I need to rework the whole way this site adds images and galleries and such. The moderating your own gallery is so cumbersome even I would quit using Tabulas cause of it.

I also am torn between the display methods of images. On one hand, I do want to offer some sort of "high" resolution images; but it's so hard to fit in with a lot of layouts.

So I was thinking maybe the addition of each image would create a multitude of thumbnails:
one at 180px for thumbnails, one at 550px for page viewing, and a 800px (called by by a pop-up) for "fullsize" images.

Grar. And on top of that, images added via entries feature a 360 thumbnail.

Dag.

I've been working a little bit on AudioMatch; was pretty ill yesterday and couldn't do much. I will probably completely rewrite the process of handling the gallery today. I mean from scratch. I just don't like how messy it is.

Sigh. I spend most of my time rewriting. But such is life :)

Oh yeah, a new "generic" layout will be up (by hopefully tonight). This is a layout you see on all the other "weblogging" services so I feel somewhat obligated to do it.

Before I go to sleep, I feel obligated to let loose some thoughts that I'll clarify tomorrow. Kind of like a "hey roy, here's what you're going to do tomorrow!"

I've been neglecting the gf. I feel so horrible. It's just ... hard I guess.

Fog of war. Why bother watching the news?

Honor back on the battlefield? Irony as the US was one of the first to abandon honor.

Generic layout? Oops, sorry! I'm lazy!

Automated matching and thoughts on that for AudioMatch.

Good night, all!

Quick notes:

Don't bother checking with news during wartime. It's useless. I only check in with factual information (e.g. we TOOK over a city - note the PAST tense)

Our delivery dude from Miami Subs last night goes to King's Park - same as Daniel.

It's amusing to me that the US is moving away from total war back to limited war - while we obviously abandoned this first against the Brits during the Revolutionary War. (Total war = war against all civilians, perfect example was WWII). Is this a good thing? As long as we don't involve ourselves in conflicts which are unpopular within the other country, the answer is a resounding YES. (Small note: 600 Iraqis have been tragically killed during the first 12 days of war. At this rate, it'll take something like 10 years of warfare every day for the same number of people to die as Saddam has killed during his regime.)

Kerry is a f'ing NUMBSKULL. I hope he does not win the Democratic ballot. Actually, I rather have Bush than any of the current Democrats - don't get me for a Bush lover - but he has done a solid job thus far and at least we can predict what he's doing. I don't want to take a risk with any of those retarded Democrats.

The British has more experience in policing civil crowds with the military - we should take their advice with much weight.

The anti-war crowd failed because of their inability to distinguish between anti-Bush and anti-war. Most everyone who can make that clear distinction completely will side with pro-war.

I hate allergies. They are killing me.

Pre-release coming along slow. Too busy with school. :)

Can't wait for this weekend; "A Man Apart" and "Phone Booth" looks hot. Anyone at Carolina wanna go see it this weekend?

I was interviewed for some thesis paper regarding Koreans growing up in North Carolina. I'm not sure how long the interview was supposed to last - the interview lasted 3.5 hours (!). I guess I had a lot to say about race.

At least my life is partially documented now. :)

Why are the Israelis so villified by America? I guess most people in their utter lack of research decide it's "cool" to be anti-Israel (and anti-America, for that matter).

It really angers me when people try to make the Israelis seem like the victim. Of course, these same people are the very same ones who can't tell me who started all the wars Israel's been involved in (answer: Arab nations).

Even the Palestianian issue is a tricky one. Of course, they've made headway by removing some power away from Arafat (who's made it clear that he's only really in it for the money and power; he doesn't care about a Palestinian state at all) and appointing a real prime minister. Now hopefully with the war in Iraq winding down (well, one can dream), we can start to negotiate for a real peace in the Middle East.

To anyone who says the Israeli's unfairly victimize the Palestinians, tell me how. Tell me how after three+ wars against Israel, how Israel is supposed to respond when terrorists start blowing up bombs in crowded civilians centers. And then someone comes and yells at them for shooting a suspected terrorist?

Give me a f'ing break. Israel has a clear history of living in that land we currently call Israel. The Palestinians have no history there. Nope, they don't. Try to give me direct historical references indicating that the same Holy Land as the Jews is also shared by the Palestinians. Heck, the Palestinians have never existed as a separate state.

I wish people wouldn't be such d'arses and would actually research the topics at hand.

I hate it when stupid people try to be smart. It's annoying as hell.

Rar. Tabulas prerelease coming along (very) slowly. I just realized I may have to work a little bit more on the entries; malformed HTML carries over (must prevent that!). That's going to stink.

