Brian Zhang Larsen’s Blog

We have now arrived in Yanji, where Lei’s mother live. It is considerately colder here than any other place we’ve visited this year. But its fine, and it is kind of similar to Denmark, so in a way, we are preparing ourselves for our return.

Last week we spent in Beijing, and a lot have happened since last year. We were lucky with the weather, and had clear blue sky everyday. Since my parents were with us we visited the major tourist sites like the great wall and the forbidden city again.

We took a tour bus to Badaling, which is one of the heaviest visited tourist attractions on earth. The trip itself couldn’t be more profit optimized. Just when we got in the bus, the (chinese speaking) guide, recommended we went to the toilet before departure, for which they charged 0,50 RMB. Then on the way they dropped us off at a jade shop, where the prices were supposed to be especially favourable. The shop itself had a layout like a maze, where it was hard to find the exit. And the nearer to the exit, the cheaper was the prices on the same items, to squeeze as much out of the travellers as possible, no matter if it would mock or anger the customers who allready had made a purchase (poor suckers).

At Badaling there is now so many people, so they have extended the parking lots down the mountain, which means that there is now even longer to walk to the wall itself. But it is pretty impressive though, and it certainly is a challenge to walk on the wall.

Later we went to the newly reconstructed Qianmen street. The street have been completely rebuild to look like it did in the 1920′es. After the reconstruction, the prices are so high so very few companies can afford to rent in, which have resultet in an almost completely empty street, with the exception on the obligatory Quan Jude Roast duck restaurant, and a post office.

A visit to Beijing in 2008 have to include a visit to the olympic city I guess. And so we did. It has become a pretty nice area, with crazy theme hotels and off course the well known stadiums.

We have now been in China for about a week, and are now staying in Guilin. We started out in Shanghai where we did some shopping and went for a one-day trip to Suzhou. The weather is nice here, with around 27C, but unfortunately it is quite misty so it is difficult to experince all of the fantastic scenery here. Yesterday we went to the top of the Longji rice terrace hill, where we ate some local rice, prepared in bamboo over fire, and drank some homemade strong rice wine. We also went there last year, but we didnt go all the way to the top then. This year we did, and our legs was shaking a bit upon descent. This time of year, they have just finished harvesting, so the terraces are all empty and dried out. As you can see on the picture, it is a little foggy here at the moment.

Tommorrow we will head to Beijing, and then to Yanji where we will spend the last week in China. I look forward to treat myself with delicious spicy Korean food, when we get up there.

Geotagging, geocaching, plot your runs, trips and so forth. There are many new coming hobbies and tendencies provided by new technologies such as GPS devices, interactive online maps and various web apps. What about just plotting your entire life?

I wanted a more efficient way to geotag photos, and a lot of people are doing it by comparing a GPS log with the photos EXIF timestamp, and adding the GPS data as EXIF data to the photos. Often by interpolating between the GPS points, to get a closer match.

But the log itself could become a little amusing, especially on vacations, to see where you actually have been. Not to mention those Sundays, where you wake up and think “hmm… what exactly happened yesterday”. Upload the log to your nifty little web app, and there you go. In 15 years, it could be possible to look back and see where you were on the19th of April 2008, or any date and time for that matter. You can then calculate stuff like how many meters you moved overall for 2008, or what was your average velocity in 2011, compared with the year before. If I ever become so manically obsessed with tracking my own whereabouts at any time (quite likely), I would prefer to keep all this data somewhat private though. That being said, I am really not too concerned about privacy in general.

Anyway, for my new toy, I just ordered this:

I wanted a small lightweight logger at first, to see if this would catch my attention. So by studying the flickr group “GeoTagging Flickr”, to look for advice i found the DG-100 GPS Data Logger to be an interesting choice. This gps receiver should be more precise than the Sony GPS-CS1, and have a newer chip set :O! I am a little nervous about the battery time though, but for a first device whatever must be adequate.

Logging and uploading daily whereabouts will only be step one. When GPS phone prices drops, it could be tempting to write a little java or whatever app, that sends the GPS data directly to a server. In that way, it would be possible to obtain real time life logging, which obviously has tons of opportunities (?!).

In a few years, I image myself with a large hat, which transmits my location and my viewpoint video/audio feed to my server, so I always have an exact multi media log of my life… Well, maybe not.

Other than private amusement, there must be great marketing potentials if GPS logs where publicly obtainable. Even for semi or fully anonymous data. It would be possible to use the data to define marketing segments, and target ads about local shopping or dining specifically to people who is likely to get near these areas. By generating heat maps, it could be possible to forecast trends to where the new hip spots are occurring. It could also be used to optimize transportation, city planning, real estate location relevance and much more.

More on this topic when I actually make an implementation and try it out.

Lei was trying to book tickets for domestic flights for China this summer from a site called www.sha911.com (kill 911, or death 911). I am not quite sure how the precise meaning of this name should be interpreted, but it doesn’t exactly mean “happy fun flights”. I think very few (hope none) would associate this name with positive thoughts, especially when it comes to booking flight tickets.

…I think I’ll take the train this time.

Last fall i went to Turkey, and i tastet some türkish specialties which actually tasted pretty good, although the consistency is nothing to celebrate in any way (clearly adds to the downside of this snack). Then recently I tried to buy some in the local greengrocer, but I was quite dissapointed. The consistency was even worse than remembered and the taste was… well not very good. But then i saw the text written on the package, and i don’t mean the words “Super Delicious”. Right there in the middle of the package i saw the word “Lokum” which is a rather bad word for toilet in danish. Apperently the turkish meaning of Lokum is not directly linked to the danish meaning though. But maybe, somehow the etymology behind the danish word may stem from this foreign snack anyway. It is not hard to imagine how a foreign word for some kind of food kan be linked to a danish word for Toilet. After all the danes are not known for their strong stomachs and physical adaptability to foreign foods.