I finally got to experience what it was like to sashay into an exclusive (ish) club (I even skipped the VIP line!!!!). Seriously, it was pretty cool. I understand why people at the top of the clubbing food chain love going to clubs ... I felt so special walking past 50 people trying to pay $100 for a ticket in (I got in for free, too).
Oh god, I sound really lame.
. . .
Anyways, thanks to NoNa for their awesome hospitality this weekend!
I wonder why Live Search hasn't indexed a single Tabulas page.
When I was little, I would lie down in the floor of our living room, and wonder what our house would be like upside down. It seemed much cooler.
Nothing much going on; tired of traveling - I need a good weekend indoors to catch up.
My Japanese Peace Lily is starting to bloom:
Things to not joke about with your mom: telling her the baby fish in my community tank were the closest thing to grandchildren she'd have (although technically, they're her grand-grand children).
My co-worker Pete (who is in-office this week from Minnesota) walks over to my computer and goes: "Are you listening to the Backstreet Boys?"
. . .
I came into the office today and found two stuffed bunny rabbits on my desk. I'm not sure what's going on, or how to feel.
For on-and-off two weeks now, I've been slowly trying to reorganize my place to minimize the "stuff overflow" factor - there is just too much "stuff" in my place. Too many non-personal things - books, dvds, furniture.
On Friday, I finally accomplished the first task of my room reorganization: minimize the visual overload from my DVD collection:
I saw a great Flickr photoset on using sleeves, but after cutting a few covers, it just didn't feel right - it was hard to get the size correct, and I didn't like the idea of destroying all my covers. So I just continued on without cutting the covers. (The plastic CD sleeves that were recommended in that photoset are really REALLY nice, especially given their price. They are cheap, and they are smooth enough for the sleeves to not stick together. Highly recommend.)
After a few days of transferring all my DVDs over to sleeves, I managed to get them all into a few boxes (alphabetized, obviously):
These fit nicely underneath my TV:
Of course, the shelf bowing concerns me; the DVDs may find a new home underneath my couch (which would help even more with the "hide stuff" motif).
The problem remained: how can I efficiently locate a DVD?
The answer: Delicious Library. I had no problem forking over $40 for the software after demoing it ... the beautiful thing was that it worked perfectly with my :CueCat USB bar code scanner! Without having to do any keyboard or mouse inputs! Every time I scanned a barcode on a DVD cover, Delicious Library would automatically pick it up, do the Amazon search, and add it to my library. BEAUTIFUL. (As a side note, given how cheap you can pick up a CueCat (I think I got mine for $8 on eBay), they work REALLY well; sometimes you gotta keep scanning back and forth for harder ones, but eventually it'll pick it up. *PLUS*, there's no extra software to install! Plug and play at its finest!)
Delicious Library let me digitally organize my collection. But this only solved half the problem: I also want to put up a copy of my library on the web. On the off chance I ever make friends, I can bribe them by offering them free rentals from Royflix; this lets them see what I have!
Luckily, Delicious Monster stores your collection in XML (in ~/Library/Application Support/Delicious Library/Library Media Data.xml). I hacked together a quick PHP script in about half an hour which parsed the XML and generated an HTML file (there were other libraries out there, but I have some ideas on how to expand this script later which required me to reinvent the wheel for now).
So, world ... here is my DVD collection!
And because Kristin Bell is so beautiful, a picture of her:
Am I old enough to wax nostalgia? (No, but you'll have to hear me out anyways)
I've been doing some massive reorganization of my loft over the past few weeks ... anyways, today I found my personal mementos box, containing photos, cards, and letters (mostly from college). Anyways, I was looking at some prints I made from my SLR and an early digital camera (I remember paying an arm and a leg for an early 3.3 megapixel camera) and realized that I was one of the (un)fortunate ones who "grew up" with film cameras. When I went on my photography trip to Vietnam and Korea, a dSLR wasn't available to consumers. I shot the whole trip on film positives (slides) ... I paid roughly $3 a shot ($1 per shot per roll, $2 per shot for development)! Even then, I still had to pay $1,000 for a film scanner and spend countless hours scanning my slides into their digital equivalents!
Jeju Island, Korea, 2002
I think the digital film explosion over the past five years has been remarkable, but it makes me long for the days when a picture was truly rare. When I find a picture of myself and my friends, that truly is a rare picture - there is probably not another copy of that photo anywhere (because I never developed doubles and I lost the negs).
When I look at pictures on Flickr ... they seem so ... uniform. CCDs have reached such a starking level of clarity and precision that the pictures lack imperfection. A few years ago, I took a trip with my friends to the mountains - most of the pictures I took on that trip was with a Polaroid (you know, the kind with the instant film!) ... the pictures are fading fast now, but the blurriness and imperfections of the physical media make me more nostalgic than finding an old digital picture of myself on Facebook. Memories fade for a reason - maybe pictures should, too.
