While I should be studying for the GRE, I keep thinking about how technology has come to be–there’s an ever battle between Microsoft and Google, also often used as a favorite topic for journalists to spin because after all, nothing attracts attention like a fight during a lunch break or a rare catfight between girls. I remember back in the 1990s, when you wanted to play PC games, you’d need to buy a PC and with Windows under it and play Freecell. So, that was cool till AOL came out, all of the sudden, people were buying PCs like crazy to be on AOL. Windows was underneath these, ofc. But now? you buy them to be on the Internet to show yourself on Facebook, to Twitter away, or to Google for information.

Sometimes, I do wonder if there will be a completely new technology that will not require http because pretty much everything is transmitted through http right now. And if you wonder why http? it goes through a protocol called TCP/IP that allows every imaginable device to communicate to one another–from your PC to your pager and even a printer operates on it. Google has foreseen this and made a massive engineering to copy/store everything that’s ever existed on the web and make the information highly relevant and monetize them. Now, Google has recently announced they are going to develop a new kind of OS that will supposedly squeeze everything in between so that you can get on the web as soon as you press on the power button and then go explore on the web like a crazy monkey. Although there are people who spend their days fantasizing about Microsoft going down like the ship Titanic. I’m sorry to disappoint you but that’s not going to happen. Microsoft will remain to do business, largely in thanks to millions of users who play games like WoW, Starcraft, Quake, Counter-Strike, pokers and ofc, their beloved Microsoft Doc. My mom loves to play Freecell on Windows and that’s all it matters to her. It has no annoying pop-up ads, she said.

Once everything’s been said and done, I do have this imagination that the world will end up like the movie, A.I., where there’s not a trace of a human being left and that the only proof of us is to be found on countless hard drives from Google or maybe more like the Wall-E movie that people have long abandoned Earth because of the excessive mess they left and couldn’t be managed.

Actually, I think getting wiped by a gigantic asteroid that’s as big as the sun will more likely happen than I just describe above. Because that’s what happened to dinosaurs.

I just purchased a one way plane ticket to Seoul, Korea and that’s a little over a month from now when I will have stepped my foot over there for one more time.

Like one of my friends’ favorite maxims, “No replacement for displacement.” He’s a big fan of the LS series engine with those big V8 cylinders. At the beginning, I’d argue with him and reasoned that a 4 cylinders engine could keep up with the best of them while being efficient on fuel. He said that’s cool but when it comes down to raw power and torque, nothing can replace displacement. Yep. When you want a go in your car, you just tap your foot on the pedal and a V8 engine will gladly rev up for you without too much effort. Not quite so on a i4 engine, you’d have to bring the rpm up high, get VTEC to kick in to experience some substantial power output. To put it succinctly, he said the Corvette is the closest thing next to a Ferrari that is mass-produced and affordable. Well said, friend.

Well, as luck would have it, I will be returning to the country where I was born in but was “displaced” at the age of three. In the last few years, I have given a lot of thoughts about going back to the country especially after having discovered my family and learned that my sister is deaf too. As I thought about my life and what I’d like to do with it, I realize that I cannot, in my good conscience, leave both my sister (and her husband and my niece) and my brother behind and pretend they are a figment of my imagination. They did not have the same fortune of living in the land of opportunity, America, and get a college education. Sometimes, I wonder what really went through my biological father’s mind when he made a decision to give me up for adoption? He must have made an insight that had I stayed in Korea, I wouldn’t have had same opportunities that I was able to experience. It’d be nice to inquire him about that a bit more but it was hard to communicate with him since we had nothing in common except for the blood and Korea has such a manner that parents do not reveal much to their children.

Another desire to go back to my country is to learn a bit more of the culture and what is culture without language? The language, Hangul, as I have learned, is a very effective language and is the only language to have a national holiday based on. I’ve always got a thing for languages in American Sign Language and English and thought it’d be cool to learn another language and become fluent at it. I often have a dream that I was able to converse in any of four languages. I realize that the image I have of myself has significantly changed after I visited Korea for the first time in 2002. It validated my existence, my identity and saw where I was truly from. Even at this point in today’s society and time, we have progressed enough not to use race as discrimination but our identity still remain important. So, going back to Korea will enrich my identity at the extent of who I am. There’s no replacement for displacement.

