Casually, on Friday, I happen to eat my lunch while my superior was eating his. We started chatting, and I learned about the person in my position before I was around. Since he was no longer here, I was curious as to what happened to him. I have always been a fan of history, believing that it is important to learn from past mistakes, as to avoid making them in the future. As it turns out, the guy before me didn't get along with the CEO of the company. He had his way of doing things, and the...
Written on June 5, 2011
Yesterday, while driving home from class in the evening, I noticed something small scampering across the street in front of me. Slowing down as to avoid hitting it, I watched as it safely crossed the street. To my surprise, it was a baby bird, which had not yet learned how to fly. I watched as it fluttered its wings, frequently, attempting to fly. As the seconds turned into minutes, I gradually slowed down to a halt, and simply watched the bird, wondering if I was to witness the rare moment when...
Written on June 1, 2011
This past weekend marked the one-year milestone since I moved here, and started my new work and study. I reminisced about how things were a year ago, when everything was up in the air, and I was truly a nomad. This I did, while cleaning my room, in order to have a fresh beginning, to re-create the setting a year ago. As it were, when I first came back (after a 2.5 year sojourn), I had started cleaning, but was interrupted by a year of continual school and work. The task got put on hold, as I...
Written on May 24, 2011
At the onset of the redesign of my site, there were a few things that I learned from my first design:
Picking colors, themes, and styles was really harder than it looked. I used to be pretty creative and artistic. Now, I'm more of an engineer, and I just try to build things to specs. So, with all the colors of the spectrum for me to choose from, I must say, the end result didn't look as good as I wanted it to.
I was only touching the surface of what the Dojo Toolkit had to offer. There...
Written on March 28, 2011
This is just a list of notes, problems and solutions I encountered / found from creating a Rails 3 application, and getting it to run in Apache, on my new server. They are categorized by the aspect of the project they pertain to. Expect this list to grow, as I organize all the scattered links I visited.
CSS:
CSS classes do not work when they begin with a number (http://www.yoursiteisvalid.com/validnews/css-class-not-working-when-name-begins-with-numbers-1000.html).
Javascript /...
Updated on March 14, 2011
For a preview of this work in progress, please go here.
If you like it, you may be interested in how I'm making it. Here are some of the tools (the materials) I use. The credit all goes to these guys for making it easy to put something together:
Operating System: Ubuntu 10.10 (Lubuntu flavor)
Server: Apache 2.2
Language/Framework:
Ruby on Rails (Ruby v 1.8.7; Rails v 3.0.1)
Javascript Library: Dojo Toolkit 1.5.0
Basically, that's it....
Written on March 3, 2011
If there was any time that history could have taken a radically different turn, it would have been during the time of these two generals in the Song dynasty. Yesterday, while browsing the internet, I stumbled upon the biographies of these two great men on Wikipedia. The lives they lived were inspiring, but the ends they received were heart-wrenching. The only other person I know of in history which received a comparable death was Joan of Arc.
Having fought for more than thirty years, Yue...
Updated on March 3, 2011
This is my first entry using my re-designed site, consisting of Linux (unchanged), modded Apache with Passenger (formerly Apache), MySQL (unchanged), and Ruby on Rails (formerly PHP). So, I suppose you could call this a LAMR(oR) setup. The work experience I've accumulated is really showing, as about a year ago, when I did my first personal website, I could not do this:
See the pretty colors, the different fonts, and other fancy effects?
But, now I can, and a whole lot more,...
Written on February 25, 2011
Today was a good day.In the morning, I woke up to the sun's shining rays gently pouring through the cracks between my blue window blinds. Springing out of bed, I immediately got myself ready for the church meeting. I was out of the door within 20 minutes.The drive to the meeting was very pleasant as well. The air was crisp; the temperature was cool - not cold enough to be uncomfortable, but not warm enough to induce lethargy. There were hardly any red lights, and I was at the meeting hall within...
