Back in the fall of 2023, we went on a week-long road trip around Hokkaido. We were there during peak foliage season, so I took a ton of photos.
As has been the trend with my recent photography, it took me almost 18 months to finish processing these. Here are the ten I'm quite happy with.
Last year I shared my predictions for the 2024 season and I'm back again on the eve of the first race of the 2025 season to make this a yearly tradition!
But before we get to that, let me quickly grade my 2024 predictions:
| Prediction | Outcome |
|---|---|
| Max wins drivers' championship with fewer than four races remaining. He doesn't win as many races as he did last year. There are three other race winners besides him. | ✓ - He won the championship in Las Vegas with two races remaining. He won only nine races. And there were six other winners! |
| Red Bull wins constructors' championship at the Austin Grand Prix. Mercedes comes in second and the point gap to Red Bull is smaller than last year. | ~ - Much smaller gap between Mercedes and Red Bull (121 vs 451). Half point. |
| Lewis wins a race with Mercedes one last time at the São Paulo Grand Prix. | ~ - He did win twice but not at São Paulo. Half point. |
| Lando wins his maiden Grand Prix. | ✓ - Yay, and then some. |
| RB finishes higher in constructors' championship than last year. | ✗ - They finished 8th same as 2023. |
| Yuki gets his maiden podium, and outscores Daniel at the end of the season. | ~ - No podium for Yuki but he did outscore Daniel. Half point. |
| Alex gets a podium. | ✗ |
| Carlos outscores Charles. | ✗ |
| Logan loses his seat at Williams. | ✓ |
| Alex gets the Mercedes seat. | ✗ |
| Checo loses his Red Bull seat and Carlos gets it. | ~ - Ended up being Liam who replaced him. Half point. |
| After the investigation, Christian Horner remains Red Bull team principal and only gets a slap on the wrist. | ✓ |
So I only got 50% these correct. Let's see if I do better this year:
Well, I was never tagged in a blog challenge before but I saw Rachel sharing her answers and kind of tagging everyone. So here I am, hopping on this bandwagon to answer some questions about my blog!
The first time I remember doing something somewhat close to what you'd consider blogging was when I left Thailand to attend high school in the US as an exchange student. I never kept a diary or a journal growing up, and I didn't have a blog either. A year or two prior, I started getting into English language books, specifically the Pendragon series, which is presented as a bunch of journal entries. Inspired by that and also as a way to practice my English writing1, I chronicled my solo, multi-day journey to Michigan. In a Microsoft Word document...
I probably would have published that on a blog if I had known what those were (or how to create one), but I wasn't at all tech savvy back then and was barely on the internet. So the file just sat on my old laptop's hard drive, and I'm sad to say I lost that file a long time ago.
The first time I actually published a blog post was a few years after that. You can find it in the archive. I was still trying to improve my English writing (and it clearly shows) but I also wanted to share my experiences as an international college student. And to also share my photography since I had just started getting into it back then.
This blog uses the static site generator Gatsby and it lives in a GitHub repository. When I push a change, it triggers a deploy to Netlify. I remember specifically learning about this as I was trying to figure out how to write my own WordPress theme. It was this blog post by Tania Rascia on how to migrate from WordPress to Gatsby that got me. I was really impressed by how fast everything loads. And I thought it'd be nice to build my own site and have these posts stored as simple text files on my machine instead of some proprietary format.
I am honestly not really all that happy with Gatsby in recent years and looking to move away from it. But I haven't had the motivation to work on it.
The first time I set up a proper blog was on Blogger. Then I moved to self-hosting a WordPress site on DigitalOcean, and later to their managed hosting.
I write my posts in Markdown using BBEdit. I start by launching BBEdit which automatically creates a new empty text document, then I name and save it as a .md file in the /posts directory. I usually have gatsby develop running which builds the site locally where I can live preview the post as I'm writing it. When done, I commit and push directly to the main branch, which triggers a rebuild of the site.
Also I don't think I've ever revealed this Easter egg about my blog, but if you append ".md" to the post URL, you'll get the plain Markdown text that I wrote up. Here's for this one.
