http://blog.desandies.com Writings and Ramblings (A/V) from Guangzhou, China Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:25:03 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en There's a new site for finding your way around in the Philipines. You can research weekly trips, or find a ferry schedule directly. I was involved in making the site, so I am a little biased, but I think its  the best ferry schedule site in the PH. I can't ... http://blog.desandies.com/2007/11/18/new-site-for-travel-in-the-philippines/ I was going through some old emails and ran into this one... I wrote this the last day I was in Tibet, about the trek we did from Gamden to Samye. Its a god story, and maybe i'll try to expand on it some day. But in the meantime, this ... http://blog.desandies.com/2007/02/24/gamden-samye/ I juist returned from a nice business trip to Cebu, the Philippines second largest city. I had a really nice time there, the people I met were wonderfully nice and friendly, and we were able to get a lot of work done. I also went on a great canyoning trip ... http://blog.desandies.com/2006/07/13/back-from-cebu/ Alright, i know it has been a long time. But I'm back. I actually got 2 emails from people besides my mother who watched these podcasts, so I have been meaning to continue, but a rather busy few weeks of work and I just haven't had the time to ... http://blog.desandies.com/2006/04/29/cm22-breakfast-at-cheungs/ I have been working with PHP for a long time now, and Java for longer, and Ruby for about a week. Today, I had to implement a very small script in a jsp page without my library of helper functions. This script in php would have been easy in about ... http://blog.desandies.com/2006/04/12/goodbye-to-java/ I suffered the rather dubious humility of being stopped at the entry point to China yesterday after a 2 hours train ride from HK. The guy said, sorry, there's no visa. What? But I have plenty of time left... Nope, just this one, which ran out March 30. Oh no... The following was ... http://blog.desandies.com/2006/04/04/cm21-caught-deported/ I just received a new 1.83Ghz Macbook Pro from my new empoloyer. I am in HK right now, and this is soooo nice. I'm still in the store, writing this about 2 minutes after opening. http://blog.desandies.com/2006/04/03/new-mac/ After a really long development period, cameraitacina.com is live and public. This was not an easy project, and has given me lots to learn during the development phases. I re-wrote the AJAX part using the Protoype Javascript library, which is awesome by the way, and I had to add a ... http://blog.desandies.com/2006/04/03/cameraitacinacom-is-live/ I have been really interested in the Ruby Language and the much hyped Ruby on Rails web development platform. I had already played a bit with Rails, but this weekend, I decided to go back and do some research in Ruby itself. I found this wonderful book/tutorial that I just ... http://blog.desandies.com/2006/02/27/aweomse-ruby-tutorial/ OK, I know, why have a pic of SF if I am blogging from China? Well, I like the picture. Also, we just got back from our US trip. We had a great time, but now its back to work. I promise, when I get a good pic of Guangzhou that matches ... http://blog.desandies.com/2006/02/15/back-in-china/ Finally, after 3 years of waiting and 2.5 years after officially filing the petition for Alison's Visa, it was approved friday afternoon. We have already booked tickets for Jan 21 (in 2 weeks AHHH) Maybe we'll see you then! http://blog.desandies.com/2006/01/08/we-have-approval/ Last week I had to take care of some errands so I grabbed the camera so I could give you guys a tour of Guangzhou. We start off at the riverside near my house. This area is pretty nice, but its a little too far to walk from our house, so ... http://blog.desandies.com/2006/01/02/cm20/ Wow, I just installed WP2 and I could not be more impressed. Alison was asking me what is wrong, cause I just whooped in amazement. You won't see much change on your end, but here where I type in this stuff... man it is SLICK! Hmm, maybe I should put ... http://blog.desandies.com/2006/01/01/wordpress-20-is-my-hero/ 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 ... http://blog.desandies.com/2005/12/30/i-am-ajax-ready/ If you have been paying attention, you will remember that Alison and I live in a district of Guangzhou called Liwan 荔湾区. 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 ... http://blog.desandies.com/2005/12/27/cm19-moto-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 http://blog.desandies.com/2005/12/26/cm18/ 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. ... http://blog.desandies.com/2005/12/26/cm17/ Our current client, Camera di Commercio Italia in Cina, or The China-Italy Chamber of Commerce , or 中国意大利商会 (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 ... http://blog.desandies.com/2005/12/19/dev-sit-up-for-ccic/ 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 ... http://blog.desandies.com/2005/12/19/i-must-be-big-im-getting-spammed/ 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 ... http://blog.desandies.com/2005/12/13/cm16/