Almost half year after I moved to Pudong, I finally get my home in good order. Today, as Wendy and I celebrate the 1.5 year wedding anniversary, we welcame our first batch of guests: Grace, Claire, Xiao Gao, and Ricky. They share something in common – all of them are best friends and all of them keep blogs. It is late after the party and I will write more about the new home soon. The reason why it takes so long to settle down is, we have more than 60 boxes and we have to clean them one by one and put the stuff in the boxes into their new place in the new home. So from today, I guess the life is completely back to normal. It seems to long a process, isn’t it?
Posting my Mobile Number
I listed my mobile number on my contact page. Some one commented that “Jian Shuo Wang is really crazy that he put his mobile phone number onto his blog! The whole world can see it.”
I Never Received Any Spam Mobile Call or SMS
I am not crazy. To publish a mobile number on the web is not that astonishing as others think. I am comfortable with it. To put on an email address in its original form may bring many spam emails, but a mobile number is not as attractive for spammers, especially for international spammers. :-D If they want to spam, mobile number is much easier to guess than email. Let me tell you the rule if you are going to spam (take it as a joke). All mobile numbers in China are 13 digits. The first three can tell you the operator the mobile is using. 135, 136, 137, 138, and 139 belongs to China Mobile while 131, 132, 133 belongs to China Unicom. In Chinese version of Google (swtich the interface to China in Google Preference), type in any mobile number and they tell you the operator, the type of the subscription (Shenzhouxing or Quanqiutong) and base city. Here is the information for my mobile. Since China Mobile is going to open the 134xxxxxxxxxx number range, it is pretty sure that the existing number range are almost full. Back to the spamming topic, a spammer can just start with my number and increase the number by one (I know it is one of my friend’s number), and spam it. Then increase it by one and spam again. At last, the spammer will reach all mobile in China. (Don’t tell others that I told you this :-D).
I was kidding regarding spam idea. The point is, they don’t need to actually see your number before they send spam SMS or call you. Unlike email, they have to pay much higher for either SMS or call, so mobile spam is not popular yet.
I Love to Receive Calls
Till now, every call I received was a pleasant story.
I received call from United Kingdom, they asked for the financial institutes in Shanghai. I received call from a reader, who sat at the Startucks of Beijing (Near Guomao) and just called to thank me for the stories I wrote. I received other calls from different part of the world (German, United State, Spanish, and India…). The good thing is, I *always* got the call at day time. It seems the notice about the time difference worked:
If you are out side China, please consider the time difference between Shanghai (GMT+8) and your place. I did get phone call from U.S. at mid-night. :-D
International caller’s number does not show up on my mobile’s screen. It displays “Unknown number!” if it is an international call. Whenever I see this number, I know it is either my reader from out side China or my elder brother in Portland.
I also got calls from book agents, magzines and newspapers. Some of the interview was conducted via telephone, such as the MarketPlace interview and the China Radio International’s. Yesterday, I got a call from MetroZine, the most popular free magzine (in terms of wideness of distribution). They asked if they can use some of my Pudong Articles in their magzine. I said, “Yes. Thanks for asking.” Things like this happen all the time. I love it. The base line is, they respect my work and checked my permission before using it (see On Credibility). They won’t call me if they cannot find my mobile number.
The most interesting call I received was from Italy. Any one still remember the English Instructions in Yantai? Two days after I posted the entry, a girl called from Italy at around 6:00 PM Shanghai time. She said: “Well. I saw your post about the instruction in Yantai. You know what? I am now in Italy and I came from Yantai. My friend happened to be the manager in charge of the computer facility in that hotel. I called him and he said, the instruction was not printed by them and they would have people change the instructions to the correct version. He just wanted me to tell you, that now everything is OK.”
Haha. Small world again. What an interesting story. I am happy that this blog helped to improve something. It is like a media already. I didn’t post the story becaue the girl perfer now to post the story immediately when I checked her permission to disclose it. She said, how about two or three month later? OK. Now it is almost three month. I appreciate her friend’s effort to change the instruction and I want to thank the girl in Italy to take the trouble (and money) to call IDD to me just to let me know.
