Tag Archives: twitter

Sidenote: I Haven't Felt This Way Since Freshman Year Of College

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The title of this post could have been easily Twittered, but I think I might need a couple hundred more characters.

Back in those days, I didn’t care about the hours of sleep I lost, or the retarded Physics classes I skipped. I remember having an incredible desire to put together what was called the “JKmain Journals”.

Now, it could be that I’m looking back on this event with nostalgia, but I truly believe that I haven’t really “innovated” since then in the arena of web applications. More or less, it’s been small improvements on past code or design. Until the day I die, I’ll probably attribute “Journals” as my first true web application project.

Although there was barely any security (heck, I remember using some other project for this since I didn’t want to do it, and there was a huge vulnerability with a bit of domain hacking, which wasn’t the other project’s fault… subdomains…), I learned a lot.

Now that I’m re-embarking on this journey, it’s getting a little trippy. It might be the lack of sleep and abundance of caffeine. Or, it might be that I’m finally feeling like I’m doing something worthwhile again.

Let’s hope that this fire doesn’t die down too quickly. While I believe I haven’t done anything, I believe I have. Having this mixture of states bothers the extremist in me.

I really should go to bed before I do more damage.

Screw It, Here It Goes

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Hello? What the heck? Who is this?

Yeah, I know. It’s been a while.

While I have been developing a backlog of things to write about here on this blog, I’ve also been occupied with… okay, I won’t lie: Video Games.

A Three-pronged Attack on My Free Time

Across three “systems” (Wii, Mac, and PC), the attacks are as follows:

For the Wii, it’s been Rock Band. Horribly gimped. Definitely not worth the $180, in respect to the downloadable content-laden and better graphic’ed Xbox 360 and PS3 versions. (I would have bought it for cheaper gladly. Instead, I just bought it with lots of bitterness.) I still ended up going for the full set, because I know for a fact I’ll be selling it as soon as I master the drums in this game. I had a feeling it’ll sell better as a full set. Plus, I kinda wanted people to play with me anyway. Oh, and thirdly, I want to sing and play a plastic instrument at the same time. I feel like that’ll be yet another extreme and exciting challenge, let alone, hilarious for the onlookers. (Yes, I even bought a microphone stand. Yes, I’m insane.) I’m probably going to get Guitar Hero World Tour anyway, if I keep the Wii, that is.

On the Mac, it was Fallout. This game, my goodness, is amazing. Who would have thunk a post-apocalyptic world would be so much fun? I cannot believe I missed out on it during my middle school years. I guess back then, my life was too consumed with StarCraft to be messing with other games.

I ended up installing Boot Camp for one single purpose: Orange Box. Specifically, Team Fortress 2. It has consumed any free time I’ve had in the past couple of weeks. Steam will tell the truth. I think reaching a Steam rating of 10 – EAGLES SCREAM! means someting… 36.6 HOURS? Expect this number to go up as I play through Half Life 2. With TF2, going through enough achievements to get to all the new weapon upgrades was very enjoyable.

Of course, installing Windows opens myself up to all these games that I didn’t even think about playing. Also, it opens myself up to wanting better hardware to run everything oh-so pretty. Too bad the iMac isn’t really up to the challenge in this area… (even if I go up to the 24″)

Sidenote: Where did my Air go? Sold it. Long story short: I didn’t see the value in being mobile anymore.

The State of the Blog Address Post

I’ve been experimenting with a little app called Chyrp. For awhile, Twitter filled my desire of posting short status updates and other interesting links. However, plagued by downtimes and other issues, I decided to start looking for some distributed or self-hosted alternatives. While I will continue to use Twitter to follow the heavy hitters and as a tool to supplement the blogging insanity, I have a feeling my traffic will die down. Actually, It’s been happening.

Twitter Stats

As I started to use Chyrp more and more this weekend, I feel as though it’s got a lot of potential. I just don’t see myself fiddling with any blogging platform for too much: I want the darn thing to work out of the box, as advertised, with very little, if not, no programming intervention. Is this too hard to ask? Yes, I’m a lazy programmer who’d rather be just a little bit less lazy about his own projects.

