Web neighbors

• One Love Theater
• Awassa Children's Project
• ICCF Holland
• Ministry of Education, Ethiopia
• Korea International Cooperation Agency
• Korea Overseas Volunteers Association
• YouHost.KR
• HostHow.NET

KOV quarterly report (only in Korean, though)

• 1st year (1999): September [ PDF | PS ], December [ PDF | PS ]
• 2nd year (2000): March [ PDF | PS ], June [ PDF | PS ], September [ PDF| PS ], December [ PDF| PS ]
• 3rd year (2001): March [ PDF | PS ], June [ PDF | PS ]

Publications

• Hyok Kim, Building Educational Information Network and Accessing World Wide Internet on Ethiopian Telecommunication Environment, Proceeding of Institute of Educational Research National Conference 2001, Addis Ababa University and USAID, November 2001. [ PDF | PS | PPT ]
• Master Thesis (only in Korean) Performance Analysis of TCP/IP Data Send/Receive Processing Under UNIX Operating Systems [ PDF | PS | PPT ]
• H. Kim, H. Sung, and H. Lee Performance Analysis of the TCP/IP Protocol Under UNIX Operating Systems for High Performance Computing and Communications High Performance Computing ASIA '97, Spring, 1997 [ PDF | PS | PPT ]
• H. Kim, H. Sung, and H. Lee, Performance Analysis and Feasibility Study of a Parallelized TCP/IP Implementation Conf. of Korean Institute of Communication Sciences, Fall, 1996 [ PDF | PS | PPT ]

Rebuilding Movable Type blog completed just now. One simple stupidity (too stupid to mention), not myriad mistakes made this blog out of cyberspace last quarter. All the entries that I posted and maintained over the past ten plus years totally disappeared due to irrevocable backup copies.

Physical failure can be constant risk in server operation and maintenance. Backup as well as recovery plan is a basic and perfect measure in most of cases. However, the backup must be done properly. This is the lesson that I learnt.

More than five years, Movable Type Professional Pack (Professional Blog Template) kept the position of main theme for kokeb.net with flexibility over multiple column design for PC-based web browsers. The advent of mobile and portable devices triggered the transition to convert existing HTMLs to mobile aware ones. The completion of those small projects made me chuckle with happiness that I attained higher degree or depth in Movable Type manipulation. On the other hands, I should have spent most of time to wrestle with my poor taste in design, templates, and codes instead of putting high quality blog posts.

Recently, I completed migration with the template, called Rainier. It will switch styles dynamically based on types of devices or browsers accessing the blog; No need to keep two types of HTMLs for PC-based or mobile browsers as I did before. All DNS and web server configurations fixed accordingly, such as m.kokeb.net, kokeb.net/m, kokeb.mobi, and so on, not to make search robots grumble.

The last screen shot with professional pack is as follows.

Regardless of criticism or pros/cons dispute toward Movable Type, it has stayed long in my hosting space since the year 2005. Today, MT 5.2.2 got populated.

Once I came to control this platform at my fingertip, upgrade process was one of consistent and easy procedure without any burden because of not only comfort in its use but also no dramatic change in core components I had been using. This was the case with today's upgrade; just code upgrade.

Then, I realized that mobile template (called, Rainier) started to ship with Movable Type AT LAST! From now on, anybody (including me) can generate Movable Type blog compatible with mobile devices.(Movable Type 5.2.2 has been released!) I did not convert my blog with new template today but will do some day. Let's enjoy.

UNIX 기준입니다. 아래 명령어를 순서대로 입력해서 private key 와 CSR을 생성합니다. 파일 이름은 임의로 정합니다. 각종 사항을 물어 보는데 임의로 입력 하면 됩니다. 다만, Host name(CN)은 정확하게 입력해야 합니다. Private key는 웹 서버 설치에 사용하면 됩니다.

• openssl genrsa -out ca.pkey.txt
• openssl genrsa -des3 -out ca.pkey.txt 1024
• openssl rsa -in ca.pkey.txt -out privatekey.txt
• openssl req -new -key ca.pkey.txt -out server.csr

CSR이 준비되면 아래와 같은 순서로 인증서를 발급 받습니다. 이미 저는 소유 도메인에 대해 절차를 다 진행했기 스크린 캡쳐를 다시 할 수 없습니다. 메뉴 상의 순서만 보면 아래와 같습니다.

