House of Sand and Fog

For summer school I had to read Andre Dubus III's House of Sand of Fog. Overall I thought the book was well written, and I didn't mind the change of narrators, but the characters weren't likeable. Kathy Nicolo is evicted from her house by the county because she neglected to pay a business tax. Her husband left her several months ago, she has a meager income as a house cleaner, and she's struggling with an addiction.

The next day her house is sold to Colonel Massoud Behrani and his family for 45 grand at an auction. Behrani is an Iranian immigrant who was part of the overthrown Shah's army. After squandering money on furniture, clothing, and a "pooldar" apartment, he realized that without a good source of income he couldn't afford to live his lavish lifestyle. After spending the last of his savings on Kathy's house, he learns that he can sell the property for four times its worth.

The problem is that Kathy was evicted from her house by accident and she has no where to live. Infuriated by this news she bothers the Behranis about her situation and starts to drink. Behrani conceals this information from his family and further upsets Kathy. Also, the deputy sheriff that evicts Kathy becomes obsessed with her despite having a family and stable job.

It's a pretty interesting read and hard to put down, but by the end of the book you don't like any of the characters. They all make a series of poor decisions and in the end pay for their actions. You wouldn't want to be friends with these people because it could be a dire mistake. It's a modern Greek tragedy and I'd recommend it if you don't like people and don't want to.

China Photos

Now that summer school is over I've run out of excuses for not posting and I'd better step it up. It's been some time since I came home from China, so I've finally uploaded my photographs from the trip. Most of them were pretty bad and just of me, so there's only 2 pages of photos. Here's China photo page 1 and China photo page 2. Enjoy!

Four layer lemon cake. 

It's Okay to Download!

Michael Moore gave everybody the okay to download his new movie Fahrenheit 9/11 as long as they're not using it commercially. Imajes pointed out that Some people took this farther than Moore expected by putting the movie on the distributor's website, Lions Gate Films, for a brief period of time. It wasn't advertised directly on the site, but it was easy to find out where it was posted. I was on dial-up unfortunately, so I only got 10mbs of it.

When my cable internet was fixed I took advantage of it immediately and found a torrent file of F 9/11 and spent roughly 2 days downloading it. Last night I watched the film on the computer to see for myself what all the hype was about. I thought it would just be a film aimed at people already against Bush and the war in Iraq, positions I stood by so why watch this film? After watching the first 20 minutes I was hooked though. Not because it reinforced my positions, but because it asked questions that went unanswered from the last four years. I agree with Jimmy Dee, everybody needs to see this film.

Hi8 to DVD Updated

How and where do I convert my Hi8 tape to DVD? I've never dealt with this sort of thing before and don't know where to begin looking for the kind of place that will do this for me. Video transfer? Conversion? Duplication? All the major stores do digital photos now, not digital video. Walmart, Sam's, and Walgreens all do pictures, but not video. I will figure out how to do this.

Updated

I figured out what to do thanks to Kevin Marks. Walmart, Sam's, and Walgreens accept tapes for conversion to DVD through a company called YesVideo. You can take your tape to the photo counters at one of these stores (or several other ones) and ask them about converting the tape to DVD. It costs about $24.99 per tape and 2 hours of footage. Walgreens was offering a deal with coupon for a second tape converted for free, so we went there with 2 tapes for the price of one. The photo specialist said the tapes would be sent out 14 to 21 days from now. Why these companies don't advertise these services more is beyond me but I'm glad I'll get to see what's on my tapes using my computer.

44000kbps Dial Up

Our cable internet has been knocked out by a storm, so I've had to revert to using dial up. After unplugging the cable modem several times, gaining a connection, and then losing it two minutes later I decided to give our old dial up internet a try. Surprisingly it wasn't hard to set up, the old access number still worked, and I got to make use of our second phone line reserved for spam faxes. I give credit to updated Mac operating systems and Airport software. It's a slow connection, but faster than the one I was dealing with in China, so I can easily browse sites and check email. Navigating between websites isn't much slower than with cable; the commercials say cable is 50 times faster than dial up, but it doesn't seem like I'm going 50 times slower. Half has fast is more accurate.

I won't be able to upload my China photos until the cable starts working again, but there's still some things to do before I can start uploading. Instead of hosting my photos on my Geocities or Spymac accounts I'm going to sign up for a Hello account like Anji and hopefully it'll be a smooth transfer directly to my blog. However, after I do post these photos you'll want me to go back and take better ones myself.

My excuse for limited posting is summer school, but I'm only taking one class so I guess it's not a very good one. When I'm inspired to write something I'm either a) too tired, b) have reading to do, or c) a combination of both. Now the dial up connection is yet another excuse. I have a great talent for finding excuses not to write, not very conducive to being a blogger. It's something I do a lot anyway, a bad habit I have to get rid of. I pull through it, school, slow connections and anything else in my way.

China Cracking Down on the Internet, Again

The Chinese government is issuing more internet regulations.

China's Internet police stepped up an ongoing campaign to control the web by issuing new measures to crackdown on "unhealthy" Internet content, state press said.

A circular issued by the Ministry of Information Industry has unveiled a series of measures to regulate content, crackdown on unregistered Internet bars and step up controls over online bulletin boards and chatrooms, Xinhua news agency said.

The measures will also ensure that Internet information providers refrain from spreading "information threatening national security or social stability," or containing superstitious or erotic content, it said.

...

China last week launched a website, net.china.cn, entitled the Illegal and Harmful Content Reporting Center, for people to complain if they have seen something they believe is unlawful on the Internet.

I wonder what people get if they report something, because incentives are the only way people are going to participate. What's even scary is what would happen to somebody producing "unhealthy" content in China. A black mark on their secret file, loss of party membership, or jail time? Probably just more blocked sites :-(.

Where are the Identity Theft Commercials?

The best link I've found for the CitiBank Identity Theft Commercials is now gone. I guess Alora Ambiance got into trouble for hosting another company's work without permission. Another place that's hosting a few commercials is the company that helped make them, Fallon. Anyone posting the spots without permission has probably been forced to take them down...

Testing Out WordPress

Now that Movable Type (supported version) isn't free anymore the next best alternative I've found for blogging is WordPress. It's free to download, but I couldn't install it unless I had a host. Instead of buying a host and then trying WP out, Michel Valdrighi suggested I try a demo WP blog. The blog refreshes every 2 hours, so if it's not working you can try it out later. Now I can test WP out and see if I can handle it.

Color Wheel and Selection

When I started this blog I picked one of the templates supplied by Blogger. I wanted to customize my template, but didn't know any html let alone CSS. So I found the color hexadecimal codes and changed them till it was the way I liked it. Choosing colors for a website is just as challenging as choosing paint colors for a wall. It would've been helpful if I'd used a color wheel. This is a pretty good one to use for making a websites because it tells you what are good web safe, smart, and unsafe colors. Of course it helps to know a little about color theory so you don't have to keep testing color combinations. About has some more information on color theory here. Another really useful color theory chart lets you pick colors and see how they go together, and also see how they will look on a small sample webpage. All these sites and many more really help with site design.

Beijing Buildings and Air

Before I left for China I did not look at any pictures of what Beijing would look like. I had assumed that it would look like any other big city in America and Japan, so I didn't think I'd be too surprised when I got there. I forgot that China was still a third world, developing country, with buildings reflecting that. Actually, the buildings don't reflect anything because most of made out of brick, not glass. Brick and tile are the most common materials used for buildings of all kinds. Residential, commercial, government, and just about everything else was brick or tile. My guess, brick/tile insulates better by keeping the cool air in and the warm air out during the summer, and vice versa in the winter. It's much cheaper to that way.

However, there were some buildings that were made of glass, only there was something different about them. Some of the glass windows looked like they were coming off the building. Never having seen this before, I looked at them again and realized that the windows were open. A sleek, modern office complex with unsightly open windows? Yes, air conditioning is expensive and nature lets in cool breezes.

The breezes may have been cool, but I doubt they were very fresh. Air quality seemed to be below what I was used to where I live, which is supposed to have low air quality levels. My friend asked me I had any respiratory problems before we left and boy I was happy I didn't. Beijing's air is dirty, but it wasn't my breathing that was impaired. Once or twice daily my eyes would feel like they were on fire, yet they watered like pipes. I used my shirt to try to clean the filth out of them, but eye drops would've worked better. Man! The book never said anything about this.

Last, Beijing's buildings are not 90 stories tall like in Chicago or New York. The city seemed short to me, like it was still young. But that's exactly what I saw was. These buildings are developing, just as much as the country itself. I saw a poster for what I thought was a plaza complex that was being built of glass. This kind of building is a sample of what's to come in Beijing. The brick and tile buildings may be torn down in 30 years and replaced by sky scrapers competing with the rest of the world along with the Chinese economy.