In any case, I never realized that Nas was a really good rapper. But Neeraj hooked me up with "One Mic" and Nas has so much ... power and feeling in his songs. The 2Pac remix Thugz Mansion was good (I thought that was a fluke) ... but Nas is a really good rapper.

Rap is so much more powerful when there are strong feelings involved. That's why I guess 'Pac's "Hit Em Up" is one of my favorite songs regardless of it's message.

So Canon (my favorite company!) announced ... the Canon D10.

Which
is
the
most
perfect
DSLR.

Some places are carrying it as low as $1500! It's an improved D60 ... equivalent of the Elan 7 (which is what I have).

I need. Money.

So here is my dilemma. Should I sell my FS4000 film scanner NOW or later? I have a feeling that the price is going to drop on the scanner; but this means I won't have access to a film scanner for a while (until I save up $1500+ in any case).

I can still fetch about $500+ on eBay (my second favorite company, NOT!) for the scanner, which means i have to save ... a whoppinng ...

$1000.

sob.

I wish I was hot like Colin Farrell. That would rule. It was really odd when I was briefly watching E! (I swear I was just flipping through channels and not actually watching E!) they had an interview with Colin Farrell.

He has the awesomest Irish accent. I wish I had an Irish accent. For some reason it just sounds hella cool. I could go to Ireland and trick everyone ... they would think I'm some stupid Korean kid ... but then I'd bust out the heavy Irish and they'd accept me as one of their own.

Google makes me nervous. They have no privacy policy listed. They're a private company. As much as the open-source community loves them (which I don't understand as they're really not different in developing proprietary stuff like MS) they're not all that great.

I mean, the searching is good, but that's to be expected. Compared to growing up with Altavista, Webcrawler and Northern Lights, Google was a relief.

But you have to understand they have no interests besides their own in the way they conduct business. They're unnecessarily herofied (is that even a word?) just like MS is unnecessarily vilified. It's annoying, to say the least.

In any case, MS is now on track to try to "compete" with Google. Unfortunately I think MS will fail. They're not much of a web company; they write software for PCs. Every internet venture they've started ... sucks.

The only company that I think could get that would be better would be Yahoo! They have a much better understanding ... but they're lack of real software development is going to hinder them.

If Yahoo and MS created a partnership where MS put its weight and expertise .. and Yahoo put in its web experience ...

It might work.

But nah. Probably not. Maybe I should make a search engine. Har har.

I've been listening to Christina Aguilera's "Fighter." Dave Navarro is cool. Anyways, I was chatting with Mr. Phil about UI in webdesign.

Man, webdesign is tiring. Very tiring. UI is a pain in the ass; it's not so technical but more intuitive. But good UI is still incredibly hard to pull off. I always try (I've made a strong effort to make UI as streamlined and intuitive in the control panel as possible) but it's so hard.

Tabulas is starting to take its toll on me. Not really in terms of time, as I still manage to do everything in my life that I need to do (e.g. school stuff), but it's just mentally exhausting.

Dealing with bugs, new feature development, more design, fixing up UI ... I'm not entirely sure any one person should be subjected to these stresses. But it'll make me stronger, right?

In any case, the hit logging doesn't really work the way I wanted it to work. I'm going to redo that whole part. I'll also upload a new template today for use.

Today's goal:
1.) Plan econ paper for Turchi (15 pages!)
2.) Get new template for Tabulas
3.) Fix up logging
4.) Read two chapters of A-Chem (exam friday)
5.) Add "edit template" from pre-existing templates
6.) Begin planning the renovation of this "add entry" page

I feel especially bad as all this work has been taking a toll on my personal life. I know that a lot of people feel ... neglected in my life. I know I haven't really seen a lot of people. I hope that once this week is over, I will change that. I will try not to spend so much time on Tabulas.

Oh yeah, check out my gallery. I've added most of my webdesigns up there. Nothing new, except one of the new jobs I'm doing for an old friend here at Carolina.

Speaking of gallery, I had an idea the other night for a "shared" gallery of sorts. It'd be really nice if a bunch of people went to the same event, all took pictures, then were able to share an album into a larger "shared" gallery so one could see all the pictures.

Maybe that'll make it into pre-release ...

School is pretty tiring. I got a lot of stuff to do this week. Been studying for my A-Chem exam and also started planning my paper due next week. I gotta do a little more research for it ... guess I'll try to go tomorrow after my chem exam.

I'm more or less happy with where Tabulas is feature-wise. I feel at this level it can compete with Xanga at the least. The backend coding could use a lot of fixer-upping (it's quite sloppy and inefficient in places), but that'll come after my paper due next week.

