SubscribeThere's no 'I' in team, but there sure is in China
August 30, 2008 at 2:13 a.m.
China won gold at more events than any other country in the Olympics, but it didn't take home the most gold medals, as Duke University political scientist Michael Allen Gillespie points out (via Tim Johnson). The reason: Americans dominated the team events, while Chinese athletes excelled in individual sports.
If one looks over all of the Olympic sports, Americans took home 118 gold medals, 99 silver medals and 76 bronze medals, while the Chinese took home 76 gold, 35 silver and 38 bronze medals. That is 293 total medals for the USA to 149 for China.The point here ...
On getting out of the way
June 10, 2008 at 4:26 a.m.
My Saturday gig sent me to Tennyson High School this week where alumni celebrated the school's 50th anniversary. I was tasked with adding unspecified multimedia to an already-written print story. I went, grabbed photos, audio and nachos, and built a slide show that I'm in no way happy with.
Here's where I think I went wrong: I tried to tell a linear story, and I fell all over myself doing it.
First, Soundslides was the wrong tool. It was wrong because, for the most part, it is a tool for telling stories that go from beginning to ...
Making multimedia a habit
May 17, 2008 at 1:27 a.m.
I'm a freelancer.
In a given week, I write for at least three publications, both in print and online (plus this much-neglected blog). Because I'm pretty much at the bottom of each respective totem poll, I tend to get assignments that are, well, befitting that altitude.
I did this at my last newspaper, too, those unglamorous bits and pieces, but since I had a regular beat there, it wasn't all I did. I had stories that developed over time, that had new angles, and that weren't just things we covered every year.
So let's make ...
The Pottery Barn theory of blogging
May 15, 2008 at 12:36 a.m.
I broke it.
And never have I felt more like I owned my blog than after having put the damn thing back together piece by piece.
The whole mess started when I tried to upgrade last week. Since I switched from Blogger to Wordpress in March 2007, I'd been using a version somewhere in the 2.1.x range. It's been outdated for, oh, a year or so. Upgrading was never much of a priority because everything mostly worked, and my minor theme tweaking was enough.
I did use a separate WP2.3.x install for my portfolio ...
Marines and Motherfuckers
March 13, 2008 at 11:04 p.m.
About three paragraphs into the story I was writing on a the homecoming party for a squad of local Marines, my editor popped her head around the cubicle with a suggestion:
"Do you think you could take out the drinking and the swearing?" she asked. We were, she reminded me, a family newspaper. (Note: It's been a couple years since I worked there.)
I've never figured out what that means, exactly, a "family newspaper." We printed some grisly stuff: car and train wrecks, blood stains on sidewalk, skeletons of houses gutted by fire.
And marines are vulgar. Take ...
So long Dalian, and thanks for all the fish
January 29, 2008 at 8:08 a.m.
I'm leaving Dalian. And China.
I know this seems like a good time to be in China, and hence, an awkward time to leave. I had planned to stay until the Olympics.
I wish there were an easy way to explain why I've decided to go back to California, but there isn't. I woke up one day back in November with one clear thought in my head: "Time to go home."
The best reasons I can give are my girlfriend and my grandparents. In about two weeks, my girlfriend and I will hit the four year mark ...
Why I didn't blog much about Korea
January 29, 2008 at 3:46 a.m.
- It was kinda dull. Much of my experience was a less interesting, more disorganized version of last year.
- I've been distracted. On a whim, I started learning Django (and by extension, the Python programming language), and the deeper I get into it, the more I'm enjoying it.
Before I left Dalian a month ago, I'd planned on spending my time (and hence, not my limited budget) plowing into Drupal and PHP, since that's what we used for DalianDalian. It also seemed a logical follow to my efforts with XHTML and CSS.
What diverted me was Matt ...
Podcast: At Home in Dalian, China
January 26, 2008 at 3:24 a.m.
Podcasters Marcia and Lisle Veach interviewed me a couple weeks back for their show, At Home in China. We talked about:
How might subtle differences in culture and language become a barrier to mutual understanding between people from the West and China? Marcia interviews Chris, a journalist who is currently teaching English and studying Chinese in northeastern China.
