OK. Let’s try out this blog thing. 🙂
Found a card reader at the Nova store area near the main train station in Taipai. Unfortunately, the perl script that does uploads to asuka still has too short a timeout for a 13 meg AVI file.
Computer parts and such are pretty much the same prices and variety as at Frys, CompUSA and others. Not a surprise. What was odd was that these stores seemed to be very filled with MP3 players. Some stores had phones, too. Found one way-back store with a couple of web cams. Lots of stores with laptops. Acers, mostly, of course. Anyway, no reason to bring memory chips and so on to Taiwan. But no reason to get ’em here, either.
Weather is mostly greyish sky with some blue coming out. Warmish, but not hot. Fairly humid, but not in any way oppresively so.
Got no start yet on finding some Mandarin instructions. Learned a few word parts from people, though.
The place I’m at is really low budget. 10-15 bucks a night. Downside is the room is a closet and the bathroom’s down the hall (something I’m more sensitive too at my age as in the past). Upside is that the room actually has a computer in it. Funny how a low-budget place is better computered than biz hotels I’ve been in. And, another upside is that in most hotels the proprietor does not spend a half hour telling you about things around town and island. Very friendly place. Nice people.
It’s already dark at 5:30. Hmmm. Gotta get up early. Tomorrow I’ll see about finding some instruction. And take a look at Taipai 101, the world’s tallest building. Might be able to wander up in some nearby hills, too, given MRT (nice subway) and buses.
Keep us up to date about your progress in Mandarin.
How has jet lag been?
If you want to do picture posts, I recommend setting up an account a Flickr. Very blog friendly. In the mean time, I’ll link up to the pictures you have uploaded thus far…
Let me know if you want me to setup some sort of improved anonymous transfer system for the video files?
I’m shocked that it’s dark that early. You’d think that closer to the equater the night would come later. Very strange.
I hope you’re having fun. It sounds like a gas.
I’ve been clocking one picture file upload. 6 minutes for the 2 meg file. That’s just gotta be fixed. I’ve got a couple dozen on the card right now.
hmmm. Looks like flickr reformats your pictures, though upload is much quicker. Might be they send smaller files (using flickr uploader program)
TZbar is my flickr user, btw.
Night comes when the time zone says it does, I think. In Equador day was 6:30am thru 6:30pm. Here, I think it’s light a bit before 7. At 7am, anyway, it doesn’t seem too bright yet.
Can you provide a link to your flickr account?
Using tzbar in what appears to be their URI scheme doesn’t work…