Russian Space Station

I was thinking to myself yesterday that i haven't blogged about my trip to centre of all of things chinese, china.

I had wanted to blog about my experiences while i was there, but a combination factors, namely i was having to much fun, stopped me from doing so.

My trip lasted 21 days, in that time my perspective and views on the world changed dramatically.

The motif i left China with was:
"Ignorance is dead, long live ignorance". I went to China thinking that i was a fairly open minded person, dismissing all but the most absurd things.

I should preface this by saying that i realise that the china i saw was the watered down westernized version. Any cultured battered by a foreign civilization(US/west) over several decades is going to experience some level of change.

Politics
China (mainland) is very different from anything i've experienced before. First people who call the country a developing nation/3rd world country are misled. Sure there are undeveloped parts of the country, they are called villages. The cities are bigger than anything the west has offer, and in some ways better.

China isn't a developing nation, its developed! It is the new superpower, financially, and strategically. I've admired how the government conducts itself outside of its borders. Slowly buying up resources around the world, in deals that could considered slightly unfair, but are deals not invasions (iraq) backed with questionable events(9/11). This is how the British empire started many moons ago. On the basis of (one-sided) trade, and a mighty navy to protect that trade. The US 'empire' also started like this, and guess who has the biggest naval fleet now?

Having read the above you might think i disagree with this practice. Not really, its the cycle of life, the strong prey on the weak ... The Eagle and the Mouse.

The food
Thanks to china, a new mime emerged in my life, "noodle time". This is basically when my craving for noodles gets to much and i have to statisfy it, with ... Noodles!! Rice noodles, eggs noodles, whatever!

The food is amazing, i would marry a chinese woman, just to get that (the food) on a regular basis. One of my favourites is jian bing which is crepe made with eggs, fried dough (this is the magic), hot sauce, spring onions and some other magic. Best breakfast in the world.

Next up is stir fried noodles, simple, quick and very tasty. If i had to rate the rood, i would give it 10 stars out of 5, i ate like pig.

Shopping
Ever heard of a factory direct store, think of china as one great big one. All of your favourite brands at one tenth of the price if not less. Sadly this doesn't extend to electronics. Well not if you want ones that work, more on that later.

People
Chinese people are really friendly and in general extremely welcoming to westerners. While i was there i was consantly being asked to take pictures with people, and i mean 'with' not 'of'.

Language
i speak chinese right, so that means i should have had no problem communicating right? Not quite, it helped but at first it was awful. The problem with my chinese was that i had a decent vocaburary, but very poor pronouncation. The other problem was that my listening skills were poor, this was highlighted when i conversed with the locals, and they (assuming i was fluent) would reel off something at me! In the latter stages of my trip i could comprehend most of the nouns in the sentence, along with the odd adjective or verb and use common-sense to work out the meaning of the sentence.

The peak of my chinese came in yangshou, where i talked to a rickshaw driver about my iPod Touch, while playing Mahjong. Even got a discount fare out of him, other highlights where drunk bargining with the traders in yangshou and getting a certain polo shirt.

Conclusion
Absolutely awesome. I loved china, and can't wait to go back. God willing i will one day, how long for is just a question of how long they will give me a visa for!

Zaijian

This program made me wonder what is the big thing of our generation. Yes i know that we have the internet, but is that all we get? Might sound greedy but if you think back to the sixties they had colour TV, Jet Airplanes, moon landings etc. Is the current parallel Twitter and Facebook?

Labels: facebook, Future, maglev, sixties, Technology, train, twitter

At the moment i'm sitting in Doha international minding my p's and q's. But i really want to do is freak out a chinese person. When i say freak them, i mean butt in to their conversation, and add something witty. Yes folks, thats how i get my kicks.

Of course first and foremost this is a technology blog. So lets chop up game. The in flight entertainment was pretty awesome, i watched grand torino, and the valkyrie, played a little tetris. But the most awesome thing, (if it had worked) live TV! Nothing fancy just news channels. I guess it's too much to ask for skysports @ 40k in 2009.

