There goes the diet.
Been at Siebel for about 9 hours.
Instead of looking at the business-related “documentation” I’ve accumulated over the past couple of days (I cannot believe how useful my Entrepreneurship class notes packet is…), I’ve decided to go and wear the coding hat again.
More and more, I see these two natures battling within me. I really want to be able to wear the two hats well… do I really have to pick? Can’t I be both?
Few ideas that are running through my head that I can’t implement until I’m done with “work” work.
Delete ALL old Xanga posts
Would much rather want the readers to go through the site at joshkim.org rather than going through Xanga
Lots of extra metadata that could be used for the readers (relevant posts, popular posts) going to waste if Xanga is used
Xanga/Facebook as a “platform”, and nothing more
Recode Croissanga to implement deletion of all posts through cURL.
Make partial posts show up at both Xanga and Facebook
Didn’t realize that posts on Facebook were linking to Xanga
If reader wanted to comment, he or she would have to go to Xanga, only to go to joshkim.org
I didn’t think this one through… sorry guys!
Make only the top 3 partial posts available
Full posts ALWAYS for full feed subscribers, but to encourage feed usage… and to discourage dependence on the “platforms”
Facebook will now be using an alternate feed from feedburner, Xanga will be using a modified version of Croissanga, which I will post the code to later
Redesign
Create my own template, Restructure categories, Retag, Upload old blogs, Fix broken image/links from old posts
This one’s going to take a LONG while…
Just thinking about doing these things… makes me excited. Need to find the time… oh, time… why do you run away from me?
This is Josh Kim’s Brain. Not on C8H10N4O2, but just… high on life. I feel liberated and able to focus again. Not sure how long this burst is going to last, but let’s hope it keeps up this way for at least the last of the month when I bust out my monthly reviews.
These bullet points should really each be a post each, but seeing how things are getting quite crazy over here… I might have to just condense it into this smattering of blah.
Lots to ponder, but it looks like HanMeta, Inc. is the name I might be going with. At least I’ll have a company to start strategizing the service I’m going to be releasing.
No, JKorp will not be returning. Ever.
All in all, I’m leaning towards LLC, but this isn’t too good for the buyout from Google/Yahoo… Meh. When Max Levchin (Co-founder, CTO, PayPal) stopped by UIUC, I remember him specifically saying C Corp in Delaware is the best for any Internet-based startup… but what does he know? Doing some research… companies like Automattic and 37signals are LLC’s… Like these companies, I want to keep the company growing, and not start off gunning for an IPO/buyout exit strategy.
Alas, I’m still excited even thinking about the possibility that that might happen. Wow.
In terms of implementation, I’m looking at Ruby on Rails for the back-end scripting. I’ll be posting as to why I’m going to be choosing this over PHP or Python or… .NET.
This could be my first business expense (tax write-off, here I come!), but I might be looking to purchase about $200 in books… The Pragmatic Programmers (Hey look, they’re an LLC, too!) have some great books… From them, I’m thinking about purchasing these books. I really do want to get the pdf version, too… so I don’t have to look silly carrying around a thick stack of books wherever I go.
Textmate: Text editor of choice for all Ruby programmers… but I wonder if there’s anything useful in this book. I hope to go to a bookstore and really see if it’s worth getting.
Programming Ruby: The 1st edition is available here, but it seems like there’s quite a bit of change to the 2nd edition of the book. And heck, it’s a reference book… reference books are always nice to have around.
Agile Web Development with Rails: This one’s probably a keeper, cuz it’s written by the guys that invented the thing.
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master: Looks like it could be a great book on software development in general. I think I have to pick this one up and Code Complete (but Derek has a copy… huzzah).
Learn out to spell “received”: Received, received, received, received. Oh my goodness… I screwed every single time I typed that word out just now… ugh.
Philippians: Only three full weeks left. I think I have about half of it left. It’s going well, and it’s helping me immensely. I think I’m going to tackle another book afterwards… But… maybe not like as a whole chunk… maybe chapter by chapter? Weekly? Hmm… lot’s to think about here.
Work/Freelancing: Let me step you through what I have to do this week.
Implement authentication in a custom CMS through Active Directory. In freaking Coldfusion. Shoot me now.
Create new template for the new students at Human Resource Education Online. Kinda in Coldfusion, but mostly just dealing with CSS/xhtml. Meh, just shoot my toes.
Fix bugs in an open source project, Moodle… and keep up with the Moodle development forums.
