Google & native language

(Resolved: see last line of the post)
I am facing a strange problem with google homepage. The homepage loads in a different language (check the pictures attached), which even google auto-translate cannot detect. Few of the writings look like: ᏧᎵᎦᏚᎢᏓ ᎣᏚᏓᎸ ᏚᏙᏢᏒ ,  ᏂᎦᏓᏊ ᎫᎦᎵ ᎨᏒᎢ, ᎢᏳᏍᏗ ᎨᏒ ᎣᏲᎲᎢ, ᎠᏱᏍᏗ, ᎬᎾᎨᏒ ᎢᏗᎬᏁᏗ ᏗᏟᎶᏍᏔᏅ.

I can change the language going into the settings of page, which was is not easy as "English" in not one of the options in language list (most probably "English" is written using that strange script). I first switched to one of the languages ('Hindi' in my case) which was familiar to me and then again changed the language to English. But the problem is that the settings are lost whenever the relevant (google's) cookies are cleared. I am curious about why google loaded this strange language. I googled (aka searched) and found that there were few other similar incidents.

Following are the other observations which might be relevant.

• Using Ubuntu Lucid Lynx (10.04) 64-bit installation  (not relevant)
• Noticed this behavior after fresh installation of Ubuntu 64-bit (not relevant)
• Other browsers (chrome and opera) seems to be working fine
• The problem can be solved by setting language to "English" in settings, but it reappears when the stored cookies are deleted.
• This strange language is the default language even after logging into google/gmail account which has English(US) as the default language.

I will be posting more details and workaround here, if I can figure it out. You can find the solution here.

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Configuration Files

Updated weekly irrespective of the date of this blog post.

Ubuntu

• .bashrc
• .emacs
• config - mplayer
• input.conf - mplayer

Windows

• mplayer.ini - mplayer-ww
• input.ini - mplayer-ww
• AutoHotkey.ahk

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Monday as first day of week - Ubuntu

Tested on: Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)

The calendar, which pops on mouse click over clock in Gnome panel, generally has Sunday as first day of week. This may not be a desired behavior if you use this calendar to manage all your appointments etc. Following are the steps to make Monday or any other day as first day of week.

The calendar and time etc are associated with the local settings. Use following command to know current locale-specific information.
locale In my case it produces the following output: LANG=en_US.utf8 LC_CTYPE="en_US.utf8" LC_NUMERIC="en_US.utf8" LC_TIME="en_US.utf8" LC_COLLATE="en_US.utf8" LC_MONETARY="en_US.utf8" LC_MESSAGES="en_US.utf8" LC_PAPER="en_US.utf8" LC_NAME="en_US.utf8" LC_ADDRESS="en_US.utf8" LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.utf8" LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.utf8" LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.utf8" LC_ALL= Locale in my case is en_US. Then the specific locale file have to edited for the required change. Use following command (replace en_US by your locale):
sudo nano /usr/share/i18n/locales/en_US Search for "first_weekday" & "first_workday" and set both of them to 2 or any other value depending on your choice of first day of week. Sunday is represented by number 1.
first_weekday    2 first_workday    2 Then run following to compile the changes to locale definition files.
sudo locale-gen Logout and login. Or you can also run the following to avoid logout: killall gnome-panel It should do the trick.

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apt-get behind proxy server

Tested on: Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)

• Using Synaptic
  Navigate to Settings->Preference->Network in Synaptic package manager. Enter your proxy server details like: username:password@proxyserver, and put the proxy server port
  
  
• Using Command Line
  Add following lines to the end of ~/.bashrc http_proxy=http://username:password@proxyserver:port/ ftp_proxy=http://username:password@proxyserver:port/ https_proxy=http://username:password@proxyserver:port/ HTTP_PROXY=http://username:password@proxyserver:port/ FTP_PROXY=http://username:password@proxyserver:port/ HTTPS_PROXY=http://username:password@proxyserver:port/ no_proxy=server1,server2 NO_PROXY=server1,server2 Replace username, password, proxyserver and port by relevant value. You can omit username:password if your proxy server do not require any authentication. All the names, like http_proxy, are obvious and self-explanatory. no_proxy can take any number of servers separated by comma. Then type following command in shell sudo visudo It will open up a text editor in shell. Add the following line at the end of the file Defaults env_keep += "ftp_proxy http_proxy https_proxy HTTP_PROXY HTTPS_PROXY FTP_PROXY NO_PROXY no_proxy" It instructs to keep the variables from user environment to the sudo environment.

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