General

• Some New Sites Launched Apr 08 2009, 2 Comments
  

  Some new sites which have been keeping me busy lately have recently launched I am currently looking for more web projects, so if you need help with a web site please drop me an email. My resume is posted here if you’re interested in learning more about my background.
  Here are the sites:
  Basikneads Catering, [...]

• Stay Tuned Feb 15 2009, 1 Comment
  

  I’ve been back in Vancouver BC for over a little over a month now, and I’m more or less settled in now. Which means I need to spend some time updating this site (finally), and various WordPress plugins. I’m going to move more towards microblogging (find me on twitter), and tantannoodles.com will become a home [...]

• Moving On Dec 09 2008, 4 Comments
  

  As some may know, I’m going to be moving back to Vancouver BC this Christmas (only 2 weeks!). Kinda crazy when I think about it… I’ve been living here in Washington DC for a little over 6 years now. How time flies! And next year, I’m going to be getting married… woohoo! 
  Anyways… since I’m making [...]

• Update: Flickr Photo Album– Localization Support (1.1) Oct 06 2008, 7 Comments
  

  A followup to my call for help last month. Combining the work of several volunteer helpers from around the Internet, the Flickr Photo Album plugin for WordPress now includes support for 12 different languages: Danish, German, Indonesia, Italian, Korean, Persian, and Simplified/Traditional Chinese, Dutch, French, Spanish, and Swedish. You don’t need to do anything extra in order [...]

• Localization Help Needed (Updated) Sep 20 2008, 1 Comment
  

  I’m currently working on translating the Flickr Photo Album plugin for WordPress into multiple languages. If you’re fluent in English and another language, and would like to help build up the Open Source Flickr community by providing translations, then please let me know at joetan54@gmail.com.
  The plugin has already been downloaded ~70,000 times now, so any [...]

• Yup, Something Happened…. Aug 06 2008, 11 Comments
  

  Here’s my version of the alleged events:
  I sent a request to her on Facebook to change our relationship status, and fortunately, she accepted the change… woohoo! And well yeah, we also went to the sculpture garden before (see long winded version over there) and I guess I did awkwardly ask for her hand in marriage with said [...]

• Netgear ReadyNas Duo Jul 24 2008, No Comments
  

  Last week (or two weeks ago?) I ordered a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo and it finally arrived the other day. Basically it’s a really large hard drive based storage system you throw onto your network. I don’t really have that much stuff to store, but I think it’s generally good to store and backup my [...]

• Updated: Flickr Photo Album (0.98) Jul 13 2008, 2 Comments
  

  I’ve released a new version of the Flickr Photo Album plugin for WordPress. This release adds a couple new incremental features and is mostly a bug fix / maintenance release:

  Paging support for albums with lots of photos. At the moment, this is limited to 30 photos per page.
  Added a “Interestings” tab next to the “Everyone” [...]

• Blocking Similar Comments with Simple Spam Filter (0.6) Jul 01 2008, 5 Comments
  

  In the on-going war against spam, I’ve noticed spammers starting to use a new tactic. They simply copy and paste previously posted legit comments that have passed all spam filters, modify them just a little by tacking on a link to their spam site, and then re-posting the comment. The logic here is that the [...]

• How To: Creating a Life Stream Jun 18 2008, 6 Comments
  

  Say you want to create a lifestream for yourself. That is, aggregate all your online activities into one page, to make it easier for people to keep up to date with what you’ve been up to (or to stalk you, like my parents… who complain I never update this blog). Sites like FriendFeed will do [...]

• 30 Years May 24 2008, 5 Comments
  

  About 30 years ago, my dad met my mom in Singapore. When my mom decided to move to Canada to study, this made communication between them a slight problem, since there was now an entire ocean between them. To solve this problem and talk to my mom, my dad had to travel for over [...]

• Cherry Blossoms Apr 10 2008, 5 Comments
  

  If there’s one thing about WashDC that’s better than Vancouver, it’s that the trees are a little prettier.

• Battlestar Galactica Season 4 Apr 06 2008, No Comments
  

  After a really long break… the best show on TV is back! If you haven’t checked out Battlestar Galactica, I recommend starting with the miniseries DVD.
  Check out the season 4 premier embedded below, courtesy of Hulu. Sorry, USA only :-/

• MetBlog + WordPress MU + Amazon S3 Mar 10 2008, 3 Comments
  

  The new MetBlog just recently launched. A great design, and a pretty neat example of what can be done with WordPress MU. Of interest to me (and perhaps you) is that they’re using Amazon S3 as a host for their images, and in turn, using my Amazon S3 plugin for WordPress to help facilitate [...]

• Invites for Aviary Feb 25 2008, 10 Comments
  

  I just got a beta invite to Aviary, a new suite of web-based application for “people who create”. At the moment I have access to Phoenix, which is their bitmap image editor. It’s no Photoshop killer by any means, but it certainly has potential. I already use Google Docs to share and collaborate [...]

• Metro Bus Stops Feb 22 2008, 4 Comments
  

  I don’t have a car here in Washington DC, so I rely on public transportation a lot. And mooching rides off my friends where available. I also take the bus to and from work, so I the fact that Metro offers a service for people waiting at any bus stop to call a number [...]

• TanTanNoodles 2.0 Feb 17 2008, 2 Comments
  

  I decided that the somewhat Christmas-y colors are getting kinda old, so I made a couple updates. Also the HTML and CSS were a huge mess and basically needed some major rewrite to get things back in order. It’s not really a dramatic change on the front end, but the code is much cleaner now, [...]

• New Mac Apps for My Dev Stack Feb 12 2008, No Comments
  

  Some new Mac programs I’ve been using to code web stuff:
  Coda, by Panic Software – Much more than a text editor, Coda aims to be a “one-window web development” app. It’s not quite a fully featured IDE (like Zend Studio or Eclipse) but it’s much more specifically tailored for general front-end template work. [...]

• Enhancing Akismet with reCAPTCHA: Simple Spam Filter (0.5) Jan 19 2008, 4 Comments
  

  The really Simple Spam Filter plugin I wrote a couple months back has been doing a great job at blocking the really obvious spam. Since it’s release, the plugin has actually blocked about 90% of all comment spam that flows in, which is pretty good for just a couple quick anti-spam filters. The remaining 10% [...]

• Quick Look in Mac OS X Leopard Jan 11 2008, 4 Comments
  

  After using Leopard for a couple months now, Quick Look is probably my new BFF feature in Mac OS X. When I first heard about it, I had my doubts as to how useful it might actually be… I thought it sounded kinda gimmicky (after all, it’s basically a way to preview files). But [...]

• Mint Money Management Jan 04 2008, 7 Comments
  

  I’ve been using Mint.com lately to keep tabs of my financials, and aside from GMail, it’s probably the neatest and most useful “Web 2.0″ app out there right now. I’ve tried using MS Money on and off in the past, and always eventually quit because syncing transactions was never an easy process. It’s probably [...]

