Author: Haidong Ji

  • AWS Management Console is nice

    If you want to play with Amazon cloud computing stuff, I think using AWS Management Console web interface is the best, easiest, and most intuitive approach, based on my experience so far. My usage with Amazon Web Services has been only with EC2 up to this point. Prior to AWS Management Console, I had to…

  • AnyDbTest

    I’ve been working in my spare time on a database testing tool, AnyDbTest, with my friend Liu Zhongwu (刘忠武). The program is written in C#, based on the .Net Framework 3.5. It can be used in many scenarios: business analysts and QA can use it to confirm and validate data, recordsets data comparison; database developers…

  • 英语成语: 挂猪头,卖猫肉–Pig in a poke

    今天早上读Glenn GreenWald的博客,读到“They (the Chinese) don’t want to buy a pig in a poke”,虽然从行文里猜得出意思,但我还是用鼠标左键选择,然后右键股沟搜索,来查查这个成语的出处。我到现在还搞不明白为什么IE里没有这个功能,该功能已是我学习的利器之一。 原来欧洲中世纪后期流行的商家坑人手段是挂猪头,卖猫肉:把猫肉放在袋子里当猪肉卖,因猪肉稀罕但猫多。所以“pig in a poke”是忽悠人的意思。这和我们的”挂羊头,卖狗肉”有异曲同工之妙。 引申开来,”Let the cat out of the bag”就是揭秘,还真相于天下的意思。我明白它的意思,并且也用过这个俚语,但今天是第一次搞明白出处,挺有意思的。 感谢宋以郎的链接,让我了解到Glenn Greenwald的博客。个人以为Glenn Greenwald的文笔犀利,逻辑清晰,其揭露媒体之无良、政府之腐败、权威智库之装逼的深刻,令我击掌叫绝。

  • WordPress 2.8, a step back

    Update below Reports in blogsphere about some WordPress blogs being hacked got me alarmed. So I decided to upgrade mine from whatever version it was at (2.3, perhaps, whatever the current version was a year ago) to 2.8, the latest, but certainly not the greatest. The upgrade process wasn’t hard, just a bit tedious. After…

  • In search of a better dev environment setup

    Now my make-shift working area is no longer the dining table after the move, I am eager to set up a proper environment for learning and developing software at home. My thought is to have one decent computer that powers a few virtual machines. I like the idea of virtual machines as opposed to physical…