In My Mind’s Zen Garden

This is my contribution to the Rice Bowl Journals August 2008 Collaboration. The topic to write about? Your personal highlights for the Summer of 2008.

Well, if you’ve been reading my blog pretty consistently, you are more than aware that 2008 hasn’t been the best of years for me. But life goes on and I still try to keep a positive attitude and go with the flow…

So, the main highlight was obviously my family’s trip to the Philippines for roughly 3 weeks in June. We basically had to go there to do the funeral arrangements for my father-in-law who passed away on June 3rd, had him cremated per his request, and his ashes were placed in the family mausoleum in Lubao, Pampanga. Read more »

A special thank you to Rachel for creating these cool graphic buttons for the Rice Bowl Journals community. Sorry I was late in posting these. They’re very cool indeed!

This entry is part of the Rice Bowl Journals Collaboration Project for July. The idea is to post a review of your experiences during the first half of the current year. So, here goes…

It’s interesting how, when a lot goes on within a given time, one doesn’t remember as much. Too much information coming in, perhaps? Information overload? Read more »

I continue to receive hits via Google regarding the following enygmatic question… Are Filipinos Asian?

So, in keeping with my mission to further settle this matter once and for all, I thought I would do a follow-up article to a previous post I wrote entitled, Yes, Filipinos Are Asian!

Hopefully, we can convince those naysayers who claim that Filipinos are not Asian, and also persuade those Filipinos who are either unsure, think they are something else like Pacific Islander, or simply want to distance themselves from the Asian classification altogether.

The Official Geographical Definition

Geographically speaking, The Philippines is, in fact, located in Southeast Asia.

Taiwan and Hong Kong are just a few hundred miles to the north and northwest, and even closer still is Malaysia and Indonesia to the south and southwest, respectively.

Map courtesy of Wikipedia.org

So geographically, The Philippines falls within the boundaries of the Asian continent, and so it is correct for Filipinos to be classified as Asian.

Filipinos Are Asian On A Nationalistic Level

The Philippines is a country in Asia with a similar history to Singapore:

That said, if you are Filipino or Singaporean, then you are referring to yourself on a “nationalistic” level. Though ethnically, you may be Indian, Malaysian, Chinese, or any number of different ethnicities. But nationally you would be considered Filipino or Singaporean.

There is no doubt that Singapore is considered an Asian country, and that Singaporeans are considered Asians. Should there be any doubt then that Filipinos too are Asians?

From Wikipedia.org:

Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry. They include sub-ethnic groups such as Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Indian Americans, Vietnamese Americans, Korean Americans, Japanese Americans, Cambodian Americans, Laotian Americans and others whose national origin is from the Asian continent.

Genetic Studies Show That Filipinos Are Asian

Some interesting genetic studies have shown that Filipino origins can directly be linked to the Ami tribe of Taiwan, considered the closest genetic relative. Overall, genetic studies have connected Filipinos to Chinese, Korean, and Indonesian ethnic groups, all originating from Asia.

From Wikipedia.org:

Some genetic studies, based upon very small samples of the population, have begun to provide clues to the origins of Filipino people. Much remains to be learned by larger studies of valid statistical significance about the ancestry of the various Austronesian Philippine ethnic groups.

A Stanford University study conducted during 2001 revealed that Y-chromosome Haplogroup O3-M122 (labeled as “Haplogroup L” in this study) predominates among Filipino males. This particular haplogroup is also predominant among Chinese and Korean males. That finding is consistent with the theory that people migrated from China south into the Philippines.

Another haplogroup, Haplogroup O1a-M119 (labeled as “Haplogroup H” in this study), is also found among Filipinos. The rates of Haplogroup O1a are highest among the Taiwanese Aborigines. Overall, the genetic frequencies found among Filipinos points to the Ami tribe of Taiwan as their nearest genetic relative.[7]

A 2002 China Medical University study indicated that certain Filipinos shared a particular gene marker that is also found among Taiwanese aborigines and Indonesians.[8]

A 2003 University of the Philippines study based on 50 participants each from the islands of Luzon and Cebu provided some insight into the various places of origin of early Filipinos. Some rare genetic markers were found which are shared by people from parts of Asia.

