i'm in the brussels airport while my dad rents a car and my mom gets cash money from the atm. the keyboards here are english so i can do a real quick recap.

day 1-2: brussels, belgium
everything is old. but it's realy purdy. i walked around the central market area ... it's gorgous. but there are too many frickin koreans. i think "central" tourist attractionsa re like homing beacons fort eh koreans. oh well.

went to amsterdam yesterday. wasn't too exciting. amsterdam is the most confusing city in the world. between the weird streets, the trams, teh buses, teh weird right of way (cars and bikes have right of way when turning), along with teh canals... damn confusing.

we\re about to drive to vienna, stopping along a few stops along the way (germany and stuff). drive back will swing through zurich and parts of france. exciting stuff.

random thoughts:
1.) i really wish i had some conssiten access. some of these tabulas bugs can be real easy fixer uppers.
2.) i think it's amusing that people put red ribbons on their bags to "differentiate" them. that is, of course, until you find someone else who did the exact same thing.
3.) there's a company called 'europcar' here. i don't like that word. i must prefer eurocar.
4.) i cannot find a goddamn power cord to plug in my laptop. it's killing me.

ok gotta run. take it easy guys. :)

i'm in vienna right now and there are still a few keys that are switched. actually, just the y and the z are switched. odd. in anz case, all z and z in this entrz and ä is '.

we drove on the autobahn zesterdaz from brussels to nuremburg, stopping in heidelburg along the way. heidelburg is gorgeous ... unfortunatelz i havenät reallz been hitting the photographz very hard because iäm with family.

the autobahn is a great idea and shoudl be adopted in america. of course, weäd have to rid ourselves of all the crappy car companies (ford, GM, etc.= but eventually we'd get it right. itös amusing because all the german drivers are frickin good, and thez've got a nice system for driving on the autobahn. moreo n this later.

nuremburg sucks. don't go there. vienna so far is pretty cool. itäs the most confusing city to navigate, and i've been to a few large cities where that means something.

i reallz think i want to come back to europe with some friends of mine ... backpack and ride the train. there are a few spots i'd like to hit again for photographic reasons.

i still cannot power up my craptop. sadness. i'll be back tomorrow for more updates as this internet cafe is right by our hotel.

update: gah, this internet sucks. it keeps dropping connections. i can't consistently SSH into my server to do any real work. neither can i chat on AIM. and this keyboard keeps bothering me. arrrgggh. but i'm getting used to both. i really just wish i could use my craptop. not even power it up. just be able to do some work on it. i installed php/mysql/apache on it before i left. gah.

back to the autobahn story ... the germans are amusing when it comes to the autobahn. basically it's a two lane highway with no set speed limit. however, the right lane is usuallz 65mph since all the trucks drive there (and they tend to be slow) ... the left lane is usuallz about 110mph. but it's a safe 110mph.

here's a quick quiz: when renting a car in europe, i rent a _______. the correct answer for the kim family is ... A FORD FOCUS111 YEAH! (whoa i just realized that using the caps lock is hte same thign as using shift, even for the symbols above the letters. weird).

haha. anyways, it's served us well so far ... but there are so manz audis and bmws... makes me so sad to see them zoom by at 110mph. anyways, if you're slow in a lane, the german will tail you at about 5 feet ... shift to the left side of the lane to see if there#s anyzone in front of you, then the right side of the lane to double check. then the'll highbeam your ass until you move.

the autobahn has made me hate SUVs. no one drives them here and it#s a godsend. and of course no one is stupid here and talks on their cell phone while driving either. it rocks. we made good time on the autobahn ... i love it!

tomorrow i explore vienna ... then we head over to zurich and then paris and then to brussels, where we fly back.

how is everzone doing? i had some time to read other peoples# tabulas and it seems that everyone is having a good time.

ok tomorrow i#ll have more time to journal and will write more. take it easy everzbodz!

neeraj, i need you to go to http://www.audiomatch.net/squirrelmail/ and logßin with the ftp username/password ... its the same as mysql

theres a bunch of winamp3 errors. mght wanna take a look. comment when zou get this msg. thanks.

note to self: i should of listened to zush and implemented the email function with tabulas 0.9999999999999. bah.

in europe you have to pay to use the public bathrooms. i was sauntering around vienna when i had to go to the bathroom. i found them ... and then as i was about to go into a stall, this old lady got up in my face and started speaking german.

there's a simson's episode where lisa gets lost in the street and these german guys start talking to her in german. they sound angry and dangerous, but the captioning says something along the lines of, "how are you doing little girl? are you lost?"

in any case, the lady might of just been saying "good sir, you must pay 0.50 euro to use this stall," but it sure didn't seem like it.

in any case, i gave her 0.50 euros and she closed the door behind me.

and then i couldn't go. there's something unnerving about the fact that there's an old german lady sitting right outside your stall, thinking about lord knows what. in any case, no matter how much i coaxed by buttocks, they wouldn't give up their golden nuggets. sigh.

so i gave up.

tick tock tick tock. this is costing me a bunch of money i shoudl be spending on little trinkets for my friends. leave me a tag if you want a souvenir. i'll get you a nice one if you're a good friend and just a cheapo crappy gift if i don't like you. haha.

no really ... amusing thing. i had some time to take pictures around vienna today (FRREEEDDDOOOOM). when i was around the center of the city, this old german lady started following me and started taking pictures _exactly_ where i took them. she followed me for like 10 minutes, doing this.

what is the point of having pay phones if you need to buy a phone card to use them? isn't the point of a _pay_ phone so you can quickly convert loose change to a quick phone call? imagine if you were lost in a strange land and then you went to a pay phone only to find that HEY YOU NEED TO USE A PHONE CARD! NO CHANGE ACCEPTED! then, of course, every place you try to visit to find a phone card _is out of them_ or is _closed_.

