We woke at the ripe hour of 5:00am and were at the airport by 5:30. By 10:00 we were in Hong Kong, and by noon we were at the visa office on the Hong Kong-Shenzhen border. I had travelled this route before, so I knew getting a visa should not be a problem. However, to our dismay, the visa office closed for “lunch” from noon until 2:30pm every day. Luckily, the staff member returned around 1:00pm and processed my visa. We crossed the border by 2:30pm and went in search of funds. A Bank of China ATM, hidden in an apartment building a few blocks away, provided what we needed. Two thousand RMB later, we were at the train station buying tickets to Guangzhou, and by 4:30pm we were on the train. We arrived …

Alas, it is finally time for me to say goodbye to Taiwan. Yesterday I spent a few hours cutting and pasting my “Unlonely Planet guide,” a collection of freely available information in English and Chinese. I even designed a little cover logo; I find parodies quite humorous. Last night, after sending some rather important emails, I packed my laptop. I didn’t go to bed until 3:00 a.m., even though I had basically finished packing last week. I woke up at 7:30 a.m. and started taking the boxes to the local post office, which isn’t particularly close. I borrowed a dolly from the breakfast place, but I still had to carry four 20 kg boxes down five flights of stairs, in the Taipei heat no less. …

This will be my last post from Taiwan, and I’m placing it in my tech section. Shortly I will be flying to Hong Kong, and then traveling into China. I’m not bringing my laptop with me. I’m always a little wary of using public computers, especially in many of the poorly run internet cafes. Often the logged in user is the administrator, and we all know the computers are obviously crawling with worms and keyloggers. What can I do?

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of meeting up with some of the OpenMoko guys. You’ve seen me write a little bit about this project, but meeting them and actually getting to play with a device was quite enlightening. Most foreigners in Taipei take taxis, but not I. I already had an idea how to go to FIC headquarters, yet it was – rough. I jumped on the right bus, going the right direction, yet didn’t really know where to get off. In my broken Chinese I started talking to a group of high school kids, who somewhat pointed me in the right direction. At one point we were coming up to a light and a lady just said: “get off, go down that road.” I grabbed my bag and jumped off the bus. …

A mere three years later, I have finally put my Britney Spears remix online. I made it for a media-literacy class I was taking, and it has already been shown to well over a thousand people. If you have six minutes to spare, feel free to watch it.

The date is June 25, 2007, and I’ve sinned. Let me explain. I’ve been involved in technology for quite some time and have long been opposed to Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster. I never felt any urge to join; I always thought people spent too much time updating their profiles instead of writing something useful or insightful, or doing something productive. Two months ago, I broke my rule and joined MySpace for a single day because I needed to contact someone.

The buzz of Computex is finally wearing off, so I’ll finally scribe my account of the event. YS was kind enough to go with me, we actually called it a date. The scene was quite similar to the trade shows we saw last year, however there seemed to be fewer people. This might be because we went on the final day, although we suspect there weren’t that many people because there aren’t “sweet” deals to be had. Regardless, there were several main “halls” filled full of stuff. The first three (two were in one building) weren’t particularly interesting. I mean, there were some cool displays and lots of technology, but nothing that left me thinking “oh, that’s …

For the last 16 months I had been living in Taiwan (if it wasn’t obvious). Within the next month, that chapter will come to an end. Over the next few weeks I will continue studying for the GMAT and hopefully finishing my MCSE; any words of encouragement will be warmly welcomed. Meanwhile, I will try to avoid distractions, which seem to be coming in the form of Python. Django has been one of the most fun things I’ve ever played with. Recently I wrote and contributed some code to access both Alexa Web Search and Alexa Site Thumbnails via Python.

I am currently working from a Starbucks cafe, I’ll admit it. The internet is normally quite good, and I pay about $15 a month to use it. Today, however, it is very unreliable. Don’t believe me? In addition to certain sites failing to load, forcing me to use pattern recognition in Tor to open them, the internet is simply slow today. I can’t even connect to AIM. Frustrating.

I’ve had many friends produce music. Some were quite good; others were not. One of my friends, Mark Heckman, has produced a mixtape. Considering I listen to it as often as Nevermind, I’ll leave a link here for anyone else who would like to download it. Cheers, Mark. Get the Mix’d Tape, only about 90 MB.