Self at 35

Self at 35, originally uploaded by offstandard.

So I'm 35. Woah, how time flies. It's interesting to see many of my friends "Married, with Children" (heheh, I used to watch that show... crazy Al Bundy... who in fact used to be a serious actor until that show haha... anyhow)

Of course my family is worried I would die a lonely lonely loser... I mean... man, but I fear not. Because for over 10 years I've been searching but in the process I was actually going against God's desire. By that I mean, that whenever I had an interest and would pray, God would say "no" or something in that vein.

So now I gave up trying. I leave it up to God, I'm not really looking anymore... although I do appreciate some of God's fairer creations, I try not to ogle as much.

For myself it is actually very relaxing, just relying on God for His timing. I still have no idea what God has planned for me in the future but I'm willing to wait and follow what he has prepared for me in the present.

So for those out there, don't worry too much about what God wants you to do in the future, because the NOW is where you are serving God, and God has prepared you until now so you can handle the present. The future will come, and God will only make it available when you're done with the present.

unless... we can time travel... where's my Delorean Doc Brown?!

iPad... Legendary... Fail.

I was waiting on the Apple Tablet for what seems like years. My last mac was the Apple eMac G4 700Mhz 17" Desktop. I also had the Original iBook USB 2 which I purchased back in 2000 or 2001 to the price of $2000.

Having started Video Editing again, I awaited a Mac that I would be able to replace my venerable Fujitsu T4220 Tablet PC. Sadly, the iPod Touch XL is not what I was waiting for. I wanted it to be able to handle any OS X software, but this maxiPad doesn't have OS X, it has an iPhone heart.

The only thing this thing has going for it for my personal use, is that they have created iWorks for it. I always wanted to use Keynote (Apple's Presentation software like Powerpoint) because compared to PP, this thing is leaps and bounds easier and better looking in terms of design and usability.

Another thing that I would hate is the use of iTunes for connectivity. I never liked the proprietary nature of how Apple runs things, and iTunes just tries to take over everything. Yes, it is really easy to use and all but I would like more control over what I can do with my files.

On a tangent, my PMP of choice (the Archos 5) is going for warranty repair, and was trying to use my Palm Pre. But sadly, this Palm disappoints me once again. I have no control over the music on this thing. I can transfer the files in USB mode (which is awesome) but once in the system, I can't delete/move from my phone. I can't even select to play a "folder" but it chooses to play in Album/Artist/Genre/etc. My collection of "favorites" is just in a folder, but from Palm Pre I can't play that folder... Palm, you're disappointing your old Palm users who could customize everything!!!

Anyhow, the iPad, is also not an iBook... wait... now the iBook is a software for books... and not a Laptop? What?! I think I sold my Sony E-reader prematurely (I did sell it 2 years ago), time to rebuy it so I can start reading things again, it was so easy to sync my reader of daily articles (for free) and read my news away from the computer in a nicely lit living room or outdoor with a tea.

I'm just venting at my disappointment on the opportunity to own an Apple again. I'll have to wait until Final Cut Studio can manage AVCHD file format (Panasonic GF1, GH1, etc.) natively until I get a Mac again... until then... I'll vent...

My Life is a Tragedy...? More Glory to God!

I had a very interesting dream this morning. In it appeared a girl from my life past (someone I don't have contact with anymore) and we were catching up on our life since.

We enjoy each others company and have fun in the amusement park of all things. Then she tells me she likes me--I know, it's starting to sound like a sappy romantic comedy--and I had semi-feelings towards her too but I don't move forward to meet her half-way.

I realize my life is not a comedy but more a tragedy. As I pass my hand through my hair a chunk of hair comes out and about 1/4 of an inch from the root is all white... alarmed we go to the hospital, and I'm diagnosed with some kind of disease (my dream did not provide me with the details of the disease) and I remember vividly that the doctor said "in the final stage".

Then the scene cuts to me in someone's house, and everybody is sad (of course they are! I'm dying!! And I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread!!!) the girl is sitting on my right next to me crying. I wasn't really sad or anything for myself, not to sound all "holy" or anything but I was at peace with the next part of my life. But I did feel sadness for the girl as I was causing this pain, and thus I put my right arm around her to console her.

I felt my skull with my left hand and a lot of hair had come out, and there was one part of the skull where it was soft, as if there was no more bone in that section, I thought it odd, and chucked it to the disease.

