The definition of a G

Part of what I want this blog to become is a collection of my random theoretical solutions to real everyday problems… a la synthesis, but not so heavy on abstract rhetoric. Yes, I spend a good chunk of my free time thinking about these type of things. Yes, I thoroughly enjoy it. And no, I don’t care if you think I’m a nerd.

So, fixing the arbitrary age limit conundrum. What I mean by this is the arbitrary age governments set on privileges such as being able to drive, drink alcohol, fight in a war, etc. For example: The United States sets the legal drinking age at 21 even though almost all foreign countries set it at 18, some even 16. The US also sets the age at which one can join the army at 18, which is arguably significantly more dangerous during times of war.

This makes no sense me though, because as Einstein discovered: it’s all relative! No two people are exactly alike. People’s minds and bodies mature at different rates. It’s not uncommon to meet people in their 20’s who you’d swear should still be in high school and vice versa. These differences need to be taken into account.

What I propose, then, are government mandated tests that track both mental and physical development in children. Only once certain criteria are met can these children/teenagers be deemed capable and mature enough to handle driving a car, debate the ramifications of drinking too much alcohol, comprehend what going to war actually means, etc. It’s unlikely the ages would shift that much. I’d say 18 give or take 3 years. But if, say, teenage drivers are that much more mature, resulting in a large drop in teenage car crashes (which are extremely high), then I would consider it a success. It’s all about the results.

There’s virtually zero chance of something like this being implemented though, and I realize that. There’s too much social inertia to overcome. To not be able to compare children just by age would shatter social norms. I’m very curious as to how this kind of system would pan out in an experimental community though…

Some food for thought. Until next time!

Pet me... yes... just like that...

Click here and here if you haven’t been keeping up.

1. Beautiful hardware, as always.
2. GUI looks awkward. To have the same icon sizes as the iPhone but on a much bigger screen just looks proportionately wrong. Maybe this takes getting used to.
3. Why are 3G models an extra $130? That makes no sense to me… a 3G chip costs a few bucks at most. It’s also not like that price tag INCLUDES the cost of the 3G data plan, which has to be paid for on top. Way to bilk the non-educated consumer class.
4. Magazines? Newspapers? (NOT just NYT) There’s a lot more to the print world that Apple could come to dominate besides just plain ol’ books
5. What’s the point of the more powerful custom built A4 processor without multi tasking? It is just wasteful and downright silly being able to ONLY run a Facebook app in the middle by itself. Being billed as a multimedia machine, it’d be nice to play music in the background or something while reading an ebook. Too many scenarios.
6. STILL no flash support? It was stupid of Jobs to demo time.com and disappoint everyone by showing flash still wasn’t supported.
7. Google Reader (and RSS readers in general) on the iPad has the potential to be great. I envision an endless scrolling magazine style layout for all your feeds. That, a cup of hot green tea with a dash of honey, and a warm bed sound pretty much perfect.
8. iPad over a netbook anyday though. Here’s to hoping this is the death knell of the netbook, which I absolutely abhor. (I give it points for being more hackable than the iPad though)

Thoughts?

Woops... just drooled on my keyboard

Alright, I figured I’d take a break from my typical motivational mumbo jumbo and write about another passion of mine: food. In this case, ramen!

After going to Shinsengumi in Torrance this past weekend, I felt I’d been to almost all the notable ramen joints in both norcal and socal, and thus able to write knowledgeably about them.

So… drum roll please. Here are my Ramen Rankings (for 2009 I guess?) judged on an overall basis.

1. Maru Ichi (Kuro flavor)
2. Daikokuya (Kotteri flavor)
3. Ajisen Ramen (Premium pork flavor)
4. Santouka (Toroniku Shio flavor)
5. Ramen Halu
6. Shinsengumi

Of course, there are more ramen places than these, but I felt these were the only ones worth mentioning. Ryowa and other joints like Ramenya… naw.

However, judging on a holistic basis just doesn’t tell the whole story. Some are definitely better in some aspects, while worse in others. So, I’m going to break down my ideal ramen by individual components.

• Soup base: Kuro flavor at Maru Ichi or Kotteri flavor at Daikokuya. (I’m not kidding when I say I had dreams of the Kotteri flavor for days after having it my first time)
• Noodles: the one they have in the Kuro flavor at Maru Ichi (NOT the yellow egg-ish type)
• Egg: Maru Ichi or Daikokya’s (not fully cooked, with the yolk still a little bit runny)
• Chashu meat: Ramen Halu’s (so tender….. it just melts in your mouth) Honorable mention goes to Maru Ichi.
• Extras: green onion, bean sprouts

If I were to recommend one type of ramen above all ramens, it would be Maru Ichi’s Kuro flavor, just because it’s different and not offered anywhere else.

