Ben's Lifetag:ben.jokuty.ca,2008-03-16:/blog//32009-07-16T19:14:58ZThe never ending battle against entropy.Movable Type Pro 4.23-entasty planttag:ben.jokuty.ca,2009:/blog//3.1012009-07-16T19:11:07Z2009-07-16T19:14:58ZLife is mostly full of gravel, calculus, gardening and saxophone these days, so here's something from the gardening side....Benhttp://ben.jokuty.ca/blog/]]>
campingtag:ben.jokuty.ca,2009:/blog//3.1002009-06-20T22:44:48Z2009-06-20T22:56:53Z I went camping a little while ago with some friends in Bon Echo provincial park. It was really nice! I took way too many pictures so I just skimmed through and uploaded the ones that jumped out at me....Benhttp://ben.jokuty.ca/blog/
I went camping a little while ago with some friends in Bon Echo provincial park. It was really nice! I took way too many pictures so I just skimmed through and uploaded the ones that jumped out at me. The rest are here.]]>
Testtag:ben.jokuty.ca,2009:/blog//3.992009-01-09T03:51:25Z2009-01-09T03:52:38Zif you can read this. it works!...Benhttp://ben.jokuty.ca/blog/
if you can read this. it works!
Vacation!tag:ben.jokuty.ca,2008:/blog//3.982008-08-07T12:52:23Z2008-08-07T12:56:07ZJust wanted to let anyone reading know that I'm going to be going on vacation and I probably won't be able to blog, but I WILL be updating my twitter from my cellphone.I'm flying to Irkutsk tonight, and I'll spend...Benhttp://ben.jokuty.ca/blog/ I'm flying to Irkutsk tonight, and I'll spend some time at lake Baikal, then take the Trans-Siberian railway to Moscow, and after some meandering through Europe end up in Tallinn, where I'll be working for a month. Once I get to Tallinn, there will probably be blogging.
]]>
Book Listtag:ben.jokuty.ca,2008:/blog//3.972008-07-02T06:49:19Z2008-07-02T10:52:12Z One reason for the lack of blogging lately is that I have been spending less time on the internet, and more time reading, mostly science fiction novels. After thinking back on it a little, I realised that I've read...Benhttp://ben.jokuty.ca/blog/
One reason for the lack of blogging lately is that I have been spending less time on the internet, and more time reading, mostly science fiction novels. After thinking back on it a little, I realised that I've read quite a lot since I came to Beijing, so I thought I'd try to compile a list of what I've read so far, for fun, and to remember. I've tried to keep them in more or less the order in which I read them.
Philip K. Dick:
A Scanner Darkly
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
The Man in the High Castle
Vulcan's Hammer
Now Wait for Last Year
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
Joseph Heller:
Catch 22
Vernor Vinge:
Rainbow's End
A Fire Upon the Deep
A Deepness in the Sky
John Scalzi:
Agent to the Stars
Old Man's War
The Ghost Brigades
The Sagan Diary
The Last Colony
Robert Charles Wilson:
Spin
Axis
Iain M. Banks:
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
The State of the Art
Use of Weapons
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
I'm currently reading Godel, Escher, Bach (Hofstadter) (picked up where I left off last year), and Visual Explanations (Tufte). Both are pretty interesting, though the Tufte book is by far the faster read. I expect to be done Visual explanations before even putting a dent in the remainder of GEB.
Finally, books that I'd like to read:
Charles Stross:
Halting State
Saturn's Children
Iain M. Banks:
Matter
There are others, but mostly in the form of a vague hunger for books, these are the only specific books I'm wishing for right now, though I'm open to suggestion...
Random stufftag:ben.jokuty.ca,2008:/blog//3.962008-05-30T16:34:44Z2008-05-30T16:52:23Z While reading my feeds today I came across this gem: The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks And since this entry would be sad with no picture, here's some honey I spotted in a grocery store in Yang Zhou....Benhttp://ben.jokuty.ca/blog/
The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks
And since this entry would be sad with no picture, here's some honey I spotted in a grocery store in Yang Zhou.
]]>
Yang Zhou Triptag:ben.jokuty.ca,2008:/blog//3.952008-05-29T15:20:38Z2008-05-29T15:32:33ZThe weekend before last I went to visit Yang Zhou with a couple friends. We spent a bunch of time visiting the parks and gardens and also some time just bumming around the old part of the city. It was...Benhttp://ben.jokuty.ca/blog/
Yang Zhou with a couple friends. We spent a bunch of time visiting the parks and gardens and also some time just bumming around the old part of the city. It was really nice, definitely a welcome change from Beijing.
