Sparktour’s Blog

This trip was another 4-day trip utilizing my summer weekend, departing for Seoul on Friday and returning Sunday night. This article uses experimental HDR AVIF. Banding issues may occur in some browsers (commonly on Android). Please urge chromium to fix this. Pre-Trip Preparations Visa Compared to Japanese visas, Korean visas are relatively easy to apply for, and for university graduates, it’s practically a “click and get” process. University graduates only need a graduation certificate from CHSI (China Higher-education Student Information and Career Center) and their ID card to apply for a 5-year multiple-entry Korean visa. Visa applications can be submitted offline at various “Korea Visa Application Centers” (such as the Guangzhou Center). Postal applications are also possible (but require sending the original ID card and incur a small mailing fee; apply offline if you have concerns). As of summer 2024, no appointment is needed for offline applications; just go to the visa center after it opens in the morning and get a number. ...

This weekend trip was sparked by my friend getting a student discount on a hkexpress flight, with round-trip tickets for each of us costing just 1300HKD. Considering our limited travel time, we decided to stick to the Kansai region of Japan, focusing on Osaka and Kyoto. This article contains experimental HDR AVIF image, which may cause color banding issues in some browsers (commonly seen on Android). This is a known browser issue. Pre-Trip Preparations Visa University/graduate students or graduates within three years in Mainland China can apply for a single-entry visa using their student ID and a report from the China Higher Education Student Information and Credit System (CHSI, 学信网). Since Japan has started issuing e-visas, some travel agencies in Guangdong don’t even require sending your passport, and all documents can be uploaded online. After uploading your documents, you will receive your evisa within 7-10 working days. It is valid for three months and allows for a 15-day stay. ...

Many people applying for Schengen visas have heard of the Visa Information System (VIS). VIS allows Schengen countries to exchange visa data. It consists of a central IT system and the communication infrastructure connecting this central system to national systems. It processes data and decisions related to applications for short-stay visas for visiting or transiting the Schengen area. The system can perform biometric matching (mainly fingerprints) for identification and verification purposes. A common use in Schengen visa applications is to store applicants’ fingerprints (so that applicants only need to provide them once every 5 years). ...

The second phase of the Sha Tau Kok Open Plan will commence on January 1, 2024. In the first stage, up to 1,000 visitors per day will be allowed to visit the entire Sha Tau Kok area except Chung Ying Street after applying for a Closed Area Permit online. This will give more people the opportunity to learn about the history, culture, and natural landscape of Sha Tau Kok and nearby outlying islands, and promote cultural and ecological tourism. ...

This article describes the process of configuring Keycloak for passwordless login using passkeys, webauthn, and OTP (One-Time Password). Some configurations in this article may require Keycloak 23 or higher to function properly. Configuring the Authentication Section In Keycloak’s Authentication - Flow menu, duplicate the browser flow. We’ll name the copy browser with optional webauth and otp. Duplicate Browser Flow In the new flow, delete browser password form and all steps/flows below it: ...

Recently, our laboratory acquired eight NVMe SSDs, which we connected to a server via PCIe adapter cards and configured into a RAID using ZFS. To enable rapid access to the storage pool from other servers in the lab, I picked up two ConnectX-4 CX4121A 10GbE network cards from a second-hand platform to link two servers, and set up NFS over RDMA. The seller on the second-hand platform did not include optical modules, so I randomly purchased two 10G Huawei modules, costing about 15-20 RMB each. ...

I recently obtained several “removable eSIM cards” from esim.me from a friend in a group chat. In short, these eSIM cards are manufactured in the form of ordinary SIM cards, so they can be directly inserted into any mobile phone that supports physical SIM cards, and profiles can be added to the eSIM cards through the Android app provided by esim.me. Although esim.me differentiates the prices of these eSIM cards based on the number of profiles that each eSIM card can join, when I later searched for blog posts online, some people mentioned that the hardware of these eSIM cards at different price points is exactly the same, and esim.me only imposed software restrictions on cards at different price points through the mobile configuration app. And if these eSIM cards are inserted into LTE modules that support eSIM, profiles can be directly added and deleted through the Windows eSIM management interface. However, the current LTE modules that support eSIM are mainly Quectel’s RM-50xQ series (used price 550 yuan) and Dell’s dw5821e (used price 300 yuan) / dw5829e modules. It’s obviously not cost-effective to purchase these LTE modules just to configure the eSIM card. ...

Graduation Trip Under the ‘Dynamic Zero-COVID Policy’ - Qinghai-Gansu Grand Tour The initial idea for my graduation trip came about at the end of 2021. Back then, the plan was to visit Shanghai and the surrounding areas of Zhejiang. However, with the lockdown in Shanghai and the tightening of restrictions in various regions, by April-May 2022, most cities were requiring individuals to quarantine in place if there was even a single confirmed COVID-19 case in their district. We once thought our graduation trip might be ruined. However, with the “Nine Prohibitions” policy introduced by the State Council in June (specifically, the two prohibitions that impacted our trip were: “Do not arbitrarily expand the scope of travel restrictions from medium- and high-risk areas to other areas” and “Do not impose mandatory dissuasion, isolation, or other restrictive measures on people from low-risk areas”), entry policies in various regions were relaxed. So, we gradually finalized our plan to travel to Tibet in early June. However, with the emergence of new cases in Shenzhen around June 18th, to avoid unnecessary trouble, we ultimately opted to travel to Qinghai and Gansu, where the control policies were relatively loose at the time. With the release of the Ninth Edition of the Diagnosis and Treatment Protocol, which explicitly stated that “isolation of individuals entering from low-risk areas is not allowed,” we finally confirmed our graduation trip plan - a chartered car tour along the Qinghai-Gansu circuit. ...

In order to activate cross-border roaming service for my classmate’s phone, I recently took the time to visit Ma Tso Lung again (the last time was two years ago). Due to the impact of the border closure, compared to August 2019, the number of people going to Ma Tso Lung has significantly increased. The way to get to Ma Tso Lung was slightly different from the last time. This time, I took the 51B minibus from Sheung Shui, which took only about half an hour compared to the two-hour walk in 2019. ...