Finalize subversion documentation for other developers at Office of Education Technology, Network Applications Group.
Install Drupal and customize for jmbarrie.net
Blog: I need to reorganize the categories. Tonight is the first and last night this week I’ll be able to even work on pimping out the blog. I’m going to go through some of the old posts and do some analysis on what the categories should be, and start optimizing the content to be accessible by the right people.
I’ve decided to keep JoshKim.org as a single entity, and not break it up into like… 8 blogs. I realized that I really do enjoy… too many things. If it isn’t Korean culture (heck, that could be split into three: music, dramas, and movies) or health tips (lifting, dieting, even cooking…) or Apple products or video games (actual games reviews and the industry commentary) or… blah blah blah. There are just too many things I want to cover, it seems… and to split them up into separate domains… would be kinda crazy.
Instead, I’m going to be looking for a visualization system in which each article would be a node in a pretty 2 dimensional graph. Or not… I’m still working on how this color wheel-esque category system will work: It’s only on paper, as of now.
In terms of a new design, I feel like I have to figure out the content before I move onto this abstract stage. I have a feeling I know what colors I want to use, at least… blue and red has always been my favorite, and greyscale is always fun.
Okay, I think that pretty much sums up what had been going on in my brain since 3 PM. Tonight, I’ll be… very very busy in trying to fix things up. I really hope Alex updates to 2.1.2…
Who still hasn’t seen this movie?
I have a feeling… if I don’t see this in the theaters and on DVD, it’s going to lose a lot of the meaning.
Trailers here.
Sidenote: I also wrote this post to figure out what’s causing my tags to disappear… what the heck?
… under my butt.
It’s been a while, no? Lots of things little and big things have been keeping me busy.
I have no idea where this energy came from. And no, it’s not the Dew. I haven’t touched that stuff since the all-nighter I pulled on Thursday/Friday. (oh man, let me tell you, that was one awesome 3 hour nap in between…)
I think I might have to attribute it to the change in weather. It’s finally getting warm, and I finally don’t have to worry if I won’t be able get my car out of the heaping mountains of snow. I can finally step outside without feeling like I need to figure out the optimal path through warm heated buildings.
It might also have to do with the Issue(s) that have been plaguing my mind. Lots of relational issues have been resolved (at least, on my side). I’m not sure if I’m going to touch on this more publicly, but just know that a certain peace have entered into my heart, enabling me to let go of things that should have been let go and to learn things that should have been learned. Thank you, to those that have helped and listened and prayed. To sum up, just know that I’m continuing to fight the good fight, and striving to grow through it all.
It also might have to do with how my sister is now going to be coming to UIUC for her pre-law/philosophy major. I actually have to start looking for a small house/condo for us to live in… (*ahem*whichmeansImightbeherenextyear*ahem*) and I also have a feeling that our family might be looking to move towards Illinois, whether it be here or up in Chicago. Long story short, things have been set into motion.
Thank goodness for the realization that it’s time to keep moving, to keep forward.
Lots to plan tonight… if I don’t watch 300. Yikes.
Continuing from: Part 1
Pendulum: a weight hung from a fixed point so that it can swing freely backward and forward, esp. a rod with a weight at the end that regulates the mechanism of a clock.
There. Properly defined. JK = Pendulum.
Oh… that fateful day when Craig and Alex decided to be Venture Capitalists (more like… drug pushers…) in my journey to stunt my growth… I still remember it quite vividly. Front row, Honors Physics, Refrigerator in the back room… Yikes.
Caffeine has become synonymous with hardcore programming. I mean it. You have to be a caffeine junkie to be an awesome programmer it seems. The healthy programmers are few and far in between, and those are the pansy ones. (I’m kidding!)
During my crazy PHP coding years (senior year in high school, freshman year in college), I probably… drank… quite a bit of Dew. I feel like I needed to be up at 7 AM, writing code to properly handle FTP through a HTTP GET request. I remember that Saturday to this day… and how aggravating it was, unable to keep my hands steady as I typed away.
Sophomore and Junior year… not so much. Junior year I got caught up with being all healthy, and so that’s when I reverted back to going hardcore non-carbonated/non-caffeinated. This is the first pendulum swing of this story.
But when Senior year hit… I found these. And I started keeping them in a nice little box, until the day I moved out of my apartment in August of 2006.