1. Domain 추가 (인증): Domain->Add; 인증서를 발급받을 대상 도메인을 미리 등록해야 합니다. 안내하는 절차를 따르면 됩니다. 인증 관련 이메일이 발송되면 메일에서 요청한 링크에 접속해 인증을 완료하면 됩니다.
2. 인증서 발급 요청: Server Certificates -> New; 아래와 같이 CSR(server.csr)을 입력하라고 나옵니다. 앞서 작성한 CRS을 열어 copy & paste (복사/붙여넣기) 합니다. Submit을 누르고 이후 절차를 진행하면 실시간으로 인증서가 발급됩니다. 발급된 인증서는 언제든지 열람 가능 합니다.

이제 Private key, 발급 받은 인증서, ca root 인증서를 웹 서버에 설치하면 됩니다.

D* 프로젝트 (Diaspora 라는 긴 표현 대신 쓰는 것 같습니다.) 의 자매 프로젝트로 makr.io 프로젝트가 공개 되었습니다.

D* 프로젝트의make something 슬로건과 같이 (회원 가입때 나오는 문구) remix something이 makr.io의 슬로건 입니다.

자세한 사항은 아래 블로그 글을 보시면 됩니다.

What does it mean to make something?

People often say, "Farming is one of faithful labors in this world." We can harvest the field as much as we plough, seed, care, and do our best involving patience as well as thorough diligence. This citing shall apply to my farming these days. Undergoing harsh pain over the couple of months with some matter, I could not work on farming at all. At the same time, the last blog post here lasted nearly two months. Anyway,

Recent torrent rainfall and soaring temperature had slashed my farm block seriously. Wet ground could not sustain maize to fall down over hot pepper and tomato section. Their growth is now in stuck. Repetition of rain and sunshine led excessive growth of lettuce varieties making them inedible.



I spent last weekend in erecting maize stems, fixing sustaining poles for tomato and hot pepper, and eradicating overgrown lettuce. I could get considerable amount of maize crops while cutting off broken maize stems. Hot peppers and tomatoes seemed to need more time to get ripe. Another month will make the remaining ready for harvest by a rule of thumb.



In a month, I will be completely re-plowing my block for autumn vegetables such as cabbage, radish, and so forth. The first half of farming season is nearly at an end this moment. The yield was not so bad in comparison with that during the first half of the last year. However, last year's experience in farming did not help much toward higher yield rate, I think. Knowledge from experience is one thing and doing what I know is totally another.

Simply speaking, this circumstance came from lack of patience and diligence!

No recent care on my blog platform, Movable Type 5.02 as of today, kept me away from proper update in the platform itself and relevant gadgets. I realized that Action Streams 2.3 released a month ago by locating this page.

Action Streams 2.3 is now on operation in place of Action Streams 2.1 (interim release).

Keeping user's own data consistently requires painful process always, for example, in front of software update and/or hosting relocation. This is (was) also the case with Movable Type to some extent. Shortly speaking, this blog post rendered from Movable Type 5 platform in success. Let me share my experience how I managed to migrate from version 4 to brand new 5 with all articles as well as custom templates.

First of all, here are my configurations that you may want to know about.

• Old configuration
• Movable Type 4.3x
• ActionStream 2.1
• Cumulus 1.2
• New configuration
• Movable 5.01
• ActionStream 2.1 (MAKE SURE to get it from here or refer to forum Q&A)
• Cumulus 1.2 (the same as from old configuration)

In brief, I tried these steps

1. Back up entries (menu "Export Entries" from old installation)
2. Create new database for Movable Type 5 (kept Movable Type 4 database untouched)
3. Install fresh Movable Type 5 (kept Movable Type 4 installation untouched) with plugins
4. Import entries (menu "Import Entries") at new installation
5. Copy custom template from Movable Type 4 to 5 MANUALLY (copy & paste; labor intensive but sure bet)
6. Copy configuration of plugin(s) as needed (the same as above)

Above procedure is just one out of numerous ways you may think of. My goal was to populate old articles with Movable Type 5 by fresh installation. Automated upgrade from Movable Type 4, you may choose if you don't want to be bothered about complexity of migration over fresh installation.