Why Filipinos Shouldn’t Be Called Pacific Islanders

First, let’s look at Wikipedia.org’s definition of a true Pacific Islander:

Pacific Islander… is a geographic term used in several places, such as New Zealand and the United States, to describe the inhabitants of any of the three major sub-regions of Oceania… Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia.

Wikipedia goes on to specifically explain that The Philippines is considered a part of Asia, and is NOT considered part of Oceania, and Filipinos aren’t recognized to be Pacific Islanders:

Inhabitants of Russia’s Kuril Islands, Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, and the Taiwanese, Japanese, Philippine, and Indonesian islands, although technically bordering edges of the Pacific Ocean, do not fall under the definition of “Pacific Islanders” because such islands are not actually located within the Pacific or therefore any of the three regions of Oceania (Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia)

Map courtesy of Wikipedia.org

Because of the above definition of “Pacific Islander”, and because The Philippines is excluded (along with other Asian countries such as Taiwan and Japan) from the regions of Oceania, then the above information leads us to conclude that Filipinos simply are not Pacific Islanders.

How Application Forms Caused Part of the Confusion

Many Filipinos in the United States may have filled out college or job applications and had come across the part where you had to check your ethnicity. Many times, “Filipino” was listed separately from Asian, leading people to assume that the two groups are separate.

Why was this? And what was the reasoning behind this? My theory, simply put:

Is there any wonder that part of the confusion may have originated from The Philippines being a former colony of The United States? And with a need to classify Filipinos apart from other Asian groups, application forms and the like were tailored so that various government, corporate and private organizations could further differentiate certain ethnic groups from one another for statistical purposes.

The Whole APA Fiasco

On the other hand, to add to the confusion, certain authoritative entities had lumped both Asians and Pacific Islanders into one ethnic group for simplicity’s sake… namely APA, or Asia Pacific Americans. Though it may have been innocently done and with good reason, group Asians and Pacific Islanders together into one group has proven detrimental to the identity of Filipinos everywhere.

Here is some information regarding the use of APA, or Asian Pacific American:

Asian-Pacific American is a term that was used in the United States to include both Asian Americans and Americans of Pacific Islander American due to its official use as a race on the United States Census between the years 1990 and 2000. Since 2000 the United States Census Bureau has split these two groups apart because the majority of the people included in the term considered themselves to be two separate groups when questioned by the anthropologists who designed the racial definitions for the 2000 US Census. Now, Asian American and Pacific Islanders are two separate races on the US Census 2000, so the term Asian-Pacific American has decreased in use.

In Summary

I just wanted to conclude with specific definitions from Wikipedia.org that show differences between Asian and Pacific Islander:

The definitions and differences between Asian and Pacific Islanders are also clearly defined:

Asian. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam. Thus it includes “Asian Indian,” “Chinese,” “Filipino,” “Korean,” “Japanese,” “Vietnamese,” and “Other Asian.”

Pacific Islander.

A native or inhabitant of any of the Polynesian, Micronesian, or Melanesian islands of Oceania. Some examples of the ethnic groups that would be considered Pacific Islanders are the indigenous peoples of Hawaii, the Marianas, Samoans, Guamanian, Chamoru , Tahitians, Mariana Islander, and Chuukese.

And I hope this finally settles the controversy and answers the questions… people have a right to be proud of their cultural heritage, but it’s important to know exactly what that cultural heritage is, and just as important to convey the truth. Then hopefully, the truth will speak for itself.

Any blogs, journals or online dairies that have been inactive for quite a while will have to be deleted from the RBJ Directory. Volunteers have been helping me flag those sites that match the following criteria:

Efforts To Keep A Faithful Directory

I am pretty dedicated to making the RBJ Directory a valid and “live” directory, and the many abandoned blogs and journals need to be eliminated in order to keep the directory alive.

It’s apparent that many bloggers jumped on the bandwagon a few years back because blogging and online journaling was the rage. But, many of those bloggers have either lost interest or simply aren’t dedicated bloggers like the rest of us.

RBJ has suffered a great loss because of this phenomenon, especially as the 2.0 social networking sites make it easy for interaction. But the problem with social networking is that there is a loss of quality writing. And we at RBJ are dedicated into fostering quality blogs with great content. So, hopefully, the more dedicated writers will stick around and the RBJ directory will dwindle down to the quality writers who are willing to stick it out in the long run.

