Monthly Archives: May 2008

CHANGELOG

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More or less a changelog for myself, so when I look back on today, I’ll see that I was actually a bit effective in doing things.

  • Three columns over two
    • We’ve got larger screens, time to start using them
    • Still keeping the main content area to 400px width, and so images to be framed within 400x300px.
    • Used the new third column specifically for Twitter updates
  • Turned off “Advanced Navigation” in K2: Wasn’t working anyway…
  • Making Twitter Updates into Asides
    • I’m starting to use Twitter enough, but they shouldn’t be the main content of the site. It’s starting to make sense that they serve to be jumping boards to full-fledged posts on a topic
  • Moving back to “Personal” as the default category
    • For some reason, I started to make personal posts into “Asides”, but it turns out, this site can be about myself also
    • “Asides”, as mentioned above, is used for Twitter
    • “Asides” = “Twitter Updates”

And with that, hopefully I’ll start the template tweaking I’ve been waiting to do for days, nay, years.

iPhone this, 3G that.

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Everyone’s talking about it. I might as well contribute a little bit.

I sold my iPhone.

I realized something: I don’t need a revolutionary Internet communication device. Not when I have the Air. More on this later.

The iPhone was a splurge even when I got it. I had to get on the bandwagon, being the Apple ahemfanboyahem I am. And at the time, I made this move only after the $200 reduction in price.

What? Did you think I was some crazy Machead? Heh, I don’t think I would have spent $600 on the iPhone. I even bought a refurbished 8GB one for $350, and even though about going down to the 4GB model for $250.

So I sold it this week for $280. I was happy to have an extra $280 to save. Until… the next one?

Maybe, maybe not.

There are a couple reasons for and against the next generation of the iPhone. But 3G doesn’t matter for me as much as some of the other people. Why?

Since I am surrounded by wireless Internet (finally, at my apartment also) and almost always carry my laptop (the Air is finally a true “lap”top… runs much cooler…), the need for a device to be always “on” is already fulfilled somewhat. Now, that is not to say that the iPhone isn’t ridiculously easy to use. I miss when my iPhone would vibrate to tell me I have an email message: It’s a new level of notification when there’s a tactile response to something that happened online.

3G map from AT&T

This is a map from AT&T’s site. See that blue? That’s where the fun is. See where it isn’t blue? Not so much love. Here’s a clearer version of that map, brought to you by the Wacom tablet.

3G map, modified by yours truly

Sidenote: I hope to use this tablet more in the future.

If not 3G, then what else? Bring on the Muzak.

Of course, I loved the fact that the iPhone represented one less thing to worry about.

Before iPhone:

  • Keys
  • Wallet
  • iPod
  • Phone

After iPhone:

  • Keys
  • Money Clip (I upgraded in this department as well: Less bloatware… in my pants.)
  • iPhone

The fact that the number of things in my pockets went from a dizzying four to a much more manageable three is huge.

The problem started happening when I realized the iPhone earbuds are pretty much trash. I’m was on my fourth or fifth, and just gave up to buy a much sturdier, bass-friendly clip-ons.

IF the new iPhone has a non-recessed jack like everyone’s raving about, then I’ll be much more inclined to get one. I’m okay with taking out the phone out of my pocket to take the call. I do it anyway because…

Sidenote: Audible iPhone Notifications

Someone write this program: Make the iPhone “tell” me audibly who is calling. That way, I don’t need to take the thing out of my pocket to see who it is.

I guess you could just pick up the call, but I tend to just start in mid-conversation with people I know. (If you know me, you know what I’m talking about.)

This doesn’t have to just stop with calls. Do it for songs, too. Artists, titles… And also, make it so that you can talk to the iPhone: have some kind of voice command to skip to next album or previous song.

I think I’m getting too far ahead of myself. Or maybe someone brilliant is working on it.

Camera. CAMERA.

Camera is soooo important for me. I don’t have a digital camera, nor will I get a point-and-shoot one. I stopped wearing a watch (to tell the time, to set an alarm) because the cellphone made it irrelevant. I stopped carrying a music playing device because the cellphone made it irrelevant. And so, seeing this pattern unfold, I have decided to take a firm stand on this.

It’s only time until America catches up with the rest of the developed world and create some hot cameras for their phones. the iPhone camera wasn’t too bad. But the kicker was that, even better than certain point-and-clicks, it had online capability out of the box. I could post to flickr by email (or if you’re l33t and have it hacked, through some apps) immediately after I shoot the picture.

