Chris Pratt promotes Fortnite by insulting Koreans [video]

Fortnite is now available to play in Korea and will no doubt challenge homegrown PUBG for domination of PC Bangs. The makers of Fortnite, that super popular battle royale-type shooter where you also build stuff that has captured the hearts of young teens and questionably-adult men the world over, has picked up lovable Chris Pratt to do some Korea …

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2019 Suneung 수능 questions (end-of-year 2018)

Today was Korean SAT test-taking day (for the 2019 university admission year, even though the test itself happened November 2018). As usual the answer sheets were released within minutes. You can download the actual reading comprehension question sheet plus answers at this link in a 900kb PDF file: 🔗 https://ssl.pstatic.net/static.news/image/news…

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English guide to Korean floor heating controls ("ondol")

Here's a simple guide to using the control panel for the ondol (온돌) floor-based heating in your Korean apartment. Winter is starting and I saw some questions about this over on Reddit and Every Expat, so hopefully this can help you out. Background Many people, whether new English teachers or tourists visiting an Airbnb, arrive in Korea and str…

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Halloween special: sexy Korean costumes from Coupang 🎃

Now here's a cultural import that I can get behind. I was doing some shopping on Coupang and got a pop up about their Halloween merchandise. Check out this massive list of stuff you can order. Costumes, masks, make-up, accessories, party supplies, candy, and yes, that on the right there is a whole category devoted to costumes for you pets . Ugh…

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Tistory blogging platform gets big update

Korean blogging platform Tistory has received a big update. Now part of Daum-Kakao, Tistory has been a longtime player in the Korean blogosphere. It recently got a refresh of modern skins/themes, and a new theme designer that looks pretty neat. It reminds me of Wix in the way it looks like you can just drag/drop chosen sections in on the homepage …

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Naver Weather Map shows fine dust forecasts and visual current conditions

Naver expands their one-box* in-results detailed information for weather. In addition to previous fine dust counts and current conditions, results will now include  predicted fine dust forecasts as well as the mini map of air quality as measured from various stations. Good to check up on whether you should bring your mask with you the next day or …

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Electric cars and Korean apartment rules - a mildly interesting dilemma

This weekend I was at an apartment complex and saw this car parked out front with a hand written note stuck under the wiper apparently left by the complex's security guard. The sign said 후면주차금지 ("No rear parking" or Park facing forwards). You can see the cars next to him are both facing forwards. That's pretty unusual given the &…

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Tribute to Jo O-ryeon

You may know about "Marine Boy" Park Tae-hwan, the darling South Korean Olympic swimmer. But you probably haven't heard of the godfather of Korean swimming, the "Asian Seal," Jo O-ryeon. Tribute to Jo O-ryeon (1952 – 2009) So I got curious after typing up an off hand comment in my last post , and did some quick googling abou…

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How big is Korea? Maps of South Korea on top of other countries

Tonight, instead of catching up on sleep, I was playing around on  The True Size Of ...  which lets you drag outlines of countries on a world map to see how they compare. All the sizes are apparently accurate and whatever and it gives you a pretty good idea of how these places stack up relatively. The takeaway of course isn't how small Korea is,…

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Simple fix for natural (reverse) scrolling in Lubuntu 18.04

Here is a simple fix for enabling natural (reverse) scrolling in Lubuntu 18.04 Background The default trackpad scrolling behavior in Lubuntu was driving me crazy. When I scroll my fingers up, I want the content to move upward, i.e. I want to scroll down the page. The default on Lubuntu, even in 18.04 is still the opposite. I feel like a fighter pi…

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