I'll be posting pictures gradually as I sort the wheat from the chaff. For now, here's two I took while we were between places, just wandering around a bit.
More coming soonish...]]>
Template update and a cute cattag:ben.jokuty.ca,2008:/blog//3.942008-03-22T08:34:12Z2010-02-26T13:46:39ZThe blog has a new look! Yes I finally got rid of my old MT 3.3 templates and got some real MT 4 stuff. It comes with an annoying CAPTCHA that you will have to fill out if you want...Benhttp://ben.jokuty.ca/blog/
It was spotted in a coffee shop (Sculpting In Time) in the north west of Beijing a few weeks ago, drinking from faucets, lying in the sun, and generally being cute.]]>
Chuan(r): Because something is better than nothing.tag:ben.jokuty.ca,2008:/blog2//3.932008-03-15T16:44:28Z2008-03-16T02:19:48ZI found these two pictures kicking around on my harddrive, and I liked them, so I decided to upload them and make a post about them. Both are about chuanr, which is basically just meat on a stick. The chuanr...Benhttp://ben.jokuty.ca/blog/
The chuanr pictured here were observed very close to the pingguoyuan (apple garden) subway station. There was no apple garden anywhere to be found, just people, shops, and chuanr.
Chuanr are incredibly abundant in Beijing, typically of the lamb/mutton variety, and ranging in cost from tiny little ones that cost 0.5 RMB, to the ones pictured which were 5 RMB, and probably higher, though I haven't personally seen any chuanr more expensive than that yet.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is a Wikipedia article on chuanr, though it is not really very interesting or useful.
This post has been brought to you by the character: 串.]]>
Trip part 1tag:ben.jokuty.ca,2008:/blog2//3.922008-01-03T15:33:26Z2008-03-16T02:19:48ZHappy New Year! I was on a short vacation with some coworkers from the 28th to the 2nd and just finished transferring my pictures onto the laptop. I need to sleep soon, so this post will be short, but more...Benhttp://ben.jokuty.ca/blog/
The lake was nice, especially in the morning near sunrise.
And Shanghai was also awe inspiring, though in a completely different direction.
More pictures and explanation to come!]]>
Acquisitions, Part 1tag:ben.jokuty.ca,2007:/blog2//3.912007-12-01T14:27:48Z2008-03-16T02:19:48ZWow! A whole month! Sorry, anyone-who-reads-this! Since I arrived here, I have steadily been acquiring more stuff. I was surprised by this until I remembered that I only came here with what I could carry, and thought back to the...Benhttp://ben.jokuty.ca/blog/
mass of the stuff I left behind back in Ottawa.
The air has been getting really dry lately in Beijing, and for a while I was waking up with a really dry throat that was pretty unpleasant. So last weekend I decided to buy a humidifier. The air hasn't been quite as dry since then, so I'm not really sure how well it humidifies, but I am pretty happy with it as a kind of surreal objet d'art. So without further ado, I present: My new humidifier.
Yes, that's right. It's a frog, and it shoots mist out of the tops of its eyes. It has a dial on the front, and when you turn it up to the max it can produce quite a lot of mist. One thing I thought was pretty cool about this is that when it's turned up to the max, the mist has a significant cooling effect on the floor near the frog, despite the fact that it doesn't make the floor wet at all.
"But Ben, just how significant is the cooling effect of the frog?"
Well I'm glad you asked, because I measured it with my infrared thermometer!
3.8 degrees Celcius!
I expect it to have a fairly limited lifespan since the water here is so hard, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I took a few other pictures of it this afternoon while I was goofing off, and you can find them in this photoset if you want.
Totally unrelated to the frog: I just finished reading Vernor Vinge's "Rainbow's End", which is freely available in its entirety at the linked page. I enjoyed it, so props to the author, and doubly so for releasing it for free.]]>
Haircuttag:ben.jokuty.ca,2007:/blog2//3.902007-10-31T17:39:06Z2008-03-16T02:19:48Z You can see the rest of the pictures here. Best 10 RMB I ever spent....Benhttp://ben.jokuty.ca/blog/
You can see the rest of the pictures here.
