To view other articles in the series, please use the tag to jump to the article directory page: #from-taking-pictures-to-photography.

From the Start to the End of Photography​

My first card camera, a Nikon COOLPIX S200, was a possession I acquired during my middle school days.

Many people suggest to photography beginners that equipment is not important and you shouldn't expect to become a photographer overnight; just keep taking photos and you will naturally get better. I once believed in this advice.

So, in those days when the internet was not yet a ready repository of knowledge, I took my camera everywhere to shoot, trying out various things. I indeed wholeheartedly embraced the notion of shooting a lot, but what followed was not growth but greater confusion.

I didn't have many people around me who knew about photography, I didn’t know what a beautiful photo was, and all I did was repeatedly compose odd and skewed frames. There weren’t many around me who knew about cameras either, so my understanding of film cameras was limited to knowing that film would be ruined if exposed to sunlight, and I always thought that the colorful noise when shooting night scenes with a digital camera was my own fault. I didn't know what a tripod was or understand concepts such as aperture, shutter speed, or ISO. After trying various modes on the camera, I just switched back to automatic.

Thus, after accompanying me throughout my entire middle school, as the quality of smartphone photos gradually caught up, I stored away the camera in my home during college. My experimentation with "photography" started with "taking photos" and also ended with just "taking photos."

Years later, when I started working, I bought myself a mirrorless camera, the celebrated Sony α6000. By then, the internet was filled with a mix of good and bad information, and by exploration, I chose my first affordable prime lens and tried to shoot using aperture priority mode. Nevertheless, I still had many puzzling questions, such as why I would need a small aperture when I have a large one and what are the drawbacks of a zoom lens besides being expensive.

Falling into the same predicament as before, naturally, led to the same results. After a while, this camera too was packed away in a box, and just a few years ago, the kit lens was no longer focusing due to the aging of its internal plastic components.

It wasn't until a couple of years ago that I finally came across an article by Sean Ning titled "Photography Notes: Photography Isn't That Hard to Learn". Regrettably, I searched for a long time but couldn't find any information about the author. There's a website that I suspect belongs to the author, but without concrete evidence, I won't share it here.

The article was clearly written around 2010 and was obviously a PDF exported from Word, feeling very much of its era. Despite its age, the content is still relevant. It starts with a technical perspective, introducing many important parameters in the camera and their interconnections, then progressively introduces the key concept of "tone" in photography, extending to the essence of "highlighting the subject," and finally discusses key factors to consider for some basic types of photography.

This might differ from the majority of the "how to compose" articles or "how to adjust colors" videos you would find on Xiaohongshu (also known as Little Red Book) or Bilibili. In fact, this article doesn't mention much about the artistry of photography. Instead, it feels like a very "programmer"-like article—I saw it full of techniques, and it was quite benefiting.

This series of articles I write is actually a crude imitation and brief summarization of "Photography Notes: Photography Isn't That Hard to Learn". Even if you are willing to read my articles, I still recommend that when you have time, to click the above link, download the PDF to your local storage, and slowly read it through. Although seasoned photographers might scoff at it, as a beginner, you will surely benefit enormously—since photography is a hobby that is a lot more about satisfying yourself than pleasing others, why take the naysaying of veterans too seriously?

Happy New Year, everyone, despite not having updated in quite a while, half a month flew by!

Recently, I haven't been feeling great, so I've decided to write about some simpler topics.

Here, I recommend a browser extension: Immersive Translate. It satisfies almost all of my expectations for a translation plugin, except for the lack of OCR functionality and the inability to translate some special PDF documents. It meets nearly all the main needs in work and life, and the way it retains the original text in translations is far superior. In addition, it can flexibly integrate various translation interfaces (the feature of integration itself is free!), making it the most useful browser extension I've encountered so far, bar none.

Its official website is here, and you can go check it out for yourself.

As for how much I recommend this plugin, it might be evident from the signature on my work Slack:

“A Chrome extension everyone should have”

TL;DR: When using Linksys VELOP routers as the main router in a network environment with a secondary router, it may lead to difficulties in setting up the secondary router or loss of network performance. It's recommended to consider other routers first. Update: Netgear routers won't work either; just stick with Xiaomi.

A few days ago, tired of the frequent disconnections of the wireless Mesh network of the Asus routers, I decided to upgrade the home wireless Mesh network as a whole. After some simple research, I opted for the Linksys VELOP series routers with a reputation for having “less functionality and customizability but being stable.” The model I chose was the MX4200.

After setting up the wireless Mesh network with several routers, I began attempting to integrate a secondary router into the system.

Since my previous Asus router was already connected to a secondary router, I naively assumed that a similar quick configuration would suffice.

However, the actual situation was completely different from what I had imagined, and I faced numerous issues. Not only did a simple configuration fail to resolve the issues, but even after I eventually figured out all the problems, I found that I could only use an imperfect solution to incorporate the secondary router.

This is why I concluded from the outset: The Linksys VELOP is not suitable as the primary router in a network environment with a secondary router.

Below, I will analyze in detail all the issues encountered during the integration process, their causes, temporary solutions, and the principle behind them.

The article is quite lengthy and contains many technical terms. If it's difficult to read in one go, consider reading in sections. Of course, if you do manage to get through it all at once, please let me know in the comments — I will respect you as a hero, whether you're a man or a woman.

This article used a word in Chinese: 路书 (LuShu). It has different meaning under different situation. ChatGPT translated it to "itinerary", but I think it's not accurate. However, it is only a codename, and I will explain it in the article.

Before every trip, we inevitably engage in some travel planning.

For me, the most critical part of trip planning is preparing an itinerary that includes various travel routes and schedule arrangements.

Unless our physical condition doesn't allow it, our trips generally proceed along the general direction recorded in the itinerary, although of course there are various minor adjustments according to actual conditions. Whether you want to conveniently check later segments of the route, record sights you've already visited, or adjust your path on the fly, a handy itinerary software is naturally indispensable.

I want to share some useful itinerary software for domestic and international travel based on my own experience in this article. Hopefully, they can be helpful in everyone’s next travel planning.

Here's a summary of the software I'm recommending along with some key points, but I believe most readers are more concerned about my experience in using them.

After publishing the first article about website construction, I had intended to take advantage of the three minutes of enthusiasm to quickly update a few more articles.

Unfortunately, things didn't turn out as desired. On the very night the article was published, one of my cats passed away from a sudden heart attack, returning to the stars. Having just settled that matter, I had to travel to Shanghai on short notice for work. Besides that, there was a string of meetings already scheduled that I needed to attend.

Because of various emergencies, I've been incredibly busy these days. Fortunately, after checking in last night and during the flight back to Beijing today, I still had a few hours of free time. I used this time to quickly add support for multiple languages (i18n) to the website, and I can also write a short article to introduce how I've made use of large models in my development process.

For the past decade, the homepage of SQYBI.com has always featured the following text:

Since my DreamHost hosting is out-of-date, I moved SQYBI.com to Linode VPS. However it will take a period of time to write a new blog application and import old data. Please be patient, SQYBI.com will come back!

Of course, there's also the bit that was added later:

Well, it's not back yet. I'm not sure when it will be back although the main part of the blog app is finished.

To be honest, I never had a clear plan for the website's relaunch. So, when it finally was about to go live again, I found myself at a loss for what to write. After all, the relaunch, much like the initial downtime, came unexpectedly.

Having not produced any new content for a long time, naturally, I want my first piece of writing upon returning to be something comfortable. So why not start with something I’m clearly familiar with—the time around the website’s shutdown ten years ago.