Robert Thompson on all things China.
Who would have thought that extending your wireless network would be so rewarding?
Here is a picture of my mess upstairs (via built-in iSight), but that’s not the point. The point is, it’s full reception upstairs! I finally realized why the reception on the third floor is so strong (with the help of the second floor bridge) — it’s because the third floor isn’t made out of cement! We added it ourselves, it’s just wood and steel.
Okay this entry is boring to everyone except me.
-BOB-
It’s about the same deal as the parents’ house and in Kunming, but this is what I’m dealing with over here in China. Granted, it’s about 10x cheaper for internet than in the States. The DSL here is fast (enough), but when browsing international links (video blogs, YouTube pages, CNN, Yahoo, basically everything except for Google sites) its very, very slow. When browsing Chinese sites, it’s very fast.
ADSL Guide reports:
Result: Slow!
DSLreports (on a Chinese server) reports:
Result: Fast!
But they don’t take into account for the P2P, which averages over 100-200k/second downloads, or the mysterious 150k/sec uploading to the thompsonjazz.com server.
Bob
I’m a real geek because not having the internet for two days was a real pain in the ass.
But it works (less wireless… doh). I got all comfy on the couch and sat there for at least an hour messing around with PPPoE settings for this DSL modem to no avail, so now I’m hunched up next to the wall connecting directly via this 2′ cable.
The house has come along in the last few days. The smell is moderate. Because we have plants on the balconies, people always stop and ask us to come up and see our house. I guess plants = you’re done with your house. So we let them in and then we go look at their house. Chun Mei and I agree that we like our house, mainly because we like the design, but it seems more spacious than others. Also, it was constructed so the windows are on the north and south faces of the house, meaning the winter sun (at it’s lower place in the sky) warms the house, and the summer sun (higher in the sky) keeps it cool. It’s also nice not to have the sunset blare into your living room everyday. We only noticed this because one house we saw today was uncomfortably warm (east-west configuration.)
There are many things about this house that are nice, but my favorite current thing are the Toto showerheads. These things have to be illegal in California. They are so comfortable and waste so much water it’s unbelievable. And the bathtub! I haven’t taken a bath in.. I can’t even remember. So the little things are adding up.
We got the kitchen all set up and bought a whole bunch of China today so we can stop eating out. We turned our stove on today and the display lit up and all the buttons worked, but it wouldn’t get hot. Chun Mei said, “Patience Bob,” as I kept touching the surface. I even took the damn thing out to examine the bottom of it to see if there was a big red button. (As I did this, I told Chun Mei stories about how Tom would figure this out in two seconds, and how I really had no idea was I was doing.) We took it to a repair shop and they put a pot on it and the water in the pot started to boil right away. Do new stoves have this safety feature in America? Because I’ve never heard of it…
My goal tomorrow is to setup up the office. As it is, everything is scattered around the room. And also to get the wireless working, then bridge it so it works on all three floors. Last night I played the violin for about 90 minutes straight, and it wasn’t bad! Thing will progress quickly.
I’ll throw a video together soon.
bOb
I’ll post a video of the entire house soon. We won’t sleep in this house for a few more weeks because of all the fumes, but tomorrow (!!!) I will move all my music gear and computer equipment in my 430 square foot office on the third floor. Internet will soon follow.
Before I get a chance to pick up the violin, I’ll finish scrubbing the first floor. I have a special technique with involves many tools. We have literally (really, no exaggeration) scrubbed every inch of this house for the last four days (bathroom walls, floors, kitchen, walls, balconies, window sills, stairs, ceilings, everything, my whole body is sore).
By the way, the Leatherman Wave wins in the “Most Used and Best All-around Tool” category. It gets passed around constantly, so I have two strapped to my belt. Two Waves. One is not enough. Only thing is, when you gotta us the squatter Chinese toilet, they hang precariously on my belt, inching down to that hole in the ground. Small price to pay for the best quality tool. It’s like an entire tool shed on my person.
The Italian tripod hasn’t been used yet, but I assure you there will be a photo shoot soon, after the move, and when things slow down.
Bob
Is a terrible one. After installing Boot Camp and XP, I spent about 40 minutes trying to get Windows to find my wireless Airport connection. I finally gave up and started playing a game of Hearts (Michele is a real pain in the ass!) until I restarted in OSX after being assaulted with the “TAKE A TOUR OF WINDOWS XP!!!” / “YOUR COMPUTER MIGHT BE AT RISK!” pop-up dialogs.
Then I installed Parallels, which is basically Virtual PC 2. It’s a little bit faster, but then again so is this computer. Because it’s such a terrible OS, I doubt I will ever use XP unless I need a keygen or something.
Hopefully I’ll get some DSL in the new place, have it all rigged for wireless on all floors (cement houses are new for me — the norm in China — and tend to limit reception.)
bob
First, as HT flies home now, just wanted to say, great trip with Helen, perfect weather, amazing pictures, and a bunch of good conversations. We all had fun, and ate well.
Second, this is a screenshot of the how fast this sucker can rip a DVD (benchmark for speed). It was over 65 frames per second, compared to the G4 which averaged 10-18 FPS. Rosetta apps are basically the same as my old G4, so I’ll have to wait for programs like Final Cut, Adobe products, and Sibeius before I see the increase in speed. It’s interesting how some companies like Digidesign (Pro Tools) released a Universal Binary update for free within weeks of the new Intel chips, and other companies just aren’t there yet.
Third, good news, we should be able to move into our new house in the next week. It looks great, some small details to work out. I can’t wait to get in there and start producing.
Fourth, I’m downloading Bootcamp to see how Windows XP Pro will work on this computer. I hope this isn’t jst 10 GB of wasted space. And I also hope there is an unistaller.
Lastly, Hel and I took over a thousand pictures, so I’ll post a gallery soon, and make a movie with iMovie (my version of Final Cut Pro isn’t universal yet) to see the results on this MBP.
_BOB_
This site [www.seatguru.com] is fresh — I wish I would have known about it earlier. You can pick any airline and view details about checking in, baggage weights and limitations plus much more in a very clear, uniform layout for any airline.
Best of all, it shows you all the best and worst seats on the exact plane you’re flying on, as well as any amenities (looks like Ma’s flight on Cathay Pacific may have AC/DC power ports?) and tips on why certain seats are no good.
Bob
Note: Make sure no applications are open except CCCloner when you do this.
1 Download Carcon Copy Cloner for the Mac
1.1 Install it.
2 Get an external hard drive ready and plug it in
2.1 If the network NAS drive causes problems, just connect a firewire drive locally.
3 Enlarge this photo in a separate window
3.1 Select the “source”, or the Internal inside Ma’s computer
3.2 Select the “target”, or the destination firewire or NAS drive
3.3 Click the lock and type in the admin password
3.4 Click “Clone” and wait a few hours.
4 Check to make sure the files are there (do a file size of comparison and random checks in different directories)
5 Format and reinstall OSX on her computer
6 Take Helen’s G4 specs, find out how much RAM you can add, and add at least a 1 GB from Crucial.
BOB
VIEW GALLERY
VIEW DEMO
VIEW CLOUD