Unfortunately as Tabulas progress has come around, progress on Audiomatch has reached a standstill. I feel somewhat guilty towards Apu, but 'sall good.

Paintballing saturday. Really looking forward towards it. It's hot. HOT, I say!

The latest South Park episode was hilarious. A classic quote:

"Think of it, an entire nation founded on saying one thing and doing another ... and we will call that country the United States of America" - South Park

Great stuff.

P.S. Baghdad fell. Great news, but the hard part is just beginning. Let's pray and hope for the best for the Iraqi people.

I've been relatively blessed over the past two years to have great suitmates in Hinton James. Sadly, this year, the trend was not to hold.

I have the worst suite. Ever. I mean, most of these guys are straight-up losers. I may sound harsh and whatnot, but these guys truly are. Ok, so maybe just one room.

In the room next to mine are two guys named... ah, I forget their names. Let's call them Ass 1 and Ass 2.

Now, besides the fact that the demeanor of these guys are in total loserdom (I mean, trust me... I'm not an incredibly harsh person, and I've never called anyone a loser before until these guys).

However, I could deal with them being losers (e.g. I avoid them), but their bathroom etiquette is ... HORRIBLE.

Besides the fact that they ALWAYS lock the bathroom door for our suite (and they always lock THEIR door when they're going to the bathroom in our suite ... even to brush their teeth), they also do incredibly impolite things.

For instance, this morning, I was showering. I leave the bathroom door unlocked at ALL times so that people can do one of two things:
1.) Use the sink (brush teeth, comb hair, whatnot)
2.) Take a piss

I do NOT leave it so Ass 2 can come in and decide to lay the stinkiest turd in the world. No, wait a second. Let me backtrack.

Yesterday, Ass 2 laid the stinkiest turd ever. 15 minutes after he dropped it, the stench was still there.

And to make matters worse, apparently he doesn't know how to make sure that when you FLUSH, you should make sure all the turds are gone. OH NO... not with Ass 2. Not only did he leave the window nice and closed (I personally choose to leave the window cracked open if I lay a smelly log), he also left turd floating around the toilet.

In any case, so Ass 2 decides to lay a turd while I'm in the shower. For those of you not familiar with Hinton James bathrooms, there is one bathroom per suite of 4 rooms. It is a small bathroom consisting of one shower, one toilet, one urinal, and two sinks. So it's not as if I could exactly avoid his shit.

Seriously, I hate those two guys in the suite next to me. I hope the next time they shower and leave the door unlocked, I'm going to unscrew some f'ing smelly chemicals (I'll steal some from my 141 lab) so they can choke during their 30 minute long (no joke!) showers.

Anyways, the full theatrical Matrix trailer is OUT. I've uploaded it for you guys here. It's 100 megs and is a 1000 pixel QuickTime mov.

It's amazing. Bow DOWN!

Sources indicate we got Roy Williams from Kansas ...

More on this later.

The joys of journaling are many. Besides potentially influencing the thoughts of others, there is always the joy of reading your own entries from times past.

I've been blogging on and off since April 20th, 1999. Most of my close friends will remember HongX.net... it became mildly popular in the E/N (everything/nothing) scene which predated the blogging ("blogosphere") scene that seems to be pretty dominant in both Old and New Media.

In any case, I've decided to do one of those "life status" entry. I guess in essence a list of creeds I try to live by. So here it goes in no particular order.

Live life fearless. There is nothing to be gained by fearing anything.

Everyone is capable of everything. Smarts only gets you so far - you can make it up by working your arse off.

Make a distinction between the person and their beliefs. They may differ with your views on abortion, but most of those differences are only on minor points. I've noticed many people have similiar value systems regardless of their beliefs.

Make a distinction between a government and its people - the government is there to take the blame for the people.

Be accountable for your failures.

Emotions are a powerful tool - but try to keep them encapsulated into a nice box when possible. When debating, be emotionless. Being detached and neutral is the most level-headed method of attacking a debate. That is not to be said that emotion cannot be used during debates - but in order to make clear and analytical decisions on a situation, be clearheaded - don't let emotions affect you.

People will ultimately fail you. No one can be trusted. You must do everything for yourself - do not rely on others to do your work.

Love everyone despite their creed, beliefs, background, ethnicity, hygiene. We are all the same and we all worry about the same things. You are not alone.

Live with honor. Honor seems to be lacking in our capitalistic-driven society. At the end of the day you should be proud of what you've accomplished.

No one is perfect. Accept people as they are. On the other hand, do not be offended if someone is not as close of a friend as you'd like them to be.

