Thu, 08 Nov 2007

Microloans for private schools

Microloans given to private schools - not just, as in the past, to students - have the potential to lead to major improvements in education in developing countries, according to a Christian Science Monitor article. I wonder if Amity could get into this.

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 19:26 in /china/education. -- Permalink

Put up a working donations link

Just before calling it a day, and indeed a week, I realised that the link to PayPal on our donations page was still leading nowhere - I had put a "blind" link there just in order to show colleagues what our new website could look like. So I was in for a last-minute repair.

Well, so much for "Today, I'll be back home around noon" ...

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 17:11 in /work. -- Permalink

Chinese words of the day

民间组织 min2jian1zu3zhi1 humanitarian organisation
联合 lian2he2 unite, join, combine

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 16:50 in /life/learning_chinese. -- Permalink

Where's the 2nd volume?

I even got round to sending an e-mail to amazon.com, asking why I received just 1 volume when in the description of the item I ordered it says "2 Volumes". To be sure, the Princeton "Intermediate Reader of Modern Chinese" is nice to have even without volume 2 (vocabulary index and exercises), but US$ 52 seems an awful lot of money for it.

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 16:49 in /life/learning_chinese. -- Permalink

Finished that other letter ...

... which is addressed to the Inland Revenue Department, so it'll cost us dearly. But no, not really. A considerable percentage of our salary is deducted by our employer in Germany anyway - the rationale for this being that we don't pay income tax there. The actual income tax we'll have to pay in Hong Kong (a lot less than what is deducted from our salary) will be paid by our employer. So it doesn't make any difference to us, we're losing out anyway.

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 16:33 in /life. -- Permalink

WordPress update

I updated the new English Amity website to the latest WordPress version. This took no longer than 20 minutes altogether - and this is without Subversion.

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 15:44 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink

HK government encourages e-mail encryption

The Hong Kong Inland Revenue Department points out that e-mail is "vulnerable to third-party interception", encourages people to encrypt e-mail and makes the public key of the department's e-mail address easily available. Moreover, they will reply by e-mail only if you request this and give them your own public key. I'm really impressed!

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 15:44 in /china/hong_kong. -- Permalink

Finished one letter

Finished one of those bloody letters. Was actually rather important - formalised a big decision we have made. Nothing to be especially happy about, but this chapter is finally closed, and that's a kind of relief.

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 15:42 in /life. -- Permalink

A pic

I somehow like this photo ...

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 15:06 in /technology/photography. -- Permalink

One more goes down the drain

Sometimes, when you look closely at what you're supposed to translate, you realise it's just too bad. Better to sweep it under the carpet and hope that overseas audiences will never find out anything about certain aspects of our work, such as working with the Communist Party in order to create a "harmonious society" - a dictator's dream, everybody else's nightmare.

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 14:45 in /work. -- Permalink

Reduced my workload

I magically reduced the number of articles I still need to translate from 8 to 2. Some things just take care of themselves if you wait long enough. My letters and e-mails, though, won't write themselves.

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 14:30 in /work. -- Permalink

Quatember

Sonntagskinder, Quatembertage, Ember Days. I'm in the process of refreshing some items in my collection of useless knowledge. Wikipedia is great for this! (Those Ember Days may not be useless, but knowing the meaning of the term surely is.)

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 14:12 in /life. -- Permalink

Creative lighting

Nils has pointed me to the so-called "Creative Lighting System": use your ultra-expensive digital camera as a remote control to fire lots of ultra-expensive strobes, which you have positioned all over the scene. Add some softboxes and reflectors to complicate things even further. No wires needed, and everything is measured in real time through the lens.

Yes, I know, putting a flash on your camera is evil ... Which is why I hardly ever use flash! I'm too lazy to carry a tripod, too, and call the result "available light photography".

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 14:04 in /technology/photography. -- Permalink

Amity 2008 calendar announcement

At least I got one of the things on my list done. A nice calendar, by the way. (True, the design is still rather conservative but we're working on it.) So go ahead and order your copy now!

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 13:37 in /work. -- Permalink

Getting lost in less relevant jobs

Fixing links, replacing a picture, writing an announcement ("Buy our new calendar!"), checking e-mails, replacing the broken start page for both the Chinese and the English websites, tracking a cancelled PayPal payment ... All at the same time. More important than all of this would be writing 2 letters and several e-mails, as well as translating the remaining 8 or so Chinese articles.

If you want to make sure you don't get anything done, go to the office.

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 12:02 in /work. -- Permalink

Hans Rosbaud
Hans Rosbaud promoted contemporary music early on, was one of the first radio symphony orchestra conductors, introduced instruments and music to audiences in order to help people appreciate music, was general music director for some years during the Nazi dictatorship in the town where I was born, was the first conductor of the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra, helped establish the modern music festival at Donaueschingen.

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 12:01 in /life/music. -- Permalink

How to edit a file within WordPress

OK, that was easy again. Files in the folder of the theme which your WordPress blog is using will show up in the "Theme Editor" (in the "Presentation" section) if they have the file extension ".php". So I renamed the file "announcement" "announcement.php", changed the file which loads the announcement box accordingly - and that was it.

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 11:48 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink

How can I edit a file within WordPress?

How can I get WordPress to display the file containing the Amity "announcement box" alongside the stylesheet, PHP files etc.? It would be nice to edit the announcement box from within WordPress, instead of downloading, editing and uploading it with FTP.

Posted on 08 Nov 2007 at 11:05 in /technology/internet. -- Permalink