Your Clown President

Your clown president is here, America. No matter what you may do or say or protest or resist. He is here to stay.

In fact for a long time I never know anybody, let alone a politician, can be so shameless. Oh, some of you call that honest. And most main stream media still won't call lies lies. That's refreshing. Can't block all the exist while setting fires I guess. What if the worst is to come?

Blame globalization. Blame automation. Blame the incoming AI. Oil can't save jobs. Making air conditioners can't save jobs. Nobody knows for sure what's he or she is going to do for a living in 10 years for sure, and that fear is real. But going back can't save ya.

But, on the other hand, this clown, and the size of the protests, the media no matter fake or not, are all part of the democracy that makes America. Similar stuff would break a country. Similar crowd would call for tanks. A clown like this would break a civil war but not in America.

And that's the best part.

Why WhatsApp And Signal Not Blocked In China

Winter is coming for people living in China.

China is not famous for its internet openness. It's quite useless to keep track of how many top 500 websites and internet services are currently being blocked in China. And with recent developments it's quite obvious that while blocking services outside China, the government is encouraging local companies to develop similar ones, and collecting all kinds of data from its users, i.e. basically all Chinese. Some would argue it's a process that the internet itself is heading towards, what the Chinese gov is pushing, is a experiment that only this gov can do.

IM services, like Facebook messager, are among the most heavily blocked. It's understandable. First of all communication itself is dangerous for a gov like this one. Second, controlling communication is power. But what's wired is, among those IM with encryption as a selling point, like WhatsApp, signal and telegram, only telegram is blocked. In fact today, inside China, WhatsApp and signal is usable and pretty reliable. That's unbelievable in itself.

My theory is, there are 2 possilities to explain it all:

Unlike telegram, WhatsApp and signal are using AMAZON's cloud servers. China just can't simply block this one all together. AMAZON's cloud servers are so important once blocked the after effect would be so serious.

These 2 IMs are being activity used among Chinese government personnels as well. Their encryption is pretty strong. And apps are pretty well built. So why not use them instead of building something from scratch?

The thing is, most of Chinese don't bother with these encrypted IM services. They live in a different world and in that world, tightly controlled IMs actually are giving small benefits and enjoying a much much more bigger user base. If more and more people are using encryption, well let's say blocking these 2 will take the GFW about 5 minutes.

Whatever the reason is, I am happily using them on a daily basis. And I think a lot more people are using them too. Although I am aware of the fact that, encryption, is against the fundamentals of how this country is currently governed. Some day in the future they will be blocked out. Well I will build my own OTR server then. This is the internet, the math can't be beaten.

Freezing Cold!

posted from Bloggeroid

Rogue One In 3D

I think this movie is not for the first time viewers or even not so hard core fans. Rogue One is more like a fan movie than a serious star wars movie. I am not saying I am disappointed in it. No. Production quality is excellent but, the story line is kind of poor, and the ship, Rogue One, is a more than normal empire shipping ship and destroyed soon after it is named. Oh btw almost everybody is dead in the end. How could anybody be happy with this?!

And the IMAX 3D, I was skeptic towards 3D in the movies. Now that 3D is almost dead in the TV market I though 3D is bond to disappear in a year or two. But I wonder why my local theatres only provide 2 versions of this movie, one is normal 2D, and the other is IMAX 3D. I just want to watch it on a IMAX screen but in 2D but hey, there is no such option.

At first about 20 minutes into the movie my girlfriend felt sick and had to take off the 3D glasses. Then I myself felt silly because, in a 3D movie you can only see what the director wants you to see, like the character who is talking or the ship that is flying away. In a traditional 2D setup, when people get bored they can look at other things, the sky, the building in the distance, etc. But now in 3D everything in the background is blurred out. That's, frustrating. When things move around on the screen you are gonna be frustrated even more because you are forced to move around your eyeballs just to get a clear focused picture.