good god. europeans ... you guys are so smart yet so stupid at the same time.

france is aiiiggghhht. the countryside ain't that pretty. paris is pretty nice though.

i'm pretty tired. want to go back to US. hey guys, is everyone up for some poker once i get back?

you know, updating this from an internet terminal would be a lot better if this POS touch screen could actually work well as a mouse.

back in nyc right now waiting for a flight to RDU. i'll try to update tonight
`

two "placeholder" thoughts before i go through the task of going through 10 days of unchecked emails ...

firstly, the concept of putting something "unique" on your luggage so that you can differentiate yourself from 5,000 other black suitcases ... does not work when the other people do the exact same thing.

secondly, it's kind of depressing to turn on your cell phone after returning from a long trip to have no voicemails. you'd think that i would have enough friends that maybe ONE would of not discovered i had gone to europe and would of left a voicemail saying, "hey roy, let's hang out. call me back," but this is not the case ... maybe i just have no friends.

ok, onto emails.
::takes in deep breath::

i'm ready.

thoughts
(Read More)

i'm really tired, so i'll keep this short:
1.) send intervention force into liberia.
2.) if there are no wmds, admit it. a lot of people are getting tired of it.
3.) this does not change the validity of the war with iraq. even if wmds are not found, there is still a strong case for the war in iraq. but yes, the point is somewhat undermined.
4.) keep our hands out of iran. the last thing we need to do is involve ourselves in a situation that will solve itself.
5.) what the hell is up with the chinese and hong kong? that anti-subversion law is crap.
6.) go lakers!

Oh yeah, HK's comment in my post below reminded me ...

I was really hungry in Paris, and I was craving some fast food.

Then I discovered McDonalds. Of course, I was curious as to whether there really _was_ a Royale with Cheese ... muhahahaha.

And there is! I had it, but it wasn't too good. The McDonalds in Europe (much like Asia) give you undersized portions (if you're an American). Had to order multiple sandwiches with my "Maxi Menu" (which is only equivalent to a regular combo at Micky D's in the States) ... but it wasn't too irregular. A lot of people were ordering a combo and then another sandwich.

soob, this is the moment of truth. where will all the free agents go?

the lakers gonna have kobe, shaq, and gp next year. will the mailman follow?! COME ON! DYNASTY!!!

imagine how sick the lakers will be next year if they have malone ... MAN. SICK.

at least on paper. hopefully kobe and shaq will be good enough to realize now to let their egos get too large. gotta do it for the dynasty.

http://www.freekobe.com

yeah!

this is an interesting test. it's supposed to help determine stuff about you and dating and stuff... it was an okay test, but what was interesting was the initial assessment of who i am:

You're a natural leader. You're smart, insightful, and willing to fight for what you believe in. Your job isn't just something you do to make money. Making a real contribution at work or in organizations you're involved in is key to being a "success" in life. In fact, at times this part of your life has pushed aside romance and fun and made you dangerously close to being a "workaholic." But you're not someone who settles; you want it all! You have a vision for the future and always are searching to find love and a sense of "balance" in your life.

What's interesting is I've never thought of myself as a leader at all. Maybe I think I have leadership traits subconsciously.

me chilling in brussels

Girls are really evil!

tsk tsk.

constants aren't so constant anymore (ripped from the get up kids).

yeah ... things are kinda sucking right now. it'll be alright though.

i rented three dvds from blockbuster just to spend some time alone to think about how things are going ...

rented tears of the sun. now, i don't know why so many people said it sucked. i really liked it a lot. what really got me was the score. hans zimmer is an amazing score composer ... and i really liked the score to this one a lot. when the movie ended with that touching choral-type song that led into the end credits ... i could feel my heart swelling.

the song is amazing is called "the journey - kopano part III." i've decided to upload it so you guys can download it. so go grab it here.

i love this. i didn't write this, but give it a good read. i like it especially because it's a poke at a lot of democrats (and republicans, but mostly democrats). conservative libertarians rule!

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's & the early 80's, probably shouldn't have survived.

Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.
We had no childproof lids or locks on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets.

Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking..

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors!

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.

We shared one soft drink with four friends , from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day ,as long as we were back when the street lights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. No cell phones. Unthinkable!

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms.

We had friends! We went outside and found them.

We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt. We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents No one was to blame but us. Remember accidents?

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out any eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.

Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Horrors!

Tests were not adjusted for any reason.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected.

The idea of parents bailing us out if we got in trouble in school or broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the school or the law. Imagine that!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers, and inventors, ever.

We had freedom, failure, success, and responsibility --- and we learned how to deal with it.

And you're one of them!

Congratulations.

i love 25th hour. an amazing performance by edward norton. i think i may buy the dvd some day when i'm not poor.

adaptation is pretty damn good too. nicholas cage really shines in this one ... playing two parts at once. and the plot keeps twisting and turning... makes for an interesting movie.

i remember back when i was a wee tyke when i used to think that factories made clouds. then i found out that they were actually probably destroying clouds by screwing up our ozone system.

why is it everywhere i turn to nowadays, there's sensationalist media reporting that things in iraq are turning for the worse? anyways, there's an editorial from the weekly standard that you should read. it doesn't imply by a long shot that things are dandy in iraq ... but just give it a read. (it's #10, but i'm also going to post it below).

As I write this from Baghdad International Airport my thoughts drift to an upcoming 4th of July, a time when American Muslims feel that sense of duality a little more strongly than usual (Mansoor Ijaz, Supporting Our Armed Forces: An American Muslim's Perspective): An appreciation for the freedoms we enjoy coupled with a longing for the lands of our heritage; proud of our advancements on these shores and bemoaning the inability of our homelands to re-visit the more glorious days of our past.

