Canghuixu

Zhongguancun before dawn, February 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 19:09:00 +0000

I was just in Beijing. I stayed at the Yanshan Hotel in Zhongguancun. One morning I woke up well before dawn and went out to take some pictures. I basically made a loop, following Kexueyuan South Road from No. 3 Ring Road up to Zhichun Road, then turned left and went along Zhichun Road to Zhongguancun Boulevard, then back down to the hotel. I was shooting with my Canon S95. Once again, my SLR remained in its bag.

The following are a few of my favorites, and have been included in my gallery of all-time favorite photos of Zhongguancun from my various visits. The gallery with all of my shots from this visit is here: http://www.canghuixu.com/China/Beijing-Zhongguancun/Zhongguancun-at-night/21609941_2j2Z9X

Peking University before dawn, February 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:22:00 +0000

I was in Beijing last week for a meeting. One morning, I made it up to the campus of Peking University before dawn to take some pictures. It was very cold, so I ended up going through 3 batteries in something like an hour. I think I nearly ended up with frostbite on my fingers. Anyway, I think the results made it worthwhile. I added the pictures to my existing gallery of night photos from the Peking University campus. Here are a few of my favorites...

Facebook privacy for subscriptions... FAIL

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:11:00 +0000

Recently, I was dabbling with Facebook subscriptions.

As far as I can tell, even if a user configures his or her settings so that subscriptions are supposed to be visible to 'Only me', and the list of people they subscribe to is no longer displayed on their own profile, their name and a link to their profile will still display publicly at the profile of whoever they subscribed to, in the list of subscribers.

Moreover, lists of subscribers are always public. In my own experiments, once I changed the setting to allow people to subscribe to my page, I couldn't find any way to prevent my list of subscribers from being displayed publicly.

To me, this seems like a flaw. If I have checked 'Only me' for who can see who I can subscribe to, not only should my subscriptions not be displayed on my own profile, but my name shouldn't show up as a subscriber on the profile of whoever I have subscribed to. My name showing up on the list of subscribers on another profile sort of defeats the purpose of 'Only me'.

At the very least, Facebook should warn users that even if they choose 'Only me' for who can see who they subscribe to, it only prevents the list from being displayed on their own profile, and doesn't prevent their name from being include in the list of subscribers at the profile they are subscribed to.

This seems to work differently than the privacy settings for my list of Friends. As far as I can tell, if I have set my list of friends to 'Only me', not only is my list of friends not displayed on my own profile, but I am not visible in my friends' lists of friends.

Meanwhile, I still can't figure how privacy settings for Likes, Subscriptions, and so forth apply to the information that is displayed in other users' Tickers. Oh well.

Overhaul of my Smugmug site

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:22:00 +0000

I just overhauled my Smugmug site. I began by making all of my galleries smugmug stretchy so that the display would take advantage of all the available space in the browser window. As a result, photos and thumbnails now display much larger, and the overall appearance has much more visual impact. I already noticed in the day or so that the change has been in place that people are hanging around the site longer. I decided that I could take best advantage of the use of the full screen by further reducing the amount of space devoted to my banner. I redid the banner to make it text only, confined to two lines along the top of the screen, with only the most important links. I moved the search box and the Facebook 'like' box down to the footer. Take a look and let me know what you think: http://www.canghuixu.com

An appearance by one of my photos on a tour company site

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 18:48:00 +0000

A Chinese tour company site has embedded one of my photos from the Travelator in Hong Kong Central in a web page introducing the Travelator is the system of escalators that move people from Mid-Levels to Central and back. The traffic from the link turned up when I was inspecting Smugmug referrer stats. It is definitely worth checking out if you visit HK, if only because the area it passes through has become a popular place for bars and restaurants.

Here is the website: http://d.lotour.com/zhongxiqu/yule-32613.html

As you can see, the photo that they have embedded includes my watermark.

Here is the gallery that includes the original photo: http://www.canghuixu.com/China/Hong-Kong/Central-to-Mid-levels

Here is a direct link to the photo: http://www.canghuixu.com/China/Hong-Kong/Central-to-Mid-levels/10512194_qvUxs/1/729868404_mqbN7#729868852_Dv8hX

And here's the photo:

Updated maps for Hong Kong and Shanghai photo galleries

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 21:20:00 +0000

I updated my Google Maps to include markers for the rest of my galleries from Hong Kong and Shanghai. Click on any of the markers in the maps to be taken to one of the galleries.

Here is Hong Kong...

View Canghuixu Photos in a larger map

And here is Shanghai...

View Canghuixu Photos in a larger map
And while I'm at it, a map view of all my China galleries...

View Canghuixu Photos in a larger map

Night scenes of Minpu No. 2 bridge in Shanghai Minhang, and nearby areas 上海闵行闵浦二桥的夜景

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 03:52:00 +0000

I spent the summer in Shanghai. I ended up spending a lot of time in Minhang, near Jiangchuan and Dongchuan Roads. One evening I had some extra time and I walked down to the Pudong river and took the ferry across the river and back, and had some great views of the No. 2 Minpu bridge. The full gallery is here: http://www.canghuixu.com/China/Shanghai/No-2-Minpu-Bridge-Minhang.

Here are some highlights...

On the way down to the bridge...

