Monthly Archive for May, 2008

Day 45: Stupid Line 9

Published on Friday, May 30, 2008

Line 9You know what’s lame? Shanghai Metro’s Line 9. The Line 9 bus ser­vice, which cov­ers the miss­ing seg­ment (Yishan Road to Guilin Road) sep­a­rat­ing the line from the rest of the metro sys­tem, ends two hours be­fore the metro ser­vice ends. Line 9 metro ser­vice ends at 10:30 PM, but af­ter 8:30 peo­ple com­ing from the rest of the metro sys­tem (ba­si­cally the rest of Shanghai) can’t even get on it. [June 13 up­date: Apparently Line 9 ended at 9:00 PM. I guess the 8:30 end time for the bus made sense then. Line 9 now ends at 9:15.]

I had to get turned around twice to find out, be­cause the first time was af­ter 10:30 and I fig­ured I just had to get there be­fore the Line 9 ser­vice ended next time. Well to my sur­prise, no bus ser­vice at 8:45 tonight ei­ther. Me and oth­ers who got off there were like wtf, so I asked the guy there and he’s like the Line 9 bus has al­ways ended at 8:30.

They should post up a big sign some­where, or at least an­nounce it on Line 3 which takes peo­ple to Line 9, be­cause I bet every few min­utes of every­day af­ter 8:30, a new group of con­fused peo­ple have to find an­other way home.

By the way, this web­site is awe­some: www.exploreshanghai.com/metro. Click and drag from one stop to an­other stop to see the es­ti­mated travel time. According to their blog, Line 9’s ser­vice should be ex­tended a bit start­ing to­mor­row, but it doesn’t say if that in­cludes Line 9’s bus service.

Day 44: Shanghai popo checks passports

Published on Thursday, May 29, 2008

“Foreigners in Shanghai should carry their pass­ports with them for ran­dom checks by po­lice, ac­cord­ing to the Exit-​​Entry Administration of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau.” – ShanghaiDaily.com

I don’t think I’ll get checked. Do I look like a sus­pi­cious foreigner?

Didn’t think so.

Day 42: Epson ME 1+ works with Mac

Published on Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Success! I got my re­cently pur­chased Epson ME 1+ (sold in China only) work­ing with my Mac. It was made for Windows only, and Epson doesn’t have a Mac dri­ver for it. Thankfully there are peo­ple who play around with Linux and make free soft­ware. So if you’re in China and bought the cheap­est Epson printer you could find, here’s what you need to do:

  1. Go to this page and down­load Foomatic-​​RIP and Ghostscript.
  2. While they’re down­load­ing, go to this page and down­load us­btb.
  3. Install Foomatic-​​RIP and Ghostscript first. Administrator priv­i­lege needed.
  4. Then with your printer on and plugged to your Mac, in­stall usbtb.
  5. Let us­btb de­tect the printer and try to find a dri­ver for it. It’ll fail.
  6. Manually choose the Epson C46 dri­ver. Ignore usbtb’s warn­ing and proceed.

And that’s it! You now have a slow, crap­tas­tic printer that you wish would break so that you’d have an ex­cuse to get a bet­ter one. You’re welcome!

Originally got the tip from here.

Day 41: Photography page revamped

Published on Monday, May 26, 2008

dkwan.com/photography

I re­did my pho­tog­ra­phy page. All the im­ages on that page now load from my website’s server rather than Flickr, so peo­ple in China (like me!) should be able to see them now. I also re­moved all the un­nec­es­sary text, like “Studio Portraiture /​ These are por­traits taken in a stu­dio.” There are 33 im­ages cur­rently, but when­ever I feel like it I’ll prob­a­bly add or re­move or re­place some.

Day 36: Still shooting

Published on Wednesday, May 21, 2008

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!“
Michael Corleone, The Godfather III

Nikon goodiesI guess I’m still sort of a photo­grapher. The com­pany wants me to take a bunch of pho­tos for their brochures and what­not. I skipped my own English class to­day to go shop­ping for Nikon good­ies, and guess what I found out.

You can’t set the SB-​​600 to SU-​​4 slave mode! It only works as a slave in a CLS setup. Meaning it only plays with other Nikons. Not a prob­lem for me since I have SB-​​800s, but I was just sur­prised by this.