It really depends. I wish I was inspired more often. But I mostly get those from reading other blogs or when I did something interesting and wanted to share. A lot of times it's also when I have a collection photos to share (which I hope to do more soon).
I use Notion to keep track of ideas on what I want to write about and jot down notes on each of them. And if I find myself thinking about an idea for a few days or keep adding notes about it in Notion, that's when I know I should sit down and write it. Just like this one!
I am a very slow writer and edit and revise a lot as I go. This post alone took me over 3 hours! But I generally publish as soon as I'm satisfied with it after a lot of copy editing. I'm still trying to learn to be a faster writer and less critical of my writing.
For longer posts that I spent days working on, after publishing I would spend even more time re-reading them and fixing mistakes I missed before publishing.
Mostly just about what's going on in my life and some tech stuff. I would like to write more introspective pieces sharing deeper thoughts and opinions on different things.
Myself, mostly. I find writing—especially about a more complex topic—to help me greatly with organizing my thoughts and crystallizing ideas and opinions on the topic. It also helps me to be more mindful in this increasingly distracted world.
I can't choose one. A more "recent" one I'm quite proud of, which also represents the kind of posts I want to write more, is this one.
This one was also quite fun to write and share.
I've got a long list for this. But a few worth noting:
Erm... I don't have many blogging friends. But I would love to hear from Indira, if you'd like to share. No pressure!
And of course, you! Especially if you were thinking of your own answers as you were reading mine!
My English tutor also probably told me I needed to work on this prior to going to school in the US.
2024 was a big travel year for me. While the number of miles flown didn't top 2023, I was on the move a lot. All told, I was away from home for almost 10 weeks! I flew 30,172 miles on 6 domestic and 7 international flights, spending a total of 69 hours on airplanes.
The average flight time was 5 hours and average distance was 2,321 miles. The longest flight was 15 hours from Toronto to Taipei covering 7,506 miles. That was the first leg of our trip to Krabi. Between ground transportations and layovers in Taipei and Bangkok, that trip to Krabi took 55 hours. It was exhausting.
I flew on a brand-new Turkish Airlines A350-900 which started operating just 3 months prior. That was also my first time on the A350 and I was very excited about that. Right before that flight, I flew on an A330-300 named "Refahiye" which was Turkish Airlines' 300th aircraft with a special livery to commemorate.
3 new countries were added to my list: Canada, Taiwan, and Türkiye. Canada was for my work at Shopify, and the other two were during the long 10-hour layovers on the way to and from Thailand. That layover in Istanbul was also my first time in Europe.
By the end of the year I was so done with traveling and flying, which I never thought I would be. I was glad to not have any travels planned and happy to stay put for a while. 2025 is already looking to be quite uncertain for me when it comes to international travels. So I am sure I won't be as busy with traveling as I was last year.
For my upcoming scuba diving trip, I didn't feel like bringing my heavy DSLR with me so I'm instead bringing my old Minolta X-370s 35mm film camera. It's been collecting dust for the past few years, but in getting it ready for the trip I found out there was still half a roll of the Ilford HP5 Plus film in it. I also found a fully exposed roll of the same film sitting in a drawer. I had no clue how long it's been sitting there.
So I took them in to get developed, looking forward to seeing what mystery photos awaited me. Though I wasn't sure if these photos were still intact since they were exposed years ago and the film had long expired.
To my delight, all of them survived, albeit a little faded. It turned out these were shot around the first half of 2017 and were mostly of my cat Simba. Here are some of my favorites:
And a few I took recently from the half roll that was left in the camera:
This discovery reminded me of how much I enjoy shooting film, and now I'm even more excited to bring the camera on the trip.
Hopefully it won't take me seven years to get them developed this time.
As you almost certainly have heard and seen countless photos of at this point, there is a huge solar storm bombarding earth right now, which gave millions of people spectacular shows of northern lights last night. Not wanting to miss out on this, I drove north of the city away from light pollution and was treated with a stunning display. This was the first time both Jess and I had seen auroras. It was so surreal we couldn't believe our eyes.