Anyways, I think next time I am going to a 2D. 3D is dead to me. And as for the Rogue One? Well let's forget about it.

posted from Bloggeroid

On Subway

posted from Bloggeroid

Skiing Today!

Today I went for a ski. For the first time of my life, although I have been living in this northern part of China for over 8 years, it's never occurred to me to go skiing for once.This time my girlfriend, who has done it for some times, brought it up and we went!



But hell today was a damn cold day for any outdoor activities. It was like 18 below zero when we started out. And when we reached the skiing ranch, or whatever it should be called, it was still so damn cold that although it's a Saturday, there was so few people put there skiing.

Anyways. First time skiing and I was bond to fall, big time. I am never good at sports, at least not at first. So lots of falling on my butt, at least 10 times for that 3 or 4 hours in the snow. Problem is, I though I can do this on my own, or with the help from my girlfriend, but I could hardly slow myself when I was already facing a pretty steep slop ( steep for me of course ). And. There were kids on that lane for God sake. I never can figure out why, there are kids of 5 or 6 on a lane full of people like me with little knowledge of what snow skiing is, speeding at about 40 km per hour. Anyways I quickly learned through some hard lessons of how to slow myself down and change directions.

The rest of the day was spent on those, narrow, slow, often stopping because so many people were trying to stand on it, kind of conveying belt. Let's say 10 minutes on the belt and 30 secs on the snow would be accurate enough.



At about 2:30 pm I was exhausted. Fully. And called it a day. On the way back my appetite was back and had a nice early dinner and now my legs are, well, they are still there but the feelings coming from them are not that conformable.

But skiing is fun. I like it. Hope in the future I could enjoy more of it and learn more. Maybe after a while I will go skiing some more, if I have the time haha.

posted from Bloggeroid

America As A Concept

Just watched Obama farewell speech. After the election I have paid little interest in drama of American politics. Partly because I am living in China where democracy is not of the top priority. Partly because of the disappointment i felt towards the result. Watching the speech hardly helps at all. But that's not the point for tonight.

It's the concept of America as a country. Countries are defined by lines drawn on the map, by people. Countries are held together by various means. Most of them by race, color of the skin, by religion, by tribal traditions. Look at China for example, most Chinese are of Han, and those who are not are rapidly converted into Han's way of life. In time of need, China can always use race as a way to incite patriotism, in order to hold the country together. Most countries on earth behave similar way.

While America, ideally, is a different story. Ideally America is held together by a concept, a notion, that no matter where people come from, what God they worship, people will work together to build a new and a better system to help themselves. Patriotism for Americans should really be to protect such concept from harm. That's why America could be so diverse and still works. That's why different people would live and work together under a single banner of America. This never has happened before in history. To build something better on a grand scale or just for one self, is the ultimate concept of America, of success and now challenges ahead.

This is the political experiment that really matters.

posted from Bloggeroid

Snowing In The North

It has been snowing pretty hard and the weather is getting colder these days. Although the days are getting longer and that gives people a sense that the winter is almost at its end.

There is some saying, based on some old Chinese sayings, that we are now in San Jiu. That is the 3rd group of 9 days that… while I am not so familiar with it anyways. It basically means that we are in the coldest days of the year, despite the days are clearly getting longer and there has been more and more sunlight every day.

I wonder why though. We ARE getting more heat from the sun but it is still colder.

Anyway. Walking in the snow to and from work sure is hard!

posted from Bloggeroid

The Mamas and the Papas Memory

For some reason picked up this album, the all classic the Mamas and Papas' If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears. I just can't help remember the road trip once I took with some of my family.

We started to drive, from my home all the way to the Shandong Province to the sea. All 5 of all crammed into a BMW. It was like a 1000 km plus journey I am talking about her. With my younger sister in law and my brother in law sitting in the back and we basically had nothing to do.

God it was so many years ago. Back then I was having a hard time, on everything. And I had a small mp3 player with me. With a pair of earphones I simply blocked myself out for most of the journey. I just kept myself to this album. Back then mp3 players just couldn't hold that many of songs. There were some others but this one was my favorite. It still is, now that I am listening to it again.

