Archive for the 'Foreign Languages' Category

2/12 Of A Year

Published
by
Josh Kim
on March 2, 2007
in Asides, Foreign Languages, God and the Bible, Investing & Finances, Project Ideas, Site News and Web Development
. 2 Comments

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.

On the Blog

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.

Traffic for February

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…

On Finances

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.

On Spiritual

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.

On Code

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.

On Business

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.

On Foreign Languages

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.

On School

For the MBA, I’ve decided to not go for this upcoming year. Period. Maybe the year after, but not this year.

On Health

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.

Closing

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!

1/12th of a Year

Published
by
Josh Kim
on February 1, 2007
in Asides, Foreign Languages, Investing & Finances, Site News and Web Development
. 1 Comment

A new month has begun.

After I got back from Cincinnati, I was so tired… I went to take a nap. Instead, it turned out to be a 5 hour one. I guess I’ll be off cycle for tomorrow. This is why I’m writing at 2 AM, CST.

I don’t know if you guys noticed, but I stopped making the daily list a while back. I had intended to make those lists monthly; a kind of “self-performance review”. I guess this is the first of many to come.

I’ve decided to break it down into subject areas… and so, here we go. In no particular order.

On the Blog

I promise to use more images. As soon as I figure out how to fix this image linking problem in TextMate. The image gets uploaded, but for some reason (maybe this is a feature), I have to create the image HTML element myself, which seems silly.

While on the subject of images: I guess I won’t be using Gallery for my blog image solution after all. It looks like WordPress/TextMate is an awesome combo. I might consider using Gallery for hosting pictures straight from iPhoto, but I’m sure there’s some Web 2.0 startup that’s looking to make it easy and painless… I’m looking at you: Sharpcast.com.

I also think that joshkim.org will become first and foremost, a blog. I think I’m going to formally announce the dropping of “/blog/” today, and implement the change with the upgrade to Wordpress 2.1. While that happens, I also need to implement a swankier interface… which I will painfully chronicle as I do so, so you guys don’t have to deal with plug-ins and whatnot if you are also creating a wordpress blog.

I haven’t even touched my “combine all previous posts into one” project since last year. I need to get started and finish it this month, so that Mr. Google can index it and I can finally have one place to go for all the Josh Kim fun.

Oh, and I want to double my site visits this month.

Google Analytics

On Finances

In terms of expenses, I have only a few things. Apart from student loans and other bills… basically, it comes out to groceries, gas, and discretionary spending that changes from month to month. I’ve been trying to find the average spending on each category by tracing my spending for about two months. It’s become a habit to keep my receipts and check with my online statements (I hate checks and checkbooks… and paper).

Looks like I dropped my spending on food by about half, compared to December. This was achieved through this one rule: to eat out only ONE meal a week. Eating out has been categorized with “discretionary spending”, along with any fun things I had to pay for or gifts I’ve purchased. This month was kinda lopsided because of the iPod shuffle purchase for my sister (which, by the way, I’m lusting crazily after… it’s so cool looking), but still, I managed to keep it under $150. $100 is the goal for this month.

Groceries, though… The first time I went shopping after I got back, I bought almost $100 worth of groceries. I still have some of the stuff I bought from then, but man… I hope to never spend that much on food at one time ever again. Data for groceries was lacking, because while I did live in apartments for a year last year, groceries were split up between 5 people… and so I didn’t really have a clear number. This month, I ended up with about $200 for this category, which might be a little bit more than I should be spending. I’m going to be aiming for $100 for this coming month… we’ll see how it goes.

Gas was interesting. Without taking to account the trip to Cincinnati and back ($20), I ended up spending less than $50 on gas for the month. I will once again shoot for $50.

So that’s $250, on top of bills and student loans. All extra cash… well… that’s another post, dealing with retirement planning (yes… I’m doing it…) and investments and savings.

Right, taxes. I’ve already ran through the Federal, but I want to make sure I get all the deductions I deserve. Hope to finish by the end of this month.

On Spiritual Life

Seems like I’m a little behind on my Bible reading, but I’m actually not. The initial goal was to read 3 chapters, from start to end. The thing is, I got tired of Genesis real quick. I’ve done this book to death, since I’ve tried reading all of the Bible many times before. I think I even read it through in Korean, back in the day… So, I started to read Proverbs. But that wasn’t enough, so I jumped into Paul’s letters in the NT. Currently, I’m reading more than three chapters a day.

I just need to continue with this. In the morning, prayer and NT reading. In the afternoon, or other free times, OT readings.

Ah, let’s enter into prayer. I’m still having a hard time praying for the world at large. I feel like there are enough issues with me and me and me and me and other people. I feel like I put God in a box sometimes… I gotta pray through this one, as well.

On Code

Programming is fun and irritating all at the same time. But it gets that much more fun when you sit through the irritating times and figure it out.