Updated map of California photo galleries

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 20:56:00 +0000

I just went back and added place markers and links to most of my California galleries. Browse the Google map below to find galleries...

View Canghuixu Photos in a larger map

Wujiaochang, Shanghai at night (五角场的夜景)

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 04:47:00 +0000

I processed and uploaded some pictures from some walks around Wujiaochang in Shanghai. Wujiaokou is an intersection of five streets, and it seems to be emerging as a major center in that part of Shanghai. There is a large, submerged pedestrian plaza in the center of the traffic circle, with spoke-like walkways that emanate to the various plazas and department stores that are being built around it. It is quite nice.

I took the pictures during a walk from the Crowne Plaza Fudan to Wujiaochang and back, so there are some pictures mixed in of stores on Handan Road and Guoquan Road.

The full gallery is here:

http://www.canghuixu.com/China/Shanghai/Fudan-and-Wujiaochang-area

Some favorite pictures from the gallery...

Some street vendors on Guoquan Road...

The submerged pedestrian plaza at the center of the Wujiaochang traffic circle...

One of the tunnels emanating outward from the submerged plaza...

Another shot of street vendors on Guoquan Road...

Data services on China Mobile in Shanghai... Android Wifi tethering, VPN service etc.

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 06:04:00 +0000

I'm in Shanghai for the summer. I've been using China Mobile for my cell. I switched out my T-Mobile SIM card and put in an China Mobile M-Zone SIM card that I bought a couple years ago in Beijing. I talked to someone at the 10086 help line and they confirmed that even though I bought my card in Beijing, the data plan worked the same wherever I was in China. In other words, the 500mb I signed up for was 500mb, wherever I was in China.

One general observation I have re data services on China Mobile is that they are much, much better in downtown Shanghai than in the suburbs. When I am downtown, which is probably where most people reading this will spend most of their time, the data speeds are comparable with what I get when I am in LA, even though I think here I am limited to 2G, whereas in LA I have T-Mobile's '4G' service. When I am out here in the distant suburbs, however, things are much spottier. My phone signal is strong, as it is everywhere in China, but the data speeds are much, much lower than downtown, and data is much more prone to interruption.

At least for the time being, my China Mobile data service supports the VPN I have configured my Android phone for. Downtown, the VPN connections tend to be rock solid. Out here in the suburbs, however, the VPN connection tends to be much less robust. The connection often drops after only a few minutes. Sometimes I can't connect at all. Given that VPN works pretty reliably downtown, I suspect this has more to do with the poor quality of the local data services than anything else.

I am pleased to report that I am able to use WiFi tethering with my Android phone with China Mobile data services, at least for short periods of time. I wasn't sure how well that would work since I thought not all carriers were too happy about tethering. Again, this generally seems to work much better when I am downtown than when I am out here in the suburbs. Out here in the suburbs, the connection via WiFi tethering is pretty slow, and unstable. Sometimes the connection drops and the phone loses data services completely. So I really can't really use the WiFi tethering as anything more than an emergency backup when my residential DSL is flaking out. At one point this morning I actually had a VPN connection running on the machine that was tethered to the phone, but that didn't last very long.

A few notes re data plans on China Mobile, at least with M-Zone. One is that you manage them via SMS messages to the China Mobile service number, 10086. I have never found a comprehensive list of the commands that you can issue via SMS, but here are some important ones. At least if you have service through Beijing China Mobile, you can initiate a data plan by texting a message of the form KTSJLLxx where xx is a number to 10086. I think KTSJLL stands for 开通数据流两. To get a 500 Mb/month service costing 50 rmb/month, for example, you would text KTSJLL50. I think, though I haven't confirmed it, that KTSJLL100 gets you 2gb/month for 100 RMB, and KTSJLL200 gets you 5gb/month for 200RMB. According to this page, there are different commands if you are signed up through Shanghai China Mobile, or somewhere else. At least if you have Beijing China Mobile service, to check your data usage for the month, text CXQTC to 10086. You're only allowed to check your data usage three times a day. It may be a different command if you have service through Shanghai China Mobile.

One thing to note is that any data plan you sign up for on China Mobile starts at the beginning of the following month, so if you send the command to initiate in the middle of the month, you will still be paying by the byte until the end of the month, which may drain your account pretty quickly if you have background data turned on. My Android phone is a data pig if I have background data turned on, so I used up a lot of money on data charges at the end of June before the plan I signed up for kicked in on July 1. Unfortunately I only signed up for 500Mb/month, and since I realized I was burning through that pretty quickly when I was out and about the town, I have learned to turn off background data when I am out unless I really need it. I wish I had spent the money and signed up for the 2gb or better yet 5gb plan.

Another handy SMS for 10086 is YE. That returns the balance remaining on your prepaid account.

To cancel the plan, text QXSJLLxx to 10086, where xx is the amount of the plan you originally signed up for. So for me to cancel my barely adequate 500mb/month plan that costs 50rmb/month, I would text QXSJLL50.

One thing I would like to add is that I am pretty impressed with China Mobile customer service via the 10086 number. Every time something comes up and I need to talk to someone, I get through to a Chinese- or English-speaking representative pretty quickly. And the people I talk to generally know what they're talking about. This is a real change from the US, where talking to a human being requires being on hold for half an hour, only to find out that whoever you talk to is working from a script and can't function if there is any departure from the script and you have to wait half an hour while they bump you up to someone who knows what they are talking about.