For now though, Beijing's modern architecture is not the most flattering and its ancient buildings are loads more desirable to look at. One building that I remember seeing that I thought would be the kind I'd see all over was the Gloria Plaza Hotel. These buildings do exist, but they're a minority.

Google Beats Amazon

For the last few days I've been thinking about a book that I read many years ago in 6th grade. This book stayed in my memory all these years because it combined history, horror, archaeology, and travel all into one. An American teen visits his aunt in England where a bear/monster is mauling people. The stone circle Stonehenge is somehow connected to the monster, but I can't remember exactly how. The only problem was that I couldn't remember the book's title. I went to Amazon and tried to sift through the categories in the children's book section and then typed in a search for "Stonehenge", but no luck. After trying a few more categories I decided to try something that any Google power user would have done first.

I searched for monster, stonehenge, children's book and the book, The Doom Stone, was the first result; it's Amazon listing. Why didn't I do this first? I underestimated Google's abilities, including doing what sites can not do for themselves. Another way to search for a book in Amazon is to use Google instead.

The Geek Test

I'm 23.66864% geek according to this test. That's the second to last position on the geek scale and I still feel like I should get out of the house more often. Link via SushiCam.

Back Home From China

On Friday I came home from my trip to China. I was pretty exhausted after spending the whole day in the air, then having to go through U.S. Customs, catch another plane, and a three hour car ride home. Jet lag hasn't been too much of a problem because I didn't sleep at all on the plane from Beijing to Shanghai to Los Angeles. By the time I got home it was 11pm of the same day I left and I was really tired. After two days of relaxing I'm on my regular schedule again.

Visiting China was a completely new experience for me. To prepare myself I bought a used book on Beijing (Frommer's Beijing 2nd Edition, copyright 2002) to get a general idea of what to expect. I also looked online for some information on what to bring that I couldn't buy there, especially in Harbin, where I'd be spending 2 full days. The book didn't tell me everything, but it did cover the basics pretty well. I learned a lot of new things that wouldn't be in many official tourist books anyways.

Instead of writing about all my experiences all at once, I'll write a series of posts covering different topics on my visit. While in China the only computer I had access to had Windows 98, a dial up connection, and Internet Explorer 4.0, all of which did not agree well with Blogger or visiting many other blogs. The computer was used for email correspondence with my family and Yahoo news. When I was in Beijing we spent most of our time at the tourist attractions and we tired after eating dinner, so I didn't go to any internet cafes.

Another thing I would like to share on this site is the pictures that were taken. However, I didn't take the pictures and the pictures were taken of me; most of them. My friend said it was a Chinese thing to do, but I don't believe it. Why fly 6,000 miles to take pictures of myself instead of the sites? My friend argued that people have already taken pictures of the sites though. Still, I don't want to put portraits on here. The plan was to buy a disposable camera, but my friend said that 45RMB ($5) was too expensive. She used her family's camera to take pictures and I bought a roll of film for it in addition to what they brought. In total I brought back 3 rolls of film, but when I develop them I'll know if they're upload worthy.

In the end I had a good time and I'd like to return to China again. Now that I know a little about what to expect I can further enjoy the country more when I return.

Going to China

I'll be leaving in a couple of hours for China soon. I'm really tired because I didn't get any sleep the night before and only took a short nap. There's still some last minute preparations to make and all I'm concerned about is packing everything and getting out of the house. I don't know if I'll be able to update this blog, but it'll only be a week, so that's not too bad. The next major hurdles are to get to the airport, get checked in, get on the plane and sleeeeeep. It's going to be a long journey but when I get there it'll be a ton of fun. Gotta get packing now.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Wisdom

Carl has a magic belt that grants wishes. He doesn't know how to use the belt, so when he tries to fix Frylock's eyes, Carl ends up turning his head into Swiss cheese.

Meatwad:(paraphased) "Aw Carl it's not that bad...err it is. But with the computer technology today, you don't even have to leave the house."

So true Meatwad, so true...

Kitchen "Painting"

This is a picture of our dinette set after I tried to make it look like a painting with Photoshop Elements 2.0. The original photograph looked so boring that I don't know why I took it. Now I've learned that you can make a "bad" photograph look better by turning it into a painting.

What to Bring to China

Next week I'll be leaving for China. It'll be the first time I've gone there and I have no idea what to expect. It's going to be in the 80s where I'm going, so light summer clothes will be necessary. When I go to Beijing it'll be hotter so I'll bring sunscreen (my friend wasn't sure if they sold it in China). I need to make copies of my passport and visa and write down the contact information of the U.S. Embassy and the closest consulate. An umbrella and other clothes can be bought in China for much cheaper prices than in the U.S. Since I'm going to be shopping a lot I'll bring one small empty suitcase. This trip is only going to be one week so I probably won't buy a ton of things. For a longer trip two empty suitcases would be suitable.

I'm not going to bring my computer, but I'm definitely going to bring a camera. I'm still not sure whether to take the digital camera or just buy a bunch of disposable cameras. My cell phone plan doesn't allow me to make international calls, so I could buy a cell phone in China, which I hear are cheap. Uploading the photos on the internet for display on this website probably won't happen, but I'll keep that possibility in mind.

The tap water in China is not clean enough to drink or brush your teeth with. This was something I dealt with in Mexico, but the water in the hotel was filtered. Water in the best hotels in China is not safe to drink either. Instead boiled water is provided in bottles in the hotel rooms. I'll be buying a lot of bottled water; I wouldn't be surprised if they don't recycle though.

I also learned that there are restrooms without toilet paper! It can be bought in stores, but why not just provide it in the restrooms? A side effect of being a third world country or Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist thought? Does Das Kapital even cover toilet paper?

There's still more planning to do, but as June 4 nears I'll be more prepared. Actually going there will prepare me better for future trips.

Pink Flash

Here's a flash movie of Pink Floyd's song Bike. Nothing fancy, but that's what makes it good. Link via Kevin Marks.

Mashed Potato Maker

I hate making mashed potatoes. They take about 45 minutes to make and I always find a way to make a mess. Peeling, chopping, boiling, mashing or ricing(?), and mixing are required to make perfect mashed potatoes. Instead of going through all the hassle, there are many dried versions of mashed potatoes the come in boxes and take about 15 to 20 minutes. But those just aren't as good as home made.

Carmina O'Connor realized this and came up with a simple idea. She decided to invent a mashed potato maker. What a great idea! Executing it was more difficult, but she made a prototype(non-working) and a firm offered to sponsor her idea and make a working prototype. I can't wait till this machine hits the market, but I guess with the Atkins craze mashed potatoes are a no-no.

To Do Before June 4

• Make shopping lists


• Go shopping


• Go to bookstore


• Return library book


• Get new camera(s)


• Get summer school textbook


• Find Northwest card


• Figure out how to use Spymac


• Request school information

Virtual and Actual Updates

I've had a lot of free time since school ended which means that I should be getting a lot of things done. Well, I haven't made much progress, but I've made some. I changed my template, got a Spymac (free) account, and finally borrowed (and read a little of) a book on Dreamweaver MX. Still, that's not much and there's a whole lot of other stuff to do. I can't figure out how to use the Spymac service to host pictures or anything else I want. Even after doing the Dreamweaver tutorials, I don't think I could build a site from scratch yet.

On top of virtual tasks there's several real life things to complete. I've got to get ready for my trip to China and then immediately start summer school. It doesn't feel like I'm going on vacation, but in the next few days I'll probably be really busy preparing. I hope I have time to post...

Untitled Document

Doing a Google search for untitled document brings up some interesting results. The Government of Utah, a British swimming group, an opera site, Jessica Simpson, Math.com, and the State department's page for travel to Nigeria all have sites named untitled document. It's quite embarrassing for a professional website to be listed as an untitled document, so maybe it's a strategy to get more visitors. The Southern California Conservatives are probably taking it farther than any other site.

Getting a Chinese Visa

Yesterday I went to the Chinese Consulate in Chicago to get my single entry visa with my friend. I thought I had all the information and materials but that wasn't the case. Getting there also turned into a mini-fiasco also. We got lost because we didn't bring a map to help us in case our Yahoo Maps directions didn't work, or if we got off course. My dad asked for directions a few times, but he kept asking people if they knew where the Chinese Consulate was. There are several consulates in Chicago, how would they know where the Chinese one was? It was funny when he asked a Fedex guy where the Chinese Consulate was and he promptly told us the address (100 West Erie Street), which we knew already. I joked that if we had asked him what 100 W. Erie St. was he would've said, "Oh, that's the Chinese Consulate." I guessed that he had delivered a few packages there. I realized how true that was later on.