Just yesterday… an IE bug annoyed me to no end. I had to make a design choice because of this bug, and ended making the wrapper background white because something wasn’t stretching properly (no, I’ve tried every hack in the book, and no, I don’t like hacks).

What I’m learning is to be flexible… in a lot of ways. I might even have to learn .NET this month, seeing how this multi-authentication system is going… or I might just get stuck with the PHP side to it, I don’t know. Even re-learning coldfusion is continuing to help me see how important flexibility really is…

It’s not the language, it’s the concept.

And while, yes… I’m finding certain areas of programming to be increasingly annoying… but someone (i.e. ME) should fix it so that it isn’t as annoying or annoying at all to other programmers going through the same thing. That’s the beauty of open source. Huzzah.

But closed source is fun too. Hooray.

Ruby. Need to keep going with ruby. I see great things in the horizon.

Also, some projects need to be written down on paper. Not a full blown business plan, but just some stuff. Post it online for the world to critique.

On Foreign Languages

Korean. I’ve completely stopped Hanja all together. I need to restart that goal of learning one page per day… but let’s tweak that to half a page a day for this month. I’ve also started a vocab list of Korean words I come across that I don’t know the meaning to. That list is going to get large real quick. I should also continue writing email to my mom in Korean.

Japanese. Going to continue with Pimselur for listening and speaking. I want to review one lesson and move to the next lesson each day. Hooray for WIMPE and mindless running… In terms of writing, I still have no clue with katakana. I still want to focus on hiragana, first, though, and so I want to go through one lesson in the Korean Japanese book each week.

Chinese. I’m not even going there. Someday… someday…

On School

MBA Info Session in two weeks. GMATs in four, if I ever register for it. Admission Essay and Application due in six. Awesome. I’m still not 100% sure if I want to go back to school… hmm…

In Closing

Wow, it’s day break. You’ve got to be kidding me. Okay, back to work.

Dean Knox Day #3

Published
by
Josh Kim
on January 6, 2007
in Foreign Languages
. 0 Comments

As Jay Chow came up on the iTunes playlist, I had to ask the question about Chinese music.

The question was: How can Chinese music be sung with intonations?

The answer: All intonations are disregarded.

Then I found out that it will be extremely difficult for me to really “get” Chinese. Intonations must be much harder than I thought them to be, originally… I mean, I still can’t get the four tones of Mandarin. I think I’m going to take “learn to speak Chinese” off the list of things I want to get done. I’ll at least go and focus on them Chinese characters for both Korean 한자 and Japanese 漢字.

And yes, I know this is cheating… However, I did write the beginning of this entry yesterday.

Okay, time for the actual entry for today.

Japanese - Introduction

Published
by
Josh Kim
on December 27, 2006
in Foreign Languages
. 0 Comments

Japanese

For Koreans, Japanese should be much easier than for other people. Lots of similarities abound, but there are many more differences that make this language fun but challenging to learn. I’m personally almost done with learning the hiragana (平仮名 [ひらがな], wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana) entry) and continuing on to katakana.

While I was learning trying to figure out how to pronounce things, I figured out some mnemonics. I’ll share them here, so that just in case someone else wanted to start up this language, it’ll help them a little bit. I’ll also share how much I’m pissed off at how characters are way to similar… and some of the strange quirks of the language (get it straight… why is わたしわ spelled わたしは…)

Maybe it’s time for a language partner. I guess that’ll make my stay on the UIUC campus a little bit more interesting.

Foreign Languages…

Published
by
Josh Kim
on December 10, 2006
in Foreign Languages
. 1 Comment

This post basically launches off the category known as “Foreign Languages” here at JoshKim.Org. I hope to include things from Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and even… Latin. I really should put those 4 years of high school awesomeness to good use.

For some reason, I really feel like learning a new language has tremendous benefits. Something about the languages of choice originate from global superpowers (Japan… GDP 2nd next to US), to-be superpowers (China) or past superpowers (Latin = Rome. almost all of the known world at that time)… (Korean? I don’t know why I’m learning this, other than I’m Korean myself.)

Maybe there’s more to it than that. I look at Chinese scripts (which Hanja (Korean-ized Chinese)and Kanji (Japan-ified Chinese) come from), and see how much art and history is behind it. Alphabets look silly compared to it.

Obviously, English is like a bazillion times well suited for effective communication (No, I hate you, simplified… but I guess the world’s going to be moving towards it…), but something about the Chinese characters… stir something from within.

Maybe you the reader will take away from these random posts I make on the topic of foreign languages. I’ll basically use these posts as summary of what I’ve been learning. Also, I’ll be posting on the joys and frustrations of learning a new language… from my viewpoint. I guess I could try to be as non-biased as possible, but that’d only be kidding myself.

Well, onward!