One other observation I have is that whatever the rules are re showing ID to get a SIM card, they don't seem to be enforced very well. I bought my M-Zone card a few years ago in Beijing at a shop and never showed any ID of any form to anyone. I also bought a SIM card here in Shanghai without showing any ID. However on that SIM card, when I turned on the data services, I did receive a text message saying that I should go to the local Service Center with my ID. So maybe they only enforce an ID requirement for data services.

The historic canal town Luzhi, Jiangsu (江苏水乡古镇甪直), June 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 09:10:00 +0000

In June, I spent a few days in the lovely and historical canal town of Luzhi, which is in Jiangsu, between Suzhou and Kunshan. I was lucky enough to stay in a house in the reasonably well preserved part of the old town, close to the canals and old buildings. I had a few opportunities to get out and walk around with my camera. I put a selection of my favorite pictures from Luzhi into a gallery. These favorites are drawn from three galleries, one from my boat ride, one from some nighttime walks, and one from daytime walks. I have included a few of them below, along with links to individual galleries.

I was shooting with my new Canon S95. I was generally very impressed, especially with its low-light capability. I find that as I get used to it, I am pretty much leaving my SLR at home. Obviously the SLR takes much better pictures, but it is also heavier, and attracts more attention. While carrying an SLR around a famous and well-photographed area like the Bund in Shanghai doesn't attract any attention, using it in a quiet neighborhood where there are few tourists with it sometimes attracts more attention than I would like.

My favorite pictures were from a walk through Luzhi in the evening:

I also took some pictures during a boat ride:

And finally some pictures from just walking around...

Back from Wordpress...

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 08:28:00 +0000

I came back from Wordpress. It didn't seem to be as accessible from China as I was hoping, so I decided to return. Wordpress is impressive in many ways, but I am used to the Blogger interface, as so without the incentive of being accessible in China to lure me, I returned to what was familiar to me.

Moving to Wordpress...

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 20:16:00 +0000

I'm going to let this blog go dormant, and start blogging at a Wordpress site: http://journal.canghuixu.com. Please update your bookmarks.

The main reason I am moving is that I have heard, though not confirmed, that Wordpress blogs are available in China. I guess I will find out soon enough. I don't have any complains about Blogger/Blogspot, but since China isn't playing nice with various Google services, I thought the switch to Wordpress was worth a try given my plan to spend the summer in China.

Thoughts on why people are losing interest in Facebook, and how Facebook could tweak its user interface to keep users

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 20:33:00 +0000

Recently there have been some stories claiming that Facebook is losing users, for example, this story on CNN

I would also be interested in seeing what is happening with activity per user, not just estimates of the total numbers of accounts. My own sense, admittedly largely impressionistic based on what I see among my friends, is that many account have 'gone dark' in that users are no longer logging in, or log in occasionally to check out what their friends are doing but almost never post anything themselves. Right now out of well over two hundred people on my list of friends, I would guess that not more than a dozen or two are active users, and there may be a few more dozen who post something every once in a while, and that the rest are dormant, either because they no longer log in, or because they log in but no longer post.

My own thought is that along with Facebook's well-known and really annoying penchant for adding new features that abruptly release personal information and require tinkering with privacy controls to reign back in, another key problem is that the user experience is largely unmanageable. Facebook's interface seems designed to pressure use to share everything with everyone, and connect with everybody.

I am sure that people would like and use more frequently a service that made it easy to compartmentalize their online presence, sharing some things with colleagues at work, other things with family, other things with classmates, and so forth. Basically, Facebook makes it too difficult to direct status updates or shares to particular groups of friends, and segregate these different groups from each other. While it offers the ability to create lists of friends, those lists are not very useful. At some point in the past I took advantage of the ability to create lists of friends defined by how I knew them, for example, high school classmates, college classmates, and so forth, but right now from a practical standpoint those lists are almost useless. At the web page interface, directing an update to friends on a particular list requires several clicks: first the little padlock, then Custom, then I have to enter the name of the list, then click on specific people, then type the first few characters of the list. And the mobile app doesn't allow any selection of friend lists at all.

I wonder how many people find themselves in the same situation as I am, where there are things they would like to share with particular groups of friends, as they have defined them on lists, but the process for doing so is so cumbersome that they simply don't bother, and restrict themselves to posting only the most innocuous of updates about the weather, a sandwich they just ate, or the price of gas. I often see news articles or videos or other websites I would like to share with specific sets of friends, but I shudder at how cumbersome the process is, and don't even bother.

I would like to be able to designate a small number of my lists as favorites for sharing, for example, "Work", "Family", "College Classmates" so that they would show up immediately when I click on the padlock, along with existing choices like "Everyone" "Friends" "Friends of Friends" etc. This would give me finer control over who I share what with, and make me more likely to update my status. Along these lines, it no longer seems possible, or at least easy, to specify which friends apps share information with.

Along these lines, once I have defined subsets of friends, I would like to be able to click on the name of the list and see a feed based on the updates from people on that list, with a default that if I post any updates while in that view, they will be visible only to the friends in that list. I could have sworn there used to be a feature like this, whereby I could look at updates only for friends on a particular list, but that seems to have disappeared.

