China Musings

For the backstreet project, I wrote a WP plugin that allows the user to control what shows up on the front page. One of those items was the main graphic, the big pic that sort of sets the tone for the whole front page. The reasoning behind it was so that they could use that space to promote big acts. Of course, they have not used it even once!

Anyway, I have recycled that plugin now for CCIC, and tonight, I decided to update it a little. The idea is that the users can upload as many pictures as they like, as long as they are the right size, and the front page will rotate through the pictures randomly each tome the page reloads.

Since I did backstreet, I have been using Gmail, and I really like how it is able to grab content in the background without me doing anything. So I got to thinking… what if you didn’t have to reload to see a new photo on the front page. How can we use AJAX to reload the images in the bacground, say on a timer.

Well, I have been following the XMLHttpRequest movement very closely, but I had not actually written any code. I decided this was the place to start. And you know what, it was rather anti-climactic. 5 minutes. It literally took 5 minutes to turn the front page into an automatic Javascript based slideshow that works like a charm. Now granted, I already had the infrastructure in place. So the images are already uploaded, there is already a function that returns a random image name. All I had to do was hook that function to a GET level parameter and copy some code from this excellent tutorial. (It is rare when a 1 page tutorial leads you to a point where you can do something useful, but here I am)

To be fair, it really isn’t AJAX, since I am not returning any XML, just a plain string. However, I find this extremely useful, and I think I am going to be using it in other places as well.

So go ahead and check it out http://cameraitacina.net.cn

If you have been paying attention, you will remember that Alison and I live in a district of Guangzhou called Liwan ???. This is one of the 5 main Guangzhou City districts, and maybe the 3rd oldest in terms of history. In terms of urban renewal, however, liwan certianly lags behind more central parts of the city and is just now receiving its fair share of skyscrapers.

Guangzhou as a city has been around for ages (predates Song dynasty ~900AD), and so while Liwan is not the oldest, it certianly isn’t new. In fact, on this little tour, we pass the alley where my Grandfather’s house used to sit, before it was torn down in 1992 to build one of the early high-rises. In fact, problably the thing I like the best about living here is that truly, this is where my grandfather grew up. Literally. He must have walked these streets on his way to primary school, or ran around with his friends in the Liwan Lake park down the street. When I mention a large tree, it excites me that my grandfather, at 10 years old in 1921, might have seen that very same tree get planted for all I know. My grandfather left home in his early 20s to study abroad, and most likely 95% of the buildings are no longer standing, but I am sure that the flagstone alleyways are the very same ones he and his cousins and brothers must have run down, giving their caretaker’s heart attacks. He’s #11 in this photo.

Anyway, this little tour takes us from my street, Duobao Lu ??? down Longjin Xi Lu ???? to the parking lot where Alison was getting her driving lesson. Sorry about the wind noise…not quite sure what to do about that though.

CM #19 Motorcycle Tour of Liwan

Hey everybody! It’s that time of year again. We both hope you are warm, happy, well fed, and with people who love you.

CM #18 Merry Christmas from Guangzhou

Alison’s closest co-worker (seated in the next cubicle and working under the same boss) announced she was pregnant soon after Alison arrived at her company. Alison watched as her friend’s belly grew and grew, and we visited the new mother and new arrival 2 days after the baby was born. Now, the healthy little girl is 7 months old and under the care of both of her grandmothers while mom went back to work.

We decided to go visit the baby the afternoon after our trip to the consulate. We had a very nice afternoon with this baby. We were feeling kinda bummed, but the child was oblivious to this and easily brought smiles to our faces.

Also, our friends live in a Small District ?? that is designed in a very different way than out little neighborhood. This kind of apartment complex is very common, and most new housing built since the 80s is in this format.

CM #17 A Visit with Yuanyuan

Our current client, Camera di Commercio Italia in Cina, or The China-Italy Chamber of Commerce , or ??????? (I like the Italian name best), has set up their new China based hosting -> http://cameraitacina.net.cn.

The site is backed by wordpress with the multingual plugin. I had to fix some bugs and add some additional code, but multilingual was awesome.

The site will be ready in the first week of Jan… until then you can continue to check that site to watch the development progress. Right now the biggest task is continuing to hack multilingual to add support for links, and for site-wide language pref cookies. After that, we need to ensure the member directory is working and looks good. Finally, the site will be a well-designed, informational site with a very rich back-end editing platform. Hope they like it!

