Tian Mu Shan and the Leeches

The graduate department of our university put together a wonderful trip to Tianmushan, a mountain nature preserve that has two peaks approximately 1500 meters high. The department arranged a bus and allowed me to fill it with some friends and past students. Here we are: Amery, Chris, Peter, Tim, Anita, Sophie, Rebecca, Jack, Sue, Danny, Lisa, Sarah, Jenny, Vincent, Sara and Blue! Xiao Zhou has been so great all year - I send him all of my copies via email every week and he has them printed and ready to go for me every Tuesday morning! I feel quite spoiled as all of the other teachers have to make their own copies.Sue, with my student Lisa, a 2nd year law student. Since this is a preserved area, there are many large trees and it is SO green! It was also very hot today, probably 90 degrees, and cloudy. Very humid and warm!Sue found some sort of chrysalis from some long gone resident. We saw these all over the place, and the forest was abundant with butterflies. Maybe this fuzzy fellow will build one too!Xiao Zhou, and another one of my past students, "Blue". I think she always wore blue in my classes, but today she wore red!Peter and Jack took a break and hung out by one of the many waterfalls we passed on the way up the mountain."Sara" and "Lisa", two of my law students... Peter and Jack talked to Chris, who is studying for his masters in Precision Measurement. He is also a very fast runner and is the fastest hurdles runner in Zhejiang province. They like the same video game, Warcraft 3, so they had plenty to discuss. Rebecca and Anita came with us too, and it's always a pleasure to have them around. They get on so well with the boys and Sophie LOVES them!Peter with Jenny. He is now about the same size as most of my students :).Here he is again... I think he's now taller than Rebecca and Anita.... but he hasn't passed me up... YET!Jack found a creative way to get across the stream - shimmy across a fallen piece of bamboo. I was SURE he was going to go into the water but he made it across without a problem. Here's Chen Ye, "Sara" next to one of the large trees in this dense forest! Sue and Anita admiring the foliage...Now we're half-way up and it's very warm out. Everyone is soaked to the bone with sweat and we're all hot as you can see from our red faces! We found a nice resting spot beside the trail and sat down for some lunch. They brought a spread of duck-wings, some sandwich fixings, cookies and other munchies for lunch.Then Peter noticed something on Jack's leg. It was a LEECH! Yuck! I managed to pry it off of him with my fingernail. Here it is stuck to a chopstick. One of the other teachers at the university warned me that leeches are prevalent at Tianmushan and I should take great care to wear long pants. I took it as so much Chinese folklore and thanked her for the advice -- but it was TRUE!When we got home tonight, Sue pulled off her socks to find a leech had bitten her through her sock and her wound bled for quite awhile. They are really amazing creatures. They put some kind of anesthetic on the bite area, so you don't feel them bite. Their saliva contains anti-coagulants so the wound bleeds and bleeds. Sue's was still bleeding a couple of hours after we got home and treated it! The green path that we were walking on - so tranquil - it looks deceptively cool, but it was so HOT!Sophie found a little fountain and tried to splash me the best she could!The fountain comes down this bamboo trough that originates near the waterfall. Many people drank from it but I wasn't going to risk it only 7 days before going home!We did however put our heads under it, and it felt GOOOOD. Thank goodness for short hair. The girls with all of that long black hair decided not to have a go.Taking my turn... so refreshing!We took a little side-trip to a really stunning waterfall...Here we all our for a group shot!Making our way up the slippery rocks...All the more difficult with Sophie on my shoulders. She decided that riding was more fun than walking. I can't say I blame her!... a view up the ultra-green path! Finally a break at the lookout point. It was a bit cloudy so the view wasn't that good, but it sure felt good to rest after carrying Sophie up here!Anita, having a break after a tiring hike!... and here we are, 2/3 of the way done! Rebecca and Anita are standing in front of a tree that died about 80 years ago and is more than 2,300 years old!We're all egging Sophie on. "Sophie, can't you please WALK? You're so LAZY!"We made it back to the bus down the mountain and transferred to our bus back to Hangzhou. We all had a great time today being out in nature!

Stacey Marie Barker

Girl's Vegas Trip!

A couple weeks ago I went to Vegas to celebrate the birthday of not one, but TWO very important birthdays of my friends, Amy and Tiffany. We got a van to hold all eight of us and stayed at The Venetian.Amy went a little crazy writing on our van!There was so many memorable moments but here's just a few:-Before we even left town, one girl forgot her underwear.-I decided to do a fake tan for the first time and burned myself really bad! (I STILL have the light lines on my back!)-One girl fell out of the van! Twice!-A gas station guy asked, "What does Vegas or Bush mean?" but what was written on the van was "Vegas or Bust!" So that became our slogan.-We got amazing hookups everywhere we went, just for being a group of girls!Birthday Girl #1: The beautiful Amy.Birthday Girl #2: The beautiful Tiffany.Vanessa knows how to rock a photo shoot!Yep, I posted this one cause I look goood!My two favorite (G-Rated) quotes from the weekend:"I love big words and when you use them, I kinda love you a little.""Every time I'm sad I'll think of her falling and I'll be happy again."This weekend was one filled with rainbows, cookies, bubbles and midgets (or technically, a Dwarf.) It will go down in history as being one of the most fun times ever to be had by yours truly!

