Protocol Snow

This news story has been racing around the Taiwanese blogosphere so I wanted to share with a different audience. Yang Ya-ching (楊雅晴) is a 27 year old music student studying abroad in Paris. She is apparently done with her degree and wanted a memorable parting gift, so she launched a project to kiss 100 strangers in Paris. At the end of all this, she’s planning on writing a book about her experience so she has a photographer tag along to capture the kisses. This is her photo album so far, she’s up to 54 kisses!

I liked the fiery color in this one. Perhaps not too surprising that the guys she kisses are all fairly good looking. She doesn’t look 100% Taiwanese though, and I’m fairly certain she’s mixed although I couldn’t confirm it.

I have some readers who read my site through RSS so I wanted to take this opportunity to plug my Twitter feed. People use Twitter in various ways — I use the micro-blogging service predominantly as a links dispensary. That way I can avoid writing low-content posts like this one on my site and still conveniently share interesting videos and articles. I’ve been using Twitter more and more so consider following me if you read my site!

After a half year break, I am glad to be finally back. How do you like the new design? I’m working on a couple minor formatting tweaks but for the most part this is the final look.

The sliding header with the five images solved a couple problems for me. First, my old blog was minimalist to a fault with a very bland black and white color palette. For my new site, I definitely wanted something colorful at the top. Initially, I was planning on creating a banner image based on the title Protocol Snow, but that would have involved a lot of work and creative/Photoshop skills that I don’t have. The sliding header allows me to keep “Protocol Snow” as a plain text title and to rely on pre-existing images to bring the color.

A second problem is that at first glance, it was very difficult for new visitors to figure out what my blog is about. “Protocol Snow” is gibberish nonsense that is meaningless to everybody but me. Additionally, my posts don’t have a consistent focus, unlike a games-dedicated blog or an Asian drama-dedicated review site. My sliding header helps this problem by highlighting several of the categories that constitute the bulk of my content.

I’ve thought about ways to increase traffic, and it seems like most successful blogs I read are dedicated to one specific topic and attract a consistent, devoted readership. However, I like to write about all sorts of random things and ultimately, this is simply my personal blog — my goals aren’t to become famous or rich from blogging. So for better or for worse, the content of my blog will not be changing in any way. I hope that whatever attracted you here in the first place keeps you coming back.

Speaking of “personal blog”, one of my cousins from Taiwan went to my brother’s college graduation with me and kept insisting that I shouldn’t be afraid to post pics of myself. I’m starting to agree, and since my next post on the graduation will likely be shared with family and they’ll want to see personal pics, my readers will finally get to see what I look like. That post will be up tomorrow so stay tuned!

I finally have my own domain! =) I am re-launching my blog with a new design based on the Sliding Doors theme, officially sometime in June. In the meantime, I’ll be fiddling around with the site and making small adjustments whenever I get a break, but I wanted to get this site out to the public early so Google can start indexing. Consider this a soft launch.

ProtocolSnow.com will be my future home and has all the contents of my wordpress.com blog (which is now discontinued). I did a straight export-import from within Wordpress and haven’t done much else, so if some links aren’t working, please bear with me. See you in a few weeks for the grand opening!

Yet another break in my blogging hiatus — I feel like I have a new gig doing public relations for my brother! He was selected as one of the twenty students in USA Today’s 2009 All-USA College Academic First Team. This is the self-submitted photo gallery. I’ve been trying to keep my name relatively hidden on this blog so I won’t say my/his last name outright (though I guess anybody who’s really interested can search for me considering I used to write for gaming websites). But if you’ve read my blog for any period of time, it should be obvious which one he is.

I personally feel he has the best photo out of the 20, though that wouldn’t have been my first pick out of the dozens of photos he showed me. By the way, I love the photo for the Johns Hopkins guy (my alma mater). It’s a beautiful campus but his photo perfectly captures how there’s practically more brick walkways on campus than grass! Anyway, big congrats to all. I believe this is in today’s edition of USA Today, I have to run out and buy it!

UPDATE: Ah, screw anonymity. My brother recently launched two websites and I’m going to help him out by linking them here. First is his personal professional page about his education at Harvard and research projects. The other is a company he is starting called Ivy Writing (website still under development), which helps edit applications for students applying to college/grad school. He has a lot of experience with editing and consultation already and, well, his successes so far speak for how well qualified he is for this work. His company should be launching in a couple weeks!

As you probably noticed, I’m trying out a different Wordpress theme. The switch was precipitated by my desire to post images larger than 400 pixels wide, which was possible with the old theme but looked awkward because the image would spill over the sides of the allocated column width. If I wanted to widen that layout, I needed to pay for an upgrade so I’m switching to an entirely new theme. The downside is that color is virtually non-existent, which I’ll have to disguise by posting more pictures!

For prosperity’s sake, here’s my former header image:

If you were ever curious about the meaning of “Protocol Snow”, I briefly discussed its origin before. The header image itself was inspired both by that name and by my fondness for bicycling in the snow/ice, which I still maintain is a lot easier than slipping all over the place on foot. I snapped the photo outside the Johns Hopkins main library with my bike covered in snow.

The long-awaited Google Street View has finally come to Japan! I could have used this a couple months ago when I was planning my trip to Tokyo. I always do a ton of research to prepare for my trips abroad, but being able to virtually travel along my routes and find all the stores and landmarks in advance is so helpful.

It’s fun to check out familiar places.

Being a Bathing Ape aficionado, I thought it was hilarious that the Bape store in Aoyama had a crowd lining up waiting for the store to open. Something must have dropped that day.

The service is available in Tokyo/Yokohama, Osaka/Kobe/Kyoto, Sendai, Hakodate, Otaru, and Sapporo. Now I’m waiting for Street View in Taiwan!