Non-sequittal _______

11:00 pm - I'm back, but I'm not

22 months after my original idea about moving my blog to my own host, I finally did it.  So this probably is going to be my farewell post to Livejournal.

10:11 am - Software design

10:38 am - Firefox 2.0 alpha 1

The next version of Firefox is making the public alpha debut, with a code name Bon Echo. How exciting.

But after seeing the page above, I'm a bit concerned. The professional developers are willing to release their flagship software without having all components in place? I'm worried that they're starting to rush their products out, rather than taking their time and make everything as perfect as possible. Grrr...

10:37 am

So soon after I ramble about something, another potential solution pops up - The Zend Framework. This looks interesting. Because of its simple design, it seems to have less dependency on libraries and stuff. And it should be fitting in more environment than other frameworks.

But.... eh, it's a bit too late. Right now, I'm using the combination of the Stupidly Simple MVC Framework and in-hous PHP based template system. I'm still struggling to set things up correctly. I dearly hope that this will be saving me time in the future, because it sure feels like tons and tons of time being wasted now. Bleh the learning curve.

09:35 am - Japanese on Linux

I knew it's been possible for years and years. But for some reason, I could NEVER figure out how to do this. Last night, I took another plunge at setting up the environment up so I can type Japanese on Linux again. This time, the tools used were Ubuntu running XFCE desktop (Xubuntu), anthy, and uim. I followed some instructions on various ubuntu wiki and forums, and... ta-da! It's good to go!

I took this linux laptop to Walmart this morning before work. While they were working on the oil change, I typed up my first Japanese blog entry on that laptop. It works like a charm. ;_; My 8+ year goal has been finally reached.

11:25 pm - Blog move

[22:48] <Sylf> installing wordpress was so, so, so easy
[22:48] <Sylf> I'm thinking about moving my blog from LJ to my server
[22:48] <Serjei> yea, LJ sucks
[22:48] <Serjei> be leet
[22:48] <Serjei> and host your own
[22:48] <Serjei> hahaha

It's not that being leet sounds good. I've bee thinking about moving away from livejournal for quite a while. For over a year, actually.

So yeah, I'll be moving soon. This is actually the 2nd time this blog will be moving. It used to be on my own domain, using something I wrote really quickly. Then moved to LJ. Now I'm moving back to my own domain. I'll post more about that soon. Probably tomorrow.

11:12 am - Confused programmer

Beware - highly geek whining ahead. And it's rather unorganized.

As a programmer, I've hit a huge stumbling block. Actually, it's not something that happened at once. I've been feeling the pain for at least couple years, and I'm getting more and more fed up with the situation. And the worst part - I still haven't found a way out.

When I started using it in 1999, PHP was somewhat a new language on the web. It's a language that was made for the web. It did what I needed. It was very easy to learn, especially with my background in C, however rudimentary it was. I've built a site with it, and it worked. Not the best, but it worked. But ever since then, I've been stumbling on number of problems that these various "why PHP is bad" articles point out.

I think the worst problem I'm facing is that the apparent simplicity of the language is actually the cause of added complexity. I don't know for sure - I'm just guessing. I don't have the expertise in other languages like these bloggers. I must be missing something in the area of knowledge in software engineering, and the knowledge of the features that those languages offer.

The sites I manage here at work are getting bigger and bigger. The complexity adds on each time. At first, these sites were rather simple, just like some simple personal sites. I didn't have code manageability in mind when I started on these sites. Spaghetti codes are everywhere. We're managing the current sites fine, but I'm not sure how we'll manage if we have to do a total overhaul of these sites.

I have no intention of abandoning PHP just yet. Despite the weaknesses that PHP has, I still think it's possible to build a good software with somewhat clean codes with it. There are some major, successful projects built in PHP. Many popular blogging software like wordpress, drupal, b2evolution, etc are written in PHP. New wiki systems pop up quite regularly, many of them written in PHP. Large scales bulletin board systems too. Heck, I use b2evolution, PmWiki, and Simple Machines Forum, all driven by PHP. So I know it can do the job.