It's easy in our skepticism to look at cursory reports from the media and dismiss the events now unfolding in Iraq as either just another example of American imperialism or a catastrophic mess in the making. Yet doing so does no justice to the nation being re-born before my eyes. Every day more and more decent and hardworking Iraqis are standing up for themselves, learning that, as one Iraqi teacher lamented, "for every six steps forward we take five more back."

Now is the time for the American Muslim community to build bridges and tell the Iraqis that they will not be forgotten. We can help nurture a sense of ownership that the Iraqis have lost after years of being degraded. American Muslims are in a unique position to couple their education and knowledge to help Iraqis help themselves. We can act as liaisons between groups, advocates for rights, and fundraisers for needs no one else has yet to identify. For every American NGO there should be 10 American-Muslim NGOs working with Iraqis.

While skepticism given America's foreign-policy record in this part of the world may be warranted, on an interpersonal level I see the U.S. military treating Iraqis with respect over and over again. I see commanders asking me and other American Muslims for advice on how to deal with religious and cultural sensitivities and taking very seriously any real or perceived abuses by troops. I see Iraqis risk their safety and the safety of their families to inform on rogue elements. I see soldiers who've never left places like Kansas City understand and use the word inshallah. I've seen food distribution that was slow and methodical because U.S. soldiers there wanted to make sure that older mothers got what they needed first. Afterwards community leaders and elders who normally would have cursed these foreigners thank them for treating their people with dignity.

There is an Arab proverb that says a thousand days of tyranny is better than one day of anarchy. It's time we kick that proverb to the curb.

--Omar Amin, Specialist, U.S. Army

i was messaged a few days ago by roosh of rooshlog who wanted some help outsourcing some design for his new business, rooshlab.

the amusing part of this is i used to read this guys website a few years ago (1999-ish) ... back then before "blogging" (i hate that word) took off ... there was a huge network of e/n (everything/nothing) sites that were essentially bloggers. i really think these guys set the tone for blogging, and a lot of them are still around (bamf, neoflux to name two) ...

in any case, there seem to be a lot of ... confusion over my journal for some. i used to write immensely personal post in a "f' the world" manner where i would write anything and everything; this total lack of privacy also lent itself into the 24 hour webcam (who remembers this?!) that i ran for the better half of my freshman year. you can actually view my old entries on my website under 'thoughts.'

in any case, i've grown up a lot since then. i try to write entries that aren't so personal for public consumption ... amusing thoughts just to titillate you. sometimes i'll have the inspiration to try to write a 'real' funny post just like oliver, but those days getting rare. of course, i also write my share of boring posts about technical stuff about tabulas and audiomatch that i write for my own good (so i can read it in the future).

just because i don't write about something a lot does not mean i do not care about it. there seems to be some preconception that if i don't write about something, i don't care about it... sometimes the stuff that means the most to me are not ever revealed on this journal.

most of the real personal stuff to me is the stuff i share with other people - and i don't feel it's right to invade their personal privacy because i feel like posting some story for the web. so please do not make the misconception that because i don't write about something, that i don't care. i try to write as much as i can about myself without affecting others ...

in any case, i guess i do try to hold an audience with this journal. i do try to maintain some sort of readership. i know this journal has helped me with my writing (it would suck even more than it sucks now if i didn't) ... so there's one benefit.

plus with so much on my plate lately it's hard to let people know what's happening ... so i also maintain this journal partly to help people keep up. or something.

man this is such an unstructured entry.

in more lighthearted thoughts ...
why does everyone hate nick cage? after my post below about adaptation and nicholas cage being a good actor, every single person has bashed nicholas cage! what's the deal?! i mean, what has he done to deserve such hatred? he's been in a lot of good movies, and he seems like a really cool dude.

am i just lost here?

we broke up after i discovered that she went to the bathroom and released bodily wastes... i thought girls didn't go to the bathroom, and when i asked her before if she did, she said no! she shattered my idealistic myths and LIED TO ME. i cannot date a liar and a pooper. there could be no continuation of the relationship after that.

so yeah.

this one is directed at all my friends who fear big brother.

told you so

i'm pretty optimistic about the ability of the american government to not totally invade our privacy; members of congress are, after all, citizens themselves. no one would dare allow for the creation of a system that would impose a 1984-esque era.

i guess this just goes back to my point that although you read a lot of sensationalist articles about how the government wants to monitor everything you do, the government will not do this in the sake of perpetuating goverment, as 1984 would lead you to believe.

in any case, alex borst, i told you nothing would come of these initiatives by poindexter and other sketchy people ...

i trust the government more than corporations.

so i'm not much of a plugger, but i have to plug exo's tabulas and his website. they are amazing drawings and sketches ...

damn i wish i could draw.

man, there is something so nice about centralizing the scripting power. of course, we could all go install separate journaling software instead of using a centralized service like tabulas, but then upgrading things site-by-site would be a pain. i can suddenly see why larry ellison keeps trumpeting centralized computing (as opposed to the MS way of giving each computer power on its own).

as it stands, if i wanted to update the templates for tabulas, i can do it in one place, and 500 people's sites are suddenly upgraded. it's hard to describe the power that you feel when you know you can make everyone's journal better easily ...

i'm currently working on the new comments page ... the current one is incredibly CPU intensive and hits the database more often than it should. the approach i've taken is to load all the data relating to the entry into memory (arrays) and then manipulating them from there.

in any case, i'm getting much more comfortable working with arrays ... so. maybe i'll finish it tonight and get it up, and that'll be one less thing for me to do tomorrow.

fear the ducks

i had a really active development day. go check out all the cool new features. they're mostly technical things and won't benefit you directly ... but it's still cool.