New Membership Through Recommendation

We at Rice Bowl Journals will stop the registration process, and only accept those serious bloggers and writers who are willing to dedicate the time to their blogs and journals. There’ll no longer be a registration process, actually. But if someone is serious about joining RBJ then he/she can contact me about becoming a member of the directory. Only serious writers with quality content will be considered. This is the exact opposite from social networking sites that are willing to accept anyone and everyone.

Anyone can contact me to recommend a blog or journal as well. And we can invite those blogs and journals that can be a worthy addition to the RBJ Directory.

If you’re a regular reader of mine, you might recall that months ago I expressed that I was getting burnt out with my work on Rice Bowl Journals.

This had taken a more serious turn when I realized that it felt like I was suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome with regards to “the bowl” (RBJ).

Now, I’ve been working on RBJ, and have started checking for broken links and dead journals and blogs. And the results are turning out to be a bit depressing.

Actually, I already covered countries Afghanistan through Cambodia. And I’m currently on the second page of China.

Have most Asians grown tired of blogging and online journaling? Because it appears that every other member has totally abandoned their site, or haven’t posted in a year or more. Now that’s downright depressing and sad.

But, I’ve been deleting and deleting… and though the number of members at RBJ may significantly go down, at least we’ll once again have a directory with valid links to journals and blogs soon.

So, are fewer and fewer people abandoning their blogs and journals? Or perhaps they jumped on the whole blogging bandwagon then decided they weren’t really writers? Or maybe they simply had gotten lazy and joined social networking sites like Facebook? Who knows…

I still get the impression that there are a lot of bloggers and online journalers and diarists out there.

Added TwitThis to Rice Bowl Journals. A simple feature that posts the URL of the current web page you’re visiting to Twitter.com, a social networking post-it-note type website.

I thought this would be most useful when reading RBJ members’ latest entries on their RBJ Profile pages, providing they added their RSS Feed to their account.

If you are using Twitter then this is a handy tool to use. Especially on your own site.

I have a confession to make…

I’ve really, really been neglecting the Rice Bowl Journals site lately. And basically I haven’t done much of anything to it so far in 2008. This is pretty lame and pathetic, I know.

Well, the problem was the webhost’s move to PHP 5 finally, but I must’ve had some pretty radical code that it “blew up” a lot of the PHP scripts. Frustration led to confusion and that in turn led to a loss of inspiration and motivation.

Right now, there are so many problems with the site (behind the scenes and as one surfs the site itself). For example, the registration process is broken. And I’d been debating on whether or not to just start a new one. Also, I want the site to be more accessible somehow to everyone. Everyone should be able to create an account on the site…. if not as a blogger, as a reader of RBJ blogs. So, it seems like a monunental task for me. I had a lot of other stuff going on musically, so I just kept putting RBJ on the backburners.

But take heart RBJ fans and friends. Randomguru will try and get back on the “good foot” and fix all the problems that have plagued RBJ recentlly. In the past, it just seemed that RBJ had been plagued with one problem or another that had kept it from becoming a great community site… then Web 2.0 came along and basically swept everyone off their feet in a virtual online kind of way… and a poor little webmaster like myself just couldn’t keep up with all that.

Hopefully, I will just take all the problems, one step at a time, and try to slowly but surely fix everything, and bring the beloved RBJ site back up to speed! There is so much I would still like to do for the community and to keep it alive and well….

Just wish me luck, okay? And keep those donations coming because all those affiliate programs just aren’t cutting it… or, please visit our sponsors, if you know what I mean.

Thank you,
Randomguru

101 Things About Me….

I know, rather cheesy with the 101 thing but I couldn’t resist, and I wanted to be a little different…..

This is for RBJ’s August 2007 Collaboration:

. . . .