But on the sites that don't rely on these pre-built software, I'm really struggling. First and foremost, the separation of the logic and presentation is not there. I've been reading on that topic for quite sometime. I've heard about Smarty template engine. I've read rants about smarty. I've looked at some much smaller template system such as this one. But I've never implemented these. And I just left it alone.

Ever since I read this article on slashdot, and learning what this WASP thing is about, the whole issue of separation of logic and presentation came back to me. Actually, it's a bit more than that. It's the concept of MVC - Model, View, Control. To me, this thought pattern makes the perfect sense. It does separate the logic and presentation. Not only that, it separates the data access logic from the core business logic. And here it is - WASP - a framework written in PHP that handles the MVC. Perfect.

Or was it? NO. A big no. It assumes I have certain libraries and such that I don't have. It doesn't work well forme. And my search for a perfect MVC framework started. Symfony? No. PRADO? No. Cake PHP? This one looked the most promising of all systems I looked in to. I spent about two weeks trying to learn this system. But still, it just isn't flexible enough.

There is one problem when it comes to these systems written in PHP. Many of them assume that the hosting environment is Unix/Linux based, and is run with Apache web server, and MySQL is used as the database engine. My situation is completely different. I run my PHP site on Windows server, using IIS, and use an obscure database connected via ODBC, as well as IBM DB2. We connect to several others as well. Yes, multiple databases adds more complexity to the system.

Then I came across this series of article, Stupidly Easy MVC in PHP. It's not a pre-built frame work. It's a walk through on how you can build your own frame work in simple format. It takes inspiration from the same system that WASP and CakePHP did - Ruby on Rails. Great. I think this might work.

Right now, I'm in the middle of trying to figure this baby out. It still is quite a monster when I try to fit this monster spaghetti code in to this framework. I can no longer slap codes together as my instinct tells me to. I'm struggling hard to just rebuild one application using this simple framework. What I thought was somewhat simple when I coded it isn't simple at all.

I really lack the proper knowledge of software engineering. I wish I could get some experience in larger software shop, and learn how to work in an organized software project. I want to learn how to manage large scale software projects. I just don't know where to start. I feel like I'm trying to grab on to whatever piece of straw I can find.

01:37 pm - I'm still alive!

That's what I've got to say for today. Really, you don't want to hear about 6 months worth of my monotonous life.

OK, let's spice up the post a bit.
100% corn socks - socks made out of corn. Yup. Instead of using cotton or wool or petrolium based fabric. And Kansas produces helluva lot of corn - most of it for cattles, but others for ethanol production too. Go Kansas agri-business! (Not that I have any part in any of that business.)

01:02 pm - Firefox - as safe as condom

http://www.factorycity.net/sfx/always_use_protection.jpg

I knew this was going to happen.  Firefox ain't perfect.  What a shocker that is... NOT.  But now all I hear anymore is about the security vulnerabilities found in Firefox.  Oookie...  Of course, if you don't practice safe sex safe computing, you'll always be vulnerable.  Duh.

Anyway.

I want that condom.  Such a geeky sex toy.  <3

10:32 am - $30,000 cat

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=8443560&src=rss/oddlyEnoughNews

No, I don't buy that.  That's screwed up!

01:15 pm - Painful memory

Dog bites

Since I was bitten by a dog 20 years ago (and I think I had much worse injury than this girl), I got very scared of dogs, then I gradually come to love them again.  Properly behaved dogs are just very lovable.  I couldn't possibly name anything I disliked about Maggie, a very sweet border collie.  Of course, she has a very responsible owner - she's a fortunate dog.  But sometimes, I wonder about some owners...

City of Wichita has no regulations on how many dogs you can have.  Not that it's a bad thing, but I do wonder if people are wise enough to know their limit.  Take this news item for example - that house had 6 grown-up dogs.  That's a quite a few to handle for anyone.  I know some people gets very attached to their pets.  That's a good thing.  But along with that must come responsibilities.  It may be hard to let go of your puppies.  But wouldn't it be worse if your dogs gets sent to the pound, as these dogs did?

I hope that this girl will overcome the fear against dogs.  It might take time.  But animals can bring lots of good to us.

