Been thinking a lot lately. This picture is from Vietnam at a place whose name escapes me at the moment. It's by Hue.

Sorry if this post is a little ... light. I had a horrible heat exhaustion episode today - didn't drink enough water before biking. I was passed out in Lenoir for about 10 minutes while I tried to recover. This happened once before with Fer ... it really sucks. I was pretty disoriented and couldn't think very straight at dinner ... still feeling a little disoriented.

In any case, the RIAA settled with college students accused of violating the DMCA. These kids are paying thousands of dollars each year to the RIAA until 2006.

Bullshit. These kids built spidering programs that spidered the network and made it easier to find files; they didn't facilitate nor did they condone the transfer of MP3s.

It's really scary how much power corporations have - the Bush administration needs to really push for reform of a lot of these laws. But then again, the Bush administration is not really capable of pulling off even decent domestic policy. F'ing tards.

There was also news a few days ago that the Treasury Department needs their spending limit raised to some ridiculous amount in order to avoid defaulting on interest payments on their T-bills.

Whatever administration comes next needs to forget about politics and tighten America's financial belt. The excessive spending by Dubya is not necessary - we need to cut back on military spending. As much as it's useful to have a military that can kick anyone's ass in a period of a few months, we cannot afford it. We are the world's superpower, but that does not imply that we are omniscient.

I have a slightly conservative leaning, so this is also where I argue that we need to either reform Social Security or get rid of it. Put the burden of planning for the future on the individual or on corporations.

Also get rid of f'ing tax breaks for corporations. Their endless drive for ultimate profitiability as well as their little loopholes for getting out of taxes is ridiculous. But it's not entirely their fault - the tax code system for America needs to be resimplified.

I guess as an analogy, we're building more and more stuff on top of a system that I believe is fundamentally weak (due to its complexity). If we could revamp the tax system to be more efficient, it'd do wonders.

Whoever the next President is... please fix our nation. It's br0ke.

I wish someone would pet me ... I don't mind the stress.

Most of you know that I've decided to join Yush and Sung in 305 Lewis (a wonderful triple in luxurious north campus.

I am looking forward to next year. Why? Well, Yush and I have decided to start a social experiment of sorts. The question: How long does it take to completely break a defiant spirit? The goal is to get Sung to break down and cry in front of us. We will be subjecting him to verbal (and physical sometimes) abuse on a daily basis, as well as emotional warfare.

We are all aware of Sung's love for CS. What happens when he comes back to find CS uninstalled? What happens when he comes back to find he traded away all his hot players on his fantasy team? What happens when he's constantly under secret webcam surveillance 24/7?

These types of questions will all be answered next year; in fact I think I'll create a webpage for this project.

The warfare has already started; Yush and I started laying it on Sung, getting him all worried that Yush and I hadn't actually registered him for our room (so he would think he was "roomless"). We kept joking that we only got a double and whatnot ...

In any case, I got an e-mail today from the nice people at UNC housing, "confirming" our room. I was curious about this e-mail so I asked Yush. Apparently Sung in his fear that we hadn't actually registered him for our room, took the initiative and found out whether he DID have a room.

Haha. The war begins. Sung things this is all a joke. Ok with me... it'll just make it easier to hit him with something when he's not expecting it.

How long does it take to completely break a defiant spirit? I'll let you know next year.

I don't care. I can't be thug all the time. Sulhye sent me this flash file and I love it. It's so cutesy. The song is really good, too!

Argh ok. Enough of this foolishness.

THUG LIFE!!!

Edit: Damn I'm posting a lot tonight. Guess it's cause I have no exams until Monday, so I kinda feel like blowing everything off and doing nothing.

Methinks I'm going to sleep and wake up; if no one has any dinner plans I'll probably head on home and eat some dinner at home. My mom is the best damn chef. I wanna learn some of her secrets, but she won't teach me! I am determined to learn, however.

I really need to fix up blogrings on this site. It's really blowing chunks. I also need to figure out how to make adding new templates for extended user much easier. It's such a pain because I have to create the template and then create a separate CSS file so people can edit their styles individually. I also need to fix up the way galleries work.

Sigh. My work never ends. I think I may take Tabulas out of beta soon. What does this mean? IT MEANS YOU FREELOADING BASTARDS WILL HAVE TO PAY TO USE TABULAS. MWAHAHAHAHAHA. Just kidding.

I have to wonder about why people are so critical of change. The best example of this I've seen is when a band changes its style or image ... suddenly they're "sell-outs" and they're not "real" anymore. What's up with that, you elitist assholes?

Just because people change doesn't mean they're doing it to personally offend you. And what exactly is wrong with changing for the sake of making money? We all need to eat.

I think the best explanation is that people are too insecure with themselves so they transpose themselves by becoming a band groupie; kind of like the band is supposed to represent them. Then, when the band grows up changes its style, there's a feeling of betrayal as the one band that used to define them is no longer ...

Whatever. Quit being an elitist. People change. Learn to accept it rather than being critical of it.

F'ing McCarthyism at its worst. Homeland Security and the Patriot Acts need to be REPEALED.

Gary Hart, a Democrat, has started blogging. This will be the first step towards reducing the lack of communication between our political leaders and the people. Although I don't agree with a lot of what Mr Hart says, I can see how he thinks and thus this gives me more respect for him. This should help to make people more aware of situations and be able to vote for the right people.

Good job, Gary. And may the Democrats regain their former glory (and I'm not talking under Clinton).

