Tag Archive for 'return'

Let Me Try This Again, Part 1: Twitter

Published
by
jk
on May 5, 2008
in Site News and Web Applications
. Comments

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.

Returning from the Deep Slumber

Published
by
jk
on April 16, 2008
in Personal, Site News and Web Applications
. 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.

Nothing to See Here: Just a Tired Man

Published
by
jk
on June 8, 2007
in Personal
. Comments

I’ve been dying to put something up here. Something eloquent. Something earth-shattering. I mean, if it took this kid like a month to post something, it’s bound to be nuggets of diamond-encrusted platinum, right?

But I come before you, a humble man: I’ve got really nothing to say. And since I’ve got nothing to say (at least… I’m not lying to you), I think this is the best time to return to the “blogosphere”.

I’m not trying to come up with excuses as to why this blog has been just wasting away (no… it’s not WoW or Ruby or other life changing… events…), but I think it’s good to kinda throw out some possibilities as to why this might have happened.

I think it’s safe to say this: I was slapped on the wrist for violating an NDA with Yahoo! during the interview process. I’m still not 100% sure what I did to break it (I’m about 90% sure). Whatever it was, I think it was settled. I complied and removed the offending posts. I really should have requested a hard copy of that NDA… but I really don’t care too much about Yahoo! at this point. A recent article on Ars Technica covered a story on something like this.

At least I didn’t pull a “Josh Kim” after getting a job. Whew.

Anyway, all that insanity made me question something about this blog: Who am I writing for? Yes, it is indeed, partially for me… but what about everyone else?

I just haven’t really realized how public my blog is. I mean… it’s just as easy to get to my site as it is to get to facebook or google. This is the beauty of the Internet, and one of the many reasons why I got into web development in the first place. (However, seeing how Dreamhost has been acting up in the last couple of weeks… I’m considering switching hosts.)

So what is to become of JoshKim.org?

I think I’m going to keep it just as open as before… but with more sobriety (and no drinking jokes here, please). I think I just need to keep straight that this blog, while frequent most by the loyalist of fans (i.e., friends I know in real life), can and will be visited by people I’ve never met before. (That “How to Hack Xanga, Kinda” is one of the few examples as to why this statement is… so very true.)

In general, I need to start posting less personal posts. I have a lot of “Lessons Learned” posts, but I need to make sure those are just vague enough so that the people that were involved in the incident would know, and only those people.

Link blog? I think I should start it up someday… I have too many links to share with the world. I should at least start with my starred items in Google Reader.

Ruby. Rails. I’ve started going through the books. And methodically, might I add. I forgot how much I learn by doing. I also forgot how much I love to learn by doing. Yikes.

Purpose. Without purpose… why even do it? Follow the examples…

Why do all my posts end up with some kind of universal life lesson? Oh, right. Metacognition.

Ugh.

Chicago, Illinois. Madison, Wisconsin. Fun.