P.S. Comment feature was of this entry is closed on May 21, 2006.
Search Function Improved
Anyone noticed the new search function on this site? I wrote the code (PHP code) and added the following features:
Standalone Search Page
I have removed the search box from the title area and put a search link on every page. Thanks to readers like PP to point out the search box won’t work on certain browser. I know it is against Jakob’s usability suggestion that search should be a box, so I added a search box at the middle of the home page.
History
I record all the search terms entered in the search box so create some hints of what others are looking for. When the history data becomes large enough, I will hide some terms that are searched only once.
Search
I am a fan of Jakob’s usability site. His research show a site with more than 200 page should offer search function. This site has grow to more than 1000 articles (including both traditional site and blog site) so if you cannot find anything, don’t hesitate – search!.
Google is doing great on search, so I don’t need to create my own search engine.
Am I working too much on the technical side of this site? I often surpress my attempt to drive into code although I enjoy writing some small piece of codes. As I said, the soul of a blog is the content, not the technology it is using.
Goudaner Scratched by Drunk Driver
Life is bitter, for my car. Around 7:00 PM, at the parking lot, a Hyundai Sonata backed to the parking lot. My car was stopped nearby and the Hyundai’s head scratched the rear of my car. Bang! I checked my car. It was not very badly hurt but my heart was hurt.
I went to the driver. I was surprised to see the driver seemed cannot understand what I said. Later, I found out that the driver, about 40 years old, was completely drunk. He even could not step out of the car. With his friends’ help, his friends have to support his hands so he could walk. The air suddenly was full of the smell of alcohol. I could not imagine how he managed to drive to the parking lot. The driver seems to be the big boss. There is a guy jump out and tell his boss that nothing happened. He will handle everything and sent his boss away. It is obvious that this guy don’t want others to know the driver was drunk. I guess he is the big boss’s executive assistant or some role like that.
The big boss was certainly not satisfied with what his assistant told him to do. He managed to come to my face and was very angry. “What is your name?” He pointed to my nose and asked. Haha. I guess he was more seriously drunk than I thought. His assistance finally managed to let his boss calm down and agree to hand over everything to his assistant.
After that, the driver and other people left. There is only me and the guy. The argument was boring and he finally only agree to pay me 300 RMB. Anyway. I don’t care about it, but I care so much that the boss dare to drive after so badly drunk.
I called 110 for the police. But it is a pity that every body disappeared before the slow police arrived. I told him, everybody had gone. He got it and went away too.
The “good citizen” inside me raise again and I called the police of Xujiahui and they gave me a number. I called and reported again. He recorded everything and suggest me to go to their office tomorrow morning and bring all my witness. Again, I was not happy with what I was told. I said, the driver is drunk. The car is there. They have to get back soon. It does not make sense to handle it tomorrow when the evidence of the drunk driver disappear. The police said they will investigate. One hour later, I called again, and he said, thanks for calling back, but we have nothing to do since the driver is not there. There are more drunk driver on the road of Shanghai than I thought, since the police is not as efficient as I thought.
Ironically, on the day of the first month of my new car (April 15, 2004), I scratched the car for the first time. The car went very well in the following five months without anything wrong, and today is exactly half year after I bought my car (March 15, 2004).
Negative Comments for this Blog
Some people don’t like this blog. Some hate it. Here are their reasons.
Why a Chinese uses English to Blog?
It is common comment. Someone said something really bad about this blog, because it is in English. Many people take France as a model of anti-English countries. I have to accept this. It is bitter sometimes. Well. Let me get back to the question, why I choosed to use English in this blog?
It was just for fun at the very begining. When I started, who knows what the site would be look like. Just as the URL of this site, I used http://home.wangjianshuo.com for simple reason – the computer was at my home. After that, I found the gap of communication and the hopeless visitors in Shanghai or planning to visit Shanghai. So I continued. It does not mean I don’t love my country or to show off – as some commented.
Bad Shanghaiese?
Some people just feel someone is bad because they are Shanghainese. This became popular, as I discussed at the Mercy! Tolerance section of Nice Meetup with Hailey and Roddy. I don’t want to comment on this. It does not make any sense.
