Moving (again)
I’ve been writing blogs for years, moved blog several times. My last blog was on Drupal, at http://kittipat.thisbluepla.net. Back in 2006, as an undergrad, I had a lot of free-time so I decided to run my own blog to get some experience. It did pay off, I got a Drupal-related job. However, I found it was a painful exprerience to run my blog on Drupal. I used category module because, back then, Drupal tagging did not satisfy me. But the category module did not turn to be reliable and I was trapped. I have been wanting to move out of Drupal for over a year but I could not find the time to do that. Even though I am not that free now, this is a good time for me to move out as my web hosting contract will end soon. So, my quest is how to move blog from Drupal to WordPress. As far as I know, there was no easy way to do that. Hope Google can help!
Some thoughts about Wiki
To tell the truth, I’ve never edited a wiki. That’s quite a shame. (?) But, recently, there were some circumstances that made me take a closer look at wiki softwares. I thought that it would be easy to edit an entry. However, to my surprise, editting function of most wiki softwares was quite primitive. MediaWiki, the one that powers Wikipedia, did not come with WYSIWYG editor by deafault. I’m not a big fan of WYSIWYG editors, still I feel that some kinds of visual help would be nice for normal people. This should be one of the reasons why people don’t contribute to wiki. Even I, a person who works with computer languages for ten years, still feel unconfortable when I see the wiki source at the first time, how would you expect ordinary people to feel at ease?
I thought markdown and wmd might help; however, they don’t. MediaWiki has markdown plugins but it’s still not the solution. They lack of live preview function that is available in wmd. And, to my knowledge, there is no wmd plugin for MediaWiki at the moment. But, the most important thing is that markdown was not designed for wiki, therefore you will still need to deal with cryptic format.
I should do more research on this. Human friendly syntax for wiki could be my Master project 
keyword ที่ฮิตที่สุด
จากการนั่งดู log มาเป็นปี ผมพบว่า keyword ที่ฮิตที่สุดคือ “ศูนย์ซ่อม BenQ” มี traffic จาก google เข้ามาทุกวัน น่าจะทำเว็บขาย notebook นะเนี่ย
GSoC 2009 with Geeklog (AptitudeCMS, actually)
Okay, it’s time to blog again. Google Summer of Code announced the accepted organizations last month. I was a bit disappointed as I had talked with the TeX Users Group about a project, but, unfortunately, they didn’t get accepted. I could voluntarily work for them but Google name on my CV sound very cool. So, I needed to come up with new plans.
After glaring at the project list for sometimes, I decided to pick 3 that matched my interest the best: Creative Commons, Geeklog, and GenMAPP. I like Creative Commons license so I picked Creative Commons. I was fascinated by text search technology so I picked “Taxonomy and Tagging plugin for AptitudeCMS (Geeklog2)”. For some unknown reason, I love Bioinformatics so I picked GenMAPP.
I submitted proposal and forgot them for a while as I still had (and have) a lot of work to do before summer come. Then, the result came out last weekend. I didn’t expect anything since I was turned down by MS and Google earlier this year, though probably because of visa issue. Still, I felt very excited when I saw the result. I’m in the GSoC with Geeklog!
As I said earlier, my project is actually for AptitudeCMS (formeyly Geeklog2). My mentor would be Tony Bibbs. I really can’t wait for the summer to come, but for now I have to take 9 exams. It’s a bit crazy, I will blog about this later. For now, I’d better go back to study.
P.S. I have twitter account now: @kittipatv
A brief history of Thailand
1932 – A small group of people asked for Democracy. They got it. First & second constituions.
1933 – First coup d’etat.
1946 – Third consitution.
1947 – Second coup d’etat. Fourth constitution.
1949 – Fifth constitution.
1951 – Third & fourth coup d’etat.
1952 – Sixth constitution.
1957 – Fifth coup d’etat.
1958 – Sixth coup d’etat.
1959 – Seventh constitution.
1968 – Eighth constitution.
1971 – Seventh coup d’etat.
1972 – Ninth constitution.
1974 – Tenth constitution.
1976 – Eleventh constitution. Eighth coup d’etat.
1977 – Ninth coup d’etat. Twelfth constitution.