Maybe this is a sign of the times, yesterday morning i had 50 new blog comments. Wow, I thought, I finally hit the big time. Then I checked and found out there were all complete and utter SPAM. Nonsensical spam at that. Carefully crafted non-sense to get through the baysian filters packed with completely unrelated links. All I have to say is “WHY?”

I have turned off comments temporarily while I figure out how to stop them while still alowing my friends and family to leave messages here. You can always reach me at adeh -at- desandies, if you need.

Boy, I make myself sound a lot more important than I really am. No one even reads this…

Coming home late Monday evening, I decided to put together another story podcast. This one tells the story of my first day teaching in China. The first class did not end up being a good indicator for the rest of my classes thoughout the year. I really enjoyed my time teaching and the students and classes, in general, were the best part of my first year in China. The little altercation regarding my first class was, however, a good indicator for my relationship with the administration. We can leave at this, communication was not their strong suit. Maybe some other day i can talk more about the politics and psycology of teaching in China, and why ultimately I couldn’t take it anymore, even though I truly did enjoy my time.

The links mentioned in this episode are:

Lance Anderson’s Verge of the Fringe

and sponsored by:
The Camel’s Back - Discover Central Asia, Visit The Camel’s Back.

CM #16 The First Day of School

I just added my feed to feedburner, cause Wordpress was doing funny things to my RSS feed. (ie it was non-existant)

Anyway, http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChinaMusings

Check it out! I’m going public with this thing!

As many of you know, Karaoke ??OK is very popular in many Asian countries. I have managed to miss out on this particular leisure activity for quite a while, but my streak ended Friday night. Alison and a friend she had been dining with got an invitation to join some other co-workers in a hotel’s karaoke floor(? I don’t know what quite to call it). In the US, karaoke is often a very public thing, where people go up on stage in front of a lot of people, and they are expected to be good. In China, and I assume other places in East Asia, this singing sensation is far more private. Groups of friends or business partners rent a room and order a boatload of drinks - everyone sings, drinks, and makes merry. It doesn’t matter how bad you are, ’cause you are all friends anyway. I think this set-up makes a lot more sense, since everyone can get into the spirit of things and relax without worrying about getting booed off-stage.

So we went up to one floor of the hotel that had maybe 10 seperate rooms for people. They were already partying when we got there, and I am sure they carried on for a while after we left. We had a good time. I even sang the current pop hit “Mice Love Rice” ?????, whose chorus states:
I love you! I’m loving you ???????
(wo ai ni, ai zhe ni) [woh ai nee, ai juh nee]
Just like mice love rice ???????
(jiu xiang laoshu ai dami) [jiu sheeang lou-shoo ai da-mee]

A-a-anyway - it was a nice time. I didn’t know anyone, and I think Alison didn’t know most of them very well, but that didn’t stop them from sharing their drinks and snacks with us. The group we joined were having a great time, and it was fun just to see them bond and let loose.

CM#15 Karaoke Night

I got a new phone today. After a week with no mobile pone - it was like a vacation - I finally went out and let Alison splurge on a new one. We got the Motorolla RAZR v3, and despite my rather pointless opposition to the entire affair, the phone is really cool. And yes, the phone is much cheaper now than when it came out a year ago.

The backstory is the phone that I have had for the past 1 year and 1 month (warranty was of course, 1 year) completely died. It had been struggling for months, but nothing horrible. It would just shut down unexpectedly while in my pocket, and I would have to turn it back on. Finally it stopped turning on, or would only stay on for 1 minute. So I took it to a local phone store to ask them to fix it since the warranty was gone anyway. They said no prob, pick it up in a couple of hours. So when we came back, they told us they could not fix it, take it to the service center. Ok, no problem. I took a morning and went to the Siemens service center here in GZ. They took my 20RMB and asked me to wait.

When they returned, I was informed that since a third party had opened the phone and attempted to fix it, and the evidence of their clumsy attempts were quite obvious, I had no alternative other than to replace the phone’s “motherboard.” On a cellphone, the motherboard is basically the phone without the plastic, and of course costs almost as much as a new phone.

I argued with the lady, but ultimately gave up and just stewed on my way to the office.

Well, if they are still selling these phones, beware of the Siemens CX65 or its descendents. Piece of CRAP! I had really liked the phone and actually wanted nothing more than to have it simply usable again , but alas I cannot. So I have moved on.

Rest in peace CX65.