methinks

Adam's Dog

My friends Adam and Alf once took a grand adventure through Yunnan Province. Adam has posted some pictures from that journey and the dog on the spit stands out on in my memory for some reason. For a larger version of this picture and many more photos from their wilderness experience, click the image below.

Note to Commenters

I've been having some trouble with spammers leaving comments on this site, so I've enabled "comment approval", which means you won't see your post on the site until after I approve it. I get an email that says, "So -and-so posted such-and-such, do you approve this comment?"

So if you feel like your comment isn't posting and you should try three or four more times just to makes sure...it worked the first time.

Shamrock

Would you believe I got an email from someone at Shamrock asking me to put a link to their site on my site. I guess all the cool kids going to Chengdu check out andycriss.com.

If you're ever in Chengdu and want to check out a fun Irish pub, head to Shamrock.

Address: 15 Ren Min Nan Lu, Section 4 Chengdu.
Tel: 028-8523 6158
Fax: 028-8535 0835
Web: www.shamrockinchengdu.com

English Song Competition

It was the spring semester of 2004 and I was a guest of honor at the school's annual English Song Competition. As a guest of honor, I got a seat near the front and a cup of tea with free refills, although my refills didn't come as often as the judges. You might be wondering why I myself wasn't a judge at this event. Well....I think I kinda got a reputation for being a hardcore, face-robbing judge at some previous events. I didn't realize that even though the possible score range was 1 to 10, the actual scores should fall between 9.0 and 10.0 The 6.3 I gave caused quite a scandal. Anyway...I wasn't invited to judge this one. So I videoed instead.

The Best
This is Lark singing and dancing her way to first place with Everything You Do. Definitely worth a watch.

Click here to watch Lark strut her stuff. (7.9MB)

The Rest
They're all winners in my book, that goes without saying, but only one can be THE winner and get their full performance on the internet. Everyone else has to settle for their 15 second snippet in this video. I think there were 16 contestants overall. Some of them were really good and came close to beating Lark; some of them were less than really good. I've tried to capture the best of each performance...maybe this should be called the best of the rest.

Click here to watch everyone else. (11.6MB)

Robert
If ever there was a showman among the faculty at Qiannan Normal College, it would be Yang Bingwu, aka Five, aka Hwife, aka Robert. Performing I Love You More Then I Can Say, he gives the kiddies a lesson in crowd pleasing.

Click here to watch Robert bring the house down. (6.0MB)

Firefox Burns Ads

This is an easy-to-follow guide on how to make your Internet experience, safer, faster, more private and pleasing.

I rarely post about software or computer stuff (there was the post about Skype), not because I don't have anything to say on the issue, but because I know you ten readers have little (to no) interest; you have your software, your routines, and there is no need for Andy's tool-of-the-day to go dorking up your computer. But this one is worth it...I'm serious.

1. Use Firefox

Firefox is an internet browser. It's better than Internet Explorer on many fronts, both technically and practically. It's safer. It's faster. It's easier have several pages open at once. It prevents most all spyware. (What is spyware?)

For a full account on why you should use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, read this.

Follow this link to download Firefox. Once there, Look in the top right hand corner.

Once you've installed Firefox, you might find this guide helpful to make the switch. I don't think you'll need it, but just in case.

2. Hate Ads

I hate internet ads and you should too. Those flashing, blinky, garish ad banners are an eyesore at the top and side of almost every major site on the net today, an inconvienence to be scrolled beyond every time you load a new page. More importantly they are stealing valuable bandwidth. Here is an example:

I chose a page at random from nytimes.com. When I loaded it the ads were 40 kilobytes of a 194 kilobyte page total -- 20 percent of the page.. If you use a high-speed connection the extra wait is probably imperceptible - at least for the moment. If you use dial-up, those ads just cost you an extra one or two seconds.

So how do you get rid of ads? Well, if you insist on using Internet Explorer, the method for preventing ads is more complicated than someone who insists on using Internet Explorer would be willing to do...so for the sake of simplicity, we'll just say you can't do it. Sorry, you'll just have to live with them. If you're using Firefox, it's shamefully simple.

2. Block Ads

Once you've installed Firefox, you'll need to go here and download Adblock. You must go to this link using Firefox.

Adblock lets you prevent your browser from visiting certain sites. Since web sites are pulling their ads from the same sources over and over, if you block the sources once, you've blocked ads from that site forever. You don't spend time downloading things you don't want to see.

After you've installed Adblock (remember: you'll need to close Firefox and re-open to finish the install), load a site with lots of ads. You'll see these little grey tabs that say "Block this ad" (or something like that) around all the advertisements. If you don't see the tab, just right-click the add and you'll see the same option in the menu bar.

Click the button and you'll see a very long, very complete address come up in a display window. I suggest reducing that to any obvious smaller element. For example, if the address is http://ads.doubletree.com/blah/blha/blah/3423098fsdf-1.jpg -- you should just chop it off to http://ads.doubletree.com then you'll block all the ads from that address instead of just that one particular one.

I know, I know...it could get really tiring blocking address for every page you visit. There is a faster way. You can import a pre-made list of criteria to block ads.

The brilliant minds at The Adblock Project Forum have complied a text file that balances effectiveness and speed. Will it block every ad forever? No, not likely. But it will block the vast majority. And for the occasional few it misses, you can add those manually.

Save this text file to your computer.

Open Firefox (after you've installed Adblock) and hit ctrl+shift+p. Then click Adblock Options, then Import Filters, then of course chose the text file you just saved to your computer. And that's it.

You'll have a faster, safer, more private internet experience uncluttered by blinking, binding billboards.