And our Chinese adventure is a thing from the past. After arriving here in September it is time to go back home for Sunny as well as myself. This is also the first article in a long time, which simply was due to not having much time available for this. After the last article before my visit to China I went back to my previous employer. Moved one of its headquarters IT wise, together with a whole team. The last taking quite a bit of time and many a weekend was spend in the office to get it running in time. Many battles with all kinds of new hard and software, a lot too learn. The Honda was bought for a reason as the Mazda was in bad shape, it also moved quite a few servers in the end. But Sunny got a bit upset during that time which in short ended up with us being in China now for close to three months and me shedding all the accumulated days off from the last two years. I do appreciate my employer for allowing this and use their offices in Beijing. The new way of working has its advantages although was stretched a bit far this time. Will doubt if it has any repeats either by myself or others. I do hope there will be more time now to add a few things so every now and then again, compared to the last two years. There are still a few unfinished things which need completion so if you find any stories in between September 2010 and January 2009 it only meant that I had the time to finish them. Next week we will be in Hainan (where it is 20 degrees warmer at least) and so far in the days off we’ve been visiting Chengdu, Datong, Taiyuan, Tianjin and surroundings as I can no longer remember all the names of places i’ve visited anymore. Maybe I’ll add some entries on those in the near future. Also the photoalbum which wasn’t working has been repaired and later on the password script will be modified as well. These all stopped working with tests on this environment little over a year ago but never took the time to fix them. So if you still have your username and password you can log on again. No new photos where added either so at this moment there isn’t nothing new to be seen. I will add all the photos of the last three months before modifying the password change script so when you receive an e-mail the photo’s have been uploaded as well.
All posts by Eugene Dullaard
Found what I need (I guess)
It’s called an Archos 70. A 7 inch tablet with capacitive screen and multitouch. Runs on a modified Android 2.1 Eclair system (but advertised as 2.2 Froyo, which still needs to come in the form of an update). It’s pocketable, it should fit in the inside pocket of my jacket and weights about 300 grams which is more than half the weight of the (bigger) iPad. Something similar could be said about the price as well. Compared to the Galaxy Tab it does not have 3G, the iPad I had here didn’t have it either and for the purposes I use I doubt if I need it. And it has less memory on board: 8Gb instead of 16Gb. It allows for tons of tinkering, so maybe more posts will follow in the near future. It should be waiting for me by the time I come back in the Netherlands. Can’t wait, but have to…. it’s ordered but it has not shipped yet and that might take a while as it’s sold out and backorder info tells me it will be halfway December before it will be shipped. On the downside, no Harbour Master……. Maybe I just have to settle for Angry Birds.
My own thoughts on the iPad
During my stay here in China I was asked to look at an iPad a friend of the family had bought because she could watch movies on it. Thought it was a kind of expensive as a video player, especially here in China where dedicated video players are dirt cheap and play just about anything opposed to the standard video player in the Apple.
But it allowed me my first experience with the device and coming from Apple it is at least a solid high quality build product. But after trying it out for a few weeks I decided not to buy one myself.
Found it a bit heavy and to big to carry around, especially as I normally don’t like to carry around bags and such. I had a number of issues it couldn’t find the WiFi Access Point where my laptop had no issues but tend to think this is simply caused by the product itself as due to the way you hold it the antenna aren’t always aligned that well. With a laptop this less of an issue. Found iTunes a horrible product, and was not able to share uploaded data between applications, it seems to have restrictions in this. The video files uploaded from an iPhone was playable only on the onboard videoplayer, a later installed VNC player couldn’t use it, it had to be uploaded again. Bummer. Would have liked a folder structure to access the data I want to access. It’s not just negative, loved the capacitive screen with multitouch. Found Harbour Master, eventhough it was the freeware version utterly addictive. Web browsing was a breeze, although Flash is missing I noticed.
Also Sunny enjoyed it, so now it’s a thing of finding a tablet which is the size of Samsungs Galaxy Tab, which is the only other one I saw besides huge amounts of local Chinese things with the older resistive screens. The experience isn’t great once you’ve used a capacitive screen and after some didn’t want to start in the shop I decided those aren’t for me. When I have time I’ll see what else is on the market on 7 inch tablets, so my arm doesn’t start to hurt when using it for longer periods. I don’t need 3G either and fail to see why the Samsung device is so expensive, you would almost by an Apple for just that reason alone……..
So long and thanks for all the fish
Well had to do something during the daily commutes on Beijing’s subway and the weekly visit towards Sunny’s grandma. That something was reading and for those that read science fiction might already guessed which books they where…… Michael Douglas’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series…… I’ve had five (electronic) books in total and the last one is just finished. For those that like scifi it makes good reading, the title for the post comes from the 4th book. On on a totally different subject. Dad, congratulations with your birthday……. See you in one and half months…….
Wii has company
It’s called a PS3, and as the new slim models are coming out the old ‘fat’ models go on sale and that’s where I got mine. Bought it with two controllers so together with Sunny we can play Little Big Planet which is one of the additional games that I bought with it. Sure beats the Wii in graphics etc. etc. but we will see which one of the consoles will be used most in the near future. For Sunny I think it stays with the Wii due to the type of games on there, I will probably use the PS3 a bit more. The only thing that will stay with the Wii is the Guitar Hero setup as I would like to have the full kit one of these days and that gives us two guitars to play around with.