• New Rule for Christmas Presents Dec 22 2007, 3 Comments
  

  New Rule: When purchasing gifts for people, never buy stuff that comes in a round cylindrical container. Seriously, it took me over an hour to figure out how to wrap this one gift…
  The Practice Run:

  (note all the crease marks, where I tried to figure out if there was some way to fold some guidelines to [...]

• Alternatives to TV Dec 13 2007, No Comments
  

  Who needs to watch “real” TV anymore, when there’s so much great (and free!) content online? The production values for these shows might not be as good as that of professionally produced content, but I think it’s getting there. Here’s a couple video podcasts I’m subscribed to:

  Ask a Ninja
  Best of YouTube
  Channel Frederator (cartoons!)
  Diggnation
  Discovery Channel
  dl.tv
  PBS Frontline/World
  GeekBrief.TV
  The [...]

• Random Stat Nov 28 2007, 5 Comments
  

  Just a quick random statistic:
  TanTanNoodles comes up #1 for a search on “Joe Tan“. Some people like to hide and be anonymous on the Internet, I think I prefer to control what the Internet says about me. Also, I’m #20 for Tan, and #42 for Joe. I wonder what it takes to get [...]

• Things I’m Thankful For… Nov 22 2007, 1 Comment
  

  * Note that even though this post is on Nov 22 (aka Thanksgiving / aka the day before Christmas shopping officially starts), I would have already “officially celebrated” Thanksgiving about a month ago, since we Canadians don’t blindly follow Americans when it comes to the tradition of giving thanks. I think I may have even [...]

• Firefox Woes Nov 10 2007, 5 Comments
  

  I think I’m beginning to lose faith in the Firefox web browser. I still think it’s the best web browser out there, especially when it comes to web development, but it just feels like it’s slowly deteriorating with each new release. Does anyone else think that it’s lost sight of it’s original goals (lean mean [...]

• Two New Sites Oct 31 2007, 1 Comment
  

  A couple sites I’ve worked on recently launched. I think there were a couple others since I last updated, but I don’t remember… so guess these two will do
  First up is IFCJ.org. You can visit their shiney new site to learn more about the organization. As far as site construction goes, I [...]

• Me and You Oct 15 2007, 1 Comment
  

  Yeah… I haven’t been updating this lil’ blog of mine regularly…. so to all my faithful readers out there (ie my parents and grandma), here’s a little something to hold you over till the next “real” post

  (mp3 from zefrank)

• Just Five Things Please Sep 11 2007, 5 Comments
  

  BioShock and Halo 3 are probably going to be my next XBox 360 games. Anybody up for some Co-op Halo (when it comes out)? Look me up: Quixotic54
  I’ve started tinkering around with Yahoo’s YUI toolkit, and I think it’s pretty fantastically cool. The fact that they offer to host all their JavaScript and CSS libraries [...]

• A Piece of Cake Aug 23 2007, No Comments
  

  I’ve blogged about using web frameworks in the past, and for the most part, I think they are generally useful. Most recently, I had an opportunity to do a bit of experimenting with the PHP based CakePHP framework. The nice thing about being PHP based is that it’s basically one less thing to worry [...]

• Prayer Jul 17 2007, 6 Comments
  

  I’ve been going through a series on prayer with my Bible study group at church, and one of the things that stood out in the past couple studies was how Moses, and Nehemiah responded when faced with difficult situations. Instead of just giving up in despair, they went to prayer and appealed to God’s past [...]

• G4, Meet Core 2 Duo Jul 02 2007, 2 Comments
  

  Woot, I just got my new 15″ Macbook Pro, 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. I havn’t really used it too extensively just yet, but my first impressions: the screen is so much nicer than my 12″ G4 Powerbook. Comparing them side by side, the Macbook Pro’s screen is definitely at least 50% brighter [...]

• Live Blogging with Amazon S3 Jun 14 2007, No Comments
  

  This is pretty neat stuff (particularly if you do web related stuff like me). A couple of bloggers decided to use Amazon’s S3 to handle traffic for an Apple keynote live blog, and they recently shared some of their stats:

  7 pictures
  130 text posts
  20k visits
  50k pageviews to the page
  5M requests – this includes the 15 second [...]

• From Seattle to Vancouver Jun 08 2007, 3 Comments
  

  One thing about going on vacation for about 2 weeks is that… there’s always a load of emails to delete sort through when you get back. Ah well, here are some pics

  And lots more in my Flickr stream…
  And for my birthday, my girl got me Guitar [...]

• Installing My Own OpenID Server May 23 2007, 2 Comments
  

  If you’re a bit of a tech guy like me, you’ve probably heard something about OpenID. It’s an interesting concept, and I’ve been poking and playing around with it a bit lately. At the moment, there arn’t that many places to use OpenID, but I think that may soon change. OpenID is basically a [...]

• New Plugin: (Really) Simple Spam Filter May 05 2007, 8 Comments
  

  A frustrating thing with my blog is that it attracts a huge amount of comment spam. Close to 500 a day (sigh). Akismet catches almost all of these spam, which is great and all that… but then, it becomes impossible for me to check for any legitimate comments that might’ve accidentally got marked as spam. [...]

• One Week Apr 23 2007, 1 Comment
  

  I don’t think there’s really any need to rehash what went down last week, but suffice to say it’s been a pretty hard 7 days. In Friday nite study, we went through Luke 4:14-30, studying Jesus’ opening remarks for his upcoming ministry. One thing that became immediately clear as we went through that passage was [...]

• Silas Partners is Hiring Apr 16 2007, 1 Comment
  

  Just a quick note that Silas Partners is looking to fill a couple of open positions. In addition to being able to work with someone totally awesome (well ok… the other people are pretty cool too), you’d get to help “churches, Christian ministries, and other humanitarian nonprofit organizations to improve their communication and expand their [...]

• Free MySQL Containers from Media Temple Apr 16 2007, 2 Comments
  

  But only if you were a beta tester, or submitted a beta application. Otherwise, an entry level MySQL container starts at $20 / month for a container with 128MB RAM, and goes up to $150 / month for a container with 512MB RAM. Fortunately, I had previously submitted a beta application, and so was able [...]

• TanTanNoodles: The Theme Apr 09 2007, 2 Comments
  

  I recently got several requests from people wanting to use the TanTanNoodles theme for their own sites. While I never really had any intention of releasing it to the public, I figure I can at the very least just release what I have. This WordPress theme is literally the best I could do with Photoshop [...]

• Global Warming Mar 24 2007, 5 Comments
  

  As I was getting off the Chinatown metro today, I saw some people standing on the corner handing out what appeared to be an anti-Al Gore campaign, basically claiming that the slideshow movie “An Inconvenient Truth” (and global warming) is propaganda and full of half-truths. Indeed, a quick Google search turns up many articles with [...]

