hanwiki:About

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Welcome to my wiki page. The content generated here is a manifestation of the life I lead, so you may have a better idea of the content available here if you know a little about me. Up until mid-2019, I had spent most of the daylight hours as a web developer, and currently, I've joined the main campus IT applications group at a state university, which includes an enterprise IT support. As of January, 2021, I've just completed a major project, and helping others to learn the framework I've just developed. I have been developing applications and websites since 1995, and a native to *nix environment. The first homepage I made back then was for the little computer shop I was working for at the time called Qnix Micro Systems in Virginia, and it was a company website. Pre-Internet, I was running my own BBS (bulletin board system) back in late 1980s. The rest is history which may bore you quicker than a speeding bullet train. I'll just share what my interests have been.

a programmer

The web development has been my full-time job for last decade and counting, and a lot of content you find here has organically grown from such occupation. I started out programming BASIC on Apple IIc and Commodore when I was in middle school, and then moved onto Pascal, Assembly, and C at a very techy school called Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. I was the captain of the school's computer team, and we won some neat competitions. I also won several math and computer competitions at the national level, too, but that's nearly three decades ago and counting. It's little embarrassing that that I haven't won anything similar in worldly value since then. It's been hard to resist the idea that God has been trying to keep me humble. From then and now, as an autodidact, I've acquired skills in Java, C++, C#, PHP, Javascript (ReactJS these days), and few others (Rust, Swift, Kotlin, to name a few.) I have always played around with mobile development SDKs, but volunteering at church used to eat up a significant portion of my free time, but nowadays, I have more spare time at home to spend, so I've been focused on my core interests.

kendo keiko twice a week

Since I have a typical sedentary job, I try to be physically active, and one of the ways is to practice kendo (literally, "the way of the sword"). Even though I can wield a katana we usually practice using bamboo swords. Living in the high desert of Southwestern USA means there is a very few people who practice this martial art. It's been over 12 years (as of January, 2021) now, and I'm still at ni-dan. It doesn't help that keiko has been cancelled during this pandemic since March of last year. As for promotional exams before this, it hasn't been easy driving 6 or more hours just for a shinsa, and besides, shinsa is usually offered up to only shodan due to the shortage of high-ranking senseis in the region. Someone who has been practicing just as long as I did in the East Coast or West Coast could be around yon-dan level. But who cares about rank? :-)

judo keiko twice a week

I had practiced it for a good month 'til I managed to break couple of my ribs. I've completely recovered, and life's priorities have pushed this out aside for now. I hope to be able to go back to it soon. This pandemic gave me 10 lbs of flesh which I need to get rid of first.

used to swim every morning

I had swam everyday without missing a day for over a year. I haven't gotten much further beyond free-style because I've been too lazy to practice different ones. It used to feel like something is amiss if I miss a session during the week. It's weird, or maybe my brain just loves that feeling of being in the water. Anyway, I wish to go back to doing it everyday some day.

interested in languages

I've lived in South Korea for first ten years of my life, so it's quite natural for me to be drawn into East Asian history and its languages. I'm also fluent in Korean, but reading level may be around 10th grade level in my estimation. I've also worked as a professional translator for KBS America for over 10 years, so that's another reason why I've kept up my Korean language skills. I know more hanja (traditional Chinese characters) than necessary, and I'm barely conversant in Mandarin Chinese (aka Putonghua). 3 years of Latin and 1 year of Japanese during high school has made me revisit those languages time to time, but I'm not very conversant in either of those. (My Latin teacher was actually a living practitioner of Latin in some obscure club where people converse in Latin.) I once learned enough Spanish to be carrying a casual conversation with a Hispanic janitor, Alberto, at work, but after Alberto moved to another part of the university I haven't had a chance to practice and I've practically lost the ability to speak in Spanish now. I can read, without much comprehension, Classical Hebrew and Koine Greek, thanks to my college courses. These days, I'm more focused on grasping the basic curriculi used for children during the 19th century Korea, or so-called the late Joseon dynasty period. I've been at this for over a couple of years now, but the progress has been very slow as I only manage to find only few hours per week for this at this time.

interested in history

I've probably gone through the survey of the world history about 3 times, but I guess I know little more than an average Joe on the topics of Western Civ history, history of Western Christianity, Far East Asian history, ancient Mesopotamian history -- especially ancient Egyptian history and ancient Israelite history based on the Bible.

interested in philosophy

I've been shallowly reading enough philosophy materials to be dangerously pedantic. Lately, I've been delving into a comparative analysis of Platonic and Confucian thoughts and I'm simply fascinated by striking similarities. I haven't developed the needed patience for modern thinkers, starting with Descartes.

formally trained in biblical hermeneutics

As a good Christian I should be spending more time parsing Hebrew and Greek than meandering the interpretations of logographs according to Zhou-yi.