Read My Recent Interview
I was interviewed by New Dynasty recently, which is a magazine and website in Xi'an that's similar to Chengdu Living. They do regular profiles of foreigners in China and they recently did one on me and Chengdu Living. They called me a "Hao Hao Reporter" due to the success that Chengdu Living has achieved on that site. For those who don't know, Hao Hao Report is an aggregate news site similar to Digg.com which specializes in content about China. This was a personal interview, as opposed to one about Disco Death or Chengdu Living.
I knew this interview would get submitted to Hao Hao Report but I didn't think it would get voted up to the front page! Read the interview and check out the post on Hao Hao Report.
They linked to justcharlie.com and discodeath.net also. Bonus!
Congratulations, Washington D.C.
Well, it's about damn time. Although it's not without its caveats (no cultivation), it's a step in the right direction: removing the puritanical government from the doctor patient relationship. Congratulations, D.C. - here's the article that brought me this news:
Washington D.C. Legalizes Medical Marijuana
The D.C. Council on Tuesday approved amendments to a medical marijuana law first passed in 1998 by 69 percent of District voters. Congress had blocked implementation of Initiative 59 for more than a decade, until it lifted its ban last year.
With Tuesday's vote, the District of Columbia joins the 14 states across the country which already allow qualified patients to use medical marijuana without fear of arrest.
"Today marks a long overdue victory for D.C. voters and potentially thousands of chronically ill residents who will benefit from legal access to medical marijuana," said Karen O'Keefe, director of state policies for the Marijuana Policy Project.
"A well-working medical marijuana program in the nation's capital will also provide members of Congress who have never seen such programs up close with a unique opportunity to do so," O'Keefe said. "Once they see for themselves that these laws do nothing but provide compassionate care for seriously ill patients, hopefully they will understand the need to create a federal policy that no longer criminalizes patients in any state who could benefit from this legitimate treatment option."
"It has taken nearly 12 years, but the District will at last have a law that recognizes the mounting scientific consensus that, for many conditions, marijuana can be safe and effective medicine," O'Keefe said.
Under the District's law, physicians will be able to give medical marijuana recommendations to patients suffering from HIV/AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, and other serious conditions that can be alleviated through marijuana.
Qualified patients will have access to their medicine through dispensaries within the District.
Chengdu Living in Italian
This is interesting: the recent Chengdu's Spy Network article on Chengdu Living has been picked up by a few blogs and even translated in Italian by one. I can't read Italian but it's pretty neat that it's been translated and posted in other languages. The link came from Cinaoggi.it, which is user that I've been seeing a lot on Hao Hao Report recently.
Rock on Cinaoggi.it, thanks for covering Chengdu's "Una gang di hacker" story.
Tweeting in China
As you may or may not know, Twitter is (and has been blocked) in Mainland China. Iran's Twitter Revolution has the Beijing regime fearing for the spread of ideas and opinions so the service remains mostly accessible from the world's largest internet audience. For this reason, I have seldom used the service over the last year unless I've been travelling in Hong Kong or other countries in Asia.
However, I've recently come upon a solution, via an API Proxy trick that enables me to send and receive tweets from my iPod Touch (thanks to Kevin for his help working that out) and I'm reading and sending tweets again. Hooray.
If you're on Twitter frequently, follow me and see what I'm up to as I navigate my way through life, work, and fun in Chengdu.
Oh, there's a Chengdu Living twitter account as well which I'm updating more now that I can access the service from my mobile device. Follow that, too.
New Sites Online, Happy New Year!
I haven't posted on 19thstep.com in a long time because I've been busy building two new sites. They're both online new, check them out:
www.chengduliving.com - a site about life in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, chronicling the adventures of being a foreigner in the worlds fastest changing country
www.discodeath.net - a musical collective of myself and local producer Jovian. We'll throw up our DJ mixes, remixes, and original songs on this site and it's also the homepage of our monthly event at Xiong Mao.
As I spend more time developing these sites I won't be updating the 19thstep quite as much (since over the years, it's come to be similar to Chengdu Living, anyway) but the back catalog of years of posts are still available for browsing.
Happy new year, by the way!
Restored
I've moved to a new host and I'm back up with all of my old posts. I decided to implement a new theme. Even though I've changed the design for this blog a lot in the last few years, I haven't been able to tweak it exactly the way that I want. I like the current muted look which focuses on the content and feels more like a journal which it truly has become.
New Host, New Look
I'm finished moving everything to new servers and everything is coming back online again slowly. I updated to the latest (2.7) version of WordPress and decided on this easy-to-scan 3 column layout.
Today was the day of the Qing Ming Festival, a holiday for enjoying the spring weather and tending to the graves of your ancestors. Read about it on Wikipedia. Below is a cartoon family burning paper gifts for spirits on Qing Ming Jie.
No paper was burned and I didn't tend to any grave sites, but I moved my blog and finished Resident Evil 5 today.
Free Image Hosting
The last week or so I've been getting back into the swing of being back in Chengdu after 2 months of traveling. Being away from home for so long has allowed me to come back and see things with fresh eyes so I feel great about being back and working on projects. Just a quick note for tonight - I found and installed a php image uploader, it hosts images you upload and can resize them for forums, blogs, etc: justcharlie.com/upload
Add me on Twitter
I've been languishing in Saigon for a few days now but Nemo finally arrives tonight at 10pm. I'll leave to pick him up shortly. I've made a few updates to twitter everyday, recently micro blogging has more suited my quick and brief status updates.  add me on Twitter and you can also see the latest twitter update by clicking the black pull me button. Also check out Dave's new blog about Medellin or Tim Ferriss' blog which I've been reading a lot recently.
Last May immediately after the Sichuan earthquake I signed onto twitter.com as it became the quickest way to get news updates. I basically haven't used it at all since then but a few days ago I found a Blackberry twitter application which allows me to update in seconds. So the last few days I've been trying it out, posting every day or so. If you're on twitter, add me! www.twitter.com/justcharlie