When we finally got to the visa office there was 15 minutes before it closed for 1 hour. Posted all over the walls of the small room were the instructions for filing for a visa. The problem was that much of this information was not posted on their website, so we had to wait until the office opened at 1pm. In addition to what we brought with us we needed a prepaid envelope so we could get our visas and passports mailed back to us. That costs another 5 bucks in addition to the $50 for each visa, money orders only. That meant a trip to the post office for my dad (one of the notices had directions to the post office).

We stood in line for an hour for the visa "officials" to come back. We moved to the front because many other people had left. Then, as the hour wound down more people started to show up... with numbers. Numbers!? These people had come early in the morning and weren't able to get visa, so they got numbers to use when they came back in the afternoon. There were about 18 numbers given out, so we were 19th in line. Processing a visa is a quick operation, so we weren't too discouraged. However, a new policy surfaced, one that was not outlined on the website. You could have a travel agent deliver your passport and application to the office for you.

The first guy in line had 2 applications, so we were sure we'd be out of there quickly. But the second guy had at least 50! Some of them weren't filled out right, and the lady processing the applications was new. How long would this go on? 18 people ahead of us, with at least 300 applications. And the office closed in 1 and a half hours. Luckily, my dad got a travel agent to take our applications, he was number 15 and had a whole bag of apps. He was nice enough to take ours first so we got out before it closed. That's one experience I don't want to go through again. Next time I'll use a travel agent.

Cell Phone Issues

Recently I've had some trouble with getting my t68i to work. Now that most of the problems are solved I don't feel like screaming at the cell phone service people anymore. But this guy went nuts at his cell phone company's store.

Can you hear me now? Jason Perala's message got through loud and clear to employees at a Fargo Verizon Wireless store Wednesday.

The Fargo construction worker said he planned only to scream at the employees at the store in West Acres mall.

"Then I just lost it," he said in a phone interview a few hours later, from inside the Cass County Jail.

"I just started grabbing computers and phones and throwing them," he said. "I just destroyed the place."

Unreliable phones and poor service were eating away at Perala for months, he said.

Send Me Money Please

Twenty-nine-year-old Karyn Bosnak was in deep trouble. She moved to New York City from Chicago and spent and spent. Hair salons, manicures, designer handbags, clothes, and of course shoes. She charged all of these items to her credit cards and made the minimum payments on them. It was a recipe for disaster. Soon she was $20,000 in debt and had lost her job. What did she do? She set up a simple website and asked people to make her donations so she could pay off her debt. If 20,000 people gave her $1, she'd be set. It was worth a try and it eventually worked! Now she's written a book about her experiences and probably rich now. How cool is that? Link via the BBC.

I was thinking about becoming an Amazon affiliate to generate a little commission for this site so I could pay for a hosting service. Rebecca Blood and Fuyuko Takegawa have that on their websites; Fuyuko even has paypal donation system also. I don't think it would work if I tried it, but who knows? All kinds of people are on the internet and if they see something they like they'll pay. A lot of professional bloggers talk about how blogging is a service to the community (or something like that), and see nothing wrong with making money to support that service or just for themselves.

It's just something I'm pondering now since I realize I may have to pay money to do more with my site. Who knows, maybe I won't have to work if people are willing to give me the kind of cash they gave Karyn.

Soap Is Soap

Middle and high income nations have invented many different kinds of soap. There's soap for in the shower, in the bath, your face, feet, hair, and hands. There's soap for cleaning the bathroom, the kitchen, the floors, and carpets. Many other specialty soaps have been developed including soaps for electronics, cars, leather couches, wood, and metal. When you run out of one kind of soap you get more. It's like using the right tool for the job, you don't substitute another soap. If you do, who knows what could happen? You could mess up your suede jacket, end up with dirty dishes, or nothing could change at all. How could we get along without our soaps?

When I ran out of body wash a few days ago I asked my dad if he had any in his closet. He asked me what happened to the soap he gave me the other day. I told him that that soap was hand soap. He said that's the kind of soap he used in the shower. What?!?! You can't use hand soap in the shower... It just doesn't work. That night I scraped out what was left of my body wash (Dove) out of it's container and thought some more about soaps. Are big corporate companies just telling us we need to use a certain kind of soap for our whole bodies just so they can make money? The next night I tried using the hand soap in the shower. It didn't lather up real well and it had a somewhat medicinal smell. But I did get clean.

Now I know what soap to use when I'm strapped for cash. But I live with my dad and he grew up in a poor household so any soap will do for him. When my mom came to visit I told her that I ran out of shower gel, so she got me five bottles of the stuff from Bed, Bath, & Beyond. I don't think I'm that picky, but soap is not the same.

Drowning Cat

If your cat has drowned and you want to resuscitate is, just grab it by it's back legs and swing it around yourself to get the water out. Do as this man is demonstrating. Or you could do what the vets recommend.

Rumsfeld Songs

Now you can hear Donald Rumsfeld's quotes set to music and sung by a soprano. Be sure to listen to the song clips, the woman has a really beautiful voice.

It Works!!!

Finally, I got the T68i to work. After learning that the phone wouldn't work with Cingular, I decided to try something else. We took it to the AT&T and the guy there said that he needed the unlock code to make the phone work. Unlock code, what's that? The phone is already unlocked, what is the unlock code for? After doing some research online I found out why the AT&T guy wanted the code. He wanted to lock the phone so it couldn't be used with any other service. I was disappointed to hear about this and felt that the cell phone companies were trying to control people.

Then we decided to try something else. We bought an AT&T Go Phone, the cheapest plan, a basic phone. The same guy said that if we wanted to use a different phone, we could just take out the SIM card and put it in another phone. Is that not what we were trying to do a few hours ago? Maybe he just didn't understand fully or maybe he did, since we ended up buying a phone from AT&T even though I already had one. Once again, the phone companies are trying to control people.

I'm glad that my new phone works. After going to so much trouble to get it it's good to see that my efforts and others' were not futile. However, now my family got brand new phones...

Afghan Prisoners Killed

Joi posted about the possible killing of thousands of Afghan POWs over a year ago. The documentary (Warning: it's 52MBs and you need the latest version of QuickTime to view it) talks about how 7,000 Taliban prisoners were transported to various prisons throughout Afghanistan. Only 3,000 POWs arrived at their final destinations. Many of them died in containers on trucks (lack of air, holes shot in containers), others were killed in fire fights, and some were murdered in the desert. American troops were aware this was happening, but the media did not report on the deaths because they were focusing on the American Taliban John Walker Lindh. If this story got the same amount of press the Iraqi POW abuse is getting it would be the greatest blow to the Bush administration, even greater than no WMDs yet.

Blogger Overhaul

Yesterday Blogger completely revamped itself with new features and a new interface (GUI). Now it comes comments, user profiles, good-looking templates, and posting via email among other things. I was hoping for categories and trackbacks, but I happy about the changes and hope I can benefit from them. What can you expect with a free service? Although Movable Type is free also...

I'm thinking about using one of the new templates, but that would mess up all the settings I already have (I think) and they all feature "recent posts" sections, which I hate. It's time to start reading up on Dreamweaver MX 2004.

Dream Lash

I want to buy Dream Lash because I saw it on TV and it looked legitimate. However, my eyelashes tend to fall out and into my eyes, often getting stuck for hours and irritating my eyes. Maybe this stuff makes them stronger or it's just a waste of money.

Not Lasting So Long After All

CDs and DVDs, the storage mediums that are supposed to last for at least 100 years, are deteriorating after 20-some years.

Dan Koster was unpacking some of his more than 2,000 CDs after a move when he noticed something strange. Some of the discs, which he always took good care of, wouldn't play properly.
...
"We were all told that CDs were well-nigh indestructible when they were introduced in the mid '80s," Koster says. "Companies used that in part to justify the higher price of CDs as well."
...
Part of the problem is that most people believe that it's the clear underside of the CD that is fragile, when in fact it's the side with the label. Scratches on the underside have to be fairly deep to cause skipping, while scratches on the top can easily penetrate to the aluminum layer. Even the pressure of a pen on the label side can dent the aluminum, rendering the CD unreadable.

I have an vinyl record player that I got a few Christmases ago. My mom's old vinyls from 40+ years ago still play on that record player, even though the quality isn't as high as CDs. I was told that if you played a vinyl record too much it would wear out and you'd have to buy another one. I'm pretty confident that my CDs will last a long time because I keep them in their jewel cases and rarely play them. The batteries for the CD player run out so quickly, that I'd rather just convert my songs into mp3s and put them on the iPod.

How Do I Get In China?

