Monthly Archives: January 2007

Textmate Blogging Bundle is Beautiful

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I’ve been giving this TextMate Blogging Bundle a try. I have to hand it to Brad Choate… this is one heck of a bundle that decreases a LOT of painful work.

If you want to be l33t like me… okay, I take that back.

If you want to be nerdy like me, and be able to post to your blog every 30 seconds with ease, this screencast will definitely help you along.

Sidnote: Yes, this is another feed I am subscribed to.

I knew that there was a way to create links in TextMate using a single keystroke. I found it in the docs, which brings me to the fact that I still need to learn so much more.

The idea of linking to images and uploading them through TextMate… that is amazing. Here’s an example… (if it actually finally works… Okay, it didn’t, so I had to manually fix it…)

Screenshot of the Preview Post window

One last thing: Looks like I’m going to have to upgrade to WordPress 2.1 soon. As soon as I make sure that all my important plug-ins work, then I’ll move to the new version.

How Apt: An entry from Coding Horror

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Coding Horror: How To Become a Better Programmer by Not Programming

Sidenote: Derek, this is one of the many RSS feeds I read.

If you don’t have a subscription (RSS) to Jeff Atwood‘s blog, get one. I love what he has to say. His reading list is superb… too bad I’ve never fully read any of those books. I can say I’ve at least touched half of the books on the list.

One thing I have to add to what he wrote:

You won’t– you cannot– become a better programmer through sheer force of programming alone. You can only complement and enhance your existing programming skills by branching out. Learn about your users. Learn about the industry. Learn about your business. The more things you are interested in, the better your work will be.

My efforts of trying to learn this programming language or that web framework is worthless, unless I realize why I’m doing it. This is why my focus is going to change back again to just creating.

I’ve been obsessing over preparation: Preparing through learning, through researching. I guess I could have also been preparing through doing, but that wasn’t the case. If I had actually been preparing through doing, I would have quickly gone past the preparation stage into the action stage.

In the end, what I’m trying to say is that while I have all these great ideas of creating a web application, I won’t get anywhere just by sitting back and passively learning. I gotta learn to walk the talk.

I’ve told some people that programming is slowly becoming a chore: I think this should be the case with a lot of programmers in general. I know what I want the computer to do. I know the quantifiable steps required to make this Turing complete contraption do what I want it to do. But all these syntax… bureaucracy… complexes…

Eh. I just gotta suck it up. And Dew it. I mean, do it.

Goodness, I miss caffeine.

Rethinking

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Still in Cincinnati. I definitely cleared up a lot of things on the to do list, from canceling cable internet to driving the family SUV to get it fixed to dealing with the college loan people to tracking down all the tax-related paperwork my parents and I need. I really wanted to see if I could get this retainer check done and over with so I can drive back to Illinois. It might be I really am going to be here until Wednesday.

I wasn’t able to get a whole lot of work done: Still feels like I’m on a vacation. Rather than working, I’ve been catching up on a few TV shows here and there (Battlestar Galactica, I’m so behind) and reading quite a bit of the Bible. Right, that and continuing to think where my life will take me.

To tell you the truth, I’m excited. I don’t know what I’ll be doing after 5 months. I don’t think I can stress this enough: I’ve never had a time in my life that I wasn’t 110% sure what the next step was to be. I guess it comes with the territory of actually being able to support oneself, but it also comes with being kinda self-employed.

I will be having an interview with the good MBA people at UIUC on the 19th of February. More or less a information session… and that’s what I’m looking for, more information. As soon as I get back on campus, I’ll be yoinking some GMAT books from the great Library we have. Looks like I have to write four essays, two pages max per question, for the application. Yikes. Too bad I like to write.

Personal Finance is too fun. Learning more about retirement planning… so much fun. I know for a fact I’ll be maxing out my Roth IRA very soon. Huzzah for that. If only I had some kind of system that could help me transfer some of what I’ve learned to the world…

Right. Blogs.

