As some of you know, the speed kicking record was held by Luan. It stood at 202 kicks in 60 seconds. He set this record several years ago, back when the school was at Lower Sacramento Road.
Well, most recently (about 3 weeks ago), Patrick smashed that speed kicking record–delivering a whopping 214 kicks in 60 seconds!
Congratulations Patrick!
This morning, as I did my morning run, I listened to my morning dose of “On the Record” hosted by Greta Van Susteren, I heard something interesting that I normally wouldn’t hear in this show. She said that a music video titled “Friday” by a 13 year old named Rebecca Black has gone viral on youtube.com with over 100 million hits! To put this count in perspective, in the United States, there are around 300 million people.
This video has over 2 million dislikes; and According to Greta, Rebecca Black made this video as a joke; but since she has made over 159,000 in music download sales on the recorded music version of this, Rebecca Black is the one laughing on her way to the bank.
created by jscreationzs
Since the emergence of the Internet in the 1990s, it has evolved from being a simple means to communicate via e-mail, chat (IRC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRC), and retrieve information. It has since evolved into something that is now part of almost everybody’s lives. Having lived through that evolution, how I use the Internet has evolved as well. I went from simply using it as a tool for downloading device drivers (via FTP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ftp) to using it for my day to day activities! Here’s a breakdown of how I use the Internet today:
In the second half of the 1990s, I was working for a high tech company called Network General Corporation (http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/14/14226.html). I didn’t start using the Internet there until around 1996, the year its commercialization became more prevalent. At around that time, e-mail, file transfer via FTP, and information access were the biggest use of the Internet.
Fast forward to present…
How I use the Internet has totally evolved. My use of it is completely intertwined with my life and day-to-day activities. Here’s a typical day.
When I wake up in the morning I go for a run. I use one of those things from Nike called Nikeplus. When I finish, I take the little gadget that logs my run and plug it into one of my computer’s USB ports. It uploads my running data to nikerunning.nike.com where my running record is maintained. I’ve also tied that to my facebook account so that a facebook app logs an entry into my profile.
Thereafter I read the latest news through Google News; then check for any new e-mails through Google’s gmail and Yahoo’s e-mail. From there, I go to Facebook for any new messages or postings from relatives, friends, and favorite pages.
On occasions, I have bills due to be paid. For example, my city utility bill can be paid via the Internet. I simply visit the city’s web site, go down to the finance section where one can log in to pay their bill. I’ve saved countless amount of postage by paying my bills this way. Besides, I don’t even have to use a check. Everything can be paid using a credit card! On occasion, when our checking account is low on balance, I would access our other bank accounts and transfer funds. The transfers would occur within one business day. Very convenient, and all that without having to stand in line.
When I have time, during early morning hours or late at night, I do a bit of writing. Since I like to write, I thought that I might as well earn a few bucks while I’m at it. To that end, I write various articles online at sites that pay writers to post short articles on their site. I write for Helium.com, Bukisa.com, infobarrel.com, ehow.com, brighthub.com, hubpages.com, and on my own blog site freetechzone.com. All the money I make there goes to an online account on paypal.com or to my adsense account on google.com. After a certain period of time, I actually collect enough money there to buy stuff online! The good thing about this little gig is that even when I’m not doing anything, my articles earn me money! By the way, sometimes while I write, I connect to pandora.com and listen to some online streaming music. I simply identify a particular artist, and it plays music from that artist and others with similar styles of music.
At work, I sometimes have to visit a site that is several miles away from my office. I use google maps to help me find a route to get there. On my smart phone, I have a built in GPS which uses google maps to show my actual location, the route I’m following, and the estimate of how many more miles before I reach my destination. Because of google maps, I don’t even buy maps anymore. Who needs maps when one can get the entire world’s map through the Internet!
When my wife and I get a chance to relax, we sometimes watch movies or TV episodes. We use to have cable TV, but not anymore. Since 2010, we’ve been cable TV free. We watch movies and TV episodes via the Internet. Hulu.com has many movies and TV programming episodes you can watch for free, and if you have a projector and a big white wall to use as a projection screen, you can have one heck of a big screen to watch movies or TV shows. If you purchase their Hulu Plus offering, you can watch even more recent TV episodes. I’m not sure how it differs with regards to movies though. YouTube.com has also come a long way. They too offer movies (http://www.youtube.com/movies) and TV episodes (http://www.youtube.com/tv). Most recently, we discovered Netflix.com. They too offer streaming video service over the Internet. If you purchase service from them, you can get watch relatively new movies, and TV episodes.
My family run a business. We teach martial arts. Like most business, we too have an online presence. We get leads through this web site. When people look for a Taekwondo school in Stockton, California, (i.e. go to google.com and do a search for “taekwondo stockton ca”) our schools shows up at the very top! I built that web site, and with the help of the Internet we can reach customers that would otherwise miss our street sign.
