The last twelve months have been a bit of a rollercoaster ride:

• My wife had a baby – Zander James Brown.
• I completed my Graduate Diploma of Education – Secondary.
• I was offered a job in Malaysia.
• My wife was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
• I turned down the job in Malaysia.
• I was offered a job at Kelvin Grove State College and accepted it.
• I was offered a job at Unisys over the holidays (fantastic since I don’t get holiday pay).
• My wife found a new house for us in the city closer to the hospital and Kelvin Grove.

The best thing that happened this year was definitely Zander closely followed by graduating. The worst thing was Sheree being diagnosed with cancer. I was really scary when we knew it was cancer but didn’t know what type of cancer it was or if it was even treatable. When we finally found out it was Hodgkin’s lymphoma we were actually relieved because Hodgkin’s lymphoma has an 80%+ cure rate which is much better than some of the alternatives.

Sheree has been having chemotherapy for almost two months now and the side effects haven’t been that bad. The worst side effects have actually been from another drug she is given after the chemotherapy which makes her bones ache.

I’m going to try to post more frequently this year but we’ll see what happens.

China Menu

One of the most challenging things that I had to deal with when we moved to Beijing in 2006 was ordering food from chinese restaurants that didn’t have English menus (most of them). Over time it became easier (you memorize a few favorite dishes) but it was always slightly annoying.

Well technology keeps on progressing and a new application has been released on the iPhone that should make ordering Chinese food easier. If you are planning to visit China for a holiday or have decided to line in China but can’t speak Chinese then China Menu is an App worth considering. Unlike phrases books this China Menu helps you customize your order (you want cold beer, not warm beer). It also has a section that help you to understand Chinese customs and tells you how to deal with some of the more interesting ones.

That being said it doesn’t have the killer feature that I would love to see which is being able to take a photo of the menu and being told what it is ^_^

Discloser: I worked with the primary developer of this App when I was living in China. That being said it’s still a great idea and I’m looking forward to using it when I go back to China.

Easter Zander

Dad & Zander

Mum, Dad & Zander

]]> http://www.adinobro.com/2009/03/30/zander-james-brown/feed/ 4 http://www.adinobro.com/2009/03/30/zander-james-brown/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nathanielbrown/~3/wqgRQLp20C4/ http://www.adinobro.com/2008/12/24/100-things/#comments Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:37:13 +0000 admin http://www.adinobro.com/?p=123 This is a meme that is going around and it looks interesting. A lot of it is very American but that’s life. I first read it at Empty Thoughts.

