Old Blogs | Ka Ming Fung, Ph.D.

Oops! I did it again.

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 13:00:00 -0400

I did it again. A day after my Jekyll-generated site was launched, I discovered Hugo, another SSG (static site generator) written in Go ✨. Six hours later, my Hugo-powered site is up and running. Here in this post, I am explaining why.

Dr. J and Mr. H

Hugo is Faster - website generating is a process of conversion from a collection of scripts into html and other media files for website hosts. With multimedia content, such as pictures and videos, Jekyll took 8 seconds to render my site vs Hugo’s <1 second. Some users tested that Hugo can generate 600k pages within 5 minutes.
Hugo is Neater - I forked my site from . This template groups all relevant contents, including source markdown scripts, pictures etc. of each post/page under individual folders. On the contrary, the Jekyll al-folio classifies required files by file types
Hugo is Newer - one long page, fast scrolling, no BS. Just like Insta. 📷

Jekyll for flexibility

Based on Ruby, Jekyll is still a more customizable tool for website builders. It encourages users to add contents using HTML, liquid syntax, and markdown all at once, sounding perfect for picky geeks 🤓.

This is the moment

Fri, 09 Oct 2020 16:58:10 -0400

So I have been told there is a new tool (new to me 😉) trending among academics. I was casually checking it out last night, and now, I have just finished my 12-hour journey of website migration. Not to bore you to death by giving you all the geeky 👓 and technical details (including how I googled and picked the nicest templates, extracted the good elements, studied their liquid syntax & HTML codes, reassembled them, fixed countless bugs, and ran numerous tests…), I will discuss some major advantages of Jekyll, as a static web page generator, over WordPress.

WordPress was not good enough

Let’s start with WordPress (WP). Here is a list of bad things about this commercial web page hosting service providers:

WP is Slow - to entertain its broad base of users WP comes with a bunch of plug-ins that most of us won’t find useful. Recently, they updated their editors to enable “block” elements, hoping to make layout design more flexible. But this change came at the expense of becoming more graphically demanding (as compared to Google’s Site <- Yes, it is revived 😈). All these non-essential add-ons have made WP extremely heavy and slow.
WP Poses Design Restrictions - though WP has a bunch of themes and plugins to choose from, it’s not easy to make small adjustments because it doesn’t allow you to go all the way under the hood (i.e., change the codes). WP’s closed ecosystem limits customizations.
WP Has Ads - pop-ups, top-bars, and other forms of ads appear like elves if you are not a paid user. It just looks unprofessional. (I know, so do emojis 😱.)

Jekyll is not perfect but just better

After some research, aka skimming though the first page of Google Search results and watched a few Youtube vids, I found that Jekyll + GitHub Pages would be a better alternative for me.

Jekyll is Simple - if you have used MS FrontPage to make websites (like ~20 years ago 💾), you would know how tedious it could be to write a blog post, format it, and index it alongside other posts. Jekyll, an HTML code generator, can auto-complete those procedures for you. The only thing you need is some knowledge of the markdown and liquid syntaxes.
Jekyll is Fast - similar to WP, you can choose your favorite template from a collection of free and paid ones. Unlike WP, these templates come with source codes, which allow you to trim, extract, reuse, improve, and modify as you see fit. Optimizing code sets to your needs helps speed up the loading time. Also, it’s always ad-free.
Jekyll Puts You in Charge - even though the Jekyll-generated websites still need to be hosted on places like Github Pages, you can always keep a local copy of it, including all the blog posts, pages, pictures, pdf files, etc. With this, you don’t have to worry about your memories being gone one day like those Xanga diaries you once wrote. (Sorry that I am a senior netizen. 👴)

One size doesn’t fit all

I am sure that somewhere out there a newer and fancier tool has already been invented. I also have to confess that learning Jekyll was not my sweetest moment, and I have invested quite some time (probably longer than I should have). It’s highly customizable but not at all straight-forward. But, after all, I am happy to pay such as a small cost and appreciate Jekyll’s letting me own my contents and, together with GitHub, enabling me to host an ad-free open-source website.

I think Jekyll will make maintaining my website easier. If you are considering switching to Jekyll but still in doubt, feel free to connect with me. I will be more than happy to share with you my experience.

Appeared in Early Career Spotlight in IGACnews

Sun, 15 Mar 2020 13:00:00 -0400

Thank you IGAC for introducing me in their newsletter’s “ ” session on pp 23-24. This issue also covers the IGAC/SPARC Chemistry-Climate Model Initiative (CCMI) 2019 Science Workshop I helped organize in CUHK (pp 8-11).

Useful Datasets

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 16:58:10 -0400

The following datasets and documentation are open to all. I hope they benefit your research! 📚

Climate

(daily & monthly over 1979–present; 2.5º-by-2.5º) [ ]

Ammonia (NH₃)

(0.01º-by-0.01º)
(site data)
(monthly; 2º-by-2.5) [ ]
(monthly; 0.5°×0.667°) [ ]

Nitrogen Dioxide (NO₂)

(monthly over 2006–2018; 12 km-by-12 km) [ ]

Fine Particulate Matter (PM_2.5)

(annually over 2010–2016; 0.1° × 0.1°) [ ]

Agriculture

(5’-by-5’ & 0.5º-by-0.5º ) [ ]
(for the year 2000; 5’-by-5’) [ ]
(5’-by-5’) [ ]
(for the year 2000; 5’-by-5’) [ ]

Soil

[ ]
- Land mask, terrain elevation, slope (30"-by-30" & 5’-by-5')
- Land use and land cover: rain-fed cultivated land, irrigated land, forest land, grass/scrub/woodland, built-up land (residential/infrastructure), barren/very sparsely vegetated land, or water bodies (5’-by-5')
- Soil qualities for crop production: nutrient availability, nutrient retention capacity, rooting conditions, oxygen availability for roots, excess salts, toxicity, and workability (5’-by-5')

Geography

(shapefiles; check out my on how to use it in R)

Using "Ka-ming" as my author name

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 11:12:00 -0400

Hi there! 👋 My last name is “Fung” (馮), and my first name is “Ka Ming” (家銘). In Chinese culture, the family name comes first, so my full birth name is “Fung Ka Ming” (馮家銘).

Because of the British-style education system in Hong Kong, some people here have adopted English names as nicknames, and I go by “Victor”.

As for my academic identity, I’ve chosen to use “Ka Ming FUNG”. I want to show my appreciation to my parents for choosing my birth name, and also to promote and preserve the Cantonese language.