Sparktour’s Blog

USA Travel Diary

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 18:00:00 +0000

During the winter break, my friends and I completed a loop road trip through Arizona and New Mexico, starting from Phoenix. Our route primarily followed the I-10, I-17, I-40, and I-25 interstate highways. The journey took one week, covering a driving distance of approximately 1,870 miles (3,000 km).

Trip Preparation

Climate and Roads

Cities on the southern side of the loop (including Tucson, Phoenix, and Las Cruces) enjoy winter daytime temperatures consistently above 10°C (50°F). Flagstaff, Albuquerque, and the areas along I-40 are somewhat colder; temperatures can drop below freezing if a cold wave passes through. Almost all roads on the loop and within the attractions are paved, or are flattened dirt/sand roads (like at White Sands), so a standard sedan can easily handle the entire trip.

2025 in Photos

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 21:00:00 +0000

All photos are arranged chronologically and have not been post-processed.

January 2025, Qianhai, Shenzhen, the deflated Rubber Duck exhibition

February 2025, Shenzhen, parked e-bikes and pedestrians in the Huaqiangbei commercial district

March 2025, Zhanjiang, a train leaving the Guangdong-Hainan Railway Ferry

Running Bonito Basecaller on Nvidia Jetson and other ARM64 devices

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 21:00:00 +0000

Jetson is an embedded AI computing platform launched by Nvidia. Compared to laptops and servers, Jetson has a smaller size and lower power consumption, making it suitable for deployment on edge devices. Oxford Nanopore Technology has also released MinION Mk1C based on the Jetson platform for real-time analysis of sequencing data. This article describes how to install and run Bonito Basecaller on Jetson for real-time sequencing data analysis and model training on edge devices.

2024 in Photos

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:00:00 +0000

All photos are arranged chronologically and have not been post-processed. I tried to use AVIF as the image container format, which might correctly display the HDR effect captured by my phone on the web (unfortunately, the issue of AVIF overflow on Android devices still hasn’t been fixed after a year, I’ve submit the bugreport link but still got no fix).

January 2024, a morning view from the Tanglang metro station overpass, Shenzhen

USA Travelogue

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 18:00:00 +0000

This blog post shares my travel experience in the United States during the summer of 2024. In this two-week trip, I visited cities on the West Coast, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, and on the East Coast, including New York and Washington, D.C.

Route and Attractions Map

My general itinerary involved driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles, then flying to New York, taking a train to Washington, D.C., and finally flying back to San Francisco.

A Look at the Nanopore Basecaller: Bonito

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 21:00:00 +0000

Bonito, named after the bonito fish, is a basecaller developed by Oxford Nanopore Technology. In this article, I will try to explain, in an easy-to-understand way, the data flow and data formats of Bonito, as well as some knowledge needed for the secondary development of Bonito (or even other nanopore sequencing basecallers).

Korea Trip: A Typical Northeast Asian Metropolis

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 18:00:00 +0000

A Typical Northeast Asian Metropolis

A Weekend Trip to Kansai, Japan

Sat, 25 May 2024 18:00:00 +0000

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.

Exporting Your Personal Data from the Schengen Visa Information System (VIS)

Wed, 10 Apr 2024 18:00:00 +0000

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).

One-day trip to Sha Tau Kok Port Closed Area

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 12:00:00 +0000

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.

Add optional passkey/webauth/OTP login to Keycloak

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 12:00:00 +0000

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:

Mount NFS via RDMA on Mellanox Card

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 12:00:00 +0000

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.

Configure esim.me SIM Card with PC/SC Smart Card Reader

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 12:00:00 +0000

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.

Using EC20 Module, Asterisk, and FreePBX for SMS Forwarding and VoIP

Sat, 08 Oct 2022 12:00:00 +0000

In many parts of the world, mobile phone numbers are increasingly intertwined with online services and personal identity. This is particularly true in mainland China, where a single user may find themselves managing multiple phone numbers for various applications and platforms. While solutions like telegram-sms and SMS-forwarder have emerged to address the inconvenience of managing multiple physical SIM cards, they come with limitations. These apps, typically installed on smartphones, are often hampered by aggressive background process management common on Android devices, leading to unreliable SMS forwarding. Furthermore, the practice of keeping older devices powered on long-term for this purpose introduces safety concerns, such as battery swelling. Perhaps the most significant limitation is the inability to handle phone calls; these apps only address SMS. This article details a project where the author, leveraging an EC20 cellular module and a blend of software tools, overcame these limitations. The setup allows for SMS messaging through instant messaging applications like Telegram, and makes and receives phone calls over the internet using SIP clients, providing a more robust and flexible solution.

Graduation Trip Under the 'Dynamic Zero-COVID Policy' - Qinghai-Gansu Grand Tour

Mon, 18 Jul 2022 18:00:00 +0000

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.

Visit to Ma Tso Lung Again in 2021

Wed, 22 Sep 2021 18:00:00 +0000

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.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

@sparkcyf

Major in EE, postgraduate student in SUSTech.

Student assistant of SUSTech CCSE and maintainer of SUSTech Open Source Mirrors.

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Email

me@sparktour.me

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Callsign: BA7LKC

DMR ID: 4603443

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