• Job Opening in Downtown Washington DC Mar 19 2007, 1 Comment
  

  Even though I’m not working with him anymore these days, Sebastian Traeger is one of the main reasons why I moved out 5 years ago to Washington DC to work for Silas Partners. He’s now since moved on to managing a new startup in the downtown Washington DC area (DuPont), with the goal of “working [...]

• Those Media Temple GPUs Mar 12 2007, 8 Comments
  

  So this site has been on Media Temple (mt) web hosting for a week now, and so far… I’d have to say it’s been going pretty well. The only thing that gave me a bit of concern during the first few days was GPU usage, which is basically (mt)’s way of measuring usage. Now [...]

• The Facebook Photos plugin for WordPress Feb 28 2007, 12 Comments
  

  I think Facebook is doing a lot of things right in the social web: opening up their network everyone, having a clutter free interface without in-your-face dating ads, turning down $1 billion offers (wait, what??), and the one I’m most intriqued by, releasing an API for developers to play with. Other popular “friending” social [...]

• Moving to Media Temple Feb 27 2007, 3 Comments
  

  If you’re reading this, TanTanNoodles is now on Media Temple. This site used to be hosted on Dreamhost, and while I think Dreamhost is all fine and works pretty well, Media Temple’s Grid Server clustering technology is just too hard to pass up… especially for a geek like me It’s a little bit [...]

• Random Tip: Importing Emails from Outlook into a Mac Feb 12 2007, 19 Comments
  

  I used to be a Windows PC guy, and so used Microsoft Outlook for email. About 5 years ago, I saw the errors of my ways, repented, and switched to the one true computing platform. After making the switch, I proceeded to backup my important PC stuff, like emails and documents, to CD archives, and [...]

• Some More WordPress Powered Sites Feb 05 2007, 4 Comments
  

  I’ve been a little busy at work lately, and the reason for that is because we have just launched three brand new sites: Westminster, Calvary Chapel Grass Valley, and Christian Management Association. Woot!
  Each site is built on the open source platform WordPress, and while I certainly did not do all the work for each [...]

• Apple Jan 18 2007, 3 Comments
  

  By now you probably already heard about Apple’s new iPhone, soon to be released sometime mid-2007. Ahh yeah… leave it to Apple to make me want to spend more money on something I don’t really need (or at least I don’t think I need). The touch screen user interface is absolutely fantastic and looks like [...]

• Nintendo Wii Jan 04 2007, 1 Comment
  

  Woot! I just got myself a Nintendo Wii from Walmart.com. It’s actually pretty fun, in an entirely different way compared to the XBox or Playstation. I think Nintendo has done a great job in making video games interesting and fun even for people that wouldn’t normally play them.
  The pack-in Wii Sports pack-in game [...]

• Customizing WordPress Templates Dec 19 2006, 8 Comments
  

  I’ve been doing a bunch of work with WordPress lately, mostly customizing templates and writing plugins to make it work more like a “real” content management system (CMS), rather than just a simple blogging platform.
  Rather than try to explain all the technical details of what I did (I hate doing documentation), I thought I’d [...]

• More China Dec 06 2006, 3 Comments
  

  I’m back in the great USA and sorta caught up with everything. Well, TV shows at least. Here’s some more reflections on China…

  Economy: Incredibly big and expanding at a phenomenal rate. Just looking at the way some businesses are run over there, it’s like everybody’s out to make mega bucks, which is not unlike [...]

• China So Far Nov 23 2006, 6 Comments
  

  Hello from China… I forgot to bring the usb memory card reader for my camera, so pictures will have to come later. But for now, here are some highlights:

  Traffic: if you thought driving in Anytown USA was bad, you havn’t seen anything. Traffic signs, road markings, and even the direction of traffic are mearly suggestions [...]

• Leaving on a Jet Plane Nov 16 2006, 3 Comments
  

  Well, I’m leaving for China today, and won’t be back until after turkey day. I’m stopping by VanBC for a day, and then hopping on another plane bound for Shanghai with my parents. That’s a lot of flying, and not enough iPod battery juice to last all that. Anybody want anything from China? Well, I [...]

• Thanksgiving this Season Nov 04 2006, 15 Comments
  

  There’s just a little under a month till Thanksgiving here (or it’s already past if you’re a canuck), but already, I have a lot to be thankful for this year.
  I’m thankful for my family, and for being able to travel to China with them this thanksgiving. I’m thankful for my job, in particular for [...]

• My Current Watchlist Oct 23 2006, 4 Comments
  

  Battlestar Galatica – Hands down, the best show on TV. Yeah, it’s got space ships and faster-than-light jump drives, but it’s not scifi like Star Trek. It’s more like a drama, that just happens to be set in space. The coolest scene thus far is probably when Galactica jumps into the atmosphere, launches it’s fighters [...]

• Three Sites Oct 12 2006, 1 Comment
  

  A couple new sites I worked on recently launched (or relaunched as it may be), developed on “enterprise-level” web site platforms. That is, these web platforms do just about everything a nonprofit would want a web site to do. We also have a couple “simpler” WordPress based sites coming down the pipeline, so I’ll [...]

• Amish in the News Oct 09 2006, 4 Comments
  

  I can’t help but be amazed at the Amish response to their recent tragedy. Instead of being quick to anger, they were quick to forgive; and instead of pointing their fingers to try and find someone to blame, they showed love and mercy. A few of the many qualities that are sorely lacking in our [...]

• Buses Oct 03 2006, 2 Comments
  

  Stupid: Realizing I forgot my wallet (which contains my bus pass) when I left for work… only when the bus came.
  Bad Luck: The regular bus driver wasn’t there, so I couldn’t talk my way into an IOU for bus fare. Thus, I missed my bus… but I had no morning meetings, so it was ok.
  Dumb: [...]

• Three Things Oct 01 2006, 4 Comments
  

  1. Sometimes, I feel like the choices I make are not always the best… as demonstrated by Calvin:

  2. Fortunately, we don’t have to be anxious with our decisions because we can put our trust in Christ. Pastor this sunday also talked about the story behind the hymn “It is Well With My Soul”, which I [...]

• My Current Playlist Sep 27 2006, 4 Comments
  

  See the Morning by Chris Tomlin
  One thing I really enjoyed about his previous Arriving album was that it was worshipful, and captured such a great atmosphere of praise. This album builds on that and sets a new bar for great worship, both musically and lyrically. The album opens with the question, “How can I [...]

• Praying Fearlessly Sep 24 2006, 3 Comments
  

  In study this past Friday, we read through a passage in Nehemiah and discussed how Nehemiah prayed to God. It was great because it reminded me of how we should be intentional when we pray to God, and not just pray for things we happen to remember. It’s interesting that in his prayer, Nehemiah was [...]

