Recent Posts - Eric Cheng
Eric Cheng
Eric Cheng and Billy Leung at a farm in Yamanashi, Japan

The Asian Blush Forum is back online

Before social media, I ran a small forum focused on a large percentage (~half) of East Asians turning red when drinking alcohol. It's not isolated to Asian people, but that's how I came across the topic (since I turn red when I drink). In 2003, there was almost no online material about the phenomenon, and a post of mine on my website (this website) led to hundreds of comments, which prompted me to open the topic up as a dedicated discussion forum...

jr-east-website showing an error message

Booking Japan rail travel from the USA

tl;dr Visitors looking to pre-book local travel in Japan know that it isn’t always straightforward. We needed to book travel to visit our friends, Kozyndan, which can luckily be done by booking a single local express train from Shinjuku that doesn’t involve any transfers. We heard that Japan Bullet Train was a service that some ...

A man looking at a complex steampunk sci-fi computer, thinking about something

Using ChatGPT in every day life

Like many others, I’m using ChatGPT and other LLMs a lot these days, but I’m finding that I have to apply a specific mental context to all interactions, which is one of extreme skepticism. Critical thinking and fact checking are *required* when using ChatGPT. For example, I asked it about tourist visas for American travelers ...

DIY refillable Liebherr charcoal filter (and other filters)

Pry the lid off of your Liebherr charcoal filter and to make it refillable (try this on other disposable filters, too!)

A webpage showing a backup archive from Apple Messages

Backing up Apple Messages

My Apple Messages archive is around 40GB across 2445 threads and goes back to 2012. I love having all of my messages instantly available on all of my Apple devices, but the size of the archive is getting out of control. I decided it was time to archive all of my old messages...

3D-printed FasTrak Flex suction cup mount

3D-printed FasTrak Flex suction cup mount

Designing and 3D-printing a FasTrak Flex suction cup mount for a vehicle windshield.

Rivian wheels with and without Aero cover

3D-printed Rivian Wheel Center Cap for 21″ Aero Wheels

For a Father's Day project, I took some time for myself and 3D-printed 4 Rivian Wheel Center Caps using PETG-CF filament in a Bambu Lab X1-Carbon.

Extracting spatial videos and panoramas from local photo libraries (for Vision Pro)

With Apple Vision Pro's pleasing presentation of panoramas and spatial videos, I needed a way to identify and extract both formats from local file storage.

The mess of prescription optical inserts for VR headsets

I've been looking into prescription optical inserts for my VR headsets so I don't need to get a special contact lens prescription just for VR use... and it's messy.