geek

Shanghai Software Park

Jacob Redding — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:33:57 +0000

Most tourists like to travel to resorts, amusement parks, or fancy restaurants. I like software parks!

yup, I'm that geeky

Huangzhou Developer Conference

Jacob Redding — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:26:10 +0000

May 24, 2008 I attended the 2nd annual developers conference in Huangzhou. I have to say that I was quite impressed with the line up of speakers and with the quality of the presentations. I was always extremely interested to compare how I, a big white westerner, and the local Chinese students interacted within the sessions. Or maybe I should say that lack of interaction within the sessions. I was extremely excited to ask questions, to probe deeper and to really get at the "meat" of the matter(s). The Chinese students seemed bored and also as if they knew all the answers or maybe they just didn't care.

I was cool to attend and to see how the local developers interact and to watch this ecosystem grow. In 10 years (or less, according to the Chinese government) the world is going to see a lot more highly skilled, very talented developers hit the industry.

The coolest Chinese word so far..黑客

Jacob Redding — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 17:28:52 +0000

Last night I had an IM conversation with a new friend of mine whose English name is Patrick. During the conversation he told me that he turned down an offer to do some hacker programming against paypal. Now I know the Chinese word for hacker.

黑客

The word is a transliteration. Transliterations are several Chinese characters that form the sound of the word but by themselves mean nothing. Broken down this is

黑 : hēi (pronounced like hey): This is the character for the color black (黑色）
客：kè :By itself it means visitor, quest but it can also be used to mean helping/serving (of food).

If you take the sounds of the character and leave behind the meaning of the characters you get "Hey Ke" which sounds like "Hacker".

I'm off to the chat rooms to see if I can learn any other nefarious terms.