Wesley's Tool-Box

Recent news (in Korean) shows that the population of Naju is returning to one hundred thousand mark some time this month. It's still a far cry from the two hundred forty thousand back in the mid 1960s. But considering that the last time Naju had a 6-digit number of people was 12 years ago and it even dipped below ninety thousand half a decade prior, it's a cause for celebration.

Seriously, the city hall is actually planning to celebrate it. In the meantime, I got curious and dug into the registered population statistics available from the Ministry of the Interior.

As this graph I just compiled from that data shows, the biggest factor in this turnaround is none other than the Bitgaram Innovation City, which was spun off as its own administrative district (Bitgaram-dong) in February 2014 coinciding with the completion of its first apartment complex. The influx of newcomers was clearly evident from the beginning, but it really picked up steam at the end of 2014 when most of the public corporations finished moving into the city, including KPX. Nearly fifteen thousand people have been registered to be living here by the end of last month. Optimistically, the number will hit twenty thousand by the end of the year.

You can also see from the graph that population of the rest of Naju have stagnated or shrunk a bit, so I wondered how much of the growth of Bitgaram City have been translating to the overall population.


For the most part, the population growth of Naju as a whole has been closely trailing that of Bitgaram City. The gap has widened somewhat in the most recent months, suggesting that some people living in the original downtown were more actively moving in to the new town. It still doesn't change the fact that most of the influx are from outside. It should be interesting to see how this will play out in the long run.

Apple held a big press event yesterday, introducing new products like iPhone SE and iPad Pro 9.7", while releasing new OS updates - iOS 9.3, watchOS 2.2, tvOS 9.2, and OS X El Capitan 10.11.4. While I have updated iOS and watchOS as soon as possible, including the betas, I had been holding my Mac mini and Macbook Air from getting El Capitan (OS X 10.11) updates, and instead kept using Yosemite (10.10). This was mainly to have the server running stable.

But now I felt that any early kinks in El Capitan had been fixed and it was getting increasingly inconvenient to have the previous version of OS X holding back some new features I could enjoy on my iOS devices. So I decided to take the plunge today. After about an hour of installation and fixing any broken server configurations that the new OS installed had caused, everything is running alright again.

With the Apple Watch going on sale next month, interest in smart watches should spark in 2015. Being wearable, water resistance of these sort of devices is one of the aspects that's getting attention. Usually, the IP (International Protection) rating, an IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) 60529 standard, is used because they're electronic devices. This rating certifies resistance to solids and liquids.

Lots of good quality smart watches and water resistant smartphones are rated as IP67, including Samsung's Gear 2 and Gear Fit. Apple Watch has an IPX7 rating, which has the same water resistance rating, but without dust resistance certification. The last digit, 7, indicates that the device can withstand submerging at a depth of 1 meter for at least 30 minutes.

Information on IEC 60529 Standard: [1], [2]

Meanwhile, traditional watches often sport "water resistant to X meters" or similar indication instead. The problem is that the IP rating seem very underwhelming in comparison on the surface. Casual water resistant watches often have a 30-meter mark, which seems to be much better than the 1-meter rating for IPX7.

But if you delve in deeper, you'll find that the 30-meter mark is only good for splashes and short immersion in water. The watch cannot be expected to withstand dives to a few meters, let alone 30. This is because the mark merely indicates momentary resistance to static pressure of 3 ATM, which is what water exerts at a depth of 30 meters.

[Information on water resistance ratings for watches]

10-meter (1 ATM) water resistance is only good for accidental splashes, which seems analogous to an IPX4 rating at best. A 30-meter (3 ATM) mark is good for general splashes and short immersion. An old standard quoted in a FAQ of a watch company says that the 3 ATM watches "must be able to survive 30 minutes under water at a depth of 1m (3 feet) followed by 90 seconds under a pressure corresponding to 30 meters." So a 30-meter water resistance is more or less like an IPX7 rating. If you're to go swimming, a minimum of 100-meter mark or a IPX6+IPX8 rating seem necessary.

So the current crop of smart watches have a useful water resistance not unlike many casual watches, and shouldn't been seen as too inadequate. Still, as the competition heats up, we might eventually have proper swim-proof versions. I see so much potential there.

Water supply to Naju Bitgaram City had recently been contaminated with "mud water", making the water murky to various extents (LH3 Apartments seem to be much worse than LH4) and becoming unfit to drink. Emergency water trucks have been dispatched, handing out bottles of water to residents, as seen in the photo. Hopefully, the issue will be resolved soon.

When I started "The Toon-Box", I thought that I would eventually hit 4 digits in the number of strips, so it started as #0001. Ten years later, it really happened - today, it hit #1000. Wow.