Still thinking over what I want to do with this blog.

“Christian Coding Korean” was what I wanted to go with. But I want to add even more to it… I’m stretching my subject areas too far as it is. Not only am I going to be writing for people, but I’m actually going to be using the blog to retain information; to help me remember what I’ve researched and learned through my browsing the Interweb.

But I’m interested in so much… Does Josh Kim dot Org just stay that way? A site just devoted to whatever the heck I’m interested in at that moment in time? But that means… I’m going to be writing endlessly…

I mean, I can sit here and write “personal” posts continuously, with a Bible open before me, going through verse by verse, just being convicted through every verse. But that’s not very productive, in the sense that I’m not meant to be doing that: It’s not like I’ve been called to some sort of a blog ministry.

I guess the problem is I’m not the best at anything. I’m just okay with a lot of things. But I like being okay at a lot of things… If there was something I learned in college (other than the subject matter), it was that one of the most important things in life is not being the best at something, but to create something to be best at. For some reason, that entrepreneurial spirit was sown.

But what to reap? What am I using as nutrients. Hopefully, massive amounts of learning and research on my own. But it can’t be my own. I must ask for help… from others and from God. Asking help from God is easy (okay, sometimes… after humility takes place). Dealing with people, though… that’s another story.

Where the heck am I? I feel like I just wrote like 2 pages and got nowhere.

Right, back to the point. Rethinking.

If I want to use the blog as a passive income generator, I need to make sure that it can be used that way. I guess I need to crank out more worthwhile posts in terms of the subject area I choose, whatever they may be.

Oh man, that’s going to require some category reorganization. Retagging, also. And I’m still thinking about ripping the RSS feeds into categories that make more sense.

Things could be easier if I just started to create more domain names, and just created content based on each… hmm…

Another FOUR posts edited to oblivion

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I need to get better at this content creation thing. I set my standard for an actual post so high that I can never really write one from start to finish. Sorry, but you’re going to get another retarded personal entry.

Yes. So this is indeed my vacation #1 of 2007. Coming to Cincinnati was definitely the right thing to do… seeing friends… rethinking the future… almost a career “retreat”. Anyway, here comes the meat. Truth be told, I don’t normally choose to be a jerk. But I think what happened with this project that Alex and Chris had, wigdets… I wanted the project to be something more… more than what it was. I actually wasn’t too sure of the project to begin with, and one of the main reasons for coming on board was just to be a part of a project that friends would partake in. I had a wonderful time the one meeting I got to sit down with the founders of the project, as I heard about their motivations in structuring this project. I was, at one time, excited at what it had to offer.

But… I’m not really sure what happened, but I lost interest. Fast. The things that I was going to do for the project… I never really followed through. I guess I could partially blame laziness for this one, but I have a feeling that there was a larger issue at play: wigdets wasn’t my project. I never felt like I could be at equal with these other guys. Also, wigdets wasn’t something I conceived. Heck, I didn’t fully understand the technologies required to build such a system, nor did I feel comfortable enough to preach on the features of the system. I apologize publicly that I didn’t come to this realization fast enough. But I have a feeling, Chris and Alex are and will be okay without me.

As for me, the game is afoot. I’m glad I’m learning a bit more about myself…

Tomorrow is another day. Rock rock rock.

Oh What Fun!

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This is definitely not the post I wanted to make. I’m still writing a post on why home doesn’t feel like home anymore… but I was sidetracked with one heck of a fun night with the Nerds here in Cincinnati. Nerdworld 2007, as Argo so affectionately called it. And man… it was definitely a world of nerds (But I don’t think we should start calling it that… that’s kinda… nerdy… oh… wow… supressing… recursive… joke…). There was the obligatory video gaming (brought to you by the Wii), then some Mega Monopoly (yeap, I lost… and I’m going to say it again: I had no chance of winning when I started). But this time, things were a little different. We had a full blown discussion on technology and start-ups for a couple of hours. I’d say about 2 and a half hours or so on subjects from YouTube clips to DirectX 10 (which I was happily not a part of) to career choices. I think this might be the record time spent on talking about some serious topics. Alas, in the end, the entire thing just broke down to watching clips of SNL Digital Shorts and listening to Weird Al. Wow… okay, next paragraph.