i'm almost done with tabulas 1.0. soon ... soon.

i'm getting pretty efficient at cranking out php as long as i can concentrate. even with some personal conflicts, i can stay relatively focused at the tasks at hand ...

just a few more features i want to build before i start limiting people off with quotas and actually offering a paid solution:

post moved

i moved this to a separate post

a less shittier looking comments page
i hate it, i don't know why, it's ugly. unformatted. the styling changes i implented for tabulas 0.99 set the groundwork so i can rehash those pages.

the method i'm using to sort those comments are also incredibly inefficient. ideally i would like to grab all the comments at once from the database, throw them into a hash, and arrange them like that. right now, it grabs all the top-tiered comments, then the second level, etc. bad architecture.
edit mod_rewrite to stop showing such an ugly URL (maybe /~user/number.html?mid=motherid#commentid would be nice)

content aggregator
i think i feel comfortable enough with regexps that i might be able to build a small RSS aggregator from multiple RSS feeds ... and also from non-rss feeds (e.g. xanga). this could help you read LJ, xanga, and other sites from the comfort of your tabulas admin panel. and i could take this another level by also offering it as a templating option (kinda like blogri..er.. shared journals show up on your main page).

linkroll/shared journal list
make it optional to show up on your main site.
edit: now that i've done this, i've realized how woefully inadequate the current tabulas prebuilt templates are. SOOOOO... another thing to add:

tabulas templates
- allow for counter tag, audiomatch tag, allow for optional shared journal lists, linkroll, and contentroll

calendar
you'll notice your hit logging is using a nice calendar system. i wrote the set of functions very open-ended because i left the possibility open in my mind that i would implement a calendar for your entries, much like xanga/livejournal

other crap
- fix up the archived hit logging pages - generate them once instead of 10,000 times
- yellow pages of tabulas members (basically the front page, except on steroids)
- clean up the log data files; extract all relevant information then delete it
- start storing links externally
- check gallery privacy levels
- fix up individual profile pages (move to separate PHP file)
- jump to date (fix up archives pages)
- store artist/music info separately

i think i need to set up a phpBB for now to help manage the faqs and bugs.

edit: goddamnit it. why does the list never get shorter?! arhghrahgaehgaheg

i am sick of reading economic forecasts ... they always have the meat of the news (e.g. this and this is up from last year), but they always have to tack on some opinionated bullshit about whether the economy is recovering.

i'm pretty sure they teach at journalism school that one factor does not determine our GDP and thus does not determine whether our economy is "slumping." just save the "oh the economy is showing signs of recovery" crap because no one wants to hear it and no one cares. OH GOD. MANUFACTURING IS UP. THAT SURELY MEANS OUR ECONOMY IS RECOVERING.

SHUT UP!

also, while i was waiting at the dmv for my license, i was thinking about all the spanish-americans (?!) ... and thinking how wrong it was to say that they were all mexican. i mean, i know asians who get all pissy when you call them chinese (when they're korean)... shouldn't we hold the same standards to our southern brothers and call them "nicaraguans" and "panamanians?"

roy listens to busta rhymes and mariah carey's "i know what you want."
roy finds himself largely ignoring busta's part.
roy finds himself singing along with mariah.
roy realizes he needs to hit puberty one of these days.

roy is embarassed.




why is roy using the third person?! gah.

update: holy crap

Apu1Nahasa: i didn't go to work today...
Apu1Nahasa: worked on audiomatch til 4 tihs morning, and bout to start again....artist filtering i really wanna finish tonight

i need to start working on audiomatch too.

first day i have a license.

my foot slips.

and i almost rearend han.

wtf. this does not bode well for my driving career.

man, i have the most respect for tony blair than any other politician i've seen in my short life.

i was flipping through the channels, and there was the normal "grilling" of tony blair by the house of commons.

if you haven't watched this before, you need to. it's nothing like what we have in the united states, and it's something we could learn from.

basically the house of commons are allowed to ask blair anything at all and basically it's debate after debate between blair and individual members of the house of commons.

and this isn't a civilized occasion ... oh no. these guys are pretty wild... think about eminem's free-styling scene in 8 mile, take out the hip-hop, and replace all the younguns with old british dudes and you've got it.

the amusing thing is how the house of commons realizes when someone's has subtly insulted someone else ("mr. blair, WHEN ARE THESE WEAPONS GOING TO BE FOUND?!") and start making noise as show of support.

you should watch it. it's really entertaining. and in blair's defense, he was damn good at defending himself. now i can see why he is so beloved by everybody ... he's so damn charismatic.

and sexy.

i got a large shipment of photo paper from bhphoto.com, my favorite online store ...

in my spare time, i started making prints of pictures from last summer ... judy got me a really nice photo album and i'm going to fill it with pictures from last summer. i actually also busted out my box of slides that i didn't deem worthy to see if there was something in there that would work.

i'm also making some extra prints ... if you want a print from any of my pictures last year, let me know. i have plenty of paper (i ordered 100 4x6 paper and 30 8x11, all of the canon pro photo brand) so i can make some prints =). i would just make them for people, but it seems so ... narcissist to be like "oh i made you a print from a picture i took last summer."

yeah, that definitely doesn't sound very humble. ;)

The RIAA has continued its warpath through American society ... after the RIAA shut down Napster and Audiogalaxy ... they went after Verizon, an internet service provider.

In an amazing decision, the courts ruled that Verizon had to hand over the names of users on their service that were accused of "piracy" by the RIAA.

Since then, the RIAA has been going after individual users; they've claimed that they've already served up a thousand people with notices that they've been pirating music and legal action would be taken. According to various news sources, the RIAA has been going after about 75 people a day ...