1st of April
ǝɯıʇ ǝǝɹɟ ɥɔnɯ ooʇ ǝʌɐɥ noʎ sıɥʇ pɐǝɹ noʎ ɟı
Number Nine
Before my Mazda will act up a little bit to much I thought it would be wise to trade it in for something else. After about 310.000km and close to 16 years of service it’s time for something else. So looked around for a Mazda 6 and on that search came accross something else. Not a Mazda but a 2005 Honda Accord Tourer. This car is bigger then the Mazda, but just as reliable; at least that is what I hope, and cheaper to get. After driving it I was sold, a very nice driver indeed. The size of the car will need some getting used too as moving from a dinky toy to the largest car Honda can deliver is quite a difference. With the rear seats down I can lie in the back without bending my knees, so that is about 1.8m of space….. As I buy my cars second hand you cannot have the choice of colour as you would with a new one and black is not the first colour that comes to mind but it will do. Hopefully it will last me just as long as the Mazda did which I drove for 13 years.
The previous eight cars are:
Some of these I only drove for a couple of weeks, as they where sold. After number 5 the pricetag for the cars I choose went up and selling them didn’t occur anymore and they where traded in on a frequent basis until the MX-5. It took only 6 years to go through the first seven cars on the list, the rest was taken by the MX-5. And this will be the car I will miss the most of all of them, the only other car with really fond memories is the 323 GTXi, which was a really nice driver as well. If in the future I will have a house including a garage I think I will buy a convertible again, but instead of one that can be used as a daily driver rather something with more classical lines, most likely a replica. Cobra’s come to mind as there are plenty to go around even in the Netherlands, but an Abigail or Marlene would be awesome, those are the most beautiful cars I’ve seen so far. Abigail would be an Auburn 852 Boattail Speedster and Marlene a Mercedes 500K Roadster, both originally build in the 1930’s. Another cheaper alternative would be a JBA Falcon which also has similar lines, but there are no left hand driven cars in existence as far as I know. The JBA is build in the UK, where the other two are mostly build in the United States.
Pics from the previous site
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- Windmill in ‘Zaanse Schans’, one of our countries most popular tourist destinations. Picture taken in 2005 when we visited Zaanse Schans.
- Pagoda in a park near the office at that time, as the business unit moved to another location later on. Taken in 2006.
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- Statue of an elephant in Black Bamboo Garden, Beijing. Taken during our 2006 holiday.
- Picture taken in the Stone Forest near Kunming in Yunnan Province, China, during our holiday in 2006 in that region.
Broken window
Couple of weeks ago my girlfriend decided it would be nice to start the car for me but forgot one thing….. I never park on with the handbrake applied. I always leave it in gear especially now the car doesn’t drive that much anymore. My current employer supplied me with another car for all work related stuff, I only use the Mazda for private rides and occasionally also for work as it needs to drive so every now and then to stay in shape. So as the car was parked backward the gear was still applied in reverse and as soon as she started the car jumped backward and due to it’s height parked itself on the curb and the rear tires just outside the pond behind the parking lot.
She got lucky the curb was high enough otherwise my car would be swimming together with the ducks and Sunny behind the wheel. Doubt it will sink much as the water is about 20 – 30 cm deep, however to get it out would be a different matter as it will suck itself tight in the mud.
However it did came with one cost which was the passenger side window. When this happened she left the door open and it hit a tree when the car came to a rather abrupt standstill and as the window runs free on an open two seater that didn’t survive the impact. The door itself was not affected thankfully.
After getting it off the curb with a tow, I’ve driven it towards my parents so it was parked somewhere dry until the replacement window would arrive. The bottom was okay maybe a few bits of coating but that is it. The exhaust pipe is running inside a tunnel together with the drive shaft and the beam that bolds the differential to the gearbox, in that way it is girlfriend proof.
When reparing the window we’ve found out the car is getting old as the wires moving the window up and down broke after moving the window up and down a couple of times and they needed to be replaced as well.
Guess this was a nice lesson that in reality not everybody applies a handbrake compared to what you learn with your driving lessons. I simply down want to let the brake pads rust onto the discs when it’s standing there for a while. She now knows and I guess this was a valuable lesson for when she gets her driving license….. In the meantime I do keep my car keys with me at all times……
307313 – Time for a new adventure
Don’t worry, still have the car. I just changed jobs, this was the last day with my current employer and tomorrow will be the start with a the new one. So no more travelling abroad and the amount of spare time will also increase a lot as travel time will be cut down considerably. The new job will keep me closer to home which is a nice thing since traffic in Holland is becoming more and more of a disaster during rush hour. It will save me about 1.5 to 2 hours per day. Makes Sunny a lot happier as well, the same with travelling abroad as she doesn’t like to be alone in our apartment. How this new adventure will unfold I do not know yet. Different environment, different challenges……. Tell you later, I guess.