Internship at Baidu.com, Inc

My web development engineer internship in Baidu.com officially started last Wednesday. So far, I have been in this city for 12 days. Right! 12 busy days!

I flew to Beijing last Tuesday morning, took a lunch at McDonald's, and visited the company as a guest at the afternoon. Process of checking in was scheduled on Wednesday, and it took the whole morning. And then, I became a member of technical support group of service operation division under technical department. A web development engineer under technical support group sounds weird, right? At least I think so.

That is caused by a so-called historical problem. Before the company has a portal search, which means when it was still a search solution provider to other portals, technical support group wrote web pages for consumers and helped them consuming the core search service. The group played the role as consumer technical support, and ran under service operation division.

Nowadays, technical support group mostly acts as template support, which means writing templates for all kind of products. We also do front-end researches, in fields like web standards and JavaScript programming. There are many talented people in our group, and we share all information and knowledge we have freely via emails, blogs, and internal magazines.

So far, I enjoy working here, as I can take projects that I feel passionate with. I think Baidu.com would be a passionate start of my career.

P.S. My CV has been updated, for my TOEFL score was out and my internship started.

Exactly 300!

I wrote exactly 300 words in my TOEFL writing test second essay! It just reaches the minimum word count of so-called qualified essay.

In fact, I have done little preparation for my TOEFL test. From time to time, I think I need to do something about my TOEFL test, but I just don't want to do anything around it. So, I didn't use any strategy during the test, and spoke and wrote without any so-called pattern. I don't know what kind of score I might get for doing this. Anyway, it will just reflect my true level, I think.

Tired of filling application forms!

I'm applying jobs now. In fact, I hate filling out all those kind of forms online. They look familiar, and I still need to copy information from my profile and paste them into forms. Why they don't apply some open standards and APIs? For example, they can use hResume, which is a microformat.

I really want to implement my own open resume standards, and let those job application sites just crawl my website in order to get my information. Then I might have my resume done once for all.

Joining IfGoGo.com

Ok. I haven't written anything in this blog for a long time, but recently I have joint an English team blog. That is IfGoGo.com, which is an English blog written by Chinese.

I still have no idea about what I should post here and what I should post there. There's no theme for both blogs, so maybe I'll just post English stuffs randomly. Anyway, remember to check out what's on IfGoGo.com, because it has a wonderful team, and great posts will appear soon.

Translation Job

I've started translating Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action into Simplified Chinese since this month. It's a contract with Turing Book Company, Posts and Telecommunications Press. The book is more than 500 pages, and I'm going to finish it in 4 months, with my partner Junyu Wang.

I've finished first two chapters of the book in 2 weeks, and start feeling that the job is quite interesting. At first, I've found some phrases and clauses hard to translate, and asked the translation support group for help, or just try to see what Google Translate might offer me. Then, I started getting used to those phrases and knowing how to break down complex clauses. Google Translate did offer me a lot, more than translation results. It lets you know how to write translated sentences more like natural Chinese sentences.

The side effect of doing translation job is that, after reading every perfect phrase or complex clause in English, I would try to think about how to translate it, totally naturally, even if I have no intention to translate it. When I'm reading a book in English, I'll keep trying analysing what I've read, just like a parser, and this makes me feel weird.

Microsoft MVP Award received

This is the last day of the month, and I have to post something to keep the pace, which means at least 1 post per month. In fact, I received the MVP Award at the first day of the month, but I totally forgot to write it down in this blog.

There are around 200 active MVPs in mainland China, and about 2000 active MVPs all over the world. And I'm so proud to be one of these 2000. As an MVP, I received an Award Pack from Microsoft, which included a laser pen, a USB drive, and a $150 coupon from Microsoft Company Store.

I have chosen a camera, a headset and a keyboard in the Company Store, and had $60 left. Then I picked some gifts for my parents and friends. Sharing the value of the award with people who supported me makes me feel quite happy, as I think their support is also some kind of contribution to the community and they deserve it.

Keep Writing

I think I should keep writing as I'm preparing for the TOEFL iBT. However, I have no idea about what should I write. Keep writing all those TOEFL style topics, like do-you-agree-with-the-following-statement things? I don't think so. Maybe I should read some articles on the topic of American campus life or academic essays everyday, and then write some comments telling that this is something I like and that is something I dislike.

No Junk Food Month is nearly over

This May is my No Junk Food Month, and it's nearly over!

Advanced to Round 2

We got rank 26 with 7 votes in Round 1 of Imagine Cup 2007 Web Development invitational, and advanced to Round 2. Our project is a Q&A system with feature of recommendation. Here is the page of our team: Jovenes.

Blog*Spot or Block*Spot

It has been blocked in mainland again...

I hate Chinese bots!

"We're sorry, but access is denied to that document."

"This might be because you are accessing this site from a machine in China. Because of a massive amount of robot traffic from Chinese machines, we've had to take the unfortunate step of blocking access from those IPs."

Why Chinese programmers always design their program to use up all the resources, and do not consider other people who also need the resources?

I don't know what that bot is. It seems that it's Baidu's spider, but Baidu said not. Many sites have been *attacked* by this bot, including some of my sites.

Back to Blog*Spot

Well, Blog*Spot now can be accessed from China, while Sitesled cannot after the earthquake. I have to change the publishing address back to Blog*Spot. After changing back to Blog*Spot, I upgrade the old template to the new layout which supports widgets, and you may realize that my blog's interface has been changed.