China Musings

by Girls of A4 group writing assignment, June 19, 2005

The year was 2020. I’d just been sleeping. Suddenly, I cold hear something loud outside. I went out, but i couldn’t see anything. And then, Iwent into my room, went on sleping. But the loud noise woke me up again. I walked out again angrily, but I found nothing.

Suddenly, I could see a little dog. The dog had broken a leg, it was in great pain. It made me feel angry, and I spoke loudly, “Dog Dog, Get Out!” But the dog sat on my leg, it didn’t let me go. Poor thing, I should mend it, it’s so cute.

Suddently, it said something. “I’m homeless, I’m from Mars, but I’m not from a UFO.” This time, I could see it had something different.

I was a little afraid of this dog, but I told it, “How did you break your leg?”

Its answer, “I fell from that thick cloud!”

Oh [I thought], “How can I help you?”

“Take me to the hospital and let me go back to the sky”

“Ha? How can I do that? I am just a person from Earth!”

“Thank you all the same, I think you can’t help me [in that way]. I want to live on the Earth. Please keep me as a pet”

“But you can speak like people. Do you think it’s strange? You will frighten my friends!”

“No. Help me! I think you can. Help me!”

“I’m really not able to help you! Maybe help you in another way.”

[narrator] Er… Let me think. It’s very difficult for me, and it will make me into troubles. “Can you do housework?”

“Yes” [replied the dog]

“Can you make your whole body like a girl from Earth?”

“Yes”

“Then you can live here.” It smiled and looked happily at me. “But you must clean the house, do all the housework for me. And remember, from now on, you must remember you’re my cousin! Don’t tell anybody about your homestar!”

Google has posted sattelite images of most of the world. I was really suprised to find guangzhou on the map. We live approximately in the middle of this photo.

I used to live here, at my parent’s house.

Lots of fun with google maps!

Finally uploaded the newest changes to LotusRomances.com. Installed SimpleCMS (our wiki based CMS system) with Textile formatting, added some boxes to the front, and fixed up the font page. Actually, the home page loads much faster now that it uses the 3 - column layout instead of millions of tables. It is still full of tables, but those will have to wait for another day, CSS based design takes too long.

This layout - 37signals » 3-column CSS Layout is a godsend. It is very simple, and magically, it works. The secret to its simplicity, and unfortunately it’s only drawback, is that you have to define the columns in reverse order. But using this I have managed to re-design the lotusromances front page for web standards without losing a single pixel.

Finally launched OCPGroup.cn. This website is actually the culmination of several PHP technologies that I have been toying with. It includes our newly named HMW SimpleCMS software, as well as the HMW Product Management system. I am proud of the fact that we got all 4 languages in there, its a little bit crazy, NO.

A lot has been said about Steve Jobs’ (founder and CEO of Apple) commencement speech, given last weekend at Stanford. I have read it and indeed find it quite inspiring. Steve Jobs is someone who has really done amazing things in his life. He started one of the largest, and certianly most influential computer companies in the world. He started the most successful digital animation company in the world. But more impressive to me is the level of quality in the products his companies produce.

From the speech:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Anyway, you can find the speech in it’s entirety here.

By Charlie, Middle School Grade 2, No. 97 Middle School, Guangzhou, China

One day, I was walking by the river. Suddenly I saw something in the river. I got it . What’s that? A red stone. “Oh it’s interesting.” So I took it home.
A few months I didn’t mention it. But lots of strange things happened to me, like a few books lost, my desk burned even though I never smoke, and my plants all died!!! I didn’t know why.
One evening I got up to have a drink. I saw my clothes shining with a red light. I took away the clothes. It was the red strange stone!!!
I didn’t sleep that night and looked at the stone. I put it in one of the machines that I invented. With the X-ray, I found it wasn’t a stone but a living thing. I phoned the police, but nobody answered. I went out of my house and knocked at the next door. A famous professor lived inside. But neither he answered. “My god. Where is everybody? Where have they gone?”
After thinking I was nearly crazy. I shouted for a longtime. It was still quiet everywhere. I walked out of the building.
What’s that moving? Big area of red “stones”!!! At once the one in my hand got very hot. I threw it away. I could take on. But the “stones” were still moving to me……

Well, I know it’s been 3 years since I was there, but finally, I have posted my Everest Album. Most of the pictures inside were not taken by me, as I was using my trusty EOS Rebel on that trip. The fate of those photos (tucked away in a box, in a closet) is as good a case for me buying a digital SLR that I can imagine. I really miss my EOS, but it just isn’t practical. Anyway, about the pictures, I tried to write up as much about the trip that I can remember. I still have to create and post an album for the rest of Tibet. These pics are just from our 8 day Everst “trek”.

