Tinkering During the Install

So while I was waiting for my toolchain to compile, I decided to play a bit. First, I confimred that I can see East Asian fonts by googling Yomiuri Shimbun. And voilà! There it was: 読売新聞. It looks right on my computer--if not necessariy on the reader's. And I learned about keyboards--specificically, the compose key. I assigned the compose key to my right 'ctrl' key which I never use anyway.

The compose key lets you use two keys to create a character otherwise not on the keyboard. This includes all the accented characters in French which I like to type correctly. It also works on less common languages like Romanian--I can actually type Vlad Ţepeş. There are cool sequences for all sorts of characters--the following list of triplets is the two characters to type after hitting 'compose' and the resulting character: Or®, Oc©, tm™, !!¡, ??¿, <<«, >>», c=€, oo°, y=¥, -l£, xx×, +-±, -:÷, muµ, 12½, 13⅓, 14¼, 34¾.

I also got Thunderbird installed so I can read my email.

I added a calculator, terminal launcher, and Thunderbird to the panel.

I'd like to install a Japanese input method, but setup seems a tad complex so I'll do that later. I have enough to do right now...