Category: General

Stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else

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General

Welcome to the new website

Welcome to my new website! It’s finally here (to those that have been waiting). I’ve been using Blogger since the beginning of 2003, writing new content from time to time, and I thought it was about time that I integrated my weblog into my website. In fact, the old website was the first one that I’ve ever made, which I created when I started my Masters degree in 1999. That makes it quite old.

So, here’s the new one, redesigned with a lot of old content gone, a bit of new content added, and some of it remaining the same. But now that I have the new design and framework in place, I can start adding new content easily. What’s new? Well, the banner at the top, for one. In the top, right-hand corner you’ll see two graphics showing the geocentric longitudes of the Sun and the Moon, respectively. The positions are generated using the Swiss Ephemeris every five minutes, but you’ll have to refresh the page to see any updates. Also, the quote at the top of the page is now no longer given out at random, but a unique quote is given every day. View the source for this page to see how I do this.

Anyway, I hope you like the new design, and that you’ll keep coming back to see what’s up with me. Let me know what you think. Cheers!

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General

Drink to your health!

Check out this article. You’ll learn some things I bet you didn’t know. In fact, the first time I read it, I had to stop reading because I was laughing so hard. Your mileage may vary, but at least I hope you get a kick out of it. Enjoy!

http://www.skepdic.com/urine.html

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General

Blogging is Easy

Right now I’m showing my friend, Gao Wen Dong, how my weblog works. It’s actually quite easy to do (even my mom could do it!). You don’t need to know anything about html. You just log into the Blogger website and start typing. When you’re done typing, you can just press the post and publish button. And voilà! The entry shows up on my weblog.

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General

Starting to rebuild the website

I’m back in Beijing and things are going well. I adjusted a lot better to the jet lag coming this direction, so I’m thankful for that. It turned out that even with all my books, my bags weren’t overweight. The girl in front of me in line at the check-in counter ended up paying $300 cause her bags were 17 kg (or was it pounds?) too heavy. Yikes!

The weather here has been quite good, and amazingly, the air has been quite fresh. Wow! So I’m enjoying that. I’m also concentrating on continuing my astrology studies and on overhauling my webpage. For years it’s kind of read like a resume, so I want to change that. I’m designing the style and layout right now, and once I get that in place, I can start to add content to the framework. I’ve just switched the style of this page so that someday my weblog and my homepage will match.

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General

Leaving Edmonton

Well, it’s just after midnight, local time here in Edmonton, and I’m about to fly back to Beijing in the morning. Nothing exciting, I guess. I’m just tired. But I am looking forward to being back in China and being with my friends again. I wonder how cold January will be…?

I’ve got my bags all packed (all the books I bought!) and I’m just playing around on the computer a bit before going to bed. Next time I write, I’ll be in a very different time zone. Cheers!

Categories
China General

Books, and Fluoride for your soul

I’ve been home from China for the last three weeks over Christmas, visiting family and friends. I’m going back this Friday, so I’m doing the last of my errand running and such tomorrow. I sure bought a lot of books this trip. I hope they all fit in my suitcase. There is a definite lack of English books in China, especially on the things I like to read about. So I’ve made full use of mail-order web sites as well as the good old used book stores in my hometown. I’m sad to have learned Second Fiddle Books closed about three months after I left for China. I heard the owner, Chris, is no longer in the book business but has started a plumbing apprenticeship. Good luck, Chris! I hope to run into you some day.

I visited the dentist during my brief time here, and a conversation with my dental hygenist left a significant impression on me. It was weird. Having learned I was living in China, she expressed concern whether I would be getting fluorinated water over there. She then launched into a exposé on the importance of fluoride which bordered on fanaticism. It seemed strange enough that it triggered some fragments of pieces I’d heard about fluoride being unsafe. So, this morning I looked up fluoride on Google! and learned a bit more about the controversy. The preceding link will bring up sites on both sides of the fluoride debate. If you read too much, you may begin to question our faith in the agencies which are in place to protect the public’s health, or in the scientific societies (and journals) which are in place to protect the objectivity of science. You could call me paranoid, but maybe I haven’t been getting enough fluoride in my diet the last 9 months to keep me quiet about such things. 🙂 Cheers!

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General

Welcome to my new web log

I’ve given it the title “The Mad Philosopher” because that’s how I feel sometimes. This will be a forum for my thoughts, ideas, experiences, and other things I want to share with my friends and family, especially as I have been hanging out in China lately. It will be interesting for me to see where this goes and how it turns out. I’ll eventually merge it with my webpage proper, so that the two sites are integrated with the same style. You can find my webpage here.

I maintain this “blog” through the site Blogger.com, which allows me to simply log in, enter some text, hit the “publish” button, and blogger then creates and updates the webpages that you are now viewing. So if you feel like creating your own web log, give blogger a try.