Always remember that even as you're stressing, you have so many blessings. Count them.

In a sign that I have no life, this thread has been started for people to try to find all the sites I run. Let's see the list!

Sadly, mr. witty himself (alex borst) decided to say the following in response to the thread:

ABAlex123: hey, i found it.. someoen slipped a half naked chick under my door and i typed in the address
ABAlex123: and next think i know, i end up at one of roy's sites... conspiracy?
ABAlex123: i see... N degrees of roy kim...from any picture of a hot chick with web address, how many clicks required to get to one of roy's sites

sigh.

If you didn't read the op-ed from Eason Jordan, go give it a good read. Eason Jordan is the CNN chief executive. The gist of the op-ed is that CNN withheld a lot of stories about brutality under the Hussein regime to protect their employees. But certain idiots (e.g. Fox News) are criticizing Jordan for a lack of "journalistic obligation.

Shut UP. I don't care if you're a pro-war slanted broadcast, that doesn't save you from idiocy like this. A company's commitment, regardless of its purpose is first and foremost to its employee. You protect and defend your employees at all cost, then you go about your business.

Fox News just took a hit on my respect list.

Also, if there's one thing I cannot stand, it's trying to spin the Iraq situation. Baghdad has fallen into a state of anarchy, as does any city undergoing governmental change.

Yet some people try to justify it: "The BBC's David Willis in Baghdad says a small minority of the population is carrying out the looting and most residents are hunkered down behind locked doors in fear.

However, he says that the mood on the streets is a sense that "the Iraqi regime had stolen from the people for years and now they are taking it back"."

Oh please. "Stealing back?" That's the best the BBC could do to justify it?

It's anarchy. It's chaos. Just call it that.

My head hurts. I've been wearing my hat from freshman year until my real hat gets washed. It's kind of small.

I think I need to go hat shopping soon. I can't expect my primary hat to be there ALL the time. I need backups.

Roy Williams is coming to Carolina. Woot!

I have a 15 page paper due tomorrow. Shouldn't be too bad. I think I'll nap right now and when I wake up hopefully the paper will have written itself.

The weather is so beautiful.

My 15 page paper went pretty well. I wanted to work on Tabulas today, but I got pretty lazy (kinda uncharacteristic!). This is perhaps the first time I had a chance to work on Tabulas but chose instead to watch TV.

I just think it's 'cause I'm pretty tired.

Question of the day:
Is it right for two gay guys who are in a relationship to room together in a dorm?

Last year I saw two flagarantly gay guys holding hands in the bottom floor of HoJo checking their mail. They were obviously roommates ...

Only when I started delving into times and stuff ... it's so confusing man. Why do we have to use such complicated systems with daylight savings and stuff! Why can't we all do simple offset from GMT?!

Unfortunately, Daylight Savings Time isn't just an American phenomenon. I discovered this when chatting with eng.

In any case, I'm enjoying a restful day. I've been playing a little bit of Panzer General; I just beat the game (again) so I should remain productive tomorrow.

PG is such a fun game; it's one of those old-school games I used to play on my 486. It's essentally a board game on the computer.

But the simplest games are the best, no? :)

Hope everyone is having a great Easter weekend!

There was once an architect who was asked to design a University campus. He eventually returned a plan back to the administrator's with all the buildings and green spaces laid out to the best of his abilities. But there was one key aspect missing.

"Why are there no walking paths?" the administration asked.

"I'll lay the walking paths down in one year where the grass is worn down," replied the architect.

User interface design is such an interesting area. Screwing up with make a potentially promising product into crap.

In any case, there's no surprise that I'm really focusing on UI for this site. Ideally in any website, an action should be complete with one click. Of course, this becomes rather hard with an administrator's panel like Tabulas which is loaded with features. However, there are still a lot of issues I need to work out.

Before I begin criticizing LJ and Xanga, I'm in no position as a lot of things with Tabulas still are not done. But I hope I've at least set a good foundation for UI here.

My main issue with LiveJournal has been its lack of aesthetics and lack of UI. A site should be usable from the start, not after learning how to use it. If you've used LJ, you'll know what I mean. I still cannot find half of the stuff I need to find on that site.

Xanga is also pretty annoying just due to its ... lack of navigation. Then again, there isn't much content on a per-page basis for Xanga. But having to click twice to get to my subscriptions page = annoying. Should be one-click.

Well, I've been trying to find a way to get commenting to work nicely. Although it would be preferable to do direct replies as a hierarchal tree (e.g. LJ), design limitations do not allow for this. Most designs aren't running full screen. I think when I rewrite the comments module I'll try to use color coding to somehow indicate threads.

