August 2009 - Ryan McLaughlin

A rundown on where to find weird China news

Aside from terrible traffic, row upon endless row of souless apartment blocks, and a rather brutal family planning system; China’s massive population also assures that it’s never short on bizarre news stories. And while traditional media outlets are never shy to publish a juicy or scandalous story, a number of blogs have popped up in …

August 30, 2009

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Twitter documentary by Singaporean filmmaker brings new angle to social media

Dubbed Twittamentary, a new documentary about Twitter by Singapore filmmaker Tan Siok Siok, is setting up to take the term “social media” to a whole new level.

August 19, 2009

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Sexy Space — world’s first SMS worm made in China

There is a silent but ever-present chip carried around on the shoulders of many in this country about the nation’s “what have you done for me lately” innovation sector. Sure, China is responsible for the compass, gunpowder, paper making and printing. However, a little over a thousand years ago, it hit a bit of a …

August 12, 2009

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Suzhou info page finally fleshed + Suzhou district map

In any given week I usually get 2-3 e-mails from people just arrived or arriving in Suzhou. As one of the longest running blogs with a focus on living in Suzhou, Google gives me some love and I in turn do my best to pass it along. In an effort to provide information about the …

August 12, 2009

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Olive (Delhi Palace) – Some great Indian food in Suzhou

Yesterday afternoon Maggie came home with the latest edition of MORE magazine, one of Suzhou’s handful of expat-geared mags, and a glowing review of a new Indian food place caught her attention. As a yoga instructor, she tends to be a bit of an India-fangrrl. The review extolled the place as Suzhou’s hidden sub-continental jewel, …

August 9, 2009

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Creating wallpaper

I’ve created a new Flickr set for a little hobby of mine – creating desktop/Web site backgrounds or wallpapers. They are admittedly quite amateurish to the amazing stuff already out there, but I get a kick out of it. So much of my day is spent designing stuff with a very specific purpose, it’s nice …

August 9, 2009

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China, the world’s factory–a photo tour

It’s been a silent couple of weeks around the Tech Dynasty and for that I apologize. I headed off on vacation and spent two weeks desperately trying to pretend computers had never been invented. The vacation was great, but as is always the case, returning to work brings with it a mountain of things to …

August 5, 2009

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Trippin on HDR

Well, I’ve been back from travelling for nearly a week now, and am only just getting organized. I plan to post a full summary of my and my friend Cory’s summer travels around China’s tourist triangle, just as soon as I get all my photos organized. To tide things over, here are a few photos …

August 2, 2009

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