The necessity of Assistant Language Teachers in Japan

Many people question whether it is really necessary to have foreigners assisting in teaching foreign languages in Japan. It's a good question.

外国人の英語補佐は何の訳で必要でしょう？

問われる疑問です。

In truth, the Japanese program for teaching English in the primary grades is not bad. If anything, it's too good. (I suppose I'll have to rant about how an education program can be too good. Later.)

正に、日本の英語教育はそれほど衰えていません。問題あれば、好すぎ、とのことです。（さて。教育課程が、どうして好すぎに言われることがあろう？またいつかの話にします。）

At any rate, when the Japanese teachers use the resources they have, and put out a little effort, the program works as well as it might be expected to, even without the ALTs.

実は、日本の先生方がその持っているリソースをあえて使って見て少し力入れると、我国言語教育プログラムが期待できるほど巧くのです。外国人言語補佐がいなくても。

Pronunciation? Grammar?

発音？文法？

Horror stories about errors perpetuated are like horror movies -- they have little to do with the real world. (Or they promote a perverted view of the real world.)

先生の失敗が子供にどれほどの悪影響を持ったかの怖い話は怪談話やホラー映画と同じです。実の世界と関係ありません。（或は、異常な誤った観点から世界を見ることを促進するものです。）

You don't have to be perfect to teach. You just have to be willing to try to help children see the meaning in things.

教える前に完全に完璧にならなくていいです。ただ一つだけのことが不可欠です。子供たちに物の意味が見えるように、助けてあげれば善いです。

Some people question the goal of teaching every student English. That's not the real goal, the real goal is to give them important communication tools that are often best obtained by learning a foreign language. English just happens to be the best choice to standardize on.

全ての生徒に英語を教育させる目標が疑問に思われるでしょう。

それは本当の目的ではありません。英語を教えることの本当の狙いは、外国言語を学ぶことによって得られる大事なコミュニケーションツールを子供たちに差し与えるのです。一つを標準として決めるなら、英語がベストの選択肢でしょう。

(Why standardize? And, really, why English? Those are, indeed, very good questions, and I'll have to rant about that later, as well.)

（どうして標準を決めないと行けない？正になんで英語でしょう？いい質問ですね。これも後の喚きにします。）

So, if the program is good enough, without the foreign ALTs, why have ALTs?

さて、外国人言語補佐無しで巧く行くことあれば、なんで補佐を雇うのですか？

How, indeed, do I justify the humongous salary I was receiving to stand around and spout "native" English in class at the lead teacher's request?

ホンマ。ボクはどういう訳で莫大なお金を頂いて、クラスにうろうろして、本当の先生の指示で「自然な」英語を流し聞かせる仕事をどうしたら妥当にするつもりでしょう。

Number one. I was not receiving huge money. Ten, twenty years ago, the pay was good, maybe too good, and that's something else I want to rant about later. I have never received that kind of pay. I've barely received enough to keep my own kids in school.

第一。莫大なお金を受けたことはございません。

十・二十年前の話にしたら、まあまあの好い給料を受けた人は居ったそうです。もしかして好過ぎだったかも知らない。それはまた、いつか、喚き散らすかも知れない。

わたくしは、そんな給与を頂いたことは一度もない。

自分の子供が学校に行ける行けないか危ない程度でした。

So, why?

じゃ。何ででしょう？

In truth, there are better solutions, many of which involve making it easier for foreigners to work normal jobs in Japan. Others involving giving primary school children more options. I need to rant about both of those subjects sometime, too.

正直に言えばもっと善い方法あります。その方法の内には、外国人が日本で普通な仕事で働けるようにすることもあれば、小・中学校の生徒たちの選択肢を増やすことも在る。これらのことも、またの話にするしかない。

My wife and I tried to raise my son bi-lingual. It worked okay until we put him into day-care at four. (Yeah, another topic for another day.) From that time until he was in the third grade (elementary), he absolutely refused to touch English.

息子を二カ国語のまま育てることにしていた。四歳の時、保育所に入れるまではなんとか巧く行った。（はいはい。また、違う日の話の課題が出てきた。）その時から小学校三年生まで、英語に触れる向きもしてくれなかった。

In the 3rd grade, an ALT visited his class. Finally, he got a chance to see that there was, indeed, someone besides his crazy dad and sometimes crazy mom who talked in those crazy sounds.