As I pull her tight with my arm, she leans on me and sobs quietly some more with her head resting on my shoulder, she gently kisses me on the cheek (don't worry, a lot of people were at that house so nothing weird is going to happen)... the weird part is that I don't reciprocate. In the dream I definitely had feelings for her, and the terminal disease magnified those feelings even more perhaps, but I just didn't move. She kept giving me small soft pecks on the cheek, but I eventually pushed her away when she tried to kiss me on my lips. I then give her a big warm hug, stand up, and leave the house by myself... to a blinding light...

... then I wake up.

Weird huh? Everything above was in my dream, except the "blinding light" part, that sounded more dramatic, but in the end of my dream I just walked out of the house by myself then I woke up.

As soon as I woke, I started to ask God what the dream meant if at all. There has been only a handful of dreams that were answers from God--I can count two--so I'm no expert in dream interpretation. If I interpret the ending of walking out "into the world" a certain way, it could mean that I'm to forsake all (or am willing to?), even a loved one, to walk out by myself into the world.

And that has been my wonder for the longest time, since I was in my early twenties, I wondered if God would call me into servitude as a non-married, devote whole life, type of calling/ministry (I strive for the best).

Summer of 2007, at a Mission in Mexico, I might have had one confirmation... I told everybody in that Mission Trip that I would be willing to forsake marriage for God's glory. The Missionary asked if there was a girl I liked, and I said sure. He asked if she suddenly told me that she liked me too, would I be willing to say no to her and follow God? I struggled for a couple of seconds and said yes.

The Missionary later told me that he had the same feelings when he was younger but later he ended up marrying, because at the time that was what he needed to hear, and maybe at that time (2007) that was what I needed to hear. Through that I devoted one year of "no looking for girls" and many other good things.

God is good, but this aspect of my life being a very important one weighs heavy on my soul. Specially more so because of my parents and sisters who worry about my marriage =) I wonder how my parents (mom specially) would react to such a calling, she couldn't even handle me being called to be a pastor hahaha.

International Standard of Units

This is for my own future records more than anything.  What comes after, mega, and giga and tera?

Kilo = 3 zeroes
Mega = 6
Giga = 9
Tera = 12
Peta = 15
Exa = 18
Zetta = 21
Yotta = 24

Mathematically, if anyone remembers from high school/college statistics class, anything with over 26 zeroes is same as infinity and with over 26 decimals is same as impossible... I think.

Now, when will I get my 1 PetaByte hard-drive!

25 years ago I remember a commodore 64 (that's 64 kilobytes of RAM)

20 years ago I remember buying an IBM computer with 512 kilobytes of RAM, with no hard drive. Running at the lightning speed of 4.7 hertz (not mega/gigahertz)

1 year later, I had a 20 megabyte hard drive.

10 years ago I think I had a pentium with something like a 250 megabyte HD running at 200 megahertz... Nothing that I recall in detail. But I do recall buying a 40 megabyte compact flash card for $100, and that was a good deal. (btw you guys remember the Iomegas Zip Drive? Watch a high tech movie from the 90s and they are all using it haha)

Now computers are easily running 3 gigahertz, with 1 terabyte drives, 4-8 gigabytes of RAM.

So in 2020 I think i'll get my computer that runs at 5 terahertz, with 10 petabyte drives and I bet i'll still run out of space.

No there was no research involved in any of this so numbers and facts are just based on my faulty memory... In case you read this far.

--
Chris Hwang
http://www.offstandard.com/ (my blog)

Casual Day...

Decided I needed a break for myself and ended up watching TWO movies I wanted to watch for a while. "Monsters vs. Aliens" and "Wonder Woman" an animated movie produced by Bruce Timm (Batman Adventures, Superman, Justice League, Batman Beyond).

MvA was a real disappointment, it had some pretty big name actors, but the first half of the movie it seemed like half the scenes were specifically composed for the "3D" effect with some random objects flying into the screen, or panning in/out, etc. Sadly, it did nothing to me as I was watching on blu-ray and not a 3D screen. Which made me think every other set-up scene go "well, that was a waste of time" as it didn't add or subtract anything to the story or character development.

From the get-go things happen fast but because of a lack of character development, you don't feel anything for the characters and they seem seriously... two dimensional. I guess if you're a kid you might enjoy the graphics and be entertained nonetheless.

However, I did enjoy "Wonder Woman". I guess I'm just a sucker for anything created by Bruce Timm, although this movie is not part of the famous "DC Universe" created by Mr. Timm, it is nonetheless a very well developed, animated, and told story. It has a very short but good character development and you start to bond with Diana and Steve from the beginning and as the story progresses even more.