1. Started your own blog

2. Slept under the stars

3. Played in a band

4. Visited Hawaii (Visited Vanuatu & Malaysia which are closer to Australia but similar)

5. Watched a meteor shower (Tried to 3 times but failed)

6. Given more than you can afford to charity

7. Been to Disneyland

8. Climbed a mountain

9. Held a praying mantis

10. Sang a solo

11. Bungee jumped

12. Visited Paris

13. Watched a lightning storm

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch

15. Adopted a child

16. Had food poisoning

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty

18. Grown your own vegetables

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France

20. Slept on an overnight train

21. Had a pillow fight

22. Hitch hiked

23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill

24. Built a snow fort

25. Held a lamb

26. Gone skinny dipping

27. Run a Marathon

28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice

29. Seen a total eclipse

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset

31. Hit a home run

32. Been on a cruise

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors

35. Seen an Amish community

36. Taught yourself a new language (Mandarin)

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person

39. Gone rock climbing

40. Seen Michelangelo’s David

41. Sung karaoke

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt

43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant

44. Visited Africa

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight

46. Been transported in an ambulance

47. Had your portrait painted

48. Gone deep sea fishing

49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling

52. Kissed in the rain

53. Played in the mud

54. Gone to a drive-in theater

55. Been in a movie

56. Visited the Great Wall of China

57. Started a business

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia

60. Served at a soup kitchen

61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies

62. Gone whale watching

63. Got flowers for no reason

64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma

65. Gone sky diving

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp

67. Bounced a check

68. Flown in a helicopter

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial

71. Eaten caviar

72. Pieced a quilt

73. Stood in Times Square

74. Toured the Everglades

75. Been fired from a job

76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London

77. Broken a bone

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person

80. Published a book

81. Visited the Vatican

82. Bought a brand new car

83. Walked in Jerusalem

84. Had your picture in the newspaper

85. Read the entire Bible

86. Visited the White House

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating

88. Had chickenpox

89. Saved someone’s life

90. Sat on a jury

91. Met someone famous

92. Joined a book club

93. Lost a loved one

94. Had a baby (almost)

95. Seen the Alamo in person

96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake

97. Been involved in a law suit

98. Owned a mobile phone

99. Been stung by a bee

100. Read an entire book in one day

I went to our website to find out what was broken and everything I checked worked correctly. I contacted the support team again and asked them to explain exactly what was broken. This time they explained that only parts of the site were down so I asked them to send me a list of broken URLs. Since it takes me an hour to commute to the office I decided to hunker down and fix this problem from home.

Step 1 – Verify The Problem – This ensures that you understand what the problem is and that you are both talking about the same problem.

When I received the URLs they all worked. It is really hard to fix something if it is not broken. I contacted them again and it was still broken from the office. I tried connecting to the office via a VPN and when I checked the website as if I was located at the office it didn’t work. So I’ve been able to verify the problem but it seems to be limited to the office and a couple of customers which is a bit weird.

Step 2 – Occam’s Razor – Use Occam’s razor to come up with the simplest solutions and test each solution.

At this stage I decided there were three different things to test:
1. The computer at the office – Try using a different computer at the office – Same error.
2. The server – Try accessing the backup server from the office – No error.
3. The proxy at the office – Modified the host file at the office to switch the servers. – The error still only affect the live server.

Step 3 – Eliminate Options – Eliminate problems that aren’t backed up by the data and cross reference to figure out what the might cause the problem.

So at this stage I know:
1. From home I can access the backup site without errors.
2. From home I can access the live site without errors.
3. The office can access the backup site without any problems.
3. The office can access the live site but some URLs return blank pages or have their connections dropped.

The only difference in the data is that some URLs can’t be accessed from the office to the live server.

Step 4 – Isolate The Problem. – Try to find the boundary of what breaks and what doesn’t break.

At this stage I had no idea what the caused the error but I knew that if I could isolate exactly what was causing the problem then I might be able to fix it or work around the problem. I knew it wasn’t:
1. The users computer. (Elluminate because other computer at the same office had the same problem)
2. The proxy (A similar URL on the backup server worked)
3. The server (Everything worked from another location)

So I decided to try variations of the URL:
1. http://www.example.com/module/user.php?uid=123 – Was Broken – It returned a blank page at the office but the correct page from another location.
2. http://www.example.com/module/user.php – Worked – It displayed the same page at both locations.
3. http://www.example.com/module/user.php?id=123 – Worked – It displayed the same page at both locations.
4. http://www.example.com/index.php – Worked – It displayed the same page at both locations.
5. http://www.example.com/index.php?uid=789 – Was Broken – It returned a blank page at the office but the correct page from another location.

It took almost 30 minutes of trying different combinations to get obtain the 5 URLs above which enabled me to solve the problem. Based on the URLs above the problem it is possible to figure out that the problem is related to the query string (The part of the URL after the question mark). Specifically any query string that contained ‘uid’. I decided to try some more tests:

6. http://www.backup.com/index.php – Worked – It displayed the same page at both locations.
7. http://www.backup.com/index.php?uid=789 – Worked – It displayed the same page at both locations.

Combining the results of all these test allowed me to refine the problem to:

• There is a problem accessing the live server from the office using a URL that contains ‘uid’.

At this stage I was on a role and I felt like I was making progress. Can we isolate the problem in any other ways? Well what are the differences between the backup server and the live server?

• The OS is the same.
• The code is the same.
• The database is the same.
• The live server is located in Hong Kong.
• The backup server is located in China.

Maybe the problem is related to the location of the servers. Well that’s fairly easy to test:
8. http://www.google.com/?uid=123 (In America) – Was Broken – It returned a blank page at the office but the correct page from another location.
9. http://www.google.cn/?uid=123 (In China) – Worked – It displayed the same page at both locations.
10. http://www.adinobro.com/?uid=123 (My personal site in America) – Was Broken – It returned a blank page at the office but the correct page from another location.