Thomas the Tank Engine, etc. didn't do the trick for that. Like magic shows.

三年生の時、英語の補佐が彼のクラスにやって来た。やっとう、気違いのお父んやたまには突飛なお母ん以外に、あの気を狂わせる音を喋る人に出会った。

機関車トマスなどはこんなところに役に立たないのでした。手品の感覚でしか摂らなかったらしい。

Some ALTs really don't do much more than stand around doing the human CD player gig. My first few months, that was almost all I could do.

ある補佐は本当にヒューマンCDプレーヤーの役しかしません。ボクの最初の数ヶ月間はそういう状況に近かった。

After building trust with the teachers, however, I was able to give one-on-one help to the students, both during class and after. I found many ways to earn my wages. There are many of us who do. I think most ALTs who stick with it for long do so.

先生の信用を得てから、生徒たちと一対一応援する方法を、授業の間も授業の後も見つけることが出来ました。給料を頂くほど役に立つ方法をいろいろ見いだした。ボクだけではありません。補佐の仕事を長く続ける人はだいたい、役に立つ方法を見つけて、その給料以上の価値を見いだしていると思います。

Could Japanese citizens be doing the same job?

日本人は同じ仕事できるのではありませんでしょう？

Well, yeah. Maybe. But they don't, and that's one of the points.

まあ。言い方が悪いけど、多分できることは出来るけど、しません。それが問題です。

The regular teachers are overworked as it is.

英語なくても、先生方に課されているしごとが多過ぎる。

In an ideal Japan, no, not necessary. In the real world, you don't want to do the job without us.

理想的に見れば、必要ではない。実世では、課された仕事を、補佐無しではやりたいと思いませんでしょう。

I pad.

Well, yeah, Apple has hit the sweet spot again with this iPad thing. According to the sales reports, they've hit a good market window, too. They're good at that sort of thing.

ウォッ。アップル社はこのアイパッドをもって今渡こそスィートスポットを当たった、な。売上の情報によると、市場のいい時期を見事に入ったらしい。

And the processor is neither INTEL nor x86. Yay!

CPUはインテルでもx86系でもないワイ！祝い！

Yeah, I want one. A whole bunch, in fact, one for each member of my family.

欲しいな。何台もほしい。家族の一人一人に。

No, my budget isn't going to stretch that far. Not this year.

否。予算が伸びへん。今年は、な。

My wife and children really wouldn't know what to do with an iPad anyway.

まあ、家の嫁さん、子供たちは今のところ iPad なんてそれほど使いこなせないでしょう。

Eh. Wait a minute.

エッ、まってよ。

My children would figure it out quickly enough, and the boss would not be far behind.

家の子らは充分はやくその謎々を解かせるし、上さんも負けへんに思う。

By the time I can afford one, I'm sure they'll have a lot of the bugs worked out.

家計の予算は買うほどの予算が出来るまでは、操作の不都合なバッグったをアップル社が、ある程度洗い出しているでしょう。

Maybe there will even be solutions to make them compatible with Linux machines. (Fat chance of that.)

リナックスとの互換性のためのソリューションも出来上がるかも知らない。（そんな可能には思えへんけど。）

[update -- June 5th]

I was in Osaka last week wrapping up the contract that just ended, and I took the chance to drop by the Apple Store and check the iPad out.

先週、終わった契約の後片付けに、大阪に行った。ついでにアップルストアに寄り道して、 iPad を視てきた。

Erm. I guess my enthusiasm gets a little moderation here.

エッと。その魅力が薄れたようです。

It feels like a large cell phone. Yeah. Klunky.

大きな携帯、という感じだ。ン。不細工。

No, I take that back. It's not that bad.

いや、まあ、取り消します。それほど呪えたものではない。

No way I would put it in the same class as my Docomo-branded Panasonic-built Linux-hidden-in-there-somewhere-and-where-is-the-source? cell phone.

ボクの、リナックスがどこかに隠されていてソースは何処だ！パナソニック製ドコモ携帯の類いではない。

It feels like the iPhone on steroids.

ステロイド射たれて拡大された iPhone という感じだ。

Oh. That's what it is.