The lick-able user interface

I really don’t feel like I have to argue the fact that no cellphone UI comes close to the iPhone UI.

I’ve used Nokia Ericsson (some free brick phone), Motorola (v505), and Samsung (d807) phones. All trash in terms of UI (although, I like sliders, so the d807 still has a place in my heart).

By this alone, I should be re-buying the phone. I love good UI almost too much. I also hate bad UI completely too much.

So… Will you get it on the 9th?

The rumor around the blogosphere has it getting released on the 9th. Probably on stage. I’ll probably have to take off work to sit there on Apple’s site to grab it if I decide to get it.

But really, I’ll just do it like last time. I’ll go to the nearest Apple store that has it in stock, mess with it, and then buy it… sigh I guess it’s just a matter of time, isn’t it.

Start your “Josh Kim iPhone purchase date” pool now.

Let Me Try This Again, Part 3.2: Entertainment: Video Games

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A Sidenote

If this post makes it up successfully, I will have made three posts in a 24 hour period. If people can define a recession as an economic downturn for two quarters, I can define the “return” to blogging as more than two posts in a 24 hour period.

Or something like that. And now for something not all too completely different.

World of Warcraft

This game has been a… “game changer” in a couple of instances in my life. It has made me a hermit, lost me the A in a very A-able engineering class, and helped me keep friendships across state lines. Needless to say, the online phenomenon that is WoW has changed my life for the better and for the worse.

I recently picked up the game a couple months back with the intention of enjoying the game’s content from 60 to 70. Which I did. A bit too much. I even started the insanity that is the 25-man raids. (I had run a 40-man before, but it was quite a while ago.)

I had quite the fun. But then at one point, it started to become work. I had to get the items. It started to become that addiction that I had once gotten rid of.

And this WoW business… it’s amazingly addictive. Take away everything… the professions, the pvp, the thinly veiled dress-up game… but keep the social always-on aspect of it, and it’ll still be extremely addictive. This is, of course, assuming you have actually passed the tipping point of knowing other people that are willing to play as much or even more than you.

[And here it comes: the obligatory reference to some web application] It’s like Facebook. But prettier. And instead of profiles or other personal information, you have… the Frozen Shadowweave Set.

And there you go. And so I quit. Maybe I’ll return with the next expansion. I don’t doubt that it is a possibility, but I hope to have something even more exciting to look forward to in the coming months.

And no, not Rock Band. Well… maybe.

Rock Band is delicious. The question is about the Wii version of this game.

Ever since I played Guitar Hero 1 on PS, I’ve loved the series. And it didn’t matter that I didn’t know the song: I liked the one-to-one mapping of notes to some strange finger combination on the fret buttons. I actually found more musicians and bands to listen to through the entire process of playing 1, 2, 80′s, and 3.

Disclaimer: The only song that I cannot beat on expert is Through the Fires and Flames. And I feel like if I really really practiced, I could. It’s just I don’t feel like dumping so much resource into it. Some people would say “lamer”, but I’m okay with myself. Maybe not.

Sidenote: Moving along, the whole point of this series is to get all this personal crap out so you guys can actually get some meaningful content. Let me continue for just a bit longer.

Fast forward to recently when the Wii version of Rock Band was announced, as well as the news about the whole gimpedness of it all. No DLC. At all. But then, a glimmer of hope was found in the form of a song pack disc, Track Pack Vol. 1.

So it seems like I’ll be buying this. Another $170 thrown towards “Entertainment”. (I’ll most likely be renting the song pack from Gamefly, though.) I better start saving now because my budget just doesn’t allow $170 for “Real-Time Interactive Music Simulation”.

What else… What other “games”

Scramble? No. I hate that game.

Other Wii games? Boom Blox will be coming very shortly. Zack & Wiki is amazing. WarioWare, as I said before, was an incredible party game.

Yeap, that pretty much sums up Video Games.

One More Thing

Right. Portal.

That was one of the most disgustingly amazing games ever. I still do not understand to this day the infatuation with the Companion Cube, but it was like eating sticks of butter. Hmm… butter…

And that ends. Video Games.

And that ends, the three part series on the three of most pertinent things of my life: Twitter, Health, and Video Games. It’s kinda sad, really, but at least I got the ball rolling.

I think now that the ball has started to roll, I need to make sure there’s enough ground for it to roll. The blog is in disrepair (category structure is screwed up, commenting is also screwy, older/newer links are not working correctly) and I intend to fix it. Maybe this week.