It's a confusing matter, and I'm not sure there's a clear solution. Does anyone know one?

Hinton James, I shall miss thee.

I've lived in Hinton James, the arguably worst located dorm on campus. Situated about 15 minutes away by foot (I'm a slow walker), Hinton James is 10 floors modelled after ... the projects. No, I'm not kidding. They've managed to maximize the number of students they can cram in here with using as little space as possible.

My freshman year I got lucky and got A/C (1/4 of the rooms have A/C here, which gets somewhat annoying during the sweltering summers).

I really shouldn't use the word sweltering to describe the heat here. I think it's just habit actually. It's just like when you describe large crowds you always use the word "teem." Like ... "the teeming crowd surged forward." Etc. Chapel Hill is definitely not sweltering compared to Vietnam. Hoo, boy. One day in Saigon ... 35 Celsius with the bright sun beating down ... all with massive humidity. I would be outside for a minute (literally) before I felt lightheaded.

Ok, back to Hinton James.

Next year, I'm moving in with Yush and Sungjin into a triple in Lewis. I shall finally be close to campus!

I would of stayed in HoJo another year if they gave me a plaque or built some sort of Saddam-esque statue in front of Hinton James.

Sad.

The Iraq War has (for the most part) ended. Big surprise there. A whopping victory. Biiiig surprise.

So here comes the hard part. Settling the dust. Of course, those doves are starting to fess up that there were indeed issues turned out to be non-issues.

I really wish I had more actively blogged during the Iraq war instead of taking a backseat for the sake of being non-argumentative. In any case, I don't think there was ever a legitimate scare of Iraq creating a broader war nor was there a legitimate scare that WMDs would be used over a battlefield.

The big surprise is honestly how fast Baghdad fell. I didn't expect the protracted street right of Mogadishu; I expected a Stalingrad-esque starvation of the Republican Guard within the city while JDAMs continued to pound away at logistical structures. In the worst case scenario, I thought we would encircle Baghdad and take the rest of the country.

In any case, we cannot find Saddam or the WMDs. That is also a big surprise. Although I didn't expect a big cache of chemical weapons to be found, I did expect a few isolated incidents to spring up. This shows that (as much I hate to admit it), the UN inspectors were doing their job with some efficiency. Although Blix has increasingly been shown to be completely biased, there was some legitimacy to his claims that he couldn't find any WMDs.

The State Dept and the White House are claiming the WMDs are hard to find because:
1.) They have been destroyed
2.) They are indeed on mobile trains are continued to be ferried around
3.) Secret underground labs

Now, I have major issues with the last two. With the downfall of Saddam, there is no central structure to provide support... Although I have no doubt that there ARE WMDs still in Iraq, I begin to wonder if they WERE all destroyed prior to the war or if they were indeed moved to Syria (I hate to use conspiracy theory and I'm not sold on this idea yet).

In any case, the new candidates for Iraqi leadership ... are pretty expected. They are all moderates with a slight hatred of the US. But trust me, this is much better for OUR policy than what was before. And in a few years when the Iraqis have forgotten our removal of Saddam and start bitching about whatever the Iraqi leadership tells them to bitch about, we can all rejoice that at least they're not being murdered innocently.

There is still a lot of reconstruction work to do - and I'm really interested to see the political endgame of Iraq.

P.S. I still cannot understand those people who are saying, "War was not the answer. I agree Saddam was a bad man, but we should of found a peaceful resolution."

Sorry, but this irks me beyond belief. How can you say that after the war went relatively bloodless and Saddam WAS removed?!

And any arguments now about the war's legal legitimacy is bullcrap. Both sides have so much ammunition I don't think any of us want to wade into that battlefield.

Two slight disturbances in the blogging world today.

One, there was the announcement of an "invisible" blog (Invisablog). Basically you can make anonymous posts ...

Now does anyone see what's wrong with this? The point of blogging is to tell people about YOUR life ... specific to YOUR experiences. Whether you use an alias an not post much information about yourself (Mad Dog) or you tell people about your personal life (this blog!), there's still a level of accountability.

Now, anyone can register one of these invisiablogs, claim to be a Chinese dissident, and no one can deny it. This undermines the credibility of the blog ...

In more credible news, the Movable Type team announced that they're going to take Movable Type and make it turnkey ... basically meaning it's exactly what I'm trying to do with Tabulas. Their new site is TypePad. This poses a HUGE threat to me because it's _exactly_ what I'm trying to do.

Knowing MT's track record of making great scripts with good features, this has me slightly worried. They also are very standards compliant, which is something I should be striving to do but I ultimately ignore because of my own laziness.