A complaint I have about certain ramen joints are the ones that don’t include extras like eggs and bean sprouts standard. A bowl of ramen is already pretty darn expensive, but adding those on makes it almost ridiculous. Those extras COMPLETE the ramen! It’s like a BMW without the sport package…  just wrong.

Next up: Taiwanese beef noodle soup. If you have to eat, might as well enjoy it, right?

An adage that is oft-repeated in self-help books is to surround yourself with motivated people. Well, if you’re at a loss for where to find such people… head over to the gym. You won’t find a higher concentration of motivated people anywhere else.

Everyone comes in with a clear goal: burn fat, build muscle, increase cardiovascular endurance, etc. By coming into the gym, they are no longer just thinking about what it takes to achieve their goal, they are doing what it takes. Although obvious, this is a point people too often fail to recognize, and a mentality that should be getting applied to other areas of life.

Set after set, people exercise their way to greater health. At the gym, everyone recognizes this of one another, so the feeling of camaraderie is very real. In my experience, everyone is more than willing to:

1. Lend a spot and offer words of encouragement when a set nears failure.
2. Allow one to work in with them.
3. Make it clear they aren’t using certain equipment or machine attachments.

Never feel intimidated. Everyone you see also had to start somewhere.

Furthermore, although going to the gym in itself should be applauded, to go consistently is a whole other ordeal worthy of praise. Go often enough, and you’ll recognize the same people. You’ll see their progress. In the same way laughter is infectious, seeing others’ progress will compel you to do the same.

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle, considering the fast food filled environment we live in and the always tempting option of just being lazy, requires lots of willpower. There’s no doubt about that. But by going against the grain, hauling yourself to the gym, and breaking a fat sweat makes it feel that much better. Remember that feeling, and you’ll eventually be addicted too. Don’t forget: without health, you are nothing.

Personally, I’m at the gym 3 or 4 times a week, rain or shine, midterms or finals. It’s my therapeutic break from the everyday grind. It’s important to have a few constants in life, and the gym is a great one to have.

So, feeling unusually lazy? Get yourself over to the gym, get motivated, and get healthy. Try your best to ignore the B.O. though, which at times can be unbearable.

Sidenote: I will definitely miss going to UCLA’s gym once I graduate. The atmosphere at an ordinary 24 hour fitness unfortunately lacks the fervor that my fellow Bruins have.

They can. So start paying attention.

I’ve been venturing into uncharted but very promising territory lately (explaining my lack of posts). I’m excited, bewildered, scared, and ready all at the same time. Will I make it? Who knows. What I do know, however,  is saying self defeating words such as “try”,”guess”, or “could” will not help me. I’ve been proactively purging my vocabulary of these words and replacing them with words such as “do”, “know”, or “will.” Everyone should be doing this. The universe works in wondrous ways, and I know that if you believe in yourself and make it evident through the way you write or speak, you increase your probably of success exponentially.

Don’t second guess what you’re capable of. Empower yourself through your vocabulary. Simple, yet effective. Let me know how it turns out.

I make these in my sleep.

If you know me well, you probably think I’m on my way to making a boatload of money because of my entrepreneurial ambitions. I may be, but that’s not what I truly care about. The difference lies in the definition of being rich versus being wealthy. This has been discussed many times over on the internet, but I never tire of it and I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a definition that I truly agree with, so here goes.

(Note: these are my definitions, and you can take it however you want)

Being rich is having a filthy amount of money, but nothing else. You’re alone, in poor health, and far from happy. You have so much money, but nothing to spend it on and no one to share the experiences that the money can buy you. Sad, yes, but it happens all the time.

Being wealthy is having a well balanced life, which includes but is not limited to:

• A healthy relationship with your family
• Close friends you can depend on
• A healthy body that allows you to engage life to the fullest
• Enough money to buy you the experiences that you crave
• Addition: Having a purpose/passion to pursue

To dote more on the money aspect, being wealthy doesn’t necessitate you have lots of money, but often times it does only because the experiences most people yearn for take lots of money.  For example, I eventually want to create an action oriented foundation that tackles real world problems, become an amateur race car driver, open my own Taiwanese beef noodle soup chain here in the US, travel the world, and pamper friends & family with gifts. These are all money intensive wishes, but it’s obvious I don’t want money just for the sake of having money.

At the same time, if you can be satisfied with what you have, money won’t matter much. This has been a constant debate with me. Part of me thinks it’d be nice to just be happy and content with what I have and not strive for more, but another part of me wants the world. Right now, I’m leaning toward the latter (I’m doubtful this will change).

