It’s so nice seeing the cultural exchange taking place here in the states. Despite the controveries surrounding FIFA on corruption, I am glad the World Cup is able to bring different peoples together.

Let’s go Korea, 대한민국! Rooting for Mexico too!

AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI!!! I’m sick of having AI crap being shoved down my throat every. single. day. I recognize there are fields/cases where AI thrives and is beneficial to humanity. But overall? It’s an absolute net-negative with the way its being handled. No, I don’t need AI in my email service, search engine, nor phone. I wish I can stop thinking so much about it, but its ‘frickin everywhere.

Recently, I’ve been making an effort to spend more time reading documentation as opposed to using Claude or ChatGPT. The reason being is because I noticed myself being a tad-bit too overreliant with the use LLMs to aid in development. For example, I’d be so lazy and would inquire Claude for something simple as syntax.

While reading documentation, at times, can become a massive chore; I believe there is merit into dedicating time and effort into it. It builds a type of “character” that desires a deeper understanding at the subject at hand, rather than one that seeks an easy way out.

Domain Expansion: Cursed, sub-optimal SQL query!

I thought it’d be funny to share the first working SQL query draft I came up with from a personal project.

SELECT youtube_artists.youtube_channel_id, 
    artist_name, 
    latest_subscriber_count-min(subscriber_count) as subscriber_delta, 
    max(view_count)-min(view_count) as view_delta, 
    min(view_count) as min_view_count,
    latest_subscriber_count,
    earliest_subscriber_count
FROM youtube_artist_stats
JOIN youtube_artists ON youtube_artist_stats.youtube_id = youtube_artists.youtube_id
JOIN (
    SELECT youtube_id, subscriber_count as latest_subscriber_count
    FROM (SELECT youtube_id, subscriber_count, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY youtube_id ORDER BY date_pulled DESC) as rn FROM youtube_artist_stats) 
    WHERE rn = 1) AS c 
ON youtube_artist_stats.youtube_id = c.youtube_id
JOIN (
    SELECT youtube_id, subscriber_count as earliest_subscriber_count
    FROM (SELECT youtube_id, subscriber_count, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY youtube_id ORDER BY date_pulled ASC) as rn FROM youtube_artist_stats) 
    WHERE rn = 1) AS d
ON youtube_artist_stats.youtube_id = d.youtube_id
GROUP BY youtube_artists.youtube_channel_id

While reflecting back on the previous post, I couldn’t help but remember Uncle Iroh’s quote from ATLA.

“Pride is not the opposite of shame, but it's source. True humility is the only antidote to shame.”

- Uncle Iroh

Keeping up with people has never been my strong suit. It’s a toxic trait that even I myself can recognize. I can genuinely call someone my best friend, but when I move away from them (to the point where meeting up face-to-face becomes infeasible), they might as well be a stranger. The reason I’m like this is that I am not where I want to be in life, and I am afraid of being pitied, afraid of feeling inferior.

The bible teaches that with pride comes shame (Proverbs 11:2). My pride and, by extension, shame is preventing me from keeping the ones I once loved close to my heart. I understand these things, but find it nigh’ impossible to act upon it.

I’m sorry to those I’ve hurt. Please be patient with me.

How do you overcome your adversaries? Do you cut them out of your life, or do you plead to them with hopes that they change their ways? One way is temporary; the other, more difficult, but with much to gain.

I settled with using my last name as the favicon. The hanja 黄, read as the Sino-Korean Hwang (황), means ‘yellow.

It’s getting hot over here. Time to prepare for the 6 month long summer again ;_;

I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been paying more attention to cybersec news, but it feels like every week there’s a new Linux local privilege escalation exploit being uncovered. The first one I noticed being Copy Fail, then Dirty Frag, and now allegedly a TOCTOU-based (Time-of-Check Time-of-Use) exploit.

Before my IPhone, I used to have a Samsung during high school. I took a look at the photo album for the first time after I got my new phone and was surprised to see all my photos from back then were saved. They were of my home town and a wave of nostalgia washed over me.

Looking at the videos and photos, I remembered how I tried to surround myself with music all the time. I took an orchestra class for all 4 years of high school, and spent my hours after school in the marching/concert band. I’d also spend hours upon hours learning guitar songs so that I could show off to my friends on Instagram.

There were also a bunch of pictures of my closest, childhood friends. Some I’ve haven’t spoken to for many years. I miss being able to see them nearly everyday. It’s all too bittersweet.

I finally deployed this site! After I finished development on my local environment, I didn’t expect to run into issues during and after the build process. Regardless, I must say that using the Astro framework feels soo nice.

There are still some things left to do; the first being creating my own favicon. How do people even do that? From where do they pull inspiration to create their own logos?

I am thankful for my IPhone 11 for serving me well for the past 5-6 years. Yesterday, I upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy S24 and I’ve been liking it so far. But the switch from IOS to android came with some pain points: 1) I’ll have to repurchase some apps, and 2) I’ll have to get used to using Google Maps instead of Apple Maps.

Progress on the website is going well! I heavily referenced (if not fully copied) Mu-An Chiou’s website. I really liked her minimalistic yet functional design.

As time unceasingly, unforgivingly marches forth, I find myself forgetting how to spell words correctly. It’s upsetting.