Just feel like writing something here. I realize that writing is simply thinking through our fingers. And that’s great because I myself love to type. I suppose I don’t have much choice because I’m deaf so this is pretty much the only mode I could communicate with hearing people. Unless they know sign language, of course. One friend of mine gave some wise words. She thinks it is actually our advantage that we could write in these circumstances because that means less distractions for us especially and use constraints in an advantageous way. Back to typing, I should mention that I’ve remapped the cap-locks key as a backspace, so whenever I mis-type, I use my left pinkie to do a backspace on the caps-lock key, not the normal backspace key that’s at the top right above the enter key. It’s helped with my typing speed and much more comfortable to reach as well. I should say it’s probably the same reason why I insisted upon working for an employer like Google because pretty much everyone at the company knows how to type and loves to chat on their computers, which puts someone like myself on an even field. Gmail, Gtalk, and now Google Wave. Cool. Writing also feels pretty natural to me that I can compose words like a picture and try to make some points and make sense of my own thinking through my fingers.

When I was a young kid, one of my fave games was SimCity on SNES. I remember I would play the game obsessively. I think I got started on it after I got bored of playing Street Fighters. Not quite sure of how I first heard about the game but I was fascinated by the idea of “simulation gaming”.

As I first started on the game, I didn’t quite get what the game was all about (I think I was 9 years old) but found out that it’s about building zones, transportations and growing in population, so soon enough, I was completely hooked. I played obsessively, all night on it and ofc, my mom couldn’t understand the addiction. One thing, though, was that I would run out of money and would have to wait for annual year to get taxes so I could build more zones. I looked up in my old Nintendo Power magazines (I have the first 12 subscriptions) and found a cheat code to get 20k every time I ran out of money. Delightfully, I built new zones, destroyed not-so-developed zones, put in all trains (which lessened car pollution), built airports, stadiums, and fetched more money till I reached the metropolis level at 500k population. I remember how simple the game was and how neat the panning/zooming was, even for a SNES.

Then, there was a PC revolution, so I got on that, and there was a new game called SimTower. Again, I got hooked on the game and kept adding floors and rooms till I got a 5 stars rating and over 100 floors built. It was beautiful and the graphics was good too. Then, another game, the Sims, came out and I tried it out but didn’t find it as appealing as the other two because it wasn’t progressive (people were even unpredictable in the game too!) to me and it was more of goofing around than learning, I suppose.

(more…)

I’m not sure how eloquent or articulate this will be, as I attempt to explain this thought I have in my mind. For some time, I’ve been thinking why we’re here and how we come into existence but that’s a kinda too far-fetched question as no one knows for sure and there is an ever battle between religions on this question.

The more important question we should be asking ourselves is that since we’re already here, the question is what are we doing with ourselves and time? I’ve been thinking about that as I drove alone for 7 hrs one way to Los Angeles and San Diego. Well, I think I’m closer to the truth than I ever have been in my whole life. I’d like to throw in an excerpt from Wikipedia.

“Quality,” or “value,” as described by Pirsig, cannot be defined because it empirically precedes any intellectual constructions. It is the “knife-edge” of experience, known to all. “What distinguishes good and bad writing? Do we need to ask this question of Lysias or anyone else who ever did write anything?” (Plato’s Phaedrus, 258d). Likening it with the Tao, Pirsig believes that Quality is the fundamental force in the universe stimulating everything from atoms to animals to evolve and incorporate ever greater levels of Quality. According to the MOQ, everything (including the mind, ideas, and matter) is a product and a result of Quality.

(more…)

1. My first meal when I was adopted to here from Korea was a happy meal from McDonald.

2. I’m not much of a talker myself, so if you find me pretty quiet, don’t feel offended. You can be assured that my thoughts are almost always running at 100 mph per hour. If anything, I’d rather coding, writing, reading, or actually be doing something.

3. I’ve come to realize that emotional intelligence (or street smart) is as important as being smart in school. That said, my dad has a way better EI than I do, unfortunately.

4. My dad has many great stories when he was younger like he rode motorcycle across America and into Mexico. I think his life sounds better than mine already.

5. I try not to be judgmental but I’m capable of asking questions that would reveal who/what you are in a matter of minutes.

6. My 3rd grade teacher made me sit outside in the hallway because I made fun of her signing skill. It wasn’t very good at all, in fact. I hate it when teachers think their ASL is wonderful just like these girls who think their voice is great but is completely off-key. Know what I’m saying?