The last thing I would like to note is that I found my current job though an Internet job search. I used the Internet to make my job search very easy and convenient. Had I not done that, my search would have been limited to news paper clippings, actual business visits, and word of mouth knowledge of openings. Today, you can set alerts that would send you emails telling you of the latest job openings. You don’t have to look for them, as job openings come to you!
With the fast upsurge in smart-phone technology and its integration with applications tied to the Internet within the last 2 years, expect more amazing things to come. As things stand now, the power of the Internet is no longer limited to your desktop. You can be anywhere, and have access to the Internet and everything that can be done through it. Isn’t the Internet and technology amazing?
If you have comments about how you use the Internet in your daily life, please share it here.
Happy Valentine’s Day to my better half!!!
Thanks to the power of Animoto.com, I was able to create the above online animated greeting for that very special someone…my wife.
Can’t afford to subscribe or buy technology magazines? Guess what, if you have Internet access and you don’t mind reading PDF files, and you don’t mind your content being about 2 to 3 months old, then you can get them for free!
Maximum PC is one such magazine who provides archives of issues from their web site. Just head on down to their PDF archive page and you’ll see what I mean.
Finishing Stockton Half Marathon in record time--1:56:56
Stockton premiered its first half marathon on 14 Nov 2010. The run featured a 5K fun walk/run for all and a 13.1-mile half marathon run for the die hards. By this time, I consider myself a running die hard. I ran the half marathon.
The day was perfect for running–around the high 40s. It started and finished by the Stockton Hilton. The course was nice, as it had some slight uphills and downhills. It also took us to the better part of Stockton–Brookside.
In the race were 638 finishers–373 females and 265 males. The average finish time was 2:18:15. This tells you that this run had some of the most die-hard runners, as that time is pretty good time. I finished 186th overall with an official time of 1:56:56.
Last Saturday, 06 Nov 2010, all 5 Koryo Family Taekwondo Center kids claimed gold at the 2010 All California Taekwondo Championships held at Bethel High School, in Vallejo, California.
Here are the breakdown of results:
Congratulations on a job well done!
Below is the second round of Angel’s 2nd match:
St Jude Children's Research Hospital
A million THANKS to all the students and instructors who participated in our ‘RUN for a CURE’ fundraiser at KORYO Family Taekwondo Center, and a huge THANK YOU to all their families & friends who supported them.
With your help, we raised a total of $2400 for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Great job, everyone!!!
This is one way we can give back to the community, whether it is local, national, or worldwide in scope. What we give comes back to us tenfold, in some positive way or form.
The date, 10-10-10…the event….the 2010 Chicago Marathon. After about 10 months of preparing for this run, I finally made it. I completed the run with a time of 4:57:14. My goal for this run was to simply cross the finish line with a descent time. This time isn’t bad considering the temperature. That day had a relatively warm or hot temperature for a long run. The temperature range for that day was between 60 degrees and 82 degrees.
I ran this race with my sister-in-law. We stuck together for the first half. As a result her half marathon time and mine were exactly the same: 2:25:31…not bad.
As part of a charitable effort, I ran for a cause–St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Some of my friends supported me there. My wife contacted others and was also able to get pledges. I estimate that the total pledges comes out to be around $1000. I will be happy if this effort will make a difference in the life of one child.
There is one thing very different from this run–many people running are running for a cause. I don’t see this on 12K or lesser runs, and I’ve done many such runs. I think a marathon is different and that it takes a special dedication and determination to complete such a challenge. Drawing from my own experience, the dedication and determination were definitely there. Since December of 2009, I have been training for this run, waking up at 4:30am and running at around 5:00 am. Not too many people can do this. Sometime during the training, I suffered through multiple injuries: plantar fasciitis, knee soreness, and maybe even IT. I rested and recovered. As a matter of fact, I was still recovering from a knee sprain/soreness/inflammation when I ran this marathon. The good thing was that my knee didn’t even bother me during the run!
Observing the crowd, I saw many people from different walks of life, some people stood out in that they obviously had some form of injury or disability as can be seen in the way they run, yet they are there doing the marathon. That is very inspiring. I have never seen this kind of determination in any race I’ve been to.
Running a marathon has been an experience. Knowing that not many people can complete such a challenge makes one feel somewhat special. Now that it is over, it seems that I have caught the marathon bug. Which one should I do next? Someone suggested the NYC marathon. Hmmm…maybe.
Each of our kids take home a gold medal!
This Saturday’s tournament made for a long day, but it was well worth it! Our kids–Ivan, Sofia, and Partick showed indomitable spirit, determination, and courage for the events where they competed.
Ivan, Sofia, and Patrick all did forms and sparring. Partick also did board breaking. In forms, both Ivan and Sofia took home the gold. Patrick took home the silver in his group. In sparring, Ivan took home the bronze, Sofia and Patrick took home the silver. In board breaking, Partick’s advance breaking technique got him the gold. Good job kids!
Here’s a summary of the our team’s efforts:
Please make sure to congratulate them for a job well done.