Regardless, I still strongly believe it’s all about balance and so I’ve made pact with myself that on my quest for wealth, I will never lose sight of the big picture and how a balanced life is the only life worth leading. Will you?

I am so luscious.

Does anyone realize how much more fruit that would be? The seed takes up probably half the entire fruit (at least 1/3), so a seedless mango would literally have DOUBLE the amount of fruit! My mind explodes with its potential awesomeness.

This way, you don’t have to deal with the archaic practice of cutting up a mango. SO INEFFICIENT. I literally created mango puree on my cutting board attempting to properly cut and eat a mango. All you’d have to do is bite into a seedless mango, no worries!

Also, you know those movies where there is always one character in it famous for doing exactly one thing? Like inventing silent velcro? I’d imagine inventing seedless mangoes would be the same type of thing.

“Yeah, see him? He created seedless mangoes.” *head nod*

Please, fruit modifying engineers, please.

Who knows what's inside that booklet... *snicker

If you don’t know, I am an absolute knowledge junkie. I scour the internet daily for all the information I can possibly digest. Going from website from website takes eons though, and as an engineer, I would never let myself be that inefficient. In this post I’ll be discussing my first and most important tip for digesting information quickly.

Naturally, I receive lots of questions on how I read my news. For example:

• “How do I replicate your amazing news reading abilities Jono?”
• “How did you become a Level 100 Knowledge Digester Jono?”
• “Why do you have no hair on your arms Jono?”

All good questions I assure you. The first thing I tell everyone is that I don’t shave, it’s all natural. The second thing I tell them is that the most important tactic is to take advantage of RSS feeds.

Have no idea what RSS is? (don’t worry, most people don’t) watch this quick video:

RSS feeds were a complete godsend for me when I discovered them a few years ago. By using an aggregator, such as Google Reader (what I use; tutorial here), everything I’d want to read everyday was conveniently located in one place.

However, it’s important to note that you can’t just subscribe to ANY RSS feed. You have to be selective. The biggest problem I see when people subscribe to feeds is that they subscribe to big names such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times. No. This is wrong. These sources post tons of items a day, and it will take forever to sift through these and get the information that you are looking for.

For example, one topic I enjoy reading about are developments in open source web frameworks. I’m not going to subscribe to the technology section of a dozen major newspapers to read about this. That would just be a waste of time. Instead, I subscribe to a few focused blogs such as webmonkey and Think Vitamin.

By subscribing to major news sources, you’d be wasting precious time just skipping and throwing out unwanted news items. This might seem obvious, but it really isn’t, as I have seen these wrongdoings firsthand and cringed. As they say… “Common sense really isn’t all that common.”

To discover niche sites that write specifically about what interests you, I suggest using sites like alltop, delicious, and stumbleupon. Happy knowledge seeking!

For Many Americans, Nowhere to Go But Down

An introspective look into how people are really being affected by the recession. It kind of annoys me how careless they are with money in certain areas though, such as cigarettes and alcohol. Will definitely make you appreciate what you have.

Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin

If you ever hear your friends complain again about how they are running billions of miles and not losing any weight, direct them to this article.

The truth about grit

The foundation of an entrepreneur, ’nuff said.

Inspiration at its finest.

This post is about a simple inspirational arts & crafts project that I’ve been continually doing for the past few months (it’s so simple I’m not even sure it qualifies as arts and crafts). After reading this, you’ll either go “uhh, that’s stupid, please give me back the 3 minutes of my life I spent reading this” or “hey, why didn’t I think of that!”.

I’m a big drinker of organic teas, such as Honest Tea (Green Dragon flavor to be specific), and underneath most of these teas’ caps are inspirational quotes. Instead of recycling the caps, why not convert them into mini magnetic muses?

Needed materials:

• Bottle caps with quotes
• Magnet roll with adhesive backing, magnet tape, whatever you want to call it (I got mine at one of those small Japanese stationary stores, such as Marukai)
• Scissors to cut with

It’s pretty self explanatory… but in case your brain happened teeter off to the bahamas for a vacation today:

1. Cut off just enough of the magnet tape to cover the back of a bottle cap.
2. Peel off the paper covering the adhesive on the magnet.
3. Attach magnet to bottle cap using the adhesive side.
4. Stick new inspirational magnet on refrigerator.
5. Rejoice in the fact that you have now cluttered your fridge with something more inspiring than euphemisms for “Call this number if you want heart attack inducing food”.

I actually have over 30 on my fridge now.