Written on January 30, 2011
For the last two weeks, I have been assembling a new computer / server. It is now finally up and running. As of this message, I am officially hosting my website on the new computer. Sometime in the future, whether sooner or later, I will be redo-ing this whole site using rails, incorporating what I've learned on the job, and updating some of the hacks I used in making this site. In addition, I plan to write an article of FAQs, composed of solutions to many of the problems I ran into when setting...
Written on January 8, 2011
Well, this year is winding down, and I have been a solid member of the workforce for almost 7 months now. Work was the most challenging at the onset. Maybe it follows a sink or swim methodology: those who can survive will have no problems. School had been toughest at the end of summer, and has since been a more enjoyable experience. Next semester, I am only taking one class. This starts on January 20th, so that leaves me with a month of relative quietness.My plan is to redo my site, this time...
Written on December 20, 2010
It has been a little more than 6 months since I started working, and here are my thoughts. But, before I begin, I think I should caution my imaginary readers that I believe in stating things the way they are, and not the way I hope they will turn out to be. Sometimes this works, like when you need a honest opinion. Sometimes it doesn't, like in interviews.I am surprised at the work/money ratio. This is probably the one point I have the hardest time accepting. Maybe I am just good at what I do,...
Written on November 17, 2010
As I reflected upon my website, and how to improve it, I realized that almost every one of my posts have been pretty depressing. No normal person enjoys reading about things that depress them, and even those who can tolerate it have a limit to which they can handle. But, on the other hand, as I look around, there isn't much happy news. While things may be going well, apparently, but if I look a little bit below the surface, I am always disappointed. Thus, to write about superficial things is...
Written on November 2, 2010
Autumn has a particular smell. I noticed this, after all the times at the end of summer, every year, when I tried to enjoy the last bit of it just by sitting quietly either in a room looking out the window, or outside, on a bench. Right now, as I am sitting here, with the windows opened, I can smell that familiar smell. It is very nostalgic, because that is when school starts every year. It is the smell every year, as when I waited for my mom to pick me up. It's the same smell as when I used...
Written on September 26, 2010
Throughout the years, I have had a number of pets. The first one was Mimi, a kitten I got when I was very small. I still distinctly remember that afternoon. I had woken up from a nap, and was still drowsy. As I opened the door to the study room, I met my dad in the hallway, who stopped me, and told me to be careful opening it. Curious, I asked him why, but he wouldn't tell me, except to say that something special was inside. So, I carefully opened the door and closed it behind me. I did not...
Written on September 3, 2010
At the turn of the last century, naval technology was the computer technology today. It was at that time that battleships appeared on the scenes. These were the most heavily-armed, most heavily-armored, most expensive, and least used ships in history. Ironically, though these ships were the most capable ships sailing the seas, because of their tremendous cost, navies deliberately kept these ships from the heat of the battle, for fear of losing them. Combined with the continual advance of technological...
Written on September 1, 2010
One of the things which are theoretically impossible to do is the act of going back in time. It is possible to go into the future, because that would simply involve slowing time down somehow (it sounds complicated, but it is possible), but to go into your past, that is not possible. That was... until last weekend. So, a little background: I went from not doing anything and bumming around at home to both working full-time and taking classes part-time within the span of a week. I accepted an offer...
Written on August 18, 2010
There was a girl I knew during my childhood. We were friends, or at least we played together. But, one day her family had to move back to Taiwan. The last time we met, I was so hopeful that we would meet again. For a while, I missed playing with her, but this feeling reached a climax, and was gradually replaced with apathy. As the years went by, the memories faded, but I still remembered being friends with her. Yesterday, our families had dinner together. It was then that reality hit me. The...
Written on August 8, 2010
These days, living by myself, I am experiencing a feeling which could be called loneliness. I hesitate to call it that, because I think there is more to it than that. I understand that I was never like everyone else, so I would understand if I am by myself on this one, but this is the kind of feeling I get when I find an isolated corner in a library. On the one hand, I would like to hide there forever, by myself. On the other hand, that very thought makes me feel lonely. Thus, I wish I could be...
Written on July 31, 2010