Facebook seems to offer a partial remedy with its groups feature, but the drawback of that is that it requires people to join a group. I really don't want to run around organizing groups. I would just like to be able to broadcast to selected subsets of friends, without worrying whether they are in a group or not.

Another admittedly petty annoyance that I have with Facebook is that its People You Might Know feature doesn't have a "No" button that I can click, and will prevent that person from ever being suggested again without actually blocking them. I gave up using the People You Might Know quite a while ago because every time I saw it, I had to wade through a long list of people I didn't recognize, or who I really had no interest in, before I came across someone that I actually wanted to friend. I found that I can prevent people from being suggested by blocking them, but that is a cumbersome procedure. I can't for the life of me figure out why they don't offer a feature like this, since presumably it would increase the efficiency of help them train their algorithms. LinkedIn has a feature like this and it makes the People You May Know feature there much more useful. I can plow through the list of people every once in a while and cull out the people I don't know, so at any given time the new people it is suggesting are more likely to be people I actually know. This is related to my general complaint about the Facebook user interface being unmanageable, and aimed at getting everyone to connect with everyone. Why keep suggesting the same people to me if I have passed them over dozens of times already?

Oh well. I guess I'll stick with Facebook until something better comes along, but in the meantime, update less often. I really think they would be well-served by imposing a moratorium on adding new features, and back up and spend some time cleaning up the user interface to make it easier to compartmentalize our presence.

Google Music Beta

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Sat, 28 May 2011 16:47:00 +0000

I received a Google Music Beta invite earlier in the week. Of course I accepted it, and installed the helper on the machine where I keep my collection.

I was interested in seeing how well it would perform, given the size of my collection. I have a large collection of music, about 18,000 tracks or so forth, all of it acquired legitimately. I had a large CD collection already, which I went through methodically and ripped disc by disc, and then I have been buying mp3 albums at eMusic and Amazon since I stopped buying CDs. The current limit for Google Music Beta is supposed to be 20,000 tracks.

The helper that I downloaded and installed began scouring my Music directory and uploading tracks about four days ago, and it just finished a few minutes ago. I think it was about 150Gb or so of music. I was uploading from a machine at work that has a very high speed connection. I suspect that at home, the upload would have taken much longer, since at home we have awful ATT DSL.

The upload seemed to go smoothly, and as far as I can tell, everything is there. The web interface for Google Music Beta is nice, and the Android app also seems to be basic but functional.

A couple of things came to my attention as limitations.

First, Google Music Beta doesn't seem to make use of anything but the basic tags for artist, genre, album, track title and track number. I have a large collection of classical music with additional details like composer, which is handy in Mediamonkey and other managers that recognize those tags. I have also assigned star ratings to all my tracks, so that I can make up auto-playlists for favorite music by genre or artist. I'd like to see some way of accessing all the other tagging information on the tracks.

Second, Google Music Beta doesn't seem to import any of the M3U playlists in the folders it scours. This morning when I went running and wanted to try out Google Music Beta, I had to quickly throw together an Exercise playlist in the web interface since it didn't import my existing m3u playlist, which was exported from an auto-playlist in Mediamonkey. I have several other playlists based on my favorite music that I would like to import to Google Music Beta but right now I don't see how to do that. Oh well. Fortunately, creating and managing playlists in Google Music Beta is very straightforward, basically drag and drop. I thought Google Music Beta had the easiest playlist management of any of the web interfaces for music I have tried, including Audiogalaxy and Subsonic that stream from the computer, and Rhapsody and MOG which are cloud based.

As I said, I went running this morning with a hastily assembled Exercise playlist, and I was pleased with the results. I have an HTC G2 on T-Mobile. The stream was very robust, as robust as when I am streaming from Subsonic. I had mixed experiences with many of the other streaming services.

There seem to be some odd glitches with the players. In the web interface, it was easy to set a song, album, or playlist, or whatever to play, but I couldn't find a pause or stop control, so to stop the music I had to close the browser tab. Maybe I'm missing something. On the Android app, going through the playlist on shuffle, sometimes it repeated tracks until I hit the 'fast forward' to skip to the next track.

Overall this looks pretty solid and robust and well thought-out. I may still continue with Subsonic since I invested so much time in figuring it out, and now that I have it figured out it works quite well, but of the cloud based services I have tried so far, Google Music Beta seems to be the most robust in terms of the stream, and has the cleanest interfaces. As mentioned above it could use some additional features, but I assume they'll be adding things.

(9/11/2011 update)

I haven't been using Google Music Beta very much recently. The main problem I was having was that on my HTC G2, the app became increasingly flaky. For one thing, it didn't seem to play well with the original Music app that came with the phone, which I think was the default Android app. Somehow it often became confused between the two of them. In some cases it crashed the phone and brought down other apps, such as Cardiotrainer. Also, the inability to import M3u playlists, or make use of any of the other Id3/id4 tags such as ratings that I had added to the music in my library was a downer. I spent a lot of time rating my music to identify a subset of a few thousand tracks that I really, really liked, and there was no way to make use of that in Google Music Beta, at least no easy way via an m3u playlist. There might have been some way of doing something in two steps, first by important the playlist into iTunes, but when I tried it, the results weren't pretty.