Closing

I like sidenotes, tangents, and disclaimers. But I’m realizing how much they break up the flow of the posts. I have to figure out how to do prettier footnotes with little superscript numbers. Bah, more work to do on the blog itself, I guess.

Let Me Try This Again, Part 3.1: Entertainment

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This is what I do these days to wind down from a day’s work. And a night’s work. Now that I think about it, I “waste” a lot of time. Hmm.

Music: Electric Guitar

Yes. The fake and the real kind.

Guitars AND Vaccuum.

I am also known to rock the vacuum from time to time. See the TV exploding? It’s because of the vacuum Star Power .

Starting out with the songs that I know all too well from Guitar Hero 3 (such as “When You Were Young” by The Killers, “Reptilia” by The Strokes, and “My Name Is Jonas” by Weezer), I’ve begun to play around with the tabs. It’s good fun.

  • Money invested
    • Real Guitar: $99 for amp. ~$40 for cable, picks, strings, and tuner.
    • Fake Guitar: $90 for guitar and game (the other set was a present for Derek, but I get to keep it around until he gets a Wii)

I’m thankful that Derek had a electric guitar that he wasn’t using. Or I might have invested a bit more.

Art: Wacom Bamboo Tablet

Wacom Bamboo Tablet

I love user interface devices. One of the many reasons why I got the Wii was to get that delicious Wiimote.

With this tablet, I’m going to start maybe possibly drawing a few things. It’s going to be deathly useful for drawing diagrams on the computer, as well as just using it as an alternative mouse input. I might finally start up that web comic I’ve been wanting to do for so long. I make no promises.

Ink.app isn’t that great, however. I’d recommend against using this for handwriting recognition.

  • Money invested
    • $67.62: Money going to good use. For the blog and elsewhere.

Actual “Waste” of Time: Video Games

As a child, I was always told that video games were a waste of time. I don’t think I’ll ever fully be able to shake this stigma. However, I’m slowly but surely realizing that I will probably be gaming until the day I die.

Like reading a good book (I haven’t done that in a while), listening to a great song (what are these “CD”s or physical media you speak of?), or watching a great movie (I still haven’t seen Iron Man, and no, I don’t know why), certain games will enter into the general populace. In my opinion, this hasn’t happened yet, and so I’m okay with having this slightly wrong view on video games. When the “public” thinks that games are a great way to enhance hand-to-eye coordination, increase motor skills, enjoy people’s company through online play without any concern to geography, strengthen real relationships, supplement actual workout routines, improve creativity, bring about relaxation, diminish tension…

Moving along. Hope to finish this two part of the third part of the series tomorrow. With a commentary on the conundrum I’m having with Rock Band and the Wii.

Let Me Try This Again, Part 2: Health

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Introduction

Okay so here we go, another rousing rendition of facts about my life. While I try to regularly post these, I’ve begun to make them private (and no, they’re not on this server… hacking won’t really help you here, hehe). You’ll remember back in the day when I’d post these huge lists of things I wanted to get done during that day or week: These days, it’s becoming more of a priority queue.

Health Problems

Yeap, they’re continuing. And I’m glad to hear that at least I finally have a diagnosis to one of my problems: enlarged liver. (Insert your heavy drinking jokes here… although, I can still count the number of times I’ve drank with my fingers… and although I have alcohol in the freezer, fridge, and in the kitchen… moving on) It’s gonna be awesome going in to see a gastrointestinal specialist the day after Alex’s wedding.

Tomorrow I get to see a rheumatologist. And on Friday, I’ll be starting physical therapy for my ankles.

Isn’t insurance great?

Medical Insurance in the US

I’ve gone to the doctor more times in the past couple months than all times I’ve gone before that in my life. Now, this could be because I didn’t have the best of health insurance, or even had health insurance to begin (in certain points of my life), but I just haven’t had a need to go to the doctor. The only real time I had to go to the hospital was for the scar on my right forearm. (A story for later)

Over the past ten or so doctor’s visit I’ve had, from your general doctor to your specialists, I’ve learned a bit more about how this entire system works. And there are a few interesting things I’ve gathered.

Firstly, I wonder why I talk about my pains and ills to a nurse/assistant who in return write them down on a piece of paper that the doctor reads. Why don’t I just tell the doctor directly? Are the nurses/assistants some kind of filter? At least, in my case, I end up saying the same thing to the doctor after he or she enters. Eh.

Lots of old people are at hospitals. Who knew?