This is ridiculous. The RIAA is on incredibly shaky legal ground right now ... they've been criticized for their anti-competitive practices ... and now they're using Congress to pass laws that are overly broad and vague so the RIAA can sue everybody.

I really have been disillusioned with Congress lately ... I detest politics ... there needs to be some direct dialect between the President and the people; Congress needs to quit standing in the way and demanding political favors to get anything done.

The favoritism is crippling America ... gar. We need a strong President who can respect the individual rights and put pressure to get various laws overturned - the DMCA being one of them. All these laws are killing innovation and will be our downfall if we don't get rid of them.

Sigh. I would recommend not going on file trading services until Verizon can appeal the court decision and prevent the RIAA from targetting individuals. Geeks need to build an encrypted P2P system that we can all adopt to prevent the RIAA from spying on us ... those bastards deserve to die.

dude, i just saw rounders after hao suggested it.

that is an amazing movie. and i can appreciate it because i play a little poker. texas hold-em is an amazing game ... so intricate and so complex. it really is a skill game and luck has very little to do with it.

Weekend Excursion - Moving On
Glance out the window
see the lines pass me by on the road
I'm moving onward as another chapter unfolds
and I wonder who will I love
and who will I see
most of all I wonder
who will I be
It seems like yesterday I had it all
and nothing was wrong
but the times are changing and I am moving on

I feel so alone but
at the same time I feel so alive
My time here is over
I'm off to a new place, a new life
and I wonder who will I love
and who will I see
most of all I wonder
who will I be
It seems like now that I have it all
and nothing is wrong
But the times are changin
'cause I am moving on

I was staring at the back of her car
as she drives away
Our time together, its over now
I can hear myself say
who will she love and
who will she see
and most of all I wonder
who will she be
It seems like yesterday we had it all
and nothing was wrong
But the times are chaning
cause I am moving on

Who will I love
Who will I see
most of all I wonder
Who will I be
It seems like yesterday I had it all
and nothing was wrong
But the times are changing
and I am moving on
Everybody in the world is moving

i redid the main front page. looks nicer now. cleaner .. a bit fresher. more to the point.

in any case, the next step is to build the "find users and shared journals" page.

then ... add the little capability to go straight to 'advanced' instead of having to click it.

then ... a section that'll explain how to use tabulas.

then i'm done.

dan imed me ... (big dan at jp morgan) and we were chatting about friendster for a bit. it's an interesting concept but honestly i shunned it because i hate popularity contests. and i'm not really interested in social networking (cause i'm a loser!).

in any case, he did drive the point home that tabulas was a good infrastructure to build a similar system; journaling is another medium for expressing oneself... and i really think i could build an interesting system for social networking within tabulas.

if you look at the main page, i've added a "% users networked" under the statistics. that takes a factorial of the total number of users and calculates how many actual user-friends links has been made compared to the total number. it basically means that out of the total capacity of the site, only 2% of the total "friendsness" has been created.

i may actually take time to build the "find a user" page to make it a bit more complex than what i originally envisioned to see if i can build in a rudimentary friendster-type system. nothing that'll compete with it, but maybe something that'll let you find people easier.

i remember a talk i gave with caroline, bobby and some other people when the beta first launched. i half-jokingly said the best way for tabulas to make money was to get into the dating area ...

now it doesn't seem so farfetched.

whatever happened to sarah mclachlan? i really loved her music.

Sarah McLachlan - Angel
Spend all your time waiting
For that second chance
For a break that would make it okay
There's always one reason
To feel not good enough
And it's hard at the end of the day
I need some distraction
Oh beautiful release
Memory seeps from my veins
Let me be empty
And weightless and maybe
I'll find some peace tonight

In the arms of an angel
Fly away from here
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
You're in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort there

So tired of the straight line
And everywhere you turn
There's vultures and thieves at your back
And the storm keeps on twisting
You keep on building the lie
That you make up for all that you lack
It don't make no difference
Escaping one last time
It's easier to believe in this sweet madness oh
This glorious sadness that brings me to my knees

In the arms of an angel
Fly away from here
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
You're in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort there
You're in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here

wow. i love database systems. after realizing that it would probably be better to offload the tabulas database to my auxiliary server ... the total downtime from the moment i decided to move to the moment i got everything back up running was exactly 6 minutes.

6 minutes to migrate a database? :) i LOVE databases!

Great song.

Beatles - Blackbird
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free.

Blackbird fly Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird fly Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

tired as crap. tabulas needs to finish itself. finished some sort of shared journals/users master list (view main page to see).

also started implementing limitations on accounts ... tomorrow's going to be a busy day.

things to do:
1.) advanced/simpe mode stuff
2.) css/template limitations
3.) fixxors some entry.php problems
4.) tabulas tutorials? someone shoot me :/

i'll be picking up another server sometime over the next week. i've got it figured out ...

i'll leave audiomatch and tabulas databases on the existing "client" server since it's so lightly loaded. i'm going to move tabulas/audiomatch to the new server for strictly http/php. no mysql. i'm actually probably going to get the ensim system and gut out all the services i don't need (tomcat, bandwidth_manager, etc.) so that it'll be optimized to server up apache requests ...

but i'm counting on the fact that tabulas and audiomatch will actually generate some sort of revenue. and honestly i'm not so sure it will :/

blech.

uday and qusay, sons of saddam hussein, have been reported to be killed in a gunfight.

although i have lots to do, i got bored enough to start messing around with perl regular expessions ...

and i managed to build a xanga journal backup utility. i had e-mailed xanga twice before asking them when they were going to build a "backup" feature. they replied back twice saying, "it's coming soon." this was more than a year ago.

well i got tired of waiting. i managed to get a script to crawl my xanga, extract relevant information (entry & datetime), and display it. i think i may put this little tool on roykim.net ... could be quite useful.

