Jonathan Biddle – Made in Taiwan

Tag: Technology

  • 2056 – Supermemo

    Yesterday, I passed rather a milestone – I have now learnt more than 2000 characters!

    I have not spoken a great deal about my learning Chinese, except for the occasional moments of frustration or amusing anecdotes. But, it does consume an enormous part of my free time here in Taiwan.

    Six hours tutoring after work each work – strategically placed on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 7 to 9 o’clock – plus about four hours again at the weekend, have slowly but surely raised my Chinese skills to a level at which I could perhaps compete with a five year old. A very stupid five year old.

    I have been here for more than two years now and I can conclusivly say that learning Chinese has been the most difficult thing I have ever done. It is ridiculous. And I am positive that if if you were designing a language system, this would absolutely not be the way to do it. And yet… billions do. Amazing.

    The other weapon / toy in my armoury is my trusty Palm. I went for 18 months with my old Sony Clie, and recently upgraded to a much cooler Tungsten T3 – with Bluetooth and higher resolution. On this is a piece of software called Supermemo, and into this I place all my vocabulary, including that from the text books. It gives me daily tests and turns the tedious process of learning thousands of characters into something more akin to a computer game, its algorithm intelligently learning which characters I am good (or more likely bad) at. Some relentlessly return every day, and will be tested again in over two years time!

    So, every day over breakfast I am doing flashcards as I eat. Usually, I will have about 70 cards in total, but from the first book (about 950 words) I now get tested on about 10 per day – pretty cool. Furthermore, I have added almost 500 of my own characters – mainly related to work, design … bike, babes and beer.


    Palm T3


    The geek factor – but we all know how much we love stats in sports. Same here.


    An example flash card, showing the answer.

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • Web 2.0

    I have been messing around with the Web 2.0 stuff recently – good to be on the wagon, as it were.

    Anyway, the two sites below maybe show my professional, and my personal sides. If you find me there, do look me up.

    Linked In
    MySpace

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • The Great Firewall of China

    I have set up e-mail blog posting because I have a strong suspicion that I will not be able to post directly to my blog while in China – bypassing the firewall put in place by the authorities. We will see if it works!

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • Japanese Cigarettes

    Bumped into a friend in PS today and he had just come back from Japan. I’m not a smoker, but I could be persuaded with a packet as cool as this.

    The pack slides open sideways, and the main information is ‘H’ for heavy, along with the associated red colour. Apparently, the other packs feature different letters and colours for lights, menthols and so on.


    Alphabet Cigarettes – ‘H’


    In my frequent visits to PS: Cafe I am always taken by the fascination with all their glowing screens. Cell phones, notebook computers, portable games machines, PDAs, disctionaries, iPods … anything that sparkles, glows and allows them attachment to other people – even to the detriment of the people sitting next to them. Interestingly, I saw a pair of guys watching a TV show together off an iPod ‘with’ Video. Rather interesting.

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • Welsh Rarebits

    One half of my family lives in Wales, but don’t hold that against them. The Biddle unit decamped to the South, primarily focussing on good mountains, food and beer. Here are some wee piccies:

    Trecking in The Brecon Beacons

    Mum & Dad at one of the amazing waterfalls of the day


    ‘Now, the GPS says there is one more left to find today…’ – Lady Mio has the last laugh


    The Welsh contingent in force (with exception to newl-wed cousins Huw and Alex … Congratulations!)

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • ADSL !

    Finally, after 10 weeks of waiting, we now have fast internet in the apartment. Ironically, I am sitting in the same position on the corner of my bed, where the old bootleg wireless connection was strongest.

    Now I need a desk and chair and finally I’ll get my room in a state I am happy with.

    Happy Happy Joy Joy!

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • Maywa Denki


    Maywa Denki – Utter Insanity

    After a dangerously quiet weekend of staying in, eating well, avoiding alcohol (mostly) and mountain biking I got a tip from Michael to check out Japanese art rockers Maywa Denki at Luxy. Quite seriously, I have never had my mouth open for more at a concert – either in disbelief, awe or laughter. However, I am not quite sure which was stranger – the Japanese band, or the reaction by the Taiwanese, who predictably spent the concert sitting on the floor, as if at school.

    School Assembly

    Summing up the band is quite difficult. Indeed, the pictures fail to capture the charisma of the lead singer, or the stern, steely gaze of the ’employees.’ Stopping in the middle of the performance to explain that their musical instruments shed some light – “MANY MANY SWITCHIE, 100 VOLTIES, KA PAAANG!”


    The employees, with products behind… note my favourite star-shaped xylophones

    Maywa Denki used to be the lead singer’s Father’s company. Passed onto him, he deemed that art and rock were more important, but maintained a tight focus on product. As such, the musical instruments are controlled by the aformentioned switches and replicate guitars, percussion or exploding dolls. Goods can be ordered from theire web site here. Hard to sum up, perhaps these photos do a better job!

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • New Camera

    Finally, I have a new digital camera! This should mean, combined with the bootleg wireless connection I have in my apartment, much better with you – the outside world.

    For those that are interested, I have a Canon Ixy 60 – otherwise known as an Ixus 55 in Europe or Powershot 450 in the US. Confused? You should be.

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • Computex 2005

    Visiting Computex – Taiwan’s biggest electronics show, no.2 in the world – was a pretty interesting experience for me, mainly because it was one of the most memorable company events from a year ago when I first arrived. I have a feeling it was a slightly more sombre affair this year, but it may be in part to being more used to the environment here!

    You can check last year’s event here

    One of the most arresting things are the hordes of babes touting electro tat for their companies. There seems to have been an alarming trend over the last year to make it slightly less sexist and rubber clad, but fortunately there were enough companies seeing the light this year to continue with the fine tradition.

    Plenty of booty shaking – these girls clearly believe in their product

    Michael approaches an AMD clown…

    … and gets the desired effect.

    NVidia splashed out on bored students with enormous bags.

    And I am almost positive these ladies had nothing to do with the stand at all, and were simply craving the attention of the legions of happy snapping geek guys (me not included)


    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…

  • Flickr Words

    I really like this. Spell with Flickr

    The story of a British Industrial Designer in Taiwan…