あ、そーか！？まさにそういうものだ。

Maybe I still want one, or maybe I want Sharp's NetWalker instead. If I had the budget, I'd probably want both.

まだ欲しいかも知らない。でも、シャープ社の NetWalker を先に欲しいかも分からない。予算あれば両方欲しい。

But what I really want, nobody seems to want to make.

だけど、本当に欲しいと思っているモノ、誰も作ってくれません。

I want the NetWalker with the cellphone radio and headset jack built-in.

携帯無線電話装置と、ヘッドホン・マイクの差し込み口を内在している NetWalker がほしい。

(Maybe an iPhone with a blue-tooth keyboard will do? Oh, and I'd have to buy into the developer program, too. Gotta be able to program it myself. But I want to be able to tweak the programs when I'm on the train, too.

iPhone とブルートゥースキーボートを組み合わせたらどう、かな？ただし、開発者プログラムにも有料登録しないと行けない。自分でプログラムを組むから、な。でも、電車に乗っている間プログラム弄ることができないとダメ。あかん、アカン。)

iPad? Again, I need a physical keyboard. The iPhone/iPad user interface model is too narrow for me.

アイパッドはどうでしょう？本物のキーボードはここにもいる。ボクには iPhone/iPad の利用者接触面が狭すぎる。

I found myself continually wanting to do something the UI architects haven't been able to squeeze in yet.

ずっと、そのインターフェースの設計者たちがまだ対処していない機能を使いたいと、思いつつままだった。

In the case of cursor control, the UI takes too long figuring out I want to edit, and there are places it won't give me cursor control at all.

例えば、カーソル制御の機能を使いたいと思ったら、その機能を見せてくれない処あったりして、見せてくれるところにしても、制御の道具が出るまだの反応が遅れる。

And the developer program, of course. But I haven't checked. Does the developer program provide the tools for compiling on the iPad itself?

やはり、開発者プログラムも要る。しかしまだ未確認の点ですが、 iPad 本体上にコンパイルするのは可能かな？

What I want instead of the iPad is the Macbook Air. Running both Linux and Mac OS X. (Can you really squeeze a useable Parallels install into a Macbook Air?) On a non-Intel processor. (Thank you for your non-support, Intel.) Preferably a multiprocessor ARM, although I'd take a dual G4 PPC. Or even an AMD!

iPad の代わりに欲しいのは Macbook Air かも知れない。ただし、リナックスもマック・オ・エス・テンも平行に稼働しているまま。（Parallels を本格的に、使いこなせる形、 Macbook Air に搾って導入できるでしょう？）それはインテル社以外のプロセッサーだよ。（インテルよ！非応援ありがとう！）望ましくは 複合 ARM。 Dual G4 PPC でもいい。さもなければ AMD!

Sigh.

(ため息やな。夢の世界だ。）

silence is not golden

Time to break the silence. Break ranks, really.

沈黙を破る時期になってきている。列を乱すことになるかも分からない。

(By my contract, I'm not supposed to talk about this stuff in public, but, when conditions become as they are, those terms becomes unconscionable.)

契約上、こういう話を一般的なところに出していないはずですが、こういう状況になって、条件が変わった。常識外れといってもいい。法外にもなってきた。

Hmm. I'd like to break the silence, but I'm not sure where to start.

さて、説明しようと思ったら何を何処から言い出していいでしょう。

When I started working as an assistant English/language teacher (ALT/AET) here four years ago, I had intended to run a regular blog talking about the experience. But I realized that, contract aside, there were moral issues about the information, too much personal information to wash out, and figuring out how to make an interesting blog that doesn't breach someone's right to their own information took more time than I could put in on it.

四年前、外国語補佐として努めることにした時、こういうブロッグで定期的にその様子を話すことも考えていたが、一つ気がついた。例えば、契約に個人情報を大切に守ることが明確に書いていなかったとしても、人のことを勝手に一般なところに喋るのは道徳にかかわるものです。学校で起きることは全部個人情報に染まっている。個人情報を言わずに、人が喜ぶような話だけを残して面白いブロッグを書くのがかなり難しい。個人情報の権利を破ることせずにブロッグすることは時間掛かるばかりです。余裕がなく諦めた。

Working in IT, I understand that sort of thing all-too-well.

