My blog is under renovation! I’m finally starting to make my blog look more like the rest of my web site, by mucking with WordPress themes. Since I don’t feel like installing WordPress on my own machine, all of my experimentation will happen on my blog live. Hopefully it won’t cause much of a problem.
Author Archives: Jimmy Lin
El Camino de la Muerte
On Thursday night I saw a documentary on the History Channel on Bolivia’s Yungas Road, also known as the “Road of Death.” It’s a major transportation route running northeast from the capital city of La Paz, but the most dangerous section is gravel, only ten feet wide, with steep dropoffs of over 1000 feet and …
Songs on my mind over the past month
I actually don’t mind having these songs stuck in my head, which is a good thing. Last month it was “Rhiannon” (video 1, video 2) and “Gypsy” (video 1, video 2) by Fleetwood Mac. Triggered by listening to The Dance CD over and over again during my trip to Rochester. Afterwards came “Sister Golden Hair” …
Helvetica at 50
What other typeface has both a book and a movie about it? Helvetica at 50 by BBC News Magazine
The Rich Internet Application arena is heating up again
Over the past month, there have been a slew of announcements that have the potential to rearrange the Internet development landscape. Building on the momentum of Flash and Flex, Adobe announces Apollo, a platform for building desktop applications using a combination of Acrobat, Flash, HTML, and JavaScript. This could be seen as direct competition to …
Continue reading “The Rich Internet Application arena is heating up again”
Yesterday in History
May 8, 1886: Pain relief or the pause that refreshes? A pharmacist in Atlanta invents Coca-Cola. (Thanks, Rich!)
Done with taxes
Our family has been using TurboTax to prepare taxes for years now, but I’d blanched at the thought of giving Intuit even more of my money for electronically filing my tax forms. This year I decided to give e-filing a shot. The verdict: dang, that was convenient. No printing out 50 pages of tax forms, making sure …
Travelers gets its red umbrella back
Another chapter in the long story of corporate rebranding: a couple of weeks ago the Travelers insurance company regained its iconic red umbrella logo after its former parent Citigroup decided to stop using it and sell it back. How did Travelers loseWeight Exercise it in the first place? Here’s a nifty diagram I put together, …
Taiwan or China? answers
China Airlines: Taiwan Air China China National Petroleum Corporation Chinese Petroleum Corporation: Taiwan (now called CPC Corporation, Taiwan) China Post Chunghwa Post (chunghwa means “Chinese”): Taiwan (now called Taiwan Post) China State Shipbuilding Corporation China Shipbuilding Corporation: Taiwan (now called CSBC Corporation, Taiwan) Central Bank of China: Taiwan (now called the Central Bank of the …
Taiwan or China?
A few days ago, several state-run companies in Taiwan removed “China” from their names. The old names date back to when the Taiwanese government claimed to represent all of China. Mainland China wants that practice to continue, lest anyone think Taiwan is separate from China. The Taiwanese government claims it simply wants to reduce confusion, …