04:52 pm - Insecure info world

Another story linked from slash dot - 'Geek speak' confuses net users

I'm not too surprised about this finding, but the result is still depressing and scary.  People tend to form some sort of community anywhere and everywhere they go, and some type of lingo starts to form.  IT is very notorious about that.  All kinds of new technologies are born everyday, both good and bad.  Along with them, new lingoes pop up.

I hear it at my work place all the time too.  Answer the customer questions using the terms that we have gotten accustomed to.  We know exactly what we mean, because we face the technology everyday.  To end user, that may not be the case.  What might sounds like a common sense term is not common at all to the customer.  It is difficult to provide help in the language that anyone and everyone can understand.

I also see it on AnimeSuki Forum too.  People ask "I can't play the video I downloaded. What's wrong with it?"  Someone else answers "It's your codec. Reinstall the codec."  Most readers knows what that means, to some extent.  What's a codec?  That's a simple question.  "How do I exactly go about this reinstalling?"  That's a much harder question.  And often, this more complicated part is omitted from the answer, just because that's something those people who give the answer do all the time.  It's a common knowledge to them.  But to the person who asked the question, this "how to" is what they really want to know... most of the time.

But hey, there are plenty of FAQs and README and manuals out there. So we say RTFM!

09:08 am - This week, so far

Several things have been going on around me this week.

First, on the fansub front.
Froth-Bite took a semi-break during the month of March - we made 4 releases during the entire month.  Now, as of April 6th, we've already released more than double of that number already for this month, and more are on our way.  The Leiji joint project has finally got their senses together, and started working on Space Symphony Maetel again.  Finally released first 4 episodes again after taking 6 months break.  Some of our own projects had some progress too.  Then there is the new joint I'm doing with another group, Minor ja Nai.  They've lost their translator for MAJOR.  And I love that series.  So it felt natural to step in and give them a helping hand.  They didn't coordinate the release effort with us very well...  They released it while I was still sleeping.  But oh well.  We'll live.  Sounds like they will be ready with next MAJOR by this Sunday.  I better pick my speed up on their project.

On to the music scene.
The leader of the jazz band I belong to has decided to make a career move.  He has decided to move to Seattle.  So someone had to take over his duties...  I was chosen as one of those people.  Even though it's Cessna Jazz Band, there are only 6 of us who actually work for Cessna.  We are minorities.  Oh well.  Poor Carl is brand new to the group, and he picked up co-leadership as well.

And tonight is our first gig under the new management.  There are many uncertainties.  Will we really survive?  We'll see.

On the different music front, I went to a first music concert in ages.  Rajaton is a Finnish a cappella group.  It's a somewhat jazzy, very contemporary, fun group.  It was $15 well spent.  I love finding all these small, unknown gems.  They reminded me of The Real Group - another a cappella group from Scandinavia.  I later discovered that I'm not alone having such opinion.  They have their similarities, but also differences as well.  The Real Group likes to do traditional jazz standards (It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing, Come Sunday) to some pop hits (Drive my car)...  Rajaton likes the pop covers (Ticket to ride) and their original tunes.  It's fun to listen to all these Beatles tunes a cappella.  Hehehe.

10:18 pm - Ooops

I let kojih.com domain name expire... and left it expired for over a week. Ouch, that hurted when I realized it. But how wonderful is DNS caching... kojih.com continued to work until today. Yay, internet.

But I need to manage these things better. I host my mom's e-mail address on this domain... now she'll never have to switch her e-mail address when she switches her ISP. And it's free for her. And it's all made easy, because Mozilla Thunderbird is translated in to Japanese too. ....as long as I keep kojih.com up to current, that is!

01:52 pm - Firefox is an insecure application

That's a surprise statement coming from me.  Various people knows that I am a Firefox enthusiast.  Then why am I making this statement?

It goes back to earlier this month, when we received a notice from the IT department.

( The note, with the org. name edited out... )

Our response to that is that we need Firefox to keep our current level of productivity.  Personally, I use Javascript Console, HTML Validator extension, and Web Developer extension on the daily basis.  It's more than just a damn good web browser to me.

But still, it made me think of this whole issue, and I came up with my own conclusion.