• Ubuntu Linux Sep 20 2006, 5 Comments
  

  So a couple weeks ago I decided to do a little system administration and configure a spare computer with a desktop Linux distribution. Yeah, it was a great way to spend a Sat afternoon I went with the Ubuntu because it’s been getting some good reviews lately, and also because my coworker [...]

• Free Music Downloads Sep 19 2006, 2 Comments
  

  Thought I’d give a plug to my music podcast, which recently got a couple tweaks here and there. Actually, it’s not much of a podcast (you don’t have to listen to my voice or anything crazy like that), it’s really more me searching the Internets for free (and legit) full length MP3 downloads and [...]

• Ooo… Shiney New Apples Sep 12 2006, 3 Comments
  

  Looks like I wasn’t too far off when I tried to predict what new wonderful gadgets Apple would have us buy this Christmas. The most interesting bit was when they previewed their set-top box, code-named iTV. This seems to be a step down from a full fledged computer, but also a step up from [...]

• Where Were You? Sep 11 2006, 2 Comments
  

  Who would’ve guessed that I would be here now in the United States, and in particular, Washington DC of all places. But on this day 5 years ago, I was in Vancouver, sleeping in parent’s basement. That morning, my mom woke me up and told me to turn on the TV. I felt confused about [...]

• Showtime for Apple and Amazon Sep 09 2006, No Comments
  

  Looks like online movies are starting to heat up, Amazon just unvield their new movie download service, UnBox. At first glance, it doesn’t seem to be that compelling, since there seems to be some pretty heavy restrictions on what you can do with the movies you download. First of all, it’s just plain inconvenient. You [...]

• Who Reads This Anyways? Sep 05 2006, 2 Comments
  

  If you know me in real life meat space, you’ll find that I’m probably not the most engaging person to talk to. Or at the very least, I need a little ‘warming up’ in order to get going. I guess this blog serves as a way for me to share some of things I find [...]

• It’s Like a Series of Tubes… Aug 29 2006, 1 Comment
  

  Senator Stevens, June 28, 2006:
  The Internet is a series of tubes.
  And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of [...]

• Web Developer Software Aug 19 2006, 4 Comments
  

  Since a number of people that come to this little blog of mine are looking for WordPress plugins, I thought it might be somewhat interesting to post the tools I use to create such plugins and web sites in general. I know there’s probably stuff I haven’t heard of, so if you’ve got something you [...]

• Chinese Community Church Aug 13 2006, 2 Comments
  

  So today marks the last Sunday worship for the Chinese Community Church of Washington DC at 900 Massachusetts Ave, Mount Vernon Place. Next week we start worship in our new building, located at 500 I Street NW. We had a nice closing thanksgiving ceremony where everybody took a small item from the sanctuary and [...]

• Tastes Like Burning Aug 10 2006, 5 Comments
  

  I meant to post this earlier, but I didn’t. Anyways, if you eat enough meals with me, then you’ll know that I like to eat really spicy foods. And not the wimpy tame version of hot you might get with a spicy chicken combo #6 (tho that is good too). If the dish doesn’t have [...]

• The Jobs Keynote Aug 07 2006, 2 Comments
  

  So today was another Apple press event, and yup, the blogosphere went crazy. Without repeating too much of what’s already being said, here’s my three thoughts:
  Excited:
  Spaces and Core Animation. The neat and exciting stuff is all under the hood. Spaces combined with Expose is going to be a great productivity booster. And Core Animation will [...]

• Street Fighter II: Hyper Edition Aug 03 2006, 6 Comments
  

  Woot! Street Fighter II: Hyper Edition was just released for XBox Live Arcade on the XBox 360. This was a game that I used to play for hours on end back in the day on my SNES. At one point, I even got good enough such that I could beat the game on the [...]

• 5 Things Jul 31 2006, 4 Comments
  

  1. You know how on Fear Factor people do all kinds of crazy stunts like eat weird things like bugs and other interesting animal parts? Let’s just say I felt something crunchy in my mouth riding my bike home from work the other day. Word of advice, don’t ride a bike through a swampy area [...]

• On Microsoft Zune… Jul 23 2006, 4 Comments
  

  Microsoft just recently confirmed their iPod and iTunes killer: Zune. According to Engadget, Zune is a brand and will be a “vertically integrated end-to-end solution”; not unlike Apple’s iPod + iTunes + iTunes Music Store trifecta. Basically, you’ll be able to buy a Zune media player, use Zune software to manage your media, and goto [...]

• Hymns Ancient and Modern Jul 18 2006, 2 Comments
  

  Something that was brought up at a worship workshop I went to a couple months back was the fact that a lot of recent praise songs are a bit “fluffy” and “empty”, in that they sound nice and have catchy melodies, but there isn’t much substance in the words being sung. I don’t think these [...]

• The Sunday Set Jul 10 2006, 3 Comments
  

  Music is one of those things that is just, cool. Fun to play and even more awesome to have people joining in, especially if they are singing loud (which they were). Links go to iTunes…
  Everyday, by Hillsong
  My Redeemer Lives, by Hillsong
  Famous One, by Chris Tomlin
  Take My Life, by Passion
  Wonderful Cross, by Joel Engle
  And a new [...]

• Happy Canada Day Jul 02 2006, 2 Comments
  

  Saw Superman Returns with my study group on Fri, and for the most part, the movie was pretty fun. The effects are very well done (the plane scene is so cool), and the story is pretty good too… unlike some some comic book movies. The story is also pretty interesting because you can definitely [...]

• When It Rains Jun 19 2006, 1 Comment
  

  … it pours. So I’ve been riding my bike to work lately, and that has been sorta working out. Looking at the doppler radar for my ride home after work today, I knew there was a thunderstorm storm coming in, so I made sure to leave work right at 6pm to try and beat it. [...]

• Game 7 and Macs Jun 17 2006, No Comments
  

  Woot! Edmonton’s made it into game 7 of the Stanley Cup Playoff’s, and it’s been an exciting matchup so far. This series reminds of when the Canucks also made the finals back in 1994 and were down 3 games to 1 in the series against the Rangers. And just like Edmonton now, they came [...]

• Man of Few Words Jun 12 2006, 2 Comments
  

  To the right is a tiny preview of the new web site for my church, designed by some fine peeps I work with. It’s going to use a pretty specialized package of WordPress (the mojo that powers this blog), made specifically for churches and ministries by Silas Partners. Hopefully we’ll be able to release [...]

• Random Stories Jun 08 2006, 4 Comments
  

  Parents were in town this past weekend, took them to a bunch of museums and monuments around the WashDC area. Made even better by the fact that they paid for all the dinners, save one. And for that, we went to Morton’s for their anniversary (and my birthday) and had some really awesome steaks. If [...]