Listen to the whole show here.
I mentioned a few blogs and a few books in the podcast, and I'll recommend them all again here:
Books
- River Town, by Peter Hessler
- Riding the Iron Rooster, by Paul Theroux
- The World is ...
(anti-)Social
January 3, 2008 at 1:35 p.m.
Seoul is a lovely place. Probably. But for the past week, it's also been an unbearably, wretchedly, can't-feel-my-face, my-hands-shouldn't-be-that-color cold kind of place. Really, it hurts to go outside.
So, if such a thing is possible, I'm spending more time than usual in front of my laptop, which does have the side benefit of warming my hands on it's overheating core duo. Ah, technology.
What that means for you, dear reader, is that I'm compulsively hitting reload on the social networking sites where I now have more friends than I do in what an ...
Back alley Japanese BBQ: Pure joy on a stick
December 23, 2007 at 1:06 p.m.
A few days ago, I ate one of the best meals I've had in Dalian.
I've eaten well here, to be sure: dumplings of all variety at DaQingHua, curry at Abashi, pizza at Noah's. Add to that list Japanese barbecue at the pragmatically-named Barbecue Coals.
Consider the selection:
Grilled chicken teriyaki with a hint of lemon, covered in melted cheese.
Shitake mushrooms, cooked soft, subtle, and simple.
Asparagus, something I haven't had in China, roasted and served with a dollop of mayonnaise on the side, which I indulged in but felt guilty about (for masking the ...
What did Apple know and when did it know it?
November 30, 2007 at 10:37 a.m.
Last weeks hard drive meltdown hit me pretty hard, but it looks like it wasn't entirely a surprise to everyone. Patrick emailed me a story today, claiming Apple was aware of flaws in many MacBook drives but has so far kept silent on it.
The affected drives -- model numbers ST96812AS and ST98823AS -- are commonly found in notebooks such as Apple's MacBook or MacBook Pro, the firm says. To determine whether a MacBook has one of the affected drives, it's suggested that owners go to their Mac's System Profiler application and check the revision number under the ...
Vote China Law Blogâ€â€It's Chinese (sort of)
November 29, 2007 at 11:50 a.m.
I got an email from the guys at China Law Blog this morning beggingâ€â€OK, asking politely, but begging on their own siteâ€â€for an endorsement on ABA's best blawg contest. CLB being one of my favorite China blogs, how could I not?
What sway I have in such things is questionable, but if both my readers vote for CLB, well, I'm sure it will make Dan and Steve happy. And we all want happy lawyers, right? Better than unhappy lawyers (though now that I think about it, which group is more likely to ...
After the crash, I only have what I've shared
November 28, 2007 at 8:06 a.m.
My hard drive suffered a fatal melt down last week. I woke up on Friday morning to find my screen holding fast at 1:18 a.m. and my 6:30 a.m. alarm telling me it was time for class. The laptop's fan was almost as loud. I shut down, restarted, nothing. A gray screen, a file folder with a blinking question mark. My computer was checking its own vitals, looking up at me and reporting, "We aren't detecting any brainwaves. The patient is not responding."
Attempts to revive the disc failed. Neither a laptop nor an ...
There's a Chinese lesson in here somewhere...
June 24, 2007 at 7:28 p.m.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. â€â€Douglas Adams, via Most Grave ConcernI need to read more Douglas Adams. Anybody who writes sentences like "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't" ought to be on my shelf, assuming I had a shelf and could buy such relevant books in Dalian. I will be buying books, though. I've already started. Everyone's advice last week confirmed what I ...
I've been telling my younger siblings this forever...
June 23, 2007 at 4:48 a.m.
The eldest children in families tend to develop slightly higher IQs than their younger siblings, researchers were to report Friday, citing a large study that could effectively settle more than a half-century of scientific debate about the relationship between IQ and birth order.Finally, evidence. Turns out it's not biology, but the little niches that form within families that make first-borns just a touch sharper. We also tend to be more cautious and duty-bound. I found myself nodding along with this story and picking out my siblings, going, "Yeah, that's Mike." Especially this part:
Another potential explanation concerns ...
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