I (also you, probably) encountered two hurdles in the middle of migration. One was incompatibility of ActionStream 2.1. Resolution was already here (just download version 5 aware port!). The other was how to import entries because the dashboard did not show me any clue how to do. Now, let's dive into details and workaround which I escaped from stalemate with.

Upon the first sign-in after the installation process, one special blog (new term called "Website" from Movable Type 5) will be available. It is a kind of an aggregator or integral point of its dependent blogs. That's why no "Import Entries" menu can be seen from it.



Just leave this Website untouched for a while. Re-configure the "website" if needed in the future. Then, create a blog under that "website". You will be asked about template set, directory locations, and so forth by the same way you would be on previous installations. Once a new blog is created under the "website", it will bring you all facilities familiar with us. We can see a menu, "Import Entries"



Due to this "website" scheme and the procedure I tried above, your blog ID will be "2" instead of "1" taken by the "website." In most cases on previous Movable Type distributions, the first blog should take blog ID "1", however. This situation will make archive cache corrupt on search engines without any doubt. Configure mod_rewrite (.htaccess) or something like that if corruption matters to you seriously. I did not touch anything because search engines would refresh their cache in the long run. :-)



Except two issues above (action stream compatibility and entry import), everything will be favorable for experienced users in Movable Type installation. I hope this helps. One good news is that new Movable Type now supports "Export theme" facilitating custom templates archive and making it available as a part of blog theme pool in automated manner. No more copy & paste!!

One of my recent jokes with colleagues and friends was, "Everything is ready with me except an iPhone." All services as well as facilities that I had subscribed and run were mobile aware and ready to interconnect with mobile devices. The first photo upload dates back to August 2006 at flickr. The first blog post was made April 2005. Others around that time.

With the start of iPhone service a month ago, I signed up subscription plan with black colored handset. The iPhone enabled me to access Internet services from wherever I am. There is no change in services that I would enjoy; however, there is dramatic change in the way of using them with the help of Wi-Fi or 3G network omnipresent.

It's time to say bye-bye to this old handset below. Huh, nearly 5 years with me.

Having intended not to put a post on this blog for a while (long while as a result, though), I used to devote myself to another challenging things. The last post dated May 29 remained latest post here. :-D The challenging things were near at an end beginning September. However, I could not completely finalize them since the end of the month. "Decision and focus" policy failed in the long run. "Get all, then manage them" I took.



Breaking the silence today, I updated status of services which I had been involved in. Absence from there led the stacking of messages I did not reply to yet. Feedbacks from friends as well as unknown others were responded gently because they were ignored thoroughly so far. There is something notable upon status updates.

• Twitter: several became followers who I did not know. I wonder whether I can drop my on-time trace to share with them. Anyway, Twitter should be operational for them. :-D
• Plaxo: a certain friend's network suggested several job offers with private email. Headhunters tried to reach me. I did not respond, however. I am still alive on a job market as a hunter's prospective prey or bait :-)
• Linkedin: Colleagues updated their networks with me.
• YouTube: Channel view marked over 1,500. I realized that my videos were being watched by friends and YouTube folks AT ANY RATE. I can't stop YouTube-ing.
• Flickr: Several shots became other's favorites. Somebody pulled the naked David shot for his or her blog. Another person requested me to permit the use of one of my toilet shots by courtesy. The shot does not require permission as long as it is used properly against Creative Common License. It may appear on a certain magazine. (I will let you know when available, Dear readers!)
• Mar.gar.in/delicious: nothing special; I just did not do anything.
• Facebook/Hi5/Tagged: I could not manage them. So so so many messages :-) However, "Get all, then manage them" discipline will work soon.
• Other services I would rarely visit: no idea yet; delete or do something

Social network platform, Movable Type Motion, released recently. In effect, Movable Type version 4.25 includes the Motion as a key feature as well as legacy blogging modules and templates like Classic Blog, Action Stream, Professional Website, Community Blog, and Community Forum distributed independently under respective license terms. My blog still runs as personal web pages on Professional Website template that I can not find any reason to transit to the Motion. (Refer to this link how the Motion works)

Upgrade to 4.25 was at my fingertips because there was no special change on Professional Website templates. Several enhanced features shared across modules presented me convenience. Of them, I would like to mark high scores on a couple of functions below.

