Ever since coming to Taiwan I have been looking for a specific kind of wall clock. You would think that in Asia finding a wall clock with the Chinese characters for numbers would be everywhere. Sadly this was not the fact. I looked everyplace imaginable, from clock stores, to night markets, I even searched the internet, but no luck. So instead of giving up I decided to make my own, and that’s what I did.

The first thing I had to do was to find a good, cheap, and customizable wall clock. I found what I was looking for at Ikea of all places.

This clock fit all of my requirements and now the hard part was in the design.

To design my clock was no easy task. The first thing I had to do was disassemble the whole clock to get the correct measurements. After all of that was done, I fired up Illustrator and got down to work. I first had to create the perfect circle to fit the clock which was easy, but creating the hour and minute tabs was where I got in trouble. They had to be perfect all around and I won’t bore you with the details, but it took me a while to figure it. Once that was done I had to add the Chinese Characters and line them up perfectly. Here is the final design.

The character in the middle of the clock is my Chinese last name which is pronounced as “hey” which means the color black. I made a version that was black background and white tabs and numbers, but I think it looks better this way. Check out the final product.

As generous as I am, if anyone requests it, I will make a personalized design for you and send you the picture to print. Just tell me the character or imagine you want in the middle and if you want to keep the Chinese numbers or something else. You can send your request here : Clock Request

I like doing this kind of hack and will be thinking of new ones to do in the future.

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Finding shoes for me in Taiwan is not the easiest thing to do. I wear a US size 13. If the planets all align and the wind is blowing south/southeast I might be able to find a size 12, but usually when I do they look like this:

Thank you Adidas for making probably THE ugliest shoe I have ever seen in my life, no seriously, I dare anyone to show me a picture of an uglier shoe. In fact let’s make it a contest. Whomever can show me an uglier shoe, wins a free beer. You can pick the beer and the place(in Taiwan) and it’s yours!

Besides the ugly shoes, the type of shoe I have wanting lately are leather casual shoes. All my life it’s been running shoes, or skater shoes, or shoes of that type. The thing I learned about those types of shoes is they suck when they get wet. The absorb 100% of the water and make my already stinky shoes smell worse. I need to throw then in the washer every time I drive in the rain. Then it’s another day or so for drying before I can wear them again. Well no more! Since I can’t actually go to a shoe store to buy shoes (fuck you midget feet Taiwanese!) I have to shop online on Yahoo Auctions Taiwan. Then I get the pleasure of searching for people selling size 13 and pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster God that they have something decent looking.

The reason I want to get some leather shoes, is for one they look nice, they are more water resistant then cotton lined shoes, and I need to fake like I have some class. I have some prospects now, and If I manage to purchase them, I’ll make a nice post about it. Good luck on that contest.

It’s always nice to spend some money. To treat yourself on some of the finer things in life. For me those things are electronics. The two electronics that I have cherished the most, is my iPod and my cell phone. Well it was about that time that I upgraded both.

My first purchase was a new phone. My previous phone was a Sony Ericsson K700i. Normally I hate Sony products because of their proprietary memory cards and accessories, but the design and interface of the phones are awesome. Since it was time to upgrade and since I enjoyed my last one so much I bought another Sony. I did my research and bought the K530i. It has everything thing(almost) my K700i had, but so much more. For starters it is a 3G phone, and for those who don’t know what that it(Mom) it’s high speed internet on the phone. With 3G I can access my email, google maps, and search engines(google). I can do video calling since it has a camera on the front. The only problem is that I don’t know anyone with a 3G phone, so I haven’t tested it out yet. It also comes with a 2MP camera on the back, which takes decent photos. Here is a picture:

K530i

My next upgrade was for my iPod Mini. I bought it on May 4, 2005, and it has served its purpose. It has survived through one battery change, once being dropped in the toilet(not full), and multiple drops. It still works, but I needed more than the 6gb it offered. Apple finally released a new version of their classic iPod so I bought one of them. It’s all black, and has a whopping 80gb storage(73gb after format). This one has a full color screen(as opposed to the half color screens), and can play videos. While the screen is a tad small to watch full length movies, it’s nice for short clips from YouTube or Frostfox Films. I have only filled about 40gb so far, so this time I am not worried about running out of space. I’ll run out of hard drive space first, but that’s cool, since I need a reason to buy more. Here it is:

iPod Classic

I also got some new clothes, but we can talk about that on a day I’m feeling more gay.