A New Deadline?

I kinda had a feeling this was going to happen this weekend. I took off the day on Monday due to a possible trip to Philly. After that got cancelled, I had four days ahead of me to create The World’s Next Best Thing (TWNBT, as some refer to it). However, not a whole lot happened. A LOT OF FREAKING GAMES happened.

But somehow, I found enough time between the TF2 and the Rock Band to write this slightly coherent update. Oh, there’s even more I could write about.

Status of Health

Quickie, because I don’t want to seem weak to everyone when I freaking have to go through my condition.

  • Weird sleeping issues
    • I’ve woken up in the middle of the night twice, at around 6:30. Randomly. I still don’t know why this happened.
    • These days, I feel really really tired. Could it be the lack of exercise? Could it be something even worse?
    • Takeaway: Start exercising to see if it’s some other problem.
  • Excruciating eye soreness
    • This started very recently. I might need to see a doctor, but chances are, it’s the 36.6 hours of gaming after the day job I do in front of a monitor. It might be the TV shows/Movies I see on the iMac.
    • I need to pick a day and not use the computer at all.
    • Okay, maybe a bit extreme. More on this later in the goal making section.
  • Wrists
    • Overuse? Maybe. A month ago, I was given a set of harder braces to use. Kinda hurts more to use while I type because it restricts the natural way I use my pinky and ring finger to type. Also, I was told to take Alleve twice a day… really didn’t do much.
    • Once again, I need to start taking huge breaks. HUGE breaks. I’m not sure what I can do that doesn’t require the wrists… I guess I could start back up on the Korean Hanja/Japanese insanity.
    • This is probably reason #2 as to why I don’t blog as much anymore.
  • Ribs (Fibromyalgia)
    • No doctor has figured this out. The soreness/tenderness all across my lower rib cage. Some thought enlarged liver after the sonogram, but after the CT scan, some idiot lab technician was found wrong. I had a MRI of the brain to see if all of this could maybe possible be caused by MS. Came back negative.
    • I guess this is good news, although still no one knows what’s wrong with me…
  • Ankles
    • Feels a lot better. Physical Therapy worked. There’s still some residual pain on the outside of the soles and ankles, but it might be from actively correcting my gait. Hope I don’t have to see the podiatrist anymore. I’ll give it a week for my ankles to be awesome again.

Overall Takeaway From My Health Issues and EVERYTHING else in the past couple months AKA Goals

I’ve miss making goals. I’ve gotten weaker in character, not being able to follow through with a whole lot of things I’ve been wanting to accomplish. I’ve let past (uh oh, this is where it gets kinda dramatic. RUN. RUN! He’s opening the “past” folder) things muck up the present. Actually, it really hasn’t. You know what, now that I think about it, I look to the past mistakes as awesome. Or wait, am I just soothing myself?

And…. Scene.

That kind of thinking gets me nowhere. I feel like my gift of memorizing things is quickly fading. Sometimes, two people will tell me I’ve said something that I completely do not remember saying. This has almost never happened before.

Is there an eraser in my head? (For those of you that got this reference, have a cookie.)

But really: I’m kinda sick and tired of old-me. New-me kinda wants to kick old-me in the face with the Awesomedary Boots.

One Small Sidenote: Becoming Someone Else Who I’m Not

It’s kinda hard to define who you are. Do you do it with respect to others? Or do you not care at all about what people think, and just make you you?

For some reason, I’m like an electron (fermions) in the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Like a 0 or a 1 (dang it, I keep thinking about the Gary Winston speech from Anti-Trust), I cannot have that widely- and socially-accepted view on this matter.

Actually, let’s bust out the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle. Actually, let’s not. I’m boring myself, even.