元々情報技術ですから、そういうことよくわっている。わかっていないとダメです。

Anyway, I find myself, after four years in a job that I knew was a dead-end, facing a two-month contract and then a three-month chasm, with unknowns beyond that. If I were single, no big deal. If my wife and I had no children, well, it would not be easy on my pride, but it would not be an impossible situation.

さて。最初からこの仕事は行き詰まりに向かっているって言うこと知ってた。四年後、正にそうなっている。今現在の契約は二ヶ月しかない。その後は3ヶ月の深い裂け目を直面しています。その向こうに何の約束もない。もし、まだ独身だったとすると、大丈夫でしょう。たとえば、家の嫁さんとの間に子供二人ができていなかったならば、自尊心が打たれる以外は何とか免れるでしょう。不可能の状況ではなかったでしょう。

But we have two children, and if I don't get work in June, we all don't eat, and they don't go to school.

でも、子供二人います。六月までに別の仕事を手に入れないと家族は食べれない。二人の子供は学校に通えない。

The last several summers, I've made ends meet by working summer or part-time jobs, graveyard shift sorting packages for the parcel post or sorting and checking orders for a cake manufacturer, eight-plus hour shifts as a guardsman waving the red wand around at fireworks displays and roadwork sites, concerts, etc. That way I was able to stretch the already tight budget across an always unpaid August.

この四年間、夏はほとんどアリバイとに過ごして財産を繋いでいます。宅急便で深夜の仕分け、ケーキ屋で深夜の仕分けと検品、花火大会や道路工事やコンサート現場で８時間以上の番、誘導灯を振ったりして、既にきつい予算を引き延ばして、学校の仕事の無い八月の間を無事に渡ってきた。

(See, I'm not really a teacher employed by the shool board. I'm an uncertified assistant, a temporary worker, no less, employed by a staffing agency. A scab by some interpretations.)

あのね。教職員ではありません。教育委員会の下で努めていません。ただの資格のない補佐だけです。派遣社員です。人の意見によってはスト破りにすぎない存在です。

But three months is too long a stretch, and we don't know whether our company will be able to get the contract again in September.

しかし三カ月は少し延びすぎることになるでしょう。また、九月になるとうちの会社がまた契約を引き受けるかどうか分かりません。

There are laws, you see, to protect somebody or other from the evil that would occur if we were allowed to work too long for the same school district.

ご理解していただけるかな？法律があるって。誰かを守らなきゃイケない。つまり、我々外人等が長い間同じ教育委員会の下で努めることがあれば何か悪いことが起きるでしょう。

Well, this is going to be a long rant, and I want to translate it, so I'm going to stretch it across several posts.

怒鳴り散らすか。泣き喚くか。話が長引くでしょう。訳したいし。また後の投稿に続くかな。

Everybody's Beautiful in English Class

There's a problem with sharing all the interesting and funny things that happen in class. It's called, "personal information". In a legal sense, I have to wash whatever I share of identifying data -- names, dates, places, and all the details that make it a smooth read. In a moral sense, I'm not the only one there, so I really don't have the right to act unilaterally with the information.

(This is the fundamental reason why gossip is wrong, even when it isn't "bad". But that's a rant for another day.)

That said, with care, I think I can share a few things.

For instance, two days ago, I joined the lead teacher for a jr. high 2nd year (8th grade, in US terms) class.

You know the age group. In the statistical mean, they have been struggling for almost two years with their hormones and, at the same time, trying to understand the adjustments as they are being helped as gently as is possible (ergo, not very) to make the transition from the walled gardens we call elementary schools to the adult world. (Run-on sentence, yes.)

Well, the subject of the lesson was, what was it? Oh, yeah. It was a poster made by a Japanese volunteer to help Cambodian children learn to read.

You see, some Cambodian children can't read the danger signs.

Or something like that. (Yes, illiteracy is part of the problem with landmines.)

And the lead teacher was trying to explain the phrase, "You see, ..."

It's easy to confuse the phrase with "... as you see, ..." [ご覧のとおり== go-ran no toori] and similar phrases. It's also easy to see it as just an intensifier. [ほら！ == Hora!]

