Ryu2.mind

Well... happy new year everyone!

After some thought, I\'ve decided to make my thoughts page (aka blog) a dynamic, database-driven one... and possibly, as time goes on, the rest of the site as well. of course, there are both pros and cons to this:

PROS:
* Easier to post -- I don\'t like using FTP clients, so when I write a thought, I log into my host via ssh and edit HTML directly (and modifying index pages as well to reflect the new \"modified by\" dates). While a simple task, as most of you know, I\'m pretty lazy, and so without this extra layer of overhead, I should be able to post more comments, fresh as they come up in my mind. Furthermore, this lets me update from Internet cafes or other public terminals that may not have ssh.

* Comments -- I had refrained from making a comment system for my blog, because I thought people would use the jack.html responses forum of JBB, but apparently, that\'s been effectively dead as of late. It\'s a full threaded comment system, a la Slashdot or most other \"discussion\" sites, unlike simpler solutions on most people\'s blogs. So, yeah, feel free to comment.

* Dynamic -- it\'s searchable in terms of topic area and full text, and customizable according to one\'s preferences, so if you don\'t like to view comments on a certain topic, you can simply exclude them.

* Unified -- it allows me to post updates to not only the thoughts, but pictures, quotes, etc. on a single portal page. And long thoughts and short thoughts alike will be able to share a single page.

Cons:
* It\'s hard to post the real \"short\" 1-2 line short thoughts that seem to pop up every now and then in people\'s pages, since each new post is considered a \"story\" by itself, and frequent such short posts would take up a lot of room... but then, I\'ve realized that I\'ve never really posted the \"quickie\" type of thoughts that these short ones generally are, so perhaps this isn\'t too bad for my case. I always like to go for quality rather than quantity.

* Harder to back up... let\'s hope this web host of mine isn\'t too flaky, and I\'m conscientious enough to dump the MySQL database every now and then.

Anyhow, let\'s see how this goes... this will most likely undergo a significant amount of tweaking, and expansion as I convert all my old thoughts into the database, and also make the pictures, etc. dynamic as well -- so comments, comments, comments people! =)

It seems everyone is jumping onto the blog/thought page/journal bandwagon these days.

Anyhow, I've got my own jack.html-esque page where I've listed blogs that I read regularly that aren't on jack.html as well. I've just added a whole load of new pages to it, and I must say, the social representation is quite a diverse cross-section. I'm sure Danny knows some of those people, and I would suggest them to be on jack.html, but the last time I did that, I got publically decried as a "stalker", despite the fact that I know all these people personally and I've found their pages through publically-visible links. =P (But I'm sure that neverthess, he'll see my links, and duly add them to jack.html himself... ;) )

Apparently, this page on my site comes up number 2 on a Google search for "Onnuri church" (number 1 if you restrict the search to English languge pages). I get about 100 hits on this page a week, and even more absurd, I get emails from people inquiring about Onnuri, as if I were an official at that church. Funny, huh?

It's quite rare where two different people from different social cliques blog about exactly the same thing, with exactly the same content. A few days ago, this happened on two of my friends' blogs: Cat's (the latest in a long line of friends jumping on the blog bandwagon) and Joe's.

I was sufficiently grossed out by this info that I felt it was only proper to repeat it here: If you hold up a sheet of toilet paper, the distance between the fibers is about 20 microns... but a fecal bacteria is only about 1.2 microns. You do the math.......

If you wash your hands just with water, you get about 90% of the bacteria off your hands. If you wash your hands with soap, you get about 95% of the bacteria off your hands... and if you wash with antibacterial soap, you get about 97% of the bacteria off your hands.

However, in studies done across the country, only about 20% of men wash their hands after using the toilet, and only about 40% of women do.

WASH YOUR HANDS!

You bet I've been consistently washing my hands since reading that! =P

I had dinner with Eric Yang last night. We were discussing who would be next to get engaged. I said Paul, he said George. Then, today, I check my email and Davis sends a msg that he's "off the market."

OK, just to keep the scandal level of this page to at least a token minimum, ensuring this page isn't totally "holy", and also for Desiree and other self-proclaimed romance analysts, here's your chance... see that little poll I set up off to the side? You can vote and you can even leave comments and have discussions.

No offense intended for any omissions -- write ins are welcome, even anonymously. =)

I have the feeling this might come back to haunt me, but we'll see...

And FYI -- I am totally abstaining from any vote, hee hee...

If you're Asian-American and Christian, you undoubtedly know about the somewhat misguided Rickshaw Rally "Far East"-themed Vacation Bible School curriculum put out by LifeWay (affliated with the Southern Baptist Convention).