I have no clue how many bottles of Bawls I drank that year. I remember some crazy Operating Systems MP (Machine Problems, what UIUC calls programming assignments) which required some Buffalo Wild Wings and two bottles of these lovelies. (Kurt Becker, I miss you!) I remember some crazy case studies I had to pull out for some of my business classes… only brought to you by these blue bottles.
Sidenote: The reasons why I like Bawls so much is that they:
Very recently, I fell in love with these 59 cent fountain drinks at the nearby gas station. Derek and I would hit them up while we had our Spinter Cell: Choas Theory Co-op fun. Then… I bought three 2 liters, just to start drinking STRAIGHT OUT OF THE BOTTLE. How recently? Try… last month.
However, I’ve gone hardcore hard turkey again. Only things that I drink are milk, water, and juice.
Second pendulum swing.
Maybe the next time I start taking caffeine again, it’ll be in small doses… I mean, come on, caffeine does help when you need that extra kick!
Oh right… I like tea, though. Tea and honey makes me all happy and warm inside.
I’m a proponent for growth. I think this is why I love learning: ANYTHING. I’m afraid I’ll find something that I don’t want to learn… but that’s going off on a tangent.
But as I desire growth in life, I think I’m unsatisfied at times at how slowly I’m growing. Even then, regardless of the pace at which I’m growing, I feel like there are lessons to be learned.
I can’t stop shaking the undeniable fact that I won’t be able to learn all of the lessons. This is why I started writing really really long entries in my journals to begin with: It’s because I wanted to write them down, so that maybe I’ll figure it out, then and there, who I am and why I’m doing such and such. I wanted to find the equations to Josh Kim… more like… the Josh Kim algorithm.
if (JoshKim.getEmotion() == X)) return Y; else return Z;
But it all goes back to pride: I want to be able to tell myself, “Yes, Josh Kim, you did it all on your own. You used logic and philosophy to deduce what the next step is to come.”
What the heck? I have to learn to understand that if I miss the big lesson the first time, it’ll come back and hit me again. The little ones… just stop worrying about them. Prioritize your issues, and then attack them top-down.
Wow, Josh Kim, you’re quite the motivational speaker, even to yourself!
The irony is that as I just typed that last paragraph, I felt just a little bit better about myself. Yes… I feel like writing is my escape: Heck, it’s the only “art” form I can be somewhat coherent at. I can’t draw, take pictures, make movies… even though I want to… learn…
Maybe one day my dreams of becoming xkcd with a programmer’s twist will be realized. But until then… JK^extreme.
Time to get myself to the gym, and then sleep to the extreme.
I guess this wasn’t brought to my attention enough: I like to take things to the extreme. Let’s point out some of the examples in my life RIGHT NOW that show how incredibly insane I am. And while I’m quite insane, I want to use that insanity for something good.
I go to WIMPE daily. There is no question about this one, rain or shine… minus the crazy snowstorm this past month. Even if there’s an injury (right biceps before, and just recently, left biceps), I’ll try to work around it. Heck, once, I ran without shoes because I was wearing my casual ones.
A friend of mine (Mike Cho… more like an older brother…) told me about the Boxer’s Diet… and today’s day three of this crazy Chicken/Broccoli diet. Why am I doing this? I don’t know why. Because it’s EXTREME.
Whey whey whey. Ever since last summer… I followed in Dean Knox’s footsteps on this one. I still haven’t finished the 5 pound jug I bought last year… but I’ve been drinking it daily, at least once.
Why the heck am I so focused on health and fitness? I’m not sure… but this is one area in my life that can a little less extreme… so that it can make way for:
While I was typing up Philippians, I suddenly got the urge to pick up this keyboard layout. Pictures!
Mind you, this was in the middle of Grainger, 2nd floor. It probably drove quite a few people to insanity with all the clicking. It’s actually quite easy to pop your keys off, I found out (the hard way… I broke one of the two hinges where the “c” used to be, but it still works just fine). I guess I’m going to be keeping this computer around for a while… unless I’m going to have to throw it back into QWERTY when I sell it on eBay.
Back to the point as to why this is extreme: I wanted to pick this up since I found out about it during high school. It’s probably going to take me like a month (OoO… it’s another goal?!), but I think in the end of it all, it’ll make me a better typer. (As if I’m not l33t enough…)
It was love at first taste. Mike Liao, Jon Liu, and I went up to Marketplace to shop and have dinner. Oh my goodness… why is this thing so good?
Just one day later, I had to drive over to Taco Bell to get this.