I tested a number of other servers all over the world and basically any server outside of China was broken. Around this time some of the previous URLs started to work intermittently from the office.

The the problem can be defined as:

• There is a problem accessing the any server outside of china from the office using a URL that contains ‘uid’.

Here is a little bit of background information about the Internet in China:

The ‘Great Chinese Firewall’ is not actually a single firewall. Each ISP in China has different rules and filters traffic differently. While they all block traffic differently the end users experience is always the same – A blank web page is displayed or the browser reports that “The connection has been reset”. Also if the ISP has to much traffic then the excess traffic is often passed though without being filtered.

So after eliminating all the simple solutions the only solution left is that:

• The ISP that the office used was blocking and URLs to servers located outside of China (including Hong Kong) that contained ‘uid’ in the query string.

I did a final check and verified that the users that were having problems were using the same ISP that our office used. While I was on the phone with the customers the problem magically went away.

Why would the ISP block go out of it’s way to block ‘uid’? Well for a while some of us (Foreigner IT workers located in China) have suspected that Chinese ISP temporarily block access to sites and services not located in China to encourage companies to move their servers into a Chinese data center which cost significantly more and can be seized by the Chinese government. If they block the site in an obvious way then users will notice and get annoyed but if they block parts of the website then it looks like the website is broken. There is no way that companies can predict what will be broken next so if they want to be reliable then they have no choice but to move into a Chinese data center.

I was aware of these rumours but I thought Hong Kong would be treated as if it was part of China but not according to our ISP apparently.

So remember if you are trying to solve a problem:

1. Verify the problem by replicating it.
2. Occam’s Razor – Find the simplest explanations for the problem and test them.
3. Eliminate options that aren’t possible.
4. Isolate exactly what is causing the problem.

Once you have found the problem you can fix it.

The first talk was about Rube on Rails just after version 1.0 came out. Since I gave that talk in 2006 there have been a lot of advances in the Ruby ecosystem and the talk is completely out of date but I figured I would upload the files anyway to show some of the problems that early Rails users faced.

• Ruby On Rails (Open Office)
  
• Ruby On Rails (PDF)

The last talk I gave at the Beijing Linux User Group was able the state of Linux gaming.

• State Of Linux Gaming (Open Office)
• State Of Linux Gaming (PDF)

I had lots of fun at the BLUG and I meet lots of cool people there. If you are ever in China I’d recommend catch up with them.

So what went wrong? Well have a look at by backup solution and see if you can figure out what happened?

• Images backed up to PicasaWeb – 1 Gig free.
• My Documents backed up to JungleDisk ~ 50 cents a month.
• Manual backusp to USB stick.

Now before I tell you what happened lets have a look at my parent’s backup solution:

• Monthly backups to DVDs.

Their problem was that they stored the DVDs with the laptop so when their laptop was stolen last month so was the backup. This is an important lesson:

• Don’t store the backup with or on the same machine.

My problem was I started to edit files directly on the USB stick so when I lost it I lost the files that were on it because I didn’t manually copy them back to the computer. This teaches us another valuable lesson:

• Backups should not rely on manual processes.

and also

• One way backups often end up becoming two way backups.

So how did I solve my problem and what is my recommendation?

Well online backups are a good idea and also fairly cheap but often inconvinient. My Dad had too much data for online backups. JungleDisk also doesn’t work very well with external drives.

So after looking around I found Allways Sync which can automatically detect when USB drives are plugged in and then sync the files that have changed automatically. I’ve been using this solution for the last couple of weeks (in addition to my online backup) and it’s been work fantastically.

Recomended Backup Solution

So here is my recommended backup solution which costs less than $10.

• Allways Sync configured to automatically synconrise files when a USB drive is connected.
• A USB stick (currently 1G is less than $10). Put the USB stick on your keyring and then you’ll never be temped to leave it with your laptop/computer.

You could use an external harddrive (currently 1T is less than $200) BUT you will be tempted to leave it with the laptop/computer so I don’t recommend this solution if you can avoid it.