Oh, and about hospitals. Being silly and not knowing of the system, I thought you just went into a hospital and they fixed you. I thought the whole process was more or less like going to a computer place to get your computer fixed. I guess there’s this thing called being “in-network” and “out-of-network”. But now, after thinking about the money making part of the field of medicine (the field I like to call the “Bob Kelso” field), I see a clearly picture of it all.

tan(Medial Insurance in the US)

The huge pharmaceutical companies are like proprietary software vendors. You have to keep going back to them for your livelihood. However, there are generic brands that you can buy for, sometimes, half the price. The generic ones aren’t as advertised in the media and the doctors. And so, in this simile, the generic brands become the open source, reverse engineered awesomeness.

I was upset when I was told to take Lyrica for my ankle pains. Instead of actually freaking treating the issue, I’d just be paying some company to keep my ankles “fixed” for the time being. In actuality, it was just prescribed to me to see if the pain was caused by some neuropathic issue.

So was prescribing Lyrica to me like hiring consultants to fix a company’s internal IT? Tee hee. [runs away]

cot(tan(Medial Insurance in the US))

I do like how my health insurance is amazing: I didn’t know all my tests were free. I was curious as to why my doctor wanted me to get a cholesterol test, but after finding out that all lab work is phreeee, I decided to do it. (Hooray for normal levels.) Of course, I had all kinds of tests before a sonogram (yes, make your pregnancy jokes here, go… at least I can say that I know how that gel feels like…)… hooray for the sonogram for detecting the enlargeness.

Overall Realization of the Frailty of Life

In the midst of all this health insanity, I feel so… helpless. I can’t run. Heck, I can’t stand for too long. I can’t really type too effectively without these wrist supports. My entire abdominal section is killing me from time to time.

And all this time, I’ve been wanting to run and play and code. But without health, none of my dreams will ever be achieved. As soon as I’m allowed to go lift and run and whatnot, I’ll keep it going forever.

I’ve been known to be a bit extreme. During my junior year in college, I did go a little bit overboard with the eating of healthy greens, the running of many miles, and the lifting of heavy weights. Then I crashed, and tried as hard as I could to maintain. The entire system failed about a year after I graduated from college, and I haven’t been able to get back to the desired body shape. I’m actually heavier than I started out with. (I really hope my muscles didn’t run away with all this fat that’s covering it.)

So I was ready to go all out again. Then all these insane health issues occurred. I had to scrape my plan of becoming (using Dan Sun’s terminology) an adonis.

Start Your Old People Jokes… Now

To tell you the truth, dear reader, I know more people who are younger than I. I’m kinda getting sick of all the arthritis jokes. Heh.

Another Thing I Can't Stand on a Mac: Lag on Dictionary.app Lookup

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Before Leopard, everything was fine. I was able to open up dictionary, look up a word, be happy that I learned a new word, and close the window. Done.

Is it just me, or does the Leopard Dictionary.app SUCK in the lookup time? I’m talking about the time from when you find the word you want and opening up the definition. With respect to Tiger, this is unacceptable. Back in those days, it was actually fun (yes, I’m a nerd, figure it out) searching through the dictionary.

Let me know if this is just me, because I’ve tried this on both my macs, as well as a Tiger machine just to see the search lag difference.

I also should go to the Apple forums to see if this issue has been reported.

EDIT: Looks like 10.5.3 update fixed this. I am delighted.

Two Blog User Interface Issues

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Two. Two big issues that I see rarely, but often enough to write a post about it.

Previous/Next vs Older/Newer

NEVER EVER use “Previous”/”Next” when paginating. EVER.

The vast majority of the use case of the Internet: Googling information. What happens when you pop into a blog with hive page and is faced with two options: “Previous” and “Next”. Does “Next” correspond to chronologically later or earlier posts?

A better pair of words that should be used here are “Older” and “Newer”. Since blogs are almost always, by default, ordered chronologically, it makes a whole lot of sense to use this pair of words.

The place where I feel like there is actually a little leeway is the positioning of “Older” and “Next”. I’m on the side (pun? hardly) that puts “Older” on the left, as if the person reading is flipping through the book from page one to the last written page. In this case, the blog becomes a sort of a never-ending story.

But regardless, as long as it saves me the trouble of guessing, hitting the wrong one, swearing inside, hitting back, and then getting to the right page, I’ll be a happier person inside.

Not having pagination at all (Yes, Blogger, I’m looking at you)

What is wrong with you?

I really do need to test this out, but I seriously hope that Blogger doesn’t default to not having any sort of Previous/Next or Older/Newer links.

