Jeff Chan

I Am Still Alive

So I realize I’ve been inactive for around six months now. My last post was in May?
So basically, it’s Junior year and I’m more busy than ever. Over the summer, I took Precalculus and Trigonometry and that took up majority of my time. I traveled to Oklahoma for the 2008 International Botball Tournament and we earned third place overall. I was in Taiwan for three weeks in August.

So now, school has been tedious and time consuming. But I really like my classes this year. All my teachers are enjoyable (in different ways). I’m taking:

• AP Calculus AB
• AP Computer Science AB
• AP United States History
• English 3 (aka Counseling 101)
• Biology
• Spanish 3

and then… I have the usual stuff with robotics, client work (still), and some programming… Oh yeah, did I mention I need to study for SAT and SAT II’s as well?

I really hope I will be able to keep posting here though.

 Topics: robotics, schedule, school, update

Hi Again!

Welcome to the new website! Yup that’s right. This is the new design I’ve been working on. My main idea behind the design was a simple and super fast theme that is fluid, accessible, could easily extended.

This is the part one of my relaunch. In the coming days, I’ll be revamping my about page, creating a complete portfolio, an extended archives page and perhaps a downloads and tools section. What’s also coming is a bilingual support for Chinese.

Also a little story about my upgrading process. As usual, I deleted all the old WordPress files but I accidentally deleted the wp-content folder which contained all the pictures, themes, and plugins. This sucked. But hopefully I can get a backup from Shane. In the meanwhile, all the screenshots and thumbnails will not be accessible. Sorry about that.

 Topics: backup, blog, Blog Updates, update, wordpress

Tumblelog

I’ve been thinking about getting a tumblelog because I don’t have much time writing long blog posts but sometimes I really want to share some things. The only downside about getting one is that I don’t have full control over the my domain, because I’ll have to point the domain to the hosting server. The other thing about it is that there is no comment system, so I’m still thinking about whether or not to switch.

So what have I been up to…

1. Final exams this week. School is out Thursday.
2. Working on a big project for a client, building everything upon MyBB through the plugin system.
3. I have a research paper due Wednesday, tomorrow, and I haven’t even started.
4. Preparing for the Internal robotics Botball tournament.
5. Upgraded this blog to new version of WordPress.
6. Finished reading Fast Food Nation. I’m now reading At the Center of the Storm, My Years at the CIA by George Tenet. I love autobiography and nonfiction books like this one.
7. Lots of summer assignment for next year’s AP World History class.

Catch up later.

 Topics: assignment, blog, Blog Updates, books, botball, Life, MyBB, robotics, summer, tournament, tumblelog, update

Another Update

I just got back from this one award ceremony and Shane forced me to update my blog.

It’s getting down to the countdown until the end of the school! So excited! For school work, I finished my mousetrap car. It goes 6 meters. I’ve also finished a presentation on Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Very fun. Final exams are just around the corner so I have to spend extra time studying

Besides those stuff, I’m trying to start a reading habit again. I’ve been reading Fast Food Nation, great book. If you want to gross yourself out, this is the perfect book to find out about the dark side of the All-American meal. Next up on the list is The Broker by John Grisham. It’s a legal suspense novel. I usually don’t read fiction books but legal suspense novels really interest me.

As for my web life, I plan on working on a few ideas I have and putting them into action over the summer. I really want to get things done this time.

 Topics: book, Life, mousetrap car, presentation, school, update

Wordpress 2.1

I’ve taken the time to upgrade this site to Wordpress 2.1. Everything went smoothly except I had to update some old plugins and edit some files. The best feature I like from this new release is the separate comments section which allows better comment control. The other thing I really like is the included Akismet plugin which filters spam. I’ve been using this plugin for a long time and it’s been catching over 2000 spam comments for me. The autosave feature is really awesome. I’ve lost several drafts because browser crash or what not.

 Topics: akismet, autosave, Blog Updates, spam, Tech, update, wordpress

What I’m Doing

If you are reading this, you’ve probably notice a new addition to the blog sidebar navigation. Yes, that’s right, I’ve added a Twitter badge. If you don’t know what Twitter is and how awesome it is, read my previous coverage.

If you ever get bored and wonder what Jeff is up to, feel free to take a look at that. With this Twitter badge thingy, I won’t have to update my blog that often to post what I’m up to. If you would like a full archive of my Twitter, visit my Twitter profile.

 Topics: Life, twitter, update

Back On A Schedule

Some of you may have noticed that my blogging rate has been decreasing over the past 3 or 4 months. I’m trying to get back on blogging with at least 3 to 4 posts per week. I want to expand my topics from tech and my life to perhaps my views on various topics. My goal also includes increasing the length of my posts. To do this, I might have to probably pre-write a few posts and store them (:P). So I’ll probably schedule posts and let Wordpress post them automatically.

You also may have noticed I tweaked the width of the content and sidebar so that the sidebar is slightly narrower and the content column is wider. This should be handy when I start increasing the length of my posts. I’m also starting to organize my categories.

Keep checking back!

 Topics: blog, Blog Updates, News, update, wordpress