In all honesty, I'm worried. I cannot compete against MT, a paid venture with people experienced in development by myself. But I'll be damned if I roll over and die. I think ultimately I can match Xanga and Blogger (I honestly don't think those two are all that great), and I might be able to match LiveJournal ... but if TypePad is everything it's hyped to be, I might have trouble on that front.

This is, of course, good and bad news. The good news is now there's a sense of urgency and something really pushing me to make this site much better.

The bad news is ... there's more competition in the increasingly crowded weblog community. There are only a limited number of people who want to post blogs ... sigh.

In any case, I have a few exciting developments coming along for Tabulas. First, of course, is the development of increased security as well as cookes for extended logins. I know the issue with being logged out is annoying (to say the least)...

But the most exciting development for me, at least, is going to be the ability to cross-post into your Xanga and LiveJournal accounts whenever you post here. WoooO! Due to the general way the Internet works, you can post to forms that aren't on your site. This is of course somewhat a pain if you're a server administrator and someone is using your form to send e-mails ... but on other hand it's really useful.

And I do plan on making a WYSIWYG editor. I think I'll do that once I get logins working ... so that all you non-HTML literate people can make cool little entries filled with font tags and such!

Is "1" on the refridgerator the coldest or is "10?"

I really don't want to experiment and find out once all our food spoils.

Thanks.

The last week of school comes to a close. I have a 10 page paper and a 15 minute presentation tomorrow. Then I'm done until exams.

I got a few webdesign jobs to hold me for the summer. I also have a few non-profit favors I'm doing for people. As time goes on, I find my heart hardening; I'm not as nice as I used to be. I'm not sure what it is, but I think life has kicked me in the butt real hard and now I'm starting to worry about the future and a lot less about peope's feelings.

In any case, this weekend should be nice and busy (and relaxing, hopefully).

I've for some reason taken a liking to the one Air Supply hit ("All out of Love"). Hehe. It's a decent song.

In any case, time to learn more about the Mexican financial crisis of 1994 and nanocomputers.

Here I am ... up at 5 am. Working on my econ paper. I just finished working on my chemistry presentation on biological computers ... nanotech.

I'm tired. I wish school was out. I need some time away from school.

I wonder what I'll do this summer. Hopefully I'll be productive. I can't stop listening to "The Remedy" by Jason Mraz.

"I won't worry my life away ..."

The warm North Carolina night. Two strangers, coming from two different places, meet. They share the bonds of brotherhood briefly. They exchange stories and understand each other. Then they reach the end of the road. There they must depart and go live their own lives.

There is a lot of talk about the Iraqi war being illegitimate and illegal.

I will venture a guess and say that not many of us have degrees in international law, so none of us can really argue beyond shallow arguments. Reading a few "real" international law arguments as well as talking to a few law students studying international law, there is enough ammunition for both sides of the argument. So we can quickly discount that argument.

Now, as for the argument that the war is "illegitimate," I would really like to know what that means. The war is not a unilateral engagement; 30 countries have joined the coalition and have risked political power. So among the 30 nations, we have a consensus. Furthermore, the Iraqi people have welcomed the removal of Saddam Hussein (although I will admit they have not been so keen on US forces on their soil)... this means in the Iraqi peoples' eyes it's legtimate.

So now again I ask, why is it not illegitimate? Most people will answer: "Because the UN never granted its blessing."

Let us get one thing straight: The UN has _nothing_ to do with legitimacy. The UN has only "officially" sanctioned 3 wars; every other military operation has been "illegitimate." Where were the critics then? This again ties in with my argument that the anti-war crowd is actually anti-Bush. Their idiocy and inability to separate the two basically put them into one camp.

Furthermore, the UN only sactions wars on two grounds:
1.) Pure self-defense
2.) Wars "sanctioned" by the Security Council

Does anyone see the obvious hypocrisy here? Somehow a country that manages to get a coalition of 30 countries is illegitimate, but if you get the backing of a 15-member "council," the war becomes legitimate? All the 15-member council does is give a UN "ok" to the war. Now you wonder, what does that mean?

Not a damn thing.

So the next time you find someone arguing the war in Iraq is illegitimate, ask them why. You'll quickly find they'll be for a loss of words if you debate them using the template I just gave you.

By the way, the war is legitimate for the following reasons:
1.) It is not a unilateral engagement. 30 countries have joined a coalition to remove Saddam from power.
2.) The Iraqi people have welcomed this war as a liberation from Saddam. This is indicative that the Iraqi people view this war as being justified, and thus legitimate.