Hopefully, if things go as planned, I'll be going to China within the next two months. There's a likely chance that the trip will be cancelled, but I'm not worried about that right now. My biggest concern is how to get a visa. U.S. citizens must have a passport and a visa to travel to China. They have to get the visa from the Chinese Embassy offices or Consulate offices. I only know of the Consulate office in Chicago, but I don't want to make a trip there just to get a travel visa. The Chinese Embassy websites aren't giving very much information on where are all the places that let you get a visa. China's a relatively safe place to go to right? Why do I need a visa to go to China? I understand that I need a visa to go to Ghana, but I don't get China. Anyways, I still need to figure out how to get the visa, then I need to find a good deal. My friend's going to look at some travel sites in Chinese, so we can probably save a lot of money that way.

Cats and Bunnys Shouldn't Date??

No, it's okay for them to go out.

One-Way Writing in Taiwan

Now in Taiwan official documents must be written from left to right only, not right to left or up to down.

Official Taiwanese documents can no longer be written from right to left or from top to bottom in a new law passed by the country's parliament.

All texts must now go from left to right, like western languages, although arts and literature are not affected.

A spokesman said it was necessary as the old method, in texts using numbers and English, "looked confusing".

Been Busy

I've been a little busy over the last couple days, but now that the semester's almost over I have more free time. Next week I just have one little exam and then I'm free for the summer. I wanted to take summer school but the course I wanted was way to early in the morning. Now, nearly everyone who shows up here is looking for Citibank Identity Theft Commercials and where they can download them. Go here, I'd host them myself, but I don't have any space. Anyways, now I have time for more blogging ;-).

What Do/Don't You Eat?

I have the worst diet of all my acquaintances. It's not filled with junk food, instead it's not filled with very much food. Starting from best to worse, breakfast is the one complete meal of the day that I eat. Sausage, eggs, hash browns, a banana, strawberries, and some pear are usually on the menu. It's plenty to get me going in the morning and holds me over until I get home from school. After that, there's no telling what or when my next meal will be. Rule for healthy eating: Eat meals at relatively the same time every day. Since I have a lighter schedule now I have some time to cook my own meals, but I hate shopping for food. I'm not used to buying food for myself (and my dad) to make meals with so I try to avoid going to the super market as much as possible. After living at home for a long time, it's hard for young people living on their own to learn how to feed themselves. Eventually most learn how to do this by the time they start feeding other people too. My dad doesn't shop for food to make meals because I don't think he's learned how to do this. I live at home with my dad now so I have a tendency not to even think about dinner (we never eat lunch). I've been looking for old forgotten stuff from the back of the pantry to eat.

My main snack is peanut butter and saltines. I eat that after school and for dinner and have not tired of it yet. I also eat grapefruit, bananas, ramen noodles, peanut butter sandwiches, and canned soups. We're starting to run out of a lot of food, foods that my mom knew bought but my dad doesn't understand what they are. There was one point in time when he bought me some South Pacific TV dinners but I got tired of them. All of the food I eat, except for the fruit, is unhealthy in large proportions; I've gained weight. The poor diet is also causing me sleeping problems. I never realized how good home cooked meals were until my mom left and my dad "took charge".

In reality I don't think I have the stamina to come up with recipes and buy ingredients, and neither does my dad. I made a Martha Stewart macaroni and cheese which took an hour and a half to prepare because I'm bad at timing things. After 30 minutes of baking in the oven I finally completed a main course and nothing else. I don't see how Martha or any other domestics can pull meals together day after day. Tomorrow I'm going to go to the grocery store, hopefully I'll pick up edible items that will last more than two days.

They Called the Secret Service?

A student's drawings prompt an interview with the secret service.

Secret Service agents questioned a high school student about anti-war drawings he did for an art class, one of which depicted President Bush's head on a stick.

Another pencil-and-ink drawing portrayed Bush as a devil launching a missile, with a caption reading "End the war -- on terrorism."

The 15-year-old boy's art teacher at Prosser High School turned the drawings over to school administrators, who notified police, who called the Secret Service.

I understand calling the police, but the Secret Service ?? It seems like a waste of resources to investigate a 15-year-old's violent political artwork instead of people who have a greater chance of causing harm. I guess the kid'll be watched by the government for the rest of his life.

Citibank Identity Theft Commercials

Here are the Citibank identity theft commercials. They're among some of the few good commercials in the U.S.

Opening a Range of Ports (Updated)

I recently learned that the trick to speeding up bit torrent downloads is to open up a range of ports that are blocked by a router. It's so simple right? If you're behind a router and you're getting really slow download speeds (less than 10kbps) just open up ports 6881 to 6889, that are blocked by the router and you can get speeds up to 200kbps+ (if you have broadband). Well, I seem to have a special talent for discovering problems in doing the simplest of tasks. For one thing, I don't have a linksys router, I have an Airport (Snow). How do you open up a range of ports using an Airport base station? Nobody seems to know how to do it, so I improvised.

For Public and Private Port fields I entered the same number (6881, 6882, etc). For the Private Address field I just entered my computer's ip address. I did this for every single port number I wanted to open. I don't know if this was the right thing to do, but surfing the net seems to be faster. I didn't notice any changes with bit torrent downloads right away, so I connected directly to my cable modem. Still no change in download speed. I connected back up to internet via Airport and have waited a little while and noticed that my download speed went up to 30kbps. That's the highest it's ever gone for me, but it went back down to 10kbps. I still haven't figured out how to open a range of ports with the Airport, but maybe someone else with publish the solution.

Update
I did followed all the steps up above, but I didn't realize one thing; the Airport changed my computer's ip address after I updated it. I looked at this forum and found some more directions, leading to a description of how to prevent the Airport from changing the computer's ip address, I think ;-). I don't expect anybody who doesn't have this set up to understand what I'm talking about, but I wanted to compile the information for those who do.

Culture Determines Educational Performance?

In the real world I heard someone say that in America Asians value education more than whites, blacks don't value education very much, and Latinos just don't understand the language (English). This was an explanation for why there are differences in educational performance among the various ethnicities in America. This person cited the book "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning" which is about how bad young black students do in school, but it also talks about the reasons why all ethnic groups perform differently. The book has been disputed by several other scholars not because of the data in it, but the "cultural" differences among each group.

"Asian(all Asian people, east, south, etc.) culture" focuses primarily on education, so Asians do much better than whites in all educational levels. Blacks don't focus very much on education and instead spend too much time on sports and entertainment. Latinos (Spanish-speaking) do not understand English very well, so they can't do very well in American schools that teach in English. The man who told me this said nothing about whites or native Americans. I see numerous faults in this "theory" as to why different ethnic groups perform differently.

I made some comments and asked questions about the man's theory, but I couldn't change his mind. Why wouldn't blacks care about education when it was a Supreme Court ruling from a case involving a black family and a school board that ended segregation in America? "Asian" culture is an extremely vague term suggesting that everybody in Asia has the same or related culture and different groups of Asians perform vastly different in school. That's all I got to say to him because he kept going off on tangents, avoiding the questions, and changing the subject. I also wanted to let him know that many Asians in America have a native language other than English, so why don't they suffer in school as much as Latinos? Or vice versa, how come Latinos don't perform as well as Asians? He made a statement about how in every single Asian country the students work so hard, especially in Japan. I wish I had asked him if he was only counting the Asian families that send their children to school, and completely ignoring the kids that drop out because of commitments at home. Asia has the highest dropout rate in the world. That's pretty hard to believe if the "Asian culture" values education so much.

According to him and the Thernstroms (authors of No Excuses) blacks perform the worst in all educational levels. Highest drop out rate, lowest test scores, most expulsions. When I read "Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto" I learned that it was native Americans (Indians) who performed the worse in all these fields and also had problems in education. Why didn't he say anything about this group? Do they not count? Why not compare blacks and native Americans for cultural similarities and differences if both groups perform poorly?

Guess who also got left out of this cultural comparison? He didn't tell us how well or bad whites did in school. He never mentioned anything about white culture. (I'm kicking myself now for not saying white culture, I was dying to hear how he would respond to that term at the risk of sounding like a member of the KKK). My guess is that he felt since America's mostly white, whites set the standard for education. Well jeez, shouldn't we be setting our standards a little higher? Why not have Asians be this "standard".

I think it's safe to just ignore this "theory" because the educational performances of different ethnic groups is more complex than what peoples' so-called cultures are. Asian culture, black culture (blacks everywhere), Latin culture, and all those other general terms are just as vague and useless as saying white culture.