My sister in law was a sweet, delicate and innocent young lady back then. While I was giving my eyes a rest staring out of the window she said if she could listen to the songs I just played. She said they sounded nice. After a while she was glued to that album as I was. We shared earphones. We became friends. We talked a lot later on that journey. But not afterwards.

Now I was living so far away from home and my family, alone in this cold city of North. Sometimes I wonder if she was doing alright. Last time I checked she was fine, got a government job, bought a car, still cooked great dishes and laughed like I never seen on any other faces.

Hope she still remember these songs.

posted from Bloggeroid

Google Is Testing A New Mobile View In Chrome

Just now I found out that Google is pushing a test on Chrome browser to help viewing webpages on mobile devices.



As you can see I was viewing a wiki page not optimized for mobile ( a stardew valley wiki, btw it's really hard to understand why they are not making it mobile friendly ), while there was a banner on the bottom of the page. When clicked the page turned into:



It looks much better now and it's sort of mobile friendly. Or at least friendlier should I say. It is not perfect because the tables in this wiki page are not properly displayed at all. But at least it's working.

For years, Chrome is the default web browser for Google's Nexus ( and pixel ) phone line. And for many devices users are far more happier with a Chrome preinstalled than a OEM browsers, which most of the times are just a webview app with loads of OEM links in it to monetize. But fairly speaking Chrome's advantage mostly is integration with other Google services. Yes I know it's fast, reliable, secure and has a data saving function built in. But when it comes to other functions, some of them are useful on a daily basis Chrome is still doing a slow catch up here. Personally I'd like to see this mobile view coming out but hey can I just see the mobilized page at the first time when I load the page?

posted from Bloggeroid

Weird LG Phones

In smartphone business LG is surely weird. Or innovative, depends on your liking.

I don't know about other markets in the world but here in China, LG almost always equals to air conditioners, TVs, and other home appliances in general. Few know they are also selling top of the line smartphones. Maybe LG is really tired of this image in people's mind they are ABANDONING Chinese market right now. I mean, seriously. The only place you can buy a LG phone was online, and the phone you are left with is a LG G5, a 2015 model and they are still selling at a full price, with a heavily modified system that does not have Google services. And btw can not be rooted. People are saying that the first week LG put G5 on the Chinese market they were selling so few of them it was a joke.

Well there are too many competitions here in mainland China, even a ex-english teacher can make and sell phones these days. LG must be having a hard time these days here. But their phones are weird in the first place.

The only decent smartphones you can buy right now that can swap batteries are from LG. ALL of them are from LG in fact. Rumoured G6 may ditch this design trend but hey, who knows now for sure?

LG has some layer of skin over the top of Android. Most die hard funs hate these kind of skins. I was one of them and went for a Nexus 6p but guess what, pure Android experience means Google can do whatever they want including some experimental stuff on the phone, and in the end ruined the battery, which is, unfortunately sealed in. I want to talk about batteries later. But the skin that LG puts on is not that intrusive at all. It's WAY better than Samsung's or Huawei's or even HTC's. It's so superficial that sometimes you would think LG is just being lazy. LG doesn't have any strange services of its own working in the background. Hardly any apps that would seem competing with what Google has already offers. I should say it's a gentle and lay back way of doing skins.

Over the days after switching from a Nexus to this LG V20 I am currently holding I can say I am super pleased. Yeah I know rooting is hard but to me I just have enough to worry about and the general Android experience is good enough for me to live without a root.

Oh one more thing. From Nexus the newest doze mode, can't be applied to Google's core services and that sometimes ruins battery life. But on a third party phone guess what nothing can't be dozed. And I have never seen any Google apps on my battery usage anymore.

In the end I should say, LG you are making some really untrendy decisions on phones. You are being different and at times weird. But hey I like that! It's exactly what makes me happy with your phone from the days of my old Nexus 4! Keep doing it. You have the cash to burn. Just keep doing it. (Like Sony).

posted from Bloggeroid

Rocky Week

This has been some week!