Need for Speed Undercover Patch v1.01.18 now available

If you've got the need for speed, then you'll definitely need this: v1.0.1.18 patch is now available across all platforms that Need for Speed: Undercover is in - and that's quite a list of platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PSP, NDS, PC, mobile and PS2.For this patch, you'll once get into high-intensity police chases, as well as get introduced to the new "Heroic Driving Engine". This new feature uses a unique technology that is capable of generating high-performance moves up to 80mph.There's also the Challenge series, which you can get for free, featuring 60 new events in two new game modes. Here, you can also earn up to three new cars. Wanna add another diamond to your collection? Then make your pick with the premium Boss Car pack, which you can get for US 5 (400 MS Points).Here's what's included in this sweet fleet of new mobiles: Carmen's Shelby GT500 Chase s BMW M6 Chau Wu s Mercedes-Benz CLS 63 AMG G-Mac s Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 Hector s Nissan 370Z Nickel s Dodge Viper SRT10 Rose s Porsche 911 GT2 Zack s Volkswagen SciroccoRelated Need for Speed: Undercover Articles:Crossing the finish line: NFS Undercover finally reaches App Store

berlin!

Ok, this post is gigantic. What can I say. Berlin is my favorite city in the world, and it's a vegan/green living mecca. In exchange for posting tons of photos, I will not use any words. If you want specific information about anything or any place you see, feel free to ask me. For comprehensive vegan Berlin information, look at this post on the PPK, where Sarahbean and Mihl posted hugely valuable information. Their lists were basically our guides! And, I got to meet so many awesome vegans and bloggers on this trip, including Mihl and Ditte. This was an amazing trip. Berlin, ich liebe dich!latté made with soy milkmunching on a hawaii burger at yo-yojojo enjoys one of our many many cupcakes from Cupcake (yes, jojo from Brighton)yes, vegetarian doner!vegan gummi bears- seriously addictiveyet another Soyamilchkaffeelemon cupcake!apple tart with vegan whipped creamvegan brunch. plate 1 of many...our group came from 5 different cities and most of us crashed together- so fun!yay photobooths!Mihl & bazu, about to enjoy some fine German beerSudanese vegan food.you heard me right.another vegan restaurant, co-owned by an Iranian-German lady. um. vegan Iranian German food.you heard me right.^ this is where you find it. It's in the Kreuzberg neighborhood.Berlin has many, many healthfood stores, including an all-vegan supermarket! Above you see that Germans have a huge selection of veggie spreads and pates to choose fromsoup,and hot dog at Hot Dog Soup. That's what they serve!Lots of different hot dogs, including hawaii dog, above.the last 3 remaining Berlin revelers, right before leaving our hostel room...This post didn't even scratch the surface! The one thing everyone can agree that Berlin is is OVERWHELMING. you can see the rest of my photos from this trip here.