Back to the point of this sidenote: I’m in the state of not caring about anyone else. Or at least, a very few people very very passionately. Much more so than any stage of my life, I bet if I let one extremely respectable and legendary person into my life, I could end up doing their bidding. And because I said this publicly, I’m going to end up going the opposite way.

The JK way is to always keep them surprised: I cannot stress how much I have to continue to innovate myself. I cannot be. I have to keep moving. If I am just existing, I might as well not exist. I have to create.

I have to punch someone in the face. I have to love someone to death.

With all these lists, “How To” guides, and massive trivia in my head, I hope to live life and experience something new each and everyday. I say this, but I have a feeling none of my past experiences will amount to jack squat in the future. I say that, but I have a feeling it’ll all come together and make sense in the end.

DANG IT, STOP IT WITH YOUR CIRCLES.

And… Scene.

I’m totally not editing that last section. I’m not even going to look at it anymore.

Yeah. That last section was the insanity that’s brewing in my head every freaking single day.

I feel like occupying my CPU with actual work is better than all having all those JMPs muck up the pipelines. Which leads into one of the many goals I’m going to be making.

  • GOAL: Stay off the information firehose that is the Internet.
    • AIM. Twitter. Even Feeds. (Phone? Heck, I rarely use that crap these days.) These sources of constant communication just eats up my time. No: I am not a freaking processor: I do not multitask.
    • I will set a block of time to do all of this. Which means… I will probably be behind on the news.
    • SIDENOTE: Need to talk about how I get offended if people bring me news I already know or link me to something I’ve already read and how this offense is completely retarded on my part but how I can’t deal with it.
  • GOAL: Back to 145-ish lbs.
    • You won’t believe the gut that I’m currently sporting. I took a picture of it, so that when I become awesome again, I’ll be able to use it as a reminder to never ever go on fast-food laden WoW binges again. I don’t blame WoW, but I blame the eating out.
    • Back to cooking, a lot. I enjoy it, and it’s an art form I’d like to master. It’ll be another way to rest my aching body.
    • Will need to go grocery shopping weekly. I mean, weekly. And probably will have to up my equipment a bit.
    • The gym daily? Maybe pushing it, but starting today, the routine begins again. Biking sucks, but ankles will have to get better.

SIDENOTE: Wow, I feel like I’m in the zone again. You know, that zone I was in when I had my last blogging explosion. Gotta keep going. Bawls, keep me awake and my cornea blood vessels enlarge so it doesn’t hurt as much.

  • GOAL: TWNBT announced on the 8th. Probably gadgetget. Maybe not.
    • Come on. You’re supposedly not going to Business School. Make sure of this by making the doubt about making the right choice nonexistent.
    • Will require only a couple of hours each night.
    • DO NOT GO EXTREME. Or even, think about going extreme. Extremeness will come with awesomeness.
    • Extremeness in moderation? Is this a T-shirt?
    • Need to start chronicling this. Blog? What am I doing with WordPress?

That’s all: Stop Multitasking. Focus on Health. Go Be Awesome.

  • GOAL: And blog all of it. ALL OF IT. Keep yourself accountable to the world. Or at least, for the poor people that read this mess.
    • Seriously, what are you still doing here? Hehe.

Thanks for taking the time to read through this ridiculously long post. I guess I’m posting this on the 6th of July CST. This date means nothing to me.

And so, it begins. The Legend of Josh Kim.

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.

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.

Returning from the Deep Slumber

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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.

Tired of my Twitter Updates Yet?

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Subtitle: “Suck It Up and Write.”

It’s been a while, I know. As each day passed without a worthwhile post being put up here, it got harder and harder to write. My thinking is that if I could somehow blog about how I haven’t been able to to blog, it’ll get the ball rolling, and the dailies will follow.

Physical Limitations

Subtitle: “I’ve got tunnels in all up my extremities”

Yeap. My wrists are acting up again. And quite a bit, actually. I feel like exercising and working out helped to lessen the pain, but… I’ve also been having issues with my ankles for two months. Turns out that after seeing the doctor for the first time since I got my work permit, I might be onto something called Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome. We’ll see if I have both Carpal and Tarsal next week after I get some strange electrical testing done on me.

