JooJoo Crossing

Closest word for 정

2008-07-28T10:12:00.003-04:00

I've finally found the closest translation for the word "정" in English. Many people have said it does not exist, but in actuality, 정 = affinity, strong affinity for someone else. English is awesome! :)

New Project

2008-06-02T18:48:00.002-04:00

Recently, my project has changed from the IRS to ... a project where if I told you what it was about, I'd have to kill you. The change more or less mandatory than voluntary and it's been quite tough to adjust. As a result of what I've experience for the past 3 weeks, I've learned the importance of having co-workers that are the same age. I am the youngest in the office and it has been quite difficult to fit in to the "group". Work environment is key to how stressed, or unstressed, you are after work.

Status update

2008-05-12T17:12:00.003-04:00

Haven't updated my blog in a bit. I've been so busy with doing nothing ^^;;

There have been many articles online about device simplicity. My question is: then why are they putting more and more features on a phone? Do people really want to watch tv and movies, listen to music, surf the internet, organize their life, while talking to their mother on the phone all at the same time?

Don't get me wrong. I will most likely also follow the trend and buy a phone that can vacuum the floor and cook me dinner. But there is still a fundamental downfall to this idea of having a device that does everything, and that is battery life. Phone manufacturers have boasted that battery life on their phones but reality is, if you are watching a movie or listening to music, your phone will most likely die when you are making the most important phone conversation of your life. Once you drop your ~~life~~ cell phone, your life will become a mess because you've grown a dependency on it.

Maybe this is another way for phone companies to raise phone plan prices offering to do your laundry for you for an extra $15 a month ...

One of our brothers needs pixels!

2008-03-10T20:47:00.003-05:00

Wow, I haven't posted a post in a long time but this requires a post. The mother of one of the brothers that attend our church has been diagnosed with cancer and is in the late stages. Unfortunately, their family did not have health insurance until recently and he is having a difficult time with the treatment bills before they acquired health insurance. He has created a website to help with this effort and I've posted it on digg. Let's digg this website up to raise awareness within the digg community!

PixelPrayer

Back from a really long trip

2007-08-28T13:55:00.001-04:00

Ok, so I'm back from a really long (almost two months of traveling) trip. I presume I'll put up massive quantities of pictures but for the time being, this blog will have to wait until I recuperate from jetlag and other such factors that have the potential to destroy my daily routine. Til then, always smile everyone!

Flock to browser

2007-07-10T01:03:00.000-04:00

I'm a little psyched about the new social networking focused browser that Mozilla is about to release. It is called Flock and its main focus is to make the social networking blob on the interweb a little more user friendly. The browser will allow users to organize all of the sites that you frequent and organize them in a manner where you will be able to view the more recently updated post. The application will gather recently updated pictures and blogposts from the various sites that you stalk and organize the information into three separate boxes.
It will pretty much be a portal or gateway to all your circle of interweb friends, and media. Hope the browser exceeds my expectations ...

A LAMP to light the room

2007-06-22T18:02:00.000-04:00

Whenever I try something new, it always seems to look easier to do than actually doing it. Setting up a web server? Great, looks easy enough! NOT. Learning to work with a DNS server and mapping the right ports to the right apache instance on linux? Sure, easy enough. (10 mins later) NOT! Programming with the .NET framework. I can do that. NOT!

Well, I've finally been able to learn more about one of those tough tasks. LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) comes packaged together in the ubuntu 7.04 server edition and allows the user to easily setup a linux web server. Installing all of this was pretty easy, now to configuring it .... ...........

Let's get back to coding ...

2007-06-22T17:59:00.000-04:00

Ruby on Rails looks really interesting ... rails

Cultural Korean Differences

2007-06-06T23:39:00.001-04:00

Just the other day, Steven Colbert used "Rain", the Korean pop star, in one of his very exaggerated jokes. As described by this blogger:

Stephen Colbert the Man is intelligent, witty, and is NEVER PRESENT on his show. The host of The Colbert Report is a character. The host of the show is a caricature of American ultra-right-wing conservatism — and by pushing the act so far, Colbert the Man is actually criticizing what Colbert the Host is promoting.