1978 – Thirteenth constitution.
1991 – Tenth coup d’etat. Fourteenth & Fifteenth constitutions.
1997 – Sixteenth constitution.
2006 – Eleventh coup d’etat. Seventeenth constitution.
2007 – Eigthteenth constitution.
53 unstable years
24 reasonably stable years
PM Timeline:
1932 – Civil (1)
1933 – Militarian (11)
1944 – Civil (2)
1946 – Militarian (1)
1947 – Civil (1)
1948 – Militarian (9)
1957 – Civil, Militarian (16)
1973 – Civil (4)
1977 – Militarian (14)
1991 – Civil (1)
1992 – Militarian, Civil (4)
1996 – Militarian (1)
1997 – Civil (4)
2001 – Militarian (7)
2008 – Civil (1)
Civil = 18 years
Militarian = 59 years
燒賣
Chinese lesson #1
There are 37 sounds and 4 tones in Chinese. You can hear all the sound at http://www.mdnkids.com/BoPoMo/. The tones, however, are quite hard to explain. I’ll cover this in more details later on. Below are examples of words and how they are composed. Since I couldn’t type the tone mark, the number of tone are presented instead.
ㄅ : 爸爸 – ㄅㄚ4 – dad
ㄆ : 花瓶 – ㄏㄨㄚ1 + ㄆ一ㄥ2 – vase
ㄇ : 媽媽 – ㄇㄚ1 – mom
ㄈ : 方法 – ㄈㄤ1 + ㄈㄚ3 – method
And there are two forms of “you”: male (你) and female (妳). I took a mistake by using the male one to greet my girlfriend’s sister -_-”.
You may want to check out MDBG Chinese-English dictionary. It’s really cool.
Disclaimer: I wrote this as a note for myself. I do not guarantee correctness. Use it at your own risk. License: CC-BY-NC
It’s been very long time
Seems like I’m not a good blogger. It’s been over six months since my last post. My life has been through many ups and downs during the time. Here is the synopsis. (Just to remind myself.)
I have applied to several school in the US. UCSD rejected almost right away after application deadline. It’s predictable though. In April, I got one phone interview from Chad Myers (UMN.) Thank you for giving me a chance. And it’s just that, no further contact. It was a bit disappointed. Still, I’m happy now. Sounds strange? Read on.
In late May, I received an e-mail from EuMI (European Master in Informatics) saying I has been awarded the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship. This program will take me to the University of Edinburgh and RWTH Aachen. Although this is just a scholarship for Master level study, I prefer it much more than UMN. UMN is a good place to study. However, since it is located in Minneapolis, the city which is famous for its sub-zero winter, it is certainly not a good place to live. I think to could stand that. But, wouldn’t it be better if I don’t have to stand?
“La mort vient assez tôt sans qu’on l’aille chercher.”
Urbain CHEVREAU
(Death comes soon enough without going to look for it.)
So, I should choose to live in a comfortable place, shouldn’t I?
I’ll save the details for another. This is synopsis. It should be short, right?
There are also few more things that are significant to me during the period of time. However; I believe they’re deserved their own posts. The things include:
- I had been in Buddhist monkhood.
- I traveled to Japan.
- And a few other things.
What should I do?
I’ve been waiting for the TOEFL score report for full three weeks and it showed up this morning. I got 93 out of 120 — iBT score. Well, it’s just like what I expected. However; it’s on the lower bound 
That’s a bit sad. The problem is that even though the aggregated score is enough to apply for many schools, my speaking score is so mediocre. If my performance on the section is as good as that of other sections, my total score would be touching 110. I know I have some problems with the grammar. And I also have limitation in vocabulary. But I don’t think that these problems would put my score that low. I believe that the way I articulate contributed most for my lower score. This left me with a problem, how could I improve my speaking skill?
The answer to the question seems very clear, KEEP PRACTICING! But it’s very hard to realize. I’m not living in English speaking country. And, there’s nobody around who could help me articulate correctly. I’m looking for a course but it’s very hard to find. Most of language schools focus on how to come up with something to speak but that’s not my problem. Well, sometimes it is, yet it is not something that I can’t work around myself. Any suggestion would be appreciated.