The Field Museum and the Mfuwe Man Eater

This is a picture of a Man Eater of Mfuwe, who now resides in the Field Museum in Chicago. This particular maneless lion had been terrorizing the people of Mfuwe in Africa during 1991. It was the largest lion ever recorded in the area at almost 10 feet long. From the picture it's hard to see how big this lion is, but I'd compare it to a pony only a little shorter. Normally lions will not kill and eat people because humans are not their natural prey, but the Man Eaters in Africa were different. Some say that they eat humans because their regular food supply was reduced, so they were forced to turn to other alternatives. Others say that the locals did not bury their dead properly and the lions started eating corpses, developing a taste for humans. Either way, the lions were a threat to the people, especially the 10 foot long one. The big lion was so cunning that people started to believe that it was possessed by a demon. It's last victim was a woman, and when the lion finished eating her he took a clothes bag from her house and dragged it through the main street roaring. Later on, people saw the lion playing with the bag like a sack of catnip. Why didn't the citizens just kill the lion? Well, hunting was restricted in the area and the people lacked the resources to kill it. Finally a Chicagoan came in and killed the lion after a week of hunting (safari hunting was allowed because of the financial resources it generated).

The Field Museum in Chicago is one fine museum. We went there last December for a day during winter break. When you walk in at first you see the main hall that houses the dinosaur skeleton Sue and a big elephant. All the exhibits are on the sides of the building. But that doesn't mean there isn't much room for the collections. The museum is huge. We spent a couple hours there walking around the three levels just browsing. What's at the museum? A little bit of everything. Artifacts, animals (stuffed), clothing, traditional houses, plants, and art. It's just too big to see everything during one visit.

One thing I noticed on the back of my map was a little message that surprised me at first. It said, "During your visit, you may encounter exhibits that portray people or ideas that are new to you. Thank you for viewing all displays with respect for the traditions they represent." Why do they put that message on there? Who would be so dense as to pay money to visit one of the country's top museums and look down upon the exhibits. Then my mom joked that the message was for one of my instructors, who had said some negative things about certain ethnic groups without backing up the claims with facts. There are people who would say that some of the cultures displayed in the museum are stupid, confused, or backwards. But then there are others who may be educated to some degree who would make more "scientific" claims like, "Oh, that's just faulty cause effect reasoning", "They haven't accepted progress from the western world", or "The museum's trying to make those cultures seem more important than they really are." Now I understand why the museum printed that message on the map, right next to the key information about the facility.

JewelEye

Ever wanted to put metal jewelry on your eyeballs? Me neither, but now you can get a procedure done in the Netherlands called JewelEye where you can.

"Dutch eye surgeons have implanted tiny pieces of jeweler called "JewelEye" in the mucous membrane of the eyes of six women and one man in cosmetic surgery pioneered by an ophthalmic surgery research and development institute in Rotterdam.

The procedure involves inserting a 3.5 mm (0.13 inch) wide piece of specially developed jewellery -- the range includes a glittering half-moon or heart -- into the eye's mucous membrane under local anaesthetic at a cost of 500 to 1,000 euros (270 to 540 pounds)."

Fun huh? Can't people just be satisfied with color contact lenses? I have enough trouble keeping my eyelashes out of my eyes, why would I want a titanium jewel stuck on them? Ewww, here's the official site.

White Trash Charms

I was looking at a site called Signs of Life, linked by Zannah, and I noticed a particular sign featuring a company that I thought was Japanese. As you can see from the picture, the company is called White Trash Charms. The photographer even mentions, "Aparently the Japanese don't understand the negative connotations attached to this phrase." That's not a wild hypothesis, so I decided to check it out. I found this site, White Trash Charms Japan, ignoring the first results in the search because maybe cybersquatters used the name. I couldn't find any information in English on the Japan site, so I tried my luck with the first site on the results list, White Trash Charms. After exploring the site a little I learned that White Trash Charms was an American company, run primarily by three white women.

The jewelry isn't extremely fancy, the designs aren't anything to write home about, but the name white trash just doesn't sit well with me. Nowhere on the website is an explanation for the name of the company, so I guess that's a signal to all the unhip people to pay no attention to the name, it's all about the jewelry, the art, the style. Well, I don't want to ignore the name and I don't think anybody else should. The photographer was willing to overlook the "gaffe" as a foreign culture not understanding a negative slur, but what would he say when he found out that it was a white American who created the company, a person surrounded by people who completely understand the phrase's meaning? Why are people over looking this? White trash is an offensive name for a poor/working class white person. I guess since people are willing to buy the products, it doesn't matter what the name is. And by looking at the prices of the products, white trash are not buying them, so they're not even for white trash. They probably have received letters, but the only print that counts for them is reviews in fashion magazines.

Part of me wants to do nothing more than think about it for a few days and then forget about it. But I could contact the N.A.A.C.P., an American civil rights group, just to see what they have to say about it. Maybe I'm just over reacting.

Tomb Raider

I watched Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life on Friday, a day off from school. I'd give it 3 out of 5 stars because I didn't get bored and the plot was okay. The first movie, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was a little on the tacky side because the special effects weren't as good. I also liked the sequel because of the technology, ancient history (inaccurate, but it's Hollywood, so I wasn't surprised), and different locations featured. Some of tech wasn't too impossible/James Bond-like, and could probably used in real life. Historic elements included mentions of the Santorini earthquake, Alexander the Great, and some Greek mythology among other things. Croft and her partner travel the world a bit more, stopping off in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The plots not too bad either. Lara's trying to stop a biological weapons producer from finding and using Pandora's Box to wipe out most of the world's population, or at least the "undesirable" people.

It got me thinking about Saddam Hussein's Iraq, biological weapons, and weapons of mass destruction. I don't think Saddam had as sophisticated a biological weapons program as this guy Reiss did in the movie. Who makes biological weapons anyways and how lucrative is the market? I'm not interested in making them since I don't like biology (I can't stand looking at cells under a microscope, let alone diseases). All in all, it wasn't a waste of an evening.

Eating Dandelions

On Wednesday I went to my friend's house for dinner where her mom cooked dumplings/wantons filled with pork and dandelions. I don't think I had ever eaten dandelions before, I didn't even know they were edible. Dandelions, called huang-hua-tii-ting in Chinese, are one of the "six most important herbs in Chinese medicine." They tasted a little bitter, but after awhile I enjoyed them a lot. My friend didn't tell me what I was eating at first, and for good reason, because thinking about the lawn weed and eating them at the same time spoils the flavor. Other regions around the world eat dandelions, even the early American colonists ate dandelions, but I'm not sure if that had something to do with lack of other foods or not.

Don't Do It!! Let Them Go

Iraqi insurgents are threatening to burn civilian hostages alive unless Japan withdraws troops from Iraq.

"Armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, the kidnappers shouted "Allahu akbar"-- God is great -- in the video and held knives to the throats of the Japanese, who screamed and whimpered in terror."
...
"The events suggested a new tactic by insurgents to pressure the governments of Washington's allies in Iraq, and posed dire implications for U.N. workers, journalists, religious groups, security personnel and other civilians doing business here."

After what happened last week to the 4 American contractors, and the events that followed it doesn't make sense why these insurgents are doing this. When a few Americans (or other coalition members) get killed, many many more Iraqis (both civilians and insurgents) are killed later. The U.S. has proven that it can and will meet these attacks with powerful assaults, so why do these people continue to do this? They must not care about their own citizens lives, just getting rid of occupational forces.

Save CPU Power in OS X

The Unofficial Apple Weblog posted this great tip on how to save CPU power in OS X.

"Have you ever noticed that if you are downloading many things in Safari and have the “Downloads” window open, your CPU usage jumps up? On my 800MHz G4 this can amount to 40%. If I close the downloads window or hide Safari this usage drops back down to 5%.

This got me thinking, and it turns out that its the repeated updates to the window that crunches the CPU, not the downloads. By hiding apps, you can reduce the number of CPU cycles they use as OSX no longer has to re-draw their windows when something changes. Programs which show progress bars or other such frequent window changes are most affected."

Blogger Permalinks: How to Make Them Work

Ever since I started my Blogger blog I have had trouble creating permanent links (permalinks) to specific posts. When I tried to link back to a certain post, my browser would take me to the very top of a page displaying all the entries posted during the month of that particular post. Normally a permalink is supposed to go directly to the specified post, automatically scrolling down if necessary. Why wouldn't mine do that? What was I doing wrong?

I looked on some other Blogger blogs and tried their permalinks. I got mixed results; some worked and others didn't. I looked on Blogger Forum and found that others were having the same problem. Dew's permalinks worked, so I decided to ask him. He gave me a simple overview of how permalinks work, but I was still missing something. After examining my template code I figured out what the problem was.

Titles. Blogger permalinks use titles as an anchor to link back to posts. That's why a link to an old post went directly to the title of the post. I was creating my own titles using the <h4> tag, others whose permalinks didn't work were using the <strong> tag. To make Blogger permalinks work I needed to create a title that would be recognized by Blogger. Following these simple instructions made my permalinks work.