for now i've been just getting the data to output to the screen, but i think i may do something to tabulas.com and output in both HTML and RSS format. the RSS format could be plugged into almost any journaling software and the HTML copy could be for your own records.

any thoughts? crossposted into my xanga since i know some of you heathens still are using it (if you're wondering where i'm posting this from, go to http://www.tabulas.com )

sigh. i don't know what's wrong with me.

i started working on this stupid xanga backerupper thing, not for any real purpose but just to see if i could do it.

the more i do it, the more i realize how screwed it is. gah. i rewrote it completely from scratch once, now it looks i'll have to do it again.

the problem is that PHP is not wanting to run a long loop, generating 100K+ sized files ... it's just killing the memory.

so i think what i'm going to have people input the journal to be downloaded, and have a primary script take all data and input it into a temp database. then the temp database outputs it into a html file ...

gah.

i want to break my computer.

i spent some time making my xanga backup script not suck. originally i had written this to utilize a recursive function in this format:

Step 1.) Open page
Step 2.) Clean up page (e.g. shorten it down of header/footer info so my regexps could go faster later
Step 3.) Isolate important data (entries, time, dates)
Step 4.) Upload data
Step 5.) Locate the "Next 5" link and callback this function with this page

The problem I ran into initially was the Next 5 was a bit harder to pull off than originally thought. I ran into a problem where at the last page to back-up, the script decided the "previous 5" link was actually the "next 5" link so i started an endless loop.

in any case, i fixed this, but then memory consumption became appalling. It required upwards of 60megs of ram per backup ... ridiculous. at first, i couldn't figure it out. i wasn't carelessly leaving any large arrays or variables set.

then neeraj enlightened me. i was using a tail recursion which was storing all the returned data ... not dumping it into garbage whenever a function was finished (which technically was not so until the last one had run). ah-ha!

so i learned something new today. i moved the recursive function to a loop (it's invoked through a loop now and doesn't callback on itself), and now the script runs blazingly fast; it grabbed a year's worth of xanga for me in under 20 seconds.

i've decided that instead of storing all that in memory, i'm going to dump it into the database and then manipulate it out. it'll leave for more options in the future in case i want to add more functionality to it (i don't know why).

this thing should be done by tomorrow. i've started documenting tabulas (tabulas tutorials) which should serve as a guided tour (of sorts) on how to use tabulas for you new users (since it is a bit complex).

amazing. i just watched the short stack (who was originally the chip leader at the start of the game) go all-in on a A/10 ... the chip leader at that point called him on it ... with pocket cowboys. the flop dropped 2 10s and a useless card ... then the turn dropped a king. what an amazing turn of events. 5th street was useless.

damn.

Documenting. So _not_ fun.

In any case, I've come to realize that the journaling world is incredibly crowded. Between Xanga, Livejournal, DiaryLand, all the LJ clones ... it's going to be very hard to find users who will remain loyal and pay. I feel I've put up a decent product which is semi-easy to use and is packed with features. I've also tried not to limit free users in what they can do (I hate that crap).

The next stage is documentation. I've started writing tutorials, some aimed at complete newbies ... some aimed at advanced users, and some aimed directly at users of Xanga (you can see what audience i'm targetting here).

My goal is to get someone who knows NOTHING about the internet be able to read these tutorials and learn how to create/maintain a journal. Honestly, I want my mom to be able to use this service with ease.

Which means, I might need your help. If you know anyone who has a remote interest in journaling but has _no_ experience in using the computers, let me know. I want them to try to use Tabulas once I get my tutorials up to get some feedback. It's very easy for me to just say "go to the galleries page" since I wrote the frickin system, but I need someone who's never used it to try these tutorials and find weakpoints.

So if you know anyone who loves to journal online but is scared about having to "learn" something new or needs someone to hold his or her hand, let me know. I will be granting out beta tester accounts for these people.

The older audience (35+) is never targetted by these journaling services, and I have to wonder why. They usually have the most interesting things to say and are usually willing to dispense advice. I personally think it's because they just don't know how to use these new services.

A tool is no good if someone doesn't know how to use it.

I played poker last night with a Chinaman, a Hindu, and an American. Guess who took all our money. Haha. Just kidding. No, but he really did win. But it's not because he as a moneygrubbing soulless American ... oh wait.

I cannot stand the word "blog." I shudder and cringe everytime I see that word. It's new the new word trend du jour ... and it makes me sick.

For those of you who have been spared of knowing of its experience, it is a shortened version of the word "weblog," which is the exact same thing as a journal.

Side note: Some "bloggers" will argue that journals are quite different than "blogs." That is true to a certain extend. But in the end, who is doing the writing? A "blog" is a journal that is written for an audience, and I make absolutely no distinction between the two.

Back when I was journaling back in 1998, blogs had a different name - "e/n." Yes, if you remember the e/n craze, you are an oldie. E/N meant everything/nothing, which represented the content base for a lot of journals back then.

But why? Why do I hate the word "blog" so much? Part of it is because the word itself means nothing. It doesn't associate itself with any word that's useful. Go up to someone new and say "I have a blog." When they look at you blankly, say, "I have a weblog."

They will still stare at you blankly.

Now tell them, "I have an internet journal." Watch them understand.

My second reason for hating the word is more superficial - I hate the way it sounds, it looks, and spells. I've never been particularly fond of the bl- or -og letter combinations; there aren't too many "good" words that are associated with it. I mean, "blog?!" It sounds like the crap that comes back up after you've had one too many shots of vodka. "I blogged all over the floor ... sorry."

I mean, look at all the sound to represent disgust: "Bleck." And -og just is too close to words I dont like: log (not the tree type either), mog, bog ... the -og just doens't seem very _strong_ and just has a bad connotation for me.