Have to fight my way out through some shit that, honestly I don't want to have anything to do with anyways.

But in the end the week ends with a nice overtune and hopefully things would get better with time.



Chinese new year is about to happen and it's getting festive everywhere. I have got my ticket back home and my brother in law is back from Australia. Talked with him once and he sounded serious. I don't know what happened up there making him all serious but hey, we will see.

I want to write about battery issues this year and batteries in general. I just can't find the right time to sit down for a solid hour to finish it. Hope this weekend I can manage some time!

posted from Bloggeroid

Cashless Living In China

Recently I have tried to go cashless for some time, for no particular reasons at all. Well maybe it was because I was on a business trip and carrying a bulging wallet from place to place wasn't exactly a safe practice. I can only keep my eye on certain amount of things, like my plane ticket, my phone, and my bag and that's about all. I can't just go around still thinking about that wallet in some pocket of mine. So I buried my wallet somewhere in my bag. From that day on for about a month I never actually had more than 50 Yuan in my pocket. And I can say I have had no problem at all living, both on the road and at home.

This shouldn't be a surprise to most of the people around me through. Most people living in the city like I do, have at least an IM app called Wechat installed on their phone. Some shops or supermarkets or KFC also support an app called Alipay.

In Wechat, people can bind one or several bank cards to their account. When paying someone or some shop all people have to do is to open Wechat and scan a QR code the receipt is showing, you just have to type several digits and the transaction is complete. The money would go from the bank card to the recipient's Wechat account. And the transaction goes instantly.  Because almost everyone nowadays has a Wechat account, and has Wechat app installed on their phone, paying with Wechat is really the most common way to live cashlessly. I have used Wechat to pay taxi, food, supermarkets and so on. I think I can do just about anything with Wechat.

Alipay is similar but not all the same. Alipay is not a IM app, it is solely used as a payment app for Taobao, which is the largest online shopping platform in China, maybe in the world. Users of this shopping platform don't need to go anywhere. Anything that a human would need I dare say he or she can buy from Taobao. At first Alipay was just a payment service for Taobao, after a while, Alipay started to grow in functions, like buying plane tickets, paying mobile phone bills, utility bills and so on. Most major supermarkets and shops support paying with Alipay. Personally I have used Alipay for my phone bills utility bills and even steam games.

Now I have about 10 Yuan in my wallet and it has been like this for over 10 days. I don't really feel the need to withdraw any cash from my bank.

There are concerns as well. I know these private companies would very much love to know where and when I pay for what. These kinds of information are priceless and they would love to pay a little bit just to gather that info. And the state is looking into using these info for other purposes that I am not so comfortable with. Cash as a payment method is anonymous. And there is no other way more anonymous than using cash. I understand them all. But, living like this is really fantastic and futuristic as well. I can't just live under a stone. Can I?

Google DNS Unstable For My ISP And I Think Something Is Going On

For some time I have been using Goolge’s DNS servers, i.e. 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and they are working fine. The reason behind this is the DNS advertisements going on in China, and the other reason is, I really don’t feel that good, knowing my ISP actively pushing its own DNS to all my devices connected to its network. When I say actively I really mean it, like every 5-10 minutes. On PC it’s really simple just set a specific DNS and that’s all, the same is for my router. But on Android devices, DNS can be set for WIFI but not for 4G or any mobile connections, unless you have root access.
I don’t know know the exact reason behind pushing so hard for those DNS servers, but as a rule of thumb I really don’t trust any of them. Let’s say the worst case could be, by pushing those DNS servers to all my devices, almost all my internet connections would have to go through those ISP DNS servers first. Those ISPs have all my personal information and can link my IP address to me personally without any problems. If they keep a record of all my DNS requests, they would have a almost complete metadata of my daily internet usage.
If metadata collection in those so called democracy countries is scary, and within China is downright dangerous for people like me.
But from what I can see, Google DNS is no longer a stable option for my concern. For several times a day maybe more, all 2 Google DNS services would be down for 5 minutes more or less. It’s not my internet is down, no. Pinging those 2 DNS servers shows the servers are still up and running. It’s just the DNS packets are somehow not making it.