As earthmilk said, why people keep giving comments and suggestions to other people’s life.
Flowers Bloom on MSN Messenger
Two days before, Eric sent me the message via MSN: “请放一朵玫瑰 ,在MSN名字之前( 名字前加”括号f括号”),用来表现对于数百位俄罗斯死于恐怖行动的孩童哀悼,希望可以传这个讯息给你所有线上名单,看看会有少朵玫瑰盛开” or in English: “Please put a rose in front of your name to show your sympathy for the hundreds of children killed in Russia terrorism attack.”
I added.
One hour later, there are 10 contacts on my MSN Messenger with roses (f) before their names.
Two hours later, there are about 30.
At noon, which is about 3 hours later, I counted and there are 62 contacts in my MSN Messenger contact list put the rose before their names.
Roses bloom on MSN Messenger world.
Argument Spread on Blogging and BBS World
With many people put on the flowers, many people strongly criticized this behavior. Under Eric’s report on this event, I found this link. People who are against this “rose movement” argued: “Why you don’t put on rose when people in China surfer from disaster, like the fire in Luoyang (killing more than 300 people), or flud currently in southeast (killing more than 100 people)? What is the point to show sympathy to other countries?” The term they used are sham, shameless, stupid…
It is good that different voices are heard on BBS, blogs, comments, and almost every where on the Internet. On one hand, this is good thing to see people start to think differently. On the other hand, I am also very worried about chaos in the new generation. Some dangerous ideas may lead to war after several decade, such as racism, narrow-minded nationism comments and post.
Let me share a store. Kevin sent out an email about three abandoned cats in his neighborhood. The poor cats were abandoned when someone move out. Now they are homeless, don’t have food and wandering on the street without a place to hide from rain.
I was so moved and wanted to adopt them, the poor lives. I discussed with my friends and they said: “Why bother taking care of animals when there are still some children in this country need money to go to school?.” Well. It is reasonable. How about I denote to charity o help poor children to go to school? Wait a minute, will any one jump out and say: “Hey. You are stupid. They can at least survive. There are many others who almost died…”
What I am trying to say is, whenever there is something you can help, just help. Don’t wait… Back to the topic, to show sympathy to people does not mean lack of sympathy to people on the same motherland. Regarding this event itself, it is just a co-incident that this idea got spread quickly. It reached the tipping point. If you remember, a similar movement to memorize Christine Zhang by adding a C before display name stormed the whole Internet world about one year ago…
Going to F1 Grand Prix
I finally got the F1 Grand Prix. I was not interested in F1, as most of people in Shanghai, maybe in China. No suprise. This is the time time F1 comes to this country. I never saw real F1 before. However, when the big, nice, red ticket is on my hand, I became a little bit excited. I never saw F1 before. At the time I bought it, there are only GRASS STAND TICKET for Sunday, Sept 26, 2004.
F1 Ticket for Shanghai Grand Prix 2004. © Jian Shuo Wang.
On the official Shanghai International Circuit website, there are some very cool photos of the venue. Go there and have a look. I will bring my camera with me and record the event.
The venue is not very far from Shanghai downtown – if and only if you have a car. Here is a map, somewhere at the north-west part of the city. It is 30 minutes car ride to Hong Qiao Airport, 50 minutes to the Pudong Airport.
I considered to driver there – to drive to see F1 is exciting. However, I learnt parking area is not planned at the F1 Circuit. How can it be possible! Since there are 150,000 visiters to the event, private cars (without special pass certificate) have to park at the streets nearby. It is about 4-5 km away from the circuit and takes at least 1 hour to walk there. En…. Let me think twice – to stand whole day on the grass to watch F1 and walk up to 3 hours a day may be too tiring. So I decided to join the group to take shuttle bus from downtown there. There are 4 lines from four big stadiums in Shanghai to F1…..
I guess it will be an exciting day for me. I went to karting for some times, but I know F1 is totally another thing.
AutoComplete in Web Page
This is an Auto Complete in Web Page demo. According to the file header (thanks to my good habbit to write long and detailed file header in all my source code), it is written on March 6, 2001. It shows how to implement the AutoComplete feature on a web page. Try to input something and see the input gets AutoCompleted. I have populate a long list of titles on this blog into the history.