1. Action Streams: Blog post became part of Action Stream enumeration. I don't need to roll out article RSS separately. This will provide me with simplified site design by consolidating scattered atom links into single one. (I will renovate blog layout soon)

2. Versatile Authentication Methods: Fight against spams would put barriers in front of comment entry pad. A blog would demand Movable Type specific or inconvenient sign-in methods. That inconvenience kept potential visitors willing to drop a comment away from intensive communication with blog authors. Now, whatever your account is, Movable Type will accept yours with ease.

To see is to believe. Install and enjoy!

The JustHost.com offered its service beginning with "Congratulations, you have been chosen by our CEO for platinum status." Fury toward its way of marketing arose, then. (You Have Been Chosen, Earthling) It was a beginning to make me come to an end to close hosting account. Here is story how and why I cancelled. They abused confidence and faith from customers. (You may take advantage of half priced hosting service that they may offer when you initiate cancellation process. Read up to the end of this post if you want to know how you can get that offer!)

Just before I signed in this hosting service, everything was shown completely giving best knowledge about services listed in web pages. However, it did not provide what kind of additional services are available with detailed pricing information. As shown below, there are additional services of Daily Backup, Priority Support, Private SSL, and Dedicated IP address. Their price range was acceptable and relatively cheap. However, their fees were not refundable! I subscribed Daily Backup by accepting their non-refundable policy because I expected quality service all through this year. I had committed critical mistake. :-( Simply speaking, there are not hidden fees but hidden services non-refundable.

I did not suspect quality service. This was my second mistake. When I requested backup archive of a specific date, service staff couldn't locate it. When I asked the person about server side backup schedule and terms of service of Daily Backup, I got no answer. This moment, I just considered hosting cancellation at the expense of non-refund. I did not plan to open my story yet because everything, I think, was my faults.

Anyway, I initiated cancellation. I was shocked. The cancellation page showed me counteroffer by 50% refund with hosting continuation. I couldn't stand it! It was beyond my endurance. I just closed because I was fed up with its lousy enticement.

There was nothing problematic in running my blog at justhost.com since the first signup beginning February. Quality of hosting service as well as customer support met my expectation satisfactorily. However, recent email from the company shook my confidence. I seriously consider whether to relocate my blog again, or not. Look up "You Have Been Chosen, Earthling" for more details.

Limited computing resources allocated from previous hosting plans kept me from populating redistributable, at the same time, useful items in spacious storage and spreading them over Internet with necessary bandwidth. Upon settlement on JustHost.com, my blog space got anonymous FTP facility with practically unlimited resource pool.

* this photo from http://www.iccf-holland.org/pict2007.html

I pushed one of those items, Kibaale Children's Centre - The Movie, onto this FTP area WWW archive. Original copy is available from link where individual DVD elements are downloadable one by one. My edition is a single ISO image burned with all the elements merged. For your convenience, I prepared 1GB-wise split copy of that ISO image, too. Upon download, you can optionally check validity against md5 checksum (md5sum). Pull then share the spirit of Kibaale Children's Centre!

Relatively high subscription fee (over 200 USD for GETTING HITS plan as of March 2008; look at my account panel below) from my pocket paid for stable run of Movable Type (MT) over the last year. I strongly recommend this service to whoever wants to be absorbed in article posting not in chores from UNIX administration. Flavor of an MT will stay with you always without any pain in maintenance.

Repetitive installations at the beginning of MT blogging deprived me of much time. I am a UNIX geek, though. Getting accustomed to MT administration in details was one of challenges at that time. Limitation of hosting services in Korea was another burden. Upon the decision to move from Korea, I had to pick NEXCESS.NET out of hosting services listed here not to waste time any more.