I assume Google will keep working with Music Beta and it will eventually have a winner, but right now I'm not seeing very much progress. I would have thought that with something in Beta there would be frequent updates and so forth, but I don't remember the app being updated at all the whole time I used it.

Some more appearances by my pictures...

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 22:16:00 +0000

Every once in a while I check the Smugmug referrers stats to see whether any of my photos are being embedded anywhere. Today I found a couple more...

The Beijing Hash House Harriers used one of my Nanluoguxiang photos in a post announcing an upcoming late night run. Here is the photo from its original gallery:

And a blog entry in China included one of my pictures from Valley of Fire State Park in a set of pictures featuring scenes of environmental degradation. Of course Valley of Fire State Park was always the way it is, and wasn't the result of man-made environmental degradation, but I guess the scene looked striking enough that the author of the post imagined it as what the future might hold... Here is the photo from its original gallery...

Blog and microblog at Sina.com

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:36:00 +0000

I recently set up a Chinese language blog and microblog at Sina.com.

I did this was mainly because I noticed that my photo site was getting an enormous amount of traffic directed from various Chinese search engines, most notably Sohu and Baidu, and I wanted visitors from China who found my site that way to be able to stay up to date. As you probably know, Twitter and Facebook are largely inaccessible in China, as are blogs like this one hosted at blogger.com. Right now I am using my Sina blog and microblog mainly to post updates about my galleries. Perhaps at some point I may translate some of my software reviews, or other random posts.

Setting up my account was pretty straightforward. I suppose the main issue that will confront anyone curious about setting up a blog or microblog at Sina.com is that the user interface is in Chinese. If you can't read Chinese, you're going to be out of luck. Though you might be able to muddle through with Google Translate.

As far as I could tell, setting up an account from outside China didn't require a Chinese mobile phone number, or entry of a personal identification number. At least I was never asked for either. When I dabbled with setting up an account last time I was in China, it did ask for a mobile phone number, and a personal identification number. I guess they have different criteria according to whether you are inside or outside of China.

The user interface for the Sina.com blog and microblog is pretty slick. I like it. The blog is especially good for sharing photos because you can upload lots of them at a time. When you click on the link to upload a picture, a dialog box comes up that gives an opportunity to upload or link to as many as 20 or so photos at a time. When I want to write a post introducing a new gallery, and feature a 4-5 of my favorite photos from the new gallery, it is very easy to use. The user interface is generally quite slick and easy to use. I find it as easy to use as the blogger.com user interface, even though it is in Chinese, and I am not a native speaker of Chinese.

Sina.com's blog interface also displays the number of visitors to the blog. If people are logged into Sina.com when they visit, it also displays thumbnails of their profile portraits, with most recent visitors listed first. The count of total visitors doesn't seem entirely reliable since I noticed that even when I am logged in, it seems to count my own page loads.

Sina.com's microblog (新浪微博) is also pretty slick. They really have it configured nicely for sharing individual photos. Also I seem to have configured my Sina blog to automatically post to the microblog whenever there are new entries. Sina.com also provides a very nice Android app for accessing a microblog that allows for sharing of pictures and so forth directly from the phone's gallery. The app shows up alongside Facebook and other apps where you can post a photo directly.

Overall, if you can read Chinese, and for whatever reason want to have a blog and/or microblog that is easily accessible in China, the Sina services do seem to work pretty well.

I don't have too many followers yet, but we'll see.

Suggestions for Washington, DC at end of March?

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 00:29:00 +0000

I'll be in Washington, DC at the end of the month. I like Washington. It's fun, historic, and exciting. I have always enjoyed my trips there. Unfortunately, my visits are usually very short, and fairly busy, with lots of meetings, and little time to explore. I don't really feel like I know the city well. I'd be grateful for suggestions for neighborhoods or locations that are interesting to photograph at night, and I suppose are safe. Right now I don't have too much in the way of photographs for DC. Indeed, I think all I have posted are pictures from the Metro, from a trip last year:http://blog.canghuixu.com/2010/03/washington-metro-march-2010.html

Also, it looks like I may be free on the evening of 4/1, or at least part of that evening, so I would be grateful for suggestions for things to do then... performances, gallery openings, happenings, shindigs, hoe-downs, soirees, whatever...

Beijing and Shanghai, February 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 03:53:00 +0000

I was just in Beijing and Shanghai again. I was struck by how much better the food in Shanghai was. Indeed, I was struck by how in general, Shanghai was so much nicer than Beijing. The service at the shops and restaurants was better. It was generally tidier and more orderly. The traffic was better. And yet, for all of that, I guess I retain an affection for Beijing.

In Beijing, I spent one evening in a hotel in Nanluoguxiang, Courtyard 7, which I have already discussed. I walked around a bit in the evening, and then again the next morning, and took pictures. I already uploaded a gallery containing my evening pictures of Nanluoguxiang, and another gallery with my before dawn pictures of Gulou East Street, including the Bell and Drum Towers. If you want, you can cut to the chase, and go directly to a small selection of favorites from both galleries. I was actually in Beijing for several days, but the other days I was in Zhongguancun, and was too busy to get out and take pictures.

Here are a few of my favorites from those two galleries...

A bicycle parked on Gulou East Street...

A snack stand in Nanluoguxiang....

Another shot of Gulou East Street, before dawn..

Nanluoguxiang...