Best 10 RMB I ever spent.]]>
Mmm vertebraetag:ben.jokuty.ca,2007:/blog2//3.892007-10-07T14:58:32Z2008-03-16T02:19:48ZSo I went out for supper with a couple friends last night and had a leisurely time gnawing the meat off of what I believe was the spine of a goat. We weren't actually sure that it was a goat,...Benhttp://ben.jokuty.ca/blog/
You can see some bits of goat, but also some mushrooms I think. After you eat enough goat to make room in the bowl, you chuck other stuff in to cook in the soup. We got mushrooms, daikon radish, and some giant rice noodles.
It's pretty much impossible to handle the chunks of goat spine using chopsticks, so they give you plastic gloves. I don't have any pictures of the gloves, but here's a picture of one of the pieces I ate, before I ate it. There was actually a lot more meat than I expected on the larger bones.
To go along with that one, here's a picture of a vertebra that's had almost all the meat gnawed off it. It's really tricky to get some parts!
Finally, here's a picture I took in the elevator up to the restaurant
Also, as far as coffee goes. I'll just say that the best I've been able to do so far is a pound of blue mountain beans that I got for 128 RMB from a UBC coffee in DaWangLu. I have also been trying to get my hands on some green beans from Yunnan province so that I can try my hand at home roasting without paying crazy amounts for shipping, duty, etc. Anyway, I'll be writing more about that as I find out more.]]>
so much foodtag:ben.jokuty.ca,2007:/blog2//3.882007-09-29T14:39:29Z2008-03-16T02:19:48ZI ate a lot today. I've been having Chinese lessons before work twice a week with a couple of my coworkers, and this week our teacher invited us over to her place for lunch. There was a lot of food...Benhttp://ben.jokuty.ca/blog/
and I figured I would take a picture of my bike while I was at it, since I haven't posted one yet. Here it is, in all its glory.
As you can see, my shiny new kickstand does a good job of holding the thing up... for now. In the basket are my lock, and a tissue that I use hold my chain when I put it back on after it falls off. Sometimes it doesn't happen for a couple days, sometimes it happens several times in one day. Since it doesn't rain very often I usually get pretty good mileage out of the tissues that I leave in the basket, but I have a spare pack in each of my bags just in case.
Time for sleep now, but hopefully I'll be posting again during the week about the joys of buying coffee beans in Beijing.]]>
The hills...tag:ben.jokuty.ca,2007:/blog2//3.872007-09-20T02:15:11Z2008-03-16T02:19:48Zare alive! Well maybe not, but at least they were visible today, which was a first. The weather has been perfect for the last couple days. Nice blue skies, low humidity, daytime highs around 25, and of course, good visibility....Benhttp://ben.jokuty.ca/blog/
What else is new? My bike is falling apart piece by piece. The kickstand rusted in half last week so I got it replaced. It cost me 7 RMB to replace it. There's nothing holding the seat onto the bike now, so if I'm walking it over a curb I have to hold the seat down to keep it from flying off. The chain also falls off sometimes, usually when I'm trying to go quickly, which tends to be the worst possible time for it to fall off. Despite all that I still love riding it. It's a at least a septillion times better than taking the bus to work.
Biking is a lot more fun and interesting here than Ottawa. The traffic here can be incredibly chaotic, especially on smaller roads. There are construction vehicles, cars, trucks, cyclists, and pedestrians going in in both directions on what is essentially a one lane road, because people basically just go wherever it's convenient rather than sticking to the right side. Despite that, AND the fact that my bike is a crappy one speed that is literally falling apart, I feel much safer biking here than I did in Ottawa. People actually pay attention to what's going on and respond appropriately!
Anyway, as soon as I can figure out a good way how I want to take a video of biking up the small road near my place. The larger road that I turn onto is pretty mundane, but the small road is usually pretty interesting in the morning, and sometimes even moreso at night, especially in the rain!
Anyway, more pictures and stuff as I get back into the habit of posting.]]>
]]>
I went camping a little while ago with some friends in Bon Echo provincial park. It was really nice! I took way too many pictures so I just skimmed through and uploaded the ones that jumped out at me. The rest are here.]]>
]]>
More coming soonish...]]>
It was spotted in a coffee shop (Sculpting In Time) in the north west of Beijing a few weeks ago, drinking from faucets, lying in the sun, and generally being cute.]]>
The chuanr pictured here were observed very close to the pingguoyuan (apple garden) subway station. There was no apple garden anywhere to be found, just people, shops, and chuanr.