It could be that all these issues are connected to some kind of Hypothyroidism. I hope not.

Also, for about a week, my jaw wouldn’t open all the way. I’m only realizing now how much I grind my teeth as I sleep. Might be why my jaw feels a little stiff when I wake up.

And I’ve been having pain in my upper left abdominal region. This one is still up in the air. Maybe poor posture?

So to sum it up: My body is like… melting away. This leads into…

StatusFix

Ah yes. My first multi-member project that I hoped to be a part of. Health complications definitely made me a little bit hesitant to continue in this endeavor. Also, there were huge lessons I started to learn as I partook in this project.

Which will follow later.

So those that don’t know yet: I’m off StatusFix. It still feels kinda like my own project, but it’s… time for the next project?

The Next Project

If my wrists aren’t going to be stupid, I’ll be posting the details to my next awesomeness. Also, I’ve secured another client to work for. At least I’ll be secure in that for a little while.

New Toy: AppleTV: Delicious

  • Overall, it’s great… when it works. I’ve had it crash and start on me twice, and it hasn’t been a week yet. Once, I had this weird green screen that made it restart on its own; the other time, I had to physically hard boot it. That was just at the beginning: now it’s getting better.
  • It’s made me watch video podcasts at the beginning, because I didn’t have any video content on it at first. Like Diggnation HD, which is pretty entertaining, although not that informative (this podcast stuff is another post on its own… my goodness, is someone keeping count on how many other posts this single entry is going to spawn?)
  • Over 802.11g, it’s slow. It’s slower than I could have ever imagined. Streaming music isn’t a problem. It’s the part where I want my entire music library and a few TV shows/movies on AppleTV. The first sync took me an entire night.
  • Rather than hack it, I’ve just started to re-encode things into H.264. Not the best codec for quality… or maybe it’s just the fact it’s re-encoding from .avi files. Hope to figure this out.

Twitter: It’s destroying the way I blog

Seriously, it’s making it blogging too easy. I also looked at Tumblr.

Less friction to getting my content out means faster updates. It also means a HUGE decrease in signal-to-noise ratio.

A second blog

See what’s going on? These sections are becoming Twitter updates. Oy.

But yes, I’m thinking about starting up a second, much MORE focused blog. I’m just trying to figure out the logistics of keeping and maintaining two WordPress blogs. I might have to call on some source version control software to automate plugin updates and such.

BLAH BLAH BLAH

Okay. I’m blogged out for now. Come back later for something more worthwhile.

Quick Twitter Review and Other Ponderings

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Twitter Logo

I’m beginning to like Twitter more and more. The only thing that’s stopping me from using it as much as possible is: the lack of pertinent users. I’m not talking about the awesome developers/leaders of their field people that I “follow”, but people that I actually know in, you know, real life. Outside of my nerdier friends, I don’t know of anyone that use Twitter. Yet.

But this situation is making me think about social networks in general: each network seems to create a culture of its own. This is not a new view on social networks, but it’s interesting I’m seeing it now with Twitter.

Facebook with their college crowd, Myspace with their musician/high school crowd, and now Twitter with their tech crowd.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that these social networks won’t grow into other groups of users. It’s just that certain networks tend towards a faster and wider adoption with the general population than others. And Twitter, at face value, just doesn’t seem to be a service that can grow very quickly.

I would never use the texting feature (thanks to the iPhone, I don’t have to), but I feel like this feature will help Twitter gain a wider appeal with the slightly more techie crowd.

I do like the 140 character limit, and not because it has to do with the limitations of the texting protocol, but because it puts some creative limits on what I am able to “tweet”. Also, the inability to edit an existing post makes you double check yourself before tweeting.

You know, I never thought about it, but there’s probably an iTunes to Twitter Applescript. The Twitter API is so freeing. But also… this can lead to information overload.

So much power. So much responsibility.

And that ends my rambling on Twitter.