Wed, 07 Nov 2007

Time zones (cont'd)

Two things that help with time zones:

• weltzeit.de, a website (in German)
• FoxClocks, a Firefox extension

(Cf. Time zones, on this blog.)

Posted on 07 Nov 2007 at 22:32 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink

Further fumbling with the stylesheet

I can't help it, the Linux standard "serif" font looks best to me for this. Which is why I changed the stylesheet in a probably unusual way, putting "serif" before some other fonts I like too. Don't know how much sense this makes - not very much, I guess, because browsers will just go for their standard "serif" font and ignore the rest.

Still, I'm not too happy with the rendering of Chinese characters in this setting. They were clearer when I used a sans-serif font.

Posted on 07 Nov 2007 at 22:26 in /technology/internet/blosxom. -- Permalink

Blogs found on the way

I came across two potentially interesting blogs when I explored Blosxom:

• Todd Larason's Mt. Molelog
• Mark Ivey's Zovirl Industries

Posted on 07 Nov 2007 at 20:42 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink

Chinese words of the day

暂时离开 zan4shi2 li2kai1 temporarily absent
(离 leave, go away; from)
离奇 li2qi2 odd
离弃 li2qi4 abandon v.
奇怪 qi2guai4 strange, odd
(奇 also ji1 odd [number])
寄 ji4 send, post, mail

Posted on 07 Nov 2007 at 18:46 in /life/learning_chinese. -- Permalink

Finished one translation: Qinghai biogas project

That went more smoothly than I had anticipated. Fortunately, the article I started working on turned out to be quite well written - not the usual kind of "On September 26, a great mobilisation meeting was held in the beautiful city of XXX in the presence of CPPCC member YYY ..." - yawn ... No, this was quite different; and well written texts are a lot easier to translate than the mumble-jumble we get so often. It's the story of a great success, which even in my less jubilant English version sounds a bit too good to be completely true, but there you are. (Chinese version)

Posted on 07 Nov 2007 at 18:38 in /work. -- Permalink

Chat attack

I should be translating some 9 articles ... But then everybody is coming online and I'm chatting all afternoon.

Posted on 07 Nov 2007 at 16:30 in /work. -- Permalink

A strange occurrence at the Beijing Restaurant
There was this weird guy we met during lunch. He was introduced by someone our boss knows. Kept talking to the boss throughout lunch - quite an obtrusive man, in fact. Toward the end, he introduced a device to us, part of which you can insert into your nose in order to "clean the blood" with laser light. He sells this kind of stuff for a living. Later we found out that he also wears a magnetic belt (priced at HK$ 3000) which allows him to walk more quickly.

Was he actually hoping to get involved with Amity? Does he want us to start a laser-powered, through-the-nose blood-cleaning project somewhere in the Chinese countryside?

Posted on 07 Nov 2007 at 14:27 in /life. -- Permalink

Chinese-English translating

Time to translate a few more articles from the Chinese website into English, so we can post them on the English website. Not before our weekly "Amity Lunch" though ...

Posted on 07 Nov 2007 at 11:56 in /work. -- Permalink

"Godfather economies" in Asia

I started reading the excerpts from Joe Studwell's recent book, "Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and South-East Asia". Fascinating reading - very illuminating. Helps me understand why Hong Kong (not to mention some South-East Asian countries) is in such a mess: why its economic and political system is so heavily biased in favour of the "happy few", and why this situation won't change a lot in the foreseeable future.

Thanks to Asia Sentinel for publishing the excerpts.

Posted on 07 Nov 2007 at 11:06 in /china/hong_kong. -- Permalink