001. I’m right-handed.

002. I don’t smoke.

003. I drink alcoholic beverages occasionally. Not everyday.

004. Generally, I’m an optimist.

005. But at the same time I worry a lot.

006. Playing piano is something I love to do.

007. I have played piano since 5.

008. I’ve played drums since 9.

009. Blue is my favorite colour.

010. But most of the time I like to wear black.

011. I love to eat.

012. I’m a vegan, and mostly eat raw foods.

013. I was never blessed with a fast metabolism.

014. So, I have to exercise and move about constantly if I want to stay slim.

015. I love yoga. I just need to do it everyday.

016. I love meditation. And I really need to do that everyday too.

017. Gardening is one of my favorite past-times.

018. Life has been moving too fast lately.

019. Sometimes, I don’t take too well to criticism.

020. But I will listen to people’s advice in order to improve myself.

021. I hate failure, but I understand it’s a path to success.

022. So, I have failed many times in my life.

023. At the same time, I realize that sometimes one must fail in order to succeed.

024. I worked at a large financial institution for 12.5 years of my life.

025. While I was a banker for those 12.5 years, I was still a musician.

026. I got laid off from my banking job.

027. Being laid off devastated me. It took a long time for me to recover.

028. I never wore braces.

029. I would like to lose about 25 lbs.

030. Sometimes, I think I’m a failure.

031. Of course, there have been shining moments when I was a winner.

032. For most of my life I’ve lived in San Diego.

033. I really love computers.

034. We have 6 computers in our family… on a network, of course.

035. My home network is called “Lord Shiva’s Ashram”.

036. I really, really love chocolate ice cream!

037. I haven’t had chocolate ice cream in a long, long time….

038. My biggest triumph was meeting the love of my life.

039. My wife is way better than chocolate ice cream!

040. My wife is an angel. She met me (fortunately) at the lowest point in my life.

041. I have contemplated suicide once or twice.

042. I use an electric tooth brush.

043. I sleep on the left side of the bed.

044. Once-in-a-while, I get painful leg cramps at night.

045. I haven’t gotten a painful leg cramp in a long time. *knock on wood*

046. At times, I feel I am crying on the inside.

047. Many times I am saddened by the terrible tragedies occuring in the world.

048. Sometimes, I like to sleep naked.

049. Most of the time though, I sleep with pajama pants and an old tanktop.

050. I almost drowned in the ocean when I was 18.

051. I lone surfer saved me and he came down from this huge wave like an angel.

052. I really thought I was a goner when I almost drowned.

053. I never got a chance to thank the surfer who saved me. He mysteriously disappeared.

054. Performing music keeps me going in life.

055. Equally important is my family: My wife and two sons.

056. My wife and two sons are my best friends in the whole wide world.

057. A movie I never grow tired of? Star Wars: A New Hope

058. Another movie I never grow tired of? It’s A Wonderful Life

059. Someday I will own previously mentioned movie on DVD.

060. I have an innie.

061. In college I weighted 145 lbs.

062. I’m not particularly satisfied with my current weight.

063. I’m not picky. I can listen to anything musically.

064. I consider myself an ethno-musicologist.

065. I really love the music of the Himalayas… Nepal, Tibet, India…

066. Most of my early childhood was spent in Coronado Island, CA.

067. I don’t particularly like shopping.

068. But, I do go shopping when there is something specific I need.

069. This is a good place in the list to say that I’m a very sexual person.

070. I love to burn candles and incense.

071. I almost burned the house down when I was a kid. So I’m very careful with fire.

072. I’m not a very politically minded individual.

073. Nor do I like sports all that much.

074. However, I love the Summer Olympics with a passion.

075. I lack discipline in many things. For one, I need to be more organized.

076. I first got online back in 1989, when I logged on to BBS’s.

077. Back then, I also logged on to my college’s IBM Mainframes from my Mac SE.

078, I first logged onto the Internet back in 1992. It was all text-only back then and very primitive compared to today.

079. The very first time I used a computer was back in 1978. When I used my friend’s Apple-E Computer.

080. The first time I used a computer in a working environment was in 1983, on IBM and Sanyo PC’s.

081. My favorite computer game on the Mac was “Beyond Dark Castle”.

082. I don’t play many computer games any more. Not enough time. Life’s too short at my age.

083. But I like a good board game once-in-a-while. My favorites are Axis and Allies, Monopoly, and Chess. And Scrabble!

084. I love photography. But I consider myself an artist/amateur photographer.

085. I have had a coin and stamp collection since back when I was in the boy scouts.

086. I have other collections too. I’m a pack rat who seriously needs to clean out his garage and have a huge garage sale.

