Site changes

I have left this blog sadly neglected over the past few months, and to be honest there’s every chance that this post will be a freak occurrence.  That said, I thought I should briefly comment on a couple of changes I made recently.

After years of allowing the whole world access to my Flickr pictures, I decided to restrict permission to Flickr friends and family.  My reasons for doing so were twofold.  Firstly, I was feeling more and more uncomfortable with the idea of absolutely anybody being able to peruse my photos from social events and the like.  It may seem egotistical to think that a stranger wants to waste time flicking through my online albums, but I feel better restricting access to pictures with friends and family inside.  I may go back and make some pictures public access at a later date.  Secondly, it is now very simple to share a Flickr set of photos through Facebook and other social networks, so I have a way of restricting access without forcing everyone I know to create a Flickr account in order to see my travel photos.  Of course, that is still an option if you want to avoid Facebook.

Another change I have made is to point my website nickhubbard.net straight to this WordPress blog.  My previous site was very sparse and really only served as a jump point to my blog and my photos.  With my photos now tucked privately inside Flickr the website lost half of its reasons for being (for now at least).  As a result it seemed prudent to simply point to the blog until such time as I decide to restructure my website or decide on a new purpose for it.

 

Nantou County

I have recently returned from a long weekend in Nantou with Trinity, so I once again have something interesting to share with friends and passers-by to this blog.  In due course I will also put up some photos from the trip.  It was a very enjoyable three days carefully choreographed by Trinity.  The few times we sat idle were while taking the bus to somewhere interesting, beautiful or both.  We started early on Sunday morning, catching  the tour bus from Taipei Main Station.  An early start meant we were in Nantou County before lunchtime, giving us lots more time to enjoy the scenery.

 

And so time in Taiwan goes on

I have been studying Mandarin Chinese at Shida University’s Mandarin Training Center for two months now and I find it difficult to recollect my level of Chinese prior to the course, and therefore the progress that I have made.  That said, whenever I meet Taiwanese friends who I haven’t seen for a while they are always taken aback at how much more I can say.  Along with an increase in expression, I have an increased confidence to try speaking to new people, knowing that I can ask a few more questions than the simple “How are you?” and “Is work busy?”.  Let’s also not forget that prior to the course the answers to either of the previous questions could easily have left me staring blankly at the person replying.  Tomorrow is the big mid-term test which determines whether I can progress unhindered, or have to revisit some or all of the chapters we have covered in class this term.  I am fairly confident that I won’t have to repeat content, but I spent most of the past weekend trying to make sure of that.

Studying at Shida has really moved my language ability along, but one thing I that grates is the constant testing we go through.  Most days we have a ten minute review of some aspect of our learning – characters, dictation; and at the end of each chapter we have to take an hour long test.  Each day we have two hours of class time, so these tests eat up a significant portion of the week on something I don’t feel advances my learning a great deal.  We are all adults and responsible for our progress, so why the constant testing?  I get the sense that my teacher is good enough to gauge our ability through our classroom performance and homework.  The time we take up in testing could be better spent on role-play or other activities that reinforce what we have covered.  Hmm.  I’ve had a couple of ideas while writing this that I should address to the administration.

Recently I made a web page for a project that Trinity was working on.  She needed a simple webpage to link to videos and photographs.  In the end the webpage took longer than I expected.  I didn’t take into account how long it has been since I did any HTML coding.  Many things were still present in memory, but there were quite a few things I had to revisit.  Also, the project was full of a few firsts for me.  After a little playing a realized that I needed to use absolute position for the design.  All my previous projects have been dynamic sites that stretched to the size of the browser, meaning no absolute positioning.  It is also the first time I wrote a site containing Chinese text.  I had what I thought was a good solution, but the requirement to use a specific font meant that I had to turn all the text into images.  Not something that I enjoyed doing, but an illustration of problems you can face when creating web pages that are guaranteed to have a particular font on all computers.  I also learned a couple of tricks in GIMP graphics software for creating text effects and using transparencies and masks.  It was quite interesting once I got down to it.  I am not normally one to spend my time on graphics, but perhaps it is time to exercise my creative side.

 

A Busy Weekend in the Mountains

Work  kept me very busy all the way to August, and I am only now finding some time for myself again.   Recently I have started studying Chinese.  Part of my homework is to submit a diary of my weekend activities, in Chinese.  To show off what I have learnt and to subject you all to my writing I have decided to copy my last entry to the blog.  Please excuse any clumsy grammar and spelling.  Tomorrow the handwritten version of my diary will be in the hands of my excellent teacher for correction.

 

Homesick

After a long day at work I am on my way to Yilan to meet Trinity.  I don’t have a seat, so I will be productive and update my blog.

Recent news is that I am now an uncle.  Giles and Kate now have a little baby girl, Grace May, to look after.  I am so happy for them.  The pictures they have sent me of Grace are beautiful.  She looks perfect; and so tiny.  This news amongst other things has made me feel homesick.  I wish I could go home to visit and hold little Grace.  Alas, there is no time and no money to allow for a trip home right now.  Instead I look forward to when I will be back in January.  Time to start planning an itinerary of where to take Trinity.  So what are the things that you can’t miss when visiting the UK?