversion step wherein
    157 the input is transformed into the appropriate mix of kanji and kana. Given the
    158 large number of homonyms in Japanese, this step often involves disambiguating
    159 your input by selecting the intended kanji. For example, the &lt;em&gt;mita&lt;/em&gt; in &lt;em&gt;eiga wo
    160 mita&lt;/em&gt; (I watched a movie) is properly rendered as 観た whereas the &lt;em&gt;mita&lt;/em&gt; in
    161 &lt;em&gt;kuruma wo mita&lt;/em&gt; (I saw a car) should be 見た, and in neither case is it &lt;em&gt;mita&lt;/em&gt;
    162 as in the place name &lt;em&gt;Mita-bashi&lt;/em&gt; (Mita bridge) which is written 三田.&lt;/p&gt;
    163 &lt;h3 id=&#34;some-implementation-details&#34;&gt;Some Implementation Details&lt;/h3&gt;
    164 &lt;p&gt;Let&amp;rsquo;s look at implementation. There are two main components used in inputting
    165 Japanese text:&lt;/p&gt;
    166 &lt;p&gt;The GUI system (e.g. ibus, uim) is responsible for:&lt;/p&gt;
    167 &lt;ol&gt;
    168 &lt;li&gt;Maintaining and switching the current input mode:
    169 ローマ字、ひらがな、カタカナ、半額カタカナ.&lt;/li&gt;
    170 &lt;li&gt;Transliteration of character input into kana: &lt;em&gt;ku&lt;/em&gt; into く,
    171 &lt;em&gt;nekko&lt;/em&gt; into ねっこ, &lt;em&gt;xtu&lt;/em&gt; into っ.&lt;/li&gt;
    172 &lt;li&gt;Managing the text under edit (the underlined stuff) and the
    173 drop-down list of transliterations.&lt;/li&gt;
    174 &lt;li&gt;Ancillary functions such as supplying a GUI for custom dictionary
    175 management, kanji lookup by radical, etc.&lt;/li&gt;
    176 &lt;/ol&gt;
    177 &lt;p&gt;The transliteration engine (e.g. Anthy, Mozc) is responsible for transforming a
    178 piece of input text, usually in kana form, into kanji: for example みる into
    179 one of: 見る、観る、診る、視る. This involves:&lt;/p&gt;
    180 &lt;ol&gt;
    181 &lt;li&gt;Breaking the input phrase into components.&lt;/li&gt;
    182 &lt;li&gt;Transforming each component into the appropriate best guess based on context
    183 and historical input.&lt;/li&gt;
    184 &lt;li&gt;Supplying alternative transformations in case the best guess was incorrect.&lt;/li&gt;
    185 &lt;/ol&gt;
    186 &lt;h3 id=&#34;why-mozc&#34;&gt;Why Mozc?&lt;/h3&gt;
    187 &lt;p&gt;TL;DR: because it&amp;rsquo;s better. Have a look at the conversion list up at the top of
    188 this post. The input is &lt;em&gt;kinou&lt;/em&gt;, for which there are two main conversion
    189 candidates: 機能 (feature) and 昨日 (yesterday). Notice however, that it also
    190 supplies several conversions for yesterday&amp;rsquo;s date in various formats, including
    191 「平成23年4月21日」 using &lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_era_name&#34;&gt;Japanese Era Name&lt;/a&gt; rather than the
    192 Western notation 2011. This is just one small improvement among dozens of
    193 clever tricks it performs. If you&amp;rsquo;re thinking this bears an uncanny resemblance
    194 to tricks that &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.google.com/intl/ja/ime/&#34;&gt;Google&amp;rsquo;s Japanese IME&lt;/a&gt; supports, you&amp;rsquo;re right: Mozc
    195 originated from the same codebase.&lt;/p&gt;
    196 &lt;h3 id=&#34;switching-to-mozc&#34;&gt;Switching to Mozc&lt;/h3&gt;
    197 &lt;p&gt;So let&amp;rsquo;s assume you&amp;rsquo;re now convinced to abandon Anthy and switch to Mozc.
    198 You&amp;rsquo;ll need to make some changes. Here are the steps:&lt;/p&gt;
    199 &lt;p&gt;If you haven&amp;rsquo;t yet done so, install some Japanese fonts from either Software
    200 Centre or Synaptic. I&amp;rsquo;d recommend grabbing the &lt;em&gt;ttf-takao&lt;/em&gt; package.&lt;/p&gt;
    201 &lt;p&gt;Next up, we&amp;rsquo;ll install and configure Mozc.&lt;/p&gt;
    202 &lt;ol&gt;
    203 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Install ibus-mozc:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;code&gt;sudo apt-get install ibus-mozc&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
    204 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Restart the ibus daemon:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;code&gt;/usr/bin/ibus-daemon --xim -r -d&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
    205 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set your input method to mozc:&lt;/strong&gt;
    206 &lt;ol&gt;
    207 &lt;li&gt;Open &lt;em&gt;Keyboard Input Methods&lt;/em&gt; settings.&lt;/li&gt;
    208 &lt;li&gt;Select the &lt;em&gt;Input Method&lt;/em&gt; tab.&lt;/li&gt;
    209 &lt;li&gt;From the &lt;em&gt;Select an input method&lt;/em&gt; drop-down, select Japanese, then mozc from
    210 the sub-menu.&lt;/li&gt;
    211 &lt;li&gt;Select &lt;em&gt;Japanese - Anthy&lt;/em&gt; from the list, if it appears there, and click
    212 &lt;em&gt;Remove&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
    213 &lt;/ol&gt;
    214 &lt;/li&gt;
    215 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Optionally, remove Anthy from your system:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;code&gt;sudo apt-get autoremove anthy&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
    216 &lt;/ol&gt;
    217 &lt;p&gt;Log out, and back in. You should see an input method menu in the menu
    218 bar at the top of the screen.&lt;/p&gt;
    219 &lt;p&gt;That&amp;rsquo;s it, Mozcを楽しんでください！&lt;/p&gt;
    220 </description>
    221     </item>
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