• Go Oilers! May 28 2006, No Comments
  

  Congrats to the 8th seeded Edmonton Oilers on making it to the Stanley Cup finals. And of course they had to win in the worse possible way, by giving Anaheim a 6 on 3 man advantage (Ducks pulled their goalie, Oilers took two penalties) when they’re up 2-1 late in the 3rd with 3 [...]

• Breaking Down the Walls May 21 2006, No Comments
  

  I first found out about Steven Curtis Chapman’s adoption ministry, Shaohannah’s Hope, when I did a mini-website for them back in 2005. They were even nice enough to give my company some free tickets to one of his concerts up in Baltimore. And while I don’t do anymore work for them, it still is [...]

• Traveling for 15 Hours May 20 2006, No Comments
  

  … is really not that much fun. Especially if you do it all red eye. This time I think it was the worse, since I had 3 layovers kinda jumping all over the map: Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, and Seattle. Notable highlights: Crying babies (x2), a guy sitting next to me that kept talking when [...]

• Recommendation for Guitars? May 14 2006, 7 Comments
  

  Number of strings I have broken: 4. Times those strings were broken while playing in front of an people: 3. Date of most recent broken string: Today, at church.
  Sigh… I need to get better strings. I broke the D string on the first song I was playing, so yeah, that was awkward. Had to lead [...]

• E3 2006 May 09 2006, 5 Comments
  

  So Sony just had their big E3 press conference yesterday for their next console, the Playstation 3. Some interesting stuff, but I don’t know… they basically showed off a XBox Live clone, some game demos that aren’t really much better than the 360, and a “new” controller that looks the same as the old controller, [...]

• Quotable Quotes May 02 2006, 3 Comments
  

  Some random quotes I bookmarked as I surfed the Internets.
  On web design…

  Search Engine Optimization is the snake-oil of the web: provided by traveling salesmen who trust in their victims’ customers’ ignorance and fear to hock their tawdry wears. – Jake

  On God’s grace…

  I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. [...]

• WordPress Annoyances Apr 26 2006, 1 Comment
  

  So I’ve been working pretty extensively with WordPress lately, and I’ve run into a few annoyances while customizing WordPress for clients I work with. These arn’t really showstoppers but just makes customizing WordPress harder than it should. I think the core foundation is pretty solid for the most part, but there’s those tiny little [...]

• Podcasting Experiment Apr 21 2006, 1 Comment
  

  This blog really wouldn’t be Web 2.0 compliant if it didn’t have a podcast. Well, after this update, it still wouldn’t be Web 2.0 compliant yet (there’s no AJAX), but I guess it’s one step closer towards that goal. Primariily though, it’s another way to put a WordPress podcasting plugin I wrote to the [...]

• Easter Weekend in Vancouver Apr 14 2006, No Comments
  

  So I’m back in VanBC for Easter weekend, for my cousin’s wedding. Looking forward to haning out with friends and family, and perhaps most of all, eating good food
  Ever get the feeling you forgot something, but can’t quite remember exactly what? Normally when I fly to Canada I’m issued electronic tickets, which means [...]

• Passion: Everything Glorious Apr 12 2006, 2 Comments
  

  Downloaded the new Passion: Everything Glorious album from iTunes, and I have to say it is pretty awesome. Live music is great. Favorite tracks: Awesome is the Lord Most High (Chris Tomlin), You Never Let Go (Matt Redman), I Stand Amazed (Chris Tomlin), and the title track Everything Glorious (David Crowder). Unfortunately, the first track [...]

• The XBox 360 Apr 09 2006, No Comments
  

  XBox 360s are starting to be in stock (finally), so I went by my local Best Buy to pick one up. Yeah, I would’ve gotten one sooner or later, so… I’d rather it be sooner than later. Also, the DVD drive on my old XBox was starting to get flakey, so that’s also an excuse [...]

• An Event Apart: Atlanta 2006 Apr 04 2006, No Comments
  

  So I just got back from An Event Apart, which was held at Turner Field in Atlanta. All round, it was a good focused session on web development and reaffirmed many things I already “sorta” knew, but never really quite formed into solid ideas. I think it was kind of like going to church [...]

• The New Flickr Photo Album Plugin for WordPress Mar 31 2006, 14 Comments
  

  Alright, here’s the first of hopefully many Silas Partners sponsored plugins for WordPress. If you’ve poked around this site, you’ll probably have already found it.. but in case you havn’t, here’s the ‘official’ announcment.
  The Flickr Photo Album plugin for WordPress is a plugin I developed at work. We’re actively using WordPress as a platform [...]

• New Site: McLean Presbyterian Church Mar 29 2006, 2 Comments
  

  Just launched the new web site for McLean Presbyterian Church. It’s got a pretty simple look and feel, which I think is really one of the hallmarks of great web design: presenting just enough information, without being overly “pushy”. It’s so easy these days to want to just keep adding all sorts of features, widgets, [...]

• Practice Safe Browsing Mar 27 2006, No Comments
  

  Well, it looks like Microsoft is getting a bunch of pretty bad press as of late. There’s a pretty nasty virus out there, which you can apparently catch just by viewing an “unsafe” web page. From what I understand, this virus doesn’t popup any “Click yes to continue” type alerts either, it’ll get installed silently [...]

• Persecution Against Hopegivers Mar 21 2006, No Comments
  

  Just a little over 3 months ago, I mentioned that the new web site for Hopegivers was launched. They are a non-profit organization whose primary mission is to help orphaned, sick, and helpless children in India. It’s hard to come up with a more nobler goal. Unfortunately, they have recently been under pretty severe persecution [...]

• Script.aculo.us JavaScripting Mar 10 2006, No Comments
  

  There used to be a time where if a client wanted some animating objects on their web site, I would just do it all with a custom hand coded JavaScript animation library. For example, I did the animation code for these slideshow pictures by hand (move your mouse over the thumbnails at the bottom). While [...]

• And the Oscar goes to… Mar 06 2006, 2 Comments
  

  Crash? The only movies I saw that were nominated were King Kong, War of the Worlds and Narnia. They really seemed to push the “theater going” experience as the way of properly seeing a movie. Well ok, maybe I’d go to the movie theaters more often if the tickets weren’t so expensive, it doesn’t cost [...]

• Go Team Canada! Feb 27 2006, 2 Comments
  

  We took in 24 medals this time, which is our best haul ever. We also got 13 4th place finishes, a few of which were just mere fractions of a second away from bronze. That’s pretty awesome. Though I will admit we didn’t even get a medal in what some would say is our most [...]