087. Old movies I cherish: The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben Hur (1959), and Casablanca (1942).

088. Hmm… not much of a reader of fiction and novels. But, I have tons of computer books and how-to books.

089. I’m a total neat freak. I love to keep things organized, which I’ve always found to be an uphill battle.

090. I’m not so much a religious person but I am a spiritual person.

091. I believe in love-at-first-sight, because I experienced it firsthand. It was a very intense deja-vu experience that I can still picture vividly in my mind.

092. I used to write letters everyday to my soulmate, even though we lived in the same city.

093. I consider myself a Buddhist, though I was raised a Christian (Catholic).

094. I study both Buddhism and Christianity, and somehow believe in both.

095. My latest passion is working with digital photography, photoshop and Picasa 3.0.

096. My latest obsession is watching old movies on the DVD player.

097. Ideal car? If I had the money I’d be happy with a BMW 745-IL or a Mercedes SLK-500 hardtop convertible. Sorry, I won’t buy American any more, Ford sucks… and I own one.

098. If I had the money I’d fly back to Europe for an extended vacation. But in reality the family and I are planning a Summer vacation to the Philippines and Asia.

099. Well, I also have this burning desire to travel to the Himalayas one day, and visit a Tibetan Monastery.

100. The latest toy I’m salivating over is a Nikon Telephoto Zoom Lens…..

101. Actually, forget about number 097. Instead of a luxury car I would love to finally own a Steinway Grand Piano in a shiny black finish. (Update: My wife gave me a Yamaha Grand Piano for my 50th birthday!)

Creating an application in Facebook:

The thoughts of this sound pretty exciting to me now. And though the road might be a bit difficult, I’m just going to take things one step at a time.

First off, I added myself to the Developers App over at Facebook, which was pretty simple, actually. And I was given an API Key along with a Secret code.

Then, I added an application called Rice Bowl Journals, and filled out the necessary info for its profile.

I set up a directory on my server that Facebook can point to to make the connection with the RBJ site.

And created a “Hello World!” index.php file.

Here’s my developer page for Rice Bowl Journals.

And here’s the actual page to the Rice Bowl Journals app page on Facebook over at: http://apps.facebook.com/ricebowl

Pretty nifty!!!

That’s a good start… so now I just have to think up an application that could integrate the two sites together, and code it all in PHP!

Haha…. and now the hard part begins……

But once again, I’m open to any suggestions anyone might have to create this integration between RBJ and Facebook….

I’m opening up this entry for feedback….

Is there even a need to upgrade RBJ to that level?

Well, I’d like to bring RBJ to at least Web 2.0 standards….

Basically, I’ve noticed that sites like RBJ aren’t as popular any more. And those big “social networking” sites are gaining in mass popularity, from Facebook to MySpace to Twitter and so on…

Well, I think in order for RBJ to “survive” and not just fall by the wayside, I’m going to have to do some serious coding in the next several months, starting in August and continuing on into the Fall.

What are some of the things I’d like to see on Rice Bowl Journals?

Okay, let’s see….

1. First, I’ve always wanted to have the site open to “EVERYONE”, and I mean everyone. So, I think it would be great to have a general sign-up for anyone to “create an account” so that they can track their favorite sites better, bookmark those favorites, and just have more options that they wouldn’t have if they didn’t have an account.
2. I’d like members to know who has viewed their profile, sort of like MyBlogLog, in which members can see the last 5 or more visitors. And maybe have a widget on their site that could also display the visitors.
3. And I’d like the Member Profile to show more info. Like, currently it shows readership for that blog or journal, but I’d like to also include “admirers” or “followers” of that blog or journal, so that the member of that site can decide to add followers as friends. And basically, improve the whole Profile page and do more with it. Like adding a “Randomguru is… feeling spiffy right now” or something like that….
4. I’d also like to improve on the registration process. Make it automatic and with email verification and approval. Right now I’m approving new members manually, something I’ve done since the very beginnings of this community site back in 2000! So, definitely improve on the login and registration process…

So, any ideas you’d like to share?

What changes would you like to see at Rice Bowl Journals? I’m all ears….

A lot of Xanga and Blogspot users ask me if they have an RSS feed, especially now that Rice Bowl Journals accepts members’ RSS feeds for publishing on the RBJ site, and I have to say, “yes”, you people do!

