Kelly Huang

Category: Miscellaneous

  • Benefits of an actual radio

    Radio has become the staple for family meal time.

    • More fluent user experience, simply flip a switch. No face unlock, no finding through apps.
    • Less decision making. No search for the “best” channel or topic.
    • More focused. No screen, no pop-up.
    • More engaging. Not all hosts or music falls into our likes, but that turns into a dinner table discussion.
    • Practice accepting imperfection. Less favorable songs, hosts, uninterruptible ads; the fact it can’t be swiped is a reminder to accept what happens in the moment.

    It’s an outdated, single purpose technology, but it reminds us to live in the moment, even if it’s imperfect or unpleasant.

  • Profiling

    We profile the company that we do business with. We might even profile the key contact person’s interest and birthday for gift. Why don’t we do that to our friends and family?

    Recently while visiting an old friend, I added ‘cooks dinner for the kid’ and ‘enjoys noodle more than rice’ in to his profile in Google Doc. It felt weird doing so, but again, we’re all busy with our life. What would be a better way to find a gift for the holiday?

    We should have more rational thoughts on people we love and care.

  • Fountain pen lesson 2: laziness

    Spin caps are great for night journals, the seconds it takes to spin the cap off provides a time to recap the day. It enhances the ceremonial process.

    Snap caps are great for work. The reality is, the time to spin the cap off and adjust the grip is enough to cost an idea or two. The length of the cap counts too, cap of Lamy Safari requires less travel than Pilot Elite; shorter is better.

    At work, fountain pens are tools, the more brainless the better.

    Even the Pilot Elite cap takes too much time

  • Fountain pen lesson 1: insecurity

    The feeling of running out of ink in a middle of a meeting and trying to touch the paper lightly to squeeze its last ink drop is disturbing.

    That made Lamy Safari a fountain pen worth constant revisiting. It’s a bless not having to unscrew the pen and flip it upside down to check the ink level.

  • Smart watch problems

    They gamified my life and satisfied my OCD of tracking every aspect of my life, although the benefit and medical reliability is questionable.

    The fact it shines every time I turn my wrist is extremely annoying during light out.

    That half second delay between my wrist position and screen display. Maybe my nitpicking is the reason I’m better off with analog, one-function tools.

  • What Shopee recommendation tells me about my recent life

    When I asked my wife whether buying a ASUS ProArt PA248QV monitor for work is out of necessity or impulse, she reminded me the wish list I have recently.

    The list falls into these categories and moments:

    • Laptop – when my MacBook Pro 2015 with 8G couldn’t smoothly play YouTube. Although I’m on my iPad most of the time.
    • Apple Watch – ever since I started wearing Huawei Band 7 again, the health metrics are addicting. Although I hate the fact it shines on my face during light out.
    • iPad – since Freeform constantly crashes my coloring and took the fun of office meeting. Although I haven’t drew anything in the past 2 to 3 weeks.
    • Fuji cameras – when I saw the JPEGs from the camera and the viewfinder. — this is mostly resolved after I bought a 35mm viewfinder from TaoBao.

  • Watch I keep coming back to: CASIO F-91W

    This must have been the watch I wore the longest, it’s been close to 5 years.

    From my record, it was purchase in June 18, 2019.

    I had two smart watches in between, a Xiaomi and a Huawei, none of which lasted more than few months.

    What I learned about myself with this watch?

    • I’m lazy, both Smart watches could last a week, but even then I feel frustrated over time.
    • I just want it to work. I turn all notifications off on my smart watch, but the automated screen on when I turn my wrist is something I can’t figure out. Worse, it distracts my daughter while I try to put her to sleep. It’s too much work to check the time.
    • I like small watch. I have a small wrist and really enjoy the fact that I don’t feel the weight.
    • I wore it all the time, to the gym, shower, sleep. At this budget, I don’t have to worry if I break it and get a new one. It’s so durable that it’s commonly used by terrorists.

  • New Router: Should have replaced it sooner

    ASUS RT-AX3000

    I replaced my old ASUS RT-N12 with a new ASUS RT-AX3000 last week and it 10x my bandwidth!

    The previous router was purchased in 2017. It was a time when I was still single, no kid, and still renting a one-room apartment. All I needed at the time was something functional to keep my laptop and phone connected to the internet. But that’s far from the case right now.

    Things are different 5 years later. With a family and a few smart gadgets, the number of devices has tripled. The web experience is sluggish; pages takes longer to load, video played at lower resolution, unexpected disconnection, and router RAM usage constantly occupied at 90%. This is an upgrade that’s going to happen sooner or later.

    It got me thinking, what’s the line between “still works” and “need to be replaced”? Obviously, the old router still functions and I could live with it most of the time. But it exhausts me, I feel anxious when having to do a webinar at home, I knew the signal risks degrading so I carried a ethernet cable. These tiny incidents, although not often, breaks the purpose of a router. It’s a tool, and a tool needs to be functional and needs to be trusted. It’s functional, but it can’t be trusted, I think that’s what drove me to replace it.

    Plus, the old one’s been running for 5 years, so it’s also about time.

    Before
    After

  • First encounter with dumb phone in a decade

    (originally written on December 25, 2021)

    The first day of owning a dumb phone was not full of anxiety from digital detox.

    On the morning of December 24, I picked up the secondhand Nokia 3310 that I purchased online. Being late for work, I didn’t swap my SIM to the phone (it requires an adapter anyways), so I shove it into my pocket.

    Size is a great advantage of dumb phone, I didn’t have to pull out the phone every time I sit. Even during walking, the size of the phone doesn’t break the posture. Smartphone inside the front or back pocket never felt right, it’s always awkward to walk with that.

    I realize my first day reaction is not anxiety. I had, in my mind, to show my colleague the photo quality of the 2 megapixel camera, but I didn’t. I kept it inside my pocket the whole time. Something stopped me from doing that, and I think it was embarrassment. After all, it takes an effort to go against the norm.

    What I couldn’t figure out at this point is the source of this feeling. Nevertheless, here are two hypothesis I have. First is the trust of this decision, I don’t have full confidence in this adjustment, which brings me back to my college days. It made sense, it’s only the first day and I haven’t dive into yet. The second guess has to do with how I perceive myself. As someone who works in the IT industry and as a marketing role, I should be on the edge of technologies, but this dumb phone is exactly the opposite to that. What part of myself will change, now or later, if the tech savvy part of me is taken away?

    Fortunately or unfortunately, this experiment didn’t last long. That night I found out the phone only support 2G network, which service is terminated in Taiwan. I will need to purchase another phone to continue this experiment.