This makes me nervous. I have seen how the GFW over the years blocking Google’s search results while Google search was still not completely blocked. The GFW would disconnect users’ connection to Google once in a while, creating a user experience that Google search was not stable, not usable, so that users of Google would have to turn to other domestic search engines. After a while when almost nobody was still using Google, the GFW blocked it completely and almost nobody noticed. When news came out saying Google was “blocked” the state media would say its services were never stable and other BS, internet users would agree because they knew no better. This tactics was so successful that I am afraid they are using it again, but this time aiming at DNS services.
What they want is in fact data. Over the past several years I think Chinese gov has been trying to gather as much data as possible and trying really hard to figure out a way to use all these data. I don’t believe they have made much progress in how to use the data but having them and keeping them are certainly disturbing enough.
Anyways, I would have to figure out a way to deal with it. Like many times before.

LG Snap Page: What Is It And How To Use It?

Having got myself a LG V20 for some weeks now, ditching my battery (and faith, perhaps) failing Nexus 6P, I start to notice there is a Snap Page function mentioned here and there. From the limited information on the internet and from LG help site (in fact now I can’t even find any help info on LG’s official website).From the name of the Snap Page, it is some sort of webpage saving thing on the phone, but after digging around for a while I really can’t find anything that can help me figure it out, until this morning.

So here is the deal, Snap Page, what is it?

Snap Page in fact is a part of the QuickMemo+ app, to help users of the phone to save parts of the webpage to it, with a link to the original webpage. It’s much like instapaper or pocket app, but it works locally, like reading mode on some browsers, saving only the body of the article.

And how to use it?

It is in fact really easy to use, on any browser just share the webpage you want to save to QuickMemo+, and the Snap Page will work in the background, grabbing all it can while striping ads and pictures and save the body of the article itself to QuickMemo+, with a link to that webpage in the end. On a good connection it works fairly fast and the results I have tested are acceptable, with notable failures.

How is it?

Well Snap Page has its limits. Unlike some cloud based services, Snap Page doesn’t work on websites with pay walls like NYtimes or WSJ, it can only save what it can see, that is part of the article. And for those webpages which has multiple pages, it won’t work well neither. But on average it can get the job done.

A Bad Year For Me Too

2016 was a bad year for me too.

I wasn't planning to write anything down for the year of 2016 because, I thought this form of thinking useless at best. Who would read this after, like, a month? And who would remember anything after 2 weeks? So what's the point?

But I just don't want to be wasting my experiences, disappointments of the whole year just because my point of view. Well, let's face it, it's the holidays and I got too much time to kill. Damn these holidays, if only I got to work over time.

Anyways, for 2016, it was hard for me as well.

For a whole year I have been working on one major project or, one major product, with my colleague, under some stressing conditions, and was able to pull something out in the end. The process, the whole thing was not that easy. Everything has to be done from the ground up, from literally zero. Although I enjoyed the process of actually had made something useful out of something plain, and the results were nice enough for me to sit back and relax for a bit, it was still hard. I don't know if I still have what it takes to do it again, if chance rises.

After October most of my time I spent on trips to various places and some of the situations were just not for me. Before that I never actually took planes to anywhere. I was a train guy before all that. But flied like 20 thousand kilometers before the end of the year. I really missed the days and nights of my own place, while staying at some unnamed hotel.

All those work coming to the end of the year I found myself stuck in a situation that, couldn't be solved with my chemistry skills. I spent days and nights thinking about ways to get better, sometimes thinking about how to fuck someone I know up so that I won't be dragged down with. It's really uncomfortable and just not within my abilities. And the stuff is still going on.

