Paul Hammond's Blog

I had a momentarily confusing moment last night when I tried to get money out of the HSBC bank next to my hotel in Shanghai.  In fact, it happens to me every time I come to Shanghai, usually multiple times!  Take a look at the picture below of a Shanghai ATM keypad:

Now, without thinking too hard about it, try and type your PIN number for your ATM card as quickly as you can, using the picture above as a pretend-ATM.  Did it feel odd?

The keypad is upside down - specifically, 1-3 and 7-9 are reversed!  I haven't seen that anywhere else I have traveled.  Very weird.

I blogged a while ago about the solutions I am using for photo albums now - AutoViewer and SimpleViewer.  Since I have had my Canon IXUS 800 compact camera, I have been taking a reasonable amount of video too, and I wanted to share that video with others.  I considered YouTube for a while, but decided today to dogfood MSN's Soapbox service instead.  Both meet my needs (upload videos and provide features for embedding in blog pages etc), so the Microsoft solution was the obvious choice!

I very quickly cut together some (pretty rubbish) clips from my last couple of days in Shanghai, in order to test things, and uploaded.  The post-upload-processing step seemed to take a while, and so far this is my only criticism of Soapbox.

Anyway, below is the embedded version of the video:

A while ago I came across a blog post on the Live Search blog called "Add Search to Your Site with the Live Search Box".  You can basically set up a fully featured site search using and simply include it in your page.  You can select what "zones" to search (for example just your site, or your site and the web, multiple sites etc), and there is a choice between a really nice dynamic HTML version, and a plain vanilla HTML version.

I have added the feature to the top right hand side of my blog.  Simply type a query and press the button.  Since my site has been pretty well indexed by Windows Live Search, the results are very good.  I will be removing the other search box soon in favour of this one.

One thing I would like to see is a revenue share for the paid ads that appear in the search results (a la Google AdSense).

Follow the link above to read about how you can add the feature to your own site or blog, or go straight to the Windows Live Search Site Owner page to get started.

Casper has passed the blog-tag on to me, so here are five little-known Paul Hammond things.

• I am an avid musician; I play the drums, bass and some keyboards.  I compose too.  In my youth I played the drums for hundreds of theatrical productions at local theatres.  One such gig ("Chicago") involved playing in a small band on stage in full drag.  I was fifteen at the time...
• Many people know I "come from" the Isle of Wight.  However, I wasn't actually born there, so the rumours about inbreeding are thoroughly untrue.   I lived there from the age of 6, so some of the local traits may have rubbed off on me, but I was actually born in Warwick.
• I hate doing DIY.  I don't have the skills nor the patience to do a very good job.  Painting is my least favourite activity.  Despite this fact, I love to shop for tools in the local hardware shop, and recently bought a "Tim the Toolman Taylor" toolbelt to hold all of my tools while I procrastinate and complain.  I hung new curtain tracks at the weekend and I swear the toolbelt made me do a much better job...
• Michael Connelly is my (current) favourite author - he took over from Dean Koontz.  James Patterson's Alex Cross series is always excellent too, except "London Bridges" which I really disliked.
• If I hadn't discovered talents in IT, I would probably have been a session drummer.  My other two serious career thoughts were as a Police Officer or to join the Navy.  Is that a uniform thing?  I don't think so.  Both professions seemed to offer the chance to be a part of something bigger and really very important to the world.  Looking back I would probably have hated the discipline of the Forces.  I can still see myself as a Policeman though.  'Ello 'ello 'ello.

In classic "annoying chain letter" style, I am now going to tag Simon, Jo, Brian, Tee and David.