No, I refuse to let this blog go an entire year without another post, but honestly, I haven't been on my wandering project in quite some time, aside from two whirlwind tours of the US that comprised perhaps 25 cities in one go, and a far more modest one that probably only included 8-10 cities that were a subset of the mammoth trip.
That's not to say that I have been up to nothing at all, though. And I am dreadfully sorry that I haven't yet completed the travel blog about that last trip to China. There are some ideas for wandering out again after the recent turmoil with Yahoo (Yes, I work at Yahoo), but I won't elaborate on those at the moment due to their uncertainty.
But I will tell you about the little bit of humor writing I've been up to. And the blog subheading does say that I can talk about "general nonsense and ballyhoo" too, and this stuff is right up that alley.
So, for those of you who may be mysteriously starved of what I've been up to (all possibly two of you), here's the general idea on humor and sarcasm:
- I wrote a fake Bug Tracker for Microsoft / Yahoo takeover issues, since a few of you pointed out that I might be soon working for Microsoft (assuming I'm not in the layoff round) and decided to start sending me Vista bugs, of which there's about a million. I even filed a general vista bug for you already. Yes, it comes complete with a logo for the post-acquisition company.
- I wrote an onionesque article on what happened to worker productivity when Facebook happened to be down for about an hour or so during the middle of the Hong Kong workday. Sorry, no public links on that either, need too many people's permission who are mentioned in it ;)
- I wrote a program that tries to find a significant number of the bad words that you can write in Cantonese, including the Five Great Profanities in the Unihan database; I couldn't really ask my friends here to show them to me since they're considered much worse than seems to be the case in America. And no, I'm not linking to it here. Ask me if you want to see it.
- I have been writing the weekly news letter for Fresco; I wax philosophic occasionally
- I wrote a Frequently Asked Questions list on what I'm doing tonight and getting virtually laid off at Yahoo
In the not-so-humorous-but-possibly-blog-worthy updates category, here's some more stuff I've been doing during wandering isolation:
- I've been trying to get open mic streamed out live on the internet (Fresco is an open source bar, powered by Gentoo Linux if you'd believe it!). In a nutshell, it works, but the webcam mic distorts the audio beyond recognition. Working on patching VLC so that it can handle muxing the desynced audio streams and you can just listen at home, or maybe it's just time to invest in a better camera..
- Drinking plenty of Hoegaarden. Yes, I like the big glass, and am a sucker for their product positioning with it, but it reminds me of the steins back in Munich..
- Trying to help the guys out at the NGO I joined called Aptivate. I like these guys and haven't been good enough about volunteering time to them with all the craziness at work lately, but it's my main new year's resolution for 2008 to improve on. Among other things, they try to aide other NGO's operating in regions with little to non-existent Internet connectivity, assist in the education and deployment of technologies to help close the digital divide, and donate their IT knowledge to try to make the world a better place.
- I'm in a band called "Nolex". We don't have a site yet, but we'll be playing at Fresco at the end of the month (Feb 2008, not sure what the exact date is yet, but it'll be in the newsletter soon, so check there or bug me).
- A few half-baked things that aren't really ready to be discussed publically yet.
Keeping my guitar edge sharp, I have been playing a lot of guitar lately at the open mic nights on Tuesday at Peel Fresco Music Lounge over in the SoHo district in HK. Had the best of times rocking out with a Aussie blues man named Andy last Tuesday (Feb 12, 2008) for about 3 or 4 hours. I think JZ took a couple pictures of the night, so if I can talk him into getting a copy, I'll put them up somewhere online.
