Published by Swiss James on 20 Aug 2008 at 11:34 am
Last few Beijing photos
I’m at my wits end with this blogging lark.
Don’t know if it’s the same when you try to leave a comment but every time I attempt to update a post, add a new photo, change the way something looks, or basically do anything at all- the thing crashes and I get an error message.
Being a computer geek I’ve been trying all kinds of things (I got shell access to look at the CPU usage, have optimised the MySQL tables, reloaded the admin code from scratch, deleted spam comments, changed themes, ran traceroute etc. etc.) and I just don’t know what the problem is.
Thinking about moving to another host, or even ditching wordpress and trying something else. What a palaver. Anyway, I don’t want to whinge…and in fact I’ll stop.
Here then (hopefully) are a few more of my favourite photos from Beijing.
Olympic TV Tower
This building looked pretty cool- it overlooked the Olympic Green: the Watercube, Birds Nest training track for the athletes etc.
Unusually for an Olympics, the ticket security was done before you could get to into the whole green- so instead of having anyone with a vague interest milling around the area, you’ve just got ticketholders on their way to an event.
McDonalds (who have the only ‘restaurant’ in the green) aren’t best pleased apparently, neither are other sponsors who built big exhibition sites for casual observers to ‘absorb the brand experience’ and all of that twaddle.
To me it made good sense to keep the riff-raff out, although inevitably, the odd one slips through the net:
WoAi Refuels
If you ever find yourself at an Olympics, I highly recommend taking your national flag with you.
After the 100m final anyone with a Jamaican flag outside the stadium was mobbed by people wanting their photo taken with a genuine Jamaican. Wearing a big Union Jack around my neck meant photo ops galore all day, including one with Miss World as we left the stadium (she was nice enough but would she buy me a Typewriter for my birthday?), and even though I didn’t see any British success (wish I’d been there yesterday to see the Women’s 400m!) it still felt good to be one of Her Majesty’s representatives. God Save The Queen what what?
The top three medalling nations at Beijing 2008?
Birds nest
In non-Olympics news, the turtles were fine when I got back from Beijing.
Once you put them in a big water tank, those things take care of themselves- no food, no changing the water for two days in the heat and they still look happy as larry. When I was in England, Emma took them to the vets when one of them had a slight cough, but I reckon the laidback approach is best.
If only Amphibian upkeep was an olympic event.
James it’s definitely not Wordpress because we all use it without those problems. I reckon it’s the host and suggest you try a new one.
Never thought of that picture in that way - the top 3 medal winning nations but that must have been a sign from God. If only I had put money on it I’d be able to retire next Sunday!
cute kids
the ugly one is standing behind you isn’t she
WoAi- a guy goes to the Doctor having trouble with his left leg.
Doc: “We’ve done a few tests and the problem is old age”
Patient: “No no no- my other leg’s the same age, so it can’t be that.”
You see what I’m saying? We’re not all using the same wordpress (old plugins that have affected database structure, number of posts, categories, tags, etc. etc.)
tinaria- yeah, she was off-camera. Holding a Tibetan flag.
James, I’m not so opinionated on software or hardware and I think Wordpress is pretty good. I use a single installation of Movable Type v4 for three blogs. It’s a paid version though, so I get free 24 hour support and commerical use rights, etc. The commercial version just sets the amount of users who can edit/write posts but you can have unlimited blogs.
Anyway, it’s pretty good. Same like Shanghaiist except a newer version. In MT4 all of the plug ins they have at Shaiist are just built in already. I’m not a big coder so that suits me. You can also swap between a html input and a WYSIWYG editor. Nifty.
It does seem, though, that techies tend to prefer Wordpress.
Andy- I did a quick look for how to migrate from WP to MT and most of the results that came back were for people going the other way…..
that made me think twice.
I think a lot of it is down to the traffic during these Olympics.
Did I answer your last question by the way? Yeah I remember talking with Michael on my birthday- he seemed like a good guy.
I have no doubt he thought I was a slobbering fool, but hey, it was a fun conversation in one direction.
i almost fell asleep half way through the first paragraph but you pulled it together at the end, like ohroguhgoughigogogoch in the 400m. but then all this geeklish in the comments, youve just gone and accelerated my narcilepszzzzz
Yeah, Wordpress is definitely the more popular one. It’s easier to edit the code yourself and it keeps the ‘everything in plugins’ system which is the whole point of 2.0 applications. I, however, am a lazy scouse b*st*rd and like software more geared to less effort.
if turtle upkeep were an olympic event, you and yours would have been “dead” last . . . get it? get it? =P
Swiss - Have you tried turning your PC off and then turning it back on again???
