Tag Archive for 'blog'

Two Blog User Interface Issues

Published
by
Josh Kim
on May 8, 2008
in User Interface & Design
. 0 Comments

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.

Returning from the Deep Slumber

Published
by
Josh Kim
on April 16, 2008
in Personal, Site News and Web Applications
. 0 Comments

Staring at a blank TextMate Blogging file, he sits. A man, in his early twenties, wound a bit too tight from only thinking about the things that he should be doing, rather than actually doing it, reaches out for his large Iced Coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts.

Is caffeine his only Muse? Or maybe it’s the desire for that caffeine… that inner desire to use anything that’ll give him the edge in this roller coaster game called life.

And thus. He begins to type.

I don’t want to quote Britney Spears, but you get the point

Yeap. I’m back. Things have settled down to the point where I can sit here for the next 2 hours and not move until something gets typed up.

I have a strange feeling I’m going to have a lot of bumps and bruises at the end of this, you know, from trying to get back on the blogging-cycle.

I don’t even remember the last time I made an actual post that contributed to the blog-o-sphere… because all the while I was using this thing called:

Twitter: The New Frontier

I’m just very sad I didn’t get into the game early enough. As an avid (relatively) user of web applications, I couldn’t believe I’ve been so behind on this new medium.

I’ve been having a hard time explaining to other people (and to my old self) what Twitter is really for. And to tell you the truth, I still don’t know. I feel like this channel is still very new, that rules are still being created.

There are some social norms that have developed with more traditional channels of media. For example, it’s pretty much the norm to call someone back if you missed his call. But in the world of Twitter, I’m still left with how an actual conversation starts and ends. I feel like so many people use Twitter in whatever way they want. A whole other post could be written on the different type of twitterers (Tweeters? Twitterati? See what I mean about how new this thing really is?) exist.

A few random points about Twitter after using for a bit.

  • Following/Followers: I have this thing about keeping this ratio less than one. Does anyone else care at all?
  • The “@” reply: I reply as much as I can. I rarely start them, however, unless I know that person through twitter. Then “@” is used liberally.
    • Of course, the problem with contacting the people directly is that the conversation is no longer handled by Twitter, so the record of said discussion now is at the mercy of the AIM logs/email/phone conversation
  • HUGE usage pattern differences
    • I’ve begun to use my twitter as a place where I keep track of all my past AIM away messages. Morsels of wittiness or some other random links
    • I’ve been using Twitterific. This is basically the core set of functionality I wanted for StatusFix, the project I’ve stopped working on.
    • As long as Twitter continues to be as open with its API, I would have no problem entrusting it with all my status data. The only problem is… stability.
      • Please be rock solid stable, and prove to the Rails hater that it’s very possible…

But yes, Twitter is quite fun. Finding new people I’d like to follow and having people that follow me… it’s like this new frontier.

However, I don’t see this thing becoming mainstream anytime soon. It might happen, but just not soon enough for it to matter to me.

Google Calendar: The Next Web App I Need to Learn

There’s really nothing else to say here. I just begun to realize that I’ve been losing calendar data for some time, and haven’t really cared about it. I guess I’m paying a little bit more attention to it now.

The Reviews Galore: MacBook Air, Nintendo DS, Gamefly, AppleTV, Sumo Lounge Chair…

So many random new toys, just waiting to be reviewed. I wonder if they’ll get the treatment they deserve. Because…

GMATs. June 21st.

Yeah. I’ve got this to worry about. I guess I should start paying a bit more attention to this one. It’ll probably be helpful in trying to going for the MBA.

I’m losing focus

I told you I’m rusty. Heck, there isn’t an image associated with this post. Frick.

Oh, maybe I could end with this

Yeah. So this is what I’ve been doing in my free time. WoW, indeed.

hanvia-burning_blade-frost mage

That’s plenty enough eye candy for now.

And yes, I’ve completely given way to just insanity.

Let’s try again tomorrow.

