⚠️ Notice

This post is a draft translation from the Chinese version which have not yet been thoroughly proofread.

Finally get a self-hosted blog (somewhat) set up online, but still struggling to get everything working.

Since I’m not quite familiar with the framework, there may be a lot of bugs around the site. So feel free for providing technical supports by contacting me or issue PRs directly on the GitHub repo! Thank you for the support from all the readers!

📌 Update on 2026/03/14

After playing around with various settings, most of the visible UI issues have finally been resolved! Though taking longer than I initially expected. However, I still don’t figure out why the “reading time” isn’t displaying at all.

📌 Update on 2026/04/13

Major UI revamp. The not-displaying “reading time” issue has been resolved.

📌 Update on 2026/04/23

Change the colour scheme on the entire site.

📌 Update on 2026/05/29

Updated the entire website’s attitude towards CCP’s propaganda channel Xu Xiaoxiang, and forcefully changed all titles and content quoted from him into simplified Chinese.

⚠️ Notice

This post is a draft translation from the Chinese version which have not yet been thoroughly proofread.

Alex Hsu recently published two posts in a row discussing the topic of regional variations in Chinese.

• 《The tale of two translation houses》
• 《How Taiwan and China rename English movies (and why it’s a mess)》

Admittedly, from the perspective of “movie title translations,” the discrepancies between translations by distributors in different regions are particularly severe (especially some poorly translated ones, Taiwan seems to favor using “formulas” or even making dirty jokes). Alex has suggested that “film studios should unify their translations”. However, direct translation isn’t always the best approach, since different languages ​​(and even different regions speaking the same language) can have different cultures, and direct translation may not always allow audiences from certain cultures to grasp the film’s theme or the artistic conception of the original language. (Some countries also have a tendency to include spoilers when translating foreign film titles) However, blindly forcing uniformity could also backfire.

Perhaps we should leave the previously established (or “accustomed to mistakes”) names for shit mountain untouched. It would be better to focus on choosing good names for the newly emerging ones.

Annihilating local languages?

I really admire what The Pokemon Company did. In 2016, they unified twenty years of divergent names. Taiwan had been calling it 《神奇寶貝》(“Magical Treasures”), Hong Kong used 《寵物小精靈》(“Pet Elves”), and China called it 《口袋妖怪》(“Pocket Monsters”). They scrapped all three and unified under one name: 《寶可夢》(“Pokémon,” phonetically). I remember thinking the new name sounded terrible. But I agreed with the decision. And time proved them right.

——Alex Hsu《How Taiwan and China rename English movies (and why it’s a mess)》

Pokémon is an example of an attempt to clean up the shit mountains. Alex’s remarks actually overlooked a very important aspect. When Pokémon (and other Nintendo products) were unifying their transliterations, they often tilted at Mandarin pronunciations, leading to accusations of “belittling Cantonese and substituting Mandarin for Cantonese”, which caused a stir in Hong Kong at the time. If you were to say something like that in a Hong Kong community, you’d very likely get a lot of flak. If I had a less favourable impression of Alex, I could immediately launch into a tirade, accusing him of being a Mandarin chauvinist (I really could do that), willing to sacrifice the rationality of local dialect¹ pronunciation and completely deny the value of local dialects in order to achieve his grand unification ideal.

寶可夢就是一個嘗試清理屎山的例子。Alex 的這番言論其實故意忽略了一個非常重要的面向。 寶可夢（以及其他任天堂旗下產品）在制定統一譯名的音譯時往往以官話發音為主，導致其被指責「矮化粵語、以普代粵」，當時在香港炎上過一陣子。你這番言論要是挪到香港人的圈子裏頭講，有很高機率會被罵死。因此我立馬就可以開罵攻擊 Alex，罵牠是支持官話霸權、罵牠是官話沙文主義者、罵牠是支共喉舌，會為了完成牠的大一統理念，而不惜犧牲地方語言¹發音的合理性，並全盤否定地方語言的存在價值，與支共實乃同一陣線。誰採信牠的言論，誰就是匪諜，應該徹底剷除。

• 妈的，你是不是中国人，是中国人就该讲普通话，别唧唧歪歪讲什么鸟语！
• 不说普通话的是不是辱华废青啊？
• 讲什么狗屁鸟语，等着被统一吧！
• 咱们有推出官方汉化版本，你们就得感恩了！
• XX 人全都是二鬼子，一句普通话不说

——Design dialogue

However, on the other hand, some translations of names made in Hong Kong are also poorly done. Many translations in the sports world are based on the Cantonese pronunciation, but they often misjudge the original pronunciation, and the resulting translations are almost like random translations.

The Romanization school of thought

You say you’re not Chinese? Then don’t use Chinese characters!

