I'm cold. Very cold. For the past two weeks China has been experiencing the worst winter in fifty years. Much of the country has been covered in snow. Living in the relatively warmer climates of Southern China you would expect winter to be a mild affair. Last year it was, but this year the temperatures have dropped to around 4 degrees (daytime). Now this isn't such a low number when compared to other parts of the country, but the important factor is that the South is completely unprepared for such weather. For example, the building I live in has absolutely no insulation, the windows have gaps along the edges, the door leading to the balcony is an interior door, and there is no heating of any kind. The building itself is made of concrete and this only seems to intensify the exterior temperature. I can safely say that this is the coldest winter I've ever experienced - cold, damp, and miserable. Prague seems balmy in comparison.
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If you've visited the site in the past few days you might have noticed several additions. I've been trying to reduce the maintenance overhead of managing upwards of twenty plugins, as well as reduce the support of answering emails for these. This has resulted in:
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I've got a substantial update to Redirection just about finished off and ready for release. Rather than dropping this out and running the risk of upsetting a lot of websites, I've decided to try a private beta-test to iron out any final problems.
The new version gives much better management of redirections and error logging, and adds very powerful support for native Apache .htaccess files (i.e. you can use Redirection to edit .htaccess). If this sounds like something you want to help out with then drop me a line. The only requirement for this is that you are familiar with backing up and restoring your site database, or that you have a test WordPress site. The biggest help will be from people who are already using Redirection and have data to import into the new version.
Thanks in advance for any help!
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After two years in China I finally managed to do something I've been planning to do for a long time, namely visit Beijing. As Southern China is such a very long way from the North, Christmas seemed as good a time as any, and after some last-minute clicking I had a flight and hotel booked to see me through the Christmas period.
Not only is Beijing geographically distant from Guangzhou, it's also different in most other respects. The people look different, they behave different, they eat different, and they speak different. It would be easy to convince yourself you are in a different country entirely.
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