Edit: Check out this article on Iraq and the "bad reporting" by slanted media (which I'm not necessarily saying is a bad thing) and there's recent news of the UN being incapacitated in Congo.

I didn't sleep last night due to work and shtuff. I've been slowly hacking away at this site, trying to get new stuff working. I think I'm going to take some time and develop a cool feature I haven't really seen implemented too well on the other sites - journal management via e-mail.

In any case, I took that stupid Dante's Inferno test that everyone else is taking, and surprise surprise:
The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Moderate
Level 2 (Lustful)	Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Divine Comedy Inferno Test

Our power went out today - I was so helpless without it. What was I to do?! I sat around on the futon and couldn't think of a thing to do (besides study, which I did!). After showering, I went home to eat some bibimbap and hang out with my lil' sister and my parents. My little sister is growing up! She's going to be in high school (daaagggg) next year. I'm agonna beat up any boys that get close to her though. Har har. Stay away!

My sister got a Korean IRiver that she was kind enough to loan me through my hell week; I also got a CD that she listens to. So now I can catch up with all the "new" and "hip" music that youngsters listen to (sadly, it isn't too different than what I already listen to). I came back, did some more work on Tabulas, then went to sleep.... until 4am!

Yush took me to Harris Teeter, the one place I can never learn my lessons. NEVER GO TO HARRIS TEETER WHEN YOU'RE FRICKING STARVING. $30 later, I came back and have been working a lil' bit on Tabulas.

Now it's study time. YES!

P.S. I cannot stop listening to AFI's "Girl's Not Grey." It's so catchy with its power chords and harmodic melodies.

P.P.S. I got new sandals - a sad day. I've had to "retire" my old sandals which have served me well for a year a half now - those were my beloved companions in Asia. Oh well. They've ripped up completely ... sigh.

What *is* it about Sean Paul's "Get Busy" that is so catchy?

And why am I so tired? Blaaaahhhhh.

I'm tired, hungry, and I have stuff to move. Oh yeah, finals too. Crap.

I just finished my organic chem takehome test. Wooooo.

But I missed Cowboy Bebop last night (boo). That is one frickin' good show; I can't not watch it. But I was way too tired last night to watch it. I passed out after Eastern Lights with Yush. I don't really remember what we talked about; I was seriously halfdead from fatigue. haha.

I think we're watching X2 tonight ... and I gotta study for wonderful econ tonight! YEAAAAHHHH.

It's really sad to see how certain morals we once held in the US are quickly degraded. One of the things I hope people understand is that the United States is not a democracy - we're a republic. Furthermore, it's not so clear that democracy is such a good thing in itself. Much like the word "liberal" has been thrown around so much that it's lost it's real meaning (a classical liberal is today's Republican), "democracy" has also lost it's meaning.

I guess today, more than ever, democracy simply means a government where the peope can ultimately decide things. But a true democracy is one where 51% of any vote is the "right decision." Essentially this leads to the situation where 51% of the people can oppress 49% of the people.

The Republic is set-up so that a few people, whose power is still weakened by a balance between people and government, can make the best decisions for the whole of the people. The recent sharp divide over Iraq is not an indication our government has failed - it's an indication that it's working.

Although this would be open to debate, I personally feel that the situation in Iraq has been more than beneficial to the coalition. Every day we find more evidence of terrorist links between Hussein's government and various terrorist groups. On a humanitarian level, we're finding stories of the atrocities commited by the Hussein government against its people - a situation that would lead Locke to push the Iraqi people to overthrow their rulers. Because of the strength of will of our government, they were able to face the opposition and clearly outline a plan of decisive action (unlike other previous Presidents who shall remain unnamed).

In any case, the current political situation worries me ... a lot. The increasing power of the government (which I am strongly against), coupled with the reduction in taxes (bad) with a soaring government budget (really bad) is not leading to a situation 5 years down the line that I would be happy about.

The problem is not Bush, although I'm sure you Bush bashers would love to blame him. The problems lie fundamentally deeper - it's in the way our actual political parties run. In theory we have a system where two supposedly opposing parties run to help keep things in balance. More than ever, the previous election made us realize that these parties are not different at all - whatever theological differences their parties state, they are both backed by Big Business and their generous financial contributions.

We've degraded into a plutocracy of sorts where money buys power. So how do we fix this?

It's not too easy to fix a situation where we have to reform the people in power. I'm honestly not even sure what measures would have to be taken in order to achieve such an ends. All I know is that with every passing election, it becomes more clear that the power of Big Business is increasing. The DMCA was only the first step - the very fact that a group of corporations is able to push such a broad and vague law into legislation is a scary thought.

I don't really like any of the politicians - watching the Democratic debates just made me feel dirtier. Here are right upper-class men who are arguing over nuances in health care and other things when the very issues that are most important to the citizens (an erosion of rights) are being ignored. Why does no one tackle the ludicrous Patriot Acts? Why does no one talk about corporate scandals?

I'm not a fan of Bush, but I'm also not stupid enough to realize that he's the cause of our problems - we would be in the exact same boat with Al Gore (actually, we probably would be worse off since he's the most indecisive person ever).

The American educational system has completely eroded the skill of critical thinking. Everywhere I turn I see ludicrous arguments based on weak links that have been propagated by reading CNN.

I'm not going to bother defending arguments that I'm not a critical thinker myself - although I don't feel that my critical thinking is perhaps up to the level of someothers, at least I try.