I thought I'd try to help:

My father-in-law often says, "見てみ" [mite-mi].

(That's actually closer, I suppose, to ,"See!" or "See, here." But, really, we humans are usually kind of sloppy with interjections.)

Your father speaks Japanese?

My wife's father.

ああ。ジョエル先生の奥さんのお父さん・・・

[Joeru-sensei no okusan no otousan, ... == Joel-sensei's wife's father, ...]

ええっ？ジョエル先生、結婚してる？

[Ehh? Joeru-sensei, kekkonshiteru? == Huh? Joel-sensei is married?]

美人なの？[Bijin nano? == She's beautiful?]

Of course.

もちろんって。[Mochiron-tte. == "Of course." (He says.) ]

ポンキュウポン？ [Pon-kyuu-pon?]

If you're familiar with Japanese pseudo-onomatopoeia, I don't need to explain that. I, myself, get confused easily. But I knew what he meant. It would be similar to an American boy intoning "36-24-36", or whistling while drawing the hourglass shape in the air. I think, in fact, this particularly young man did draw the hourglass shape in the air. (From him, it was a bit unexpected.)

Pon -- rhymes with "bone" -- would be the sound a bump makes, kyuu -- rhymes with "Q" -- would (probably) be sound of the para-Chinese reading of the ideogram that means, "steep, sudden". In this case, vertical more than steep or sudden, I think.

Well, my wife (no, really) when we married, was awfully close to 36-24-36. A bit narrower at the hips than that, a bit more shouldered than busty. Something like the reality behind those idealized female superheros we used to see in (American) comic books before the manga invasion. But it's not uncommon in Japan.

She still has a good figure.

I, myself, have rebelled against those overly idealized charicatures of beauty. So I was shaking my head and chuckling a little, thinking to myself something like, "How do I help you really understand what beauty is?"

He, of course, misunderstood my reaction.

ポンキュウキュウ？[Pon-kyuu-kyuu?]

And I couldn't help laughing a little.

キュウキュウキュウ？[Kyuu-kyuu-kyuu?] ポンポンキュウ？[Pon-pon-kyuu?]

And a few other combinations, and I was having trouble not rolling on the floor. Pon-poko-pon, and visions of tanuki playing in my head. I had to do something.

Everybody's beautiful!

Misunderstood, I'm sure. I wrote it on the chalkboard, just to be sure the students got it. Things quieted down a bit and the lead teacher finished explaining the phrase, "You see."

But female figures kept coming up, of course, so I had to keep calling out, "Everybody's beautiful!"

Which is something I really wish I could get these young men and women to understand.

rice shortages

Saw this old post from last September (August 30 in the States, I guess):

News on the radio this morning about how the rains have destroyed the rice harvest this year for many farmers in Japan.

I don't really listen, so I didn't catch that the problem is the mudslides, not just the water content. So I was thinking, I hope they don't just throw it away, just because it isn't going to be high grade race. We're going to need all the rice we can get this year.

Jumping to conclusions. And as it turned out, the price only went up about 10% for a few months, and now it's back down to normal.

However, I have somewhat of reason to jump, when it comes to throwing food away in Japan. Some years ago, when I lived out in the country in the middle of Hyougo Prefecture, my wife and I were out for a walk and saw a wheat field burning. We were naturally worried, but when we got close, we saw that the farmer was watching it burn, keeping the burn under control.

We asked whether we could help try to put the fire out or something, and he said, no, he had just made a mistake in planting the crop and had to clear his field. It was some sort of 麦 ("mugi" == "wheat", but probably barley), intended for making beer or some other kind of alcoholic beverage.

The mistake? The stalk was too short for the powered (mini-) harvesters he had available. (Should put a picture of one of those miniharvesters up.)

I was shocked. Aghast, really, although probably too polite to show more than disappointment. One of the few things I physically miss in Japan is wheat. There just is not enough, and, what there is, usually has most or all of the germ ground off.

Think of your favorite American brand of starch mislabeled bread.

Well, okay, only about half the bread in Japan is really that bad, but good, whole grain bread is hard to come by. What they think of when I ask for whole grain is the commercial stuff you buy in the States that is basically white bread with about 10% whole flour and cracked wheat kernels added, that usually tastes slightly like cheap vinegar.

