Category Archives: HanMeta

Sparks Begets More Sparks

Posted on by

The initial spark of inspiration fades quickly over time.

In high school, I happened upon a hidden cache of matchbooks. Completely disobeying the familiar warning of not playing with matches, I started lighting them on fire, one by one.

Then I got curious. I wondered what would happen if I set a whole bunch of match heads on fire at the same time, rather than doing so one by one. So, I took one match, ignited it, and set the rest of the matches in the matchbook on fire.

Something awesome happened. The sucker exploded into flames.

Sparks

The spark could be something small. In this case, it was thinking about indie games again which got me to record a podcast episode.

The spark could be something big. One example of this would be to write a feed reader to replace my need for Google Reader.

At the beginning, things seem so wonderfully exciting. You’re ready to start something new. And then you wait. Whatever the reason, you start to wait. And then wait some more.

The need for perfection? The lack of prioritization? The lack of focus? The crippling side-effect of freedom? For me, it’s been all of the above.

By acting on the inspiration quickly before the spark dies, you cause more sparks with greater intensity to appear, which carries you onto the next phase.

And with this realization, I push on.

Complain, But Even Better, Fix

Posted on by

Pick the right things to think and talk about. Complain, but complain well. Work hard to make sure that the right people can hear and understand your complaints. And actually, if you’re going to put in so much effort, try to think if there is any way that you yourself can fix it.

Some things, you just can’t fix. Never say never, sure, but those things might take tremendous amount of time and effort to even find out that they weren’t fixable from the beginning. Even worse, you find out that they weren’t even problems. Draw the line, cut your losses, and wait for technology to catch up to your vision. And do something else in the meanwhile.

The world is filled with problems; tackle the ones that are are within your ability to fix. Or just beyond them, so you can stretch further. Don’t go stretching too far: But remember, the further you reach, the more you might be able to fix.

Complain, but even better, Fix.

I’m trying harder to complain less on the blog, but fix more in my projects. Less talk, more code.

Designing For The Singularity

Posted on by

I’ve been designing for the oncoming Singularity. And this silliness needs to end.

Singularity

For all problems that I believe to be solvable by software, from the lowest level of hardware/software interaction to the highest level of user interface abstraction, it all had to fit into the confines of The One True System.

The schemas would be flawless, the interface pixel perfect.

I would write, the One True System, supposedly.

Well, I have a bit of confession to make.

My name is Josh Kim, and I am an over-designer.

The funny thing is, the path towards Singularity has already begun. The great developers are writing themselves out of their own jobs, in a way, and creating even newer jobs in the process, jobs that didn’t exist even a decade ago.

Instead of freaking out about how I’m writing an imperfect system, I am excited to have a say in the future, one line at a time. After all, nothing’s perfect.

And actually, born out of this human imperfection is probably how we’re going to end up with the Singularity, most likely some test case unforeseen and left uncovered.

Might as well I start the downfall of humanity and welcome the sentient overlords, one line of code at a time.

Filter Failure

Posted on by

What if your entire social life came to you? Friends, family, work email, personal email, messages, updates, and feeds… everything, constantly updated and streamed together in one place, so you can keep track of whatever you want and focus on what matters most.

Disclaimer: NPH does not come included with the Motorola CLIQ with MOTOBLUR.

I hate you, Motorola, and your caps.

Talk about overpromising and underdelivering. Well, then again, I don’t know, maybe this is the god-device everyone needs. iHear the Droid is supposed to do things the iPhone doesn’t, or something. Eh.

We, the Internet users, have only begun to generate data. Currently, I feel like the filters don’t exist in the present to deal with that mountain of already existing data. When I sat down and thought about StatusFix (a possible solution to this mess) three years ago, I built it for me, someone who continues to this day drink straight from the data firehose.

But with this commercial, I realized that the day has come when any person with an Internet-enabled phone (WAP? What?) is going to have this issue of Filter Failure.