Most people when they debate something (whether it's something I agree with or not) like to take arguments already given to them instead of trying to figure out what they really feel. And that pisses me off.

I'm not going to be a naysayer and state that our power is declining as a country - but as a race, we're definitely suffering. The only reason why the US will continue to be a power is because we allow for free thinking - although we clearly lack a development in critical thinking, we still have an edge over countries like China that demand that their citizens think in a certain way.

Whatever.

So I just got back from X2. It is 1000000 times better than the first one (I honestly thought the first one was mediocre), and it is a VERY good movie overall.

HOWEVER ...

(Note: I used to be a Marvel dork so I'm going to act in my elitist manner ...)

I seriously worry about the future of the series. I really don't like how they're taking characters out of their context. What is Colossus doing at the school? Where is his Russian accent? We can know from the fact that they avoided Colossus' history that they're probably never going to introduce Omega Red (which is the biggest shame in the world, because he is seriously badass).

Now, I worry because of the history of the TV/movie industry to take comics and "convert it for the masses." Sure, all the Superman TV series have been good (Lois and Clark is a good example) in the beginning, but they soon turned it into some sort of love triangle story.

I'm seeing more and more that they're trying to develop Iceman/Rogue (WTF!?!?!?!?! ROGUE = GAMBIT ... AND WHERE IS GAMBIT?!) and Wolverine/Cyclops/Jean Grey ... I don't want to turn this into a love triangle thing. And why did they have to murder Wolverine's love interest? Obviously because they want to develop more on the love triangle.

Now, everyone is all excited to see Phoenix. I'm really not. This can only lead to a worsening situation (in the context of diverging from the real plotline). They already killed Jean Grey in a weird manner (she does from radiation after the X-men defeat the Sentinels in space) ... to resurrect Jean as the Phoenix is only asking for trouble. Where is Mastermind? And what about Xavier's relationship to Sh'iar?

I realize that they gotta plug as many holes as they can in the storyline without diverging too much into subplots ... but this is troubling when they hint at Phoenix without giving it a proper context. What if she does come back? Then what?

Are they going to bother with the whole Black Queen / Dark Phoenix storyline?

And what about the whole Cyclops/X-Factor/Cable/Goblin Queen/Mr. Sinister story now that Jean is dead? As the movies progress, there can only be more diverging from the plot and more atrocious destruction of well-developed characters (I especially cringe at the injustice they did to Colossus ... I can only imagine what they're going to do with Gambit).

Oigh.

Edit: I just remembered something mildly amusing ... I was sitting next to the infamous Soober during X-Men. MAN, HE HAS A DIRTY MOUTH. Every few minutes he'd whisper, "Oh shit. Oh shit."

Man. Someone needs to clean his mouth. That's why that one smiley face here with CENSORED across his mouth (:soob:) is called 'soob.'

P.P.S. I did a little research, and discovered that Gambit doesn't actually join the X-Men until he helps Storm in Illinois ... this happens later.

But they're still jacking the storyline.

If you know anyone that needs a film scanner, please let them know:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2926877794. I'm trying to do one of two things:

1.) Recoup some short-term cash (my cash flow is much too negative for my liking
2.) Save up to buy the Canon D10 DSLR when it hits under $1K (which won't be for another half year I'm assuming)
3.) Fix up my life. It's in such shambles.

As soon as I get through with my final today (Turchi), I'm coming back and busting my ass on Tabulas. I'm going to completely revamp the styles system; try to implement some order to the "standard" journal styling templates.

I jammed my programming thumb in basketball.

Sung and John have sick game. I learned this the hard way yesterday.

I need to learn how to play basketball. It's so fun.

This post is dedicated to the funniest man alive, oliver sum-ping, who reminded me of this story while he was sending me a "chinese propaganda video."

This past summer I was in Vietnam, which was my first visit to a "closed" communist country. Of course, what happens when you put a hardheaded asshole like me in a country where speaking out could potentially land you in jail?

Well nothing. But there was a close call.

I visited the old VC bases outside of Saigon (in Cu Chi) ... I was forced to watch a 20 minute "video" about Cu Chi by myself in a room with a Vietnamese soldier. There was no one else there (it wasn't because they meant this to happen, there was just no one else there that day). The guard (who was a woman, so it wasn't as scary as it could of been) just watched me the whole time while I watched the video.

Now, the video (I thought, at least) would be some sort of "educational" story about the history of Cu Chi. However, minutes after the video started it became evident ot me that this video was made right after the Vietnam War; the quality was bad and the .. ideological was incredibly humorous.

The whole video basically touched on a few facts:
1.) The innocent villagers around Cu Chi loved to farm and lived in harmony with nature until ...
2.) The bloodthirsty Americans came with their warmongering ways and destroyed everything.

(Disclaimer: I personally feel the Vietnam War was wrong and I do not deny that we were very aggressive and I have no doubt the villagers *did* love farming before the Vietnam War ... there .. phew.. protection from reprisals!).

In any case, the humor was in the fact that this exactly like those stories you heard of governments REALLY twisting facts around. The video progressed to the heroic stories of the peasants destroying the armed forces singlehandedly with their resourcefulness and such.

I don't know. I was about to laugh just because of how ridiculous the movie was (NOT BECAUSE IT WASN'T TRUE, BUT BECAUSE OF THE MANNER IT WAS PRESENTED) ... I guess you had to have been there.

I had to bite my lip lest I pissed off the guard with the gun ... heh.