• Fours iTunes Feb 21 2006, 1 Comment
  

  It’s kind of like 4 things, and about 2 months late. Except it’s stuff from iTunes
  1. Music (from Passion):

  Forever
  Made to Worship
  Marvelous Light
  Salvation is Here

  2. PodCasts:

  TWiT
  Diggnation
  Ask a Ninja
  Strong Bad

  3. TV:

  Battlestar Galatica
  The Office
  Monk
  The A-Team

  4. Movies:

  Ahh… can’t download movies just yet. But very soon I suspect…

• The Winter Olympics 2006 Feb 08 2006, 4 Comments
  

  Here’s hoping Team Canada strikes double gold again with a repeat performance of the 2002 games. Both our Men’s and Women’s team won gold over Team USA. It was great. I remember much rejoicing throughout all of Canada when the men’s gold medal game was finally finished. That game was probably repeated on TV a [...]

• 30Boxes Online Calendar Feb 05 2006, 2 Comments
  

  Came across an interesting new web app. 30Boxes hopes to do to calendars what Flickr did to photos. What did Flickr do and what makes it interesting? Well, Flickr basically figgured out that people actually want an easy way to share their digital photos. And when I say share, I don’t mean share with just [...]

• Doing Less Evil Jan 31 2006, 2 Comments
  

  Somehow, someway, I get a feeling that Google has started to lose some of it’s mojo. It’s stock just took a minor tumble after it failed to meet analysts’ expectations. Which probably means they just made a ridiculous amount of money, rather than really really ridiculous amounts of money. Google Talk is great, but nobody [...]

• Chris Tomlin – Indescribable 2006 Jan 29 2006, 15 Comments
  

  Saw Chris Tomlin (again) on sat, he and Matt Redman are amazing artists. Chris did a bunch of songs from his latest Arriving album and also a new song which I had never heard before. Can’t find it on iTunes either, so I hope it’ll come out sometime soon. Chris sings really really high. [...]

• Sampling a Billion Web Pages… Jan 25 2006, 2 Comments
  

  … is something you can do if you’re Google. In Dec 2005 (I guess they like to do this kinda stuff during the holidays??), they took a sample of a billion web pages, parsed out all the HTML tags, and then aggregated the results to look at which tags were used the most often. The [...]

• The Jack Bauer Power Hour Jan 23 2006, No Comments
  

  I’m going to steal a quote from one of my coworkers (I’d say a good 1/3 of my office is hooked on the show ):

  Kiefer Sutherland plays Bauer, CTU’s toughest counterterrorist hombre, as an Americanized, cowboy version of James Bond: more brutal, more determined, more prone to extreme measures. Bauer is the sort of [...]

• Introducing Google Analytics and Feedburner Reports for WordPress Jan 21 2006, 1 Comment
  

  My latest creation, another plugin for WordPress Google Analytics, is a very power web tracking service. It’ll tell you everything you could possibly want to know with what’s going on with your web site. Ridiculous stuff like how many times people in the state of Alabama have viewed this blog in the last [...]

• The New Church of the King Jan 15 2006, 1 Comment
  

  The new web site for Church of the King is up and running. They are a church based in New Orleans and from what I understand, their previous web site was literally lost in hurricane Katrina. It’s not everyday a natural disaster can actually take out a web site. Anyways, I helped get their [...]

• The Million Dollar Homepage Jan 05 2006, 2 Comments
  

  From the “Why didn’t I think of that” department…

• West Virginia Mining Accident Jan 04 2006, 2 Comments
  

  TVs coverage of this accident, and on people’s faith.

• Bringing in 2006 Jan 02 2006, No Comments
  

  Going back to WashDC in less than a day. Which means back to work, and no more sleeping in Had lots of fun, met up with old and new friends, played and won 2 games of Texas Hold’em (didn’t have chips to play with, so we used ridiculous things like VCR tapes, bottle [...]

• Day 4 in Vancouver Dec 27 2005, 1 Comment
  

  Exploits so far…

• Merry Christmas :) Dec 25 2005, 1 Comment
  

  Title says it all

• New Site Launched: Hopegivers Dec 20 2005, 1 Comment
  

  Another day, another new site

• Apple Rumors Dec 16 2005, No Comments
  

  Crazy rumors leading up to the Apple Expo in Jan

• The Podcasting Revolution Dec 14 2005, No Comments
  

  Capturing the latest web revolution, how to podcast your ministry

• Going Home for Christmas Dec 08 2005, 1 Comment
  

  Only 2 more weeks till Christmas in Vancouver…

• Snow Day! Dec 05 2005, No Comments
  

  First snow fall here in WashDC

• Chris Tomlin In Jan ‘06 Dec 04 2005, No Comments
  

  Awesome, Chris Tomlin is going to be playing in Woodbridge VA with Matt Redman

• The New and Improved Blog Dec 01 2005, 5 Comments
  

  Introducing the new and improved tantannoodles.com!

• Google Analytics Nov 28 2005, No Comments
  

  Observations on Google’s free web stats package

• Black Friday Madness Nov 25 2005, 1 Comment
  

  Where Americans give thanks by spending

• Happy Turkey Day! Nov 23 2005, 1 Comment
  

  Hope you eat good turkey.

• The XBox 360, Scrubs 2 Nov 19 2005, 2 Comments
  

  Where I ramble about Microsoft’s XBox 360

• The Sony Virus Nov 14 2005, 6 Comments
  

  Rant against Sony’s DRM implementation

• In Flanders Fields Nov 11 2005, 2 Comments
  

  the poppies blow…

• Ruby on Rails Nov 07 2005, No Comments
  

  Where I talk about developing with Ruby on Rails

• Texas Musical Trifecta Nov 04 2005, 5 Comments
  

  Featuring Robbie Seay Band, Shane & Shane, and David Crowder

• Safari Acid Tests Oct 31 2005, 5 Comments
  

  On Apple, acid 2, and girls

• Falling backwards Oct 30 2005, No Comments
  

  Why can’t we fall forwards and spring backwards? So because of the daylight savings time adjustment, I forgot to fall backwards today, which meant I got to church an hour early. Normally, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue, but I already had to get to church extra early today so I could setup [...]

• WordPress Flickr Post Bar Oct 28 2005, 4 Comments
  

  So you may have heard about me talk about Flock, the new kid on the block. One of it’s neat features is that you can easily use your Flickr photos when you’re writing a post to your blog. I thought to myself, I’d like to be able to do that too, except I don’t really [...]

• What the Flock Oct 24 2005, 1 Comment
  

  Alright, so there’s a new web browser in town that’s been making a few waves lately. It’s the Flock web browser, and is supposed to be a “new and improved” way of surfing the web. It’s fully Web 2.0 compliant (get the upgrades if you didn’t get the memo) and basically take the web browser [...]

• Brand new iPod nano Oct 14 2005, 8 Comments
  

  Check it out, I just received my new (and free) iPod nano today. Turns out I didn’t have to wait that long after all. The nano really is a thing of beauty… it’s so pretty… and it’s black, which means it’s cool in a rebellious kinda way. Now I just need to find a case [...]

