The Taiwanese presidential election is tomorrow, and my parents and their friends are rallying for the DPP. I am no expert in politics in Taiwan, but it seems like a mess.

Our close family friend, Judy Lin Linton, has written something about the KMT on her website. It’s in Mandarin, but at the bottom of the page is an English translation.

I have blurry memories of first meeting Judy when she fled to the States. My mom told me the details of her family tragedy, but I have a hard time imagining the forgiveness she must have in her heart that enables her not to hate the organization that jailed her father and murdered her sisters and grandmother.

I am a big fan of Twitter because it’s basic infrastructure that people can choose to use in whatever way suits them. I use it as a conduit to update those twits that follow me, to update my journal sidebar, and to update my Facebook status. I can update easily from anywhere in the world where I have access to SMS.

I have phone notification via SMS turned on for only a very select group of people — a small subset even of those that I “follow.” However, it seems that anyone out there can direct message me in Twitter — even folks that I do not even follow… and these tweets use the “phone notification” master privacy setting, which has to be “on” if you want SMS delivery at all. This is a completely flawed approach. There should be an additional setting that says something like: “Only notify direct messages from people I follow” or “Never notify from people I do not follow.”

At the moment, I get lots of direct messages from Twitter users I have never heard of. These go direct to my phone as SMS messages. I don’t really want to get advice SMS’ed to my phone from strangers.

Here’s a typical exchange:

Eric: [complains about something. makes veiled cry for help.] Stranger: @echeng omg lol you need to take it easy!

I see that reply as being totally intrusive, even if the stranger didn’t mean for it to be taken that way. The problem isn’t the stranger; it’s Twitter’s lack of sophisticated privacy settings.

I’ve submitted feedback to Twitter about this. They said, “good idea!”

I hope it gets implemented soon.

If you don’t “get” Twitter, don’t worry — I won’t try to convince you to use it. But the stats speak for themselves: most people I’ve convinced to give it a try are still using it.

Call log for the day, so far:

Only 12 more hours of this before I get to stumble into bed.

Issue 2 of Wetpixel Quarterly

Hey guys. I’m here with Eli in Sausalito working on issue 3 of Wetpixel Quarterly, and just wanted to provide a link again for those friends out there who have expressed an interest in subscribing, but who haven’t yet had time.

So… here it is. :)

Just under a year ago, I installed a second 160GB 5400 drive into my 2.33Ghz MacBook Pro and configured the two drives as a striped RAID 0 array. In addition to increasing storage space two-fold, my machine felt faster. It was totally worth the “risk” of having two spinning drives in a striped configuration, and after 10 months of continuous usage on boats in various countries around the world, my trusty Mac was still running well (thus proving wrong the countless awkward 15-year olds who spread tales of my stupidity on sites like Digg).

A couple of months ago, I read about the first MacBook Pro with a SSD drive installed, and then saw a video of a MacBook Pro launching 17 apps at once. I instantely became intrigued about getting a SSD into my computer. My normal computer activity involves constant multitasking while hitting the disk hard in apps like Aperture and Adobe Photoshop. Even using a striped RAID on my notebook, I wait a lot.

And so, I made a change. (read more »)

I noticed something interesting today. On March 4, 2008, I posted a message about repeated spam calls to my mobile phone from 562-228-7160 (a problem many people were having). Google picked up my entry on March 5th, because the hits started coming in. By March 7th, my journal post on the subject had been hit over 3,300 times. (read more »)

Oh, this is going to be fun, originally uploaded by echeng.

Updated: Added a couple videos! (read more »)

I feel alive!, originally uploaded by echeng.

All it takes is a zodiac, hang glider wing, and the morning wind against my face. Taken with iPhone and uploaded live from flying boat! (yes, I am a geek)

a red-lipped batfish at the blue heron bridge

Petition to protect the Blue Heron bridge [link] Diverse diving area in Riviera Beach, Florida, is threatened by collectors

The Blue Heron bridge is located on the eastern most section of the continental United States, where the warm water of the Gulf Stream current comes in closer than any other place on the east coast. This current brings in larval animals and juveniles of tropical marine species, depositing them directly under the Blue Heron bridge. These tropical species intermingle with the temperate species normally found in this area, creating one of the most diverse marine habitats anywhere in the United States. Some of the unusual species found at the bridge are seahorses, stargazers, flying gurnards, striated frogfish, searobins, Atlantic longarm (mimic) octopi, and much more.