The Korean media took this and ran with it. The articles used phrases and words such as "poked fool of, mocked" and made sure to state that this mockery was a result of Steven Colbert coming in second to Rain in an online poll of the most influential people. The American people love this sort of over-exaggerated almost satirical kind of humor. Personally, after growing in the states, I find it to be funny, in a more sophisticated way. I love the Colbert Report and after understanding that the over-exaggerated right wing concept exists only to poke fun at Colbert himself, the humor is great. Is the Korean media only writing such negative articles in order to instigate? Or do Korean people, in general, not understand the humorous nature of the Colbert Report?

On the surface

2007-05-30T18:24:00.000-04:00

I have always wanted to do more research in UI functionality and the influence it has on how people can interact with the digital world. A couple years ago, Jeff Han showed the world how mesmerizing a multi-touch interface can be. The multi-touch screen has so much potential and will define the way we human will interact with many digital interfaces in the near future. It is not brand new technology but there is much to be done in terms of studies on what makes more sense when interacting with such a device. The first ever consumer implementation of this technology to such a grand scale has finally surfaced.

I am beyond words, and I am thrilled ...

1 + 1 = 2?

2007-05-16T11:07:00.000-04:00

Why is it so difficult to deal with people? At the same time, why can't we live without having a relationship with people?My thoughts on this are not very organized at this point.

Everyone comes into contact with various people in their lives. Everyday, we talk, work, eat, fight, and share good times with them. The fundamental question is, why do we always strive for a relationship when we know that the relationship can be headed towards doom? We desire to love and to be loved by people. We have friends that share the same ideas and whom we share laughter with. We have family that pamper us and loved ones that we would do anything for to comfort. The problem comes in when we are physically, spiritually, and/or mentally hurt by them. At this point in the relationship, can this human-to-human interaction result in positive energy? We were made to desire a relationship, in God's image. God knew that there would be pain and difficulty in those relationships but still made us in that way. He knew that the only way we know and appreciate having the relationship would be for us to endure those hard times. The would teach us to appreciate the good times.

The problem that I have and the question that I have not been able to answer is, how much discord in a relationship is the threshold and what can make the people involved in that relationship never go back? Sometimes these breaking points lead to murders, wars, terrorism, and suicide. God knows what the threshold is and knows where the fights need to stop but why does God allow so many relationships to break?

He has shown us an example of how we should deal with relationships through Christ. It is very difficult for me to follow these examples because of the fact that I can't humble myself before God. I guess the first step is to always let go of my selfish desires ...

Sluggish Leopard

2007-04-16T12:00:00.000-04:00

With the recent delay of Leopard, Apple's next biggest update to their famous Mac OSX operating system, computer users everywhere are crying foul. Contrary to what many may think is the reason for this outcry of belligerence, apple lovers across the world are complaining that the iphone was the perpetrator in causing the delay.
To be honest, I was fairly disappointed when I heard the news. The fact that apple will put aside a product that has been their flagship in order to release a product only because of its popularity and public attention clearly shows that apple's focus has changed a great deal. I imagine the removal of "computer" from their name actually signified a change in their goals as a company.
One comment from that link above summarized my other frustration. Many people, I myself included, are waiting for Leopard not because of its updates and new features but because they are waiting for Leopard to ship with a new purchase of an apple computer. Apple is famous for releasing the "next best thing" when people have just recently made a purchase, completely out-dating a recent purchase, sometimes with the sacrifice of backwards compatibility and support.
Apple is starting to lose focus. Diversification may be a great strategy as a company but sacrificing the one product that has kept the company competitive in the industry is a bad move. Especially with the recent release of Vista, although Tiger may put up a great fight, the news of a delay can only end up pushing people away from switching. The iphone's target consumer base is very limited. With its high price point, and its lockdown to a single carrier, the average consumer will only dream about buying such a product and never go through with an actual purchase. It is something like having Nike trying to diversify by diving into the Jewelry business and making necklaces more expensive than Tiffany & Co, with the sacrifice of delaying the release of the next new Air Jordan shoes. You begin to lose focus on your core target audience.
I may now have to just buy a PC and wait for the OSx86 project to work on Leopard, when apple finally decides to release it ...