It turned out to be safe bet. Everything was ready for MT and me at the initial log on. MySQL database creation, MT source code unpacking, and "/blog/2009/02/mt-config.html" modification were all that I did. There was no need to move here and there to ask staffs to adjust account environment to MT; perl module installation, required binary installation, .htaccess modification, and so on. I never suspected server incompatibility with MT. Then, it was always true when I encountered problems in MT administration. Extremely speaking, most of my support requests staying at this service were non-MT issues. This MT friendly web space made me spend more time on blog contents and their interconnectivity to other services.

As a hosting service in general standpoint, it delivered high quality user support. In most cases, the first reply from the customer center notified me of task completion. Instead of re-asking an issue (you might experience this context at other places), they tried their best to figure out solutions from my single line question. Support staffs did not simply drop guideline URLs but did do something themselves for customers. Furthermore, I never waited for the first human response more than ten minutes then could get final results within half an hour. I could always issue a ticket with newly appeared problems only. Once resolved, never reappeared.

Critical drawback of relatively high expense at low hosting resources (bandwidth, disk, database space) may keep you from this service. However, MT readiness and good quality of service will pay you. Nightmare of wrestling with UNIX? Joy of blogging? It's up to your decision.

Six Apart announced beta release of Movable Type (MT) Motion recently. One of key features from Motion is microblogging like Twitter, Pownce (merged to Six Apart already), and me2day (Twitter-like service in Korea; merged to NHN, one of major portals in Korea). One function of microblogging is a sort of mobile originated (MO) services handling data flows from mobile phone on users' palm to server side of Movable Type blog as Twitter and me2day do as of present. I am not sure, however, whether Six Apart will provide MT folks with world wide or regional MO-like service embedded in future release candidate or final release. Therefore, last weekend's endeavor was to mimic Twitter mobile support on MT. Then, I succeeded as you can see screen shot below.

Feasibility study checking out MO service providers in Koreas turned out to be illegible in my budget standpoint. They support http and/or socket interface to store messages fired from handset, then, to make those messages available in service side; MT blog in my case. Simple and easy to implement! However, more than hundred USD per month only with several hundred times of message relay :-(

Instead, turning my eyes onto other references with additional hours led me to some practical as well as free-of-charge approach (in Korean, though) using MSN protocol to hijack messages. MSN in Korea runs business, called phone buddy, in message handling from "messenger tab."

• sending messages to mobile phone(s) with flat and the same rate as mobile carrier's
• checking phone messages directed to MSN account linked with a certain mobile phone number (my phone number in this case) free of charge :-)

The key idea is to snatch messenger notification when new message arrives, then, to post that snatched message to MT blog!

In the long run, I could post simple lines from my mobile phone onto MT blog by relaying a message headed for MSN account and pushing it to MT with the help of an XML-RPC script shown in this post. Screen shot above may look like ordinary blog posts generated from dash board or direct input upon member logon on MT Motion. However, phone keypad originated those lines.

Slight modification onto MSN Module 2.1.2 Revision 102 was a starting point. After understanding how the MSN module worked, I could identify where to put my hack code to dispatch a message to a Movable Type blog. As shown below, IPG notification is always followed by a message in form of XML fired from mobile phone. I just put at most around a hundred lines parsing XML, testing data robustness, and finally sending the message to a blog using an XML-RPC script. That's all and complete.

Now, let me talk about drawbacks and improvement opportunities on this implementation.

• Restriction: I was supposed to run this script set on web hosting side. However, hosting server did not allow these scripts to run on server side. All required ports were blocked by firewall. Additionally, most hosting services did not permit back ground process (in case of UNIX variants) running in the manner of infinitive loop. Therefore, I had to operate on my desktop computer. Not a 24 hours a day service now :-)
• Limitation: Phone buddy service supports only text message, not multimedia stream
• Improvement: This implementation maintained code structure suggested for really time processing. Further investigation on MSN protocol specification revealed Offline Messaging. That is, incoming messages will be stacked if I am off lined. When I log on MSN again, messages stacked can be drawn. This mechanism seems to require additional authentication process. However, this can make scripts run by crontab.