• Just One More Thing… Oct 12 2005, No Comments
  

  OMGBBQ!!11!eleven!!!!!1 This is cool. Hot on the heels of the brand new iPod nano, Apple drops another bombshell and unveils a new iPod (also updates on iMac and iTunes). Much like how the iPod nano replaced the iPod mini, this new iPod replaces the regular white iPod and is called, well.. just iPod. So [...]

• Woot! Oct 11 2005, 4 Comments
  

  Check it out, I’m on my way to get a free iPod Nano. Click the pic on the right to see a screenshot. Of course, this process of actually obtaining a “free ipod” only took the better part of one year, getting all the necessary referrals. Now I just have to wait 4 – 6 [...]

• Happy Thanksgiving! Oct 10 2005, 1 Comment
  

  If you’re in Canada that is. And for you Americans, here’s a map to remind you where it is

• DC Festival Day 1 + 2 Oct 08 2005, 1 Comment
  

  So today (Sat) was DC Festival, hosted by Luis Palau. It’s a free concert held on the National Mall, featuring some popular Christian artists like Toby Mac, Kirk Franklin, and Third Day. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t cooperating and it was raining pretty heavy throughout the day, so the event scheduled had to be shuffled [...]

• Top 10 Things That Don’t Suck Oct 06 2005, 1 Comment
  

  Well, since this is a blog and all that, I feel obligated to join the ranks of other bloggers and at least post some sort of list of something. So here’s mine 10 random things of sorts:

  iPod Nano
  The Food Channel (Iron Chef, Good Eats)
  AJAX
  Battlestar Galactica / Firefly
  Flickr / Web 2.0
  Noodle soup (I wish there was [...]

• NHL Streaming Video Oct 04 2005, 1 Comment
  

  Sweet, the NHL is going to be the first major sport to stream live video of it’s games over the Internet. And the best part? It’s going to be free for Comcast subscribers, and since my Internet at home is through Comcast, that means I’ll be able to watch my team make it’s way [...]

• Random Googling Sep 14 2005, 2 Comments
  

  Have you ever tried doing a search for yourself on Google? Well, I just did. Let me say first off that I consider myself to be a pretty savvy guy… I mean, I know how to put together IKEA furniture, make a decent meal without using the microwave, and even how to make myself look [...]

• Flickr DHTML Badge Sep 06 2005, 3 Comments
  

  So over the long weekend, I wrote a mini-app for tantannoodles to display my most recent Flickr photos. It’s made up of Javascript and some CSS (also known as DHTML), and if it’s working properly, then you should be seeing thumbnail photos rotating in and out down the left rail of this site [...]

• HowToAdopt.org Sep 06 2005, No Comments
  

  Another site which I recently worked on has launched: HowToAdopt.org. It’s an adoption resource mini-site and part of Steven Curtis Chapman’s adoption ministry, Shaohannah’s Hope. As with my other projects, our designers gave me a design to work with and I turned that into HTML and CSS goodness. Most pages should even be XHTML compliant [...]

• Katrina Roundup and Thoughts Sep 03 2005, 1 Comment
  

  Such a mess. If America can’t properly handle a natural disaster, which by the way we could see coming for days, how much worse would it be for a non-natural disaster? I can’t believe how here in America, arguably the world’s richest and most prosperous nation, the sick and elderly have died, (not to mention [...]

• Hurricane Relief Sep 01 2005, 1 Comment
  

  The tragedy that is unfolding right before our eyes is so sad, it’s hard for me to even imagine how it all came to this. It seems that despite the fact that everyone knew a hurricane was going to hit, no one could predict how bad it was going to be.
  I know a lot [...]

• Family visit Aug 30 2005, No Comments
  

  My cousins came over to visit me this past weekend, and also to scout out some uni schools along the east coast… they grow up so quick *snif* Had a great time touring the monuments, eating good food, watching dvds, and generally kicking their butt in Halo2. hah!
  Anyway, here are some quick [...]

• Luis Palau DC Festival Aug 30 2005, No Comments
  

  The Luis Palau Festival is coming to the National Mall this Oct 8-9, featuring the artists Steven Curtis Chapman, Third Day, tobyMac, and a bunch of other artists. I actually went to a Luis Palau Festival near Seattle a few years back, and it was a lot of fun. Third Day and Steven Curtis Chapman [...]

• 1996 called, they want their IM back Aug 24 2005, 3 Comments
  

  You probably heard it by now, but Google just released their own instant messaging service… Google Talk. So far, it’s pretty basic in what it does, and isn’t particularly revolutionary. Usually, the stuff Google cranks out is usually pretty jaw-dropping awesome and just fundamentally changes the way you think about doing something. Google Search provided [...]

• Messiah College Aug 12 2005, No Comments
  

  So last weekend, my church here in WashDC had a retreat at Messiah College, which apparently is somewhere in Pennsylvania… I wasnt really paying attention during my ride over, so I didn’t even realize I was in another state until after the fact. It was a pretty fun weekend, I got a chance to play [...]

• Dumbest idea ever Aug 04 2005, No Comments
  

  Well, maybe not… but this doesn’t make much sense to me. Warning, this is a rant about Internet domains, which I wrote a couple weeks ago but forgot to post… so feel free to hit the back button and return to whatever you were doing.
  Alright, so basically there’s going to be a new “.mobi” domain [...]

• More Web Links Jul 25 2005, No Comments
  

  If this whole biking thing to work is going to have any chance of success, the weather really needs to be at lot cooler…. like maybe 20 degrees cooler.
  In the meantime, here’s some links for Monday:

  Live NASA TV – Try #2: Watch the launch of the space shuttle Discovery
  The blast zone – Well, my [...]

• Some pics Jul 12 2005, No Comments
  

  Some recent pics posted to my flickr account First pic is of Steve and me… he was in the area for a business trip a week or two ago, so we went and got dinner and hung out in the evening. I’ve known him since before the days of NES (that is, [...]

• London Bombings Jul 07 2005, No Comments
  

  What a shocking way to start off the day, London gets bombed with 4 separate explosions. I hope and pray that my uncle in London is safe, I think he lives in a suburb of London, so he should be ok. Aside from the traditional news outlets (ie CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, etc), here’s some good [...]

• Ever notice… Jul 05 2005, No Comments
  

  …that things always seem to come in bursts? Last year was weddings (I think I went to at least 5 or 6), and this year it’s looking to be helping people move. This year, it seems like almost everyone I know here has moved to a new place, or is going to move to [...]

• happy canada day Jul 01 2005, No Comments
  

  happy canada day

  Originally uploaded by Robin’s Nest.

  O Canada! Today is Canada Day (kind of like July 4 south of the 49th parallel). Seems like I’ll have to wait 3 days to celebrate Canada day, with my fellow american friends… which if all goes according to [...]