After this year of hard work, I think to me, proves that I have the ability it takes to do what I want to do. And this year also helps me realize what I really want in life, what kind of work that suits me, and what kind of balance of work and life I have in mind. But also this year and maybe the year after, shows that sometimes even if you know what you want, you are not going to get it. Even if you do, it won't be long.

posted from Bloggeroid

Lost In Translation

There is a mobile music game I have been playing for years. Honestly I have never thought myself to a mobile music game player, but after watching my girlfriend playing it for half an hour years ago I thought to myself: hey it looked fun! And it is. And over the years I have tried a lot of similar games on different platforms and this one is still the best for me. Oh BTW it's called Rythem Master and in case you never heard of it outside China don't blame yourself, I will do some explaining why later. But a recently past ridiculous ruling in China completely ruins the game for me.

It's a simple rule indeed, imposed by some part of the government I never knew exist or care to know, forces all mobile games operated within China to use Chinese and English and other languages should not appear. The logic behind this is puzzling and its effectiveness doubtable but, for the game I care, BS happens.

As you may or may not know, music games involve music. Great number of them. And most pieces of the best music in this Rythem Master game are foreign. After the ruling came out there is an update to the app. All the music titles and names of the artists are *machine translated into Chinese.*

( To be fair I don't know for a fact they are machine translated but from the quality of the translations it certainly seems plausible. And, one step further, I can hardly blame the devs behind the scenes, they are coders, not English/Korean/Japanese to Chinese translators! Poor quality is within expectations for some small time game like this)

With this update because of the need of "Chinesification" some of the best features for pro gamers are broken. Boy I was pissed.

To be fair the devs know this, and they are in no position to fight a ridiculous ruling past by a mono party famous for suppression of oppositions. As for the ruling itself I think there is something more to it. For years the Chinese gov has been pushing for so called "soft power". It probably finally noticed the fact that Chinese people are more fond of cultural products of foreign origin. It's not like that we as a nation dislikes our culture. It's simply that our similar products are laughable at best. That's where those old man sitting up there decides to do something about it. Forcing Chinese into mobile games is not the best of ideas. But forcing music titles and artists names translated into Chinese is just plain stupid.

I remember some remarks by an American friend, he said China is boring, wherevet you go it's the same. The same people, same language same dressing same way of life. Yeah. He is right. And it is the ultimate goal of the ruling party. By imposing a rule like this would certainly help. And ruining a game, and looking dumb in the process, it's acceptable loses.

And for the fact that this game, Rythem Master is hardly heard of else where? Well there is never an English version of the game. Login needs a working QQ/Wechat account which most foreigners cares nothing about, and payment system relies on services that are China only. But I think the most likely reason is, most of the music within the game has no copyright, the game pays nothing to the artists or music labels. That's why once in a while a music within the game would change its name, or its cover art or replaced by a live version. But still, best mobile music game out there😅

posted from Bloggeroid

Open Live Writer As A MS Live Writer Alternative

Back in the days of MS Live Space, when the internet was still not censored by Chinese gov but by the speed of the internet itself, I had been using MS Live Writer for some time. And some years ago news broke out that it was discontinued. Although not much of a surprise there but as a somewhat stable, MS themed, and widely used blogging software, people (who still are blogging anyways) were upset. But soon afterward the code of the software itself was open sourced. That, was a true surprise.

Well, a fork of the original was finally released to the desktop, called, Open Live Writer (quite original naming lol) on Dec 9, 2015, about one year ago. And back when I was not actively using blogger or anything like that. But that’s another story. Anyways, one year later I decided to give it a try.

The setup was pretty straight forward, the installation is in fact the process of set up accounts, and with a few clicks, account was added and I can blog on my desktop.

But a bit strangely is the fact that Open Live Writer is a bit laggy and it shouldn’t be, because I am running it on a fairly powerful PC and the software itself shouldn’t be that power consuming at all. The interface and the typing experience isn’t the best I have ever seen anyways. But hey, what else can I ask for, as long as it can edit and post, everything is fine by me. Not that people still blogging are asking for perfections all day.