Anyway I hope this article prevents someone else from losing thier data.

TED Talks are short incredabily well produced talks about Technology Education & Design. Every talk is less than 20 minutes and I’ve enjoyed every talk that I’ve watched. Here are some of my favourite TED talks:

New Insights On Poverty

Squatter Cities

Multi Touch Screens

Wii Remote Hacks

Photosynth

If you like TED but want more you might want to Talks@Google which is similar. It use to be hosted on Google Video but has since been moved to YouTube. The Talks@Google are slightly different to TED talks. The biggest differences are that they are longer and more educational. Unlike the TED talks there talks are not done at a conference so they are not quite as polished. They are held primarily for the Google employees and are often more technical than TED talks. That being said they are generally given by the top person in the field so if it is a topic you are interested in then they are worth the time. Because of the specilised nature of the videos I’m not going to recommend a specific video.

Finally if you haven’t watched “The Last Lecture” I highly recommend it.

Here are the highlights from the last couple of months.

June

• Language Calls went bankrupt and couldn’t pay anyone. I had some money invested with Language Calls so I lost a fair bit of money.
• We shipped 12 boxes of stuff back to Australia.
• Lots of cleaning, tying up loose ends etc.
• Got accepted into the QUT Graduate Diploma of Education Course.
• Lots of going away parties.

July

• Stopped of in Thailand for 10 days to see my parents and also have a little bit of relaxation before going back to work and university.
• Had a look at some of the international schools and talked to some of the teachers that worked there.
• Arrived back in Australia just after midnight on the 9th of July.
• O Week started on the 14th.
• Sheree’s Dad helped us find a nice car.
• Classes started on the 21st. (I have university on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday)
• Sheree got a 6 month contract.
• I got a 5 week part contract with Cook which starts on the 6th of August.
• We moved into our new apartment on the 26th of July (Ashely and Caleb helped)

So in less than 7 days we both got work, got a car and a place to live. Sheree’s parents have really blessed and helped us since we got back. I don’t know what we would have done without them.

Over the last two years I have learned a number of lessons about management. Some of them have been learned the hard way and other have been learned by talking to other people. In this article I’ve tried to summarize some of the most important lessons so you can try to avoid these mistakes.

In China a lot of these management problems are related to “saving face”, which is part of Asian culture. In the west these same problems are often called “office politics”. Whatever the cause the outcome is the same: They generally help a specific individual at the expense of the company.

All of these problems are related to authority and responsibility.

• Authority means that you:
  • Get the praise if the project succeeds.
  • Can be allocated resources and make things happen.
• Responsibility means that you get in trouble if the project fails.

What Works

Responsibility with Authority

If a single person is responsible for a project and has authority over the project then they have the motivation to make sure that the project succeeds. This doesn’t guarantee that the project will be a success but does improve the odds.

A Group with a Group Leader who assigns Responsibility and Authority

The chairman is not responsible for the output of the group. He/She is only responsible for assigning responsibility and authority. So if a task isn’t assigned to anyone then the chairman is responsible for that mistake but individuals are responsible for their individual projects.

What Doesn’t Work

Responsibility without Authority

This almost always means that the project will fail. It generally happens when a manager assigns a task to an employee without giving them enough authority to complete the task.

Authority without Responsibility (Kingdom Building)

This happens when roles and responsibilities are not clearly defined. The two most common forms are:

• Large unproductive departments (More employees = more important)
• Managers taking on titles without taking on the work. (More titles = more important)

Equal Group Authority with equal Group Responsibility (Blame Game)

If everyone has equal authority and responsibility then everyone assumes that someone else will do the work. If one person does all the work then everyone else still gets the glory. If no one decides to do the work then when the project fails then it is easy to blame someone else for the project’s failure.

Equal Group Authority with Individual Responsibility (Burn Out)

This scenario is similar to the “Chairman scenario” the main difference is that the chairman delegates responsibility and authority. In this scenario the individual is responsible for the project but doesn’t have enough authority to make sure it is successful. This scenario works for a while but eventually the person responsible for all the mistakes that the group makes will burn out.
This post is really different from the other posts in the blog and I would really appreciate feedback. Either directly or in the comments.