My simple answer is that the RSS feed is already there in your source code!

Here’s what you do:

1. While viewing your blog, type CTRL U (Mac users use the Command key) to bring up the source code.
2. Type CTRL F to bring up the search box.
3. Type RSS or feeds and it should automatically go to the first line with RSS or feeds in it.
4. Look for an http:// URL similar to the one below…
5. If you have a Xanga blog you should see something like:
6. http://www.xanga.com/MY_BLOG.rss
7. If you have a Blogspot blog you should see something like:
8. http://MY_BLOG.blogspot.com/rss.xml

And that’s pretty much it. You can grab an RSS button and create an image link out of your RSS feed, or just use a regular text link. And you’re done!

As long as you have the text link or RSS button on your blog, people can click on it and add your RSS feed to their “feed reader”.

Web 2.0 Magazine has published its Top 100 List of Web 2.0 Sites, which is a fairly complete list of all the user-generated content sites out on the web.

Those who have a general knowledge of Web 2.0 can get a more detailed understanding from this O’Reilly article.

Another great explanation of the Web 2.0 phenomena lies with Wikipedia’s page on this latest Web revolution:

Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004,^[1] refers to a perceived or proposed second generation of Internet-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. O’Reilly Media, in collaboration with MediaLive International, used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences, and since 2004 the phrase has been adopted by technical and marketing communities. Its exact meaning has been open to debate, and some experts, notably Tim Berners Lee, have questioned whether the term has meaning.

One of the aspects of Web 2.0 I’d like to explore a bit more with Rice Bowl Journals is the concept of social bookmarking. There definitely needs to be something added to the site that would make it more Web 2.0, rather than just Web 1.0… an information source….

Yes, a New Year’s resolution to implement in the next few months. Meanwhile, I need to continue to redo code to make the site more efficient and ready for the changes, which have been taking place already in subtle forms.

I’ve been going through some really bad times lately…

November just doesn’t seem to be my favorite month.

Here’s what’s been happening:

1. As many of you know, I was sick recently with a bad case of “stomach flu” and although I believe I’m almost 100% back to normal, this cloud of negativity that’s been hanging around me has kept me from fully recovering.

2. And just recently, Rice Bowl Journals has suffered some major setbacks, ironically at a time when the site is a finalist at The 9th Philippine Web Awards. The discussion board is broken, and many parts of the site had been down. I haven’t contacted the webhost but I’ve assumed they upgraded PHP/MySQL and some of the code crashed the site.

3. Anyways, I DID finally get my laptop back! After more than two weeks, yesterday I checked and it was ready to be picked up. Over $400 worth of repairs and I’m glad I purchased the extended warranty plan for a change. And they backed up my hard drive but when I got the computer back all the files and folders were there but out of place. I guess it was because they had to replace the RAM, replaced the DVD/CD RW unit, and replace the hard drive and re-install Windows! Well, just glad to finally get the computer back because all my working files were in there.

4. Yesterday, my sister-in-law and I had to take her aunt to the emergency ward. She’s 73 and lately she’s been really feeling sick, and it looks like she’s going to need some surgery today. My sister-in-law and my wife were at the hospital for most of last night. And early this morning I dropped off my wife at the hospital again so she can be with her aunt. It’s looking pretty serious. I pray she can get through this. Please send some prayers our way if you can.

5. And, I’ve been out of work the entire month of November, so it’s been financially difficult lately, but on the bright side of things, I’m taking advantage by focusing more on teaching and practicing on piano and drums. Plus, I need the time to just try and stay healthy and recharge the batteries, so to speak.

*sigh*

Like the first Noble Truth says, “Life is suffering”, I’ve definitely been feeling that lately… but I know it’s important to be strong and focused throughout adversity.

And despite all that’s been happening, I’ve been keeping my chin up…

The love we desire is already within us.
—-anonymous

My apologies for all the problems. The discussion board is down, and many parts of RBJ aren’t working properly, and as a few have suspected, this was due to our webhost upgrading to new version of PHP/MySQL.

Once again, my apologies for the problems.

Rice Bowl Journals is a finalist in The 9th Annual Philippine Web Awards…

I’m being offered a free ticket to be at the awards ceremony in Manila on December 7th! I don’t know if I can actually make it, but I would be very honored to be representing the site if I am able to go.

