Category: Tech

So…I spent a few months trying to build a small PC for my wife’s parents. It was an interesting task trying to find the best prices and the right parts to put together a really nice system for them. However, it turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated. We tried local stores for parts and complete systems. But we could not find exactly what I wanted at a good price. It didn’t help that I’m an American – we tend to get overcharged in China. Online was not much better. The prices were better, but getting exactly what Continue Reading →

While I can say from personal experience, air quality has greatly improved over the past 10 years, there are still some bad days. Luckily, there’s an app for that! The Air Quality app from Google Play store shows international standards air quality from many cities around China and multiple sampling centers within each city. As you can see in this report over the last 30 days, its been pretty good some days, and kinda bad others. The past four days, its dropped well into the Good to Moderate range, due mostly to Typhoon Soulik coming in off the coast. Thankfully Continue Reading →

Setting up a new printer is easy. Setting it up on a wireless network in a foreign language is not. Read on if you like rants and other people’s pain… So, we bought a new printer the other day, an Epson L301. Don’t bother looking it up unless you can read Chinese, Korean, Japanese or any other of those ideographic languages. It’s only available in Asia. This ended up compounding my issues. Setting up and connecting the printer via USB was not a big deal. The quick start guide, while in Chinese, was very pictogaphic, much like those you find Continue Reading →