Taoyuan Nights

Asia-related sites that I like

• LoveHKFilm
  A large collection of reviews of Hong Kong cinema. Might I direction your attention towards this one, that one, this one, and another one. Oh and this one. And I just can’t say no to adding this one too.You can also find more information about Hong Kong films at The Internet Movie Database.
• YesAsia
  A great site for buying Hong Kong, Korean, and Taiwanese films from. Their Japanese films are a bit pricey. If you’re in the UK, they ship with customs duties and postage pre-paid on big orders!

News sites that I like

• Taipei Times
  English language coverage of what’s happening in Taiwan. Quite enjoyable, given that it’s a traditional style newspaper.
• FT Asia
  Serious English language coverage of world financial/economic news, with a particular emphasis on Asia. I believe the FT’s articles to be better written and researched than those of almost any other newspaper I read.
• The Economist
  Despite my disdain for the pseudoscience that runs rampant throughout most of Economics, I do enjoy The Economist.
• Google News
  One of the biggest automatically generated news aggregators. It contains feeds from many non-mainstream English language news sources, particularly from areas like India, Africa, and the Middle East. Good for seeing what the rest of the world thinks.
• Digg
  This is a popular social bookmarking site. In other words, people share ‘interesting things’ they have found online, and then a community of readers vote on how cool it is. You can learn some incredible things from this site every day.
• Fark
  A slightly insane collection of random news. I find it much more enjoyable than the ‘real’ news. I particularly recommend looking at the photoshop competitions. I wish they had a 24 hour news channel on TV.

Tech sites that I like

• Digital Photography Review
  Fantastic site! Extremely in depth reviews and previews of new and upcoming cameras. The consistency of the reviewing standards makes this probably the best digital photography site on the internet. Excellent forums with advice on photography and cameras, too.
• Slashdot
  One of the oldest and most famous tech news sites. If you haven’t heard of it, then you’re probably not really a geek. That may or may not alarm you.
• The Inquirer
  The Inq is a British tech industry news site with a fantastic ability to dig up rumours months in advance, and a watchful eye on the tech industry supply channels. If you want to know whether the price of memory will be going up or down next month, this is the place to look.
• TheRegister
  The Reg is another British tech industry site quite like The Inquirer, but with broader coverage particularly including British politics. Home of the BOFH series.
• DailyWTF
  Are you a decent programmer? You’ll like this site. Hilariously funny if you’re a codemonkey. Useful for learning how to code better by seeing how to code much, much worse.

Apple Mac sites that I like

• Macrumors
  A good source of upcoming gossip on Apple Macs, hardware, software, and other apple products.
• AppleInsider
  Another good source of rumour, speculation and leaked news from company insiders.
• ThinkSecret
  You’d honestly think Apple Mac owners had nothing to do but stand around speculating and gossiping all day.

Blog Sites that I like

• The View from Taiwan
  This site is probably one of the most famous sites in Taiwan. It is run by Michael Turton and offers photography, articles, and political discussion about Taiwan.
• Taiwan BlogFeed
  This site is run by Mark of Doubtingtoshuo, and acts as the main aggregator for English language articles relating to Taiwan. You can also find some useful Chinese language tools on Mark’s site.
• A Hungry Girl’s Guide to Taipei
  This is a great source for ideas if you’re trying to think of somewhere to dine in Taipei!
• Scott Sommer’s Taiwan Weblog
  Scott is one of the top bloggers in Taiwan, writing particularly within the niche of Taiwanese educational policy.
• Taiwan Blogs
  Some bloke possibly suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder simply must have all the blogs in Taiwan linked from his site. Good for you, mate! But equally, that’s just a little bit scary.
• In The Pipeline
  Derek blogs about working in the pharmaceutical research industry, experimental medicine, and related issues.
• Overcoming Bias
  A shockingly good blog about science, rationality, and other things.

Friend’s websites

• Dr. Andy Gardner
  Andy is a researcher at Oxford university. His main area of interest is the evolution of social traits – i.e. why should spite exist? How is it shaped by natural selection? Perhaps his most incredible contribution to science is the wonderful ‘pie-men’ diagrams for gene biology. And how does he publish so many papers? No one knows… =)
• Kris Getchell
  Kris is studying for his PhD at St Andrews in Computer Networking. He’s the only one of my academic children that is still at St Andrews University!
• Dr. James McLaughlin
  Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s James in his graduation outfit. James worked at NASA for a bit, and as you might guess from the ‘evil genius’ beard/moustache, his current research project involves trying to make the sun explode, or implode, or something like that.
• BetaMinus News
  Wes studies in Taoyuan – this is a blog about his life at uni.
• Pie Entertainment
  Pete is a student in Taoyuan as well as an amateur cinematographer.