If you want to help save the Blue Heron bridge from the irreparable damage caused by collectors, please sign our petition, which was created by a local attorney, Pura Vida Divers, and other members of the Palm Beach Diving Association. If you would rather sign the petition in person, it can be found at Pura Vida Divers, Narcosis Dive Charters, Jim Abernethy’s Scuba Adventures.

manatee at a fallen tree, crystal river

I just posted a bunch of photos of manatees, including more photos of “Angel,” the 10-day-old baby manatee. See more about my manatee trip, if you are interested.

March 10-11, 2008: Photos from a trip to Crystal River with Carol Grant and Don Kehoe. Special thanks to Carol for being such a manatee expert! It was my first time in the water with manatees. Very special. We spent time with 10-day old "Angel," a male manatee born to a mother and accompanied by another female, who was presumably an escort. No one seems to know why a baby would effectively have two mothers (only nursed by the real mother, though).

I’m in Crystal River, Florida, with Don Kehoe and Carol Grant shooting manatees for two days. Today was my first real encounter with manatees, which was AWESOME. I love the things. They approach frequently and rub against you, begging to be scratched (and many of them will roll over so you can get to their bellies).

Baby manatee “Angel” plus mother and escort (both female)

There was a baby manatee born last week, which Carol photographed the morning after he was born (complete with umbilical cord and afterbirth!). He was around today with his mother and escort (female), swimming in and out of the sanctuary every 10 minutes or so. He was absolutely adorable. (read more »)

Anyone out there have an opinion about QuickBooks Online? I hear that it cannot import files, and must communicate with financial institutions directly. This seems like a deal-breaker (e.g. how do you download American Express data?).

OK, so I may or may not have had a jailbroken iPhone with a broken YouTube instance. There are dozens of guides on the web that claim to have a solution for the iPhone YouTube problem, but none of them worked for me except this one… which happens to also be bundled with directions for jailbreaking iPhones with firmware v1.1.4. (read more »)

It’s getting crazy down in Antarctica.

JAPANESE OPEN FIRE ON SEA SHEPHERD CREW: THREE INJURED Captain Paul Watson Shot in Chest; Cameraman and Crewmember Injured by Flash Grenades At 1545 hours (0445 GMT), a clash between the crew of the Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin and the Japanese whaling ship Nisshin Maru turned violent when the Japanese Coast Guard began to throw flash grenades at the crew of the Steve Irwin. Captain Paul Watson was struck by a bullet in the chest. Fortunately, the bullet was stopped by his Kevlar vest. The bullet struck just above the heart and mangled Captain Watson’s anti-poaching badge, which was worn on his sweater underneath the Kevlar vest.

Articles are already out everywhere, but I’ve posted the full Sea Shepherd press release over at Wetpixel.

I keep getting calls from 562-228-7160 to my mobile phone telling my my vehicle warranty has expired. I stayed on the line to talk to an operator, and he hung up on me when I told him I wanted to be taken off their list. If you call back, the number goes nowhere. A Google search for the number shows that others have had the same issue from the same number. (read more »)

I went to pick up Geoff and Livia from the airport this afternoon. Livia just finished recording a new album up in Banff, which I would have loved to have participate in had the stars been properly aligned. I hadn’t seen Baby Jack in a few weeks, but when he saw me on the airport curb, he got excited and reached out to be transfered to me from his mom.

That was pretty cool.

Dawn left me two tickets to see her perform tonight Osvaldo Golijov’s Ayre at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, and Cindy Mong and I met up with Stephen Prutsman to see the show. We sat in the comps section with other guests of the band, and Stevie made a big production about seeing me there (even though I had just seen him in the lobby a few minutes prior).

“Dr. Cheng! It’s been a long time! We haven’t seen each other since that thing in, where was it, Stockholm?”

People stared at us. (read more »)

Here’s an email I got today:

What filter do you use on that 20d conversion, and which service to you pick, did you get the Deep BW IR Filter Image? Thanks alot for the advice.

I get stuff like this all the time. Now, why would I reply? The guy has not introduced himself nor given me any reason to spend my time answering his question. Furthermore, a Google search for “Eric Cheng 20d infrared conversion” provides the answers as the first link.

I often get emails like this, asking about the variety of topics found on my website. It is easy enough to delete them, but I often wish the internets offered a “bitch-slap” feature as well.