This evening Jodi, her mom and I went to the Toys"Я"Us at the Super Brand Mall to avoid the crowds at the Grand Opening this weekend. Reaction? It has Uno and Mr Potato-head, but not Candyland or Frisbees. Overall, it's got a lot of toys but it's still a little too small.

You can search for videos with the normal Youtube search box. But if you try to sort by date, the Great Firewall (GFW) will reset your connection and block you from Youtube for a minute or two. You can slip past the GFW by editing the URL: copy the URL for sorting by "Date Added", remove the part that says search_type=search_videos (and the ampersand after it), and you can access the sorted search results. Removing that bit doesn't seem to affect the search results.

Oh, and one ignored "Contact Us" message later I'm still searching for a way to get the list of my Youtube favorites returned to me in the order I added them.

Lately I've been really busy with school. One of the fun things we do is organize an Astronomy Club to run the observatory. So far we've been learning about the planets and our solar system during the day, and then having biweekly observatory sessions at night. Our last session on November 25th ended in... rain, so I'm looking forward to next week.

As prep for our observation nights, I prepare a little report that tells us what will be in the sky that night. To do that I use several online tools:

1. Calendar Date And Time To Julian Day And Sidereal Times (calculate where we'll be looking),
2. NASA - 12-Year Ephemeris (gives exact planetary positions),
3. Your Sky (sky map showing planets and stars), and
4. The Messier Objects (a list of interesting interesting celestial objects to target).

And then draw up a Word document with the full report.

Via the mailing list of Chinese Bloggercon organizers, Sina reports that leaders in 12 government departments in the city of Suqian in Jiangsu province have opened 实名 (non-anonymous) weblogs. The entry with the most comments (443!) on the weblog of Municipal Party Secretary Zhang Xinshi is titled "How to understand the idea that 'Party Cadres Serve The Needs Of Entrepreneuers'", where he explains how government working to help local businesses does not mean that the government is neglecting the needs of the people.

I guess it's time to announce this:

It's about 3 months old, 4.5 cm long, heart beating at 132 beats/second. We don't know the sex yet. Suggestions for names are welcome, English and Chinese. Due date is late May.

My uncle just forwarded these to me. He teaches astronomy at a private school:

This weekend I actually listened to music. All oldies, but all goodies:

1. Smashing Pumpkins (anything of theirs, really, but Melancholly and the Infinite Sadness is a true rock symphony).
2. Butter 08 (Sean Lennon, members of the John Spencer Blues Explosion and Cibo Matto; doesn't even have a Wikipedia page).
3. Shanghai Underground 2000 sampler (just downloaded; check the upcoming concert at Yuyintang).

The reason Comic Sans survives is that it's the common font that most closely resembles standard printing as taught in American kindergartens. Elementary school teachers would be at odds without it.

My daily commute: