I’ve been meaning to add this really cool plug-in called Tags Cloud and finally got around to it. What supposed to be about thirty minutes of getting this plug-in to be functional has turned into a 3 hours efforts. A big chunk of that time consumption was updating posts with tags instead of being in categories and I’ve still got about 300 posts that are still untagged. Ugh. But as you can see, it’s soo much better than categories and much more flexible. When I write a post, it can be a little hard deciding which category it should belong to and it also might overlap with other categories. Tags are much more clicking-friendly too, as shown in the sidebar. It’s similar to the delicious website.

You can pretty much tell what things I’m interested in and my identity, according to the “Tags Cloud”. Obviously, I identify myself as a Deaf person and Korean adoptee next. Ofc, I love cars and traveling. I had a nice time re-reading through those posts. It gives out same feeling when you’re looking thru your old pictures and go “oh hey, I remember this…”

I remember I had one good discussion with my friend, Jason. We discussed and realized that writing or blogging is really vital to us because by the time we grow older and closer to the end of our life, it’s gonna be all what we will have left and our memory not so sharp. Our pictures, papers we wrote, posts we typed, the “documentation” of our life. Sure, there will be people who would remember how or what we were like and pass on stories but it’s nothing like writing because we share our thoughts and feelings as we try to record what we went through life. That’s a major reason why I decided to blog at least everyday.

As I said in my previous post, I started a blog as an addition to my website. I’d like to think that it has evolved since I started doing this. First of all, I thought I was going to write a few things about what I think in this rather short life (believe me, when you reach 70 years old, you will feel like it’s flashed before your eyes.) and about myself.

After doing this for more than a year and trying my best to keep this website somewhat updated, I’ve learned a few things. The number one lesson I’ve learned the most is that content is king. You could have a badly designed website but if you keep coming up with a good content or information, it will somewhat become successful. Don’t believe me? Just type “content is king” in the google search and there’s dozen of articles that say content is king.

So, with that in mind, I fell upon this great post by Jason Kottke. He is one of the few, if not many, bloggers who are able to make a professional living on blogging. To me, I truly think it is tough to do that, so here I am, looking at his website and what makes it “tick”. Ah-ha, it’s not even the design, well, he does have a good working design but it’s all about the content. In doing that, his friend, Greg Knauss, classifies him as a referential blogger. What’s a referential blogger? According to Greg’s words, “the referential blogger uses the link as his fundamental unit of currency, building posts around ideas and experiences spawned elsewhere: Look at this. Referential bloggers are reporters, delivering pointers to and snippets of information, insight or entertainment happening out there, on the Intraweb. They can, and do, add their own information, insight and entertainment to the links they unearth — extrapolations, juxtapositions, even lengthy and personal anecdotes — but the outward direction of their focus remains their distinguishing feature.”

That’s it! That’s what I’ve been doing ever since. I love to surf the web, like a potato on the couch. That’s going to be my focus now, to be a referential blogger. It’s like being a little both of librarian and reporter for the web.

I’m gonna overhaul my website big-time. Really big-time. Hopefully soon. My topics are going to be on the issues relating to myself—someone who’s a Deaf Asian-American, was adopted, love sports, cars, computers, gadgets, works for Google, thinks education is the most important thing anybody can have and simply a person who’s trying to make the best out of life.

And remember, content is king.

I decided to change a bit to my website, moving the “clickadelicious” section to the bigger left column to give it more room and increase its clickability. I realize I spend a good part on finding good links. It’s like finding treasures in the sand with my metal detector. So that’s my worthless reason to move the section.

I’m working on adding a “Flickr”-like photo gallery and as soon as I populate the folder with pics, I’ll post it up and you can start making fun of my amateurish photos. I have pics from the Washington DC Korean Meetup where I met an unofficial Hangul tutor. It was fun and I got to eat cow intestines and drank five shots of Soju. More on that later.

I realize I’m not writing as often as I should, or at least this rule of thumb says so. It said that if you want to attract more visitors, you should write not once but twice a day, so that your readers will know you have something new when they click onto your website or blog. Eh…

The weather here sure is playing a game with us. Last week, it was well over 80’s for most of the week and I began seeing real serious legs flip-flopping on sidewalks as I cruised down the streets with my sunroof open. Ah, spring time! But this week, the temperature went down below 60s and I had to step outside first to see if it’s warm enough to wear shorts. Otherwise, I go back inside and put on pants.

My friends are hooking me to diss work early and go play disc golf with them. I’ll do my best to sneak out of cubicle. :-)