Software and opinions roaming wild in China
After a prolonged lapse I will soon be restarting my attempts to learn Chinese by signing up for proper classroom-based lessons. My hope is that I'll be able to learn better than previous DIY attempts. I've even been provided with a student ID card, effectively turning me into a bona-fide student once more.
Next week sees the beginning of the Chinese Year of the Rat, and with it millions of Chinese will celebrating with their families. The rat symbolises wealth and prosperity to the Chinese, and I'm hoping this is a good sign as by the end of the month I will be moving to London to restart Life 2.0.
My feelings about this are mixed. In many respects I'm looking forward to having access to all the modern goodness that I'm used to, but in others I'm expecting severe culture-shock as I rejoin the familiar rat-race (pun intended). Like many Chinese at this time of the year I shall be catching up with family (although hopefully not hampered by extreme weather conditions). Following that I'll be faced with the rather more difficult prospect of finding employment and a place to live.
Seeing as the internet is ideally built for self-promotion I thought I may as well mention that if anyone happens to be in the position of needing a full-time London-based developer then please do get in touch. There's some more details about my skills here, and it should be noted that I can do other things besides PHP/WordPress. Pimp-mode over.
If you've visited the site in the past few days you might have noticed several additions. I've been trying to reduce the maintenance overhead of managing upwards of twenty plugins, as well as reduce the support of answering emails for these. This has resulted in:
Just over a year ago my long-suffering Windows laptop decided enough was enough and stopped working. As writing software is my profession, and it being the only computer I possessed, I was forced to make a quick-purchase decision for a replacement.
After some research I was going to settle on an Acer TravelMate 8204 laptop, it being a logical progression from my existing TravelMate 800. With money in hand I ventured out and visited a series of computer stores and cubicles in Hong Kong's electronic forest, before returning home satisfied and with a shiny new computer - not an Acer, but an Apple Mac Mini - a major departure from my original plan, and the beginnings of a voyage into completely unexplored territory.
It's over a year now since I first tasted the world of Apple and I thought it would be interesting to write about my experiences, the software I'm using, and why my next computer will almost certainly be another Apple.
In a curious turn of events I was recently interviewed by Dane Morgan of Blogstrokes. Dane posed a lot of great questions, resulting in answers such as:
Should you wish to check out the interview then head on over to the interview page.
Singapore was everything I was expecting it to be. Big, modern, clean, efficient, and expensive (although not as bad as Hong Kong). I've read many people describe it as a little soul-less. Maybe if you live there for a few years the size of the place may feel restricting, but for a few days it was perfect. It was particularly nice for me to have access to all the modern conveniences I don't have in Guangzhou, and not to be constantly viewed as a 'gui lo' (a somewhat derogatory term for foreigner).
A quick note to say that I'll be away in Singapore & Malaysia for the next few weeks and my computer will not be joining me. Hopefully if the weather holds I'll be able to get in some snorkelling, but otherwise I'm looking forward to a lot of nice food and and interesting places.
Jumpa lagi!
In an effort to remove all invalid links and redirections from my site I've been paying very close attention to my access logs. Courtesy of the list that Redirection maintains I've noticed that my site has been under a prolonged attack.
No, there's no panic just yet, and so far this is not something I'm worried about. The attacks appear to be part of a general 'find any weakness in any website' method, rather than a specific and directed attack.
A new design! I decided I needed a new and fresh look and the result is the still-in-progress 'Guangzhou' theme. My hope is that it's both easier to navigate, as well as being lighter and more suitable for future work. Comments, as always, are welcomed.
In conjunction with the new theme I've made use of WP-Cache and Gravatar cache, which should result in a noticeable speed improvement. The site itself has undergone a good clean, with all invalid code being replaced, all dead-links now corrected, and the addition of new sections for software, articles, and about myself.
On top of that I've added a new plugin: HTML Purified. This plugin changes the default comment filter and replaces it with HTML Purifier, a very exhaustive library that checks, validates, and corrects HTML. Not that WordPress is insecure by default, but this just beefs it up a notch, and ensures that comments are both safe and XHTML valid.
It's that time of the year again in Asia when the much revered and reviled fruit, the durian, is in season. If you've never come across the durian, it is a large spiky fruit somewhat resembling a bulbous cactus.
The taste is certainly very unique, being both appealing and slightly repulsive at the same time. It does make a great filling for a dessert, especially when cooked in durian tarts or inside pancakes. Raw durian can be very strong, and is equivalent to eating garlic - it's a taste you'll find repeating on you throughout the day.
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Mowser