Monthly Archive for December, 2006Page 2 of 5

Awwww Yeah, #3!

Published
by
Josh Kim
on December 25, 2006
in Site News
. 0 Comments

I’ve finally made it to #3 on google for the search string “josh kim”. I hoped to be #1 sooner, but… as you see… this site really isn’t a website just yet.

Currently, I’m writing and reading like insane, trying to play catch up with everything. I think at the end of this week, I’ll really be set with yet ANOTHER revision of this site. Creating content seems much more exciting to me now than designing for some strange reason… it might be because there are just too many things going on in the world to just sit on and consume by myself. Rather, I’ve decided to be more… sharing of all things that I run into online.

So… on this snowless Christmas day, I make yet another goal to “finish”… er… create a new version of Josh Kim dot Org by New Year’s. Yeah, it’s not as awesome as reintroducing the site on “07.07.07″, but whatever… at least… this way… I’ll be more on top of things.

Freak… I wanted to post my screen shot of the 5 TextMate windows running around, but I just realized that I don’t have a set way of uploading pictures online. Freak… [opens another TextMate window, entitled "New Functionality for JK.org"].

Oh, right. And Merry Christmas. It really really doesn’t feel like Christmas, but just another day. But it’s important that it’s yet another day… to be able to keep running this race. Thank you, God, for family and friends.

Thanks Argo AKA TextMate FTW

Published
by
Josh Kim
on December 22, 2006
in Apple and Web Development
. 1 Comment

It seems that my dear friend, Alex Argo (And yes, his sites have been like this for months… that “lazy bum”…), was gracious enough to think I needed TextMate, and got it for me for Christmas. I’m very thankful that he knew for a fact that I would love and hate this app to death. I would love it because it’s yet another amazing mac application. I would hate it because it was… indeed… yet another amazing mac application.

Too many good things to write about… I don’t have to mess with it. It just works. And isn’t it funny how that’s the mantra for all things mac? It’s deceptively simple. All these amazing functionality is only a keystroke away. I love how the projects are handled as a loose grouping of files, and most likely all the metadata for that project exists in the single project file that TextMate creates.

It’s kind of like learning Rails… and even Quicksilver. I’m almost sure that TextMate will make my life easier. I know this. It’s just the amount of work I need to do to get to that status of being able to use the tools fully. There will be much reading on what the shortcut keys are… what the best way to go about development PHP applications… With Quicksilver, I think there was a period of a couple of hours where I just sat there, blinking in amazement as to how amazing this program was. Then there were all those screencasts… blog entires… just a lot of time spent in realizing what I could do with it. Now, I want to go make those screencasts and blog entries to share with the world of the joy Quicksilver has brought to me.

Will Textmate make me want to do the same?

No More Winter Breaks

Published
by
Josh Kim
on December 19, 2006
in Personal
. 0 Comments

Never Ever. Not like the month breaks I’m used to from school. However, I am definitely enjoying the empty campus, and how I have to walk to work since there are pretty much no buses running (21 Quad Limited is the only campus one running…). It’s quiet… I like the empty WIMPE, I’ll tell you that. Finally, benches are open… but it really doesn’t have anything to do with me.

I guess the schedule goes something like this:

Thursday - Chicago. I’ll be staying with the Gwak.

Sunday - Cincinnati. Freaking 6 hour drive of fun.

Tuesday the Week After - Champaign/Urbana. Work work work.

Yeah, nothing special happening. I just like working… and getting paid to learn things.

Definitely starting to go sleep early, since I end up getting up at 7 AM. Whew… I guess this is how I gots to start rollin’.

Knowing What Others Don’t

Published
by
Josh Kim
on December 15, 2006
in Personal
. 1 Comment

Person A tells Person B something. Person B tells Person C that very same thing. Person A doesn’t know that person C knows. However, Person C knows Person A’s something.

Depending on how well A, B, and C know each other, as well as the importance of that something, situation changes.

What I realized in the past couple of days… if A, B, and C are that close to one another, then this issue shouldn’t matter at all.

Or, you can look at it this way: A should have gone to C. B, depending on what that something is, as well as the relationship to A and C, should have done something on that something. If not, C wouldn’t know at all. And thus, be living a lie.

It’s like out of one of those sappy movies… or everything made in Korea. How one person knows, but the other person doesn’t know that this person knows. And especially, within a GROUP of friends, I feel as though this really shouldn’t matter at all.

Like… if person A told person B something about himself, and person B goes around telling EVERYONE about those things, A would get upset. However, if C is a close friend to both A and B, and it actually that something pertains to C in some ways, then what the heck? Why didn’t A go straight to C? Why did A have to confide in B when A knew for a fact that A, B, and C are like brothers? However, who is B to say that this was meant to be shared with anyone else at all?

I think it really comes down to wisdom. Sometimes, B is an idiot, as was A to even expect such silly things from B. Or not. Maybe it’s B’s fault, 100%. But when B was handed that something, he had choices. For me, it comes down to discerning how important that something is. Now, this measurement of how important something is differs from people to people… and I think friends are made according to that “importance” scale, as well as many other areas.

Hmm. Lots of chew.

Design Philosophy

Published
by
Josh Kim
on December 14, 2006
in User Interface & Design
. 0 Comments

I haven’t had to design a website template from scratch in quite a while. I guess the last time I did it was in the summer, for the water quality data collection… but that was strictly an exercise in Academia, where I not only focused on the user interface, but also leaving behind documentation and rationale.

Why I bring this up is because I’m working on my newest client, and I’m stuck in the design process. I’m having a hard time really feeling for the company, and designing from it. I also feel like I have a set of rusted tools to work from. But I guess it’s about time to sharpen and shine them up…

From this company, I was basically given a navigational layout and a logo. I know what the company does, but I feel like these things are not enough. Graphics will be provided later, was what I was told.

I really tried to create something “useable” from what I was given. And I ended up creating two templates that basically gets across the logo and the navigational layout the client wanted. However, I still wasn’t feeling it.

Was it because of the skills I’m lacking in creating a design?

Hence, now I’m taking inventory of what I can do, just so I can look back to this entry, and see how much I’ve grown.

In the early days, what I could do was purely <TABLE> (yes… even in caps…) hacks. Attributes colspan and rowspan were my friends, and tables within tables within tables enabled me with the pixel perfect layout. Ah, those were the ignorant days of my youth.

Currently, as I’m rocking out to the tune of CSS, I feel like I’ve definitely grown to appreciate the separation between content and layout, the browser-OS intricacies, and the effort being put forth in managing all these ideal concepts.

Rounded corners are simple. You can use JavaScript through the Nifty Corner Cube (MUCH better than the old nifty corners… update NOW) or you can still get away without using JavaScript. I’ve basically changed my stance on compatibility: as long as the users can get to the info, I’ll be able to sleep at night.

Rounded corners basically leads itself to navigational design. Tabs for the main sections, check. Drop-down menus or scroll overs, check. These are all doable for me.

Two columns. Three columns. Columns within columns. ALL doable with CSS. It’s just that now, while it’s doable, it’s extremely annoying to create something from scratch. I’m still not as well versed in CSS as I should be.

These are all good for a CSS coder. But where are the gradients, the shapes, the abstract “stuff” that only comes from a true Photoshop/GIMP masta? So all I can do is mess around with colors and these design concepts I’ve honed over the past couple of months?