I also spent one evening in Shanghai. I stayed at the Jinjiang Hotel, on Maoming Road. I didn't have time in the evening to get out and take pictures, but I did wake up before dawn and walk around a bit and take pictures. Here are a couple favorites...

Taxis in Beijing

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 22:02:00 +0000

A recent experience with taxis in Beijing reminded me that I wanted to share some advice re taxis there: avoid taxis that have been sitting and waiting for fares in lines at the major hotels, or at other sites, like the entrances of stations. Drivers sitting in hotel and other lines have typically spent a lot of time sitting there waiting, and they generally want to make their wait worthwhile. Some of the ones who hang out in hotel lines seem to specialize in trying to rip off travelers. To the extent I have had bad experiences with taxis in Beijing, it has always been with drivers from hotel lines. If they can get away with it, they may avoid turning on the meter, and then just make up an outrageous fare at the destination. If they quote you a fare, it is almost definitely a rip-off. About the only time when taking a taxi that has been waiting in a hotel or other line is not a mistake is if you need to go somewhere far away, like the airport. In those situations, the driver will typically conclude that the fare will be worth the wait, and may run the meter and not try to rip you off. Quite often drivers who have been waiting in line will simply refuse you if you want to go anywhere that doesn't represent a substantial fare for them.

Accordingly, it is almost always worthwhile to avoid headaches with drivers by walking a bit from the hotel and flagging down a taxi. In twenty years of regular travel to Beijing, I've never, ever had a problem with a taxi that I hailed on the street. They have always run their meter without being prompted, and not played any other tricks. Since I speak Chinese, they generally enjoy talking as well. About the only experiences I've had with regular taxis in Beijing that came anywhere close to being problematic was that sometimes I have hailed down a driver from one of the suburban counties like Fengtai who had just dropped someone off, and generally didn't know the city very well. In those cases I was able to give them directions to the destination, so I am have been in the unusual situation of being a foreigner and explaining to a taxi driver how to get to Peking University, or Yuan Ming Yuan, or Sanlitun, or Houhai. In these cases the drivers were conscientious enough to confirm with me that I could direct them to the destination before they accepted the trip. If you have your destination written out in Chinese, but you don't speak Chinese and can't provide a phone number for the destination, and the driver of a taxi you have hailed refuses to take you, there is a strong chance that he is from one of the outlying counties and doesn't know how to get you where you want to go.

The reason for this rant is that I was recently in Beijing, and for the first time in quite a while stayed at a hotel downtown, with the 2nd Ring Road. I decided to try the light rail from the airport, and took it to Dongzhimen. The light rail worked find, but once I arrived at Dongzhimen, I found there was no official taxi line, just a bunch of drivers parked nearby quoting me absolutely ridiculous fares, like 100 yuan to Nanluoguxiang. When I told them I could have come from the airport for that fare, they tried to negotiate by offering to make the trip for only 50. I ended up walking about 30m down the street and hailing a taxi. Accordingly, unless you speak Chinese and are willing to walk a bit with your luggage to hail a taxi, I would strongly advise against taking the light rail downtown.

Courtyard 7 in Nanluoguxiang, Beijing (北京南锣鼓巷里七号院)

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 21:49:00 +0000

I was just in Beijing for a short trip. I'll write about that in a bit, and provide links to the associated galleries. The highlight of my trip was a night at the Courtyard 7 hotel in Nanluoguxiang. I wouldn't normally write about a hotel, but this stay was such a rewarding and unusual experience that I decided to write a post about it.

The Courtyard 7 is an old courtyard home (siheyuan or 四合院) in the Nanluoguxiang hutong neighborhood that has been converted to a small hotel. What is remarkable about it is that they have done an excellent job of preserving the original architecture and general feel, but have also managed to include all the amenities you would want from a hotel, most notably a nice bathroom in the room, and a decent restaurant. I had read about the hotel on the web and was skeptical before I showed up that they really could have preserved the look and atmosphere of a siheyuan and still made it habitable. But whoever did this, really pulled it off and did a nice job.

The hotel is fairly easy to find if you study the map on their web page beforehand. It was pretty easy for me to get out of the taxi at the north entrance to Nanluoguxiang (南锣鼓巷北口) and walk south on Nanluoguxiang for 100m or so and then turn right at the first alley, Qiangulouyuan (前鼓楼苑). One easy way of identifying the intersection at which to turn is that there is a Korean restaurant in a relatively modern building, Saveurs de Koree, at one corner. It was about 40m down the alley on the right.

Here is a picture of the entrance:

Another shot of the entrance, that provides a better view of the buildings on the other side of the alley...

One of the interior courtyards. The restaurant where they offer breakfast is on the left, and the entrance to the courtyards around which the guestrooms are arranged is on the right...

I stayed in one of the smaller rooms at the back. Way back in the day, these were the rooms occupied by the unmarried daughters of the family. I didn't take pictures of the room, but it was done nicely. The room had a really lovely antique bed. The mattress was firm, but that was fine with me. I guess if they had really wanted to be authentic they would have provided ceramic or stone headrests in lieu of pillows, but they did provide pillows. The bathroom was very nice. They had a very good free WiFi signal in the room.

