When the year turned 2005, someone asked me what’s my new year resolution. I thought about it and I realized that it’s nearly the same as every last year—get into a better shape, read more books, eat healthier foods, stay in touch with my parents more often, don’t go to bed too late, don’t oversleep, and so on. I realize they were not exactly very inspirational so I looked around other people’ blogs to see what they say about theirs. One actually read a book every week and blogged about it. Someone actually ran at least a mile everyday. Someone else wants to watch Oprah and Dr. Phil shows everyday. There were many good ideas but I’m not that ambitious or have no desire to do that kind of thing. Fast-forward to April 6th, 2005, I found my new year resolution and that’s to learn Korean language, Hangul. My textbook arrived yesterday, so I begin my self-education now.

After flipping through the textbook, I realize something. There is no way am I gonna learn this all by my own. To keep my motivation high, I need to find someone or a group to share it with, someone who can help guide me and recognize my mistakes. It is fruitless to learn a new language if you don’t have someone to chat. It’s like learning a new magic trick and you don’t have anyone to show to. Again, I go to the web and to my surprise, I found some good websites. korea.banoffeepie.com. Actually, their tagline is “Korean-related weblogs written in English.” Simple. This website is like a webring that contains the list of blogs that relate to Korea. I just submitted my blog there but it has to be approved first before it goes into the list. Next one I found was the meetup here in DC. I joined the group and hope to meet some of them!

Like being a teacher, I have to make a lesson plan. First week – memorize the 21 vowels and 19 consonants. Make index cards as flash cards. I feel so like a kid in elementary school!

That’s right. I got a little surprise for you…for visiting my website. :-) I found this $50 dollars coupon off a $100 purchase at Guess. If you don’t care how you look or don’t bother try to look good, you can fuggedaboutit!

Go to the www.guess.com. Add items to the cart that totals 100 dollars or higher. Then check out and use this coupon – SHPCRD – copy and paste into the promotion code to get your 50 dollars off. It expires on April 17th, 2005 and items are running out fast. Happy shopping!

*update* – thought I’d add a little graphical action to this post, :-)

I just found a perfect way to make a good use of my overrated Sony digital camera. I found this website where bloggers choose a theme, then submit a photo that matches the theme every week. There are really many good photos and I find it very fascinating to see how a theme is portrayed by a photo as there are so many different ways to capture the theme. I suggest you to check it out especially if you want to take your camera out more often!

This post is a sequel to my previous post about having a sandpaper in my throat. Know what? That damn sandpaper just refused to go away after taking three medicine cups, equilvalent to six tablespoons, of Tylenol Severe Cold syrup, four Nyquil liquid gels, two Advil pills, and 13 straight hours of sleep. I did have a fever and I got better but my throat still hurt as if there’s broken glass inside my throat, so I knew I had a strep throat and had to get antibiotics. Where to get the antibiotics? I wish I could pretend to be a doctor and write myself a prescription and just get over to CVS pharmacy and get it. I tried calling around DC to get an appointment but most of them are full till next week. I can’t wait that long so I had no choice but go to the hospital. I called the Howard University Hospital (the closest to where I live) to see if they have an interpreter on call and they said yes. So I got myself there, signed in and I waited, waited. And I waited. About four hours later, they finally got me into a patient’s room. Turned out there was no interpreter but on tv, like VP except it was a poor quality. The interpreter had a hard time understanding what I wanted to say. What’s more, prior to that, the nurses spent a half hour just to get the TV working and get the interpreter to answer. Then, a black doctor came and he didn’t even look at me at all, he looked to the TV interpreter to talk to me. He asked me what’s wrong with me. I said I had a strep throat so I need antibiotics. He said “Uh-huh, we’ll see about that.” We went through normal routine and I must admit, it was kinda funny having a TV presence in the room. Then the doctor said, “Mm-hmm, you probably have a strep throat”, and said thank you to the TV interpreter, then he just left the room. I waited for like a half hour in the room and I was like “WTF is going on” so I decided to get out and checked what’s going on. A nurse saw me and waved at me, “come here.” I came to the desk and the nurse said “here’s your checkout form”. I thought “Oh great, why didn’t you just pass that under the door while I was waiting?” I signed my name as fast as I could and the outside was already dark by the time I got out.

I was so exhausted when I got out of the hospital and I had to take the metro to get back home as I didn’t drive to the hospital. As I was waiting for the metro subway to come, I see two kids standing next to their father. The subway opened doors and I went through the doors and was about to sit down on a two-seat empty row. As I was sitting down, I immediately noticed that every other row had already been taken by either one seat or two and I got this instinct feeling that the two kids wouldn’t want to sit separate, so I got up and walked to the next empty seat, leaving the entire row open for the kids to sit down. I sat down opposite side and I felt something was looking behind my back so I turned my head. The little girl was looking at me and she had this happy look on her face. I turned back and thought “Even if I’m having an awful day, it doesn’t mean you still can’t do a nice thing for someone.” The doors closed and the metro subway started to move forward.

P.S. Don’t ever go to Howard University Hospital, which actually means “HUH?”