Oh well. Ok, so it wasn't as great of a post as I had wanted it to. I guess I'm saving all my BRAIN POWER for my analytical chem final. Bahnesssssss!

I got an email from the UNC Kasa listserve promoting the support of HR133.

What is it?

What the bill does:

The legislation provides the U.S. Department of
Education with the authority to provide grants of
assistance to higher education institutions that have
at least 10% Asian American and Pacific Islander
undergraduate enrollment to enable such institutions
to improve and expand their capacity to serve Asian
Americans and Pacific Islanders. Qualifying
institutions would have to meet certain criteria and
priority consideration will be given to institutions
that serve a significant percentage of low-income
students.

Whoa, what a dangerous game we're playing. As much as I'd love to see more money allotted to Asian-American studies in colleges, this is an incredibly dangerous road.

The keywords that you see there are at least 10% ... this indirectly supports the fulfillment of quotas by colleges. Imagine if you're the Chancellor of an unnamed college with an APA population of 9%. What are you going to do next year to get some extra money?

Of course, you'll admit enough students to fulfill that magical 10% quota so you can get some more money for the cash-strapped coffers.

This also goes back to a key argument that I really dislike: The ability of small interest groups to push their own agendas, slowly leaking money away from Congress. You can blame whatever political party you want, but it all boils own to special interest groups pushing their own agendas that create our incredibly large deficit. Although I'm not implying that the APA is some push-off minority, but where do you draw the line where special interest groups do not get money?

True, the establishment of APA studies would be beneficial, but not at the cost of other programs which might be more meaningful. Of course, it's hard to figure out where this money is coming from:

From where will the funding come?

This legislation establishes a new program to be
funded under the Higher Education Act. It will not
affect other minority serving institutions and would
require a separate appropriation.

Translation: We'll just magically find the money somewhere, but don't worry, we won't steal from other minorities!

The bill is based on a very dangerous ground; everything I feel about affirmative action and special interest groups have led me to strongly discourage the support for this bill based on those principles. The establishment of APA groups should be funded through the private sector ...

Do not turn to the government to be your father. That is not the role of the government.

I know you're reading this and you either strongly agree or disagree. I'm open to debate. If something is unclear about my stance, let me know.

There's been some buzz about some article that some guy wrote (sorry, both fail my memory and I'm too lazy to look for them while at UL "studying"), but the main gist of the article was that hackers were more similar to artists than the "traditional" CS person... they were more creative and eloquent than their engineering counterparts... I'm not really sure where I'm going with this.

Basically what the article said was that these were the glory days for hacking (hacking is not malicious ... that is called "cracking")... with the advent of Linux and the real push towards computing power and the development of "smart" programs ... maybe a few years down the line we'll have some really kickass programs.

But in any case, this advanced computing power is not going to come cheap. More than anything, the past few weeks of development (I'm doing this entirely within the context of the tabulas/audiomatch development) has taught me that metadata is important. What *is* metadata? Metadata is secondary information that accompanies primary information; not only the entry, but what time it was posted, the mood of the person ... in an audiomatch context, what song was played before, what time of the day ... in an OS setting, what programs are being executed, etc... this helps computers get "smart" about what's happening.

But this comes at a cost of privacy. All this data could fall into the wrong hands and be turned against you, the end user.

Ok, well random thoughts. More on this later, for now ... CHEMISTRY!

Oh yeah, I wanted to really quickly wish my sister a belated happy birthday. =) She's 14 now. Scary.

(her bday is may 7th, but i'm a horrible brother and i forgot).

happy birthday, sis.

I HATE the DiGiorno commercials.

In any case, I'm back at home now ... it's so weird to be home again. I guess as a rising senior, I've gotten used to this transition ... but I miss everyone at Carolina and the freedom and independence that I used to have.

But it's good. I have more time to kick back, chill out, work on Tabulas and Audiomatch, and study for MCATs. I think I'll start playing some piano again ...

Well... time to go work on Tabulas.

Edit later:
Man, I am so sick of reading about websites that say "Oh Google should be scared cause MICROSOFT is getting interested."

Any comparison by a journalist between the Microsoft/Netscape story and Microsoft/Google thing automatically loses respect in my opinion. Although partly MS won against Netscape because of it's control over Windows ... it also created a better product. This is the key point people miss... Netscape 4.x was one of the worst products to ever be released (short of all the RealPlayers) ... if NS was the better product, I would most definitely of used it over MS IE regardless.

NS 4.x (and NS as a whole) died because they managed to isolate everybody: the end-users, the corporate world ...

Been MIA. Don't really feel like blogging.

Be back in a bit.

Read this article for more info...

According to Clayton the blueprint for the perfect film is for it to have: 30 percent action, 17 percent comedy, 13 percent good versus evil, 12 percent sex/romance, 10 percent special effects, 10 percent plot and eight percent music.

I've got the perfect movie then. How about a movie about the Falkland Island invasions (actual footage used!) (action) where the heroic British troops liberate these beautiful islands from the evil money grubbing Argentinians (good vs. evil) with a subplot of a secret love between Margaret Thatcher and Leopoldo Galtieri (romance, I hope to god there's no sex) with a moving soundtrack by an aging crappy musician like Madonna (music). Of course, the whole situation is a subtle comedy (comedy). Of course we'll have the Fist of Legend ripoff action scenes with wire-fu (special effects) in close combat between the British and Argentinian troops.

Wow, I need to write this script. It'll be a box office HIT! Chris, bust out your camera and let's head to the Falklands to start shooting this film!

