From the BrianStorms weblog, I found this talk given by Urs Hölzle on the infrastructure, commodity hardware, and distributed software used by Google to support its many services. I enjoyed learning about how Google works and what goes on behind the scenes when a user submits a query. Hölzle also gives an overview of the programming framework that is made available to Google’s data mining engineers.
Over the last five days, I discovered audio content on the internet, namely Linux radio shows, audio blogs, and podcasts. But this post isn’t about this. One of the gems I found is a site called IT Conversations, which hosts audio programs of interest to IT professionals. But this post isn’t about that either. A specific recording I found on IT Conversations was a talk given by Wil Wheaton at Gnomedex 4.0. People either remember him as the actor who played the young writer in Stand by Me or as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek, the Next Generation. Well, it turns out he’s not just a geek, but a blogging geek, and he’s published a couple of books from his weblog WilWheaton.net: Dancing Barefoot and Just a Geek.
It’s a great talk. I really enjoyed it. He talks about his life on Star Trek, his decision to leave the show, the 15 years of regret that followed, and his coming to terms with himself and the demon inside named Wesley Crusher. It was entertaining and even touching. I cried.
So, go have a listen. Maybe you’ll even buy his books.
I’ve begun the process of backing up my music collection. I’ve got most of it on my portable 60 GB harddrive in mp3 and ogg format. Since the drive is portable and I sometimes carry it in my backpack, I’m worried about losing it. So, I’ll be dumping all the music files onto 700 MB CD-ROMs in the coming days.
The harddrive collection is about 7.4 GB large. Some of this is duplicated in the original collection of 6 CD-ROMs that I brought with me to China two and a half years ago, but not all. So I need to figure out what exists on CD-ROM already and what needs to be backed up. Once this is done, I’ll be in a better position to estimate the true size of my music collection, both in terms of Gigabytes and in terms of minutes. The later should be an interesting figure.
Before I came to China in April 2002, I commissioned my friend Bruce to rip my entire CD collection to mp3. Taking up 6 CD-ROMs, this was a compact way to bring my music with me. Since that time, I’ve acquired more CDs. But it’s not all just album music. About 1 GB of the above figure consists of radio shows I’ve “taped” off of CJSR, having Bruce record them onto his harddrive so that I could download them to China. Another part of the collection consists of my childhood LPs that I first recorded onto minidisc and then recorded into mp3. I’ve since burned these albums onto audio CDs for my nieces to listen to. And lastly, I’ve got a growing collection of spoken word stuff, including lectures by Alan Watts and Ram Dass.
When I figure out the final statistics of my backed-up music collection, I’ll post the figures in a new entry.
The website nerdsyndrome.com is down. Chris Dunphy must be moving into his new apartment across town, waiting for internet hookup. Damn. I just got the idea that I should have offered to host his website during the move. That would have totally been within my means. And it would have been a great way to make a new friend. Oh well, maybe next time…. We nerds have to stick together.
My friend Trevor is featured in the latest issue of Canadian Business magazine. There’s a full-page picture of him looking sharp in the print edition, but unfortunately it’s not shown in the online edition. Trevor works for Calgary-based Zi Corp., here in Beijing, and he’s a regular dancer with us at Swing Beijing! Way to go, Trevor!
I’ve been sitting in KFC for about an hour working on some new pages for my website. This particular KFC in my neighbourhood is nice because they sometimes play interesting music beyond the typical canned music that fast food places play. But not today. I’m hearing “Lady in Red” for about the third or fourth time. Maybe it’s time I leave…
Anyway, I got some good work done, including a Websites I Read page that should be up by the time you read this entry. Check it out.
In surfing the Internet while sick at home, I came across a few good utilities for my Windows systems. I run Windows 98 (not Second Edition) at home on my laptop and Windows 2000 at work. I found a few of these utilities on the website Pricelessware.org, billed as offering “the best of the best in Freeware”. Here’s some of what I found:
This one’s a gem. Renaming a file in Windows is easy. Just point, right-click, and hit “m”. But to rename more than 10 files this way is just a pain. So this utility provides a way to rename files in a batch, and it does it in a clever way. When you choose a directory of files to rename, the names of the files are placed in a text window. You then can edit the text with the full search/replace and macro abilities of a text editor. (The lines are fixed in place, of course, because each line represents a different file.) Once you’ve finished editing, you can commit the changes to disk. This utility is particularly handy for managing a collection of mp3 files or image files.