'----------------------------------------------------------
' AutoComplete Edit Box
'----------------------------------------------------------
Dim garrHistory
Const keyUp = 38
Const keyDown = 40
Const keyLeft = 37
Const keyRight = 39
Const keyEnter = 13
Function DisplayEditBox(strID, strName, strDefaultValue, strNickName)
Dim strHTML
strHTML = "
strHTML = strHTML & "
"
DisplayEditBox = strHTML
End Function
Sub DisplayEditBoxOnClick()
Dim el, elBack
Set el = Window.event.srcElement
Set elBack = el.parentNode.childNodes(0)
elBack.style.visibility = "visible"
el.className = "clsPropertyEditActive"
el.select
End Sub
Sub DisplayEditBoxOnKey
Dim el, elBack
Dim strHTML
Set el = Window.event.srcElement
Set elBack = el.parentNode.childNodes(0)
Dim intKeyCode
intKeyCode = Window.event.keyCode
If intKeyCode = keyEnter Or intKeyCode = keyUp Or intKeyCode = keyDown Then
If elBack.innerHTML <> "" Then
el.value = el.value & Mid(elBack.innerText, Len(el.value)+1)
End If
DisplayEditBoxOnDone
Window.event.returnValue = False
//garrUsers(gstrHighlightedBuddy)("ShowProperties") = False
//Call UpdateUserList
Elseif intKeyCode = keyLeft Or intKeyCode = keyRight Then
Window.event.returnValue = False
Elseif intKeyCode >= 48 Then
strHTML = "
"strHTML = strHTML & " " & Mid(AutoCompletePredict(el.value, el.name),2) & ""
elBack.innerHTML = strHTML
Else
elBack.innerHTML = ""
End If
End Sub
Sub DisplayEditBoxOnKeyUp
Dim el, elBack
Dim strHTML
Dim intKeyCode
Set el = Window.event.srcElement
Set elBack = el.parentNode.childNodes(0)
intKeyCode = Window.event.keyCode
If intKeyCode >= 48 Then
strHTML = "
"strHTML = strHTML & "" & AutoCompletePredict(el.value,el.name) & ""
elBack.innerHTML = strHTML
End If
End Sub
Sub DisplayEditBoxOnDone
Dim el, elBack
Set el = Window.event.srcElement
Set elBack = el.parentNode.childNodes(0)
el.className = "clsPropertyEditNormal"
If el.name = "AssignedName" Then
//garrUsers(el.parentNode.name)("AssignedName") = el.value
//AutoCompleteAdd el.value, "AssignedName"
Elseif el.name = "Group" Then
//garrUsers(el.parentNode.name)("Group") = el.value
//AutoCompleteAdd el.value, "Group"
Elseif el.name = "Email" Then
//garrUsers(el.parentNode.name)("Email") = el.value
//AutoCompleteAdd el.value, "Email"
End If
//Call UpdateUserList
End Sub
Sub AutoCompleteInit()
Set garrHistory = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
garrHistory.add "Friends","Group"
garrHistory.add "Business","Group"
garrHistory.add "Relatives","Group"
garrHistory.add "Old Classmates","Group"
End Sub
Sub AutoCompleteAdd(strKey)
strKey = Left(strKey, 20)
If Not garrHistory.Exists(strKey) Then
garrHistory.Add strKey, "Email"
End If
End Sub
Function AutoCompletePredict(strPrefix, strCatalog)
Dim intLenPrefix
Dim intLenKey
Dim strKey
Dim strResult
Dim intLenReminder
intLenPrefix = Len(strPrefix)
If intLenPrefix < 1 Then strResult = "" Else For Each strKey in garrHistory.Keys intLenKey = Len(strKey) If UCase(strCatalog) = UCase(garrHistory(strKey)) And UCase(Left(strKey, intLenPrefix))= UCase(strPrefix) Then intLenReminder = intLenKey - intLenPrefix If intLenReminder > 0 Then
strResult = Right(strKey, intLenReminder)
End If
End If
Next
End If
AutoCompletePredict = strResult
End Function