On a more serious note, Shiri fit a lot of the requirements for 'movie success.' Man, I loved that movie. Kissinggurami!

Me, Neeraj, Alex, Alex, Alfish, Hao, Jason, James, etc. went to see Matrix: Reloaded at Southpoint. Because I don't want to be inconsiderate to those who have not yet seen this movie, I will continue this entry as a link. Click below to continue ... For those who have not yet seen it, GO SEE IT! AGAIN, I WARN YOU, MY REVIEW IS SPOILERS UPON SPOILERS! DO NOT READ IT UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN IT!
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Some more thoughts

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Ok this is going to be a retarded request, but Dawson's Creek ended yesterday. Thank God.

What happened? Did Joey and Dawson get married? Who died? Who was the one harboring the 'big secret?'

Someone tell me, thanks.

I'm sorry. This is the last one. I hate how everyone tries to be smart and analyze the Matrix, but I do it too. Damnit. I mean, the story at this point can be taken in any direction it wants to be, but I can't help talk about it because the movie was so good.
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I've finally decided to be a hater online and start pasting people.

I was originally gonna paste the Queens, but I watched them play tonight and my hatred for them diminished slightly. Even though Joon Q has made it a mission to hate on me all the time, I will not TAKE HIS OFFER.

Instead I'm going to hate on the Spurs. I HATE THE SPURS. Besides knocking out the RIGHTFUL champions ... they also can't play ball worth a crap. Yes, I said it. They can suck my left nut.

I hate the way Duncan carries himself. He's so emotionless. And Parker? He carries himself like an arrogant little Frenchman. I'm also sorry, but I don't like David Robinson. What's the big deal? He's old. He's "one of the greats." Whatever man. Just retire. I don't care.

But I gotta say, Ginobili is a baller. He's cool. Way too good for the Spurs. Hopefully he goes away.

Queens, I hope you spank the Mavs on Saturday and then SWEEP the Spurs. I hate the Spurs.

Man, so much hate. But Joon brings out the worst in me. He was hatin' on me all day, saying stuff like Trinity ain't wack (she is wack) and he was hating on Jada Pinkett Smith.

I've just been busting my ass on Tabulas; there's a whole bunch of features coming out soon. I'm rewritten a lot of the way data displays in your admin panel (better UI). There aren't too many new features, but the features that are implemented are (hopefully) pretty useful.

I noticed today that a lot of picture frames in my parents' house is crooked. I spent a lot of time fixing all those up ...

Diane Lane is gorgeous. I saw Hardball with Keanu Reeves and Diane Lane on DVD... great movie. Yesterday TNT played 'Art of War' and 'Murder at 1600;' the latter also had Diane Lane.

In any case, I've been tossing around an idea for a new PHP project. I may take a short leave from Tabulas once I've released the next 'huge' batch of updates (which will actually take it to almost-almost 'non-beta' release) to work on this new thing.

The new project ... is really exciting. It's not anything awesome or useful, but it'll be fun. It's also has a good potential for a nice financial windfall if I pull it off right - something more immediate than Tabulas or Audiomatch.

In any case, back to scripting.

I'm not sure what it is, but Sk8 Boi by Avril Lavigne is making me depressed. I can't quite pinpoint what it is ... maybe it's the story of lost chances.

Good god. Am I letting Avril Lavigne affect me? This is ridiculous.

I smell like bulgogi. I spent a while cooking it this morning for some guests we had over for lunch at the behest of my mom ... now I regret it. Everywhere I go ... bulgogi. It's making me hungry.

Dag it.

In following with the recent trends with oliver and sulhye, i'm going to make an obligatory post so that asshole roy won't get all up on my case for not posting.

I was thinking about how I work my ass off for this site ... so that hopefully I can be successful and 'sell out.' But the amusing thing is that in striving to reach that blissful moment where I can be lazy ... I become incredibly diligent and hardworking. IRONY! (Well, not really ...)

It's kind of like how Americans (like me!) like to spend hours finding the remote instead of simply getting up and changing the channel manually. They like to justify it by saying "well, we're saving work from having to change the channel later." It's THAT much work, huh? Americans are much too lazy.

I wanted to get some new keys for my craptop because the keys I have are wearing down and I'm missing a few keys (long story).

So I went to the Student Stores to see if they would sell me the keys - they referred me to ATN ... so i go down there and they basically tell me that i would have to bring the craptop IN so they can do it ... and i can only get the keys replaced that popped off.

But here's the kicker. I can't buy the actual keys.


HOW RETARDED IS THAT?! argh. I just want some new keys ... damnit. Guess I'll have to turn to eBay.

eBay, be my savior!

Well anyways, I've been learning more mySQL stuff. Apparently there is a method of inserting multiple rows into one table that I didn't know about. WHHOOO time to rewrite some code. I also decided to switch the hit logging function to insert delayed because it suits that purpose a lot better. and check out the song of the moment. i've been missing out on this song - i heard it on a sound byte for american idol (sung by kimberly locke) and i loved that little catch.

it's raining men!

If someone had told you in 2000 that the Israel/Palestinian peace process would improve under Bush, you would of surely scoffed. I know I would. But here we are ... let's take a look at what's unfolding.