• Google Earth Jun 28 2005, 1 Comment
  

  So, Yet Another Google Post: Google just released Google Earth, an amazing Windows program which lets you literally zoom around the world. Starting with a view of the entire earth from space, you can zoom in all the way down to your street address, and then “fly over” (by zooming out and zooming back in) [...]

• So, hows the weather? Jun 21 2005, No Comments
  

  Amazingly, the weather hasn’t been too hot these past few days, which has made bike ride to/from work quite nice. People are such creatures of habit, because riding to work, I always see the same people (going the other way) on the bike trail almost every day. There’s the slightly overweight guy in a bright [...]

• on fathers day Jun 17 2005, No Comments
  

  happy fathers day, and birthday hope the weather is nice in vanbc!
  Back in the day, I used to be #1, but slowly but surely, I’m climbing to back to the top spot.
  Since it’s friday, and I have nothing better to do… linky

• Link Dump Jun 09 2005, No Comments
  

  For the record, it’s now officially too hot and humid to do anything physical outside. For example, my water bottle which was full of ice was completely melted after being outside for only 20 mins (time it takes to ride to work). Ok fine, maybe after 30 mins, but still… high of 86 degrees??? Bleh, [...]

• Wun-goh-wah to Hua-sheng-dun Jun 07 2005, No Comments
  

  Try not to travel with a stuffed up nose. After landing in Minnesota for my layover, I couldn’t hear anything with my left ear because of the pressure change from the flight. It is the most annoying thing in the world, and I had trouble ordering pizza for dinner (*sigh*) because I couldn’t really hear [...]

• joe + 1 year Jun 05 2005, No Comments
  

  happy birthday to me one of my favorite things to do in van is to go out to eat with friends and family, and I got to do all that today at two really nice restaurants. It was great. Now I gotta go back to work in WashDC :-/ Another year, here I [...]

• Caution, you are now reaching the end of the moving walkway May 27 2005, 4 Comments
  

  Flight back home was pretty uneventful. Apparently NWA doesn’t give out free snacks anymore, you have to pay $3 for a “snack pack”. Not even stupid salted peanuts! At least they did give out juice and soda pop. Being the geek that I am, I spent most of my time during my 1 hour layover [...]

• Free Frostys at Wendy’s May 12 2005, No Comments
  

  If you’re in USA-land, you can get a free small frosty at Wendy’s this weekend I’ll leave it as an excercise to the reader to figgure out why they are doing this

• It’s that time of the year again… May 11 2005, 1 Comment
  

  …when I start to ride my bike to work. I was hoping it would rain today, so I would have an excuse to not ride and be all tired in the morning, but alas it was sunny, as it has been for the past week or so. One thing’s for certain tho, I’m kinda outta [...]

• Music madness May 11 2005, 1 Comment
  

  Napster is now selling ringtones for $2 a pop. Now compare this to the fact that you can also buy a full length digital copy of a song from Napster (thats right, the very same company selling the ringtones), or even iTunes for just $1. Maybe I’m missing something, but this absolutely makes no sense [...]

• Happy Mothers Day May 08 2005, No Comments
  

  Hi mom, happy mothers day See you soon. The weather today was a clear sunny day, hope it was nice in vanbc as well. Probably rain, if anything huh.
  Today I led worship with Joanne K, and we sung a Chris Tomlin song, “Indescribable”. It’s one of my favorite tracks on his CD, especially [...]

• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe May 08 2005, 1 Comment
  

  Movie trailer for The Chronicles of Narnia was just released! I remember this being one of the first novels I ever checked out from the school library, and just spending days just powering through reading them. It’s been so long, I dont think I quite remember everything that went on, I’ll probably spend a weekend [...]

• Do you…. xanga? May 02 2005, 2 Comments
  

  My company is looking to hire a front end web designer to help with all the crazy web related stuff we’re currently doing. If you are that person, or know of someone looking for a web related job, see the craigslist post for how to contact us. One of the really neat things about this [...]

• Serenity and Halo 2 Apr 26 2005, No Comments
  

  Trailer’s out for Serenity on Apple’s QuickTime Movie Trailers page. The movie’s based on Firefly, which is one of the better sci-fi tv show’s I’ve seen… which unfortuently was cancelled only after 13 short episodes. However, you can get all the episodes on DVD from Amazon.com (or if you know me personally, I can lend [...]

• Church Retreat Apr 24 2005, No Comments
  

  So this past weekend, I went to a retreat with my church here in WashDC. It was held at the Skycroft Conference Center in Middletown, Maryland and the theme of the weekend was prayer. Here are some quick highlights, since I dont feel like making proper sentences.

  cafeteria kept running out of forks (how is that [...]

• Cynthia Lin Apr 22 2005, 1 Comment
  

  Saw Cynthia Lin perform last night at the Iota Cafe in Clarendon (close to WashDC) with a friend from church. Cynthia’s a pretty cool up-and-coming jazz / folk guitarist, her songs were easy to listen to, and she has an incredible voice. Got to talk with her a bit after the show, and apparently [...]

• DDR Juggling Kid Apr 20 2005, No Comments
  

  Originally uploaded by Joe Tan.

  Check it out, a pretty amazing video of a kid juggling three pins while playing DDR flawlessly. Not on easy mode either!

• Apple – Mac OS X Apr 12 2005, No Comments
  

  Apple’s Mac OS X 10.4 is shipping April 29. Woohoo! Amazon.com has a $30 rebate to bring the price down to $95 if you put in a preorder with them

• Google Q & A Apr 07 2005, No Comments
  

  Google can now return answers to random questions, like who is your daddy?, how many moons does pluto have?, or even common questions my American friends have.

• I can see my house from here! Apr 05 2005, No Comments
  

  Wow, Google keeps bringing on the good stuff: Here’s
  a satellite view of my appartment building in Arlington! Here’s the post from the Google Blog.

• Steven Curtis Chapman (+ Casting Crowns + Chris Tomlin) Apr 04 2005, No Comments
  

  So the other day (sunday), my company got some free tix to Steven Curtis Chapman’s All Things New Tour, featuring Casting Crowns and Chris Tomlin as opening acts. We got the free tix because of some of the work we did for Shaohannah’s Hope, which is Steven’s adoption ministry. We were given 10 floor tickets, [...]

• GMail beyond 2 gigs storage? Apr 04 2005, 1 Comment
  

  My Gmail storage over 2 gigs now. 2058 MB, and growing… the increase was supposed to only be up to 2 gigs for now, but this doesn’t seem to be the case… it seems that they’ve already begun adding even more storage to email accounts. How is it that a publicly traded company as large [...]

• Transparent Screens Mar 24 2005, No Comments
  

  clear_powerbook

  Originally uploaded by Kaptiv8.

  Cool transparent screen effect I think i’m going to try this with my powerbook ;p

• hey, this is the first post Feb 19 2005, 1 Comment
  

  congrats, you’ve found it!

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