I'm down with creating new words, but the word for an internet journal should has some links with an existing word (and not weblog).

man, brian sent me their single off the new yellowcard album. that led to me downloading some of their album.

and that led to me buying the album today. i LOVE yellowcard. they're a little bit whiny (i mean, they're emorock, what do you expect), but i like it nonetheless.

now i just realized why i hate big record labels. starting a few years ago (the earlier i can remember is backstreet boy's "millennium"), record albums decided it'd be a good idea to make music CDs "interactive." i mean, what a plan to CURB P2P sharing!

roy: "hey, i'll buy the album so i can support yellowcard!"
roy goes home.
roy plugs in CD into comptuer so he can listen to it while studying/working.
STUPID INTERACTIVE SCEEN COMES UP.
IN FRUSTRATION ROY REALIZES YOU CAN'T LOAD THE DAMN CD INTO WINAMP. arrrggghhhhhhh
roy goes and downloads the whole album in mp3 format...

look, mr. big label man. i don't want to watch no stupid music video... i just wanna put the CD in the CD-ROM drive and listen to the CD in winamp.

thank you.

After my freshman year, an atrocity was commited in Chapel Hill. Well, kinda.

The local Taco Bell on Franklin St. had to be shut down ... I know I did my part in keeping it there, being a frequent visitor late at night when I was lonely and needed the comfort of combo #9 (3 softshell tacos + drink = $3.29 or something like that).

In any case, I hadn't had Taco Bell since freshman year ... and boy was I craving it.

Now that I can drive, I decided to find the local Taco Bell and gorge myself with tacos. I loaded up trusty tacobell.com and mapquest.com and mapquested the local taco bell (which I decided was the one by Southpoint mall).

But then jennhlin told me that there was one right by the old Southsquare mall! YES!

So I drove there and had a 2 combo #9. It was really good.

I just figured out how to make some money to support Tabulas! I just got an e-mail from this Nigerian dude who said he was the the brother of some deposed general and needed MY help getting the money out of the bank! He said he's give me $2mil USD for my work!

YES! yES!!!!!!!!!

time to go to the bank ... bbl.

what i didn't pay for in monies for that awesome taco bell ... i am paying for it now.

by the way, the previous post was a joke :D ... give me a little credit, guys ;)

I'm surprised more people didn't get this joke.

related funny link

This song is definetly in my top 10 favorite song list. It came out the summer before my high school freshman year ...

Verve Pipe - Freshmen
when i was young and knew everything
and she a punk who rarely ever took advice
now i'm guilt stricken,
sobbing with my head on the floor
stop a baby's breath and a shoe full of rice
i can't be held responsible
cause she was touching her face
i won't be held responsible
she fell in love in the first place
for the life of me i cannot remember
what made us think that we were wise and
we'd never comprimise
for the life of me cannot believe
we'd ever die for these sins
we were merely freshman
my best friend took a week's
vacation to forget her
his girl took a week's worth of
valium and slept
now he's guilt stricken sobbing with his
head on the floor
think's about her now and how he never really
wept he says
we've tried to wash our hands of all of this
we never talk of our lacking relationships
and how we're guilt stricken sobbing with our
heads on the floor
we fell through the ice when we tried not to
slip, we'd say

so i went shopping today.
ha ha

no not really. i just added a third server that i have to manage now ... this means tabulas and audiomatch are going to their own homes :) of course this also means i'm shelling out $350/month for my three servers ... ouch.

i need to quickly make some money off of tabulas :/ maybe i'll offer some advanced offering for the first 100 paid users or something. like mad disk space. not sure yet.

cool beans.

time to shower and then configure the thing.

This is the best album I've bought, hands down.

It's an amazing mixture of introspective songs ... the songs all complement each other without sounding the same (which was the problem with many bands like ... say ... Linkin Park). The songs are all well-written and are musically tight (I'm not sure what it means, but I get this vibe that the songs were meticulously picked and that they don't ramble; they get straight to a point and stick to it).

Of course, I've always been a fan of using the violin in rock songs (kinda like Weekend Excursion) ... but the one thing that stands out about this album is that it's not whiny. A lot of emorock bands tend to just be really whiny (which was part of the Get Up Kids' problem).

Man I don't know what more I can say about this album. Download it and buy it!

I went to Taco Bell after losing $30 at Duke in poker (side note: i just had a bad draw of cards .. horrid draw of cards). I love Taco Bell.

Don't you hate it when you order something and then you realize you only wanted part of it? For example, I was hungry tonight so I went drive-thru at Wendy's. I didn't want the spicy chicken combo; I felt more like taco salad.

What I didn't know is that taco salad is more of a salad than taco at Wendy's. After I got it, I realized all I really wanted was a bowl of chili and some of the taco chips.

Sigh.

i just talked to my parents about deferring taking the MCATs. most of you know that between tabulas and life i haven't really devoted too much time to studying for those suckers .... i've been taking portions of each test and i'm scoring on average only about 30-33 ... not good enough. i really need to aim for somewhere around a 38-40 if i have any shot of any med school, and even that's a gamble. yes, my gpa is that low. not "korean" low. it's LOW low.

in any case, it's kind of a big lift off my shoulders. originally i was going to get a refund ... but my parents just said that i should take the test and void it for the experience. so i'll do that.

ever since hao got off working for the lab, he's been studying with me at undergrad ... he's a good study buddy. we keep taking damn breaks for small poker game ($3 pots haha).

yeaaahhh. time to work a bit on tabulas, play some intense broodwar, then sleep.

americans cannot make cell phones. i'm so sorry... they cannot make cell phones worth a shit. the europeans have got us beat when it comes to design and usability.

