We finished our meetings here in Xi’an, and tomorrow morning some of us are flying down to Shenzhen. (The others will stay here with the Xi’an team.) Our last evening here went out with a bang: a team New Year party in anticipation of the Chinese Spring Festival in a couple of weeks. Much 白酒…
Read More Mid-point of the tripSo I have seen the Eighth Wonder of the World. And the title was aptly bestowed – it was magnificent, a wonderful experience. You can check out the photographs I took here. I’m not going to give a detailed account, but there were a couple of interesting moments: While we were driving out of Xi’an…
Read More The Terra-Cotta Warriors of Xi'anHere are a few pictures from this evening’s expedition to Xi’an’s old (walled) city. The full set is here in my MobileMe Gallery. It was bitterly cold, and I used the opportunity to educate overseas colleagues on the old English(?) expression “monkey weather” (as in, “It’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass…
Read More Xi'an old city at nightMore from James Fallows: Counting the new Republican Senator Scott Brown from Massachusetts, the 41 Republicans in the Senate come from states representing just over 36.5 percent of the total US population. The 59 others (Democratic plus 2 Independent) represent just under 63.5 percent. (Taking 2009 state populations from here. If you count up the…
Read More This is democracy?As so often before, I’m posting a map of my route, as calculated by Karl L. Swartz’s excellent Great Circle Mapper. 19 days, 14,313 miles:
Read More Route map for the next tripI’m heading to China for 19 days, and so the big activity this weekend is packing. I found myself enumerating all of the electronics gear that I’ll be taking: Apple MacBook Air – my personal laptop Dell E6400 – my work laptop Power brick for the MacBook Air Power brick for the Dell Mouse –…
Read More Electronics for the tripI just posted this one-star review to Amazon.com: I bought my DV4-2045DX at Best Buy, on a whim. Soon after I got it, I headed to England for a family visit, and I decided to take this laptop along instead of my usual MacBook Air. Bad idea. Soon after we arrived, the machine began to…
Read More That b100dy HP laptopAnother month, another business trip. On Monday I’ll be heading back to China for nearly three weeks. First I’m going to Xi’an, flying United to Beijing and Hainan to Xi’an. A week later, I’ll fly down to Shenzhen, before flying home from Hong Kong. It’ll be my first visit to Xi’an, and fortunately I’ll have…
Read More Off I go againFrom the last few days…. Grendel: free/open source software for protecting your cloud data Providing Single Sign-On to Amazon EC2 Applications from an On-Premises Windows Domain Have we reached the end of scaling? Bandwidth Disparity in the Cloud Very Lower [sic] Power Servers Progress Coolness @ Storage Visions/CES 2010 (especially the “Mobo-mounted SSD” from Soligen)
Read More A collection of thought-provoking posts related to cloud computingColin McGinn has written a marvelous essay on “Why I am an Atheist”. He begins by pointing out that the atheist cannot rationally limit his stance to a simple assertion of non-belief: he… … doesn’t just find himself with a belief that there is no God; he comes to that belief by what he takes…
Read More Post-theist, post-atheist (and post-polytheist too)