Overall, the room was a little cramped, without a really good desk or other surface to work on, so it might not be the best choice for a long stay for a business trip, but if you need a base where you can stay while you can explore downtown Beijing, I don't think you could beat this place.

The staff was really nice. I spoke Chinese with them so can't assess their English. The staff were all young people who seemed pretty enthusiastic. Some other guests had small children with them and the young ladies working at the restaurant really seemed to like them and give them a lot of attention.

The room rate was very reasonable. I booked the room on Travelocity. It was much cheaper than any of the business hotels in the CBD. For the price, the experience was really remarkable.

Another nice feature of the hotel is the location. Nanluoguxiang is an interesting little hutong neighborhood that has become home to a lot of interesting little restaurants, shops, and bars. Sure it is a little touristy and not really 'authentic', but I really don't know what is authentic. It is certainly much nicer, smaller-scale, and generally low-key than Houhai. And from the hotel you can walk fairly easily to Houhai, and other major sites are a short walk or taxi ride away.

If you need to get here from the airport, I would strongly advise you take a taxi from the official line at the airport, rather than taking the light rail to Dongzhimen and hailing a taxi there. I tried the light rail to Dnogzhimen, and that worked fine, but I was disappointed that at Dongzhimen, there was no official taxi line, just a bunch of scamming drivers hanging around the entrance who quoted absolutely ridiculous prices to take me to Nanluoguxiang. Most of them initially said they would do the trip for 100 yuan, which is about what it would have cost to come all the way from the airport. I had to walk about 30 yards with my luggage to get away from these scammers and hail a regular taxi. The metered fare was something like 12 or 13 yuan.

Experience using the HTC G2 with China Mobile M-Zone

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 20:24:00 +0000

I brought my new HTC G2 to China with me. As usual, T-Mobile was very easy about unlocking it before I left. All I had to do was call their service number and ask to unlock the phone and they emailed me the code. I actually unlocked the phone before I left by swapping my wife's SIM card in and turning on the phone, which triggered the process to request the unlock code.

When I arrived in China, I popped in my M-Zone SIM from a trip one year ago and I immediately had service.

China Mobile numbers seem to take a really long time to expire. I think way back in the day they used to expire after 6 months of non-use or something, but now they seem to last forever, as long as you have a balance on your account. Basically if you come only occasionally, just make sure to have a generous balance on your phone whenever you leave China for home, and turn off any recurring charges like a data plan, and you should be good next time you come back to China. That has certainly worked for me.

I didn't have data service right away automatically. I called the China Number 10086 help number, which has service in Chinese and English, and talked to someone who explained the different data packages, and I said I wanted the 50 yuan/month plan. The person at the service line sent me a text message with a code, and I forwarded that text message back to 10086, and I was signed up. The key was that the text message included the code KTSJLL50, which signed me up for the 500 megabyte/month plan for 50 RMB/month. I still didn't have service. I called back and talked to someone and they said I had to set CMNET as the APN. Once I did that, I had service. There seem to be several data packages with varying capacities that you selected from by sending a text message: KTSJLL5 is 30mb/month for 5 RMB/month, KTSJLL20 is 150 mb/month for 20 RMB/month, KTSJLL50 is 500 mb/month for 50 RMB/month, KTSJLL100 is 2000 mb/month for 100 RMB/month, and KTSJLL200 is 5000 mb/month for 200 RMB/month. If you sign up for something, and then you will be away from China for a while, make sure to turn off the monthly plan by texting QXZSJC to 10086 before you leave.

At least by default, I didn't have international calling and text messaging either. I called 10086 and they said to turn on international calling, I just had to text KTMYCGC to 10086. On China Mobile, you turn most services on and off by sending text messages to 10086. I did that, and sure enough, I quickly had international calling and text messaging. I dug around on the China Mobile Website and found that to turn off international service, I just need to text GBMYCGC to 10086. And I can check whether I have international service by texting CXMYCGC.

There are also packages for text messages but I haven't looked into them too carefully.

Basically the best way of finding anything out re China Mobile service is to call 10086 and talk to one of the people at the help line, in English or Chinese. The website seems pretty hopeless in terms of being able to find the various codes to send to 10086 to turn services on and off, or instructions for configuring your phone.

One thing I noticed: for whatever reason, my battery drains much more quickly here than it does in the states. I'm not sure why. With only mild use, my battery seems to be nearly dead by late afternoon. I have been taking steps to conserve battery by turning off WiFi except when I am at a hotspot. I turned off syncing on my email accounts, so I just check email manually by refreshing. I don't know if this was the issue, but I did notice the phone had the little syncing symbol up top a lot of the time. I am wondering if the phone was having trouble connecting to Gmail servers from here, and draining the battery while trying to do so.

Android apps that stream music from the cloud: MOG, Rhapsody, Pandora, Spotify

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 21:48:00 +0000

Pandora

This is easily the most robust and stable of ANY of the Android apps that I have used to stream music from the cloud. For that reason alone, I like it a lot. I can listen as long as I like without the music cutting out, skipping, or the app locking up. Pandora even does pretty well when I am doing other things on my phone (a Samsung vibrant) like viewing web pages or sending text messages. And Pandora seems to be very good at what it sets out to do: streaming music from personal radio stations that the user creates by seeding with the names of songs and artists. For each station you create, you can provide additional training by liking or disliking the songs that it comes up with.