"To enable titles, go to the Settings | Formatting tab. Scroll down to the settings field labeled 'Show title field', and set it to "Yes."

"When you finish selecting 'Yes' from the drop-down menu, click on the 'Save Changes' button at the bottom of the page. Once saved, you will see a prompt diplayed that reads "Your changes have been saved." in orange at the top of the page. Do not leave this page until you see the message displayed."

After about an hour and a half I had fixed every post I had ever made, and now my permalinks work.

Safari Tip and Problem

Here's a helpful tip for Safari to make it run a little faster. From MacMegasite

I found that Safari has been slowing down and I would see the spinning cursor for several seconds every time I open a page. Thankfully This tip from Mac OS X Hints solved it.

If you go to ~/Library/Safari you'll see a folder called Icons which caches all of the site favicons. After extensive use, the icon cache can get very large. Simply delete the contents of the Icons folder and the Safari slowdown will be gone.

To prevent it from happening again in the future, make the Icons folder read only. You'll no longer see any Favicons in the bookmark window or menu, but it's a small price to pay for the speedup.

I wouldn't go that far and make the folder read only because I like to see the Favicons, so I think I'm just going to delete the contents of the folder every so often.

My Safari problem is that when I click return (enter) after I type in the site address in the address bar I get a message saying that it can't connect to server. So after I press return again the web site shows up. It's not a huge problem but it's really annoying. I have Mac OS 10.3.2 and will not update to 10.3.3 because, "if it ain't broke don't fix it," and I've heard reports that the upgrade doesn't help. Now I have 10.3.3, but I don't think it's helped the problem, which has gone away on it's own. I'd like to continue to hope that the problem will go away on it's own. Hopefully it won't come back.

More Blockages in China

The Chinese government has decided to blog the technology news site Slashdot as reported by Glutter. Reporters without Borders has also covered the rise in internet repression by the Chinese government. Typepad has remained blocked and Blogspot is still partially blocked. It looks like things are going to stay this way for a long time unfortunately.

John from Sinosplice has proposed a solution to allow free speech to prevail. His project is called Adopt a Blog, which involves a site that pays for it's domain and space to host another blog that is blocked in China. It's a new idea and I'd like to see how it works out. Another solution could be to use mirrors, but I have no idea how that works and if it's a feasible solution for hundreds of thousands of blogs.

Applele Style

This site features a graphic artist's designs of future "apple" products. If these products were really on the market it would be difficult for me not to buy them. Apple products already look great, but these designs are 10 years ahead of schedule. If this guy showed his designs to Apple, they'd be crazy not to hire him.

via Jason Nolan

Best Idea in Athletics

The San Francisco Giants are offeringfree wifi access during home games at SBC Park. I'm not a baseball fan, but this is definitely one stadium I'd visit. If all sporting events offered free internet during the games attendance would increase dramatically. However, there are many negatives to open wifi, so doing anything involving passwords or other confidential information would be out.

Blogspot Blogs Unblocked (Updated)

I think it's official now; Blogspot blogs have been unblocked by China. At first I didn't think it was true because people in certain areas still could not access the blogs, but it is true. I've already had two visitors from China, something I thought would never happen. Ever since I learned about the blockage, I didn't think the Chinese government would change its mind. How do they decide these things? Does a group of officials just sit in a board room and say, "Oh, let's loosen up our restrictions on this blog host, people can still get to the blogs anyways." If that's the case, then why block internet sites at all? Maybe it's just a way to let people know that their government doesn't want them to access certain content, and if they get into trouble because of those sites, the government can just say, "See, we told you so."

I'm stretching this because I can't fathom why the government even bothers to block major hosting services. I understand that there are things the government doesn't want people to know about, but filtering the internet is extremely difficult. As soon as Typepad was blocked people were already finding ways to get around the firewalls and spreading that information. If China continues to block millions of websites (mainly blogs), then everybody is going to know how to get around the firewalls. So much for "protecting" citizens.

What complicates the issue more is why Blogcn and Blogbus were shut down and then reopened in less than two weeks. The point of doing that was... Also, the points of blocking Typepad and unblocking Blogspot remain a mystery. I hope this means that Typepad will be unblocked too.

However, Topku made a comment on Glutter that's pretty relevant. Topku says that people in foreign countries are making so huge a deal out of the blocking, that it's sending a clear message to the Chinese government about how important the blogging medium is. Topku says that the international attention is making thing worse, not better. The government can exert its power in the 21st century by taking away people's blogs.

Update
Some areas in China cannot access blogspot. Don't ask me why, but you can consult the Chinese government instead.

Update II
More people from China (9 so far) have been accessing this site without using a work around. If you're from China and came to this site without doing anything special please leave a comment and let me know if you can access any blogspot site. Peking Duck briefly outlines the blocking/unblocking of blogspot. Another site claims that China's firewall has become more sophisticated and is only blocking certain sites.

However, some reports suggest that although most of the site is now accessible in China, some pages remain blocked. The pages still blocked are understood to carry content considered undesirable by the Chinese authorities. For instance explaining to surfers how to circumvent Internet filters and blocks.

I don't think I've outlined how to do that here, it just doesn't explain how some can access this site from China and some can't. I don't think anybody else can explain it now, so I'll continue to monitor the situation.

Ninja

Ninja!
You are a sneaky Ninja.
We don't even know you're there...
before it's too late!


Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, Robot?
brought to you by Quizilla

I'm a ninja, ninjas like apple pie.

Who are you?

via danah

Typepad Blocked in China

Typepad blogs have been blocked in China. In the last few weeks the Chinese government has been cracking down on sites that host weblogs. Both Blogbus and Blogcn were shut down, but then unblocked. Glutter has been covering the blockage and has a list of blogs doing the same thing.

What may upset people most about this blockage, is that Typepad is not a free service. Imagine paying for an internet host, uploading your website on it, and then the government blocking your access from that site. People get really angry about these things, so I don't know how long it'll last. People (including myself) become so attached to the internet that they become disoriented, lost, and confused when it is taken away from them. When we were having problems with our internet access, we were upset and disgusted that we couldn't use a service that we paid for, and that we couldn't tap into another part of our lives. These feelings are probably the same, if not worse, for being banned from your own site and the sites of thousands of others.

I hope that the Chinese government realizes this grave mistake and unblocks Typepad blogs.

They Didn't Update Their Image?

Why is a Chinese translating site using this image on their English page? It's not our current president, it's not even our last president, it's the president before the last. George Bush senior, the current president's father, is featured on that White House button, not George W. Bush the current president. This button probably was not even created when Bush senior was president, so why are they using it? Maybe for the Chinese, like Americans, one George Bush is plenty.

Canned Beef

Beef in a can. Weird.

WMD in October

The US should find weapons of mass destruction some time around October. That's one month before the presidential election, sealing a victory for Bush. Technically, they were found much earlier, but these reports cannot be released until the administration determines when Americans will forget the fastest that there's a choice in the election.

Blogcn and BlogBus Ousted

Blogcn and Blogbus have been shut down by the Chinese government. Apparently, some people using the service were criticizing the government. China also has blogspot blogs blocked, but I've heard rumors that in some locations people are able to access them. The one blog that ruined it for all of us DynaWeb. It gives information on how to get around China's firewalls. From Reporters Without Borders

Blogbus.com and Blogcn.com allow Chinese Internet-users the chance to keep up a personal page without any technical knowledge. The sites are very popular, Blogbus.com alone hosting more than 15,000 blogs that have now been made inaccessible.

Blogger Interface Change

I think Blogger changed it's Create New Post interface for all operating systems and browsers. I miss the old interface, this one has less features. I can't see my old posts and new post in the same window or republish my blog. I hope Blogger creates a new interface soon.

Site Feed

I finally posted my site feed on here. I didn't do it for awhile because I use NetNewsWire and the latest full version did not support Atom site feeds. However, the latest beta version does support Atom feeds, so I downloaded that and have decided to post the feed. I don't know of a good newsreader for Windows though, any recommendations?

The United States: A Rogue Nation

Bush often mentions that rogue nations are terrorizing the world. He identifies these rogue nations as Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and anybody else who doesn't agree with us. But now there's another nation that can join the club. The United States is official a rogue nation and evil empire. All peoples of the world can celebrate by eating at a McDonald's, Starbucks, watching MTV, or purchasing something from Nike (maybe they give people discounts for working in the factories).

What Ever Happened to this Guy

It's been awhile since I've heard of the Iraqi Information Minister. Has he been captured by coalition forces too? Or did he flee to Syria or Jordan?

