Wesley's Tool-Box

It's been about two weeks since my new book officially went on sale at various online and offline bookstores around Korea. The book saw its interest surging the subsequent Monday (August 30, 2021), and so it peaked at 32nd position of the tech / engineering online weekly bestsellers at Kyobo Book Centre the next day.

The wave has somewhat calmed down at the moment, but for some reason Naver has now decided to label it as a bestseller. I first spotted the red tag on September 4, before disappearing just a day after. It then returned today (September 7). I'm not sure what this classification is based on, but I guess the book is doing well.

A few months ago, I had the idea to gather all sorts of replies and posts I made in the electric vehicle-oriented communities on the Internet and organize them into a single book called "Electric Car - Common Sense Dictionary". Luckily, one of the major publishers I sent the first draft to thought it would sell and decided to publish it. So after beefing up the content and updating the data up to the last minute, the final manuscript was sent off to the press yesterday. And as of today all the major bookstores in the country have listed it for pre-order. Official release is slated for August 25, 2021. Here are where you can find it (all in Korean).

Official page at the publisher (Nexus)

- Kyobo Book Centre
- Youngpoong Bookstore
- Interpark
- Aladin
- Yes24

Thanks to an SBS show last year, I was invited to appear on the popular cable television program "You Quiz", and that episode aired yesterday. I liked the way it turned out, and it seems that a lot of people enjoyed it as well, especially the parts involving my wife.

Video

- Highlights (YouTube/tvN), #2, #3, #4
- Episode Digest (YouTube/tvN)
- Highlights (YouTube/unofficial)
- Preview (YouTube/tvN)
- Highlights (tvN), #2, #3, #4
- Highlights (Naver), #2, #3

Articles
Episode Review
- Herald POP
- OSEN

About Me
- Maeil Business
- Newsen
- Gukje News
- BizEnter
- Ilyo News
- Single List
- News Inside
- Top Star News

Episode Preview
- The Korea Times
- Top Star News

[Source page at SBS website]

The weekly SBS TV program "What on Earth" (순간포착 세상에 이런일이) is one of the longest-running show on the network, going back to 1998. I made an appearance on episode #187 on Feburary 28, 2002 as the "computer man" that wore the "wearable computer" around the city. The show has recently been going back to the archives to highlight the notable old episodes and they wanted to show how I was doing these days. The newspaper article from 10 years ago made the cut, but not more recent stuff, probably due to time constraint. Still, it was a good opportunity to let people know I'm still out there, alive and well.

P.S. There are now a couple of news articles on my appearance online.

2020-10-16 Update: SBS Noriter and another news outlet have reported as well.

Daegu Metropolitan City is currently the most proactive regional government in the mainland Korea for promoting the adoption of electric vehicles. The city has its own sprawling charger network and the total number of EVs eligible for purchase subsidy per year is one of the largest in the nation. Also, it has been holding an EV Eco Rally since 2017 to show off the clean and efficient nature of the EVs to its citizens.

I wanted to know how efficient I was driving my car, so I attended the event last year despite being just four months into EV ownership at the time and needing a two and a half hour trip from Naju. I ended up ranking roughly in the middle. Feeling that I could do better, I honed my skills and re-entered the competition this year.

Since each car models have different characteristics, participating cars were grouped according to the model. A group needed at least four cars for efficiency ranking and four models qualified this year - Kona (Group A) and Niro (Group B) had 14 cars while Ioniq (Group C) and Bolt EV (Group D) had 9. Other models participated on a non-competitive basis, which brought the overall total to 56 cars.

To drive as efficiently as possible in the rally, convenience features like air conditioning and satellite navigation screen are turned off to save energy. This makes the ride quite uncomfortable as my family found out last year. But Celine still wanted to join her dad in the event for this year, so I assigned her the duty of a human navigator, helping me make my way around the busy Daegu downtown. I didn’t realize how significant this would affect the outcome at first.