DirKey provides hotkeys for your favourite directories that you can use when presented with File Open/Save dialogs. This eliminates one particular annoyance of Windows for me, that of Open/Save always being open to the wrong directory. Plus, simply in Explorer, DirKey’s hotkeys will let you jump to your favourite directories. So far, I’ve bookmarked C:\darren\, C:\download\, and C:\media\.
I use the web-based email site Oddpost.com and it always opens a new Internet Explorer window that isn’t properly aligned to my desktop. And I always have to maximize it after logging in. Now with AutoSizer, the window automatically gets maximized when it appears. One less thing for me to worry about.
Cacheman is a disk caching / paging management tool for Windows. It allows me to tweak some of the memory settings on my system. This is particularly important for my laptop, which is a Pentium 266 MHz with only 64 MB of RAM. Since it’s a laptop, there’s no hope for more memory. I hope to see some improvements in the speed of loading and switching between programs. I’m using the Freeware version of Cacheman for Windows 98, but there is also an XP version. The program comes with a Wizard which helps you decide what settings are important for you to change, and various profiles for different kinds of systems. I’m trying the “Low Memory System” profile.
I started feeling something Monday night. It didn’t take me long to figure out that a cold was coming on. I get about four major colds / flus every year. They usually last about a week. So, I’m resting at home today, like yesterday, surfing the Internet, eating, sleeping, and keeping warm.
Keeping warm is important. Fall has come full force in Beijing, with colder temperatures outside, and waiting for the heat to be turned on inside. I think the heat got turned on yesterday in my building. For now, it’s only on for a few hours in the morning (before work) and in the evening (after work). So my apartment has gone from 13°C to 15°C. And believe me, this is a very noticeable difference. It’s very welcome, too.
While I was feeling industrious today, I cleaned the filters from my air conditioner (which acts in reverse as a heat pump, to give my bedroom sufficient heat) so it will work better. Better means warmer. And better means more efficient. I also put plastic over my bedroom window to seal off the airflow from outside. I had to open the windows in the apartment for a while to get rid of the condensation on the window frame so the tape would stick. But this dehumidification stage didn’t last too long, plus the sun was shining on the window frame at that point. I reused the plastic from last winter, so it was already cut to fit. Last year, while hunting for a plastic solution, I came upon the idea of using a clear plastic shower curtain from IKEA. It cost me $3 CDN. Easy to cut and very durable. By sealing the window, I will gain a few more degrees in the apartment’s ambient temperature. When the heat comes on full-time (will it?) later on in the winter, I’ll be in good shape.
There was a total lunar eclipse last Wednesday night over North America, and my sister and her family were able to catch it. They saw the full moon on their way to get family pictures done. When they reemerged to the outdoors, the eclipse was well underway, and the moon was only a tiny sliver. Trinity, my youngest neice, who’s now about 20 months old, apparently loves the Moon. She was the first to see it, and so to alert the family she exclaimed, “Moon, broke!” Very cute.
Makes me proud.
So much has happened in the last few days, or even hours. It’s 4h12 in the morning, Saturday morning, and I just finished a very cool Friday night. Since being in the taxi on the way home, I’ve wanted to sit down and write a blog entry. I haven’t done that in a while.
I started the evening in the afternoon. After researching what needs to be done to get me a new passport, I headed over to Qiao Ying’s tea house. I spent the afternoon drinking tea and speaking Chinese with her and my friend Zhang Hua. Sometimes Qiao Ying gets in these moods where she refuses to speak English. So I played along and I didn’t speak English either. It’s really good for me, actually. It really helps. I went through three kinds of teas during my stay there, met a new friend of Qiao Ying’s, and then left to join Mandi for her farewell dinner. I didn’t have far to go, and traffic wasn’t bad, but there were no empty taxis. I waited, changed locations, and then waited some more. So I eventually took a bus.
It was a direct route that I needed to follow, just 2 or 3 km up the street. And the trusty Route 120 took me there. I met my friends at Ya Show market near San Li Tun Bar Street. Most everyone was late (like I was—even I was the second person there!) cause traffic was really bad. It ended up being a party of 18 and then some, and miraculously we managed to find a restaurant to house us. Even to pick a restaurant. I was impressed. It was a Xin Jiang Muslim restaurant. Very good food, roasted lamb and such. I had my first Budweiser beer that night. The restaurant ran out of the local beers, so that was all that was left. Damn expensive and not very good. (Sorry, he says to his friend Karen who works for Anheuser Busch.)