Pot Calling the Kettle Black

The campaign ads of George W. Bush suggest that Democratic front runner John Kerry is a 'rich liberal elitist'. See, if Kerry was a rich conservative elitist like Bush, it would be okay. What's wrong with Kerry? How could he be so out of touch with American citizens.

In the style of a popular MasterCard advertising campaign, the ad lists the Massachusetts senator's expenses -- including a "42-foot luxury yacht" and beachfront estates worth "over $30 million" -- before calling his alleged claim that he is one of the people "priceless."

. Bush is probably overwhelmed by hearing about such wealth and luxury. He knows nothing about living on vast estates, going to elite schools (just for being an elite person), having millions of dollars, etc. Bush is a down to earth man who understands the value of hard work, or any work for that matter, regardless of who his friends are. That is why all of America sympathizes with Bush and is willing to give him money for his campaign.

At two campaign stops Monday in his home state of Texas, Bush will add another $3 million to his already unprecedented war chest, the Bush-Cheney campaign said.

As of January 31 -- the last date that figures were available -- Bush had $104 million in his campaign's treasury. He raised millions more throughout February, and recently launched a $10 million TV advertising campaign.

America needs to support common people like Bush and his administration.

Chinese Amazon

Dangdang is China's Amazon. I don't read Chinese, but the BBC article says that American self-help books are popular, in addition to American TV shows. Now 80 million Chinese are online, still a small percentage of the population, but that's up from 50 million according to NationMaster.com. Dangdang's founder Peggy Yu says that there are places in China where people don't have heating, but they do have internet. I know plenty of people who would rather have internet (broadband) than heating, so this isn't so strange to me.

China's SMS Crazy

In China short messaging services have become really popular. So far, 260 million cell phone users have sent 220 billion SMS messages. Even Chinese political organizations are using SMS to communicate with the public.

Here in the U.S. SMS is barely scratching the surface of mainstream communication. Nobody in my family uses it because it's not in our plan, and if it's not in your plan then you have to pay extra. It's about 10 to 20 cents per message, so it's not worth it. Hopefully SMS will be cheaper in the U.S. in the future.

600 dpi

If anyone needs high quality pictures of Bill Gates, don't worry, he's got you covered. Even Steve Jobs has a high quality photo online. Why do these people have high quality photos of themselves? Who wants to see them?

What Happened?

The Mozilla Blogger interface for the Mac looks completely different now. It looks like Safari's interface, which has less features. It may have something to do with updating to Mozilla 1.6. Don't update Mozilla if you're on a Mac and you use Blogger. Very disappointing. Now there's no Mac browser with 100% of Blogger's features :-(.

New Nickels

In the U.S. we're getting new nickels for the first time in 60 odd years. They're still going to have Thomas Jefferson on one side, but instead of Monticello (his home) there's going to be something commemorating Lewis and Clark, and another one about alliances/peace with Indian tribes (the U.S. broke every single peace treaty it had with the Indians). They won't be minting these coins for long though, the Monticello people want their free advertising back. I have a feeling they won't suffer too much while the new coins are in circulation.

I think that if they're going to redesign a coin, the Mint should redo the penny. The penny is the most boring coin because it's so little and dark. It's gets dirty and forgotten real easily. I don't even think the Mint likes the way the penny looks. But they probably don't regard the penny as an important unit, so they ignore it. The quarter is the most prestigious coin for the mint. It's getting 50 new designs, a design for each state, so the Mint is very proud of the quarter. Too bad the penny can't get that kind of attention. If so it would look a whole lot better.

Too Stupid to be President

One of my favorite flash movie and political sites is Too Stupid to be President. Most of the movies are creative and funny and teach you a lot about what's going on in the Bush administration. It's clearly biased, meant to make fun of the president, but I don't think they have to do a lot of work to accomplish that task. Also, if you're not a political person you can learn about Bush and party politics from them. I didn't know that Enron was Bush's largest campaign contributor, and it's CEO Ken Lay did not get prosecuted by the SEC.

My favorite movies are How the Bush Stole the Election, Chickenhawks, Get Stupid, Rumsfeld, The Quest for the Oily Grail, Cheerleader of the Free World, and It's a Wonderfully Privileged Life.

Racist Geisha Film?

I read Memoirs of a Geisha and I don't think it's a racist book written by a racist white man, as this
person suggests. After reading the book I doubt anyone's going to hate the Japanese, especially the men. Although some doubt whether the main character's authentic.

The Way We Do Things

Now that mom's gone, we have to take care of ourselves. We have a lot of extra responsibilities in our house and keeping track of these tasks can be hard. When mom was home, things never seemed to run out. If we were getting down to the last few paper towels, we'd have more by the next day. If the cat puked on the carpet, it'd be cleaned immediately. Now things are different. We have run out of many things, but we never seem to get around to buying more. Paper towels, tissues, napkins, bread (sliced), mustard, ice cream, and a bunch of other stuff. The things we use everyday like the paper towels and napkins usually run low for about a week before we get more. Other items we need/eat everyday like milk, orange juice, and potatoes run out completely, but are replenished the next day or two. Either way, it takes longer then when mom was around.

I would go out and shop for things but I can't find the time to do it. Also, I hate walking around the store with a set amount of money, hoping that I don't buy too much. So far I've been a good judge of how much things will cost, but there have been occasions when I was younger where I didn't have the cash. They were real embarrassing moments that I do not wish to go through again. My dad says that he'll just sign a blank check and have me write in the amount, but that wouldn't work out. The cashiers always ask you for your i.d., and I don't think I could pass off as my dad. So the majority of the shopping's up to my dad.

All I will say about his style is that some people just don't know how to shop. We run out of things constantly. That's how we do things.

Blogging Consequences

All though I think it would be pretty rare, there is a chance that someone I know personally would stumble across my site and recognize me. It's an even slimmer chance that I'll write something about that person in addition to them discovering this place. I don't want to take any chances, so I don't really post information about people I know. Sure, I'll mention friends and family every once in awhile, but nothing incriminating, personal, or specific. My policy is that I don't write anything that will upset them, especially if they don't know it. It's like telling the world a friend's secrets behind their backs. That would be the worst case scenario for me.

Also, I don't put things on here that would get me into trouble, like things I don't want people to know about me. Revealing information would put me into jeopardy, but at least I wouldn't hurt anybody else. However, people do get into lots of trouble with their blogs.

Jessica, a 23-year-old Los Angeles blogger who pens The Blueprint, had a full-fledged family throwdown thanks to her occasional posts about drunken nights on the town. "I told my parents about my blog to give them some sort of insight into my life," she says. "Then I went home for Thanksgiving and my Mom busts out with: 'All you do is go out and drink every night!' We had this huge blow-out."

"I've heard of a lot of breakups because someone posted, 'Last night I cheated on my boyfriend, don't tell!' - and their boyfriend read their journal," says Hep, a 25-year-old San Francisco Web developer behind Ljdrama.org (short for LiveJournal drama), a site dedicated to chronicling the crises that arise from blogging.

...
Twenty-five-year-old Scott Lapatine, who runs a popular media Weblog in Manhattan (he requested we not divulge the name so as to protect his identity), believes that bloggers have the potential to destroy someone's life with just one post.

"One girl I know mentioned on her blog that her best friend had an abortion," he says. Needless to say, "now they're enemies."

Yikes! Be careful what you blog, even if you think you're anonymous.

The Secrets of Movable Type

If I had my own domain and a place to host my blog, I'd use Movable Type. However, people say it's for more advanced users and beginners should stick to something like Blogger. But everybody says that MT is better. I had no clue who to believe until I found a Movable Type tutorial. It's not a complete walk through of the whole program, but it shows you how to do two important things (it only shows you how to do two things): post an entry and add links. The tutorial has screen shots which any beginner would appreciate.

So the site doesn't spill all the secrets, it at least lets you see what the program looks like. Now I don't feel like the program's too hard to use. Typepad's also supposed to be good because it's all in one at a cheap price. Either way, my mom will be buying the space I'll need.

Sushi Art

I don't know about you, but I would not want to eat Sushi art like this. Just looking at it reminds me that hands have been manipulating my food, making it less apetizing. I guess these aren't for eating, but just for looking.

Thanks othermaciej

Hey Ya Charlie Brown

I knew nothing about this Hey Ya Charlie Brown! video until somebody asked for it in Joi's IRC channel. I think it's pretty cute. There is an ABC stamp in the lower right hand corner so I guess it was on that channel, but I rarely watch the national networks, so I don't know anything about why the video was made. It's 9 megabytes.

Yahoo! RSS

Yahoo! has just launched RSS support for My Yahoo!. At first I thought it was a bad idea because people use software newsreaders like NetNewsWire. But then I realized that if you use another computer, especially one that you can't download things on, then you can't get all your information. Now with My Yahoo! you can take your RSS subscriptions anywhere. The software's in beta now, so there'll probably be bugs, but I hope they don't drop the idea.