Let’s go through an example: http://buzz.blogger.com/

Go all the way to the bottom. Where are the pagination links? Who knows. Scroll back up. WOW The months are in backwards order than I expected (I mean, the posts that are just left of it go chronologically newer to older… why should the archives link follow that logic, too?).

The real fun starts when you want to go to the post made just before the oldest story on the main page. You have to remember what month when the story was posted (Feb 2008, while I write this), click on that month’s archive (grumble again how the month order is backwards), scroll down until you see that oldest post on the main page, then go down one more to start continuing the stream of blog posts.

Horrible.

This isn’t just for Blogger, though. I’m sure there are other blogs or other web applications that get this wrong. Please fix it.

Wendy's

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The Line at the New Wendy's

This was at the newly reopened Wendy’s last week. Yes, this was the drive-thru line.

I was there this past weekend and it was still the same.

Oh man, I want to go. I wonder how late they close… Tee hee.

Let Me Try This Again, Part 1: Twitter

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I believe this is the third post (that actually made online… I’m not even counting the countless edits and deletes) that is supposed to jump start the blogging machine raging within me.

Maybe if I make this post into “Part 1″ of many, I’ll be compelled to come back and explore new topics. Oh, how much I love to trick myself into doing things.

And so, after closing AIM and Twitter: Let me try this again.

“What are you doing?”

Yes. If you’ve been watching anything on this blog for the past three months, I’ve had 80… EIGHTY… daily twitter summary posts. I think around eighty days ago was when I stopped blogging frequently.

Being such a new medium (and not just to me), I feel as though what counts as “normal” is being established. Some are seeing my updates and are completely horrified. Some are somehow led to follow me and keep up insanely quick paced and lengthy conversations (Yes, I’m looking at you, Jong-Sun… if any of you are following me on Twitter, this man probably has started up Twitter wars with me too often).

Whatever the case may be, I’ve made Twitter my own. I’ve followed and have been followed, and vice versa. It’s a different beast than anything that followed before in the Interwebs.

And it’s a refreshing feeling.

What was I doing before?

I don’t remember very well when I started my Twitter account. It must have been awhile ago… but back then, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it.

Of course, as with all social networks, Twitter became useful with people. Earlier on, I didn’t get it. As time passed, finding interesting people to follow (@davemc500hats, @gruber, @siooma even) and even making new people sign up to Twitter has been all too eye-opening.

But first, a little bit about StatusFix.

StatusFix’s Fix Found in Twitterific/TwitterSync

My desire with the side project of StatusFix was simple: It was what I needed. I wanted a way to track my past “away”/status messages, as well as an interface to see what other people’s were.

Even since I used the “away” message box as a secondary channel for communication, I wanted a way to have a historical backlog of it; I wanted to be able to search it (due to my insanely geeky nature of trying to have a new “away” message up every time I was “away”); I wanted it to be publicly available outside of AIM (linkable).

SIDENOTE: Why do I keep using passive? Crap.

I keep putting away in quotation marks because the “away” message is a perfect example of how people took a feature and made it their own. A vast majority of the people to this day aren’t actually away when their “away” message is up. More or less, it has become their status message: the song their listening to, the thing that they’re reading, the affect of the current weather to his or her mood. Soon, the networks realized this (MSN, I believe, was the first to implement this) and made it possible to still be online, but have a status message as well.

Due to Twitter’s extremely open API architecture (including their Jabber push mechanism), as long as they keep being stable, Twitter could be the back bone of such a system.

And so, I decided to use this backbone. Many Twitter clients (I especially prefer Twitterific) give me the ability to tie my status message with Twitter and AIM. Also, by using TwitterSync, I’m able to sync my status with Facebook.

AIM, Facebook, Twitter. One “return” to rule them all. (I really tried to using the word “return” with the Return of the King, but I stopped caring.)

The Existing Problems

As I said before, stability is a problem with Twitter. Hopefully, that’ll be dealt with soon enough, regardless if they go with some other language/framework.

Also, since this system is dependent on so many different pieces, it’s much more likely to fail than, say, having an actual fully fledged app to handle all statuses.

This also means that people are getting the same content three times. If a friend of mine is also on AIM, Facebook, and Twitter, they’ll see the same update in three different streams.

But then again, maybe these problems will be fixed by StatusFix, or some other solution. FriendFeed? Maybe.

More likely, I’m making a big deal out of nothing. My needs tend to be quite specific at times.

WEEE!!!

Which reminds me, the next post will do something with the Wii. And Rock Band. Or something.

Or I’ll work on the actual blog itself.