Viewing your blog just caused my computer to explode. There are pixels everywhere.
Oh yes it’s all a big joke to you lot isn’t it- BUT MY ENTIRE SENSE OF SELF-WORTH AND MASCULINITY IS TIED UP IN THIS BLOG YOU B*STARDS!!!
*goes off to bedroom*
*draws curtains*
*plays The Smiths really loud*
More medal table news…
You might want to hold fire on naming those 3 countries as the top 3 at the Games. US media order their tables by total medals won. Which puts us 4th behind the Russians.
It also means the US are top, ahead of China, but I’m sure that has nothing to do with it….
http://www.nbcolympics.com/medals/index.html
Well apparently the Yanks always do that, but they’re the only ones. I’ve been looking at the golds first method since day 1 and I ain’t about to change now.
I read that they’ve only been doing that for the last 2 or 3 Olympics. Although I have no evidence to back that up other than general e-say. However, it does seem very un-American to value finishing 3rd equal to winning.
Anyway, how are your website troubles? Have you managed to migrate to PMT yet?
Gold medals are overrated.. I’ll give you one if you tell me how to boost BT dl speeds on this turtle-slow 2 Mbps ADSL line.
When I first heard about the medal table stuff I assumed that the US would only count golds, but everyone else would have a points system worked out. Seems like no-one does a points thing though, very odd.
Website seems kind of OK today, but then I can’t think of anything to write about so haven’t tried to post something. Hmm.
Colin- have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?
As a yank my recollection of the Olympics games (with the exception of when they were here in LA when I was very small) pretty much began with Atlanta. This will be the first games since Atlanta (possibly before I just don’t recall either way) that we have not won the most golds. So yeah . . . I’m sure our media is switching to total medals rather than focusing on golds. We are sore losers. You knew this.
On the medals things.
The medals tables are totally meaningless as not every country enters every event. The disparity between the size of China and the USA’s team and half of the others renders the whole thing a moot point.
I read an article the other day, but can’t find the link just now, that someone does work out a medals table based on a ratio that goes from the team/nation sizes. Kind of like a handicap system. China and the USA are in the 50’s on that table.
Sorry but I think correcting for size of population is ridiculous. If Belgium sent everyone in the country to Beijing to compete in the 100m, they still would not have beaten Usain Bolt in the 100m final. China has 1.3 billion people but try finding 11 guys who can compete with Brazil in football and you’ll be wasting your time.
I would really have to see where Britain finish up on the list of medals-by-population to decide whether I’m for or against it.
Interesting that the US would complain about mighty China having an unfair size advantage though, there aren’t really that many countries bigger than the USA.
There’s also accessibility to sport. Take India for example, a population of untold trillions but most of them live in abject poverty with the only sport available to them being cricket in the dirt. So they would be unfairly rock bottom of the medals/population table.
It’s impossible to compare. Maybe if you took into account size of the team sent and amount of money spent per athlete per medal then it might be more accurate. But does anyone give that much of a shit?!? And does the medal table matter anyway? If we finish below the aussies in the table it won’t mean I will have enjoyed O’hanrohanrohan win the 400m any less.
Why don’t we give nations with less sunshine a handicap since they have less chance to train than countries like Australia with year round sunshine and give shorter athletes a head start in the 100 meters since they need more strides to reach the end. And yes, why not consider how much funding each athlete gets and adjust accordingly : yes, you ran 100m in 8 seconds but you got more funding than the Ethiopian who got 10 dollars over 4 years.
This is not the article I saw but it’s a similar one that plays in a bunch of factors.
aggregate medal count
For the record, I have no opinion on if these adjusted systems are any less worthless than the usual medla count.
I think you should be able to play your “Joker” card for any one event, and Golds for that event then count double for your team.
I also reckon that for track events they should invite one member of the public up to compete against the pros. That way we could get a feel for how fast they really are.
Many more ideas are available, members of the IOC can reach me at the email address to the right.
How about power-ups like in Mario Kart?
Originally, I thought it was kind of lame that you had to actually have a ticket to get into the Olympic Green as well. However, when I finally got in yesterday, I realized why they decided to do it that way. I took a good 3 hour walk around the Green (that’s about the minimum it takes to see the whole thing), and realized that like most places in China it was crowded. Not over-crowded mind you, but crowded. Concession lines still moved, and you could still easily walk around without bumping into people, most of the time, but just barely. With how many people there were outside the green, if they were to let them all in, I think it would have severely dampered the experience for everybody, because the whole thing would have been mobbed.