Suicide bombings aside (the 5 bombings in 48 hours just the other day is still a stark reminder of the problems Israel/Palestine), Bush has managed to remove Yassar Arafat (and I've mentioned THIS tons of time, but he was the big reason why no progress was ever made between Israel/Palestine) from the head of the PLO and has gotten a somewhat more moderate as the Prime Minister. Suicide bombings as a whole are down from when Clinton Administration was too busy kissing ass ... and now we've got a few stories trickling out where Palestinians are pissed off at the Hamas, the extreme Islamic arm of the PLO. And now, we've got Syria closing the offices of extreme Islamic groups ... stealing a quote from the article, "All signs pointed to what neither the Palestinians nor the Syrians will acknowledge: Syria has bowed to U.S. pressure and curbed the radicals it has hosted for years."

We have made so much progress in the Middle East, contrary to what Bush-haters would like to admit. Why have these changes come about?

Obviously Iraq has a lot to do with it. The thing that you have to understand about Iraq (although I was not openly admitting it because it would undermine my argument months ago), is that there is a lot more to the issue than simply Iraq. Besides cutting terrorist groups at the knees by getting rid of places they can train, eliminating weapons of mass destruction (I am still very convinced that these exist and will be found; what happened to those two mobile labs we found?!) ... we also sent a clear message to the world that we no longer are unwilling to act when we feel threatened.

There is a fine line between being a bully and proactively looking out for your national security; we're toeing the line but we haven't crossed it. But what helps even more is that the Bush Administration has always supported the creation of a Palestinian state. The ordinary non-extremist Palestinians during the Clinton Administration did not have many official powers to turn to for the support of a Palestinian state - now with the US backing their call for a state, my guess is that more and more Palestinians are turning away from extremist groups.

Syria is a great example of how Iraq has benefited our foreign policy. A few weeks ago, critics (in their never-ending stupidity) were claiming that we were saber-rattling the Syrians so we could go to war (since we all love war so much!!!) ... while the Bushies were claiming to simply use diplomatic pressure.

And look what we have. Syria has capitulated to a lot of the demands from the US (not openly, of course ... to do that would be to lose face). We dont' have to look further than Syrians giving up wanted Iraqis ... nor the Syrians willingness to come back to the table with Israel to help discuss the road map (the Syrians recently dropped their opposition to the creation of a road map for Israel/Palestine).

I mean, it really doesn't get any better than this. The Middle Eastern politicians are starting to claim they want to work with Israel for peace and a resolution to the Palestinian problem ... and critics still bash Bush?

And by the way ... this ... cartoon is ... so ... fitting to how i felt. Not that I'm a genius. Of course not!

People are always quick to point out that we are doomed to repeat history if we forget it. I beg to differ. In my somewhat cynical moments, I always believe that the natural greed of humans will lead to moments in history that repeat themselves - simply remembering is not enough.

Each person, each generation thinks it is wiser and smarter than previous generations. We can learn all we want about books, but that still doesn't free us from the past. The superman mentality, as well as the fact that reading something in a book doesn't mean we know it, leads to situations.

In any case, I've settled down somewhat from my desperate whiny post last night. I went to school today, did a little work, did some studying, hung out with some friends (who all seemed just as blah as me today) ... I came back and I've been relatively productive working on Tabulas (which makes me happy).

I guess standing back, Tabulas is a nice achievement right now. There are a few huge bugs to work out (e.g. the whole styling system), but once that's done, I think it will be at a point where I can stand back, take a few weeks off, and nothing horrid would happen. It just took me a little bit to realize how nice Tabulas really is; reading other peoples' Tabulas really encouraged me.

So to everyone who has used Tabulas ... thank you. I have most likely read your Tabulas, even if you don't know me (as long as you're linked from the main page). Seeing those first "hey this is my first post ... trying out Tabulas" is a huge encouragement. Thank you.

I'd really like to get to work on AudioMatch one of these days. Not to mention my new project which is incredibly exciting ... I told Yushien about it and he started getting excited about it too. It's something new that really hasn't been done ... and the level of realism ... it's going to be a lot of fun.

There are too many misconceptions of 'freedom of speech' in the United States. Freedom of speech does not give you the ability to freely say anything you want, whenever you want, wherever you want. Freedom of speech merely gives you the right to say what you want within reason.

For example, if I were to go into a crowded theater and yell "FIRE," and a few people were trampled to death, I would be criminally responsible for their deaths. Futhermore, if I walk up to a cop and say, "I'm going to murder you," I will also be promptely arrested. Freedom of speech applies when the benefits outweigh the costs; clearly the ability for me to say whatever I want to that cop was clearly outweighed by the cop's personal safety.

Recently some asshole from the NY Times went to a commencement speech in Illinois and gave an 18 minute tirade on why the US was empire-building in Iraq and was booed off stage (his mic was unplugged twice and he eventually had to leave). Some liberals are bemoaning the lack of "critical thinking."

Let me tell you something - and this very closely relates to the situation a while ago that celebrities quickly discovered - there is a time and place for you to put out your thoughts. This speaker went to a COMMENCEMENT which is normally the celebration of four years of toiling for a degree, and decided not to talk about anything BUT the Iraq situation. If I'm at my own graduation, I will not take it if my moment of GLORY, my one defining moment as I pass into the real world, will be dirtied by someone's political views.

Basically the dude decided to use this moment as his personal platform ... it's sickening.

People need to learn when to say what. Freedom of speech doesn't mean you can anything you want, wherever you want, whenever you want. There will be a private backlash if you exercise your rights at the wrong time.

Whoa. A MIT group discovered how to manipulate the frequency of light [Link]. This is some really exciting news ...

In other news, some guy pulled off an illusion to make water seem like it flowed up hill. Lots of interesting news today.