——Romanized Taiwanese chauvinists

Tan Kian-Tiong mentioned in his article “葬送的芙莉蓮 EP1-2 語句選”, that he persuaded the team at PTS Taigi Channel to write transliterated foreign words in Latin letters (instead of directly borrowing characters from Mandarin Chinese), arguing that the Ministry of Education’s Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwanese Taigi also uses this format.

Such a mix of Latin characters is not a convention in written Chinese in Hong Kong, except in certain compromises (such as the case of “Pokémon” mentioned above).

The impossible triangle of faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance

One compromise solution that takes all the above arguments into account, is to try to find characters that sound similar in various Chinese dialects¹ when creating new transliterations (unless they deviate too much from established conventions or “accustomed to mistakes”). However, this adds many more issues for translators to consider:

• Faithfulness: Does it accurately convey the pronunciation of the original text?
• Expressiveness: Does it accurately convey the meaning and artistic conception of the original text?
• Elegance: Will the combined translation sound unrefined (in some dialects)?

⚠️ Notice

This post is a draft translation from the Chinese version which have not yet been thoroughly proofread.

Recently, several articles discussing vocational high schools (高職) in Taiwan have appeared on “Wiwi Blog Universe”:

• Eo《後悔讀高職》
• JN《讀高職是我一點都不後悔的事情》
• ikuka《讀高職不代表我成績差》
• 黃碩人《高職 FAQ》

Let me also tell you about Hong Kong’s education system.

In Hong Kong, most mainstream secondary schools allow students to choose their elective subjects for their senior secondary education. After choosing your subjects, you don’t need to ever touch the subjects you didn’t choose again, besides Chinese, English, Mathematics, and Liberal Studies (or later “Citizenship and Social Development”) and two or three elective subjects. So I really didn’t have to worry about what to do with the humanities subjects that I wasn’t good at in my junior secondary.

… Unless the gap in your grades lies in your core subjects. My own situation is that I’m quite good at maths, okay at English, and Chinese and Liberal Studies are the worst, and my grades in maths and various science electives aren’t particularly outstanding either (didn’t get those “star grades” in DSE), which is quite a rare type, and can’t find a place within the Hong Kong education system¹. So after failing Chinese in DSE, I was forced to take English continuing education courses and higher diploma programmes with countless others who failed English instead, even though my original English proficiency wasn’t too bad², which is quite absurd.

⚠️ Notice

This post is a draft translation from the Chinese version which have not yet been thoroughly proofread.

My blog currently has three languages: written Chinese, Cantonese, and English. The different language versions are currently distinguished by different paths.

Since I rarely promote this website in circles where people don’t understand Chinese, most of the English content on this site has been roughly translated using machine translation tools, and I’ll proofread it more carefully later when I have time.

JN recently created a tool called IndiePing, which can be used to search for posts in the “BlogBlog Club Universe” that link to your blog. The tool has a minor bug: if your blog is not under the root directory of a subdomain, IndiePing might retrieve the wrong blog name. JN replied that this bug needs to be manually fixed case by case. Currently, this blog doesn’t have its own domain, but perhaps one day I’ll move the entire blog to my own domain. I wonder if, when moving the domain in the future, the three different language versions should maintain directory distinctions, or if, for compatibility reasons with some blog linking tools, I’ll have to assign different hostnames to each language version.

Additionally, noeFly is also developing a blog search engine, but it’s unclear how well it supports non-root directory + multilingual blogs like mine.

Eddie Lv somehow decided to include a link to my English website for some reason on his “Mentions & Discussion” page, even though Eddie’s website is written in Chinese. Perhaps he doesn’t notice that my website actually has a Chinese version.

⚠️ Notice

This post is a draft translation from the Chinese version which have not yet been thoroughly proofread.

Over the past year, some members of the “Wiwi Blog Universe” have started a trend of submitting themselves to nownownow.com, which has made me wonder if I should also try submitting myself to nownownow.com?

However, after thinking about it, I think I shouldn’t submit it for now?

All the members contributing to nownownow.com in the “Wiwi Blog Universe” are from Taiwan. I was born and raised in Hong Kong and have never lived in Taiwan for an extended period, so I’m considered a foreigner in the “Wiwi Blog Universe”. The Hong Kong section of nownownow.com currently has 10 members, and from what I’ve seen, they’re all English websites. Also I see someone equates “Traditional Chinese” with “Taiwan” directly, implying that all Chinese-speaking regions outside of Taiwan should be all using Simplified Chinese. It would be a bit awkward if I included myself in it and nobody really reads it.

Furthermore, if you submit yourself to nownownow.com, they will ask you some basic questions about yourself. If you don’t answer them, you’ll be listed in the “missing photo” or “missing profile questions” section, which may affect your visibility. However, firstly, there are some questions I’m not quite sure on how to duel with, and secondly, I’m a person who is a bit values ​​privacy, and I don’t like to reveal too much about my personal information (or information that I would consider too personal) to strangers.

