There’s some other changes I would like to make later. Maybe I’ll have some more time for personal projects in a month or so. I’m planning to migrate my plugin to use a, slightly modified, libsquish to handle dxt decompression, AND *compression*. Then I can use the Gimp to export BLP images also.

I would also like to support BLP version 1 files later on. Like the ones used for Warcraft 3.

KCRPG (remix)

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My blog has come a long ways from it’s original form. Initially I just wrote my “journal” all into one big file called journal.html. It started getting unwieldy so I broke it up into multiple HTML files. Then I learned how to use perl and I converted the files to plain text files to be read by a simple perl cgi script. Then after I started college my buddy kc asked me to install PHP on the high school server. Soon I had converted perl scripts to PHP. Later I converted all my text-file blog entries, into items in a database. Then I added a comment database so my friends could leave me messages. After that it’s pretty much stayed the same until now. I continued to make small improvements (image gallery, captchas, cms).  I’ve also had to transfer the database between servers more than once. And now I’ve finally stopped using my own home-brew solutions for what is now called blogging. It’s a bit sad to see it go. After all I put a lot of time and effort to it over the past 10 years. I simply haven’t had time to properly maintain the codebase. I do have time for minor hacking of code though. I’ve been doing that quite a bit lately on my other blog, “Taiwexans”. For now I’d like to go back through old posts and categorize/tag them. Many of my old blog entries would fall into the “rants and ravings of a madman” category I’m afraid. Looking back at some of my earlier college entries, I think that I’m a little more sane these days. At the least my later posts seem to be more mellow. Many of my old entries make me feel like Picard in this pose

That reminds me. I don’t think everybody knows this yet, but I decided that my Chinese name should be: 畢凱 (bì kǎi). I chose it for several reasons:

1. I think it sounds like “Coy B.”
2. 凱 (kǎi) is a nice character that means triumphant
3. I like the way the tones flow
4. But mostly because it’s also the way Picard was translated into Chinese

Ok so for all of you out there saying “that’s why I use Windows” (John Harris). I would like to see you be able to patch your windows kernel when something goes wrong. When you find a bug in windows all you can do is pray that somebody at Microsoft will fix it (or pay thousands of dollars to get it fixed). I love free software .

I recently created a new wordpress blog for Shao-ling and I. I plan to start transitioning more posts about our personal lives to that blog, and I’ll make this blog more about my geekier sides (gaming, programming, etc.), things that “normal” people don’t care about, and would be bored with. Of course my personal life, in general, is geeky, so I don’t know how well it will work… We’ll see though. Anyway you can check out the new blog at Taiwexans. You can view it either English or Chinese, (just click the small Texas or Taiwan flag). I still need to fix some of the internationalization, and I probably won’t post too many multi-lingual entries for now. But maybe Shao-ling will.

I have been living in Taiwan for the past two months as most of you know. I’ve been very busy at my new job. And I’m usually mentally exhausted my the time I leave work each day. At least I’m getting paid relatvely well (for Taiwan). Especially considering that my normal expenses for each month is between 500 and 600 USD.

I moved into a small apartment within a week of arriving in Taiwan. It feels as if I’m back in my college dorm room. At least I have my own bathroom here. I have to share my washing machine with 4 or 5 other people, and then hang my clothes outside my window to dry. I have a few small appliances, including a mini-fridge, hot-plate, and small electric grill. Maybe I’ll upload a video so ya’ll can see it for yourself.

I’ve been slowly learning more Chinese Mostly foods right now. I need buy it every day so I get more repetition with food words than most. Maybe in a month or so I will take some classes, I’m too busy at work right now though.

Since I arrived in January, Taiwan has had two holidays. Chinese New Year and Lantern Festival. I think that Lantern Festival is actually tied to Chinese New Year somehow. We didn’t do much for Chinese new year besides relax and eat … a lot. But I got a week off from work so that was kinda nice. Except that it put me even further behind schedule for my current project. I think that the lantern festival was more interesting. In central Taipei they held a huge light show. I had never seen so many people packed into one place before. The Chinese phrase for that is “people mountain people sea”. I didn’t like the pushing and shoving but the show was neat, and all the little models being displayed were neat. Last weekend we went to a smaller town to make our “sky lanterns”. Basically they are mini-hot air balloons. You write wishes on the lantern then you light a fire inside and let it soar into the air. Guess somebody else has to clean up the mess later. It seems a bit dangerous. Uncontrolled flames flying all over the place, but it is very pretty to see them all in the air. We had to take train for part of the trip. There were so many people that you got to know your neighbor very, very well. You really have to get used to crowded places to live here.

ok I need to go now we are in Costco shopping now. More to come later.

I finally started doing the Power 90 program that I ordered months ago. I’m on day 5/90, so we’ll see if I can keep up with it. I probably won’t, knowing me. I’ll try though. It would be nice to lose the gut I’ve been slowly growing over the past 7 years or so. I’m sure Shao-ling would agree

I have my TEFL course this weekend. I can’t find an itinerary anywhere though. So I’m assuming it starts at 8 in the morning. But I just don’t know. Hopefully, I’m not late. I should go to bed so I can get up in few hours. Goodnight.

If anybody wants a copy of the importer code just send me message

In more important news… Shao-ling will have her student visa interview on Friday. I think she is much better prepared this time. She would be starting school here 2 months later. She is going to take one or two semesters of ELS. I really hope everything goes well. It will be much, much better to so close to her. So, wish her luck. 加油 Jia you Shao-ling!

I was planning to do more things with my website. But hadn’t got the chance to since then. I have a working captcha image that I hope to put on my live blog soon. I just have to figure out a good way to pass the information around. I’m thinking about a random key of some sort. So I have to figure that out first.

At work I recently found out the guy who was my mentor is moving, and it’s likely I’ll be taking on most of his responsibilities. I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet, but I’ll found out soon enough.

I’m starting to get all of my clothes packed for my trip in 50 days. I’ll be going back to Taiwan during labor day. That way I can use my 4 vacation days that week and have the weekend on both sides. The reason I’m packing now is I’m going to mail it over there. So that all I will need is a carry-on. Shao-ling is already planning out what we will be doing in Taiwan. All of us will go to Kenting (south Taiwan) the weekend I’m going home. We’ll take the “fast train” there, and spend one night at a hotel. I hope my Chinese is better than last time. There are at least a couple more phrases I want to learn first.

All right I think I should go exercise now, another goal is to lose at least 20 pounds before I go over there. Being lazy makes it hard to do that. See you later.