As you can see, I’ve redesigned my website after working on it for a few days. Now, it’s ready for showing. I’m a big believer in simplicity so I feel that this design suits my style well. I’ve added another page to the website–about me. I’m currently working on a contact form but I’m not sure if I should add that page because we have emails and comments as a means to contact each other. If you want to learn on how to drive traffic to your blog, visit www.lucidcrew.com for more details. I guess when I happen to be in the mood, I’ll add the contact form to the navigation menu, :-) I think I’m going to give it (the redesign fiddle) a rest and focus on blogging more often so you guys will have something more to read. To help you and your business attract more clients you need a full technical support and you can find it in this blog Tech to Us.

WordPress is really starting to take off (it has been already downloaded one hundred thousand times) and more users are contributing to the development of WordPress. One is a theme switcher and there’s a theme contest. Some of the themes are quite good but I think I’m going to stick to my own design, at least for now. I’m becoming addicted to plug-ins that give more features or help enhance your website, like I used Crossianga to automatically post in Xanga for those who are members. Now, I’m gonna have to wipe off the dust on my practically brand-new Sony camera and start populate my website with images and snapshots of who I am. When you want to create your won personal website without html knowledge, you can hire http://www.webdesign499.com/pompano-beach-web-design/.

http://www.davenetics.com/2005/03/stay-in-theater.html

Wanna know what is the average time before major motion picture finally hit on the DVD shelves from the big screen? Four months and half.

You’ve probably heard this word, horsepower, many times before to describe the acceleration power of a car but have you ever wondered how that is figured? I’ve always wondered about that till I saw this mathemathical formula to calculate your car’s horsepower. Here it is:

Power = 2piN * T*1, 34*10-3/ 60

where P = Power, or horsepower
N = Rotational shaft speed or RPM
T = Torque, NM

I need to test this formula myself since I own a Honda Civic Si 2004 and its horspower is 160.

http://www.tonypierce.com/blog/2004/06/how-to-blog-by-tony-pierce-110-1.htm

This link just won the best essay about the blog or web log. Highly recommeded for anyone who regularly blogs or want to make their website better.

Here’s some of the excerpts and my comments to that:

1. write every day.

2. if you think you’re a good writer, write twice a day.

True, this will keep your weblog interesting and someone will know that you’re gonna have a new entry into your blog and that keeps drawing your visitors. It also means you’re constantly thinking and contributing your thoughts.

4. cuss like a sailor.

Hmm, can see why as it keeps your weblog humorus and not to be taken too seriously and reveal your true emotions too.

12. link like crazy. link anyone who links you, link your favorites, link your friends. dont be a prude. linking is what seperates bloggers from apes. and especially link if you’re trying to prove a point and someone else said it first. it lends credibility even if youre full of shit.

Makes sense, it encourages making connections, :-)

14. remember: nobody cares which N*Sync member you are, what State you are, which Party of Five kid you are, or which Weezer song you are. the second you put one of those things on your blog you need to delete your blog and try out for the marching band. similarilly, nobody gives a shit what the weather is like in your town, nobody wants you to change their cursor into a butterfly, nobody wants to vote on whether your blog is hot or not, and nobody gives a rat ass what song youre listening to. write something Real for you, about you, every day.

In other words, be yourself and don’t be such a fake-ass.

17. people like pictures. use them. save them to your own server. or use Blogger’s free service. if you dont know how to do it, learn. also get a Buzznet account. several things will happen once you start blogging, one of them is you will learn new things. thats a good thing.

My bad. I gotta put up more pictures here; I even have a brand-new Sony camera. :-(

21. write open letters. make lists. call people out on their bullshit. lead by example. invent and reinvent yourself. start by writing about what happened to you today. for example today i told a hot girl how wonderfully hot she is.

Be honest and don’t hold back.

22. when in doubt review something. theres not enough reviews on blogs. review a movie you just saw, a tv show, a cd, a kiss you just got, a restaurant, a hike you just took, anything.

Ok, will do more reviews from now on then.

29. dont apologize about not blogging. nobody cares. just start blogging again.

30. read tons of blogs and leave nice comments.

I’ve heard of that blog so many times. Will do my best to read blogs as many as I can and leave comments often. :-)

Hope you’ll do the same. Peace out.

http://www.vnunet.com/news/1161117

This guy named Iain Thomson predicts that online broadband services will replace DVD as popular medium to watch movies. But it will depend on consumers to have high-speed broadband. Once it reaches a substantial amount of subscribers, DVD sales will start to fall. This actually makes sense because I keep seeing countless wasted DVD copies everywhere that never got sold and companies are scrambling to find ways to get rid of the copies, i.e., Netflix, Wal-Mart, near the cashier’s lines, even a drive-thru at Mcdonalds, you get what I mean.

This leads me to make a prediction on top of that. I predict Microsoft will dominate home environment and they are only getting their feet wet. Users are giving rave reviews to Microsoft’s media center edition (MCE) 2005. Just go to the newegg.com and see what users have to say about that. They even admit they loathe Microsoft but love MCE. Microsoft recently added an extender to connect to MCE, making it more widespread around the house. MCE will really set off once online broadband get into mainstream. You either love to hate or hate to love Microsoft. That seems to be their motto right now.