I’m not sure why I didn’t see this before, but everyone, except me, are graduates of Miami; one with a Masters in CS, and the other three with BS’s in CS. I wonder how things would have turned out if I didn’t step out of state to go to UIUC and if I stuck with CS. I’m much to tired to even start thinking about the possibilities…

In all seriousness, though, I’m beginning to believe that there are even more people in my group of friends that would want to join me in my quest to shape the world. I guess I don’t really have to venture out too far to find the right “team”.

Lots to think and pray about. Hmm…

And yes. I’m trying to keep that daily post promise. It really freaking is 4:10 AM… oh geez. I swear… I made some horrible spelling and grammatical mistakes the first time through this post.

In Ohio

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3 and a half hours seemed to go by so fast… I guess I’ve been back and forth quite a few times, now.

Home has this ability to make me very… tired. I just hope that I can stay on task while I’m here.

I’m so happy my sister loves her present. Now I want one, haha. The new earbuds are amazing! No need for those silly black covers, ever. And I still can’t believe how small the shuffle actually is!

Yeap, this entry is pretty much pointless. It’s a cop-out post, what can I say.

Tomorrow will be the start of another day. A very VERY productive day. Time for another list, and the start of the month in review. Huzzah… time to rock.

The END?

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A long day. The end of a LONG day.

Thank you GOD for letting me somehow get through it all.

Work (client #1), Meeting (client #2), Meeting (client #3). This has never happened in one day before. Followed by WIMPE (which I skipped out on for the past two days due to work).

Now… I look forward to a little rest back at home. That’s right, my friends, I’m heading back to Cincinnati until Wednesday. Freaking retainer check on Wednesday, as well as my lovely sister’s birthday. (I want to play with her new shuffle… so pretty…)

I had a chance to hang out with the guys of Campus Oaks 111. I am so thankful that John and I were able to make up so quickly… last time I was at CO 111, there was some tension between us, for some strange reason. I was just being quite the idiot younger brother… Sorry, again, John!

But man, the topics covered in our discussion… were hilarious. I really should visit more… I need some more example Christians I can look up to, especially these brothers in Christ. Yes, I said this with a little bit of sarcasm… tee hee.

I kid. Then, a very needed phone call from a friend to end the night.

There is no other place I should be RIGHT NOW. It’s just a question of… where to next?

One quick thing: I’m learning to let go. Learning to keep killing my selfishness to want to know everything. Need to pray through this one.

Yeap, this what I would call a personal entry. Yeah, there’s absolutely no content in this post. I’m sorry… I have more writing left for tonight…

Just remember… my monthly review is coming up on the 31st. I’ll be sure to post extensively this weekend and the days following. Maybe even hopefully possibly, you’ll see a new design for the site!

CSS Day

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http://www.positioniseverything.net/articles/ie7-dehacker.html

This has to be the… best… thing I’ve read all day, possibly, all month. It helped me so much in solidifying all the unhappiness and anger at the state of the CSS world… up through the recent release of IE 7.

Today, I sat down with some code I had written for a site I’m doing, and ripped it apart. I came across this really strange bug that happens with using ul and li as navigation. For some reason (well… I kinda saw it coming…), the margin attribute is poorly defined. I have yet to look up the proper behavior from the W3C doc, but I’ll do so tomorrow.