Additionally, this website currently does not have its own domain yet. I don’t know if I will migrate the website to another domain in the future. If I do migrate the domain, it might be a bit troublesome to change the links on websites own by others.

I wonder what opinions my fellow bloggers have on this. Feel free to contact me via email, private messages, or comment (if I ever set up a comment board on this site)!

📌 Update on 2026/05/05

Wiwi later published a new article “NowNowNow World Champion”, in which he mentions that “if everyone in our BlogBlog Club Universe works together, Taiwan can have a chance to break into the top three, or even win the championship¹”. After reading this, I thought that the BlogBlog Club only has about 100 participants, and not all of them are Taiwanese (I myself am actually a foreigner from Hong Kong). Even if all the participants in the BlogBlog Club submitted themselves to NowNowNow, Taiwan still wouldn’t be able to get into the top three. Therefore, Wiwi’s viewpoint is likely exaggerated and flawed, so I immediately wrote an email to Wiwi to discuss about this.

And he responded by saying, “The BlogBlog Club Universe isn’t limited to those who have already submitted posts; it also includes all the readers of these websites, the website owners’ friends, and potential members who will be brought in later²”. Is this an exaggeration?

⚠️ Notice

This post is a draft translation from the Chinese version which have not yet been thoroughly proofread.

This website has been running for two months, but it still doesn’t have its own domain ¹. Today, let’s discuss the topic of choosing a domain name.

Of course, I know that GitHub Pages can be linked to a custom domain, but I haven’t done so simply because I’m too lazy to spend money to buy a new domain.

Preference to .com domains

Many blogs inside the “Wiwi Blog Universe” show a strong preference to .com domain names.

In the internet age, having your .com taken is like having your name taken.

——Alex Hsu “How an engineer dad picks baby names”

• JN has two posts (1, 2) discussing getting domains, himself using a .com domain.
• One of Wiwi’s submissions to the “Pushing the Pit” theme mentioned that he would “set an alarm to wake up in the middle of the night to grab a .com domain”.
• Alex Hsu says that he spent USD $1700 to buy his current .com domain. He also expressed his strong preference to [firstnamelastname].com domains.
• You’ve bought the domain name, and you still need to feed it. Eddie Lv mentioned that maintaining a .blog domain would cost him USD $2600 per year, which made him give up on the idea, and he ended up buying a .com domain instead.

Top-level domain hierarchy

Some people have a “top-level domain hierarchy” in their minds, which looks something like this:

.com > .net/.org > gTLD > ccTLD

By definition, all two-letter top-level domains are “country code top-level domains” (ccTLDs). According to this hierarchy, Lightingale Community is at the bottom of this hierarchy.

Not long ago, 7-zip was found that it has its .com domain name being squatted as a phishing website, this highlights the importance of registering .com domains for services with high brand awareness.

Additionally, if you’re considering setting up your own mail server, you would have to consider the fact that the global email service has been plagued by spam mails for many years as well, creating a trust deadlock that makes sending emails from new domain names very difficult. It’s said that emails sent from .com domains would have a higher deliver rate, while newer domains like .win and .xyz are often used for suspicious purposes, and are more likely to be distrusted by other websites.

My domain plans

Maintaining a domain name is very expensive, and buying a domain name just for a blog isn’t worthwhile. Even if this website eventually has its own domain, I’ll probably put the blog in a subdomain like b.example.com. In fact, I already have a fairly detailed list of subdomains in mind:

• a/ai: Self-hosted privte AI service (if ever made)
• b: Blog
• f: Forum, message board
• g: GitHub Pages／self-hosted Gitea? (if ever made)
• i: Image host
• m/mc: Minecraft server
• ms?: Self-hosted Mastodon? (if ever made)
• s/t?: Tiny URLs
• sx: Self-hosted searx (if ever made)
• v: Self-hosted PeerTube (if ever made)

Choosing a domain name

The question is, what kind of domain name should I choose?

Some people like to use their real names as domain names. Alex Hsu mentioned that he prefers such domain names². I would consider the issue of identity segregation, even if I bought a domain name containing my real name, I wouldn’t use it for this particular blogging identity.

Furthermore, the future of .io is quite uncertain. Until its future is clear, it’s best not to buy a new .io domain.

Dark web domain names

Lightingale Community has members regularly using dark web services, some of them also help the entire community set up dark web domains.

• Tor and I2P have readily available tools for mining domain names. Someone even mined a bunch of .onion domain names starting with yjspi.
• Yggdrasil is essentially a virtual IPv6 address that can be bound to any domain name. I would just have to create a subdomain called y/ygg for it.
• Lokinet may lack readily available domain mining tools.

