Published:
2013/04/18 – 16:39
Categories:

On Semantic HTML

I’m not going to reason *why* we should be using semantic HTML as that’s been covered by everyone on internet twice over, I’m just going to present a case:

Ladies, Gents, etc: The difference between old school HTML (c.1993) and semantic HTML when needing to select something using jQuery (if it were straight up CSS I might be SoL):

jQuery(‘table[width="740"]>tbody>tr>td>table>tbody>tr>td>table[width="740"]>tbody>tr:has(td.vaguely_descriptive_but_generic_class):has(td[valign="top"])’);

vs

jQuery(‘li.item_summary’);

Do the world a favor: Add descriptive classes, use things like <footer>, <header>, <ul> and for crying out loud don’t use tables unless you have tabular data (and even then it can be argued against!)

</rant>

Published:
2012/08/16 – 02:27
Categories:

Summer heat

Soooo…. Summer is over-ish (it never really happens in San Francisco) and I finally caught some time to type down some words… On my phone. 2012 so far has been an eventful year and there’s still more to come!

Of note in the past half year that I didn’t post:

- I went to New York for the first time ever with my girlfriend, then went back a few weeks later for work.

- I helped a friend of mine set up her new place just north of market street in the financial district.

- My company shipped me to Michigan and Texas to help our clients integrate our awesome products into their sites.

- I saw the Zelda: Symphony of the goddess performed in San Diego, California with an old friend of mine (and we spent both nights we were there getting hammered :D)

- I took my first non-family trip to Las Vegas and had just about the time of my life there.

- Attended the IPL Faceoff event in San Francisco, California

- Went to the renovated California Adventure  + Disneyland;  saw the “World of Color” show for the first time

…sooo. I started writing this post three months ago and kept adding to it because more things kept coming up before I could flesh anything out. So I decided I’m just going to post what I have now and continue making new posts because seriously, when have I ever been able to keep up with life? One day I’ll fill in details with pretty pictures, but for now, this is all I have.

Published:
2012/02/16 – 23:04
Categories:

A Two Day Valentine’s Day Adventure

So a lot has been happening (of course). Because I work in a start up and I’m embroiled in projects 110% of the time, I find it rare to have time to myself which translates to two things:

  1. I haven’t been to the doctor in just about forever
  2. I haven’t brought my car to a mechanic for a check up in just about… forever

Now I believe very much that a car is a living breathing organism (or at the very least that it emulates one very well). Like my body, my car can throw interrupts when something is wrong and when that something gets really bad, it slows down then stops moving all together. A couple days ago (Valentine’s Day 2012) I was leaving work at around 18:00… because that’s early in startup land. I planned to go to a local grocery, pick up some flowers and chocolates and head home and pick up my loving girlfriend so we could go out for some dinner. As I pulled out of the company’s garage, I noticed that the power delivery of the throttle was a lot lower than in the morning. As I pulled onto the main road, the car started shaking and power was almost non-existent. I freaked out, and pulled off on the first street, hoping it was just a fluke.

I ended up going around the whole block and decided that I wasn’t going to take the risk of trying to bring my beloved car onto the freeway in its current condition. Symptoms were:

  1. Random violent shaking under any sort of throttle (sometimes it would be perfectly smooth)
  2. Massive loss of power
  3. Sputtering Noise

Read More »

Published:
2012/02/08 – 10:13
Categories:

Dream report: Feb 08 2012

So I think I’m going to do this once in a while. I woke up in the middle of my dream and had a good recollection of what happened in it. I wrote this within 5 minutes of waking up:

Work with Jonathan, getting off at Six. Office looked to be a long rectangular room with large desks protruding from the walls every few feet. We were going to have like a bacon ranch something. Car was in a parking lot from another dream segment. Wearing an 05 shirt (red/white, even though I didn’t graduate in 2005) had a jacket over it. Someone was like “you graduated yesterday?” and I was like “yeah, and I’m graduating again today” or something like that. The person who pointed it out worked at the SFSU bookstore and originally hails from Vallejo, I never talked to her though.

Took out the trash/(recycling?) With a few other people, making Jonathan wait for a second. There was a 42″ TV in a box, but the box was like an 8″ x 8″ x 60″ box (somehow it slowly fell over). Right after work was kind of a celebration. As I was picking up to actually leave Nathan was like “You don’t wanna stay and celebrate?” I did that dream-teleport to the entrance of the building and thought Jonathan was in tow, but apparently he wasn’t, so I called up with my cellphone…

Read More »

Published:
2012/02/03 – 02:52
Categories:

Another Month…

So here I am again. I swear I’ll start posting more often (isn’t that the story of the internet?). So this blog was originally the site root, but I’m moving things around to make it easier to stalk me (because I know recruiters *love* doing that). In the past few months nothing too crazy has happened although I’ve been super busy.

