Wesley's Tool-Box

Nuri rocket (a.k.a. KSLV-II) launches have become something of an annual event for the past half decade. And visiting a small island in Yeosu to witness their launches in person has become a personal ritual of mine. The fifth launch of the rocket occurred at 12:25 PM on October 7, 2026 without any delays, and like the previous launches except for its maiden one, it was successful.

While successful launches all look fairly similar, there can be some interesting differences. Last time, it was a first-ever night launch. This time, it was done right in the middle of the day. All other ones were done in late afternoons. And as luck would have it, a seagull happened to be passing in front of the rocket just after takeoff, allowing me to capture this fun photo.

Another thing about this observation was that it was the second time that I used an iPhone 17 Pro Max to capture a rocket launch. Since I normally upgrade my iPhones once a year, I would have normally used different phones for each launch. But I'm waiting for iPhone Neo to be release on October 23, so this did not happen. And since iPhone Neo won't have a telephoto lens, it's likely that I'd still bring the 17 Pro Max to the sixth launch as well. Here's how the rocket looks like with its telephoto lens at maximum zoom.

While I've personally witnessed several solar eclipses before, none of them were total. So when I found out that one such occurrence would take place near a direct flight destination - Madrid, Spain - I seized the opportunity. Because Madrid was just outside the path of totality, I went to Segovia, a city about 70 km to the north, a day after my arrival. I scouted for a good location to observe the eclipse and eventually settled on a spot near Alcázar of Segovia. As you can see above, it was an excellent vantage point.

Since Segovia was a bit off from the "optimal" location, the totality would last just short of a minute, compared to nearly 2 minutes in some places. So that left less margin for error and thus I came prepared. Fortunately, my efforts paid off, and ended up shooting 35 photos of the totality, as well as several hundred of the partial eclipse. And I was able to do continuous shoots for the most part, except for a brief break where I had some issues with the tracker I brought. The entire sequence has been uploaded to YouTube.

Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers (KIEE) held its 57th Summer Conference at Mona Yongpyong Resort in Pyeongchang-gun, Gangwon State, Korea on July 2026. This event provided me with an opportunity to present a follow-up to my Bolt EV battery thesis from 5 years ago. I had originally planned to write up on the results of the battery degradation after 8 years and 160,000 km of driving. But due to the battery recall that took place 4 years ago, I had to modify the topic slightly.

The result was a comparison of degradation trends between two sets of batteries, each going for roughly 4 years an 100,000 km. While I will probably still get the newer battery up to 160,000 km point eventually for yet another thesis, the one I presented this time was meaningful in that the trends were starkly different despite keeping the driving patterns more or less consistent. For those who are interested, here are the original paper and the video of the presentation I gave.

Thesis: 'Comparative Analysis of Real Life Degradation Trends Between Original and Improved Batteries on Bolt EV' - submitted for 2026 KIEE Summer Conference (PDF file)

Video: 'Bolt EV Battery Analysis thesis - 2026 KIEE Summer Conference' - YouTube

It’s been just a few months since the last occurrence, but another total lunar eclipse took place yesterday. This one was a bit special since it coincided with the first full moon of the lunar year, which is a day of celebration called Jeongwol Daeboreum in Korea. It’s the first time that this has happened in 36 years. Naturally, I made a full preparation. iPhone 16 Pro would take wide angle timelapse, while Nikon P1000 would take zoomed-in photos of the Moon.

Unfortunately, the thick overcast clouds that had been lingering during the day refused to go away, and obscured my view of the moonrise. I nevertheless decided to stick around, and the gambit paid off somewhat. The Moon would occasionally pop out behind the clouds, allowing me to take at least some photos that would illustrate the progress of the lunar eclipse, including the totality. This was possible because the clouds had holes, allowing for windows of observation that lasted anywhere between tens of seconds to a few minutes.

After taking a few shots of the Moon with P1000, I realized that the cloud covers would prevent sufficient exposure, making the photos too dark even with a 1-second shutter speed. So I pivoted to using my iPhone 17 Pro Max instead, using its 8x zoom camera with Night Mode. It wouldn’t look as sharp as P1000, but some photos are better than none. The collection of the best shots are shown here.

Device: iPhone 17 Pro Max
Settings: 200mm equiv. - ISO 800~1600 - 5s - f/2.8
Time: 2026-03-03 19:52 ~ 22:32 KST
Location: Naju, Korea

2025 was an interesting year with lots of chaos and progress, much of which resulted from the events that took place in 2024. Now we're entering 2026, the year of the Fire Horse. Like the Sun in the picture, I hope everyone outshine the murkiness that is the clouds and rise up.

Device: iPhone 17 Pro Max
Settings: 200 mm equiv. - ISO 25 - 1/940s - f/2.8
Time: 2026-01-01 07:56 KST
Location: Naju, Korea