The Real Taiwan

30/10/2024

Typhoon Kong-Rey Will Hit Taiwan Tomorrow!

I'm more or less right in the path of this one. If anything happens that's newsworthy I will follow up with more videos.

23/10/2024

The latest photos of my Red Special build by Raymon GuitarWorks. Notice the pickups engraved with my artist name. She should be ready by the end of this month.

21/10/2024

Today was a close call. Too close for me.

Today, I honestly thought I was going to hit a police officer when he suddenly stepped out into traffic without looking in my direction. Technically he did n...

04/10/2024

This is a new one for me:

27/09/2024

I tried calling the tinnitus hotline. No answer. It just kept ringing.

22/09/2024

e-cigarettes are banned in Taiwan, yet every Thai place I go has more idiots va**ng than last time.

17/09/2024

There are but a handful of short films that just need to be shared. This certainly is one of them.

This is a short film by Hiroki Kamada shot on LUMIX S5IIX using Blackmagic RAW.The film tells a story of our protagonist who once had a fallout with his fath...

27/08/2024

While in the USA recently, my sister took me to visit our mother's gravesite. Our mother is interred in a modern wall crypt with marble shutters held in place by security screws and little discs that have a decorative pattern on them. These are called "rosettes" and they are attached to slides that fit into a plate that is secured to the crypt wall.

I immediately recognized the rosettes as our company in Taiwan manufactures them for our US customer. The pattern on these rosettes are very specific and individual to the manufacturer. There is no doubt about it whatsoever: Our company in Taiwan manufactured the rosettes used on my own mother's crypt.

Given that, it is highly likely that the slides and plates used in the construction were also manufactured by us for the same US customer.

I must say that was a pleasant coincidence.

07/08/2024

One thing that I like about visiting the USA: access to amazing used/vintage guitars! I picked up this little beauty in Ashville, NC. 2006 year model and not a mark on it. Even the headstock is pristine with no dings or scratches. There is no belt-buckle rash either. I haven't owned a Les Paul since 1978 so I think it's time and this sweetheart jumped off the rack and into my arms as I walked by.

10 new items added to shared album

03/08/2024

Please stop with the and tags! It's a cheap way to get views and I’m tired of the unnecessary notifications. When it gets excessive, I unfollow.

28/07/2024

Boarding our flight now. Row 58. The only question I have is, who organizes boarding front to back? Apparently United Airlines. Not looking forward to walking past 57 rows of people standing in the aisle monkeying with stuff in the overhead bins.

24/07/2024

For anyone wondering about the typhoon in Taiwan, the red dot is where we live. My weather station recorded 44.7mm of rain thus far, and 33.8 kph winds with 55.8 kph gusts, maximum. The nearby passing that will happen later in the day might be interesting!

03/07/2024

Came home to yet another truck parked in my private space, despite 3 cones in front. His "reasoning?" The space was "open."

Not any more.

28/06/2024

Some time so I commented on how I have I use my phone and scan a QR code order food. Starting very soon I'll have to do that to park. I get that the city wants to offload the labor costs to the customer. But since nearly every car already has RFID, it makes sense to use that. I'll have to park, scan and pay on the spot. We're pretty much back to coin meters.

15/06/2024

In Taiwan, a lot of people use traffic cones to protect their precious parking space from being used by outsiders - including me. It is common practice to place an old scooter tire over the cone to weigh it down so it’s not so easily moved. After a recent rainstorm, I moved such a cone in my own parking space and, it dumped water all over me. I then realized that there must be hundreds of thousands of these mosquito breeding cones around the country. I got my battery powered electric drill and drilled about 12 holes in the tire and it doesn’t hold water anymore. If you have one of these scooter tire cones, I suggest you do something similar so it doesn’t hold water and breed more mosquitoes. 


31/05/2024

This is my kind of gym!

24/05/2024

Update on my Weather Station situation:

I finally got the replacement sensor module. It took 59 days to get here by USPS, via Beijing. The package left the USA on March 29 and arrived in Beijing on March 31. On my way to 7-11 the postman stopped me on the street and gave me this package. I had long given it up for lost.

This was the second replacement the company had sent me. The first attempt was returned by Taiwan Customs for insufficient commercial invoice description. The second attempt arrived today. I originally ordered the Weather Station on Feburary 5, 2004. I got it a month later. It functioned for 3 days and the sensor array stopped functioning.

In frustration, the company sent a replacement unit to a friend in the USA. I was willing to pay for a common carrier (NOT the USPS) just to get the thing here. That hasn't shipped to me yet but I was in the process of making arrangements to ship it to me when I got this 59 day delayed replacement package.

Needless to say, I'm going to keep the one in the USA until I determine that the replacement is not going to die. Then I'll ask my friend to send it back to them.

I will say this: the weather station works amazing and I'm broadcasting my weather information on Weather Underground to help the network with weather prediction information.

For those of you who are interested in weather information, this is the link to my station: https://www.wunderground.com/weather/tw/hukou/IHUKOU2

18/05/2024

Fired up the Surface Pro this morning only to find (again) that Thunderbird Mail and VLC media player were uninstalled during the Windows 11 update process. What is going on?