Raphael Matos and Richard Antinucci Savor Showdown on Sunday

Championship Contenders Comment on Upcoming Contest at Chicagoland
by Allan Brewer
allan@indyproracer.com
AFS Andretti Green Racing’s Raphael Matos. Photo: ChrisJonesIRL
Months of preparation, and a sixteen-race schedule spanning from March to September, culminate on Sunday (September 7th) when AFS Andretti Green’s Raphael Matos and Sam Schmidt Motorsports’ Richard Antinucci square off at Chicagoland Speedway to determine who is going to go home with the Firestone Firehawk Cup—the prize for winning the 2008 Firestone Indy Lights championship.
Both men, who are competing in their first full year of Indy Lights competition at twenty-seven years of age, were solid preseason co-favorites to win the Cup; and neither has disappointed their fans or their teams in a season-long quest for the crown.
The pair have see-sawed the points lead back and forth from the green flag that waved over the streets of St. Petersburg in Race One to kick off one of the greatest years ever of Indy Lights racing.
Now with a single contest remaining, the last two contenders standing will settle the issue on the 1.5 mile oval near Joliet, Illinois.
Stakes High as Both Drivers Aim for IndyCar Futures
For both men the Firestone Firehawk Cup validates their credentials to move upward into the IndyCar Series.
Raphael Matos’ three victories (St. Pete, Watkins Glen and Mid-Ohio) and seven top-five finishes are bolstered by four pole position starts over the sixteen-race 2008 season.
An Indy Lights championship in tandem with the Champ Car Atlantic championship he won in 2007, and the Star Mazda championship he claimed in 2005, can boost him into the limelight as IndyCar ‘silly season’ gets underway (early) this year.
“I hope I will be in an IndyCar (next year),” Rafa offered. “There are a lot of things going on right now, and that’s my ultimate goal. That's what I'm working hard for.”
“I truly believe having the Indy Lights championship can help me in negotiating for next year. I have a great team that could easily support a car for me in the IndyCar Series,” he said.
“So let's hope.”
Richard Antinucci has shown the kind of consistency of finish, and speed on the big oval at Indianapolis, that leads to championships at the Indy Lights level and beyond.
Sam Schmidt Motorsports’ Richard Antinucci. Photo: RonMcQueeneyIRL
Two wins (also at St. Pete and Watkins Glen) compliment nine top-five finishes and eleven top-tens that could be enough to sway 1998 Indianapolis 500 winner Eddie Cheever to roll out an IndyCar team in 2009 with nephew Richard at the wheel.
Most importantly, Antinucci ran a convincing second to Panther’s Dillon Battistini at the Freedom 100 on Carb Day (May 23rd) at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The feat established his potential on the 2.5 mile oval that hosts the grand-daddy of all American races, the Indy 500.
“I hope Eddie and the whole Team Cheever manage to pull something together to do part-time, full-time, or just the Indy 500 in the IndyCar Series,” said Antinucci, “because that's where I really want to be. That's where I think his (Eddie’s) heart is, too.”
“We'd both like to work together,” he continued. “We did really well last year in the few races we did. We ended on a very positive note. We've also done a Grand-Am race together and it went really well. The results were good, fastest lap, all that.”
Something Must Give as Matos and Antinucci Focus on the Same Goal
Matos takes 472 points into the final racing battle at Chicagoland Speedway, a neck ahead of Antinucci’s 469. The closely-fought competition has left both racers anticipating the climax.
“I'm really looking forward to this last race,” said Antinucci in the final pre-race interview of the 2008 campaign, “because we've brought ourselves to this point and we have a chance.”
“We're almost going in even,” he continued of the skinny three point deficit that separates him from leader Matos, “as if the championship race started this race. It's definitely a fair crack at it.”
“I think the approach will be pretty much the same as everywhere we've been,” countered Rafa with his turn at the microphone. “We’ve shown great speed pretty everywhere we've been. We won three races on a road course, and we had two pole positions at the mile-and-a-half oval courses.”
“We tested last week at Chicago,” he said, “and we have a great car for that track. I'm looking forward to it. I think we'll have an extremely good package for the race.”
“Everybody's wishing me good luck from Brazil,” he finished. “Hopefully I will bring this title for them, to all my family, friends, and obviously my team.”

Using IValueConverter to format values in RadControls for Silverlight

It’s often necessary to modify or format some of the raw data received by your data tier application or other data sources. In Silverlight, you can create your own value converter and introduce your own formatting rules. In this blog post I will create a simple value converter that formats double values, and then use it with a RadComboBox. First, let’s create a class that will represent our data source. The equivalent of this class in more realistic scenario would be a proxy class generated by your data tier application in case you use RIA services. public class Data : List { public Data() { this.Add(new Item() { Name = "Ferrari", Price = 120000 }); this.Add(new Item() { Name = "Mercedes", Price = 100000 }); this.Add(new Item() { Name = "BMW", Price = 90000 }); this.Add(new Item() { Name = "Ford", Price = 50000 }); } } The Item class can be any class that implements the INotifyPropertyChanged interface. In this case the Item class has only two properties Name and Price. To data bind the data source class we have just created, you should set the DataContext property of RadComboBox like this: Data context = new Data(); radCombo.DataContext = context; Since we want to bind our RadComboBox to the items that are contained in Data, not the Data class itself, we can either use the DisplayMemberPath, a property of RadComboBox, or create an ItemTemplate. Otherwise, if you just simply set the DataContext to the data source you will end up with a ToString() representation of your Data class. To have our two properties, Name and Price, appear in a single ComboBoxItem we should create a custom template. Here is a sample implementation of this: The result of running this code should be similar to this: Obviously, we cannot distinguish whether the numbers part of the combobox item are prices or telephone numbers. What we would like to achieve is simply format the UI representation of this values without modifying the data source itself. In Silverlight and WPF you can use the IValueConverter interface to introduce your own format logic. The interface has two virtual methods that you should implement: Convert and ConvertBack. Here is a simple implementation of a converter that formats the Price property of the data source class to its currency representation. public class NumericConverter : IValueConverter { public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture) { if (value is double) { var num = (double)value; return num.ToString("C", culture); } return value; } public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture) { double num; if (double.TryParse(value.ToString(), out num)) { return num; } return DependencyProperty.UnsetValue; } } The Convert method is the place to introduce you custom logic. The ConvertBack method should do the inverse of what Convert does, but Silverlight isn't making use of it, so you can leave it not implemented. Note that the data binding engine doesn’t catch exceptions by custom converters. In order to anticipate any problems with the conversion process of your data type, you should return DependencyProperty.UnsetValue. Now you can declare the value converter in the resources tag of your control like this: You should also associate your custom converter to the property you want to use it. Now if you run the application your RadComboBox should look similar to this: It’s important to note that you can use the value converters in any control in your Silverlight application. Value converters are also very useful when dealing with DateTime types.