Man, I can't stop listening to Michelle Branch. I LOVE her. The moment I heard "Everywhere" on the radio last year ... I was hooked. I bought her CD early from eBay (ha ha!) and I still cannot stop listening to "All You Wanted" and "Everywhere." Maaannn!!

If you want to
I can save you
I can take you away from here
So lonely inside
So busy out there
And all you wanted was somebody who cares

Last night, Neeraj and Borst both came over ... we just chilled and talked about various things. It was rather interesting.

Now, Neeraj and Borst are the two smartest CS people I know, so when they talk about CS stuff, it lifts up my "level of game." Har har.

(Read More)

I had just arrived in Vietnam from Korea.

Gosh, I really miss traveling.

The Mighty Wingman MP3.

Ariel Sharon's cabinet approved the US-backed "road map" for the Middle East ... it calls for the formal creation of a Palestinian state ... the first time any Israel government has backed anything of this sort. [Link].

Bush can't handle diplomacy? Please. (Reference: Earlier Entry regarding this topic)

I've been gone for a while again. Doing very little work ... just kind of thinking a lot. Not really about anything in particular. Been playing Chaos Overlords again. What a great game. Will get back in the groove of things soon, I'm sure.

I think the "blah" feeling is going around a lot lately.

Man, scripting is a lot of work. You never think a project is going to require a lot of time until you get the beta rolled out - then you realize how much work is involved in fixing your damn site so it doesn't suck ass. But I've gotten better at modulating my code; everything that I've done for this new project can be copied/pasted into a new site (modifying a few lines of code) so I never have to rewrite the user reg/user log-in portions of sites again. W00t!

I've taken a little time away from Tabulas to work on another site (related to Audiomatch) to learn how to properly write a script from scratch that works nice. Plus I spent the time learning proper valid CSS/XHTML (you'll notice standards compliancy on most my sites is horrendous) ... I rolled out a premature copy of my latest project, but I think I'm going to work on it a lot more today ... oigh. More work for me :)

I've been learning a lot of new stuff about XHTML/CSS/PHP that I'll be incorporating into this site; every day I learn more about the inefficiencies and shortcomings of the method in which I do things here (did you know the styling HTML generator (css-> intermediate format --> display with dropdowns) is actually something like O(n^4) or something? hahahahaa. Ridiculous.

Hopefully within the upcoming weeks I'll also be able to knock out the next portion of audiomatch; I realized this past week that audiomatch had been buggering up big time ... I had set a key column value in mySQL to MEDIUMINT UNSIGNED (which covers autoincrementing column values of 0 to 8388607*2 (too lazy to do the math) ... and audiomatch had reached that limit and was simply using the last stored value ... boo. So I upped all the column values to INT (covers 0 to 4294967296) which begs the question: what happens when I reach *that* limit? I think at this point I'm going to start recycling the databases at around 3 months ... keep them stored in archives. Or something.

Edit: If I was not so retarded, I would of read that mySQL has the 'bigint' column type which covers 9223372036854775807*2. Yeah, that should be enough.

Now here's a story for you non-computer dorks ...

This past Saturday, Tony, Alex, and Sung all decided to go biking ... on the trails. Of course, I went along ... we went to the trails that I usually bike on.

Too bad 5 minutes into the trail, Alex flipped on the hardest downhill on the trail ... had to sit him down for a bit then Sung and Tony walked him out.

10 minutes later, Tony ran his knee into a tree.

Well that was the end of *that* excusion ... bad luck comes in twos, I guess.

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There is a great article written by a former policy advisor for Helmut Kohl based on how Germany blundered the Iraq ordeal. It hits the argument right on the nose and is quite insightful on many levels. Go give it a read.

"The remedy is the experience ..."

So it's about that time when I've come to kick myself in the arse for taking on way too much ... way more than I can handle.

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QUICK BREAK, ALLEN SENT ME THE MOST AMAZING VIDEO OF A 3 YEAR OLD KID HAVING MAD BASKETBALL GAME ... CHECK IT OUT!
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Ok back to what I'm talking about before. So I have roughly 25 odds and ends to do for Tabulas (some ranging from "taking forever" to others that would require maybe 30 minutes of hacking to implement). I also have audiomatch to work on, and my latest site.

SingItWith.Us is still in a fledling state (uh, it's two days old!), but you can bet your butt I'm going to bust my butt to get it implemented a lot better (a quick plug to lyricstime.com, a recently (re-?)launched lyrics site which I was uber-impressed with.

Anyways, back to my lyrics site. I've barely gotten the core structure of the site running; search, adding, display, corrections all work. However, there's some work left to do with the way artists are maintained and the whole "albums" issue. There is currently NO album grouping at all ...

And search is weak. Actually, it's almost nonexistent. It's utilizing some built-in mySQL functions; ideally I'll write my own PHP to handle that later on.

Most of the management issues for the lyrics site are done; the submission form is pretty well automated so it checks for existing artists and songs and flags them if the script thinks the lyrics already exist.

However, the end-user portion is not done. There are a few key features I want to build in beyond the commenting/voting I've already done. Of course, I want to help promote discussion about individual songs ... so that's always useful, so that functionality needs to be built in.

