depthq - ccm|mac

I received a call yesterday at 8:30am and it woke me up. It was Monica, my cousin from the US. I was delighted to hear from her. It has been 12 years since we last seen each other in Malaysia. She is heading off to the Badaling Great Wall for the day and wanted to meet up somehow.

I woke up, got ready and toyed with the idea that I will go to Badaling to meet up with her. I definitely should do it, I told myself and I went online to do some research.

I knew I could go from Tiananmen but I wanted a shorter and faster way. Miya was online and I asked her and she suggested taking a 419 and then a 919 at "qing he xiao ying qiao nan" and that is what I ended up doing.

I arrived at "qing he xiao ying qiao nan" and I didn't see any 919 bus stop. I asked around and no one knew. So I was walking around and I saw atleast two 919s passing on the "qing he xiao ying qiao". Oh no! I must be at the wrong stop!

So I walked towards the "qing he" station, which I guessed must be where those 919s were coming from, and suddenly another 919 appears and passes me. I didn't think much and I gave chase. I see that it didn't stop at that "qing he xiao ying qiao nan" and it was resting due to the red traffic light. I was still running and I stopped to ask a passerby about the location of a 919 stop and he said its just ahead. So I continued to run for about 100-200 metres till I reached the next stop.

I remember seeing on the sign board that there are two 919 routes but I didn't think much about it then and boarded the bus. I paid for my ticket and sat down and was proud of myself for a bit.

I fired off a few text messages to Monica to tell her I'm on the way. I was thinking that I should have enough time until I saw a sign post that indicated that Badaling Great Wall is still another 45 kilometres away. I asked the staff in the bus and she said its another 2 hours, which is at least 30 minutes too late as Monica will leave and head towards Tianjin.

I couldn't understand why and then a bit later, over the PA, I heard that this is actually a "man che" (slow car) which kind of explains everything. Maybe that is why there are two 919 routes? One fast and one slow?

I was in a dilemma. What do I do now?

I alighted the bus at the next stop and wanted to catch a cab back to the city. I am about at least 1 hour away from the city by bus and I have no idea where I am and it was definitely the worst place to get a taxi. 15 minutes has gone by and nothing in sight. A few taxis passed by but was filled with passengers. One taxi did slowed down but didn't want to go back to the city.

One shady guy in a hatchback did stop and asked if I wanted a ride for a price to wherever I am going. I told him I wanted to go to Badaling and his opening price was RMB200 and it would take an hour. I said its too expensive and there's no point anyway since I needed to be there in 30 minutes to make it worthwhile. I asked about going back to the city and he said RMB150. I thought it was pretty outrageous and told him no. He left and I waited a bit more and when I least expect it an empty taxi came by and stopped.

I got in and told him where I wanted to go and he said okay at first and after a while he started complaining that its too far and would not be worth his effort. He suggested taking me to the subway and I had no problems with that. He took me to the Longze subway station and I went back to Dongzhimen.

It is now noon. I didn't really have breakfast and I am starting to feel hungry. I grabbed a set meal at McDonald's and downed it in a few minutes while toying the idea of going to Tianjin. I know it would probably be much less effort than going to Badaling Great Wall. I texted Monica and told her that I would meet her in Tianjin. She's an exchange student in Nan Kai University now and that is where I'll be meeting up with her.

I tried to take the subway to the Beijing station but it proved more tricky than I initially thought. I was kind of engrossed with reading Freakonomics that I didn't really pay attention to any announcements in the subway.

I totally didn't realise it and I was already in Qianmen. I was pretty sure I didn't hear the Bejing station announcement. So I got off at Qianmen and took a train going towards the other direction. Oh it was one of those spanking new trains, which is very clean and comfortable.

Right before reaching Chongwenmen, a voice over the PA indicated that this train will pass by the Beijing station but not stopping. I was wondering maybe its because its a new train so I came out in the Chongwenmen station. I waited for a few more minutes and another came train and I hopped into it. Right after I entered a manly voice boomed over the PA and said that this train does not stop at Beijing station. What is going on here? Am I so unlucky today that I managed to get into 2 trains that don't go to Beijing station.

