Personal Blog of Carl Pei

Sucked, to be honest.

China’s president Hu Jintao embarked on an official state visit to Sweden yesterday. I had the rare chance to wait in the Swedish royal palace to witness him being welcomed by representatives of Sweden. And it was just what I did, waited.

After waiting for around two hours on a warm summer day in formal attire (full suit & tie), Hu finally enters the palace grounds in a traditional Swedish horse cart. I was sweating, my feet and shoulders hurt from standing still & straight. Luckily, it wasn’t only I who waited. The king, the royal family and all major Swedish politicians waited as well. What’s better is that they waited on the other side under direct sunlight while I waited in the shade.

After the cart leaves, Hu and his associates (wife, Chinese army general, and some random people) shake hands with their Swedish counterparts and proceeds to inspect the royal guards together with the Swedish king. Finally, the band plays the Chinese national anthem followed by the Swedish and Hu leaves. He is a pretty short guy in person. The president did not stay for more than 10 minutes in total and not once did he wave or even look at me, it was hardly worth the wait. But then again, being in the proximity of one of the World’s most powerful man isn’t so bad either.

The climax of the even was when Hu made his way to check on the guards, at one point which he was within 20 meters of me. Listening to the national anthems was also good. The only other remotely interesting thing that happened during the entire two hours was that one guard fainted and fell to the ground and had to be taken away because of the warmth. When other guards tried to help, the general shouted “Stand still! Stand still!“.

Was this a good experience? Well, now I can at least say that I have seen Hu live, so yes, it was probably worth the wait. Would I do it again? No.

If I ever see Hu live again, it would be under circumstances where he will at least shake my hand.

Back in 2003 I was great at web design, the Photoshop tricks I could do back then were still considered cool and the way I coded layouts were considered modern. However, somewhere along the line I lost my way between periods of inactivity. Web 2.0 was a pretty distant concept and I avoided using CSS for layout like the plague. As the Web 2.0 concept developed further, I got left behind and gave up.

It came to a point when I stopped creating own layouts and websites and instead only used free templates on pre-made CMS systems and it wasn’t until recently that I begun to regain my confidence in web design.

Getting Back Into Design

I have long been a fan of the Coupon Source logo, and always wondered how it was done. It looked so good and it’s not so easy to see how it was done. I think I might have admired it for a year, until one day last week I finally decided to learn how it was made. So I looked at it, analyzed it and after a while it finally snapped. I thought of a way that something like that could be made. Below is how mine turned out.

I’m very proud of it, but the technique doesn’t work as well for this font, if anyone could tell me what font Coupon Source uses for the header or at least suggest a similar one I would be grateful!

Winning a Graphic Design Contest

After creating the awesome graphic, I decided, with my newly gained confidence, to enter a design contest on Digital Point. Low and behold, I get a PM after two days saying that I have won, an unexpected but welcomed $25 found its way into my PayPal account. I recommend you to participate in the DP contest forum to practice your graphics skills. Who knows, if you get lucky you might even receive some money for it.

I’m Going to Learn CSS

Winning the graphic design contest gave an additional boost to my confidence, after which I was motivated to finally learn how to code layouts in CSS and catch up with the rest. If you want to start learning CSS, I recommend CSS Basics. It’s great and easy to follow!

I’ve graduated from high school and I feel it’s time to gather my thoughts on it one final time. This post is pretty long, so if you’re not a big fan of me or extremely interested in the private lives of others, it may be wise to skip.

By all means read it if you want, I just don’t want to bore you.

My Time in High School

High school was great. In Sweden, high school is three years and in each subject the grades can range from IG, G, VG to MVG. IG equals fail and MVG is the best grade, roughly meaning pass with special distinction.

I chose the Natural Science program. Ideally, students of the Natural Science program become researchers, doctors, dentists, mathematicians and engineers. After a year and a half I realized I wasn’t interested in becoming any of that.

During the first two years, I messed around, but still hovered above the average in terms of grades. All work was done last minute with minimal effort; I participated very little during lessons and never spoke to teachers outside of class. I played a lot of computer games back then, it was fun and I had a great time. I believe having fun is the best way you can spend your time and do not regret anything.

(more…)

I’m so hyped right now to graduate from High School tomorrow, I started this name meme on MSN. Ta studenten is Swedish for graduate.

In Sweden, we do all the normal stuff and then jump on a truck for 60 people with music and scream and jump for 3 hours, and then do the normal stuff again.

Saving all the analysis for a later day.

It’s time for me to clean up my domain portfolio, and I’m giving away three domains for free. If you want one, all you need to do is add a comment telling me what you are going to do with it. First come, first serve. One domain per person.

• blproxy.com (Expires 2008-04-12): A domain I bought recently as an impulse on Godaddy. I was going to create a proxy called Bruce Lee Proxy, I even did the layout, but then decided to move away from proxies. Free push to Godaddy account.
• the-gaia-project.com (Expires 2007-09-28): One of my first domains, the project was ditched. It’s on Wild West Domains, a Godaddy reseller. I have no idea how to push it for free, if you do, tell me. If not, you are responsible for the transfer cost.
• safelyhidden.com (Expires 2008-03-08): A proxy domain no longer in use. Also on Wild West domains.

Please take one only if you are going to use it. It’s not for parking or reselling.