7. There are four men that I’d very much want to meet: Tiger Woods, Rick Reilly, Steve Jobs, and President Obama. (not necessarily in order)

8. I found out what I was made of after I spent ten weeks summer internship in Miami, FL. I knew nobody there, woke up at 6:30 am every day, did not miss a single day despite 1 1/2 hour of commuting, worked out a lot (they had a workout room on the third floor) and at the end, they held a farewell party for me and gave me appreciation award, which was unexpecting.

9. I’m a huge Honda fan. Huge. My dream is to own a ‘01 Prelude SSH, then S2000, and lastly, an NSX. I currently drive an Element and used to own ‘04 Civic Si hb till I totaled it.

10. Sometimes, I can’t believe I work at Google and help push doodles onto homepages. I consider it a privilege and will never take it for granted. I’m lucky to have a great team, also.

(more…)

This is in traceback to Seth Godin’s post on the best middle name.

It’s not Warren or Susan or Otis or Samuel or Tricia.

It’s “The.”

As in Attila The Hun or Alexander The Great or Zorba The Greek.

The web is getting saturated. It’s no brainers that the web is THE platform. Doesn’t matter which OS you’re using, just as long as you’re on the web. It reminds me of unix environment where its philosophy is to do one thing and do it well. I think the Web is quickly coming down to that too.

Twitter is the microblogging or real-time updates.

Facebook is the social networking app to be a member of.

Google is the search engine to go to.

Gmail is the webmail to use (at least to me.)

Flickr is the photo sharing website to upload pics.

Wikipedia is the online encyclopedia to go to.

Amazon is the place to do online shopping.

YouTube is the website to upload videos to.

You get my drift.

Ofc, Barack Obama is the President now. :-)

Thought I’d take a stab at explaining how economy works, generally speaking, in layman’s terms and from the macroeconomics’ perspective. I’m not trying to write a Ph.d dissertation so don’t be shooting me with reference whereabouts as I am just writing off my head, with what I know and being reasonable.

I suppose it’s hard not to be thinking about economy since that’s the hot issue right now, with 2.4 million jobs being lost—the most since 1940. Yikes. So, I’ve been thinking what economy really is. At first, I thought it is just a cycle that if studied and know how it works, enables you to become rich and have a great life, or in other words, living out the “American dream”.

Let me say that economy is purely abstract. It only exists as math in your head. Numbers. It used to be based on the value of gold till someone realizes that’s not necessary and break off the valuation. That’s because there are enough goods, services, and possessions created that apparently, people want them badly enough. Dollar simply provides the means for it. Want a Porsche? then you’d have to work your ass off till you have enough to afford it. Want some hot flesh lap dance and more some than that ? Pay some fat dollars. Nothing to do with gold. Just numbers.

Price is simply the amount that you would be willing to pay for it. Marketers are expert in pricing their items in such a way that it’s not too high that customers won’t pay nor too low as to lose the profits. They aim to achieve profit margin as wide as they can. No buy? then lower the price (called a sale) till customers say “hey, this is pretty affordable. I can purchase this.” A sale is made—seller gets money and the buyer is now one happy customer with the wanted good.

(more…)

I saw someone asking what’s the difference between them. Thought I’d share a few words on this as I’ve tried them all.

These use a board, obviously, but how they maneuver is different. Skateboarding uses wheels, snowboarding - no wheels but on snow, and ofc, surfing on water. They have two things in common - they require you to have a strong sense of balance and spatial direction - forward, back, left, right, and rotate. Without those, you can’t go anywhere.

For starters, skateboarding is ideal to start learning how to board because it’s most accessible - a board with wheels is all you need while you need a far more equipment for snowboarding and surfing. Snowboarding is the most expensive because you need to buy a ski lift plus insulation for cold weather. If you’re scared of water, forget about surfing! If you dig water and big waves don’t scare you (not scared of getting drown), surfing is fun but is the trickiest largely because it is unpredictable, you have to read/measure the waves right to make a good catch. To me, surfing is the most exhilarating because you get 100% immersed into nature by its body of water and if you get to carve the wave, nothing is greater than that and you can feel nature carrying/pushing you.

From the technical aspects, I’ve found skateboarding to be the hardest. You need to learn how to do an ollie, which in my opinion, is the hardest trick to learn but once you master it, tricks become much easier and you can go over any kind of step like stairs and how high you can jump depends on how fearless you are. Tricks add up there - kick flip, kiss on the rail, so on.

They’re all fun to try and involve different kinds of nature but one thing is that you gotta have a solid foundation - sense of balance and spatial direction, which is knowing where you go and to anticipate the next step/move.

