Evan Tsai Astrophotography

Claims Locked to the Google API, Parentheses Everywhere: A Patent That Looks AI-Generated

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Recently I read a set of patent claims, and the further I read, the more my brow furrowed. The amended claims not only locked the technical features onto a specific Google API, but the independent claim was also stuffed with a whole pile of parenthetical add-ons. Seeing writing like this, the first

That Lens Patent the Astronomy Crowd Was Discussing—I Couldn't Resist Taking a Look

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Recently I saw fellow astronomy enthusiasts discussing a patent for a certain lens, and as a practicing patent attorney I simply couldn't resist digging it up to take a look. My first impression after reading it: the independent claim of this patent seems to be written rather "small"—the part that a

While I Was At It, I Turned the JPO Into an MCP Too

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Only two days ago I turned TIPO's (Taiwan's Intellectual Property Office) public information into an MCP (that whole ordeal is written up in "Packaging TIPO Patent Search Into an MCP and Wiring It Into AI"), and today I happened to get my hands on the JPO's (the Japan Patent Office) API, so while I

Wrapping TIPO Patent Search into an MCP and Hooking It into AI

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Today I wrapped the publicly available patent information from TIPO (Taiwan's Intellectual Property Office) into an MCP and hooked it into AI. The Trouble Wasn't the Features, but the Gap Between Documentation and Reality Originally I just wanted to streamline the query workflow I use regularly, but

Writing the Judgment in Your Head into a Document: Context Engineering and a Model's Obedience

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After bringing AI into my work these past few years, I've gradually broken down the judgments that once existed only in my head and externalized them, organizing them into a controllable "Context Engineering Document." I Assess a Model on Three Things Right now, when I'm evaluating whether a model i

Can a Taiwan Passport Clear ID.me? Three Weeks of Wrangling to Reach USPTO's Open Data

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

As a patent attorney (a licensed patent practitioner in Taiwan), I wanted to connect to the open-data API of the USPTO (the United States Patent and Trademark Office), only to get stuck at an identity-verification gate called ID.me. From the moment I started the application to the day I finally clea

Years Later, Rewatching Armageddon with My Kids

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

(The following contains plot details of the film Armageddon; if you mind spoilers, please read at your discretion.) Tonight I rewatched Armageddon—this time with my kids. It's an old movie of nearly two and a half hours, and I'd figured they might not be able to sit through it, but to my surprise th

Why Do LLMs Hallucinate? A Student Who Can't Turn In a Blank Exam

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Why do LLMs hallucinate? The way I see it, you can picture an LLM as a student like this: he's read a great many books, but his memory has been compressed, and he himself doesn't know which parts have actually grown fuzzy; worse still, he's been required to—during the exam—"never turn in a blank she

Code with Claude London 2026: Notes from Two Talks

Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Recently I found some time to watch two talks Anthropic gave last week at Code with Claude London 2026—one was Margot's Prompting Playbook, and the other was Legora sharing their experience with legal AI. Here are a few notes. Margot's Talk: Small Models Can Do Big Things Too In Margot's talk, what

What AI Gives You May Not Be an Answer, but a Beautifully Formatted Hallucination

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Today I asked Gemini to help me find air-conditioner installers, with the condition that it draw mainly on user experiences from PTT or Dcard (two of Taiwan's most popular online forums). At first, it listed some URLs that looked quite thorough, but when I clicked through, they either wouldn't open

The "Sycophancy" of AI Conversations: It Might Just Be Agreeing With You

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

AI research has a name for it: sycophancy. What it means is this: what AI gives you is sometimes not the most truthful, most rigorous answer, but rather leans toward an answer that leaves the user more comfortable, easier to accept, and feeling validated. A Few Common Situations - The user floats an

The 2026 Parent's Homework-Grading Toolkit: Set AI's Boundaries First

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When you use AI to help grade your child's homework, you absolutely must set up the standards and boundaries first—especially that "boundaries" part. Let AI Run Loose and It Will Rewrite the Essay Into a Textbook If you simply let AI grade in free-ranging fashion, a certain situation crops up: it fo

NotebookLM, a Regular LLM, or the Two Chained Together? First Figure Out What You Actually Need

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A lot of people have been using NotebookLM lately, and I often get asked: how exactly does it differ from a regular LLM like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude? Some people also wonder: if Gemini can be chained to NotebookLM, doesn't that make it the stronger, more complete version? My take: no. These three

Claude for Legal Goes Live: A Taiwanese Patent Attorney's Hands-On Test

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Just these past few days, on May 12, Anthropic rolled out Claude for Legal, turning Claude into a tool built specifically for legal professionals. While it was still fresh off the line, I immediately made time to give it a thorough once-over. Quite a Lot Served Up at Once This time they rolled out,

The Jagged Intelligence of LLMs: Why AI Is a Genius One Moment and a Fool the Next