The story behind this trip was that we planned to do a full-on 5 day trek from a town called Dingri to the everest base camp. It was to be very difficult, and breathtakinly beautiful. We hired a guide and driver for the 2 day drive. Upon arrival at Dingri, however, it began to rain. Our guide told us solemnly, if it continues to rain, we cannot go, the rivers will be too high.

It rained all through the night. The net morning, our guide shook his head, and held his hand to his neck, “We will have to cross many rivers, because ot he rain, they are too big, we will die.”

He suggested that we drive to the camp, take some pictures, then head back early. We dicussed this at length, and finally decided to drive up and see what we could see. The first thing we saw was no rivers…

The second thing was that although we hadn’t hiked there, we still had paid for 8 days of car time, and we had 4 nights of camp food, our tents, and all the equipment. So, we just camped out on a patch of grass in fron of the Rhombuk Monastary. We ate our camp food, and spent our days walking around the valley and hanging out with the local kids. I for one had a great time. Our driver markedly did not, but hey, he was getting paid.

Finally, on the drive back, we took our time and went through some of the most beautiful country I have ever seen, fantastic valleys, endless feilds of yellow flowers, shepherds movin their sheep across the hills, all this makes me want to come back someday and make the trek for real.

Maybe my explanation o the Roundrect CSS technique was not so clear. So, here is some code. My apologies to the person that invented this, if anyone can find the original link, please let me know.


.RoundRect{
margin-top: 20px;
background-color:ff0000;
width:700px;
position:relative;
margin-left:auto;
margin-right:auto;
}
.RC1 {
background-image:url(images/roundrect.png);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
width:10px;height:10px;
position:absolute;
}
.RC2 {
background-image:url(images/roundrect.png);
right:0px;background-repeat:no-repeat;
background-position:right top;
width:10px;height:10px;
position:absolute;
}
.RC3 {
background-image:url(images/roundrect.png);
bottom:-1px;/*this is the IE value*/
background-repeat:no-repeat;
width:10px;
height:10px;
background-position:0 bottom;
position:absolute;
}
/* hack for IE... don't know why it is so different. */
/* IE adds an extra pixel at the bottom, while Firefox */
/* lets 0 be 0, well for this height anyway. */
/* Since IE does not understand the html>body selector, */
/* this style directive only applies to firefox. */
html>body .RC3 {
bottom:0px;
}
.RC4 {
background-image:url(images/roundrect.png);
bottom:-1px;
right:0px;
background-repeat:no-repeat;
background-position:right bottom;
width:10px;height:10px;
position:absolute;
}
/**/
html>body .RC4 {
bottom:0px;
}
.RR_Content{padding:15px;}


Found a really cool rounded rect CSS stylesheet while hacking together the backstreet site. It is really simple, and while it doesn’t work perfectly (had to do some 1 px tweaking in both Firefox and IE), it works pretty well. Link. OK, can’t find the link. You all are on your own!

No, OK, I’ll explain. Basically, you make a single rounded rect gif or png in GIMP (Photoshop if you must). Calculate exactly the dimensions of the curve, be it a 5, 10, or 25 pixel square. Then, we make 6 divs, one div encloses all the elements. Then we have four divs, one for each corner. Finally, we have a div on the inside for the content. The main div’s background color should match the color of the rounded rect image. Then, the same full rectangle image is used a a background image for all four corner divs. The trick is to use CSS to position the background image so that only the appropriate corner is showing. Finally, put the content in the content div and viola! we have a nice rounded rect content box for any site.