New Goals: Pre-Month in Review

Published
by
Josh Kim
on March 22, 2007
in Asides, Site News and Web Development
. 0 Comments

Before the month’s over… and I have to do yet another one of those crazy Month in Review’s… I think I need to take this time to refocus a bit.

Lent Commitments… Uh oh…

Originally, it was:

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.

Let’s just say I’ve broken… a few of them. I probably pulled a JK^extreme again and went overboard on making up incredibly difficult and unnecessary commitments. For example, I picked up playing StarCraft again. It’s fun. It’s not nearly as addicting as before (I’ve matured, hooray!), and so I’ve been playing to get my mind off of things… I didn’t really feel guilty about playing it, but after thinking about a little bit, I feel bad that I didn’t feel guilty enough to not start it up.

So what do I do… Do I go into insane failure layer mode, give up everything and just forget about Lent? Well, I have to question my motives in even setting up these incredibly insane goals for myself.

I don’t want to give up something that I don’t do normally anyway. So something like watching TV… I don’t do it that much to begin with. I might do it occasionally, but giving that up to…

You know what? From the time I joined Covenant Fellowship Church until now, I’ve never been a fan of Lent. I’m still very much unsure of why we even do this thing. While going through the Internet, I ran into this interesting page: The True Meaning of Lent. While it is from a different denomination than mine (PCA), it definitely brings up many great points.

So before this turns into a post that I should create a new category “Religion” for, I’m going to end this here with this:

I’m going to get rid of all the things I’ve abstained from. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to go start getting addicted to gaming or movies or whatever, but that I won’t be feeling guilty whenever I break the “promise”, or at least, the illusion of it that I’ve created for myself.

However, the things that I’ve decided to add to my list of “things to do”, I’m going to keep. Reading the Word as well as memorizing Philippians has been incredibly helpful for me (even though… I’ve fallen behind quite a bit). I’m not doing these things merely because they’re on the list, but because I genuinely believe that they are helping me in my walk with God.

As soon as I focus on doing the positives, these unnecessary things will fall by the wayside anyway. I just need to make sure I follow through with the things I know will help me grow.

And seriously, Josh Kim, it’s your pride for setting up these insane goals. You wanted to feel all high and mighty if you kept them, right? You idiot…

I love setting up myself for failure. Yummy.

Summary: Read Bible. Memorize Philippians. Keep fighting. Don’t waste time.

Books

Definitely want to finish up Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age… I think I might do my first ever book review on this blog on this book. Heck, it’s the first non-programming book I’ll be finishing up in years.

The book Textmate: Power Editing for the Mac (Pragmatic Programmers) doesn’t seem that useful… at least… $20 useful. This book definitely adds to the online documentation at macromates, but I feel as if the pdf version of this book should have been included with the crazy price of TextMate. Definitely want to take my time with this book, though… seeing how I use this app hourly.

Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic Programmers): What is wrong with the manufacturer of this book? The text is printed on a slant. It’s readable, but it bugs the crap out of me. And also, THIS?

Binding Issue

It’s not just this book, but it’s also the case with the TextMate book (it’s not as noticeable because that book is thinner and the pages are thicker). I hope it’s just this batch of books of the Pragmatic Programmers series. I asked for a return on this one… so I won’t be able to dip into the Ruby on Rails just yet. Besides, I want to learn more Ruby before I go deeper. Should I just go and buy Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers’ Guide, Second Edition?

Waiting for Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days to come in the mail. I know for a fact I will love this book.

Summary: Read Hackers & Painters by end of the month. Textmate, take your time. Founder’s by the end of next month.

Consulting/Freelancing/Blogging/Entrepreneurship…ing

I felt like all these things go hand in hand. This is basically my life, or at least, it should be.