Please vote for RBJ by clicking on the link above and registering to vote. I don’t know all the details yet, but RBJ is in the “Community & Portal” category and the competition is very tough… some amazingly designed sites in our category!

If we don’t win the judges vote, it’s possible we can win the popular vote…

Either way, I am grateful to all who’ve made RBJ what it is and I definitely couldn’t have done it alone. Thanks everyone!

I’m taking a hiatus still, from RBJ. This means that I won’t be adding new members for a while, and I won’t be on the forums. And I’ll give you my reasons:

1. Regarding the forums, I feel I haven’t been an effective leader over there. It’s just that I feel like an old-timer who isn’t taken all that seriously. So, taking a break would probably do me and everyone a bit of good anyway.

2. I’m at a point where I need to re-focus on music. Particularly, practicing… drum solos, practice sightreading again, plus practicing piano again (which I haven’t been doing), and also to focus on recording some original material… I need to work more on my myspace music page too.

3. I’m getting a little disillusioned with RBJ in general. Maybe I need to step back and see what else can be done with the site, taking a break and coming back at a later time when I’ve cleared my mind of things.

4. And sometimes I just feel tired of webmastering and coding… and just do something else for a while.

. . . .

Anyway, being busy with RBJ has kept me from visiting many of my favorite online journalers and bloggers with greater consistency. In the future, I think that’ll be one of the things I’ll focus on… being able to read others and posting more comments.

. . . .

[tags]rice bowl journals, rbj, hiatus[/tags]

Had gigs this past Friday, Saturday and Sunday. On Monday my wife and I drove up to Santa Barbara to pick up my wife’s sister and her family from the Santa Barbara airport, and pick up my oldest son, who went with them to The Philippines for a wedding and a graduation.

Anyways, we drove up there, picked them up, hung out at my sis-in-law’s place and left after dinner, then arrived back home in San Diego around 10pm.

Today, I’m dead tired. And two separate yoga sessions couldn’t even bring up my energy and focus. Plus, I forgot my wallet in Santa Barbara. I guess it’s been a busy 4 days for me, and I’m feeling it. Lots of errands and work lately… it took its toll on me… I’m feeling exhausted now.

I wish I was the energizer bunny. How do some people seem to have unlimited amounts of energy?

*crosses fingers*

It’s been a hectic 2 days. But I think all the Rice Bowl Journals database problems have been resolved. *whew*

I’m still not sure why there was a “traffic spike” these past 2 days? Looks like a lot of google referer links, so perhaps a bunch of RBJ’s pages were indexed for some reason?

Just glad the problems have been fixed…

Rice Bowl Journals has really gotten more “hits” than usual these past few days.

There was a corruption in the databases, possibly from something I coded a while back and now has surfaced.

Also, according to our webhost, the RBJ Store has received the most hits, thus putting more of a load on the server. This most likely has to do with many of the store’s search pages being indexed by Google.

So, I am hard at work trying to streamline the existing code. And finding out ways to re-code more efficiently and without having to “query” the databases as much.

And so far, the front page has “zero” queries, if you check at the bottom of the page. That’s a good start… I’m rather proud of that one.

I’ve always wanted to do this! A community blog for RBJ.

I-Am-Asian.com: Here’s a cool site I learned about while listening to the Rice Bowl Journals podcast no. 2 (BOWLcast).

I’ve realized that I haven’t been “online” much in December, because I’ve been more busy in real life lately.

So, finally I’ve had the chance to “really” surf around the Web and found out via the RBJ Discussion Board that Rice Bowl Journals was actually the “top pick” on Yahoo! Picks for December 8th, 2005! And here’s the actual week-in-review at Yahoo! Picks.

And RBJ also has a special Podcast (on iTunes) along with an RBJ Podcast Blog. Awesome!

Been busy coding on RBJ this morning, mainly just little things around the site to improve it in subtle ways, rethinking links and bits and pieces of code… at a micro-level. Nothing major… yet. Then there’s the dreaded database improvements that need to be made.

Thanks so much to the people who’ve donated recently!

I’m in the process of coding more improvements to the enhanced version of Rice Bowl Journals. It’s been a while since any improvements have been made to the members’ area, and it’s something that’s been long overdue.