In general, IT department likes to be in control.  They control all the computer deployment, including all servers, desktop PC's, laptops... hardware and software.  Microsoft lets the computer maintenance folks power to control the software deployment in centralized manner.  Our PC's are tweaked so we can't manually modify the registry files.  Nor can we use tools like TweakUI.  (I think tweakUI is an excellent productivity tool, but we're out of luck.)  And the "Security" setting section of MSIE Options panel is completely locked - they are in control, not us.  So, when they need to deploy new software or security rules, they can do it in very organized manner.

Now, try to apply that on Firefox.  That's a completely different story.  Firefox lets you control the application.  And there are some very well-known extensions and plug-ins to enhance its features.  Of course, along comes the possibility of introduction of malwares.  Without the proper tweaks made to the application, it's impossible to control these possibilities, short of enforcing the ban the use of Firefox.

Also, there's an issue of the aptness in Firefox issues by the support personnel.  Are all security folks and PC support groups be able to provide the sound support for Firefox?  What if problems occur during the use of Firefox?  This question can also lead to the security problem.  With inadequate support, more problems will come up faster than the solutions.

09:50 am - anti-piracy at its max

First Swede Prosecuted For File Sharing

By itself, the news isn't too big.  It's just another case of pirate being caught.  But it's the method used that's questionable.  An unconfirmed report (I read it on faireal.net, a Japanese site) says that APB, the anti-piracy bureau (Antipiratbyrån) was using an agent who acted a part in the file sharing community.  68000 titles of games and stuff!!!  A thought of cyber-Jack Beuer came to my mind, but heh... this is just insane.  Even Jack wouldn't go THAT far.

06:36 pm - transparent putty

I have some strange fondness to transparent terminal windows on computers. (And with a few other objects as well, such as game dice, etc...) back in 1998-1999 or so, I was messing around with wterm on Linux/WindowMaker. (I first found eterm for Enlightenment, but that thing was too heavy for my slow computer.) For DOS prompt, I *could* use programs like eConsole... but I use more telnet/SSH than command prompt. I especially want a transparent SSH window.

What I just found out today, is there's a patch for my beloved SSH client, PuTTY. That's just slick. I might even start using this to do fansub works... Yup, I think I will.

04:40 pm - 300th fansub translation

I just ran a quick update of fansub translation log this morning.  I just noticed that I've hit 301st translation this weekend with the translation of Mahoraba episode 11. 300th was Mahoraba 10.
( details of all 301 )
And I've done this many in about 2 and 1/3 years?  I need to get out of my house more.  No wonder I'm still single.

09:22 pm - Smoking ban

Kansas legislature is considering a total smoking ban in any public, enclosed space. Finally, it's about time.

When I visit Charleston, WV, one of the really nice thing is that all restaurants are smoke free. shiorichan has said numerous times that it's weird when the waiters ask "Smoking or non-smoking?" at restaurants in Kansas.

All restaurants have smoking and non-smoking sections, if the place allow any smoking in the building currently. But there are still many places where there are no wall or anything effective to separate the two areas, minimizing the effect of such separation. I'm sure you've experienced in the past too - you get seated in a non-smoking section which is still close enough to the smoking section, and you can clearly smell the smoke.

Finally, they're considering this smoke ban.

I do feel this proposal is a bit extreme. Even banning smoking in the bars? I'm not very sure how wise that choice is to the night life scene. This is where I feel the facility or business owner needs to make their own decisions about smoking policy, not the state... Not that it matters to me too much, but crippling the business economy too much wouldn't be a good idea.

Still, I can't wait for the day I don't have to worry about smoke in restaurants.

09:26 am - Argh! My ears!

I just discovered that my hearing is far worse than I imagined, especially in the high frequency range.  My left ear can't hear much beyond 15KHz.  My right ear gives up at around 14KHz!  A healthy young ears are supposed to be capable of hearing up to 20KHz.  Man, I've lost quite a bit already.  I think I'm destined to lose all my teeth and my hearing.

Of course, it's not an official test.  I just tested it using heartest.exe that someone made quickly.

Or maybe it's just a temporary thing from my music...