Why is this included on the post that describes my extremeness? I’m actually… craving it… RIGHT NOW. But the thing is, my extremeness towards my diet is going to kill that craving all to quickly.
All that will remain will be two $5 charges on my Chase debit card.
These suckers are EXPENSIVE. $2.29?! Are you serious?! But… that shell is money.
Continued later. For now, I’ll let you judge me incessantly.
I went to Chicago today. I went to help out my Grandmother. I learned so much about family, I think I could write a couple chapters in my autobiography… if I had one… uh… yeah…
Sorry for the lack of posts. I kinda took a vacation for the past couple of days, starting and deleting posts all over the place. I will try harder this week to bring JoshKim.org to the previous glory days it once enjoyed.
Danny asked me how to import Xanga entires to Facebook… and so, here goes my informative post on answering that question.
If you go to “My Notes”, you’ll see on the left hand column the “Notes Settings”. When it asks where you want to import the notes from, you type in:
http://www.xanga.com/rss.aspx?user=username
And just replace ‘username’ with your user name. For me, it looks like:
http://www.xanga.com/rss.aspx?user=joshkimdotorg
This has been a not-so well known feature that Xanga provided ever since I could remember. This RSS feed only shows the most recent ten posts (it was five before…), so if you want to import anything before that, you won’t be able to.
Basically, you can also use this to get around the not-so-well planned Xanga Lock feature. (Oh man… my Xanga-hate post has been waiting too long… just a little longer…) Anyway, this information is purely for educational purposes, and blah blah blah you can’t sue me blah blah blah it’s a feature blah blah blah.
I hate Xanga Lock. I even made up a random account just to spite the people who use it… and now I use it to visit random people’s site just so that they’d look at their anti-stalker stalking tool (oh, the irony… the stalkee becomes the stalker…) and click through to my content.
Regardless, one day, I thought this one through: I wonder if the ad wizards at Xanga disabled RSS feeds for those that Xanga Locked their site… cuz after all, the guys that use Xanga Lock wouldn’t want their precious content seen by the crazy lunatics out there on the Internet. (= ME. [insert maniacal laughter here])
And lo, and behold, they didn’t. Who would have thunk it? (These guys took like 5 years (at least) to fix the horribly designed groups page… and they didn’t even do a good job of it… oh, right… not the Xanga tirade post yet…)
So, my lovelies, go “hack” away. Next time you get a screen like this and want to be extra sneaky… you know what to do.
These days, I don’t even go to Xanga anymore… I just RSS feed all my friends and call it a day.
EDIT: AH HA! There is indeed (thank goodness) a way to disable your RSS feed… it really should be that if you enable Xanga Lock that your RSS feed should be turned off by default.
Anyway, if you want to turn off your RSS feed for your Xanga, go to Edit: Account Info, and then to Privacy. On the Privacy Page, select “no” for the RSS Feed, and save.
More like… 1/6, no?
Already, 1/6 of 2007 has gone by, guys. It’s insane how fast the time goes by when you’re having fun. Actually, the funny thing is it wasn’t all just fun… it seems like time is just out of control at all times, regardless of if you’re ready or not.
While I’m writing this, I have my January’s Month in Review open, so I’ll be able to see where I’ve met my goals or fell short on them.
I want to keep this post as short and to the point as possible. Let’s do this.
I’ve begun to use images quite liberally, thanks to the Markdown plugin and the TextMate Blogging Bundle. Gallery hasn’t even been touched, and I don’t think it will be for a while: Pictures aren’t what I’m going for with this .com, anyway. Same goes with videos and such.
I’ve been giving splitting up the blog into two some thought… and while I’ve been back and forth on this issue, I think it’s best to keep it going in this manner. We’ll see in a month…
Goal to double traffic wasn’t met, but I get to blame the hosting company for that (they were down twice, and once for more than five hours on a saturday night/morning)… kinda. For next month, I just want to beat my last month’s traffic. That’s all.
In terms of a design change, it was supposed to come this past month, but we’ll see how things go this month. That… and I still have to post my old entries up. I also need to restructure the categories… retag… ugh. So much work to do, just for the blog…
Looks like the normal for groceries for me is around $150/month. I guess I should still shoot for $100/month, but I really do believe… food isn’t something you should skimp on. Eating out, however… that’s something I can still cut down on.
Discretionary spending should have been $100/month, but this past month, I went out to eat quite a few times. seems to also hover around $150/month. This month, though, I started to “live it up”… like buying furniture (exercise ball/chair) and electronic goodies (earbuds)… this is probably why I exceeded my budget. Darn.