But thinking 'beyond' the box, it has to be clear to anyone who follows what I'm doing with audiomatch and singitwithus. I want to eventually allow audiomatch creators to create XML feeds that link to singitwithus lyrics so they can easily integrate this into their website. Of course, this relies entirely on me being able to create a script that can somehow parse the massive database and run optimizations on the artists so that it can find similar matches ... and manage not to crash the server that audiomatch, tabulas, singitwithus, and about 160 other sites are on ;)

That will be ultimate tightness. But there is a huge hurdle I have to overcome with audiomatch - namely the ability to scan the database (upwards of 300,000 data entries now) and to 'correct' broken entries so the data remains as pure as possible. Due to the complete inability of people to use id3 tags, it will be difficult to create 100% perfect feeds ... but those users who do use IDv3 tags that are recognized by audiomatch will have an autolink to the lyrics; this should create an easy to use system.

And if I can find someone who can write a short javascript that can do this without having to deal with XML, that would be even better ;) If not, I can write a short little ditty to parse the XML file and create a nice clean file to include into your website.

Tomorrow I'm going to crack at the user's CP for siwu, as well as the main admin management for siwu so I can manage lyrics while I develop the site.

More tomorrow! :)

Why is it that I'm starting to see more ridiculous articles and opeds in formerly respectable publications? I haven't written the post yet, but I'm going to respond to an article written in Time magazine published yesterday ... I woke up and the first thing I read was this op-ed from the NYTimes.

It is the worst oped I've ever read. It poses no real question, poses no real thoughts or opinions; it simply rehashes a bunch of facts that everyone already knows (nobody in the Bush Adminstration was "down" with the hippies, the US trusts its military, etc.).

Forgive me, but I personally think anytime I read an oped in the NYTimes, I should be able to say , "That person gave a lot of good insights," regardless of their viewpoints. But this one just sucks ass. I read the whole thing and then said to myself, "did she actually want to say something?"

Maybe her point was, "The president and his posse diverted anger over 9/11 to Iraq, and now they are diverting it to Iran." I'm not really sure. Cause it might also be, "They [Bushies] should lose their bewildering and unconvincing color code, because orange doesn't communicate anything to anybody any more."

Learn to convey an opinion clearly, Ms. Dowd. It seems someone is a bit nostalgic about the counterculture of the '60s and wants it to come back at the cost of Bush and company.

First things first ... I made the mistake of bringing along the South Park Chef Aid CD to school. I'm listening to it in the comp lab and I'm doing everything in my power not to belt out and start singing "Chocolate Salty Balls." read the lyrics to figure out why I want to bust out and start singing it...

While taking a shower today, I was thinking about the uselessness of land mines. I mean, there's something to be said about a contraption whose sole purpose is to wait until someone steps on it ... and then blows the crap out of their leg.

In this day in age, are land mines really necessary? With war rapidly evolving into less of a prolonged land troops fighting land troops and more of a "blast the hell out of their land troops with our air power then walk in," what purpose do land mines serve?

I was looking at the list of countries that signed the 1997 land mine ban and realized that neither Korea or the US had signed it. I think it would make a big statement if the US would just get its head out of its ass and sign the damn thing. I really hate the thought of weapons that lurk around until after the war and still be dangerous.

In any case, one of the most jaw-dropping things I read was in the Guardian ... a frickin' hippy praised Bush regarding Africa. "You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy," Geldof told the Guardian. Wow.

And of course, here is another quote which basically sums up MY feelings about the Clinton Administration and why I love the Bush administration:

Lord Alli, the aid activist who is accompanying Geldof on the trip organised by the UN children's aid agency Unicef, echoed his praise of the Bush administration.

"Clinton talked the talk and did diddly squat, whereas Bush doesn't talk, but does deliver," Lord Alli said.

Wow, this is quickly turning into a pro-Bush blog. Better back off before I start offending everybody since it's so so frickin trendy to say "bush sucks." not to mention it makes me think that i'm an intellectual cause i'm "sticking it to the man." < /end bitter cynicism towards anti-Bushies >

Finalized Tabulas 1.0 feature set. It's looking pretty nice. Will release full features spec sometime tomorrow.

SingItWith.us 1.0 finished today. So go check it out, register, and submit a few lyrics!

Got really tired of studying so I came home early from Carolina ...

Watched a bunch of videos from new true talent, an amazingly talented college video group ... check out their videos. they're themed after korean-americans, and they're all pretty funny.

i've slept a total of 15 hours in the past three nights.

what the heck. i thought this was summer.

there's such a big tradeoff between flexibility of a script and memory usage. for instance, i used to store all the table names as variables that were predefined in a file.

this made it easy to change the names of tables (because they used to be named rather haphazardly) ... but this means everytime a page loaded, 2KB worth of data was also stored as variables ... inefficient waste of memory.

anyways, i'm moving the queries over to hard-encoded table names in the sql queries themselves. hey, i'm only really using this for myself, and how often am i going to change the name of database tables?

i've been playing bordello battles, a webbased game (kind of like drug lords on your TI calcs). I know Godwin's been playing LoC a lot ...

A little while ago, I got really interested in developing a web game of my own. I guess it appealed to a lot of parts of me - the "old school" game play .. (i've always loved text games) ... and of course, the tinkerer. The new game I wanted to develop would be feature and gameplay-rich ... kinda interesting.

I spent a few hours and typed out my thoughts for the game into a word doc. Originally I was going to keep this a secret and work on it in private, but seeing as to how my current workload will probably keep me busy for at least the next two weeks ... I'll post this doc up here and see if I can get some feedback in refining the game.

So if you like to play text games or have any thoughts on the game after reading my doc, let me know.

merchant.doc