I'm going to India in February, and I hope to rediscover my love of photography on that trip. I was thinking of buying a Rebel sTI, but at this point, I'm almost convinced just to go buy a whole bunch of slide film and go through the painful processing of getting digital versions of non-digital photos.
Somewhere in Vietnam, 2002
We were passing around a "Congratulations on getting married" card for Pete and Mare in the office on Friday. I was working on some deep code issues at the time, so I distractedly wrote a rather nonsensical entry in the card. However, when Pete read my message at the MindTouch Christmas dinner tonight, it seemed pretty damn funny. (This sentiment was shared by others, not just myself) I'm not sure if it was funnier cause of all the sangarita I (we) drank at the time, but I wrote:
You guys are pretty awesome. But so am I.
- Roy
Maybe it was funnier within the context of all the more heartfelt and serious well-wishes.
Remember my Blockbuster/Facebook Beacon post? Well, looks like Blockbuster may have violated a law, with a penalty of up to $2,500 per violation (thnx to Steve for the heads-up).
This begs the question: What other lawsuits are going to start flying regarding the egregious privacy breaches from other Beacon partners?
I hope somebody starts a class-action lawsuit against Blockbuster. I'm still really peeved about what they did. Did anybody stop to think what they were doing before they did it? Facebook has always had a history of doing what they want (users be damned), and then backtracking once everybody gripes out loud. One of these days, an apology is just not going to cut it.
From an article about rapid human evolution:
For example, Africans have new genes providing resistance to malaria. In Europeans, there is a gene that makes them better able to digest milk as adults. In Asians, there is a gene that makes ear wax more dry.
Africans: Resistance against diseases. Europeans: better digestion of dairy products. Asians: ... dry ear wax? What??
Man, we really got shafted.
Gizmodo: "Smarter Honda ASIMO Can Self-Charge, Avoid People, Work In Groups." Hey, they just described me! Am I ... ASIMO?! That would be a pretty badass business card: ROY KIM: Self-Charger, People Avoider, Group Worker.
By the way Aaron and Damien both Skyped me the link to the MindTouch Hiring page, I should have known something was up:
How fitting. It's like my own personal fan club page (jeez, whatever happened to that anyways?)
I haven't fully thought this out, but I could really use Amazon's SimpleDB as a good logging service. Part of the reason I can't turn on logging for more users on Tabulas is because it absolutely kills the mySQL database. Unfortunately, SimpleDB's in a limited beta, so I can't actually hack together something.
SimpleDB isn't as obvious as S3 and EC2 in its impact, but I'm slowly thinking up of ideas where I can make use of it.
. . .
I spent a good chunk of this weekend reading on Wikipedia some random topics: Hellenic philosophical schools and the European monarchies leading up to WWI. It's amazing how complicated and twisted European history was (especially the overlaps between all the ruling parties).
When reading about history, I like to try place my life within the perspective of that era. Had I been an emperor during the 18th century, I would have been Joseph II. Enlightened absolutism makes sense to me. It's a shame Joseph II made so many enemies; what was up with all those monarchs, constantly going to war? I guess it's the equivalent of today's rich kids making trouble.
. . .
It'll soon be Christmas - I took a long break over Thanksgiving to go to NC, so I'll be spending Christmas here, decompressing from a rather stressful (in a good way) year. I've been reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, which has been helpful in gaining some perspective on life. Tibetan Buddhism surely is interesting.
. . .
It's all over ESPN: The Miami Dolphins finally won a game this year, thus avoiding become the first team in NFL history to go winless. I can't believe how much coverage this is getting. I also cannot believe the picture of them celebrating one win:
I guess the only thing worse than being the 1-15 team is being the team to lose to the 1-15 team.
. . .
I wonder what happens when all these companies with massive oil revenue surpluses start developing their nations heavily to the point where they start requiring oil imports themselves.
. . .
Saw "I Am Legend." Was very enjoyable! Will Smith is awesome. I'd pay $8 to watch Will Smith mow lawns.
Man, 5000 API requests a day just doesn't cut it. Nearly 3 months after initially setting up the "related entries" feature, Yahoo has nearly (still 13,000 entries left, but that should be done by this weekend) caught up with the backlog of patron account entries. All patron accounts should have related entries feature enabled. Click through on any entry to see what Tabulas thinks are "related entries." The algorithm could be absolutely stupid, so while you write about some awesome political views, the thing might return your LOLcat entry. Sucks to be the product of my weak programming skillz.
To rehash an example of what this thing does, it recently decided my tongue-in-cheek post about the evolution of dry earwax Asians was related to my rant on tree sperm. Draw your own conclusions.
I've had some fun reading posts from years past (that I had forgotten about) as I write new entries; I hope you can enjoy the feature as well.
Note: entries are processed nightly. That means (for now), any entries you add won't automatically get picked up. You may have to wait a day (or two).
Some things I can do with this feature in the future:
I hope to have an EXCITING story to write about tomorrow ... cause today, at 8PM PST, I have a date with (humorous joke) destiny!