Much to my mother's chagrin, I don't take much notice of the SARs virus. In case you've been living in a hole, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) is a virus that has killed a bunch of people in China; it's kind of like the flu. You get a high fever and can die.

In any case, I find it highly amusing that people are limiting their travel plans because of SARS. The WHO (World Health Organization) officially lists about 5000 infected with 318 people dead. Now, as much as the media portrayed this as an "epidemic," it really isn't. It's just the first punch from a new unknown type of virus that can kill us.

I personally do not worry too much about SARS and I would not make any personal changes to my travel plans (if my plans to travel to China had gone through ... sigh). Too many people nowadays expect an absolute victory. SARS is clearly a virus that will stay around for a while; we may even have to live with it, much like AIDS and HIV.

I'm not at all saying that SARS is not deadly. The fact that it can kill people besides the young and the elderly attest to its seriousness. But jeez, don't get into a big paranoid frenzy about where you're going to travel because of SARS.

It's a scary thought, but the world is changing. Outbreaks like the SARS virus are ont going to be uncommon - as the world markets become more integrated, stuff like this is going to happen a lot. There is nothing you can do to prevent stuff like this from happening.

So just live.

On a somewhat related note, I've come to the realization that I'm somewhat a fatalist. Perhaps it's the the most logical transition that arose from my abrupt "departure" from the church three years ago. I'm not sure what it is, but I know I act in a very fatalistic manner. I was telling Yush, "You know, I wouldn't worry about the SARS virus if I was travelling to China. If I'm fated to die in China from the SARS virus, then so be it."

Guess it's just a really relaxing thought. Perhaps Christians view God as the ultimate comfort; I view fate as the ultimate comfort. It helps me sleep at night.

Words cannot describe how angry I'm feeling right now.

I spent about ... 2 hours trying to build an upgrade script only to find out that PHP's safe mode would restrict any changes. Basically ... everything I did for 2 hours was worthless.

I hate computers.

So the first big change to the administrator's that i had planned took place.

I'm just testing this out. Go test yours out, too ;)

I was really getting sick of how cruddy the old system looked. This one looks a bit busier, but is a lot more efficient in space usage. Plus finally I got the input text box a little bit bigger. Blah blah.

If this works, this is the first post that has successfully been crossposted in my Xanga, Livejournal, and Tabulas. Har har!

It's amazing how much my laziness pushes me to get stuff done ... heh heh.

So I slept like 6 hours ... except I slept from 11am to 5pm. Yush and Sung (my roommates for next year) came and woke my lazy ass up. We went to NeoChina, which is arguably the second best Chinese restaurant in this area (second only to Eastern Lights, which is closed on Mondays (?!?!?!?!?!).

Anyways, I'm doing some econ reading now ... fun fun fun!

Ok, so I finally think I'm worthy enough to call what I'm doing "programming" instead of simply "scripting." Of course, it's not really mind-challenging type work that I'm doing ... but it's still an accomplishment.

It's kind of amusing that the production cycle isn't going the way I thought it would be. I constantly find myself rewriting code and saying "What the heck was i thinking when I wrote that?!" And of course, I only work on features that I want; I guess that's a positive thing. All the recent feautures you see are the ones that I thought were severely lacking; this is partially why the XML, autolinking, and smilies don't work yet. In any case, I'm getting pretty satisfied with the way this site is going.

I was pretty pissed last night because I was trying to write an upgrade script to switch the gallery system over to a more ... standardized system. Right now all the three types of images (entry attachments, actual "big' images, and thumbnail images) are being stored in separate folders, but they're still being stored in one folder.

The upgrade script I wrote detected whose images were whose, then simply moved them to a subfolder (based on your userid) and upgraded the databases. I had also fixed up all the output pages and it was working nice ... except uploading didn't work because of PHP Safe Mode.

The server restriction right now is killing me. I really need to a get a separate server for this site. I've written so many modules and upgrade scripts that can't run until safe mode is off, and I'm definitely not doing that since it's currently being hosted off the same box that I'm hosting the NeoPages.net network (which recently counted 150+ free sites on it!).

But cool things that I could do if I had my own server for Tabulas:
Subdomain site access (http://username.tabulas.com) instead of the way it works now. Tony gave me the great idea of doing the /~user/ as a temporary placeholder instead of /users/username/ off the main domain. I also have written an awesome "spellchecking" feature, but again this requires PHP Safe Mode off because it has to execute the Aspell library. And of course, the gallery move.