These were all taken with my iPhone 14 Pro.
Last Updated: 6 August 2024 (after my trip back to Krabi in July)
Recently I've had occasions to offer recommendations to a few people visiting Krabi for the first time. I've just been passing along a private note with this list of places, but I figured I should share that here.
One disclaimer though: while I like to call these my local recommendations since I grew up there, I haven't lived in Krabi since 2010 and a lot has changed since then. I still visit every couple of years and like to try new places locals go to. So I've been to most of these many times throughout my childhood and on recent visits, and the rest are recommendations from family and friends who currently live in Krabi.
I've also created a Google Maps list with all these for your convenience.
Starting with the most important category. Most of these are located in or near Krabi town as I don't have much experience with food places near those popular tourist destinations like Koh Phi Phi or Ao Nang.
After a long winter break, it's finally race week! Inspired by The Backmarkers podcast, I figured I'd write down my predictions for the F1 2024 season to see how many of these I get right by the end of the year.
If you follow the sport, you'll know a couple of these predictions are unlikely to happen. But obviously I am biased, and those are more of my wishcasting than anything.
I hate their new team name so much. ↩︎
We'll find out about this tomorrow. I won't be surprised if the allegations are proven to be true. But I can't imagine Red Bull sacking him, as much as I'd love to see that happen. ↩︎
Over the past couple of weeks, there have already been enough takes on the Apple Vision Pro and the internet clearly does not need another one from somebody like me. Still, I just wanted to jot down some thoughts and observations from my personal experience—for my own records, if anything.
This was the first Apple product that I was there for on launch day and that was a really fun experience. You could tell the retail employees and everyone in line were super excited. I had an 8am pick-up appointment and was second in line. I opted to do the demo to see what that experience was like and to also make sure I had the right fit.
The very first thing I noticed and was honestly a bit disappointed by was that I could clearly see outside light leaking through the gap around my nose. Perhaps this is by design. Or perhaps it’s due to my Asian descent with my low nose bridge. I heard quite a few people complaining about discomfort on their nose as the weight of the headset presses down on it. I don’t have that issue at all and I can easily slide my thumb through that gap. I wish this little black nose cloth was a bit bigger, or customizable to fit people with different nose shapes and sizes.
The field of view leaves a lot of be desired. The simulated view from The Verge’s review is very accurate. Some say it’s like looking through ski goggles but I can see quite a bit more through my ski goggles. Maybe I need to get a different light seal that puts my eyes closer to the screens.
But that would make another issue worse. I use prescription inserts and my eyelashes would sometimes brush up against them. So after a few hours of use, there are some noticeable smudges that I’d need to take them off and clean them. I don’t think my eyelashes are longer than average. Maybe my eyes are already too close to the lenses. Or maybe I just have oily eyelashes.
I struggled a bit at first to do the initial calibration. I would look at a dot and as I did the pinching gesture I was already moving my gaze over to the next dot. And so it ended up not registering it or hitting the wrong one. This is also the case with other interactions inside visionOS. I needed to learn to not look away too quickly when I’m trying to interact with something.
This leads to quite a few accidental inputs and that can get really frustrating fast. But I think the eye tracking itself is not as accurate as I was expecting. Sometimes I really have to look hard or re-look at something for it to get highlighted. Sometimes it just doesn’t register where I look correctly and I have to look slightly outside of what I want to look at to interact with it. This is especially frustrating when using iPad apps where elements are much closer to each other, and some apps are downright unusable. For example with Discord, none of the interactive elements has a hover state so I just have to look, pinch, and hope that I looked hard enough at the element I wanted to select.
The pinching gesture itself feels very intuitive, though I sometimes find myself having to exaggerate the pinch gesture a bit for it to be recognized. One realization I had about using the Vision Pro that is not true for other electronic devices is that I can use it while snacking and my hands are dirty. It’s quite a freeing experience, really.
The passthrough view is decent. It’s good enough that I frequently just walk around the house and do things like normal. But it’s too fuzzy for me to be able to use my phone or read a book.