Wed, 06 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The same LLM can, on one hand, methodically refactor a hundred thousand lines of code, and on the other, offer advice as absurd as "walk over to the car wash to wash your car." This enormous gap in capability is what's called "jaggedness." The Key Isn't Difficulty, but "Whether It's Been Practiced"

From "It Runs, Good Enough" to "Confident Enough to Change It": A Rookie's One-Month Coding Diary

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Let me say this up front: I'm not a software engineer, and the coding I'm talking about here is all what people call Vibe Coding—the kind where you just go with the feel of it. Lately, to make my work go a bit more smoothly, I've been building my own little tools. Over the past couple of days I did

Will AI Replace Lawyers and Patent Attorneys? Box CEO Aaron Levie's Take

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I recently watched an interview in which Box CEO Aaron Levie offered some rather incisive views on the legal and patent industries. What follows is my summary and paraphrase of that interview; the views belong to Levie, shared here for everyone. 1. The More Content There Is, the Busier Lawyers Get G

When 80% of Drafts Aren't Written by a Patent Attorney, What's Left of This Profession?

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Let me confess something first: at the very moment of writing this article, this text too has AI's fingerprints on it. All the more reason, then, for me to talk this problem through properly. Today, roughly 80% of patent drafts are no longer typed out character by character by a patent attorney's (a

Truth and Falsehood in the Starry Sky: Physical Logic and Artistic Expression in Astrophotography

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Recently, a discussion about "comet photography" has drawn considerable attention within Taiwan's amateur astronomy community. It began with an image of Comet C/2025 R3 shot with a ZWO S30PRO—its sweeping composition of landscape and starry sky earned plenty of praise on social media. Yet when Dr. W

ARP 65: A Gravitational Waltz Across Spacetime

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Arp 65 — A Gravitational Waltz Across Spacetime

Deep in Andromeda, some 230 million light-years from Earth, a silent yet magnificent dance is quietly unfolding.

This recent work captures Arp 65, a classic pair of interacting galaxies from Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.

The two lead dancers, NGC 90 and NGC 93, are at the critical "pre-merger" moment. Under gravity's long pull, their structures are being rewritten: the spiral arms of NGC 90 are stretched and drawn out by tidal forces into broken, rhythmic knots, while NGC 93 still keeps a relatively stable core — the composed partner in this dance.

Through long accumulated exposure, I tried to capture the young star clusters triggered by that gravity — scattered through the galaxies as "knots", glinting blue-white against the smooth, warm glow of the older stars around them.

This is more than a meeting of two galaxies: it is a story of structural remaking and exchanged energy. To science, they are key clues to galaxy evolution; to the eye, a gravitational waltz spanning hundreds of millions of years.

ASA 500N
FLI Proline 16803
ASA DDM85
Astrodon 50mm LRGB
Lx21; Rx16, Gx17, Bx15, 600s
Total integration time: 11h30m
Location: Chile

An Outlet for Stress: Using an Engineer's Mind to Have AI Help Find a Solution

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Finding a way that suits your own personality to get along with your family and the people in it—that, I think, is the best way to handle stress and vent emotions in modern society. A Young and Naive Notion When I was young, I never thought stress could cause any problems. Looking back now, that was

IC 5152: A Loner at the Edge of the Galaxy Group

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

IC 5152: A Loner at the Edge of the Galaxy Group

Deep in Indus, about 5.8 million light-years away, hides a dwarf irregular galaxy of somewhat mysterious standing: IC 5152. Sitting at the fringe of the Local Group, it is still debated whether it truly belongs to our galaxy group at all.

What makes this galaxy most appealing is how readily it "comes apart": in observations it resolves cleanly into individual stars, offering a window into the formation and evolutionary history of its stellar populations.

For amateur astronomers, though, IC 5152 has one love-it-or-hate-it quirk: a magnitude 7.7 star sits squarely in front of it. It complicates deep-sky imaging and photometry a little — but it also gives the galaxy an unmistakable visual signature.

Planewave CDK 17"
SBIG STXL 11002 with AOX
Paramount ME
Astrodon 50mm LRGB
Lx21, Rx20, Gx21, Bx22 1200s, Hax14 1800s
Total integration time: 35hrs
Location: El Sauce, Chile
Software: PixInsight, Photoshop

The Jevons Paradox: Is AI Making My Life Easier, or Just Busier?

