Long Live the Rubber Duck!

The Rubber Duck rules, OK!

New post from new students at HKIT!

Here are some of my students at HKIT!

Phoebe
Jeff
Joey
Tony
Felix the Cat
Wing
Rosemary
Felix the Cat

Regarding web pages

I had some issues with my web site and the web developer was nowhere to be found. I think this is par for the course! I was unable to post images to my web site and far worse unable to backup the site I did get some useful information from the web host . It seems I had a permissions issue. This all sounded way too geeky for my liking. It seemed that the web developer had changed the password and not told me about this at all. ABCHK changed it back and pointed me in the direction of the DirectAdmin site. I had to enter an IP address and then my user name and a password. I then had to wade through the files and find the gallery in question. This was carefully hidden in the wp-content folder. The gallery folder had to be opened and then the required gallery had to have the permissions changed to 777. The required gallery had to be opened and then the "Thumbs" folder had to be given the 777 permission. I was then able to upload whatever images I wanted. Giving permission to the Thumbs folder enabled the thumbnail to be generated and thus shown on the web site. Then the image had to be changed from being owned by apache to being owned by me. This was done by the click of a button. After that had been done the permissions had to be returned to normal. If you fail to return the permissions to the normal code of 755 anybody can alter the posting and that would not be good at all. This took me ages to figure out the hard way. However, it has now been done. Had I not had prior blogging experience I don't think I could have managed this at all.

Lyuba

I went to an exhibition at IFC to see Lyuba. This is a 40,000 year old baby mammoth.

To the best of my knowledge mammoths are a bit rare in Hong Kong. This is the first one I have seen here. A Russian friend has told me there are many in museums in Moscow.

It seems that Russian and Japanese scientists are trying to clone a mammoth. The idea is to remove some DNA from the soft tissues of a mammoth like Lyuba and insert them into the egg of an elephant sans the elephant's DNA. With luck this will result in a live mammoth being born. The mammoth was probably the first species to become extinct at the hands of mankind. Fortunately, we have got a lot better now and we are killing many more species each and every year now. So it would be poetic if we can somehow reintroduce this long extinct species to the planet again. Maybe a far simpler way would be to ensure that we don't wipe out any more species. The tiger is on its way out. Maybe a reserve island could be established. All the corrupt politicians and bankers could be sent there so the tigers would not go hungry!

Burns Night

I have Scottish ancestors so I have embedded this You Tube clip in honour of Burns Night!

Happy New Year

This is now the Year of the Dragon. Gong Hay Fat Choy to everybody.

So true!