So, expect some changes in the members’ area, as well as overall changes to the RBJ site.

Rice Bowl Journals is mentioned in the online edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. And a few RBJers are mentioned as well. Yay! Some linky love and media attention! :)

I am very proud of the RBJ peeps who contributed to the launch of halfwaymag.com. I repeat… I am very proud of you guys and gals! Tyler and The Crew did an excellent job on the project! It has been a successful launch!

Prior to a few weeks ago, I wasn’t really doing any coding at all with PHP and MySQL. And now I’ve reached a plateau or point of no return. I’m tired, lack much sleep and feel like I’ve spent 10 hours every day looking at code, tweaking what’s there and trying to forge new code.

It’s sort of a mission I have to do, somehow. And the success is coming slowly-but-surely. I’ve gotten the member profile page off to a good start but there needs to be much more happening.

I feel like I need a day’s rest to catch my breath before starting again. It’s challenging to look at code you’ve written say, 2 years ago, and you have to figure out what is going on… like it’s somebody else’s code, despite the fact that I’ve made every effort to structure the code and document as much as possible.

Next up, to allow members to have an RSS feed link along with their profile.
So, that will be up soon, along with finally doing some basic fields like birthday, astrology signs, favorite quote, interests etc… and try to think up some new areas of exploration. Sky’s the limit but in reality there are only so many hours in the day.

I worked pretty much until 3am last night working out a couple of different problems with the “my RBJ” page on Rice Bowl Journals. And what I came up with was something similar to what can be found on Friendster and Flickr. Well, something found in quite a few online communities nowadays, so I am just trying to keep RBJ up-to-date.

Basically, you can view your “friends” (people who you are “mutually linked to” on RBJ) and “admirers” (people who’ve linked to you but you haven’t linked to them… yet). So, below is the page when the groups are in condensed mode:

And here is what it looks like when you expand one of the groups, in this case the “friends” group:

One other option I need to code next is to be able to “expand” all groups, being that the code currently allows only one group expanded at a time. It’s always good to give the user more options. Actually, the possible options are endless, but we take it one at a time.

I had set up an RBJ group over at flickr.com, so anyone interested should go over there and add yourself. This is a free-for-all fun thing… and already people are adding their fotos to the “pool”.

This morning I decided to redo the Rice Bowl Journals search script, which is the third most used page on RBJ, following the front page (#1) and the members list (#2). Read more »

Working deeper in the RBJ code, I realized that:

1. I really need to redo some major re-structuring in order to get to the next level.

In other words, I have to take a few backsteps in order to rework things so I don’t have to re-invent and duplicate what I’ve already done.

This basically is (in total layperson’s terms) a need to re-code so that certain tasks are made into common tasks that can be used and re-used. I pretty much need to transfer certain tasks into functions()… actually, a lot.

2. As far as the design of the site, I need to re-design the whole thing.

As much as I would like to re-design everything, there is just not enough hours in t h e day to do that. I am tempted to use WordPress 1.5 as the main page and figure out a way to have the various listings run on auxiliary pages.

3. Which lead me to thinking about a LOT of things lately… being as there needs to be some sort of organization and means to execute the various tasks needed to slowly get the job done.

Yes, it’s kinda of a mess back there, but also there has been some elegant coding that I am proud of. But, the fact remains that I will continue to code in PHP and work with MySQL until there is a better structure of code.

4. But I’m first going to have to work on the member login area. That is what needs the most improvements I think. The database listings and code work fine and I’ve been happy with that for quite some time. No need to fix something that’s not broken and works quite well.

More later…

I’m performing a partial backup of Rice Bowl Journals files, scripts, some images. Do as much as I can before Sunday, when the server will be shutdown for several hours. Y’know… just in case.

Also; still working on slight cosmetic changes and functionality to the RBJ member area. Something I’d been meaning to do.

Also: See The RBJ Front Page

I’m currently playing around with the front page of RBJ and dabbling with the login scripts as well as the logout script. Hopefully I’ll come up with something interesting, though nothing major.

Also: See Dead Journals

Aein had taken the initiative to go through the entire Korean Directory at Rice Bowl Journals, listing down all broken links and dead journals and sending the list my way. Read more »