In other related news, I think Alex has agreed to help me hack a Java applet that'll allow you to drag and drop images from your desktop to your Tabulas! And of course, Neeraj has been very patient in waiting for me to write the data filtering portion of audiomatch. I'm really looking forward to the first few weeks of summer when I can really focus a lot on these.

Of course, this summer I will also be studying for MCATs and LSATs. Hopefully an 8 hour exam will be enough to offset 4 years of crappy grades.

I also need to make a few more skins; as I told Neeraj, the skinning will filter out the good sites from the best sites. You can write a bad-ass script with great programming, but if you have a shit interface it doesn't mean anything. It's funny cause a lot of initial reactions to the beta launch of Tabulas was, "It seems really powerful and flexible." Of course, since I wrote it, I have kind of the "dirty" look of the site.

But really. Good skinning goes a long way. But I'm also working on creating clean, eloquent code so that if I ever release the source code (which is something I would like to do under GPL) people won't mock me for writing the worst code.

And in completely unrelated news, I finally figured out a good schema for handling if and else statements. Maybe it's the feminine part of me, but I like it when code LOOKS clean. The structure.

I had trouble earlier trying to figure out how I should structure the if and else statements, but I finally figured it out. It saves space, and looks cool.

I'm such a dork.

debates debates.

i looked into the inline wysiwyg editors (it's the thing in xanga premium that lets you actively bold and italicize and switch fonts and colors within the textarea ... so you can immediately see your change) and i built one that works.

the question is, *do* i want to implement it? i mean, it seems to be used primarily by teenyboppers ... and i'm trying not to draw in a massive flood of freeloaders. at the same time, it is a nifty utility (if you're running internet explorer) that could help people convert over ...

but of course, there runs an ethical question. i'm (obviously) utilizing the cross-posting utility to post to my tabulas, xanga, and LJ at the same time. if someone in theory is using xanga, and crossposts using tabulas, but utilizes my editor (which is a service that is offered to people who pay for xanga), am i crossing some sort of ethical line?

i'm leaning more towards "no" because it's up to xanga to prevent users from utilizing their posting form. but then again, if someone leaves the vault door open to a bank, and someone steals the money, it doesn't mean it's right.

argh. in any case, i will probably implement this new utility tomorrow. so all you xangans who want to utilize an easy click-interface to make your entries pretty, go register your tabulas today. it has free image hosting, too.

come on... you know you want to.

lifes so weird. a few short hours ago, i was stressing about my econ exam and nuthin seemed to be going right. but this morning, after i finished the exam (i did well on it btw) the world just seemed to be alot nicer. i really enjoyed the walk back to my dorm, while listening to some phat beats- i havent had a relaxing walk by myself in quite a while. i also think i had the best breakfast ever at lenoir today. the eggs, bacon, biscuit and gravy, and hashbrowns were deeeeeeeeeelicious! and the lunch lady being super nice didnt hurt either.

lately i've been obsessed with this game that tests ur reaction time. i can't seem to get it any lower than 0.17 for an average. but once i got a 0.018 (i dunno how i did it, maybe im psychic). try it out and tell me what u get :| http://www.fetchfido.co.uk/games/reaction/reaction_test.htm

in other news, i am the alpha male of the 3 roommates next year! (yush "the second PID" ho, seeeeeeeong "i'm too sissy to each jjambbong at eastern lights so i'll sell out and get jjajaamyun while the white boy alex actually gets jjambong" choi, and roy "alpha male" kim)

Yo download Equilibrium NOW here. It's a 700 meg divx, so be careful.

If you don't know what Equilibrium was, it was an indy flick that was released last year and it's based on Fahrenheit 451. It was done with only a $20mil budget ... but the movie is great. If you're a guy, you'll love it. If you're a girl, you probably won't.

I don't know. Go download it and watch it.

I'm buying the DVD (it comes out in a few days). Anyone wanna send me some money ;)

I really miss travelling. Instead of travelling this summer, I will be locked down in Chapel Chill studying my butt off for the MCATs. But in any case, I have decided to do a "photoblog" of sorts and start posting pictures on a daily basis now that I have an easy way of doing such a thing.

So to begin ...

I wasn't going to post more pictures, but Joon Q's incessant badgering last night (Saying Lakers suck, saying I ain't thug, saying Kobe ain't thug, making fun of Forte) requires swift and decisive action.

These are "incriminating" pictures of fobby Joon in Korea. I know I got some more somewhere ... Joon ain't hard man. When he was in Korea, he kept singing along with Boa and Jangnara.

What a soft punk.

(I'm just screwing. In retrospect, Joon was probably the perfect travelmate for Korea. He was able to hold the thug back in me laying the smack down on everybody hahahahaha).