Happy boarding. :-)

Happened to see this excerpt, liked it a lot.

The five spiritual faculties - faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom - are our greatest friends and allies on this journey of understanding. These qualities are most powerful when they are in balance. Faith needs to be balanced with wisdom, so that faith is not blind and wisdom is not shallow or hypocritical. When wisdom outstrips faith, we can develop a pattern where we know something, and even know it deeply from our experience, yet do not live it. Faith brings the quality of commitment to our understanding. Energy needs to be balanced with concentration; effort will bring lucidity, clarity, and energy to the mind, which concentration balances with calmness and depth. An unbalanced effort makes us restless and scattered, and too much concentration that is not energized comes close to torpor and sleep. Mindfulness is the factor that balances all these and is therefore always beneficial.
~ Joseph Goldstein, in Seeking the Heart of Wisdom

link

Good article. On super-noticing.

Mr Soltzberg:

It is ironic: people don’t notice that noticing is important! Or that they’re already doing it. It’s kind of like breathing—we’re not usually that aware of it. It’s much easier to recognize more “outbound” activities like brainstorming, testing, designing, refining. But noticing is just as important—it’s really where everything begins. There’s a funny Zen saying about that: “Don’t just do something, sit there.” It’s a reminder to let yourself take things in as well as output them.

I do believe that anyone who acquires sign language has this ability—to super notice, because we can communicate exclusively with our facial expressions and hands, with no sound.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about human consciousness and our existence, as well as spirituality and religions. I finally understood why people have religions, to explain our existence, our purpose and eventually, our death. That is the fact of life. Doesn’t get any simpler than that.

I believe that we come out of nothingness, which is actually some kind of magic like the birth of universe, by the infusion of one sperm and one egg. A man and woman. As we grow to become adults and getting to our prime, we procreate. Babies are born and the cycle goes on. Till we grow old and can no longer function and then drifts back into nothingness, become unconscious but with our spirit, we’ll be somewhere, wherever we want to be, with our families or loved ones. I support the first amendment, by the freedom of religion that anyone can believe in whatever they like to, just as long as it doesn’t result into violence and compromise one’s life. If they want to believe they were a cockroach or something, there’s nothing wrong with that either.

Because in the end, we all drift into nothingness but worry not, we all mean somebody to someone.

Link

“Do profoundly deaf people who learn to talk have a voice in their head?”
– Heather & Allen Exby

“My best answer to this,” Hauser wrote, “is that the brain has a special capacity to develop phonological representations, even when it does not have auditory input. The representations might be dramatically different from what hearing individuals hear. Nevertheless, they function in the mind as ’sounds.’” Deaf schizophrenics, he continued, have auditory hallucinations, and blind schizophrenics have visual ones.

This is a good link. I think thoughts are just what they are, thoughts. They don’t really exist physically but from our minds and apparently, 99% of them express theirs phonologically while we express with our hands visually in Sign.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how things are and why they come like that in life. One example of that is our thoughts. Where do our thoughts come from? Sure, it’s in the brain but exactly how they are manufactured? I’ve read that we are capable of having approx. 50,000 thoughts a day. 50,000 thoughts a day! That explains why it’s important for people to communicate, otherwise, our thoughts will go on a rampage, wondering what our friends, families are up to. I now understand why my parents keep worrying about me.

Let me share thoughts that I’m thinking right now in the next 10 seconds.

I need to do my weekly snippets
why am I even typing this post on thoughts!
I wanna buy that honda element
Super Bowl this weekend!
Disneyland next week! (Google trip)
I need to drink more water and exercise.
I need to take a break from being on computers almost 24/7
what will we be like in 5 years, 10 years?
what is my purpose on this earth?

I probably could keep doing that till I get to the 100th thought. Probably won’t be too interesting, I’m afraid.

Since I can’t record my voice on a tape, this blogging is like a recorder of my thoughts, trying to decipher what I’m thinking, learning, and writing allows me to break down information that I’m getting through my eyes. Letter by letter. Bytes by bytes. (8 bits equals one character, btw). When I’m reading something, somehow, I feel fortunate enough to be able to understand it. I’ve never thought that I would be reading a person’s post and then I found out that he graduated from Harvard University or MIT. I thought those guys were too good for me and that I wouldn’t able to understand any of it. But I do, although maybe not to the full depth but I can get the sense of what point they’re trying to make and the application of it. Granted, my writing won’t become as eloquent or pretty as theirs but it’s good enough to express some of my 50,000 thoughts a day.

:-)