It’s like an ant, carrying a Cheeto on it’s back – the physics of it actually blow your mind. But it’s common here in Shanghai – you’ll see a 3-wheeler bike with stuff piled up so high you can’t believe it’s even holding together, and yet it somehow is. Here’s an amazing one I saw today on my bike ride in northern Shanghai, around Taopu.
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| From Drop Box |
I moved to China a wee bit over a year ago, and I’ve had the pleasure of doing a ton of traveling since. I never thought I’d actually say “It’d b nice to stay still for a minute” – I’ve always wanted to go see lots of places in the world, and my job provides me just such an opportunity!
Sarah asked me last week how many miles I’ve flown in the last year, and I realized I hadn’t been keeping track. So I made a spreadsheet! The Shanghai-Chicago flight is the longest flight I’ve ever done at 7,000 miles / 13 hours, but I’ve flown over 100,000 miles this year, which is an absurd number.
This gives me an opportunity to show off one of my favorite websites, the Great Circle Mapper. It allows you to put in two or more airport codes and it’ll plot you a map showing your actual flight path. Here’s my first year of travel:
You can also view it on the website with my flight path details, which shows the mileage.
Cool, eh?
One of the parks right next to the office.
In 2003, I was a young college student, bored one winter. I had been using the Xfce window manager on my Slackware Linux machine, and I liked to use XMMS to rock out the tunes while doing my CS homework. Or maybe while drinking some beer. Anyway. Xfce was younger then and didn’t have a lot of panel plugins, but panel plugins were all the rage those days. I decided to try and write a panel plugin to remote control XMMS. With the help of some kind developers from the Xfce project and good example plugin code, I was able to create the first version of the xfce-xmms-plugin.
I worked on the code for just a few months and it was released and downloaded by many. I left the code be and some others have picked it up since. Thanks to Kemal Ilgar Eroğlu for picking up maintainership, and the others who have contributed patches over the years. I moved onto using the GNOME desktop environment shortly thereafter so I didn’t end up needing the plugin anymore, but I have been known to use Xfce on occasion for a lighter desktop experience.
A visit to the plugin website shows that while a lot has been added, my fantastic original artwork, created in The GIMP, is still intact today. I wonder if anyone is still using XMMS anymore? I’m sure there’s someone :)
November 11th, 2003: my first free software commit to the world. It was CVS back then, then converted to Subversion and onto Git these days. I was also using my university CS account which I think is disabled. The history is also preserved in the Changelog file in the source download and even amazingly goes to show that I was going by the handle “pat” back then.
A few years ago, I used to write some plugins and a little bit of code for the Banshee project. As I grew in my job at Mintel, I lost energy for working on Banshee but the project carried on and has grown from version 0.x to 2.x in a few years time. I keep using Banshee on my Linux laptop, but a year ago I made an odd choice of buying a Macbook and I’ve been hating iTunes ever since. iTunes really sucks.
I was catching up on old blogs the other day and found that Aaron has moved on from Novell and that some old & familiar names have stepped up to help with maintainership. Pretty cool stuff guys. Oh and the Mac OS X builds are much more regular than they used to be, and it’s working great!
One tip: If you’re looking for the latest version of Banshee on OS X, the website is a bit out of date. Go straight to the GNOME download server for the latest OS X build which is 2.3.4.
Furthermore, if you’re running Banshee on Ubuntu and love Amazon MP3 and the GNOME project as much as I do, please give this a read.
A few weeks ago I picked up a case of mononucleosis, which has been a real joy. As I’ve been off work for two weeks now, sitting around home waiting for my body to slowly recover, I’ve actually taken the longest break from work I’ve ever taken since starting at Mintel in 2006.
Thus, I’ve decided that getting Mono is the worst idea for a vacation ever. If I’d had more energy, I would’ve jetted off to somewhere a bit more beautiful than rainy/foggy Shanghai to rest.
I’m returning to work this week logging on from home to get caught up and start working on some small projects. I have a spare bedroom which I rarely use, but it does have a small desk in it that I’ve decided to make my work desk. My landlord left some of her furniture in here, so it comes complete with the delightful pink chair, lamp and trash.
Complete with pink furniture which was left by my landlord
Hello from tomorrow.
(Think about it.)
Photo from downtown Singapore – I call it, “Got enough air conditioners?”
I’ve been on the road a lot the last six weeks! I haven’t published a single photo from my trip to Kuala Lumpur which is just not fair. But now onto another city and new Mintel office setup – Singapore.
View Larger Map
We just opened our office here at the beginning of the month, so I’m here to install some basics like a printer, network, file server, and put lots of labels on lots of wires (most of which read “don’t unplug me!”).
I call this photo “ploogers” – in honor of what I used to call them when I used to connect the kitchen cabinets in Sherman Court with tape and string.
Other fun:
Hong Kong in the last week of September. Then back to Shanghai for a few days. Sydney for the first week of October. Then back to Shanghai for a day. Then to London for a week and a half, and now finally heading back to Shanghai. What a month!
Life advice: don’t sprain your ankle before a travel run like this :)
I’ve had a great few trips, albeit disabled by problems with my feet. Sarah flew and met me in London which was amazing. We traveled to Bath over a long weekend and saw the city and the remains of the Roman baths which are almost 2000 years old. Sarah also adventured around London and took in the sights. We’ll have to post some photos. The best bit was touring St. Paul’s Cathedral. I’ve been walking by it for years on my visits to London but this time got to actually have the experience, and it was well worth it.
Plane back to Shanghai is now boarding…off I go!