Chuanr are incredibly abundant in Beijing, typically of the lamb/mutton variety, and ranging in cost from tiny little ones that cost 0.5 RMB, to the ones pictured which were 5 RMB, and probably higher, though I haven't personally seen any chuanr more expensive than that yet.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is a Wikipedia article on chuanr, though it is not really very interesting or useful.
This post has been brought to you by the character: 串.]]>
The lake was nice, especially in the morning near sunrise.
And Shanghai was also awe inspiring, though in a completely different direction.
More pictures and explanation to come!]]>
Yes, that's right. It's a frog, and it shoots mist out of the tops of its eyes. It has a dial on the front, and when you turn it up to the max it can produce quite a lot of mist. One thing I thought was pretty cool about this is that when it's turned up to the max, the mist has a significant cooling effect on the floor near the frog, despite the fact that it doesn't make the floor wet at all.
"But Ben, just how significant is the cooling effect of the frog?"
Well I'm glad you asked, because I measured it with my infrared thermometer!
3.8 degrees Celcius!
I expect it to have a fairly limited lifespan since the water here is so hard, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I took a few other pictures of it this afternoon while I was goofing off, and you can find them in this photoset if you want.
Totally unrelated to the frog: I just finished reading Vernor Vinge's "Rainbow's End", which is freely available in its entirety at the linked page. I enjoyed it, so props to the author, and doubly so for releasing it for free.]]>
You can see the rest of the pictures here.
Best 10 RMB I ever spent.]]>
You can see some bits of goat, but also some mushrooms I think. After you eat enough goat to make room in the bowl, you chuck other stuff in to cook in the soup. We got mushrooms, daikon radish, and some giant rice noodles.
It's pretty much impossible to handle the chunks of goat spine using chopsticks, so they give you plastic gloves. I don't have any pictures of the gloves, but here's a picture of one of the pieces I ate, before I ate it. There was actually a lot more meat than I expected on the larger bones.
To go along with that one, here's a picture of a vertebra that's had almost all the meat gnawed off it. It's really tricky to get some parts!
Finally, here's a picture I took in the elevator up to the restaurant
Also, as far as coffee goes. I'll just say that the best I've been able to do so far is a pound of blue mountain beans that I got for 128 RMB from a UBC coffee in DaWangLu. I have also been trying to get my hands on some green beans from Yunnan province so that I can try my hand at home roasting without paying crazy amounts for shipping, duty, etc. Anyway, I'll be writing more about that as I find out more.]]>
and I figured I would take a picture of my bike while I was at it, since I haven't posted one yet. Here it is, in all its glory.
As you can see, my shiny new kickstand does a good job of holding the thing up... for now. In the basket are my lock, and a tissue that I use hold my chain when I put it back on after it falls off. Sometimes it doesn't happen for a couple days, sometimes it happens several times in one day. Since it doesn't rain very often I usually get pretty good mileage out of the tissues that I leave in the basket, but I have a spare pack in each of my bags just in case.
Time for sleep now, but hopefully I'll be posting again during the week about the joys of buying coffee beans in Beijing.]]>
What else is new? My bike is falling apart piece by piece. The kickstand rusted in half last week so I got it replaced. It cost me 7 RMB to replace it. There's nothing holding the seat onto the bike now, so if I'm walking it over a curb I have to hold the seat down to keep it from flying off. The chain also falls off sometimes, usually when I'm trying to go quickly, which tends to be the worst possible time for it to fall off. Despite all that I still love riding it. It's a at least a septillion times better than taking the bus to work.
Biking is a lot more fun and interesting here than Ottawa. The traffic here can be incredibly chaotic, especially on smaller roads. There are construction vehicles, cars, trucks, cyclists, and pedestrians going in in both directions on what is essentially a one lane road, because people basically just go wherever it's convenient rather than sticking to the right side. Despite that, AND the fact that my bike is a crappy one speed that is literally falling apart, I feel much safer biking here than I did in Ottawa. People actually pay attention to what's going on and respond appropriately!
Anyway, as soon as I can figure out a good way how I want to take a video of biking up the small road near my place. The larger road that I turn onto is pretty mundane, but the small road is usually pretty interesting in the morning, and sometimes even moreso at night, especially in the rain!
Anyway, more pictures and stuff as I get back into the habit of posting.]]>