Photo Portfolio

Over the bridge at the Cornell Plantations.

For a while now I've been looking for an online solution to showcase some of the better photos I've taken. I'm using Flickr as a place to share my photos, using "sets" more like event albums, and I wanted a way to separate my favorites from the rest. I had originally created a separate set called [[ Favorites of Mine ]] to list them, but it didn't work too well, I think.

The solution I came up with is Tumblr, mainly because I tried several times to find a purpose for it and couldn't. I created a new account and figured it out. I call it k.Cheng Photo Portfolio, and it'll have just my better photos. Flickr for everything else (candids, vacations, photo of the day). Check it out.

(Sadly, there's no built-in way to post to Tumblr from Flickr.)

iOS 4 and iPhone 3G (Jailbroken)

Speaking strictly from personal experience, after upgrading to Apple's latest iOS 4.0 and 4.0.1, my iPhone 3G, originally on iOS 3.1.3., was unusably slow. It was disappointing to see the iPhone 3G become something I hated to use. After looking up several tips and tricks to speed up the iPhone, including disabling all my Spotlight search results and double hard resetting the phone (which didn't seem to work very well), I decided to give jailbreaking another chance.

It turns out that the jailbroken iOS 4.0.1 , even with multitasking and the background wallpaper service turned on, was noticeably faster than the official iOS 4.0.1 from Apple. I found this a bit strange. I instantly noticed it being slightly faster right after jailbreaking it. I still resorted to rebooting my iPhone a few times a day to keep it in working order. I used the jailbroken version with as full a feature-set my iPhone 3G can physically support for about a week, after which it begun feeling a little too sluggish for practical use.

Last night, I decided to re-jailbreak my iPhone 3G, this time disabling multitasking (because quite frankly, it was impractical on such a slow device) but keeping the background wallpaper settings (because I have grown used to having a non-black background). So far, so good, sort of. It definitely feels zippier than both iOS 4.0.1 by Apple and the jailbroken iOS 4.0.1 with mutitasking. Still, compared to the good and familiar 3.1.3, there is a no contest. (The only thing keeping me on iOS 4 are the folders and unified mailboxes.)

Supposedly, Apple's investigating this issue. I wait impatiently.

P.S. There's definitely some power issues that I've noticed with iOS 4, at least on iPhone 3G.

The Omnivore's Dilemma

Earlier this summer, I decided to let eBook reading on the iPad a go, and I must say, it is quite nice. Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Nobles Nook and Apple's own iBooks on the iPad aren't bad at all. (For the record, I believe Amazon's Kindle is the eBook reader to have if reading is important to you. Personally, I don't read enough to justify a Kindle purchase. Also for the record, I am not a fan of the Nook's user interface; it's atrocious.) While I enjoy iBook's organization and ease of download, I could do without the fancy pageflip animations. They felt a bit too gaudy even for Apple.

My first real digital book (oxymoronic, perhaps) was Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's worth reading. And while reading on the iPad was a novel experience (oh, pun), this will probably be my last eBook for a while. I'm still a pencil-and-paper person at heart.

Kevin Fact 8

You need to buy a violin before you can learn to play it.

Taiwan 2010: Reflection of Sorts

This month has flown by, and although I've been away from the Internet for most of it, I don't miss using it. I came back this trip to see my grandfather one last time. He passed away on June 16, 2010.

I must say, never before have I been as motivated to properly learn Chinese (even though I know enough to get by on my own for days); never before have I realized the significance and awesomeness of having a huge family; and never before have I cared even more about ceremony, tradition, and respect.

I did manage to find time (and permission) to do "fun" things, I guess you can say. It was on my own mostly, but sometimes with a couple of my many cousins after everything was done. Now, I have over 23 GB of raw photos and video to sort, organize, and process. My goal is to go through all of it within two weeks while it's still fresh in my head. I was the designated photographer and videographer (though photo-documentarian is probably more appropriate) of everything. I am also doing a joint photo project with a few cousins in Taiwan for my late grandfather. Not ready to share too much more about it just yet other than say that it'll be the biggest and most important photo project I've ever worked on.

I'm heading for the airport shortly after noon tomorrow, local time. I should be arriving in JFK some time around 10 pm EDT on Thursday. See you soon.

Photo: Taiwan Sunset at 星海之戀 in 桃園, 台灣.

Taiwan 2010: Random Thoughts 1

So it's been raining every day since I got here. It kind of sucks, but it's kind of nice. It's a mild 80 degrees or so everyday, and not 95. Definitely could be worse.

1. Life is so simple here. I forgot how little international news they follow here, among other things.

2. By itself, Chinese is a nice language full of idioms to describe nearly everything. Chinese, however, is a terrible language to translate into, from English. Or, English is too rich a language to be adequately translated into an Asian language. Watching American movies on TV, I find that reading the subtitles doesn't do justice to the actual dialogue of the movie. I was watching "The Davinci Code" on TV and felt the Chinese subtitles destroyed much of the subtleties of what was said. ("Subtleties" is a weird word.)

3. The food here is amazing.

4. Drivers here have no regard for what's painted on the ground. Still, they are all pretty amazing drivers to not collide with anything and to be able to navigate through a two way street that's wide enough for only one-and-a-half cars.

5. I've been following the World Cup games and the NBA finals, watching most of it live. The Korea-Greece game was the best. Germany did well because Australia was pretty terrible. The USA game was expectedly terrible.

6. I've been successfully fighting my Pepsi "addiction". Not even craving it anymore.

Taiwan 2010: In Alaska

First leg of the journey is complete. It was a pretty typical plane ride which is probably a good thing. I'm over at Anchorage, AK right now for a 1.5 hour stopover (I never quite understood why they did that). It is so quiet here, but at least there is free wifi. It's 3:30 am local time right now (7:30 am eastern). I should be in Taiwan by 6:00 pm eastern tonight. Yeah, that's all. I'm just really hungry right now, as usual, and nothing is open in the terminal.

Okay, later. Time to go exploring.

P.S. Notice full bars on AT&T 3G!