recently my mom added another cell phone to my cingular plan so she could use it for "emergencies." she got some stupid motorola flip phone for $50 or something. so of course, she brings it to me to figure it out.

and for the life of me, this thing has the WORST organization ever. WORST. for some gay reason, "cell phone ringers" are found in the last menu "More" unless I use the shortcut from the main screen. and the menu buttton is hidden.

argh. americans need to learn how to design crap. right now they just cram a ton of useless features so they can charge an extra premium on phones to inflate the bottom line. and with this cramming of features comes a hastily put together menu that sucks ass in organization. it's not intuitive at all.

things should be grouped by task and should be intuitive. not forced learning. graaaaa (says the kid who made tabulas the most unusable website ever haha).

but really, why do they try to make cell phones do everything? the next time i need my cell phone to (pick one: serve as my mp3 player, take digital pictures, play games online, manage my e-mail, fax documents, serve as my PDA, do my laundry, pay my bills) I'LL BUY A GODDAMN PDA MACHINE.

cell phones should serve a few purposes:
1.) make phone calls / text messages
2.) interact with wireless networks to tap for quick browsing (info)

that is it. it should not be my goddamn calculator, it should not be my goddamn gameboy, it should not be my DIGITAL CAMERA. IF I WANT TO TAKE A GODDAMN PICTURE I WILL DO IT WITH A REAL DIGITAL CAMERA.

sigh.

kids ... remember ... less is more! especially with technological gadgets.

tony regarding my roommate situation next year:

HeY iTs ToNy LeE: i will visit
HeY iTs ToNy LeE: but if sungjin is there alone
HeY iTs ToNy LeE: i will leave
HeY iTs ToNy LeE: that would be GREAT
HeY iTs ToNy LeE: i should do that
HeY iTs ToNy LeE: visit every day
HeY iTs ToNy LeE: and then leave if you're not there
HeY iTs ToNy LeE: mind games -> ^_^
HeY iTs ToNy LeE: I love to "toy"

so my hosting company gave me a bad license of ensim (which is software that helps to manage sites on my servers) ... it took them a whopping two days to install a new copy.

the interesting thing is i think they gave me the wrong version of ensim. there are two versions: one is for cheapos like me, and the other one is some "supercharged turbo alpha" version that costs $20+/month over the cheapo copy.

i think the hosting company installed the expensive one ... oops. oh well. it's not my fault they can't install the right version ... as long as i don't have to shell out $20+ month i'll be happy :)

in any case, i'm having a blast right now configuring my server (my speech is denoting lots of sarcasm which i hope you can infer) ... had to rebuild php. i've been shutting down all non-essential services (tomcat, bandwidth_manager, i'll soon shut down the whole ensim panel itself) so that this thing will be JUST for audiomatch/tabulas processing.

i tested a quick switch of audiomatch from one server to another; it seemed to work fine. i can redirect domains almost instantaneously since i'm keeping DNS on the npservers site; i'm not going to bother changing nameservers.

the problem here is if all the services will work. i'm using a test domain to upload the existing audiomatch framework, and everything seemed to work wheni tested form this site.

tabulas is a bit pickier about libraries and dependencies, so i'm sure i'm missing some stupid library that will break tabulas. well, i'm currently transferring tabulas to my new server. it's really nice to ftp from one server to another and take advantage of the ev1.net's superfast intranet to transfer gigs of data ...

i hope all this works :0)

edit: i've just updated the DNS on npservers to point audiomatch over to the new site. so far i've been pinging audiomatch but i can't get the new IP. damnit.

edit 2:goodness gracious, trying to backup tabulas is killing the old server. maybe i'll shut down httpd for a little bit ...

edit 3: ok, audiomatch is moved to the new server. man, this server is so f'ing powerful; i've double the RAM in the system and this thing is handling everything like a beauty. i'm sure it'll run a lot faster once i get everything up and running and can disable a lot of the useless programs running in the background.

i'll wait about a day to get everyone from audiomatch over to the new server, then i'll start moving tabulas over. phhheewww. gonna be fun :)

what a great song. kind of sounds like unwritten law's "rest of my life"

yellowcard - view from heaven
i'm just so tired
wont you sing me to sleep
and fly through my dreams
so i can hitch a ride with you tonight
and get away from this place
have a new name and face
i just aint the same without you in my life
late night drives, all alone in my car
i can't help but start
singing lines from all our favorite songs
and melodies in the air
singin life just aint fair
sometimes i still just can't believe you're gone
and im sure the view from heaven
beats the hell out of mine here
and if we all believe in heaven,
maybe we'll make it through one more year
down here

feel your fire,
when its cold in my heart
and things sorta start
remindin' me of my last night with you
i only need one more day
just one more chance to say
i wish that i had gone up with you too
and i'm sure the view from heaven
beats the hell out of mine here
and if we all believe in heaven
maybe we'll make it through one more year
down here

you wont be comin' back
and i didn't get to say goodbye
i really wish i got to say goodbye
and im sure the view from heaven
beats the hell out of mine here
and if we all believe in heaven
maybe we'll make it through one more year
i hope that all is well in heaven
cuz its all shot to hell down here
i hope that i find you in heaven
cuz i'm so...
lost without you down here
you wont be coming back
and i didn't get to say goodbye
i really wish i got to say gooooodbye

the more i play poker, the more i understand how deep of a game it is. i haven't matched a game yet that is as intense, as unpredictable, and requires as much skills as poker. the level that you have to read your opponents, the guts you gotta have to stick out against odds, the way you have to calculate both your outs (e.g. probability of getting the card that lets you win) as well as the pot odds (the raise vs. the total pot, compare it against your cards)...

then again, you can always throw out all these rules and play as the big bluffer.

amazing.

no limit texas hold 'em ... best game in the world.

(i played poker last night and won some, can you tell?)