Anyway, my Japanese at the time was not up to making the kind of request I wanted to make, and it was a bit too late, anyway. It would have been an awful burden to him to have him stop the burn in a corner of the field so I could come back and harvest a bit of it by hand. But I really was feeling mixed feelings. Even just ten pounds of fresh (unpearled) barley would have been wonderful.

What's wrong with the economy?

I'll tell you what's wrong with the economy:

Too many greedy people.

And the worst greed of all is when people are making well more than they need to get by, and still insist on working 80 hour weeks.

Chronically working too hard does not display any sense of social responsibity. It's bad for your health and for your family life, too.

It's the same kind of behavior that made Microsoft and INTEL too big. And GM and AIG, too. It's not good for the company either, in the end.

If you have more than enough, be responsible. Share the work.

Fedora on an old clamshell iBook

I have an old clamshell iBook. I'm editing this post with it, in fact. Firefox 3.5 beta 4 on Fedora 10.93. (Fedora 10.93 is what Fedora 11 release candidate is currently called.)

Startup is slow. No doubt about that. But once things are running, it's quite useable.

I am currently triple-booting it, with Mac OS 9, Mac OS 10, and Fedora. Not in VMs, of course, I have to re-boot to switch, and all that. Here's how I did it:

First, dual-booting Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X on these old Macs is not really difficult at all. You just need installable media.

The last officially installable version of Mac OS 10 that runs on these old clamshells is 10.2, Jaguar. I'm not going to point anyone in the direction of the tools that help run later versions. (Was it post-facto or X-post-facto?) I've never gone there, myself, although, if Apple drops PPC support in 10.6, I may do so. (No love for INTEL from me.)

I don't want to get on-line with Safari 1 or Firefox 2, and I've wanted to keep this clamshell in use for my kids, so I've been trying to get Fedora running on it for a while. But they want to play Bugdom and Nanosaur, and I have some dev I think I may want to get back to that requires old systems, so I want to triple-boot it.

About a year ago, I bought a 160G disk and installed it. (Directions can be found elsewhere on the web, I don't have time to put all the pretty pictures I took up.) Only the first 120G was visible to Mac OS 9, and trying to format beyond that with Mac OS 10 prevented Mac OS 9 from booting. So, I needed a machine with a battery that worked anyway, so I bought an iBook G4 at the end of summer and installed that 160G hard disk on the G4. Runs very nice, have it triple booting Mac OS 10, Fedora, and openBSD. Mac OS 9 runs via classic on it, of course.

The iBook G4 was fairly straightforward. This iBook has not been.

First, Fedora would not install with the 160G drive. gparted would refuse to make a 1M partition and the installer would refuse to install the boot stuff in anything bigger than 1M. (More on that further down.) This was not the case with the iBook G4, only with the iBook G3.

First and a half. You must have more than 192M of RAM to boot Fedora. Live Ubuntu was painfully slow, although it did actually boot. An old live Fedora also was painfully slow, but did boot. Fedora 8, 9, and 10 would not boot. That's okay. You want to max the RAM anyway. Don't get the old 66 MHz RAMs, they're way too expensive. 100MHz RAM works just fine in most cases, and it's way cheaper.

And get 512M. Apple doesn't guarantee it, but it usually works, and you really want all the RAM you can get.

Second, Fedora walks on the Mac OS 9 drivers every way I've been able to install. That means that when you select the Mac OS 9 partition to boot from, Mac OS 9 won't boot. Classic will run, in Mac OS X 10.2, but Mac OS 9 won't.

That means you need to make sure you can boot up Mac OS 9 from something else, and the only other thing available on the old pre-firewire clamshell iBooks is the CD drive. (No booting from USB on these.) Catch 22 if your Mac OS 9 install CD is 9.1 and you update to 9.2.

If you do update to Mac OS 9 9.2, copy the Mac OS 9 partition off to a USB drive and burn a bootable CD ROM with that. (CD-R/W probably will not work.) And don't complain to me if it doesn't work, I haven't tried it here, I'm just speaking from theory. (Yes, I should try it. But I wouldn't have time to post this if I did.)