Speaking of using my phone, obviously Face ID doesn’t recognize my face while wearing the headset so I have to type in my passcode. But I don’t see why it can’t just unlock my phone while I’m currently authenticated on my Vision Pro, similar to Apple Watch unlock. Hopefully this is something that will be added in a future OS update.
Optic ID is really convenient and feels magical. Unlike Face ID, I literally don’t have to do anything while it’s authenticating my eyes. It just works every single time.
My Persona is quite uncanny and makes me a bit uncomfortable at first. The hair is just a solid blob. But I’m really impressed at how much it’s able to pick up on my facial expression. My eyes, eyebrows, nose, cheeks, lips and tongue movements all pretty much come through accurately. I do wish that they allow for multiple Personas though.
The windows in visionOS are quite a bit bigger in space than I was expecting. They do take up a lot of space in your field of view. Also moving them closer or further away doesn’t actually change how much field of view it takes up. It feels a bit like an optical illusion. I know it’s not what’s happening here but this does make me think of the dolly zoom effect.
Mac Virtual Display is a really useful feature. I know it’s not close to the Studio Display quality but my Mac screen looks perfectly sharp in visionOS and I could use it just fine. I was on a FaceTime call with a friend and they were sharing their screen and so I had two virtual Mac screens in my space at the same time that I can place wherever. I thought that was super cool.
Text input is just unusable and get really frustrating. I’m writing this entire post with the Vision Pro using Runestone with a connected Bluetooth keyboard. Even then, there’s always a little window that pops up in your view and doesn’t go away during text entry.
Watching movies should be done in an environment. In a regular app window the corners are way too rounded, cutting off too much of the content. These turn into appropriate right-angle corners in immersive mode. Plus, the “light” from the content interacts with the environment it’s in. You can see it reflected on the lake at Mount Hood, off of rocks on the moon, and on the snow at Yosemite. I was so blown away by this.
I can definitely feel some eye fatigue after using it for a few hours and have to force myself to take a break. Taking it off after a long session does feel quite relieving, not too dissimilar to when I take off my contacts after a long day.
It might sound like I’m unhappy with this device. It is extremely expensive. And I was actually on the fence whether I should return it but I ended up keeping it. It’s far from perfect but I’m really excited about its prospect and to see where this goes next.
I'm thrilled to announce a major update to my space launch schedule app, Liftoff!
The app was initially released in 2016 and was due for a facelift. Since the summer of 2021, I've been slowly and intermittently working on a complete SwiftUI rewrite to bring in a fresher look and introduce new features.
In Liftoff 2, you can now easily switch between recent and upcoming launches. Every launch in the list now contains a badge indicating the current status and whether a webcast is live.
The details page now showcases images of both the launch vehicle and mission badge. You can also dive deeper into launch vehicle, launch provider, and mission details including mission type and target orbit. The new weather forecast feature helps you stay informed of the condition at the launch pad. Plus, a convenient home screen widget displays a countdown to the next launch.
The most significant addition is the enhanced search page which now highlights frequent launch vehicles, active spacecraft, space agencies, and astronauts currently in space. The search capability provides a way to find more information on them as well as a glimpse into the rich history of space exploration, spanning back to its early days.
Liftoff 2 is also set to launch alongside the Apple Vision Pro tomorrow! While there's nothing too drastically different with the visionOS version, the platform does enable you to have launch videos floating right next to the app, making for a more immersive launch viewing experience. More exciting features are forthcoming on this platform, so stay tuned.
This app wouldn't be possible without the fantastic team at The Space Devs who developed and maintain an incredibly data-rich and up-to-date API for space nerds like myself to use, all for free. A massive Saturn V-sized thank you to the amazingly talented Michael Flarup for thoughtfully crafting such an impeccable icon that not only brought my idea to life perfectly but far exceeded my expectations. I'm glad to finally be rid of that old icon I used for way too long. Also, to the small group of beta testers who provided valuable feedback and bug reports along the way, thank you.