  • I hit my quarter century and celebrated at Buca di Beppo in San Francisco
  • Then proceeded to geek out at Blizzcon 2011 (90+ kinds of fun)
  • My wonderful girlfriend Melanie and I went up to Seattle to… uh… visit the rain and cold
  • Our apartment is finally fully furnished (with the things we wanted)
  • I hit the one year mark at SociableLabs! Now I’m officially legacy :p

I’ve been learning a lot of things as well. At some point I’m going to start jotting notes down somewhere around here about the things I’ve picked up. Or maybe I’ll just file those into twitter :D

Gaems!

In terms of gaming, I’ve gotten through a few titles recently – and they’re not all super old!

Dungeon Defenders

Wizard and Squire. OP as hell. Just sayin.

Eternia Crystal is Under Attack! F7U12…

I was gifted this game over the Thanksgiving steam sale? I forget. In any case, Dungeon defenders is a 3rd person class-based co-op tower defense hybrid… thing. The classes allow for different play styles and even within a class you can build your character to favor towers or personal strength (you go out and fight as well). This game is chock full of fun, spanning at least 30 hours. There is an online component called TrendyNet, which gets you ranked play and I think it has some other bonuses. Of course you can always play over LAN or on the open servers (think battle.net open).  While I can’t speak for the Xbox controller handling, the Keyboard-Mouse handling is the usual pin-point accuracy. Read More »

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Published:
2011/09/11 – 01:26
Categories:

Catherine?!

Hey, you know how back in April I said things were going crazy? Well, ever since that day, that crazy has been on overdrive. It hasn’t been until now (while I’m bedridden on a Sunday morning) that I have any real time to myself. Mind you, it’s not that I mind the crazy. I actually like interacting with customers, dealing with deadlines and delivering on deliverables. Last time I wrote was April, right? Let me give you a rundown of the last six months (we’ve been launching applications on customer’s websites just about every month now, by the way):

April

Cherry Blossom Festival X Taiko Festival: Great fun, going to Taiko Festival in Berkeley in November

May

- Prince Concert + Slight loss of hearing couple weeks after : Hearing loss != fun.

June

-Got myself a Viewsonic gTablet, flew to LA to integrate with a customer also got on google+: Like Facebook, but not.

July

- Not much actually. Just a lot of hanging out with different people and getting ready for August

August

- Hawaii, for John and Arlene’s wedding, Boston for another Integration: Awesome (but draining) month.

On the gaming front, I’ve managed to beat a few games, some late, some not so late. I realize it’s been about six months since my last gaming update… let’s see what I’ve done:

ATP to ADP: What do we need?

Aya Brea in Parasite Eve

Parasite Eve c.1998

Well, just recently I’ve finally beaten Parasite Eve. Wait wait! There’s a good reason. Apparently in the Conversion from a PSOne game into a PSP EBoot, the person who did it screwed it up in a way that on the second disc, just before the final fight, one of the cinematics would crash. I was too busy when it first started happening to find another image, but I picked it up again a couple weeks ago, found a proper image, and stuck it to Eve and the Final Boss… finally. So what do I think of it? Given that the graphics haven’t aged well, and that the story isn’t exactly brilliant, I’d still recommend it. I have an uncle who would complain when he saw me playing Final Fantasy VII with: “Why are you letting him hit you?” to which I responded “That’s how the game goes”. This is for those of you who want to have Real-time RPG, and be able to dodge. I actually think the system is quite ingenious. Positioning is everything, and even the final boss fight makes you utilize that fact. Read More »

Published:
2011/04/01 – 16:15
Categories:

Conventionism

So I’m endeavoring to post a little more, since if I wait too long I’ll forget all the awesomeness that’s happening. This week has been really busy with all sorts of interesting (read: CRAZY) happening at work, but it seems it’s calmed down. Aside from trying to help the good folk at work deal with the ridiculousness that happened, I have:

Web2.0

Entry to nerdy developers and, oddly enough, wine critics

Went to the Web 2.0 Expo

So a while ago I sent O’reilly Media an e-mail because I was interested in their Web 2.0 Summit and they said “Oh we’ll let you know”. A couple months ago they sent me an e-mail saying “Hey do you want to go to our expo for free?” Duh. So I got a free ticket into the Web 2.0 Expo, and well…
Read More »

Published:
2011/03/17 – 16:32
Categories:

Intel Speed Demon!