Third, well, it takes a long time. Even if you have installed a DVD drive in the machine, you probably want to use the netinstall CD. Otherwise, you'll be waiting for the install to finish, and then you'll be waiting forever for the first update to finish. Think in terms of more than 12 hours after you select the packages and start the downloads.

Fourth, well, if you don't have any nostalgia (or other reason to use the old systems), Fedora by itself was quite straightforward. Except for the 120G limit on the hard disk size. (I tried it last summer when I thought I had some extra time.)

So. Procedure:

HD -- 30G or greater. (The G4 had a 30G hard disk in it, so I used that.) Get a USB enclosure for the drive that you'll be removing.

RAM, as I said, more than 256M, recommend 512M.

Mouse. You want a mouse with at least two buttons. I promise you.

Backup your data, of course.

Partitions: 512M is probably enough for Mac OS 9, but you'll want more for the old apps that must be the reason you're wanting to multi-boot it. I used 1.5G, and that leaves enough room for the Mac OS 9 virtual memory space (576M).

I suppose you can put Mac OS 10 and Mac OS 9 on the same partition, but my set of superstitions suggests against it.

For Mac OS 10, you probably want about 9G or more to boot from, with another 1.2G for swap. That makes 10G if you leave the swap on the boot drive.

I used 9G for boot and 1.5G for swap. There are other places you can read up on moving the swap space off the boot partition for Mac OS 10, so I'll set that topic aside, here. Except for one point: drive label issues are much simpler on the clamshell iBooks. Plus side of a minus point, there.

(I have used Mac OS X 10.2 on a 5.6G hard disk, and it's okay, but I was continually watching the freespace and moving stuff off the main drive on that setup. And I only had 192M RAM in it at the time, so I wasn't losing a lot to swap space. I did move swap space off the boot partition for Mac OS X, just to force myself to keep room for the swap space.)

(Oh. The theoretical 8G limit on old machines. That does not cover the clamshell iBooks, even though some people within Apple, even, have been confused on this point. I have the README files to prove it, along with the booting system. 'kay?)

(Hmm. That 8G boot partition limit on the biege G3 desktops. Put Mac OS X in the first partition, cut it to about 7.5G, and you're golden. Mac OS 8 or 9 will boot above the 8G limit, so put that in its own partition, up above the Mac OS 10 partition. At least, that's the way I remember it. But that's got nothing to do with the iBook.)

The order of the partitions doesn't seem to matter on the iBook. Fedora moves things around, by the way.

You'll want one more partition, about 500M, for moving things between Fedora and Mac OS.

That makes four partitions so far. On the iBook, the partition count is important. You don't want more than 7 partitions total. (Or was it 8?) I like to cut lots of partitions, to keep things separate, but I had to give that habit up for this install. Sort of.

Ergg. Okay, no more than 16 partitions, but the drivers (and some other low-level stuff) are loaded in the first 8 partitions in the old Macs. The first partition you cut will actually be partition 9. So, the number of partitions we are cutting here must be limited to 8.

The partitioning software for Linux will allow you to cut more than that, but then Mac OS 9 refuses to boot and there is no way I could find to get around that.

Leave the rest of the disk unpartitioned, for Fedora to do its stuff with.

Install Mac OS 9. Then install Mac OS X. Or vice-versa. Make sure both are booting.

Get your install media for Fedora ready. (Again, I recommend netinstall. It seems simpler that way. If you're going to do this to a lot of iBooks, set up a private mirror instead of trying to install from the 7 CDs in the current install set.) It takes about a half hour or so at 1M ADSL transfer rates.

I'll defer to the Fedora wiki for how to get the install media.

Insert the netinstall CD, (re-)boot, hold down the C key. Fedora walks you through the several selections, pay attention.

Once you are into the graphical installer, you should use the mouse and its buttons instead of the trackpad and its buttons.

The trackpad driver is set up to take taps on the trackpad as mouseclicks (gag), and it's way too sensitive. Far and away too sensitive. If you don't use the mouse, you'll find yourself missing important setup dialogs because the drivers thought you clicked twice. You don't want that. (I really should write that up on bugzilla, but, you know my excuses about time at this point.)

Now, when it comes time to set up the Linux partitions, select the option to let the installer use the un-allocated space and automatically set up the partitions. But,
also select the option to check the partitions it sets up.