Regardless, since there is a difference between the way Firefox and IE handles this situation, I was actually going to pull out the star-html hack… but lo and behold, this hack does not work anymore for IE 7.

http://24ways.org/2005/avoiding-css-hacks-for-internet-explorer

What is a CSS hack? Such a great read… Time to use method #3… if only I had read the positioniseverything article before this one… see, now I know for a fact hack #1 doesn’t work. And since #2 is a hack… boo.

http://www.brainjar.com/css/positioning/

Good refresher for anyone that wants to learn more about positioning. I love the images… I love how I don’t have to click on ANYTHING, but just to go from page to page. I hated how for some tutorials how I’d have to go and manually load up the page in a separate page and have to close it back down just to realize I want to open it up again.

Thumbs up, Mr. Mike Hall. I look forward to going through some of your other stuff at brainjar. (Except, I just realized it’s all in ASP. Tee hee…)

This has been more or less a brain dump. I bet I’ll be dreaming in CSS tonight.

And… I need a new category for articles like this. And also, I need to come up with a new method of posting these entries, because I have a feeling more than half the readership at this point doesn’t care about CSS.

This weekend, I hope, I’ll be able to tinker with the site and make sure that the right people get the right content. Xanga/Facebook people need to get the personalized feeds, while social sites or technology-related blogs need to get the nerdy feeds. Yum.

Korean Pun of the Day

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10:22:19 PM Josh: flat hires? 10:22:20 PM Alex (Autoreply): Stupid flat hires! 10:22:24 PM Josh: those punks 10:22:39 PM Josh: yeah, that was a Korean pun, brought to you by Josh Kim 10:22:41 PM Josh: that is going on the blog

I think only true FOBs will get this one. It’s actually a really bad one.

Hope to write about my CSS journey today later tonight.

Productive Day

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Been thinking recently.

Wait, that’s the understatement of the year.

Okay, but back to the point of this entry.

One of the many things that I’ve been thinking about… is what the heck I’m doing here, and what the next step is.

My first client job will be done by this weekend. I will make sure of it. Freaking IE bug will no longer stand in my way…

For some reason, today at work I realized only today that there is definitely a benefit in freelancing like this… but the downfalls are just as large.

In this case, the overhead in dealing with three different projects within three different groups is larger than I thought. The barrage of emails alone is quite amazing. Actually, it’s both fun and frustrating from time to time… but slowly, I think I’m realizing that this life might not be for me. Freelancing… just isn’t for me, in the long run it seems.

But for the next couple of months, I think it’ll be fun to rack up some experience like this. I really do enjoy the part-time-ness of freelancing… being able to have a little bit of free time (more so than working full-time) to continue my research of my next set of options.

Here’s where I see my life going: Either I go work for an amazing company and climb the corporate ladder into management OR start a company outright. Now, this plan might include an MBA… which means that I need to start studying for the GMAT.

After this first client work is done, I might have to start studying for it. The deadline for this coming year is March 15th. I already know who to ask for recommendations, so that’s set. Just need to make sure I kill on the GMATs… My work experience will be kind of weak, seeing how MBA students usually go in with about two years of full-time experience… but maybe my “freelancing” as well as all my pertinent part-time work will be clutch.

If I don’t get in (and even if I do get in and decide to go later… or even… not go at all), then I will start looking for a more permanent position. Chicago doesn’t sound too bad… and the Valley is still an option. Cincinnati just doesn’t feel that all right with me… I’m not sure why. I think it’s more or less my desire to keep moving from place to place…

The engineering job fair is on February 8th, and so I have until then to sharpen up some skills. I hope to be pretty well versed in Ruby by that point. CSS will be cake, and JavaScript… I hope… I will have mastered by then. Freaking… get… a web application done… Maybe also by then, I can put down “Fluent in Korean and Japanese”. Must make some serious goals and timetables… and… you guessed it: Lists.

Wow… the next two weeks will be chock-filled with goodness.

Also, I might be going to Cincinnati this weekend for my sister’s birthday. I got her the shuffle… now I want one… Oh my… she’s 18! And I pray she’ll pass the driver’s license exam on her first time, too.

I think that pretty much concludes this amazingly productive day.

Onward to 6 AM!