On the way to dinner, Joanne pointed out to me that my backpack was open. Did I leave it open from the tea house, all the way on the bus ride? Or did someone open it while I was walking or talking to Paul in front of Ya Show? Yikes! I didn’t find anything missing until later. My minidisc was still there as well as my USB sound card and Palm Wireless Keyboard. (Yes, my backpack is an arsenal of geek electronics. Go Darren!) It was only after dinner that I realized that my $300 Etymotic ER-4P earphones were missing. I’ll never see them again. The disappointing thing is that the new owner will have no idea the true value of their new prize. Damn. Back to el-cheapo $10 earbuds for a while. At least the Etymotics are well coated with a couple month’s worth of my ear wax. Hope the new owner doesn’t actually use them.
I skipped out on Mandi and drinks on San Li Tun at 22h30 after dinner cause I wasn’t in the mood. It’s really not my scene. Adam and the gang were going to be at The Big Easy a few kilometres away, so I decided to join them. I wasn’t feeling so hot, actually. Mostly just tired from being sick all week with the flu. But I found myself telling the taxi driver to go there, so I just went with the idea. The Big Easy was alright, but nothing too great. The band was swinging a bit so Adam and River danced, and I got one dance in with River. I would have liked to spend time chatting with Adam and River, but an impromptu business meeting between them and the owner cut our time short. The belly dancer gave a couple of performances, but I wasn’t impressed. I just couldn’t get into it. Besides, her hair was dirty and her costume (what little costume she was wearing) had big food stains all up the front. Pretty yucky.
But, during one of the belly dances, I looked up at the balcony and, to my surprise, saw my friend Cheng Lei there. So I immediately left my friends and went and said hello. This is the second time that she and I have met “by luck” in this area. The other time happened at Latinos, next door to The Big Easy, about a month and a half ago, just before I left Beijing. (And I never go to Latinos.) So we were quite happy and surprised to meet like this again. It made the whole evening worth it. Plus she smiles so nicely at me. We chatted for a while until Adam phoned me looking to see where I was. I literally had disappeared on the group without a trace, so they wanted to know where I was. I felt loved. So we came down and said hello to Adam, River, and John for a few minutes. Cheng Lei had friends over at Latinos, a Brazilian dance performance group that was in Beijing for the week, so she invited me to join her over there. I hesitated, but finally agreed. I have never felt comfortable at Latinos, especially since Latin dancing/music isn’t my thing.
But I’m so glad I went with her. Although Cheng Lei likes dancing (she’s a salsa teacher, even) she just wanted to watch the others dance. But when I told her that I wanted to dance with her, she invited me to dance Swing to the Latin music. I was surprised that it even worked, but I guess it can be done cause we did it. And it was fun. She made me feel so comfortable there that I had no problems being there, dancing my own way, and enjoying myself. We met up with her friend Julia, and after the Brazilians left, the two of them decided the music at Salsa Caribi would be better. So, back to San Li Tun, and I got to try out a new club. Since I never dance Salsa in Beijing, they’re all new to me.
Salsa Caribi seemed not too bad. An acquaintance, Mustafa, was there outside the club, so already I had a friendly face to welcome me. The two girls, Cheng Lei and Julia, took to the dance floor immediately, so I just waited at a table. I saw my friend Irene dancing there too, and eventually discovered that all of my friends of Irene were there: Karen, Maple, and Christine. Seeing them was a treat, especially Karen since I haven’t seen her in so long. She’s been busy with work-related travel for many months now.
I had the best time with Cheng Lei and Julia at Salsa Caribi. They were dancing pretty hard, and when I joined them, I started dancing hard too. We danced and danced and danced. Some of it was Swing (but not to Swing music). Some just disco, and lots of Latin. I started to figure out the arm thing, twisting you and your partner’s arms in and out of pretzel contortions. Lots of fun. We played with it a lot, sometimes doing the pretzel thing with all three of us holding hands.
A very sweet night. I’m really feeling blessed by the whole thing, how it all turned out. I’ve been dealing with a lot of internal struggles and realizations lately, stemming from events in and related to returning from Canada. (I can only post weblog stuff when I’m being outgoing and external, which is why my posts are as infrequent as they are.) So I think tonight’s events have corrected my thinking in various ways, helping me to keep on the correct path that I need to follow. It’s what I needed.