Why? It needs to set up two (count 'em 2) boot partitions for Fedora. (Why!?!?!?!?!? I wish I had time to look at the code on that.)

You were wondering why I was worried about the number of partitions? Heh.

Okay, it needs to cut one very small HFS partition to relay the boot from the usual (Open Firmware) Mac boot procedure from the PPC days. (openBSD allows you to do that on a partition you're booting Mac OS 9 from, but they are using a different technique.) As I mentioned above, that's a 1M partition. It's also marked appleboot or something. Let Fedora's installer handle that.

It needs to cut one partition for /boot in the Fedora file system, to handle the actual Linux boot processes. Currently, 200M is sufficient, but, again, you can let the installer take care of that. The next partition can be cut as an LVM partition, and swap space and other stuff (including the root partition) allocated in there.

So, seven Mac OS visible partitions minimum:

Mac OS 9,
Mac OS X,
Mac OS X swap,
HFS shared partition,
appleboot boot relay partition,
/boot partition,
LVM

and that leaves one more possible partition before Mac OS 9 refuses to boot. I don't remember, actually, if number 16 was actually useable, and I'm not interested in going back to check. So keep it at seven Mac OS visible partitions.

Within the LVM partition, of course, if your hard disk is big enough, you can divide the partitions up as you want. With the 30G drive, I felt it was wiser to just let everything fall into the 14G or so root partition. With 60G, I'd have separated out /etc, /var, /tmp, /home, etc., but I only had 30G. No big deal for what this machine will be used for.

I might, later, dedicate this machine to be a server. If so, I'll load openBSD and no X11, I think. And I'll partition it properly.

The install takes, as I said, a long time. Because the CPU is relatively slow, all the dependency checks take about two to three hours, but once you've selected the packages to install and told it to go, you don't need to worry about that. Just start it in the evening, and come back to it the next evening.

Make sure your family won't be tripping over the ethernet cables. Last summer, I got the install started Saturday night, went to church Sunday morning, and came back in the afternoon to find that someone had knocked the ethernet cable loose. (Broken connector, I'm to poor to fix it.) And the install had timed out and there was no way to recover. Oh, well.

Choosing your packages -- last year, there were still a lot of packages that still didn't run on PPC. Open Java was still not quite there, yet, especially for PPC. Most of the packages run okay, although you'll wonder sometimes when initialization takes a long time, and the splash screen doesn't show up until about a minute after you selected the app. But the responsiveness, once the app starts, is not bad. And, once the first run sets up the initial states, the next startup is quite a bit faster.

Yes, openoffice works reasonably well, too. So do the GIMP and inkscape. (wow!)

One more thing. If mono disgusts you as it does me, you'll want to go back and uninstall the mono packages. Nothing really necessary there anyway.

Finally, after Fedora is installed and running, you need to do one more thing to re-enable booting from Mac OS 9. Get your Mac OS 9 install (or bootable) CD and boot it. (Hold down the C key after the chime, again.) You'll notice that the hard disk is not mounted by the install CD. Run the hard disk setup application in the utilities folder.

You'll see that it says the hard disk is unrecognizable. Select it and click the format button. (eek!)

Well, yeah, be careful here. If you don't click more things than need to be clicked, it will take you to the dialog that allows you to set up partitions. There is an "Options" button, click that. (I'm reciting this from memory, I should check it, but I'm running out of time.) There should be either a dialog or menu selections at this point that allow you to refresh or install the drivers. Do that.

Now cancel the format dialog.

(Of course, cancel the format dialog. I mean, it took you two days to get this far, you don't want to go through that again for no reason.)

Quit the hard drive setup utility and re-boot.

Hold the option key down to get the boot volume selection screen. The Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X partitions are visible with the names you gave them when you formatted them. (Unnamed 1 and Unnamed 2? Heh.) They also have icons which help tell them apart. You can now select the partition to boot and away you go.

One little niggle remains. You can use the Mac OS boot select dialogs to change away from defaulting to Fedora. You can't go back, though.

Except, the next time you update Fedora, it will re-select Fedora for you.

Heh. Fun times.

(Now, I'll see if I can get my kids to play with Fedora on this machine instead of playing Marble Blast on the machines I need to work on.)

[update: pictures from the preparation stage on youtube.]