I better buy stocks before this market sets off. :-)

Saw this webpage about the study of eye movement on search engines such as Google.

A new study has added tangible evidence to the widely held view that top-ranking search results get the most attention from users, and that lower-ranking results are all but invisible to most people.

The joint study conducted by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it and eye tracking firm Eyetools examined the eye movements of users viewing Google search result pages.

The study found that most viewers looked at results in an “F” shaped scan pattern, with the eye travelling vertically along the far left side of the results looking for visual cues (relevant words, brands, etc) and then scanning to the right, as if something caught the participant’s attention.

The researchers called this pattern a “golden triangle” at the top of result pages. The triangle extends across the top natural search result, then angles back to the left of the page down to the bottom-most “above the fold” result, typically in the third or fourth position on the page.

This article

This is quite funny. No wonder we have a battle of the sexes going on infinitely.

Nine out of Ten Would be Adequate

Researchers at Alabama’s Auburn University say they have determined what men want in the “ideal woman”: she is sexually inexperienced but likes sex, has a career but is a full-time homemaker, has a slim build, is athletic, and has pretty eyes, dark hair, good complexion and a firm butt. Large breasts are nice, but not all that important. The study’s lead author, Erica Gannon, says the specifications are similar to what is found in the Bible. “Our participants, whether knowingly or unknowingly, espouse a view of the ideal woman that is very similar to the views held by individuals thousands of years ago.” However, she adds, “It’s hard to be this woman.” (UPI) …About as hard as being the ideal man: strong yet gentle, powerful yet sensitive, has a great career yet helps clean the house and raise the children, in control yet cries, and a sex expert who’s only been with one woman.

While looking for plugins to enhance the use of WordPress, I stumbled onto this plugin that allows you to “cross-post” in your Xanga post. It was designed for Xanga users who prefer to stay in their own world. They even call themselves Xangains, or something like that. Think of it as a simultaneous tool so that you don’t have to post twice. Post in WordPress, then it’ll post in Xanga too. Hopefully, they’re brave enough to get out of their world and pay someone a visit. ;-)

The plugin is called Croissanga. Doesn’t that sound like a nice name?

*note: there is another similar plugin so I’m currently testing it to compare.

*updated* Couldn’t get the second plugin working due to some error in HTTP request, so this will do it for now. I notice a little longer delay as it sends a transmission to Xanga website. Well, hope it’s worth the posting.

I must admit: I spend a good part of my day on web-surfing. Whether you think it’s geeky or an awful way to spend your day. I know for one thing. I can’t stop web-surfing. It’s like an addiction. I find a joy in finding cool or useful websites, i.e. “Hey! you gotta see this webpage.” and drag my friends to see what’s showing on my widescreen flat monitor. It’s like finding your keys after it was lost for 2 days. That kind of euphoric feeling. Google is currently indexing a little over 7 billions pages weekly. 7 billion pages? And we’ve only scratched 1 percent of them. Isn’t that kinda sad? So I suppose it’s my goal to scratch a little more than 1 percent and find some cool stuffs.

I wonder if there’s such a job for web-surfers and make recommendations and spread the knowledge. Although I have a job at the government, I probably only do 4 hours of real work and the rest on web-surfing. I’m aware that Google has researchers who “googles” information. I’d love to do that. One thing about me is that I can almost find ANYTHING through the internet. Sometimes, my friend and I would play a game and see who would find the information first. “Haha, I found it first before you did.” or “Can’t find it? I have it on my screen, wanna see it?” with my face grinning broadly.

Well, if you know of a job that web-surfs, lemme know!

Some good websites to check out:

Mobissimo.com: This website parses your flight search through travel sites and airlines websites (about 80 of them) so you don’t have to go to each website to get the quotes.

techbargains.com: This looks for good tech stuffs on bargain, mostly Dell deals.

Gizmo.com: Latest tech products information

Today, I turned 24 years old. 24, just like the Fox show, 24. If you’re Chinese or an avid lover of Chinese astrology, you know I’m a Rooster. That’s something I learned today that you can easily figure out somebody’s age by just asking them what’s their Chinese horoscope. Unlike horoscopes which are monthly-based, it’s based on a year and Chinese has twelve different animals, so there are 12 years. (Duh!) Unless you’re really lousy at guessing people’s age, you have up to 12 years as a margin of error. So, if you were to guess my age, I can be 36, 24, or 12. I don’t think I look that young at 12 nor old at 36, so I’m 24. I dare you to ask someone and ask her or him if they know what’s their Chinese astrology and you shall have their age. :-) (so rude, I know.)

I remember someone who got so distraught after she turned forty years old. It kinda surprised me that she would get upset. Did she just wake up in her bed and say “Oh my god, I’m 40 today!!”. She oughta know that it’s coming, no matter what, and she’s gonna break out in tears when her birthday came? Well, she should know that she’s getting older not by every 40 years but every second. We all are getting older by this sound of tick-tock, tick-tock. What are you gonna do about it? Let each second passes? No, I don’t think so and we all should make every second counts. Life’s a game and you only get one chance.

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