Clay Shirky has talked on Filter Failure before about a year ago, just in case you missed it.

I sure hope someone’s working on it.

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Posted on by

“Don’t worry about what anybody else is going to do… The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn’t violate too many of Newton’s Laws!”

Alan Kay, 1971, Inventor of Smalltalk (source)

I didn’t know that there was a longer form of this quote. I guess the shorter form of this quote is catchier, but it’s interesting to note that inventing the future requires really smart people and reasonable funding.

The quote “Fake it till you make it” seems to have a similar meaning. I guess my quote of “Shut up and ship it” has a similar ring to it.

But really, what are quotes but words strung together in a sentence without any action?

Food for thought, really. I leave you with this for tonight.

9/9/9

Posted on by

Here’s a list of things that are happening tomorrow. I’m almost certain there are more things, but I can’t recall them right now.

The Beatles: Rock Band

Never was a true Beatles fan, but I like Rock Band lots… I’ve been practicing the singing and the guitaring, together, this past weekend (not specifically for this, but I’m sure it’ll come in handy).

And no, not this. This is happening next year. 10/10/010. [shudder]

9, The Movie

Looks interesting, but probably will wait until the DVD. Trailer here.

Apple’s “Rock and Roll” Event

Whatever happens, happens.

Nothing From HanMeta

I’ve been working a lot on the startup I’m working for, and so things haven’t been going so well with my projects. It might be like this for a while… but hopefully, I’ll find some time off to tinker.

Let's See What Sticks

Posted on by

It’s quickly becoming the norm that I don’t sleep before 3 AM. I was looking forward to changing that tonight, but now I have this weird urge to type something out. Here’s to hoping I just rock this post, and go to bed.

This week’s been very very busy. Finding a paid gig through a friend via Twitter was quite an interesting turn of events. I guess I’ll now be flipping back and forth between this new project and my own things.

In an effort to become more efficient with my time on the computer, I’ve got into vim and its lovely library of plugins. Memorizing what seemed at first to be complete nonsensical keystrokes that now seem completely logical proved to be quite an experience. Of course, this is slowing down a lot of the simpler things, but I feel like this period of learning is going to pay off big as time goes on.

I feel extremely tired and weary, but I feel like this state of insanity is where I need to be: A balance between the ideal and practical, optimistic and realistic. And there have been times I asked myself if this is what I actually want. Am I just chasing dreams because of thrill of the chase itself? Do I truly believe in my ideas and am I truly passionate? And is this enough?

Hello, race condition.

Again, realizing: Take it one step at a time. No one becomes awesome instead in one fell swoop. It’ll take a lot of tinkering to even figure out what “awesome” is. And then to achieve it? Good luck. Or something like that, for those of us that don’t believe in that jazz.

Continuing: Why haven’t you taken that first step? What’s stopping you? If it’s anything but you, are you off the hook?

I guess it’s been laziness, thinking that there’s going to be this innate ability that I can always fall back onto for sustenance. Talent. But letting this talent rot… such a shameful waste. Honing the talent… takes effort.

I sure hope I have the talent to get more talents.

Life.hack

Fueled by: The Submarines – Honeysuckle Weeks. Yeah, it took the entire album to write this post.

Also brought to you by: Isolator. Especially for these braindump posts that don’t require any fact checking, other than in my head, it works great.

An Empty Drafts Folder

Posted on by

Feels great to not have anything to write about.

In reality, they always keep popping up in my mind. But at least, on paper, my mind is free to do what I deem is awesome.

And that’s that. I thought I was going to make this blog into something more than just a personal reflection, but the time is not now.

So we’re reverting back to my personal thoughts and shenanigans, rather than trying to become a tech blogger by any means.

I’ll share links as I find them, and maybe comment on them, but that’s pretty much it.

I’m going to probably use this podium, more so as a chronicling of how I’m going to fail at building a feed reader, but we’ll see where this one leads. I’ve still got time, and fingers to type code with. Money’s running low, but I can’t focus on that just yet.