In sum, I have to find MSN ready hosting service (not possible in effect) or run my own (not reasonable) with simple solution above at this moment. Next move for realization will include 1. Coupling proxy connection to bypass firewall 2. Pulling out offline messages from MSN

Movable Type (MT) exposes interfaces to communicate with external services in exchange of actions and/or data with XML-RPC facility. Blog posts saying XML-RPC in Flickr and Windows Live Writer made me experience how it works remotely and independently from MT dash board.

Last weekend's experiment to implement my own script to contact MT XML-RPC server resulted in success with the help of this post as well as with an anatomy of XMLRPCServer.pm in MT distribution. The experiment was to post an article from my desktop computer triggered by Perl script that I prepared. Frontier-RPC Perl module facilitated the script preparation by simple API.

A code excerpt here will give you an insight how you can call MT XML-RPC methods prepared and exposed for you. Update for this code will available at the same link whenever available. Hope it helps.

Let me summarize what I have done in 2008 to reflect what I have done well or wrongly, expect this year's outcome based on this reflection, and feed myself back toward additional and continual challenges which I will devote myself to this year. I might miss several events or happening to put on this post, though. I don't care because here is blog space where I can show whatever as they are. Let me make up those missing items next time or mention them in connection with future 2009's blog posts!

Well done

Japanese learning: I completed six months beginner's dialog courses beginning Japanese character writing in Hiragana and Katakana. I marked attendance ratio by 100%. Monthly step wise test scores marked high (sometimes great!) enough for me to move on to the next grade. I failed in accomplishing seventh class owing to yearend drinking session and personal affairs. However, I came to know how and what to study next. I've just got back from Japanese Chinese character lecture (Kanji). Good student, Hyok!

Blogging: Settlement in nexcess.net March enabled stable operations in running Movable Type with satisfactory quality of service that I wanted from a web hosting service. I got accustomed to manipulating movable type at my disposal. Apart from technical attainment for blogging, I posted 80 articles on this blog with topics ranging from blogging, voluntary services, donations, almanac to trace back important events in the future, meditations, and so on. In sum, stability made me concentrate on article contents itself without time consuming relocation from one hosting service to the others.

Office affairs: Insight, logical thinking, how to make a decision, how to assist manager's decision as a reporter; these are what I attained and got to understand as a company employee as well as a quality assurance engineer in practice not in theory. I will not leave more about this matter because disclosing details on what I have done 2008 at office can be violation of information security guideline at Siemens :-) Anyway, well done, too!

Friendship: There was no dramatic advance in the number of friends that I kept in touch with. My mobile phone now holds nearly 150 phone numbers with around 30 frequent contacts. Adding, modifying, and deleting contact information all through 2008 finally ended with that figure showing the same status in 2007. We say, "Making a foe is easy, however, keeping friendship is far more difficult." In this regard, I succeeded in doing so at the high expense of drinking day time after trekking and night time after work! :-)

Failure, undone, and/or done wrongly

Exams and tests: I marked worst grades and lower points in tests and examinations than I expected while preparation. I have nothing to excuse about the result though I have something. Let me take them as they were. Test is a glass clear transparent to all takers at test date; whoever got a good luck in marking only correct answers from random picking, whoever outperformed without in-depth preparation, whoever suffered from lower health condition even with fullest knowledge, and whoever.

Book keeping: Beginning 2008, one of my resolutions was to keep a book to make cash flows visible and tangible. However, I DID NOT (not "could not") with two excuses; one was because I was lazy (a little understandable) and other was because I could not find appropriate electronic double entry booking application (nerdy am I). GNU cash is now available at my hand. It's clear what I have to do in 2009.

Diary keeping: It's also from my laziness. The last diary article appeared at September 16. I have nothing more to say about this.

Roadmap establishment: Regardless of this summary of 2008, this is never ending task while I am alive. At this moment, I have no direction to approach, no clear picture about who I am and what I have (not financial meaning but potential standpoint), and no roadmap toward my future life as a result. The roadmap that I had established upon university entry made me who I was as of 2002 when I joined Siemens whereas there had been so many successes and failures altogether against short term plans in the middle of chasing the clear ward. Who I am and what I have now are, of course, dramatically far from what I had imagined. Nevertheless, that roadmap always played a critical role and mirror in spurring me whenever I became lazy and gauging whether I was deviated from proper track or not. What shall I have to follow this year? :-(