There is a blog that features different Taiwan related blogs each week. The blog is appropriately named “Bloggers in Taiwan“. After months of waiting and wondering why my site wasn’t featured, it happened. Actually it happened about a week ago on Friday the 13th (awesome, since I am kinda evil). Maybe it was post about the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, or perhaps the Taiwanese Children Stories, or even my short lived Podcast. It could of just been that my name was the last in the hat. Either way I rule! Check out the screen shot below.

Yes, I am speaking to both of you. How are you? Actually I probably have more than 2, but it’s funny to think otherwise. I actually keep track of the traffic that comes to my site using Google Analytics. I am always shocked at some of the different places in the world that people read my blog. I have visitors coming from Auckland, New Zealand to Buenos Aires, Argentina and from Vancouver, Canada to Tallinn, Estonia. I even have a stalker from Australia (who are you, send me an email)! Recently one place caught my eye. Below is a partial screen shot from Google Analytics showing his location in the US. Take a look and think of the first person that comes to your mind. My answer is after the screen shot.

The Fresh Prince of Bel Air

Anyone can leave a comment, don’t worry it won’t hurt. I hope I am right!

A couple of days ago emKid called me up and asked if I wanted to play some laser tag and naturally I’m all like “Hell Yeah!” He told me a new place recently opened up in Taipei called “Lazer Treks” (located on the 4th floor of the K-Mall Building which is next to the Mitsukoshi Building, across from Taipei Main Train Station, their phone number is (02)2388-6565). emKid told me is was going on Thursday and I should meet up with him. The last time I played laser tag was little over 10 years ago, when I went to this place near my high school everyday Wednesday for buy one get one free day. I was pretty good at it too, but after 10 years I knew I would be a little rusty.

When I showed up around 3pm he was already in a game so I got the tour of the place. It’s a pretty nice place with a bar/snack area, nice seats to lounge in between games. The packs you wear are pretty standard, they kind look like life jackets with sensor bars in the front and the back. Using my years of experience I knew exactly how to shoot and cover. I had the perfect strategy too. What you do is sidestep when you walk leading with your shoulder while your back is towards the wall. You use your forearm to cover one sensor while the other one is holding the gun near your cheek. The gun hand is also partially covering one sensor so your pretty much set. Some may call this cheating, but those are the people who lost to me.

While waiting for the first game to start up, Tetsuo showed up and joined us. We played 4 games in total and using my not-cheating superior strategy I was able to win 2 out of the 4 games. Afterwards we were all tired and sweaty, so next time I’ll be sure to bring a towel or at least an extra shirt. While it’s not cheap enough to go all the time (4 games is $599NT) it’s definitely something I’ll be doing a couple times a month. After the break comes the pictures, so click the link below.

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I came home last night from heavy drinking to a discover an unusual thing. I get lazy sometimes and don’t do my dishes directly after using them. I am really bad when it comes to cups. Plates, forks, spoons, you name it and I wash them right away but not cups.

Anyways, when I came home I discovered sitting on the lip of my cup a tiny tiny snail just chillin. I tried talking to it, I asked it several questions, tried to discuss the weather, but you know how snails can be. He just sat there looking all smug enjoying his new home and ignoring me. Well… I wasn’t gonna put up with this shit, so I ripped him off of my cup and threw him out the window. Don’t these things learn from my previous actions that I don’t allow such things in my home?

Here is a picture of him looking like he owns the place.