Stranger Than Fiction

2007-03-19T00:42:00.000-04:00

This afternoon, I had a chance to see the movie "Stranger Than Fiction". The movie is about a man who, whilst leading a mundane life, find himself hearing the words of the narrator who is narrating the story of his own life. A very thought provoking film, it was able to sparks thoughts of what I would do if I was able to meet the narrator of my life story and read the ending to this epic tale (maybe not so epic). Would the novel be a comedy? a tragedy? a mythical adventure? Only God would know ...

Patience

2007-03-02T23:03:00.000-05:00

Most everyone knows patience is virtue. It's a saying ingrained in everyone's heads. The only problem is, it's always been a problem for me to apply it in my life. I tend to want the latest and greatest only to realize later on that it has already been outdated. I tend to desire what I see on an advertisements and easily fall for great marketing. Maybe I'm a perfect example of who marketers are targeting. Enter this thing ...

I hate creative people ...

Why did you do that?

2007-02-27T12:10:00.000-05:00

How do you convey the correct tone in an e-mail? Is it possible that not all people talk in the same way and therefore a friendly e-mail can be mistaken for a nasty-gram?

Person A send an e-mail to person B with the body of the text being:

"Why did you do that?"

There are three ways one can approach this e-mail:

Flabbergasm - When person B responds to an event with an outrageous action, the person would react to the this action by replying to the e-mail with the question stated above. This is often used to exaggerate a common reply statement.
Follow up - To truly understand why this action was taken.
Hostility - You idiot! why did ...

Now you can say that it is different depending on the context. This was just the random thought of the day ...

Say what?

2007-02-23T16:37:00.001-05:00

Reading my previous two posts, I now realize how horrible my English is. One of the reasons for starting this blog was to give myself the opportunity to constantly write, type, and publish the many thoughts going to through my head. It seems as though I'm going to need to work on putting my thoughts down on paper. This blog will give me a chance to improve my thought process and
debug the issues that hold me back from clearly expressing the thoughts that go on in my brain. Stay tuned folks ...

RAID zaps and kills

2007-02-20T01:07:00.000-05:00

No, not that RAID.

So, in order to satisfy my thirst for faster performance, I used an on-board RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) controller when building my computer. I used two hard drives and took advantage of some RAID 0 action. This setup allowed me to take advantage of quicker video edit rendering times and always gave me the feeling that programs installing faster.

People have always told me that this is very dangerous since the death of one hard drive would leave me with 0 Bytes of reliable data. I kept this warning in the back of head and continued to live my life, knowing that data recovery for a RAID setup will cost well over $2000.

My hard drives never died. In fact, they are still healthy and clean. The only problem is, no one ever told me that losing the RAID configuration and the RAID controller would also be the demise of my computer data. When I accidentally fried my motherboard, it took with it, the RAID controller on the motherboard. I tried purchasing a new motherboard with on-board SATA RAID but have been unsuccessful in recovering the data that I have gather on those hard drives for over 3 years. Without the exact same RAID configuration on the motherboard, the data on the two hard drives are inaccessible (redefines the concept of "plug and play").

My pictures, my music, my website, my setting ... all "zapped" and killed ...

Traveling Light

2007-02-12T18:46:00.000-05:00

For my first post to this blog, I would like to introduce a book titled "Traveling Light", by Max Lucado. For the past year and a half, my work required me to travel to cities outside of MD to either work with the client or work together as a team with other Accenture employees. I feel as though this has been a both a drawback in my life but also a great experience that has taught me valuable lessons. Traveling Light, opposed to my introduction and the title of the book, does not talk about the act of traveling and packing lightly for those trips. Rather, it talks about how we carry on our spiritual lives with a heavy burden on our shoulders. The book brings to "light" the idea that my life is much like a voyage, a journey. Throughout the journey, we are faced with many challenges in our lives. These life experiences have taught us to pack more and more luggage in to our lives to prepare for the worst. What we are practically doing is basically trying to handle those troubling times ourselves. Not to ruin the climax of the book but reading "Traveling Light" has taught me to unpack the unnecessary items, and travel with what is only necessary, which is the word of God. It has always been more difficult to travel with a heavier bag. When we pack our luggage, we try to pack for every possible situation. (what if I spill juice on this shirt, I need to take another shirt). I feel as though I do the same for my life as well. I've learned to shed a few pounds from my luggage to make my travels a little more about the travel itself ...