Released Deki Wiki 1.8.3 RC2 yesterday (I wrote the release notes and the blog entry) - yay.
This release turned out to be much heftier than we imagined - although we marked it as an incremental release, it's actually a major release. That means that we had a 3 month development cycle between major releases (September 21st - December 18th). This, of course, doesn't include the time from our black hole of engineering resources.
It seems that given the flexibility we need at MindTouch to handle all our side projects, the most realistic schedule is to do service pack releases once a month (1.8.3a, 1.8.3b) and then do a release every two or three months.
I still got a ton of work in nailing down QA issues (we had some regressions in this release that are disheartening) because the release checklist is somewhat dated - one of these days, I need to update the documentation.
Although I don't doubt that life gets better from here on out ... what scares the shit out of me is that life doesn't get easier. I flee from complexity in my life, but some day I'll need to stop running.
Let me put it this way: I have the best holiday greeting card you'll EVER receive. EVER. Like a fine dish, the card required a lot of preparation, well-timed execution, and a period of simmering into perfection. But in order to receive the awesomeness, you'll need to give me your address. So drop me your mailing address in the comments below or through email (royikim@gmail.com) and I'll send you a holiday greeting card! Don't be afraid to ask cause I don't know who you are - the AWESOMENESS will bond us for life. Take my word on it.
I showed Corey and Guerric the concept card today and they were wowed. It's awesomeness knows no bounds. It's like the second coming of the Beatles; it's THAT awesome.
Edit: Sorry for the confusion - this is a real, physical greeting card. I need your mailing address!
If you're reading this, could you please vote for MindTouch? (it's in the nonsensical second category "applications or widgets") 30 minutes left and we're only winning by 0.1%...
PubertY2K: i want to start a company called bodytouch
PubertY2K: i bet it would be easier to get people to work for bodytouch than for mindtouch
All I want for Christmas is access to Amazon SimpleDB. Really badly. Really, really badly. Can you hear me, AWS people? I LOVE S3 and have written about it so many times ... give a brotha' a chance and hook me up with some SimpleDB access!
(I want to move the hit logging functionality in Tabulas over to SimpleDB - currently I have to prune out all my logs every few months since mySQL seems to fall over once the datasets get too large - I'm interested in seeing how well SimpleDB handles my logging data - of course, this'll mean that I'll start paying a high cost on XML parsing from data returned from SimpleDB, but I don't mind paying CPU cycles)
Are my aquarium updates like my poker entries of 2006 in the sense that nobody wants to read them, yet I keep writing them?
Aquarium update, cause nobody cares:
I did my first 20% water change on my 60 gallon this weekend. I cleaned off the sides (lots of red and brown algae, ick!), replanted some plants (that had become uprooted), and cleaned water. I also did my first partial media change on my Fluval 404 filter. While doing this, I broke the impeller well on the filter ... and didn't realize it until today. I was checking out my tank and noticed the water was unnaturally yellow. Then I realized that the water flow from the filter was close to nothing. So I spent an hour today putting in a placeholder clamp for the impeller well (one of the ends that snapped it into broke off). In any case, the filter is fixed, and now water flow is tremendous (I must have broken this earlier, cause I don't remember the water flow being this strong!).
I had a few fatalities in the community tank last week (I also have two fish on the verge of death), which I attribute to not realizing the filter was broken. I also bought a few more female bettas for the community tank - I now have 6 female bettas (they get along tremendously well) enjoying the tank as well.
I also did a total cleaning of my 20 gallon (which houses 4 partitioned male bettas) this past weekend. Nothing much to say, except that the location of the tank is most unfortunate (its by windows). I also decided to turn off the water filter for that one, because the bettas seemed miserable with all that water flow.
The one thing I learned: the Fluval 404 (which I'm guessing cost about $200) is a remarkably simple system. All it has is a simple motor which forces water in one direction - the rest is just plastic and smart water engineering (the valves would be tricker to make on your own). If I weren't so lazy, I would try building my own.
The view from my window today:
The weather in SD's been somewhat drab and cold lately, so it was nice to see that sunset today.
My family and some friends contributed to my digital camera fund - looks like I'll be able to get one soon.
Hope all is well with everybody! I started getting word yesterday that people were getting the holiday cards...
Edit: Bert added his own view from his place. Maybe we should make this a meme.
Fans of Arrested Development, I present to you the best cello trio EVER (link courtesy of Oliver):
My god, it's so perfect. I wish I had done something more with my piano skills back in the day; if Oliver and I were born about 5 years later, our shit would be ALL up on YouTube, forrealz!
Edit: If you want to understand why this is funny, check out this video, which is a clip from Arrested Development.
To end 2007, I'd like for you to ponder this image. I'll save you the trouble of a backstory - just accept the photo as it is and ponder how the hell I ended up in front of that camera.
Be sure to come back tomorrow! I'll post a pic a day!
