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.
Three months beginner's class finished last Friday. Regardless of fluency or literacy, one of the greatest achievement from this term is that I marked only one day absence (make-up class was offered, fortunately) and that I did not skip any home assignment. Such a good student! :-D
Simplified Chinese characters should still come with pinyin typeface to pronounce properly. Simple greetings, basic grammars, and pronunciation with proper toning are at my fingertips. The entire course plan guides me to three more terms (consecutive nine months, too long journey though) to get ready for minimal daily conversation. In other words, I can say, "I just started three months ago. I just got involved as a novice."
I did not put my name on the next term roster to have a kind of break. So many affairs challenging, compelling, obligatory from office to home are awaiting me these days. Furthermore, my brain is inundated with enormous amount of vocabularies from English, Amharic, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. (mother tongue also needs some improvement this moment)
It's high time for me to sink heat on my CPU. I have to forget what I had learned so far to recollect them some day even though this strategy may be adverse to the principle of forgetting curve by Hermann Ebbinghaus. Or, my brain will become walking explosive. :-D
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!
This is attributed to a lazy farmer, Hyok Kim. :-D Anomaly in climate does not make sense any more. Erecting them with strings across stakes should be the highest priority task upon the next visit.
I spent more than half an hour in watering my block. It looks like a farm at last.
Last year's great experience from weekend family farm led me to another challenge right after move-out to new home. Beginning March, I went around so many places to locate the best family farm nearby new house. I paid yearly rental for a farm block out of five candidates April. This post is a story from "getting started" to "up-to-date" development.
This year's land space is bigger by 1.5 times than previous one at SanBon. Per-square rental fee is higher approximately by 1.5 times, too. Land shape is long bar type whereas last year's was nearly square.
One of the lessons learnt last year is that I have to focus on manageable number of varieties on a farm block. Planting, eradicating in case of failure, and their repetition over so many varieties took so much amount of time seriously. Another lesson is that lettuce yield resulted in oversupply for my family. With these two key experiences, I partitioned the farm block roughly into four pieces; green pea block (30%), maize block (30%), tomato/chilly block (25%), and lettuce block (15%). Then, stake planting followed.
As of today, all blocks are going well without any risky symptom yet because most of environmental conditions seem to be identical to or better than those last year; easy access to water supply, no need to shape farm block itself (initial plowing done by landlord), no need to mix fertilizer (done by landlord, too), and so on.
However, one unforeseen circumstance may impact on crop yield as well as the success of this year's farming in the long run. That is anomaly in Korea's climate. I never experienced such terrible weathers during this season since my birth; harsh up-and-down in temperature, high wind, lack of sunshine, and so forth. Weather forecast confirms such kind of anomalies all through this year.
For instance, early seedlings from other's blocks are already suffering from early blossom, early drop, and no or weak ovary. In my case, most varieties got started with direct seeding to escape from early mature. It was a sort of strategic and right decision that I had never tried last year, at least, until now. However, I'm sure that the more difficulties will await me. That's why I have to go through another challenge this year dealing with weekend farming
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
Weekend family farm played best role as a gathering point among friends as well as family members so far. Cultivation efforts strengthened friendship and kinship with collaboration. Seeding and transplanting, after all, produced kinds of vegetables for daily consumption. I don't need to include the names of vegetables in my shopping list accordingly.
We intended chemical-free farming at the beginning. It seemed that we would abide by that rule until the end farming cycle (late fall) because we did not feed anything except water. Last visit got us shocked, however. The farm land was covered by endemic diseases and bugs as shown below. Some block damaged seriously whereas others got slightly.
Our block also got affected in several rows and columns. Kale and Pak Choi were nearly gone away or under bugs' bites :-( All of them were digged out entirely
It's clear that we have two options; 1. Applying insecticide 2. Leaving them as a part of nature. We came to a conclusion that you will not apply chemicals as possible. One strategic alternative for leaf vegetables is to harvest them when they become big sprouts (not when they get fully grown) to minimize possibility of exposure to bugs and diseases.
Nothing yet determined for root vegetables of (sweet) potato, bean (victim of wild animals) and maize (smelling yummy for crows)! Give me some idea not to pollute environment and not to harm human at the same time!
At last, I lunched out with colleagues at a certain Chinese restaurant, one of bustling spots there. Soft breezing made us garrulous over nice dishes all the way of lunch hour. Gee, however, not cost effective! :-D
Located at the foot of Suri san (mountain), 16.5 square meters land space got committed to my family for yearly cultivation only. This is called, weekend family farm, 주ë§ë†ìž¥. Aiming at full supply of KimChi (김치) material for KimJang (김장), I got around to field arrangement last weekend. It was the first time in my life that I had plowed farm field not for fun. During this spring and coming summer, I will grow varieties of vegetables like chilly, lettuce, young radish, kale, and so on. I have to be keen to weather forecast as a farmer from now on. :-)
N Seoul Tower, located at the top of Namsan, the center of Seoul city, boasted its illumination as shown below. At last, my handy camera, Canon Digital IXUS 80 IS, succeeded in capturing fantastic views with acceptable image quality. I used to rush into getting in and out the observatory due to tight travelling schedule with my guests in most cases.
The Daechongbong, the peak of Seoraksan, is famous for outstanding beauty with flowers and plants all around. Especially, the autumn season, showing off colorful maples, attracts most of Korean and travelers from overseas. Then, what if at a cold day in winter?
The severity from harsh wind and low temperature was far more than I expected upon our departure for Seoraksan from Seoul. Sensible temperature at the peak marked, at most, -50 degree in Celsius whereas thermometer reads around -26 and wind travels in 16 meter per second. Nobody there could keep standing a second with strong wind. I could manage to move on with the help of rope along the pathway at earthworm speed. I was so scared because failing in rope grasp might have led me to fall down to cliff.
After all, I got to a shelter at the foot of the peak suffering from frostbite on my left cheek, thumb sized area directly exposed to wind. Anyway, I survived extremity. You can imagine how harsh wind was by checking out audio clip that I captured at the waist of Seoraksan, not at the peak. :-( At the peak? It's up to your imagination!
No matter what made a fire caught, immovable fact is that ancestor's spirit from Naksansa, one of major Buddhist temples in Korea, has gone away already. The fire originated nearby, then propagated to Naksansa and its outskirts. Most of national treasures of buildings, big bell, and wooden architecture as well as forests turned into ashes. These were what I could hear and remember about 2005's fire breakout.
When I visited there several days ago, its appearance seemed to be better than before. Artificial objects like architectures restored appropriately. Nevertheless, bald mountains and coarse forest still made me frown. Natural resource can disappear within a second but can't recover even in a decade.
Note switchover completed by spending considerable amount of time in transcribing action items undone in the year of 2008 from handy paper bound note in white color to small ring binder wrapped with leather folder.
I don't believe in jinx. However, recollecting memories of over the last ten years, I was on right track with that small ring binder whenever I challenged something; getting an admission to Ph.D. course in USA, passing KOV screening, and joining Siemens. It stayed six years inside a carton at home. Then, January 2009 welcomed it again.
That's one of graduation presents from one of best friends. That's, at the same time, the only thing still available with me out of what I got from friends.