4. AHRP on Flickr

I have created a Google Gadget that one may use to display photos from Flickr.com in a slide show fashion. What started me on this gadget is my need to display photos that I and other on the Ann-Hua Rainbow Project team has taken over the years on the project's website. The problem is that there have been so many of those photos that it is difficult to put them in one by one.

Flickr is an easy to use photo-sharing web service that allows one to create an account free of charge, with a limitation of 200 photos shown on the account's Flirkr page and some amount of uploads per month. If one hits that limit, like I do, there is an option to go Pro at $24.00 per year.

What this gadget does can be seen on the side of this blog under the title AHRP on Flickr. It is a mini slide show of all photos on Flickr with the tag AHRP. One may limit the set of photos to show using a combination of a group (I created a group on Flickr called AHCS to collect all photos related to the Ann-Hua Chinese School -- Group ID: 1228870@N23 -- for example) and more tags. For example, one may specify the gadget to show only photos with students in them using tags AHRP,Student -- The gadget will then select only photos tagged with both AHRP and Student.

Now, a brief on the gadget itself: It is called flickr-show (click on the link takes one to the project page on Google Code). One may use it on Google Sites, Blogger, or any other web site that allows embedded objects and JavaScript. However, I don't know what it takes for a gadget to get on to Google's listing, so the easiest way to use flickr-show for now is to specify it by URL to the code:

http://flickr-show.googlecode.com/svn/branches/1.1/flickr-show.xml

As one can see, the version is 1.0 so there are known bugs and I am working on improvements.

On Google Sites, to add this gadget in a page, one do Insert » More gadgets ... » Add gadget by URL and then enter the URL given above. Then a configuration dialog will pop up to allow one to specify the things I have discussed above.

The rest should be easy if you know how Flickr works in terms of photo-sharing. The only thing missing from general Flickr issues is the API Key that the gadget asks. Well, that is a way for one to keep some privacy on Flickr while sharing with the world. If you don't know how to get an API key from Flickr, you may use the one I acquired for my experiments with flickr-show:

2961840042dccf8323bc6060dbd24a0b

That's all for now, until I have updates on the flickr-show project.

3. 安华彩虹计划又一年

秋夏之交，新学年伊始，我们的孩子们回到学校，回到教室。此时，各位家长大约会松一口气，很高兴我们的孩子们终于又开学了，不用再一边忙着上班，一边还要开车拉着他们这儿跑、那儿颠，去这样那样的活动。

新学年开始，也是我们安华彩虹计划 (http://rainbow.annhua.org/) 新一年募捐、捐助活动的开始。每年这个时候，安华中文学校 (http://annhua.org/) 的管理团队会在中文学校借用的密西根大学工学院教室的走廊里，忙着给学生注册、发书，给初次来上课的学生、家长找教室，给上课的老师们复印资料，不亦乐乎。安华彩虹计划的志愿者也会在学校工作人员值班的桌子一旁设置一个岗位，向大家介绍我们的活动，希望继续得到学生、家长的关注和支持。

行文至此，安华彩虹计划全体志愿者要向安华的学生、家长以及其他一直关注支持这项活动的人致以最诚挚的问候和谢意。谢谢你们过去一年中对安华彩虹计划的支持，你们的捐款通过安华彩虹计划已经直接资助了 148 名贫困学生，他们远在中国许多乡村和偏远之地，从江西到云南，从四川到青海。

此刻我们还要记住远在中国的那 148 位孩子仍然需要我们的援手，扶助他们继续他们艰难的路程，继续获得最基本的教育。在新学年开始之际，希望我们大家以心中无限的温暖和手里有限的捐助，给那些同样美丽、同样天真、同样好奇的孩子们送去一些希望。

安华彩虹计划的志愿者将于九月（十二、十九、二十六日）和十月（三日）的四个周末校日在中文学校与大家交流，接受捐款。我们期盼家长们能够抽五分钟的时间走进中文学校的走廊，来了解我们的活动。我们也欢迎无法亲自前来的家长随时与我们的志愿者联系：

Ms. Xiaohong Chen	陈小虹	xiaohong_chen@hotmail.com	(734) 623-9604
Ms. Tsu Cheng	钟素粧	tsuccheng@gmail.com	(734) 973-9539 (734) 239-5730
Ms. Mengdan Chu	储梦丹	acer_rocks@yahoo.com	(734) 222-8510
Ms. Hong Jiang	江虹	jhong5@yahoo.com	(734) 495-9122
Mr. Jiang Jiang	江江	jiangj56@hotmail.com	(734) 418-0558
Ms. Ying Pei	裴颖	ying_pei@hotmail.com	(734) 717-9958
Mr. Wei Wang	王伟	ww@9rivers.com	(734) 418-8385
Ms. Qi Wu	吴琪	angel_11735@yahoo.com	(734) 327-9528 (734) 255-0567
Mr. Jianming Xiang	向建明	jmxxdrnx@umich.edu	(734) 332-0701

安华彩虹计划作为安华中文学校非营利机构的一部分，向安华彩虹计划的捐款享受免税。从 1998 年开始，安华彩虹计划与所捐助的学校、学生保持直接联系，保持了捐款零消耗 -- 工作人员均为志愿者，捐款全部完全用于资助中国的学生和学校。这些年来，尽管我们能够给予每一位受捐助学生的帮助有限，我们希望我们的行动能够鼓励那些学生继续他们的学习，而不是被生活的重担压迫而过早地放弃受教育的梦想。

借此机会我们还希望向大家介绍安华彩虹计划的“学生行动小组”。这个小组的成员都是一些热诚的年轻人，他们长期积极参与安华彩虹计划的各项活动，为资助中国 贫困学生做出了成绩，细节请参见网页：http://rainbow.annhua.org/team-ahrp/student-team。我们希望通过表彰学生行动小组成员们所付出的努力和做出的贡献，鼓励更多的年轻一代参与，这也是安华彩虹计划的另一个目的。安华的学生许多已经进入高中学习，参与社会活动是他们高中阶段必修的一项。参与安华的活动，我们的学生从中所得到的锻炼和成就实际上要超过中国那些贫困学生所得捐助的意义。

2. 【转载】你可以试试

转载一篇别人转载的不许联想博客文章《你可以试试》，从中你会发现，这世界上愤世嫉俗的人还挺多，但同时还是有人在帮助别人。

1. About This Blog

Ann-Hua Rainbow Project is a charitable program that I volunteer to help at the Ann-Hua Chinese School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was started in 1998 by a then AHCS parent. The program has since provided some tens of thousands of US dollars to over a thousand students in rural China, some in quite remote areas.

I have been with the program for many years. I have written a few small articles here and there. I decide to start this blog as a personal account of what has been done, the support we have received from the community, and also, what the students of AHCS have been able to gain from participating in the AHRP program to support their counterparts in China, as well as other outside-of-AHRP but related things.

I invite you to join me in supporting the AHRP, cheer on the volunteers, and encourage your students to participate. As the saying goes, "It takes a village..."

[Update] How to Join this Blog

1. You need to be a Blogger -- meaning you need to have an account on Blogger.com, which is really a Google account;
2. Send me an email to let me know who you are (if I don't know you already) and why you are interested in joining this blog;
3. I will remain the owner of this blog, which means if I don't like you for some reason, then tough! Otherwise, you will get an email notification. You can then start writing and posting on this blog.
4. This blog is dedicated to the Ann-Hua Rainbow Project. I retain the rights to remove you as a co-author on this blog if you write anything deemed irrelevant or offensive by me.