hanwiki:About

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. I spend most of the daylight hours as a web developer. I recently switched from LAMP to MEAN stack, and I'm still very much a greenhorn web developer even though I've been developing, as a full-stack coder, since 1995. 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. The rest is history.

a programmer

Please do note that this introduction is somewhat misleading only because web development is my full-time job these days, 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 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 25 years 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#, and PHP. I've been wanting to get into mobile development, but volunteering at church has eaten up a significant portion of my free time.

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"). No, 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 7 years (as of June, 2016) now, and I'm still at sho-dan. It hasn't been easy driving 6 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? :-)

swim every morning

It's been little over a year now, and I haven't gotten much further beyond free-style because I've been too lazy to practice different ones. It feels 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.

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. Yes, 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 conversant in either of those. 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.

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 ideograms according to Zhou-yi.