I got off and started to ask a nearby security guard and she told me that no trains go to Beijing station. Its a recent ruling and she has no idea why but she did say that its possible to walk there from Chongwenmen. My Beijing geography is not very good for those places that I seldom go to so it was a good surprise for me.

After a few minutes, I arrived in Beijing station and I got the tickets to go to Tianjin and back. Finally things are going back to normalcy and nothing too exciting happened. I got a short nap in the train and I have to say that the 1st class seats in the "dong che" is great.

I eventually met Monica at Nan Kai University, had dinner with her and chatted till I had to leave at about 9:30pm. My train left Tianjin at about 10:17pm. I arrived back in Beijing at about 11:20pm (I think) and took a taxi back home. I arrived back in the apartment just a few minutes too late and had to walk 17 floors up to where I stay.

What a way to end the day and I am tired of writing now. I think this post is already longer than I wanted it to be and I am a bit too lazy to edit it further. (In fact when reading this post over another time to check for typos before I post it I fell asleep and again I got awoken by the mobile in the morning but this time its not Monica....)

I don't know why I am so dumb that I spent so much time scouring the Web to look for a utility to convert between different audio file formats. In fact my favourite video player, VLC can do it right under its hood.

Why would I want to do this conversion business? Because I have a bunch of WMA files which I can't import into my iTunes (but it works on M$ Windows though).

The weird thing is that I didn't manage to coerce VLC to convert it to MP3 for me so in the end I just did MP4 anyway since iTunes support it.

Here are the steps that you need to take:

1. Start up VLC
2. Click File and select "Streaming/Exporting Wizard..."
3. Select "Transcode/Save to file", click "Next"
4. Select a file and click "Next"
5. Check the "Transcode audio", and select "MPEG 4 Audio", select the bitrate that you want and click "Next"
6. Select "MPEG 4/ MP4" and click "Next"
7. Choose a filename and path to store the new file and click "Next"
8. Click "Finish"
9. Wait for it to be done

You can also choose other audio file formats and its pretty easy. Although I wish there is a better interface for this.

I also provide some screen shots to describe in detail .

Time goes quickly when you're having fun, some say. I guess for me its kind of true. Thinking back on what has happened I have to say that at times its been pretty much like a roller coaster ride.

I've never been to China before this stint at Exoweb, and have only done some travels outside Malaysia. So I don't really have much expectations, other than the crap people write in magazines, which I take with a pinch of salt.

So I came to Beijing empty, like a blank canvas and now its filled with many beautiful pictures, or I should say memories, some slightly dark and the rest are bright and with more colours that you can imagine.

Colour? What am I talking about? Beijing is more like gray and smoke than anything. But the people I've met so far have really given me a warm and fuzzy feeling, which more than out colours the gray that we have to deal with on a day by day basis. So now I see Beijing in a different light.

I am really happy that I've been given many chances to travel abroad: Tallinn, Estonia and recently San Francisco, America. One regret I have is that I never traveled that much inside China. There are many places that I want to go: Inner Mongolia, Yunnan, Xinjiang, Tibet, Sichuan, Hong Kong and Taiwan (okay don't get political on me!).

There are lots of smaller places as well which I didn't mention. Some much nearer to where I am staying in Beijing. I've been to a few places this year and I've been pleasantly surprised how much fun I had. And for the sake of naming names: Cuandixia, Shencundao, Xiangshan and Miaofengshan.

Some of the highlights of these 2 years are my small adventure at the train station (which is in no way comparable to the train god), taking the bus the chinese way, becoming a true 好汉 (hao han), losing 2 bicycles, enjoying the beautiful views in Huangshan, freezing my ass off in Harbin and last but not least working in Exoweb & meeting extremely fun and interesting people.

Looking back at what I wrote 6 months ago I think I've achieved quite a bit this year in terms of travelling and more learning but still not enough. My mandarin is still, as I would say, "nowhere" in terms of reading and writing. I've bought a book back from Malaysia and I didn't read much since then. Pretty disappointing for myself but on the other hand Ionut seems to be doing pretty well and I am getting lots of inspiration from his mandarin tweets. As for work in Exoweb, I think I am doing pretty okay and I still have lots to learn as a developer and as a team lead. There is a lot more that I can do and I am still looking for the sweet spot where I can contribute the most.

