Wish-list for 2007

Not quite a list of New Year’s resolutions. It’s part to-do list, part wish-list for 2007.

The new Korean Cultural Centre

2007 will see the launch of the new Korean Cultural Centre. I don’t know their detailed plans (yet), but here’s some of the things I’d like them to be thinking about:

• Giving lots of advance notice of any of their planned activities – and maybe think about some of my other comments in my review of 2006
• A focus on Korean literature (preferably that available in translation). I know there are vague plans to bring some authors to the UK, which would be great.
• A film festival which contains some classic back-catalogue films; or even better (something I’ve been wanting to do myself but haven’t had the time to think about it properly) a series of one-off screenings (maybe in the Cultural Centre itself) of films by major directors, perhaps introduced by someone who knows the director’s films well, or the social or historical significance of the films. Let’s see some Kim Ki-young or Lee Chang-dong in London.
• And maybe, a major K-pop star in London. It’s been good to have Roller Coaster and Crying Nut in the last two years. But do they have the pulling power of the more popular stars? Let’s see what the hallyu is all about and get Rain or BoA over here.

Personal objectives

• To get over to Seoul for a few days. I think I might just have persuaded my boss that I need to get over to Asia in the next month or two, so with a bit of luck this objective might be in the bag.
• To meet some of you readers. To date I’ve met less than a handful of you. Maybe a little get-together might be in order in April to celebrate one year of this blog’s existence (the site was up before then, but this WordPress site was launched on 9 April 2006)

This site

Content

No huge changes to the content in 2007.

I hope to expand coverage in a couple of areas: firstly, more about Koreans in Britain – the occasional interview with some Korean expats (or Koreans who have gone native here). Secondly, and here I’m hoping for a bit of help, an occasional bit of coverage of New Malden, which is the main Korean community in the London area. And finally (again with some outside help) an occasional post covering the alternative Korean music scene.

I’m not sure that I’ll maintain the hectic pace of a post a day, but we’ll see how we go.

Contributors

I’m hoping Beccy Kennedy will continue to write an occasional post on the Korean art world. I’m currently in contact with a couple of people who might be contributing an occasional post – Im not mentioning names in case things don’t come to fruition, but I hope they do. And as I’m always asking: if any of you out there feel I’m not covering an area which is of interest to you, you can always cover it yourself! How about a volunteer to do an occasional story about what’s best in the world of TV Drama?

Readership

I’m pleased with the growth in readership (currently around the 600-700 mark per day, peaking at 900 when I get traffic from naver.com). Is 1,000 a day a realistic target for 2007? Maybe I need to find a friend to make the occasional post at naver to generate traffic.

Links

I’m very grateful to the people who link to me from their sites. The latest person to link to me is Brother Anthony. But I won’t have arrived in the Korean blogosphere until the Marmot links to me. I’m not setting that as an objective for 2007, but it will be nice if it happens.

Webhost

Moving webhost must be on every blogger’s to-do list. But there are limitations of my webshost’s package which are not friendly to some of WordPress’s features. Plus the fact that my blog is now working at a snail’s pace, and the hosts don’t keep you updated when they’re having problems with servers. When it takes up to 30 seconds to write to the database you know something’s wrong. So it’s bye bye Easyspace, hello Bluehost.

If I get round to it.

Design & functionality

There’s so much I want to be doing with this site, but with a full-time job and wanting to spend time on content rather than design and functionality, I’m never going to make the breakthrough without help. So if there are any css / php experts out there who would be happy to lend a hand, please let me know. Here’s a wishlist of what I want doing, in (I think) increasing order of complexity.

1. Tweak an existing “related posts” plugin to make it valid xhtml
2. Create some conditional php/css to display the star rating of a review in the post title, where the post is a review, else display the posting date.
3. Eliminate comment spam
4. Fix the problem once and for all so that the posts don’t drop down to underneath the sidebar when the window’s too narrow or the images too wide. Re-install a second sidebar as part of this re-code.
5. Stress-test the site on different browsers & fix the bugs. I’m finding that Firefox is performing less and less well.
6. Build an events calendar which meets my demanding requirements (the available plugins either don’t work with my webhost or just don’t do what I want them to, and the least bad third party option, Google, only meets about half of my requirements)
7. Maybe install the bbPress forum package and integrate its database with the blog database
8. And finally, the big one, and probably not top of my personal priority list: create a new set of MySQL tables, together with admin interface and user front-end, to accommodate a new database separate from the blog itself but integrated with it.

The reward? Full credit on this site, my undying gratitude, and maybe a few purchases from your Amazon wishlish. Doesn’t sound too appealing, does it? I thought I’d ask though.

And one final wish: for the BBC to cave in to Alice Bennell’s campaign, and buy Dae Jang Geum for showing on BBC4.

A happy year of the Golden Pig to all our readers.