Milos

This photo album of Milos, an island in Greece, is excellent. I especially love the cat photos.

Thanks Derek

Poor iPod Mini

I don't understand why people want to disembowel their brand new iPods, but at least they came to the conclusion that nobody else should do it.

Business Blogging

The new trend is business is to blog, really blog. Forget the thousands of personal journals talking about what people had for lunch or why they hate their lives. Serious business people are actually blogging. Business 2.0 talks about business blogs. You have to be a subscriber to read the second part of the article (I was fortunate enough to read it early so I didn't have to), but it basically talks about how blogging helps share information. Anybody not reading blogs and using a newsreader (the author claims it took him hours to set up, but NetNewsWire is so much easier), is out of the loop.

To me this just sounds like a job where you get to spend time blogging. How cool is that? It's like doing a blog for a course in school, instead of just some silly old journal. Right now I should be doing math, but I'd like to think of blogging as promoting school activity, so this is justified.

The Power of War

There's a video that's been circulating the internet for the last few weeks. It shows US forces in Iraq shooting 3 Iraqi insurgents from an Apache helicopter. People say that the Iraqis were just farmers working in their field, but these are just unfounded rumors. I wasn't there, so as far as I'm concerned the US forces were just doing their job.

When I first saw the video, in it's shortened form on Joi's blog, I was pretty moved by how fast the people were destroyed. It was like they had swallowed bombs and were exploding from the inside. Their bodies were completely destroyed; no remains, but particles of flesh and blood. This is what happens in war, whether it's a so-called just war or not. If the war was being fought in the US, I'd be scared 24/7 of what could happen to me, my family, and friends. Maybe that's how the Iraqis feel now, hardly different from how they felt when Saddam was in power. It looks like the sooner we leave Iraq the better. No people should live in this kind of fear.

Fire

Two nights ago we had to call 911 because our oven caught on fire and we couldn't put it out. I was baking a pizza and heard a zap noise in the kitchen. I looked in the oven an there was a white hot light on the heating element and it started to shoot sparks out. My dad came over and turned the oven off, but sparks continued to fly. He put baking soda on the part that was sparking, but it just started to spark in another location. We called the next city's fire dept. non-emergency number (we couldn't find our city's number), but they told us to call 911. 911 told us to leave the house and wait for the firefighters to come.

In about 5 to 10 minutes they arrived and stopped the oven from sparking. I don't know how they did it, but it was pretty quick. Standing outside waiting for the firefighters to come was a pretty unnerving experience. I didn't think the oven would do anything worse that shoot sparks in its inside, but I didn't want to leave the house and stand helplessly outside. The thought of leaving the oven to run its course, possibly taking the whole house with it, consumed my thoughts as I heard the sirens getting closer.

We were lucky that there was hardly any damage, just a oven heating element to replace. The thought of losing everything still lingers in my mind. All I grabbed was my coat and cat (in carrier). Other than that I would've been left with nothing had the fire/sparks ignited the entire place. But that did not happen. The new heating element is in the mail, and we'll probably get a new fire extinguisher (we didn't use the one we had, it was expired anyways).

Asian Women's Driving School

I love this cute movie about an Asian Women's Driving School. Phonebooks/booster seats included with enrollment

Kerry v. Bush

Take a little time to read about Kerry and Bush's military records. Kerry: 3 purple hearts, 1 bronze star, 1 silver star, anti-Vietnam war protestor. Bush: no combat, doesn't show up for duty toward end of service, stays at exclusive apartment complex.

Amazing

I can't believe I was able to get all my work done at the last minute without suffering from major brain damage! There's got to be some serious side effects from major procrastination other than not getting work done. Healthwise, it seems like loss of sleep is the most prominent negative effect, but I think loss of brain cells is another.

I had two tests last Friday, one that I crammed for, and the other I didn't study for at all. Part of one tests was a take home essay, which I started at 11 pm Thursday. I was able to finish writing/cramming by 1 am on Friday. I started all this work so late because I was working on silly English for about five hours. I didn't think it would take me long to finish the other half of the work I had completed, but I was wrong and suffered by not getting very much sleep.

My next amazing accomplishment was another essay that I neglected to do research on until 10 the night before it was due. I don't think I'll get as good a grade as I'd like, but I've learned my lesson, and promise I'll start research earlier next time.

I need a plan! I need to schedule work time and leisure time so I can get more sleep. I need to talk to a highly organized person who can help me sort things out. Don't we all? There's probably shrinks who do this for you; I need to find one.

Meaning and Recognition

I get up every morning, go to school, come back home and do my homework. What's the big deal? Is that important? Why am I doing this? These are questions I ask myself all the time, day in and day out. I often feel that I'm just living a pointless existence and that real success is not how smart you are, how much money you have, or what your accomplishments are, but instead what other people think of you. I know, you're not supposed to think like that. You should only care about what those close and important to you think, or just what you think. But I can't help thinking that I'm just some kind of lemming that doesn't really matter and that I'm making somebody else wealthy and important. These are really depressing thoughts that are hard to get over.

In the beginning I was so happy to be doing something beneficial for myself, but now I feel that I'm not doing anything for myself. What's doing something for myself? It's trying to figure out how to use Dreamweaver MX2004, messing around with digital photos, or reading all the best books. I want to travel and learn on my own time, doing my own thing. To me, that is real meaning in life. Who cares what other people think of me as long as I get to do what I want?

But I can't do any of that. I'm stuck here going to school and doing my homework, which takes up all my free time. So instead, I want others to give me their attention for doing just that. Why on earth would someone want to be recognized for going to school? That's completely absurd! However, if I were to stop going to school, boy oh boy would I gain recognition for quitting. How come we get recognized for doing the wrong thing? Maybe being deviant in various ways is the only way to gain recognition. Young children throw fits when they want something, people dye their hair bright green for looks. I think it's society itself that chooses to focus on the bad and not the good. If you look in national American news there are plenty of unpleasant things that get recognition. Unfortunately, it's taking its toll on me, and I feel that my efforts are pointless and that quitting seems like a better path.

I guess I have some demons to battle with what little will I have left. I've been invited to join an academic honors society, which I have accepted, so maybe that will help my self-esteem for the time being.

Still No Time

I still haven't figured out how to manage my time so I can update my blog on the weekdays. I've been so busy with all my work that by the end of the day I have no energy left. But that is what everybody who's busy says. When you are not overburdened by tons of work it is hard to understand what a person who is means. When you've got loads of free time you think that other people should know how to manage their time, that they just aren't responsible, or that they should be able to "make" time. Making time is a concept in American society that goes hand in hand with optimal efficiency. Basically, everyone should have time for anything that will benefit them. Not doing enough work is frowned upon, while doing too much work is almost rewarded.

People like to hear about the hard worker who always gets her work done and is able to make deadlines. The fact that she has little time for herself and family is ignored because her career should not be jeopardized. Our politicians like to remind us that Americans are the hardest working people on the planet. This has nothing to do with how much effort we put into our work, but that we have one of the longest work weeks among postindustrial societies.

Still, I believe that we are obsessed with working, and could use a nice siesta every so often. Siesta time used to be for reserved for the weekends, but now work is spilling over into that time frame, virtually eliminating any breaks. I try to have 5 to 8 hours of break time each weekend. I spend that time watching TV, movies, and blogging. All the rest is dedicated to work, and I am doing my work. I deserve an award.

The Little Guys

There are millions of blogs on the internet. Not just American English blogs, but blogs in many languages and countries. Blogs are relatively new, like everything else on the internet, but some have become popular among internet users. These popular blogs are usually well written, give lots of information, and are generally trusted by many. But these blogs make up only a tiny minority of the blogsphere. So what about the "little people?"

I think the little blogs deserve just as much respect as the bigger ones. Not everybody can communicate their ideas very well. So why not give the little people some respect? It's hard to describe but I'll try my best. You're a big blogger and you're visiting a little bloggers site. You scan the posts; they're about family, school, pets, etc. You barely even read the blog, but something catches your eye, so you leave a comment. You never come back and you've forgotten what you just did. The blogger tries to talk to you about the comment, but you blow him off. Thanks for the respect. A little blogger wouldn't mind talking to someone who's left a comment on his blog. The solution: little blogger stay away from the big bloggers.

Busy

I've been so busy this past week that I haven't had anytime to update my blog. There's so much work to do all of a sudden, so I don't have time to blog all my ideas. It'll be another seven weeks before I get a break and I have a feeling that my work load will not get any lighter. Blog time may be moved strictly to the weekends, I doubt I'll learn how to budget my time.