Thu, 15 Nov 2007

Better go for the latest K2 version

It's dawning on me that that database problem isn't caused by any supposed incompatibility between K2 and WordPress 2.3.1 - I guess I should just use the latest K2 release candidate for the Amity website. The problem is, I adapted quite a few things in the core of K2! Of course I should never have done that ... Especially since it's so easy to add custom stylesheets etc. That was really stupid!

Posted on 15 Nov 2007 at 19:49 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink

Finished adapting my K2

K2 now looks like it should. After some experimenting, I decided to go with the default colours - good-bye, my dear Rubin theme! I went for 3 instead of 2 columns, added a few things to the sidebars, moved the title and tagline to the right and made the header a bit narrower; otherwise, it's a K2 out of the box. Bulleted lists are fine, blockquotes display nicely, even the groups of pictures look good. This is very satisfying!

Posted on 15 Nov 2007 at 19:24 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink

The K2 sidebar manager ...

... is extremely slow, but if you give it the time it needs, it delivers the results you want.

Now it's time to push the blog title and tagline to the right - and maybe change some colours, after all.

Posted on 15 Nov 2007 at 18:14 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink

Bad Behavior blocked its first intruder

I installed Bad Behavior an hour ago - and already it blocked an intruder! Akismet, in the meantime, is lazing in the sunshine ...

Posted on 15 Nov 2007 at 16:34 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink

Indenting text with CSS

I created nice indented bulleted lists for the entries on my "entries" blog. <ul> lists are used in the sidebars, too, but there I don't want to see any bullets or indentations. In the entries, yes. CSS has nice things like these:

• list-style-type:disc; (puts bullets before each list item)
• list-style-position:inside; (puts the bullets inside the left text margin)
• text-indent:-1em; (indents the 1st line of each list item to the left)
• margin-left:1em; (indents the 2nd, 3rd etc. line to the right of the 1st)

What would I do without selfhtml?

Posted on 15 Nov 2007 at 16:26 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink

Installed Bad Behavior

How could one not install something with such a nice name? Bad Behavior is a blog comment spam killer. I saw that, even when I had turned all comments off on the "entries" blog, I still got tons of spam comments. How can you prevent the bots which send out such stuff from reaching your blog in the first place? Bad Behavior just might be the solution. I'll give it a try.

Posted on 15 Nov 2007 at 15:26 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink

Executive education in China

China has a dramatic shortage of qualified managers - you know, the sort of business leaders who are able to understand financial reports, know something about marketing, have some organisational skills and recognise the need for motivating their employees. This is why the market for executive MBA programs has exploded. What exactly are Chinese top executives doing there - when they're actually attending class instead of delegating learning to their secretaries? - "Back to School", a funny and interesting article at China International Business.

Posted on 15 Nov 2007 at 14:35 in /china/education. -- Permalink

The publisher who rules Japan

The Economist has a story about Tsuneo Watanabe, the chairman of Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's biggest newspaper. Apparently, he's the guy who pulls the strings in Japanese politics. A fascinating, if depressing, story of price-fixing, corruption and political farce.

Posted on 15 Nov 2007 at 14:18 in /media. -- Permalink

That time, part 2

Coming back to my text after a decent interval, I find I'm even less inspired, and things make even less sense, than when I left. Well ... Time for lunch!

Posted on 15 Nov 2007 at 13:20 in /life. -- Permalink

Struggling with my newsfeeds

I'm already struggling with my newsreader again - if I don't go through my subscriptions every day, things get out of control. Do I have too many subscriptions? Well, I just added another one ...

Posted on 15 Nov 2007 at 12:11 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink

Twittering on my phone

When I first tried to get twitter to work with my mobile phone several months ago, I got nowhere. That was disappointing as well as surprising because I may have a Hong Kong number, but my provider is British-based just like twitter. Yesterday, I went through the set-up steps again - and now it works! It's still so new to me, every time I get a message on my phone, I catch myself thinking: "Oh, a message! Who could be the sender?"

Posted on 15 Nov 2007 at 11:49 in /life. -- Permalink

It's that time of the year again

With the advent of Advent just around the corner, it's time for us poor Amity Hong Kong guys to help with "Minutes that Matter" once again, a series of devotional radio broadcasts which is produced by the Hong Kong Christian Council and broadcast on Radio 4, one of the channels of RTHK.

I've got some ideas for my thing - have had them for quite a while, in fact, so they were allowed to mature inside of me before I sat down this morning and started to write them down. I spent the whole morning writing (after having breakfast and, admittedly, solving a few - just a few! - jigsaw puzzles on the web ...) but now I'm stuck! What I've written so far doesn't seem to have any point! What am I actually trying to say?

I have to choose a piece of music for my "Minutes", too. Here I find it difficult to make a choice between two songs, one by Johnny Cash, the other by Kris Kristofferson. The song should somehow relate to the text I'm writing. Right now, this doesn't help at all.

Better to surf the web a bit - just a bit! - before I press on, I guess ...

Posted on 15 Nov 2007 at 11:34 in /life. -- Permalink

The same old questions

Ich saz ûf eime steine
und dahte bein mit beine.
dar ûf satzt ich den ellenbogen.
ich hete in mîne hant gesmogen
daz kinne und ein mîn wange.
dô dahte ich mir vil ange,
wie man zer welte solte leben.
deheinen rât kond ich gegeben,
wie man driu dinc erwurbe,
der keinez niht verdurbe.
diu zwei sint êre und varnde guot,
daz dicke ein ander schaden tuot:
daz dritte ist gotes hulde,
der zweier übergulde.
diu wolte ich gerne in einen schrîn:
jâ leider desn mac niht gesîn,
daz guot und weltlich êre
und gotes hulde mêre
zesamene in ein herze komen.
stîg unde wege sint in benomen:
untriuwe ist in der sâze,
gewalt vert ûf der strâze,
fride unde reht sint sêre wunt.
diu driu enhabent geleites niht,
diu zwei enwerden ê gesunt.

A poem by Walther von der Vogelweide, written around the year 1200.

I sat on a stone and put one leg on the other, rested my elbow on it, with my chin and one of my cheeks in my hand. Sitting like this, I thought a lot about how to live in this world. I couldn't figure out how to get three things without destroying any of them. Two of them are reputation and wealth, which often negatively affect each other; the third one is God's grace, way more valuable than the other two. I wanted to put all of them in one place, but unfortunately it is impossible that wealth and reputation and also God's grace are in one heart at the same time. There are no paths or tracks where they could travel: betrayal lies in ambush, rude force rules the streets, peace and justice are badly injured. Those three things have no protection unless these two get healthy first.

Posted on 15 Nov 2007 at 03:00 in /life. -- Permalink