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Lately I've often found myself mulling over a question: is AI actually lightening our load, or is it quietly making us busier? It reminds me of a rather fascinating phenomenon in economics—the Jevons Paradox. This logic could not fit my current life more aptly—whether I'm facing high-pressure profes

AI Hasn't Made People More Efficient—It's Just Made Everyone Busier: The Red Queen Effect

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Lately a lot of people have had a rather contradictory feeling: AI tools keep getting more powerful, yet life doesn't seem to have gotten any easier. Writing a document used to take, say, half a day; now AI can generate a draft in a matter of seconds. On the surface, things really are faster. The Re

NGC 1672 – The Barred Spiral Galaxy in Dorado

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

NGC 1672 — Barred Spiral Galaxy in Dorado

About 60 million light-years away and some 75,000 light-years across, this is one of the more spectacularly structured galaxies in the nearby universe. Most striking is the long bar spanning the galaxy's center — roughly 20 kiloparsecs — from whose ends graceful, symmetric spiral arms unwind, giving the galaxy its textbook, captivating barred-spiral form.

In high-resolution images the arms are sprinkled with pink emission nebulae and young star clusters, showing the galaxy still in a vigorous star-forming phase. Its core is classified as a Seyfert 2 active nucleus, likely concealing a supermassive black hole ringed by fierce starburst regions — a galaxy at once luminous and dynamic. NGC 1672 is a key case for studying how bars funnel gas toward a galaxy's center, triggering star formation and driving galactic evolution.

For astrophotographers, that bold bar and those elegantly unfurling arms make it one of the most alluring targets in the sky.

Planewave CDK 17"
SBIG STXL 11002 with AOX
Paramount ME
Astrodon 50mm LRGB
Lx22, Rx21, Gx21, Bx17 1200s
Total integration time: 27h
Location: El Sauce, Chile
Software: PixInsight, Photoshop

The "Muddy" Background in Astrophotography: Better Black Than Dirty

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Anyone who has photographed nebulae has probably had this experience: exposure time isn't enough and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is insufficient, yet you badly want to force out those faintly visible dark clouds (for example, IFN—integrated flux nebula, within the Milky Way). The result? The bac

NGC 1433

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

NGC 1433 — Double-ringed Barred Spiral in Horologium

NGC 1433 lies in Horologium, about 46 million light-years from Earth. This image was taken with a 17-inch CDK, and the galaxy's charm lies in its double-ring structure — a faintly discernible short central bar and a delicate stellar ring extending outward.

Scientifically it is classified as a Seyfert 2 active galaxy; the molecular outflow driven by its central black hole is remarkably compact, making it an important case study in galaxy evolution. With a large aperture's resolving power, the HII regions dotted along its arms come into view.

The processing proved genuinely challenging. Limited by the low signal-to-noise ratio around the galaxy, the first two versions fell short of expectations; only on the third attempt did detail and noise suppression reach a satisfying balance — the best rendition achievable for now. With more exposure time in the future, I hope to give this target an even finer treatment.

Planewave CDK 17"
SBIG STXL 11002 with AOX
Paramount ME
Astrodon 50mm LRGB
Lx21 1200s; Rx23, Gx20, Bx20 900s
Total integration time: 22h 45m
Location: El Sauce, Chile
Software: PixInsight, Photoshop

Facing the AI Era, My Feelings Are Always Mixed

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Facing the AI era, my feelings are always mixed. The fascinating side is that there's forever an endless supply of new knowledge before me, so much that one person's time simply can't hold such a vast volume of information; but the exasperating side is that AI also often leads us on detours—it'll pr

NGC 1232 – The Eye of God Galaxy

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

NGC 1232 — The Eye of God Galaxy

NGC 1232 is a grand spiral galaxy in Eridanus, about 50 million light-years from Earth. Spread almost perfectly face-on toward us, its structure is crisp and symmetric — a bright core wrapped in layer upon layer of turning spiral arms, like a great eye gazing into the cosmos. Hence its popular name: the "Eye of God".

Nearly 200,000 light-years across, its arms are strewn with blue young star clusters, pink star-forming regions and criss-crossing dark dust lanes. From the yellowish old stars of the center to the vigorous newborn stars of the outskirts, the color gradient makes plain that NGC 1232 is still an actively star-forming galaxy.

Observations reveal an extensive envelope of gas around NGC 1232 — possibly the aftermath of a brush with a small galaxy — that has shaped its internal gas distribution and star formation, leaving dynamical fingerprints that are invisible yet still at work.

Its apparent companion NGC 1232A actually lies at a very different distance; the two do not truly interact, merely align along our line of sight. Around December each year is the ideal season to observe NGC 1232 — and as we gaze into this 200,000-light-year eye, we are witnessing a galaxy's life story still being written.

Planewave CDK 17"
SBIG STXL 11002 with AOX
Paramount ME
Astrodon 50mm LRGB
Lx21 1200s; Rx21, Gx20, Bx20 900s
Total integration time: 22h 15m
Location: El Sauce, Chile
Software: PixInsight, Photoshop

Adding Hα to a Galaxy Image: Enhancing HII Regions

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In galaxy image processing, moderately adding Hα (Ha) data into the RGB and L channels is an advanced technique for enhancing the detail of HII regions. A galaxy's continuum light comes mainly from its stars, so if you simply lay Ha on top, it's easy to make the overall tone lean red. The real key l