Author: Darren

Categories
General Tech

Senseless Voting Technology

I’ve read some interesting articles lately. The first two are a series on the key problem in the use of voting technology in the U.S. The author brings it all home for me—literally—by using Canada’s electoral system as an example. So now, the U.S. system finally makes sense to me; I now understand that it is totally senseless.

The third article is great. Really, these guys are nuts, but that’s why I read The Onion every week. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Categories
China

A unique picture

I took this picture two weeks ago while visiting Ba Da Chu, a site of 8 temples ascending the mountains west of Beijing. It is worth sharing.

 

Categories
Astro

A Sunspot First

While in Hainan I got to see something I’ve never seen before, even though I’ve tried many times in the past—to see a sunspot with my naked eye. This one was particularly large, and I had no trouble identifying it as a sunspot. It looked like a very dark spot on the surface of the sun, right in the middle of the disc. I observed it on 0930 UTC 23 October 2003.

I should point out that looking directly at the sun with your naked eye is dangerous, but I had the protection of a very hazy sky to block out most of the light. Whether or not I was sufficiently protected from the UV rays of the sun damaging my eyes I do not know.

The picture on the left is a white light telescope image of the sun courtesy of the Mees Solar Observatory, University of Hawaii, Institute for Astronomy. Click on it for the full-size image. Remember, Astronomy rocks!

Categories
China General

Crazy

Crazy. It’s been a crazy past couple of weeks. Or maybe it hasn’t even been that long. Some cool things happened since my last weblog entry, so I’ll tell you about some of them.

On my flight back to Beijing, I met my cousins for brunch in Vancouver for something to do for the layover. We had a good time catching up on their lives in Canada and my life in China. My french toast was pretty good too. As we were saying goodbye before I entered the security gate for International Departures, I just happened to check the screen to find that my flight to Beijing had been cancelled. So we all went over to the check-in desk to find out what was going on. Well, the plane never left Beijing the day before, so there was no plane to take me back there. Probably unlike most of the other passengers that day, I was pleased. It meant I could spend 24 more hours with my cousins, plus see various aunts and uncles too. My uncle Paul was even in Vancouver on a business trip, so I got to see him. It was great to hang out in Vancouver like this. I even got to meet my cousin Ann’s husband Steve. They got married this past year while I was in China. He’s pretty cool. We have a lot in common.

I was a little concerned about how I was going to get a seat the next day since they were going to combine the two flights into one. The ladies at the desk told me to just come early (really early!) the next day. Well, I did that and everything seemed normal. I just wasn’t certain that I had a seat on the plane until I was sitting in it. It didn’t look like the crowd at the boarding gate would fit on the plane. But we all made it, some of us a day late.

I spent one or two days at the office when I got back. Not everything was where I had left it though. For one, the entire building had been cleared out and moved into the new building next door. I had gotten some advanced warning via an email though, so it wasn’t too bad.

A devastating realization hit me as I was unpacking from my vacation. I couldn’t find my laptop. I then realized that I must have left it on the x-ray belt as I went through security in Vancouver. How could I do that? Well, let’s just say I had a warehouse of electronics in my backpack and even though I was careful not to lose any of them, I forgot about the tray with the laptop in it. For one thing, I was held up by the metal-detector thing for several minutes. I set it off, which I normally don’t do, and it took a while to search me with the wand because I wasn’t wearing anything that should have set off the detector in the first place. So I was a bit flustered when I went back to the belt.

Anyway, after realizing my mistake (when I was in China) there wasn’t much I could do except call the airport lost and found. I did that, and because of email problems and my subsequent travel (more on that below), I didn’t actually hear from them until this morning. I spent a week in the dark about my laptop’s fate. The good news is that they do have it. I’m very lucky. So I’ll send one of my cousins back to the airport to fetch it for me. I was fully prepared to never see it again, the worst part being that all the digital pictures I took in Canada were only on the laptop. But this morning I had a feeling that I would hear some good news.

After settling into the new office for a day or two, I left for Hainan, in the southernmost part of China, for a 4-day training conference. The conference itself was two days long, with two days of tour tacked on the end of it. Oh, and the conference was in Chinese so my employer didn’t actually expect me to attend. I was there just to travel and experience more of China. I didn’t object.

There are only a few stories from my trip to Hainan. I got to swim in the South China Sea and it was pretty beautiful. I spent most of the trip, however, just recovering from my month in Canada. All in all, I’m just glad to be back in Beijing again. I haven’t seen any friends yet nor done any swing dancing. I’ll see Ilse for supper tonight. Maybe when I get home I can do some laundry!

Categories
General

Headin’ back

It’s been a fun four weeks—I’m heading back to Beijing tomorrow. I’m looking forward to being back there. I’ll get up early tomorrow, wait at the airport for two hours, take a short flight to Vancouver, meet my cousins for brunch, and then begin the 11-hour flight to Beijing. I’ll arrive Sunday afternoon in Beijing.

I’ve enjoyed my visit. It will be nice to have a rest from my vacation!

Categories
General Swing

Great fun in Edmonton

Well, I’ve been having great fun here in Edmonton. I’ve got two more weeks left, then I go back to Beijing.

