Wesley's Tool-Box

On December 10, 1981, South Korea's Ministry of Communications (체신부) separated the telecommunication sector from itself to form a public corporation called Korea Telecom (한국전기통신공사; currently KT Corporation) in order to modernize telecommunication service. And then, this company created a subsidiary called Korea Mobile Telecommunications Services Corporation (KMTSC; 한국이동통신서비스(주); currently SK Telecom) on March 29, 1984, to manage mobile telecommunication sector. In May of the same year, it started the "car phone" service based on the analog AMPS (1G) cellular phone technology around the Seoul metropolitan area. This marked the beginning of the mobile phone service in Korea.

The frequencies used at the time was 824 - 849MHz uplink and 869 - 894MHz downlink, which was 25MHz bandwidth each way. This is outlined in the Ministry of Communications Notice No.43 (May 9, 1991). KMTSC changed its name to Korea Mobile Telecommunications Corporation (KMTC; 한국이동통신(주)) as it was selected as a public common carrier on April 30, 1988. Nationwide AMPS network was set up by the end of 1991.

In 1994, a big restructuring effort was put into the telecommunications sector. In January, Sunkyong Group (선경그룹; currently SK Group) took over KMTC and privatized it by purchasing 24% of its stocks. Shinsegi Telecom Inc.(신세기통신(주); STI), which was selected to be the 2nd mobile carrier in Korea and had POSCO as its largest shareholder, was founded on May 2. This established the competitive market for mobile phone services.

Interestingly, Sunkyong Group was originally selected as the 2nd mobile carrier in 1992, but its CEO an in-law to the then-president Roh Tae-woo, sparking preferential treatment controversy. It relinquished the rights on August 27 of that year. It ended up entering the telecommunications market by buying up the 1st mobile carrier instead. KMTC changed its name to SK Telecom on March 1997 is called by that name to this day.

[Frequency Allotment 1984 - 1995]

AMPS (1G)
KMTC: Uplink 824 - 849MHz / Downlink 869 - 894MHz

I've risked the streaking and went with lower ISO and longer exposure for today's comet C/2013 R1 Lovejoy photo. I've experimented with the micro-adjustment head (Longperng TP98AR) that finally arrived late last night after much delay to see if that would help reduce the streaking, but manual compensation proved to be quite difficult. So, after about an hour of fiddling I ended up taking simple long exposure photos just before the Sun came up.

As a note, I waited for another pass of Tiangong-1 half about twenty minutes later, but either the calculations were off or it was too dim (it was supposed to be around magnitude 1) against the brightening morning sky to be seen.

Settings: SX50 HS - 243mm - ISO 800 - 15s - f/5.6
Time: 2013-11-26 06:26 - 06:29 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
7 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

I ordered an equipment on Thursday through Auction (kind of like eBay and is indeed run by eBay Korea). It was shipped out on the same day via KG Yellow Cap (kind of like FedEx), and usually, it should arrive a day later. What the picture tells you with "배송출고" on 22nd, 23rd, and 25th is that the courier went out with the package with the intent to deliver it to my doorsteps.

Well, it's still not here as of this writing, although I've contacted the courier in question and he told me he'll really try to deliver it today. One problem is that he errorneously tagged it as "배송완료" on the 23rd, which means it arrived at the destination. This told Auction that the shipment has basically been fulfilled, and unless I tell the system otherwise, it'll automatically complete the whole transaction in exactly one week, which is on December 1st, which is what "12-01결정" at the bottom means.

I think the system just recognizes any "배송완료" string as the shipment completion and ignores anything that subsequently happens. This sucks, because the counter has gone off earlier than it's supposed to and it has no intention of reverting.

While I made an unsuccessful attempt to photograph Tiangong-1 space station transit the Sun, I noticed some big sunspots. Sunspots like these cause solar flares, which have been prevalent in the recent months. This particular group of sunspots shown here is called AR 11899, of which the biggest one is casually referred to as "Sunspot 1899". It's about 4 times the size of the Earth. If you click the picture for the full look of the Sun, you can also spot AR 11903 near the middle.

Settings: 1200mm - ISO 250 - 1/1000s - f/6.5
Time: 2013-11-23 13:22 KST
Location: Seoul, Korea
10 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

The story of The Hunger Games is essentially about a teenage protagonist that accidentally set the chain of revolution into action in an oppressive government. The sobering part of it is that, even though she's essential to the whole process, she's ultimately a political pawn that are tossed around by both the government and the rebels for their own end.

She does not really understand what's happening around her. I wonder if we aren't, either.