DISQUS

I use bit.ly every day. I don't think much about it -- it just fits into my workflow -- and that's the way it ought to be.

Cheers, Dave.

I remember when I first found Blueprint. I was amazed, and still am, though I find when I want to do something simple that doesn't quite conform to the "Blueprint Way" it can be simpler to just code it up myself.

I guess that's the way for most frameworks, though...

What happens if you blow the volcano, or jiggle the hurricane? I was the little kid who used the god menu on Sim City to call down natural disasters to destroy my brother's cities, and the instinct is still strong... :)

I like the new logo (though it hasn't rolled out in Shanghai yet). It says "eh, it's cool, you know who I am, let's not be all pretentious, hey?" I don't like my soda with pretension. ;)

It'll be great. Have a blast.

In Shanghai, through China Mobile, SMSes cost 0.1 RMB (about US$0.014) each without any plan, and there are a ton of prepaid options that reduce the cost per message down to fractions. International SMSes are more expensive, though, so I never bother with Twitter's SMS functions. The mobile web interface works great for me.

Carriers won't kill SMS, but phones with IM and Twitter clients and always on, unmetered 3G connections will. It's just a matter of time.

I tried to use the service from Shanghai, and reviewed my experience: http://biesnecker.com/stream/jajah-babel-not-qu...

In short: it kept telling me to call back later (after recording) and then hanging up. Seems like a fun toy, and maybe the start of something bigger, but I'd hate to be in Beijing, lost, and relying on it.

Chinese is easy, after the first couple thousand hours :)

Characters are scary, but having seen texts written entirely in pinyin, there are worse things out there. I could see it migrating into a Japanese kana/kanji mixed language at some point -- there plenty of instances where a phonetic rendition of a character would suffice, as in context the sound wouldn't make sense as anything but a single meaning. Still, though, characters rock, and I'm glad I spent the time learning them.

And it won't take you even remotely close to 10 years, if you really try. I'd put full-up Chinese literacy -- equal to your English -- at under 5 years, probably closer to two or three. Not having to start from scratch and wrap your head around all the backwards grammar and wierdness is a tremendous advantage.

加油 :)

I finally read the GTD book, and came away feeling like if I was that productive, it would just encourage me to work more (because I could get so much done!), and I don't really want that. My cobbled-together system of Google Calendars, text files strewn across my desktop, and my own shoddy memory is keeping my bloody well busy enough. :)

Expensive and not engaging gets a 10/10? Has the bar for learning materials been set that low?

Hmmm... seems that the San Pablo UPS office is having some problems. Maybe the delivery guy is nicking your stuff? :)

Passing the JPLT 2級 is one of my resolutions for the year, and I've been trying to find good dramas that include the original subtitles (I live in Shanghai, so half the time when you buy a DVD boxset the original Japanese subs have been burned off and replaced with Chinese). I finally got my hands on 結婚できない男, which so far seems pretty amusing. We'll see how it goes.

羡慕！

As someone who started learning Chinese at 23 and is still banging his head against it, I'm SO JEALOUS. :) It's a terrific language, though.

BTW, I adore your blog. I've been reading for a while, but I don't comment much. It's pretty literally the first thing I check every morning.

That's a great idea, Elliott, and a great start as Idiosyncrasies is quite a good blog, with lot of content of interest to people living in China like myself.

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Oddly, my dictionary (Wenlin 3.0, using John DeFrancis' ABC Chinese-English Dictionary) has "remain poor and clean at retirement (of officials)" as an idiomatic meaning of ?? along with the more familiar meaning of "cool breeze." I wonder what that means?