Here’s my first adventure. Within days of first arriving here, I developed a severe toothache in my bottom right molar. It would come and go in severity, but sometimes it would even cause a pretty bad headache and I wouldn’t be able to sleep well because of it. I noticed swelling down inside the mouth near the root line, so I really didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t think it was a cavity gone really bad. So within a few days I was able to see the dentist for my annual checkup and cleaning, and he investigated for me. It took an extra X-ray, but he was able to confirm that I had a tiny bone fragment in my gums making its way out. It came from the dental surgery I had way back in high school. Apparently it takes that long for stuff to work its way out of the body. With a bit of freezing (thankfully!), he was able to get a hold of it and pull it out. Within hours, my tooth settled back to normal and I haven’t had any pain from it since. The dentist said it would probably have taken the fragment six months or so to come out on its own. Ouch! So I’m very thankful that it happened now when I could have it looked at in Canada. Thanks, God!

After my Saskatchewan trip, I gave my friend Carl a call. He was my original introduction to swing dancing when I was studying for my master’s degree. To my great happiness, he told me that his club was still running and that they had lessons on Mondays and Wednesdays, plus there would be a social at the beginning of October. Great! The club is called Swing-Out Edmonton, if you want to have a look. I consequently joined the beginner and intermediate classes on the next Monday. We learned a dance step called the Balboa in the intermediate class, plus we worked on a step called the Grapevine. The beginner class is Lindy Hop, and it was more round of a style than I am used to. The follows don’t go back and forth in a line like we’ve learned in Beijing. I adapted somewhat. My follows didn’t seem too confused, and there were no casualties.

Last night was the social. I brought my Mom so I could teach her swing and also show her how I could dance. We had fun. The dance took place in the Orange Hall in Old Strathcona. About 40 people came. Before it started, Carl was busy getting the sound equipment ready, and since he’s an Electrical Engineer, I assumed he would be able to figure it out, and because of the male pride thing, I assumed he would be able to figure it out, and because of the male pride thing, I stayed away. But later I noticed he was having trouble (it was a different setup than they normally have) so I jumped in and quickly discovered that I was the sound equipment expert for the night. All I had to do was move a few of the inputs into the proper channels and then show him what the various controls do. I didn’t have to play DJ. I knew my Mom would want to leave early, and since I’m sporting a cold still, I don’t have my usual stamina, so we left at 11 p.m. I could have danced longer, of course, but it was better for me to go home and sleep. Neither of us are sore this morning, so that’s great! A fun night of good music and good dancing. I love it!

Categories
General

Pictures from Canada

I finally have pictures ready from my trip to Canada so far. They mostly detail the trip I made to visit my Grandparents in Saskatchewan, plus there are some pictures at the end from when my friend Cathey visited my sister. Enjoy!

Categories
Swing

Swing Night

September was a very busy month. It’s already October, and I only placed one entry into my weblog for September. I was busy in September with two things. The first was the American Chamber of Commerce charity dinner, where I and others from the Beijing Swing! group got to dance and show off our stuff. The second was getting ready to come to Canada for my vacation. I left Beijing on September 17th, and since arriving in Edmonton, I’ve been going nonstop. But that’s for another entry to come.

The deal with the American Chamber of Commerce charity dinner was that they had a Casablanca theme and they asked our group to provide three couples to swing dance. They made costumes for us, zoot suits for two of the guys, an American serviceman uniform for me, party dresses for the girls, and one off-duty nurse dress. My flight home was supposed to be earlier but because of this event, I decided to change my flight so that I could dance. The costumes turned out well although it would have been better if the tailor had been there for a fitting before the event. We spent half of our time getting ready searching desperately for a sewing kit. The guys had few problems, of course, with the biggest complaint that there were no pockets in the suits or the pants. We were also told backstage that we would not dance for all of the songs. This was very disappointing and we were acting like kids on Christmas morning waiting for a chance to dance. But we did get to dance and it went very well. Many of the guests at the dinner took photos of us and especially me because of my costume. People enjoyed watching the dance, and then they joined us on the dance floor.

Categories
Tech

Fun with digital cameras

Looking out my window one morning, I noticed these clouds. In particular, their movement was barely perceptible. So I decided it was time to try out my new digital camera. I set up my tripod, opened the window, took a meter reading, and set all the camera settings to manual. I then captured 38 frames, one every 15 seconds, for approximately 10 minutes. The camera came with software to create animations, which I have yet to try, but I just used ImageMagick’s convert(1) utility to piece the files into an animated gif. Click on the thumbnail on the left to see the animation (3.26 MB download).

I think the effect is very cool. I put a 0.15 second delay between each frame in the animation, so the animated motion is 100 times as fast as the real motion. This was the first time I’ve ever tried time-lapse photography. I will definitely try this again!

Categories
General

Charles Bernard Griffith

Yesterday was my grandfather’s birthday. Charles Bernard Griffith was born 100 years ago, on 30 August 1903. He died at the age of 76, when I was five years old. So I spent the day thinking about him and what the world would have been like 100 years ago. I have a few memories about him (maybe two or three). One winter—I was probably three or four years old—when I was visiting Jackfish Lake where he lived and had raised his family, I took a toboggan down the hill toward the lake. I’m pretty sure that he and my Dad had warned me not to go where the trees were, but they still comforted me after I hit a tree. I wasn’t always known to listen to my elders! It’s a good memory for me, anyway. No scars.