It does a great job. If I just want background music with a particular mood for an indefinite amount of time, and I'm not too worried about the specific contents of the playlist, Pandora does the job. I usually use Pandora for music when we have guests, or when I am working, because it takes the thought out of coming up with a playlist. I can just fire it up and leave it going to provide background music for my work, or guests.

In case you are interested in checking out some of the stations I have created, here is my profile at Pandora. Of course, you don't get to pick specific tracks or create playlists on Pandora, the whole point is that you get a personal radio station where you don't know what the next track will be.

Rhapsody

Rhapsody has been around for a while, offering a product that streamed music from the cloud to a PC. I had a subscription a few years back and liked it for listening to music on my PC, but once I figured out how to listen to my music collection across different PCs, I abandoned it. I just tried it again but gave up before I finished the trial period. Rhapsody has a huge collection of music and a pretty good web interface, so it is still easy to find music, build playlists, and save favorites. I gave up however because at least when I tried it, the Android app simply didn't seem very stable. Songs cut out or skipped. The app became sluggish and unresponsive or even locked up when I was trying to navigate. I was surprised that even on the PC client, streaming didn't work as well as I remember it doing in the past. It cut out more often than I remember. So I gave up on Rhapsody for the time being. I might try again in a few months if I hear that the app has been updated.

MOG

Right now I am using Mog to stream music from the cloud. It does everything Rhapsody did, with a cleaner and snappier web interface, and perhaps more importantly, a more stable and robust app. I can listen to music for extended periods of time without Mog skipping or cutting out. My impression is that the audio stream is also much higher quality, at least over a WiFi or 4G connection. I like it so much that now in the office, I plug my Grado headphones into my cell phone and listen to Mog there instead of on my PC.

The app interface also is designed nicely and seems very stable and responsive. It doesn't lock up or become sluggish the way that the Rhapsody interface did. I have used it to listen to music from an exercise playlist while running, with well over an hour at 3G, and it performed flawlessly. I certainly haven't come across anything that seems like a deal-killer yet. There are a few things on the browser interface that I would also like to be able to do on the Android app, like add songs to playlists and so forth, but overall it seems pretty snappy and robust.

I do have some minor quibbles. Like Rhapsody, and I would guess most of these services, it doesn't really handle classical music very well. For whatever reason, it is impossible to search by composer. Artist searches generally turn up the performers, so if you are looking for a composer, you have to hope the composer's name was part of the album title. Then when you favorite the CD, it typically shows up in the artist list under the performer's name, not the composer's name. Also, like Rhapsody, there doesn't seem to be a way to force a search for an exact match, so if for example I want to search for covers of Brazil, I end up with hundreds of tracks that have the word Brazil in the title, but no way of limiting to tracks named Brazil.

(9/11/2011)

I eventually gave up on Mog. For one thing, the app on Android was periodically erratic, for no apparent reason. Also, I guess I finally decided that I didn't like the web interface very much. Somehow, searching for music and adding it to playlists was more complicated than I wanted it to be. Another reason I gave up on Mog was that at the time, there didn't seem to be a Squeezebox app for it, so I couldn't listen to Mog on our home stereo.

Spotify (added 9/11/2011)

Right now Spotify is my flavor of the month. I received an invite a month or two and have been using it. I like that it will import iTunes playlists and try to find matches for the songs online. It isn't perfect, but it did a pretty good job with my Exercise playlist.

Spotify's catalog doesn't seem as complete as Mog or Rhapsody. There were a bunch of things that I remember being able to find on Mog like Electronic's cover of Blind Faith's "Can't Find my Way Home" that don't seem to be available on Spotify. These tend to be tracks that aren't available at most sites so maybe Mog was unusually effective at licensing. Coverage of classical seems especially spotty. But then again, most of the major services don't seem to do classical very well.

What I like most about Spotify is the user interface, both on the Windows app and the Android app. The Windows app makes searching for music and creating playlists very smooth and intuitive. As I mentioned above, somehow I found that managing playlists in Mog required too much clicking and moving through screens. And if I want to bookmark an album instead of a track, as I typically do with classical, I just make the album into a new playlist and bang, I am done.

The app on Android seems to be the most robust of any of the apps I have tried. I have been using Spotify during exercise for several weeks now and it has been rock solid. It hasn't crashed, behaved erratically, or interfered with other apps, which became a serious problem with the Google Music Beta app.

Spotify is now available on the Logitech Squeezbox, which is very nice. The Squeezebox app seems to work very nicely and we have been using it to listen to music in our living room.

Testing blogaway on my HTC G2

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:09:00 +0000

This is posted from blogaway, which I also just installed. At first glance it looks more full featured than blogger-droid. For whatever it's worth, I see the text formatting options right on the main screen, so I can italicize and boldface and underline. The menu brings up options for adding links, photos and so forth. The linking works by inserting new text and link directly after you enter it, you don't select the text and then insert a url. Here's a link to my photo site.

Testing blogger-droid on my htc g2

noreply@blogger.com (Canghuixu) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 15:57:00 +0000

I just installed blogger-droid on my HTC G2 and am taking it out for a spin. Seems pretty bare bones. In particular, right now I'm not seeing any way to format text. Maybe there is a way of doing it, but I forgot. Also trying out the G2 keyboard for the first time.