In terms of total spending, it comes out to about $300. Anything left over has been sent into savings… By the end of this month, I hope to start up my Roth IRA… I’ll post when that happens. I still have to finish my federal and state taxes. This, too, will be done by the end of this month.
Investments… will start… soon… dang it. Lots more to learn in this field before I start.
Initially, for Lent, I had given up things like YouTube, TV shows, and movies. Then I started to play Quake… ONE. Oh man, how much fun. I think I must have sunk a good chunk of time into it. Well… I’m going to say this here: All forms of electronic entertainment is forbidden until Easter.
This includes: ANYTHING Flash, ANY passive media… It’s quite hard, seeing how almost EVERYWHERE I go, there’s a TV on or a browser open to YouTube. Time to strategize how to avoid those situations…
Bible reading is going well. Kinda getting behind (I think… I’m not sure…), because I’m really trying to learn Philippians before Easter… but that’s only an excuse. By the end of this month, I want to be fully caught up. I need to do some math in terms of how many chapters I, then, have to read to catch up. We’ll see, at the end of the month.
Ruby is definitely coming along. But lots to accomplish before I launch a service with it being the main language of choice.
Work is great. The work that I do for the College of Education is so perfect for me. It’s got a lot of flexibility in terms of hours and when I can work, as well as how applicable some of the things I’m doing for them are. For example, I’m administering Subversion for Network Applications Group. I’m going to be using that skill to start subversion-ing my entire /jk/Sites directory, or even possibly my entire home directory. It’s like getting paid to learn and learn and learn (just like you, consultants).
While I lack the “benefits”, like health and 401(k), I like to think my benefits for leading this kind of freelancer/personal consultant lifestyle are flexibility and freedom.
So hopefully, by the end of the month… I’ll have a company started. Not sure how to even go about doing this 100%, but I guess something like this… is just meant to be learned as one goes about doing it.
I’m almost done with Pimsleur’s Conversational Japanese I started… last… summer. I only really got into trying to go through the system at the beginning of this year. I should be done by the end of the month, easily.
I’ve also finally finished downloading this 10GB torrent of a Japanese Language Learning Pack. I ended up throwing away about half of it, but man… there are some good stuff here. They even have TV lessons! Whoo hoo!
Hanja, I’ve kinda given up on. I guess that 5 characters a day rule went out the window. Let’s hope I can get some kind of system in that lets me continue in this area.
For the MBA, I’ve decided to not go for this upcoming year. Period. Maybe the year after, but not this year.
It’s becoming very hard to run for my usual 30 minutes, even though I only run every other day. I think my exercise routines are becoming more and more “weight”-heavy now… but I need to start cardio again.
My back is killing me. I think it might be because my back is so weak… more deadlifts for me!
In the past month, I think I missed WIMPE a couple of days: A few due to the snowstorm and a few due to laziness. I hope to go six times a week, minus one rest day somewhere in between.
In terms of diet… Mike Cho told me something about the Boxer’s Diet: Chicken and Broccoli. Period. This scares me a little bit, but I get the point: Very little carb intake, with a humogenous protein intake. Of course, I’m not going to do it like he did for 3 straight days… but I’ll be trying this out, replacing maybe one meal a day for this craziness.
I’m going to give up carbonated drinks again… for like the 30th time. I’m not sure when this started back up again, but it’s been creeping back into my life. It’s time to go cold turkey like before, and stick to water, orange juice, and milk. It doesn’t matter if I have to do an all-nighter… I think I’m going to go caffeine-less, too, like before.
Ugh. I feel so vain talking about physical goals… it’s strange though, I don’t feel so vain talking about intellectual goals…
My my, how judgmental I am, of even my own self.
This post was supposed to be done on the 28th of last month. Ugh. I feel like writing on my blog is quickly becoming a chore. Also, I feel like I don’t even know who I’m writing to. That issue of splitting up the blog into two plagues my mind every time I start to write an entry…
“Who do I write this to?” This is what’s stopping me from writing endless entries about either myself or about other things. I mean, I want to write about how I pulled two all-nighters at Wardall lounge with the freshmen, but that doesn’t appeal to everyone. I want to write about how things are going in my life, but who wants to read that garbage. I want to write about how RSS feeds aren’t being adopted by the mass public and how to mass-adoption a reality, but no one wants to read that either.
AHHH!
Well, here’s to another month of living! So exciting, so filled with unknowns!