I'm not hypersensitive about these things, so I wasn't totally offended, but I did think it was sort of lame in a funny way, and in all fairness, they probably were just ignorant (Nashville, Tennesee probably isn't the most cosmopolitan city in the world...). So while the Southern Baptists don't need to be whacked on the head with a clue stick, they do deserve to be gently tapped with one, I think.

Anyhow, I had a bit of time on my hands, so I thought I'd do the "tapping" in a unique way by giving them a taste of their own medicine... enjoy! =)

http://www.markwang.com/vbs/

Feel free to discuss and let me know what you think. I would be particularly interested in hearing from anyone at LifeWay if they actually read this.

Just thought I'd renovate the ol' blog once again... In particular, I did a lot of hacking to Geeklog to fix a lot of timezone bugs, and improve the comment system (so you can view the original text you're replying to). I'm pondering whether to submit my patches....

Second, I've got my own list of pages I read, rather like jack.html in its frequency-based organization, but including the non-jacked ones I read, and excluding the people I don't know on jack. Of course, it's database driven too. Hope Danny doesn't view it as competition, because it's not, and I'm sure both he and I will continue to continue to incorporate newly-discovered links off each other's lists.

Also, I'm now providing a RSS feed at http://www.markwang.com/log/backend/geeklog.rdf. Eric, this will definitely make life a lot easier for you with Jackchecker...

Apparently, a lot of new people are reading this page, and one question that I get asked sometimes is: \"What\'s up with the name Ryu2?\"

It\'s the name I use online on most forums, IRC, online games, and other places where I don\'t need to appear \"professional\". I tell the story of how I picked it, just so I have it written down somewhere and can refer people to it whenever the need arises...

Back in high school (around late \'93-early \'94), when I first playing around with IRC, I needed to pick a user name. My UNIX login name \"mwang\" would be already in use a lot of times, so I needed to pick something else. I picked \"Ryu\", Japanese for dragon, a pretty interesting, albeit somewhat generic Asian name, but more often than not, someone already on IRC would be using that name already as well. So, I just tacked on the number 2, and voila! Since then, I\'ve just been too lazy to pick a new name, and it\'s stuck with me ever since. It doesn\'t have anything to do with Street Fighter, although I did play that series a bit.

And that, as they say, is that.

In the spirit of Slim, some public self-reflection and an invitation to my reader community to throw out your thoughts.

Vote in the poll and post some comments...

Bay Area:
* The majority of my friends and family
* A great and vibrant church community that I'm just starting to get plugged into
* A moribund job market with no signs of improvement in the near future, particularly in the field I've chosen to pursue
* A vast variety of recreation and entertainment options
* Spent 26 years of my life here, close to my family (both a positive and negative... ;)) -- time for a change?

Beijing:
* A small number of friends, but many "like-minded" people and potential "spiritual mentor" types
* A huge international church, but not sure if there's a real sense of "community" there from what I've heard, although it's great for networking -- plus the underground ones, of course... although it might not be wise to go into too much detail.
* A job opportunity that is in almost every sense, financially and spiritually, a "leap of faith", with the potential for some rewards, spiritually and perhaps financially -- I'm certainly not getting rich from it though. Someplace where I'd be diving feet first with no experience into a market that's relatively nascent and unexplored in the States, let alone China, and where I'd basically shoulder all the technical responsibility for "implementing." It would be accomplishing a feat akin to Jesus feeding the 5000...
* It's China... with all its attendant problems and growing pains. On the other hand, it's the ultimate way to improve my language and get more acclimated culturally.

Canada:
* No one that I know there -- zero, zip. (They all moved down to the US...)
* A risky venture with a company just starting up and currently working on a "demo".
* A lot of the negative "living" issues of the East Coast (weather), and not much of the positive ones (stuff to do, well-known churches, etc)

The East Coast:
* A fair number of friends, and a few family members
* Lots of renowned churches in NYC and Boston
* Some potential jobs out there, but like the Bay Area, they're few and far between, and just like the Bay Area, the East Coast is not the "epicenter" of my intended field.
* Winters that are actually cooooolllllddd...

LA:
* A few friends
* A few good churches
* A slightly better job market, and the entertainment capital of the world -- if I wanted to get my foot in the door, the networking opportunities here would be the best.
* Smog, traffic, etc...

Singapore:
* A few friends and family members
* Lots of good churches from what I hear, and a strategic springboard for missions to Asia.
* A somewhat relevant job opportunity that will give me very invaluable technical experience
* Visited 5-6 times here and there -- a first world city-state in every sense, but almost clean and sterile to a fault.

Decisions, decisions... ultimately, it's about being faithful of course, but still, even pondering these options makes for some hearty mental thought about where I've been, what I want, and who I am. In my short 26 years, I've never really bothered to answer those questions, and no matter where I end up, I'll have had the chance to really do some introspection.