I'm in China!

Well, I made it to Shanghai, China a week ago last night, and it's been a whirlwind ever since I touched down and I haven't had time for a proper update yet.  

...And I still don't right now, so this is just a quickie to confirm that I am here, I am taller than almost everyone, I'm the only one with a beard, I still can't read or speak Mandarin, and the food is (for the most part) amazing.  

I haven't taken as many pictures as I had planned, but I got some good phone-shots, so I'll post those soon. (This one is the view out the living room window on a slightly hazy day.)  And then I'll bust out the good camera and the little video recorder and post the results.  

Improv Broccoli Salad

Last night I needed a side dish, so I would be eating something other than just meat for dinner.

I've had some pretty good broccoli salads in the past, and that seemed like it would go well with barbeque beef brisket, but I had never made it before. But since I had just bought a head of broccoli, I thought I'd give it a go.

And ya know what? It turned out great! Not bad for four ingredients.

1 head of broccoli, cut up into smallish, bite-size pieces

(as small as you have patience for)

1 apple, cut up into small pieces

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup poppy seed salad dressing (I'm sure it would work with pretty much whatever type you want to try)

Combine everything in a bowl, stir together, and consume. Makes about four good size servings and is darn tasty.

23:59:60?!

The concept of the leap second is fascinating to me. Since our definition of a second isn't actually based on the length of a day (the time it takes for the Earth to rotate on its axis one time), rather the vibrations of a cesium atom, and since the gravitational energy transferred to the moon through tidal forces are slowly slowing the earth down, they've gotta throw a leap second in every once in a while. Most recently on June 30th, which apparently causes some computer servers to pee themselves a little.

It would be totally weird to see your clock go from 59 seconds to 60 seconds, then back to zero seconds instead of the usual 59 to 0 pattern. I might pee myself a little if I wasn't expecting it.

Kinda sad the moon is drifting away though. :(

Read about it at Accuweather.

Doodle a Drive-in or D-Day?

I love Google's occasional doodles on their homepage, and I love the evolution from the early, simple ones to the latest HTML5 craziness.  But I've never really understood how they have chosen which historical occasions and figures to represent.

For example, today, June 6, is the anniversary of D-Day, the day in 1944 that Allied troops stormed the Nazi held beaches of southern France and began the eventual push towards victory in World War II.  9,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded.  It was kind of a big deal.

But on the Google homepage today there is an homage to the first drive-in movie theater, which opened on the same date in 1933.  Really neat presentation and very well done, but the gravity of the events aren't the same.



That being said, while D-Day 1944 was a great victory for our side, a bunch of people lost their lives and I'm sure it wasn't a pretty picture.  The opening of the first drive-in movie theater, on the other hand, is a shoe-in for awesome, lite-hearted remembering for those old enough and exploration for those too young to have ever been.

And I love drive-in movies and the culture that they represent, so I'm definitely not unhappy with their selection.  But maybe Google will do something D-Day related to the 80th anniversary in 2014.  I hope they do.

CyanogenMod 7.2 on LG G2x

I've been using my first Android smartphone, the T-Mobile G2x (LG Optimus P999) - the first dual core smartphone out there - for about a year now and I'm still pretty happy with it.  Of course, I can't ever leave well enough alone, so after dealing with the random rebooting issues for the first few months and imaptiently waiting to see if LG or T-Mobile was going to do an over the air update to fix it, I went the Root and ROM route with CyanogenMod 7 last August (see this post for more info).

All has been well, and the usability and reliability gains over the stock ROM have been astounding.  My battery life is literally 50% better than stock, I get the notification lights that I so desperately missed, my phone only shuts off when I tell it to, and I get to have a slight smug superiority over those with stock phones.  ;)

But since Android 4.0 / Ice Cream Sandwich launched, oh, seven months ago now, I've been hoping it would trickle down to my, now old, phone in the form of CyanogenMod 9.  There seems to be a pretty good enthusiast base for my phone still, and there has been good progress mentioned in some of the forums, but no stable builds for my phone yet.

Since I needed to do something with my phone, and since CyanogenMod 7.2 RC2 had been released earlier this month, I decided to flash that to my phone and see what the differences were.  As always, I got nervous and searched for instructions (the most clear were here), but everything went extremely smoothly.  (Here's a good place to start get started modding your T-Mobile G2x.)

And the verdict is... there's no obvious difference.  But as least I can rest easy knowing that my phone is as up to date as it can be at the moment.