I like my “job”. I like having a steady income from a part-time job with College of Education at University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign. I like having clients to work for. I like setting my own hours (as you can see with the insane timestamp of this post). I like working wherever I want… from my apartment to the library…

I like my blog. I love being able to write about whatever’s on my mind on whatever subject I please. I love being able to strategize about how to best present the content, the information… how to monetize… ahem

I love thinking about the company I’ll be starting soon. I love doing market research. I love being my own marketing department, almost tearing my hair out trying to come up with a cool company/service names. I love imagining all the services I could provide through the company. I love thinking about the tax benefits of incorporating from one state compared to another.

The only problem I see right now… is the lack of health insurance. I don’t bring in enough to have a personal plan for myself, nor do I have health issues to begin with… it’s just something that bothers me from time to time.

But in terms of things to get done before the end of the month:

  • College of Education
    • Get Active Directory working in ColdFusion
    • Templates for moodle working
    • Fix moodle bugs, submit to moodle CVS repository
  • Freelancing
    • Finish up drupal customization
    • Finish up portfolio
    • Actively seek out clients
  • Blog
    • New template, new categories, new… old posts… blah blah blah

Summary: Get work done. Finish redesign on paper by end of the month. Finalize what is to be done with hanmeta.

I Can’t Sleep

I’m currently sick. And yet, I don’t really feel like going to sleep.

I really hope I don’t start writing another post tonight…

Silly Mistake: Redirecting

Published
by
Josh Kim
on March 22, 2007
in Site News, Web Applications and Web Development
. 0 Comments

I didn’t know this, but there’s a tiny movement against having “www” subdomain in links. Just visit no www to read up on some of the reasons why.

>Succinctly, use of the www subdomain is redundant and time consuming to communicate. The internet, media, and society are all better off without it.

The reason why the site was “down” for the better part was yesterday was that I installed this: no-www wordpress plugin. The silly mistake I committed was that I forgot when I set up JoshKim.org, I had asked for any request to “joshkim.org” to be sent to “www.joshkim.org”.

If you visited either one of those links, you would bounce back and forth… and back and forth… and back and forth… until the browser gave up on the request. I don’t know about you, but I got this strange looking error that wasn’t a 404 or anything I’ve seen before.

I realized this error after finding out that there wasn’t any server outage reports on the Dreamhost Status Page.

Just a heads up to those that might want to follow with the rest of the Internet in making it a “www”-less world… and so that those people won’t make the same mistake as I did.

YES! Site Niche Found!

Published
by
Josh Kim
on January 22, 2007
in Site News
. 1 Comment

I’ve been talking to people about how there needs to be more nerdy Christians.

I’m now proud to say I’ve made up my mind about JoshKim.org and the direction I want to take with it.

It will now be a blog focused on the life of a Christan computer nerd, with interests ranging from technological issues to personal finance to business concepts to user interface design to Asian cultures, with a sprinkling of really bad humor and horrible sarcasm from time to time.

That’s it! That should be plastered on the index.php of this site.

See… this is why it was so hard to redesign this site… If you don’t know what the book is actually going to be about, how in the world do you design the cover? What the freak can you do with shapes, colors, and lines?

Slowly, I’ve been making changes to the site. I’ve made RSS feeds available through feedburner, I’ve made sure that technorati tags are working… I might start integrating some other Web 2.0 services (meebo me? mybloglog? what what what?)…

Also… what good is a blog without content. I’ve been trying to change my writing style into a more “you”-oriented style. I think, during the days of JKmain.com, I thought I was “selling out” if I wasn’t writing purely for myself, and just letting the readers in on the fun. Silly JK… it’s been years since that happened…

I’ve realized that I want… no… need to make my mark in the community. What community, you ask? Well… the blogosphere is quite large. Not only is there are large number of different groups of people, there are quite the overlap in these groups. It’s amazing to even think about it.

I’m not going to just go ahead and throw away my personal entries all together… I’m just going to start structuring them a little bit more into ways that people can… I don’t know, read and find out things about me.

So that’s my conviction. Now… to find the time to make the cosmetic changes…