⚠️ Notice

This post is a draft translation from the Chinese version which have not yet been thoroughly proofread.

I’ve read Alex Hsu’s “The omakase blog: building an opinionated personal site” recently, let me share some of my personal opinions.

Light mode and dark mode

This site currently offers both light and dark themes, with automatic detection by default, but users can also switch between both themes by clicking a button on the menu.

But what if you’re forced to choose one? Alex mentioned he recently removed the light mode entirely, which I think is fine. Conversely, since I’m the kind of person who likes to hide in a dark room late at night to look at my phone, I don’t really like the constanly blindingly bright mode of 廢文小天地 and Wen (that kind of blindingly bright mode is more suitable for e-ink screens or paper reading, maybe I should invest in an e-reader?). In the ancient days before CSS, the default layout was always in light mode, which is why browsers now default to light mode unless colours are specified using CSS.

Simplified/Traditional Chinese conversions

I’ve considered adding a “one-way Simplified/Traditional Chinese conversion” function to this website, but I’m lazy and haven’t implemented it yet.

As for “two-way Simplified/Traditional Chinese conversion”, it’s basically a cancer. A one-to-many conversion in Simplified Chinese often leads to over-conversion.

I was born and raised in Hong Kong. Compared to Taiwan, due to cultural contact and changes in population structure, Hong Kong people have more opportunities to encounter Simplified Chinese in their daily lives. Hong Kong people generally have better reading ability for Simplified Chinese than Taiwanese people, and there are fewer cases of “Simplified Chinese reading difficulties” or “much slower when trying to read Simplified Chinese”. My own fluency in reading Traditional and Simplified Chinese is actually not that different most of the time.

Horizontal and vertical writings

Within the “Wiwi Blog Universe”, there’s a blog that’s uniquely written vertically, that’s “Me” (e89295).

Local language textbooks in Taiwan and Japan share a common feature: they are both written vertically. In contrast, textbooks in mainland China and Hong Kong are all written horizontally (although Hong Kong does have many vertically written Chinese books).

In the past, electronic devices, which are dominated by Westerners who lacked vertical writing traditions, often have poor support on vertical texts. However, the support for vertical text on electronic devices has nowadays improved considerably.

That being said, vertically formatted web pages like “My Blog” might be better viewed horizontally on mobile devices.

Table formatting

Numerous studies have shown that limiting the width of text layouts can improve the reading experience (at least for horizontal text). I have many linguistics articles that include tables. When there are many columns in a table, it often overflows, which is not quite aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps I should look into better table formatting mechanisms, or maybe I should just use images instead?

📌 Want to use it now?

• The source code is here!
• Supporting CSS

A practical little toy developed during the research of Hugo.

Usage

Markdown syntax:

{{< ruby Text Pronunciation >}}

Rendering effect: Text（Pronunciation）

⏳ Current Status

• 🏡 I’ve always been living in Hong Kong.
• 💼 I’m still unemployed. I briefly mentioned this in my “Perfect Days” post.

❓ Recently doing

• ⛪️ I’ve been maintaining my church attendance routine for the past year, but I still have no plans to believe.

The romanization system used in this article is Jyutping.

Initials

Standard Cantonese has 20 phonemic initial consonants. Although many people do mix up several pairs like /n/ and /l/, /ŋ/ and /ʔ/ ~ ∅.

Alveolar and postalveolar affricates seems to be either allophones or free variation. Some people pronounce /ts/, /tsʰ/, /s/ before unrounded vowels, and /tʃ/, /tʃʰ/, /ʃ/ before rounded vowels, while some people only pronounce the alveolar variant in all positions. Linguistic materials suggest that these two sets of initial consonants are actually distinguished in pre-1950s Cantonese, however. See my other post “A Brief Discussion on Several Chinese Dialectal Phenomena” for further information.

Rhymes

There are usually considered 8 main vowel phonemes in standard Cantonese, although there are about 11 realizations of these phonemes. Items marked with an asterisk * are rare rhymes.

Older Cantonese also has /om/ and /op/, though they are usually merged into /ɐm/ and /ɐp/ today.

/aː/, /ɐ/, /ɛː/ and /iː/ are considered as unrounded vowels, while /ɔː/, /œː/, /uː/ and /yː/ are considered as rounded vowels. The roundness of the vowel may determine whether the /ts/, /tsʰ/, /s/ or /tʃ/, /tʃʰ/, /ʃ/ set of initial is used.

All stop codas (i.e. -p, -t and -k) are unreleased, unlike most European languages.

Tones

短陰入 and 長陰入 are also referred as 高陰入 and 低陰入 respectively.

💡 Fun fact

Cantonese is one of the handful Chinese variant that preserves the 陽上 tone. Most modern Chinese variant just merge it in 陽去 or 陰上.