Also while at heathrow, i checked out the HP mininote 1k. I've wanted a netbook for a while but i've been hoping pingguo (apple) would service my mobile needs. Oh, just to say again, while my ipod touch is awesome for movies and web browsing(especially compared to this e61), when it comes to blogging, its pants.

i love travelling, don't get me wrong, but would love it even more if i could be playing FM right now ... Dalrymple wins the cup ...

Quick post to mention that i've finished my degree! more importantly i that i can get back to doing what i love, writing code (and playing FM).

Heres some extremely basic python for transforming a simple list of CRLF separated values into a sql statement.



def main():
fh = open('list.txt')

sql = open('sqlDump.txt','w')

i = 0
for line in fh:
statement = "INSERT INTO table (name) VALUES ('%s');\r" % line.rstrip()

sql.write( statement )

fh.close()
sql.close()

if __name__ == '__main__':
main()


Nothing special.

Off to china on sunday!!
再见

Labels: open source, python, University

Yes,i finally gave in and got my first iPod. First i must say, that although i still hate iPhones, when it comes it MP3 players this thing is awesome.

Messenging devices need keyboards.

For all intends and purposes this thing is basically a netbook/net tablet.

China (and my dissertation!) is only days away. All i'm lacking now is the camera. 

** UPDATE **
Never edited a blog post in my life, but there is first time for everything, and this perfectly illustrates my point.

This post was short for a reason. I wrote it on a ipod touch. I hate typing on touch screens, i like keyboards. Why you ask? Tactile feedback! A simple beep is great, but imagine, if you could actually press a key, and feel the response from it! Wouldn't that be awesome! RIMM thought the same thing, and created the Storm, sadly RIMM should have stolen a page from Palm, and took a handful of Apple engineers to create the UI. Cause the Storm sucks badly (plus no Wifi what year did you think it was!)

Virtual keyboards not only provide no tactile feedback, but they also take up screen real estate. Granted that in most situations you only need it for a couple of seconds to put in a web address or to send a tweet. If you are from the long form generation, and can see past the reality distortion field (no physical keyboard eliminates the need for multiple skus!! ), you will know that keyboards are just better. Thats why i'm clinging to my e61 with a death grip, it's huge, ugly, but it messages like no other (well until palm pre time!).

Labels: iphone, Opinions, Palm Pre, Storm, tactile feedback

I decided to blog from the park today. The primary reason behind this the 18 degree weather. You have to take advantage of this things when you have the chance.

In all the time i've had my beloved blackbook, i've never really used it outside. Quite frankly i don't know why. It looks quite cool(i think) to just sit here, with google reader watching the news and the world go by all at the same time.

At the moment there are two things dominating my mind, well actually three, but i'm only going to write about two.

China,
I'm getting so excited it's scary. Currently i'm waiting to see if the lovely folks in the chinese government will grant me entry to their beautiful county. I'm practicing my chinese often, and my tonal pronunciation is getting better.
I still haven't decided whether or not to bring my mac. I didn't want to, but i planned to have a palm pre in my possession by this time! But if i really want to podcast, and stay fairly connect, and considering that my e61's battery doesn't hold a charge like it used to it maybe that time. Plus i get to play FM for hours, oh the fun i'm gonna have! Just imagine a 22 year old man clapping to a screen at 40k feet!

My degree,
It's almost over i can taste the end, and it tastes sweet. Not quite 草莓 （Strawberry）but nice. There is still a fair bit of work left to do, but all things are possible, and i'm on target. Sadly i doubt i'm going to get a stunning degree, but at this point i just want to be free of academia. But at the time of writing there are only another 2 and bit weeks left, so bring it on. (remind me i said that).

With summer coming up, and hopefully more time on my hands i'll hopefully blog a bit more. It's not like i'm going to be doing loads now that i 'have' to hold down a job, but still if people can have 100k followers on twitter i surely must be able to blog once a week. Maybe i need to but some twiiter integration on this thing! Speaking of integration, The usual summer process of redsign should be happening soon, both the blog and the company site, i need to attempt to be serious, if only for a moment.

再見

Quote of the Day

"The greatest skill you can have as a man is being able to cook"

Mark Udall, One of my lectures

Labels: blogging, china, summer

Never thought about it before, but the idea ran through my head while writing my dissertation. Thought i should save it for a rainy day. But it would make a very nice queue. 

Ah, Messaging queues so distinctly british!