It has some very witty dialogue and comedy as well, like most of Timm's shows. My favorite part ***slight spoiler alert*** being when Steve starts by telling that he is not a very good example of a "man" to Diana, then apologizes saying that he is actually a pig and a womanizer and goes into a sad mood as he says that it is because he is afraid of being hurt and thus puts on a strong facade... he suddenly stops and says "why am I telling you all of this?" looks at his feet and realizes his feet is on top of the "Lasso of Truth" and he jumps back and screams "Oh Crap! I hope you Amazonians are never able to mass produce this thing!!!" (my paraphrase from what I remember) LOL.

This movie also has some big names as Alfred Molina (Dr. Octavious) plays Ares the God of War, a small part by Oliver Platt as Hades, and some others as well. As I was looking at the credits an old friend of mine caught my eye in the Storyboards: Sam Liu. Haven't seen or heard from him in a while but I guess he's still going strong in the animation industry. Last time was I think during my Anime Expo and OCAD days 10 years ago. How are you doing Sam? Good to see you are involved in good shows still.

I wish Bruce Timm would continue to produce "DC Universe" related shows but I guess the main audience is now too old, as most Bruce Timm fans would be around my age. But hey! We are the ones with money and can buy all the blu-rays!!! I want my Justice League/Unlimited seasons on blu-ray! That would be great!!! Who can forget that line when Wonder Woman is flirting with Batman, and Superman is clueless what's going on and Green Lantern says "For a guy with 20 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind!"

Anyhow, gotta go do my laundry and get ready to attend a Wednesday Bible Study in portuguese...

Humbling Experiences...

Paul speaking to the Corinthians, gives them a little history lesson regarding the mistakes the Israelites made in the past, telling them they became proud to the point of challenging God in their sins. He says in 1 Cor 10:12

"Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall."

It comes as a somber reminder how "pride" can sneak in little by little on you and sooner or later you feel pretty "proud" of what you can do.

Most of you know I speak 5 languages. So, I thought I spoke my languages pretty well. I could say "I can carry on a conversation in those languages fluently" hanging around with people who mainly speak English most of the time. However reality was a little different.

The past two weeks was quite an experience in my LACK of fluency in the languages I spoke. First, I was able to speak in Japanese to a REALLY fluent Korean-Japanese person (job is translating Korean Drama into Japanese), and my pronunciation was less than stellar, to say the least, as the person was continuously helping me along, haha.

Second, speaking to a Korean only speaker, I was having trouble coming up with vocabulary words to explain things because some words I would say in English and the other person would have no idea what it meant. And comedy ensued as I gestured and hunted for ways to explain in Korean.

Third, attending the Spanish School of Ministry and being around native speakers and trying to speak my Argentinian Castellano which I hadn't used regularly for 20 years stumbling with vocabulary and stuttering along as I spoke Spanglish (or would that be Enpanish? hmm... sounds like Enpanadas... I'm hungry now...)

Fourth, yesterday I was able to attend a Bible Study group of Korean-Brazilians and guess what? They greeted me in Portuguese and they ALL spoke REALLY fluently and I was so shocked... I guess I hadn't thought that everything would be in Portuguese, even the worship, and message, and prayers... and there I was adding English and Korean words as I spoke my broken Portuguese.

Not to mention that I'm reminded every week of how I butcher the U.S. Language when I speak in front of my church, creating new pronunciations of common words and constantly pronouncing God as Gad...

Yeah, I should compare myself with better speakers to constantly improve the languages I speak instead of just saying that I am fluent, because if you dropped me off in any of those countries, I bet my language skills would not be defined as FLUENT.

So, in the same vein, let us consider ourselves, so we may stay humble and never go down the path of getting too proud of ourselves that we end up challenging God in our mistakes.

Stock Photography

Every month or so, I get requests from places (magazines, companies, etc.) asking my permission to use some of my photos for their publication, powerpoint presentations, or online editions etc. I don't ask for any compensation, but just that they would give me credit if possible. it's nice enough that they ask for permission.

This makes me think about getting into Stock Photography, then I read on the agencies that contract out photographers and usually they require 50-100 samples of work to consider for a review. I haven't counted my "stock" worthy photos yet but I'm guessing I should have at least 50 high quality images. It's just that I just get too lazy to go through my stuff and weed out the stock photos and tagging them with keywords. One day I have to get to it and maybe I'll make some money off of it. But, that is not my priority in life of course, it is to read the Word and teach the Word to God's sheep.

I haven't created a timeline for the Stock Photo issue (there are so many companies out there I can submit to) but at least I have a plan set up for my Wedding Videography business. It will go live by the time of my friend's Kyung's Wedding. Website, business cards, and all.

So, for now, time to read some more stuff and prepare examples and illustrations for my Sunday messages... woot!