I can't wait for the next 6 months to come. Where will it bring me? I'll keep that thought there and hit the sack now. Its been a tiring day.

I've only been using Twitter recently and just realised how useful it can be. Its the same feeling I get when using Facebook. I am not talking about all the stupid notifications that Facebook apps send but more of a history of things people have done.

Thinking about this it reminds me of our normal "offline" book/magazine/newspaper. There is probably too much information to consume if its all sent in real time. Having it kept as a log where you can view it at pleasure is much better. I guess the people in the print industry know what they are doing. Or maybe we're too used to it? Who knows...

But because its personalized in a way, its much better suited to your reading taste. I guess maybe this is why RSS and feed readers are such a hit, at least for me.

Not only that you can choose to consume the information when you want, consuming it in batches is so much more manageable and allows work to get done! There are just too many things to distract you everyday and its getting more and more addictive, just as Paul Graham says in his recent article. I don't think I'll turn off wifi on my main work machine. I'll just be more disciplined and see how I go from there.

Thinking more about async communication reminds me of the different type of mediums that we have now to communicate with your family, friends and people that you work with.

For me, with family, its always phone or video conferencing. Very direct and real time. Tons of vocal and visual feedback. The best way to communicate for the most important people in your life. I am in Beijing and family is in Malaysia so I can't do face to face.

With friends, its mostly instant messaging (IM), e-mail, twitter, facebook messages and sometimes voice chat through Skype. Looking at this its mostly text but with different levels of interaction. Voice chat definitely requires direct and real time attention. IM is probably the second most disruptive of the bunch as it demands, although not necessarily requires, direct attention. But what are friends for? The rest are mostly offline and are great ways to keep in touch. The best way would be to do it face to face of course but it takes more effort for everyone involved!

With colleagues, at least in the Exoweb, we mainly have face to face (meetings urgh!), voice chat, IM, IRC, e-mail, blog and wiki. Face to face is great but its mostly too disruptive and should be used for the most important of things or for things that aren't easily communicated in other forms. We don't really have that many meetings in Exoweb (thank gawd!) and we try to make full use of meetings when we do. Voice chat is rare and probably used to talk to clients or colleagues that are working remotely.

IM as I said earlier is quite disruptive and its mostly between 2 people in almost real time. IRC is a pretty good way to communicate as most of the time you're talking in real time in a chat room and others can quickly follow the conversation is needed. But again, it can be disruptive, don't expect a reply if you're doing over IRC because its meant to be async.

For most things, e-mail is the preferred way. Since there is a lag, you need to write it well so that there won't be wasted time going back and forth. This is more evident when your client is working at a different timezone. It can be quite a chore to write a good e-mail though.

I've read before that to maximize the value of keystrokes you should blog rather than write an e-mail. I think its quite a cool concept. If you write an e-mail, that information is normally only shared to the recipients. If you blog it, more people can learn and take advantage of that information that you provided. And looking at the whole Web ecosystem, your blog entry can be easily tagged in del.icio.us, digg or reddit, indexed by google, yahoo or your favourite search engine and etc.

Another way is to update the information into a wiki. We use wikis for most (if not all) of the information in Exoweb. Wikis are a great way to collaboratively edit a document which contains some knowledge or information. The problem is wikis is to tell people of the changes. Our current wiki system isn't that great yet and doesn't promote the collaboration part that much.

There are times where there isn't a way that will make everyone happy but choose wisely anyway and you'll be able to get your message across in the most effective way.

In light of the recent earthquake in Sichuan, our website team turned most of exoweb.net gray.

I just want to spend a bit of time to document how we did it.

First we change all the images into grayscale using PIL with the following code snippet:

import Image
import glob
import os

for file in glob.glob('*'):
    if os.path.isfile(file):
        print file
        img = Image.open(file)
        gray = img.convert('L')
        gray.save('gray-' + file)

We don't have a very complicated directory heirarchy, so the above code was sufficient.

We cloned the main CSS file and created a copy for the gray version. We remove the styles that used colours and replaced them with gray versions.

After that we updated our Apache rewrite rules and redirected the normal CSS and images to the gray ones.

As a parting note, I send my condolences to those who lost their loved ones.