So hey. I really should go about updating this thing more than once a month, because so much is going on.

Hey, somebody’s gotta make dat moh-nee

Because of this new job and enhanced flow of income in my mind I should have lots left over after a 2-week cycle, but every time I look at my bank statement just before a paycheck it’s got me close to zero (within a couple hundred). So I started tracking my finances by creating expense reports for myself (very fancy, in excel with statistics and awesome graphs too!) Apparently when I bought my PS3 and fixed my car’s no-start condition that took up a bunch of my financial resources just after I started working here (Here being Sociable Labs). Also, eating in restaurants? Lot of money.

Read More »

Published:
2011/02/17 – 10:46
Categories:

I Need an Assistant. Any takers?

Hey Guys. I keep starting posts and getting interrupted! So, a lot has been happening over the past few months, and I figure I should log it somewhere.

  • Got an awesome job
    So I was looking for a job for a while, catching a few leads here and there, but nothing amazing came along. One day, I remembered “Hey, that Monster site was all about jobs…” and I updated my resume on there. Lo and behold, recruiters left and right started calling me asking to come in. Of the prospects that surfaced, two stuck out to me: A search and collaboration development firm for medical professionals called Apixio, which piqued my text-analysis curiosity, and a Social Networking plug-in company called Sociable Labs.  Both positions were for front-end engineers, and both companies had friendly, outgoing contacts. In the end I went with Sociable Labs because I felt I could learn the most there and everyone’s either talking about social media, or on it… talking about social media.  I haven’t been there for long, as you might guess, but in the time I’ve been there, it’s been crazy busy (hence why I haven’t posted in the longest).
    Read More »
Published:
2010/12/09 – 19:22
Categories:

Oh you~

Hey guys,
so a lot of things have been happening lately as Ive been trying to find people who would want a solid programmer without experience, and for some reason when I submitted my resume to Monster to be updated recruiters left and right started calling me. If my phone had a hook, it would be flying off all the time. I’ll let you know how it goes.
In gaming, I’ve actually received a copy of Super Meat Boy from my sister as an early Christmas present and I can’t wait to dig in (metaphorically). It looks like good fun, and the art style reminds me of Behemoth Games. Also, Steam has given away packages of the Humble Indie Bundle! For some reason, even though I bought it twice, I didn’t get an e-mail, but no matter, I have the non-Steam versions of those games anyway.
モンスターハンターポータブル 3rd
モンスターハンターポータブル 3rd

In other gaming stuff, that’s not really news: since its release last week, I’ve been wanting to play Monster Hunter Portable 3rd really really bad. Now I can. Thanks to the Prometheus-4 update to PSP Custom FirmWares or CFWs, PSPs can now play MHP3rd, and I’m having a blast with it. Just so you know, it’s available at the low low price of $74.90 (compared to around $90 everywhere else) at Play Asia. I’ve fought bears and just got through with the Gigginox, and there are definitely improvements over 2nd G (and Tri), but if you can’t read Japanese worth a lick and have better things to do with your time than translating what you’re reading, then wait for it to (hopefully) come out stateside next year. One thing I wished Capcom would’ve included in this installment of the Monster Hunter Portable Series is a lobby system that runs off of servers. Yes, I know the servers at some point would face the same fate as the OSNAP! Servers from Sony, but they could include ad-hoc and server-based multi-player. I mean the game itself is only 1.12GB, so there’s a little room to spare. Oh well, that would’ve made it so much easier than using XLink Kai, but I don’t have problems with it, so why do I care? Oh, and for future reference, if I never mention it, I’m *always* playing Minecraft. It’s super awesome :)

In life news, for one reason or another (probably because I’m at home looking for jobs online all day), I’ve been watching YouTube a lot lately. Now I haven’t been a fan of YouTube other than the occasional viral video, until lately. I noticed this week that I’m subscribed to a lot of people! In fact, I think subscribed content (including Day[9]) takes up about two hours of my day to watch. Every day! That’s insane! I knew there were creative, funny people out there, but it’s outta control! Anyway, after typing that last sentence I went to go look for a YouTube video and got sidetracked watching sXePhil and The Game Station. I’ve gotta cook dinner and relax, see you soon! -Ramil

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