RonkLogan

About Me

What to say, what to say? I’m a geek, a nerd, a dork. I’m a career software engineer, so I’m always playing with computers. Check out my LinkedIn profile for more information on that.

I’ve been an extra on Hawaii Five-0 a few times. I sometimes make silly videos (please subscribe to my YouTube channel!). I write iPhone apps, dabble in electronics, and make stuff with my 3-D printer for fun. I used to be the drummer in a rockabilly band (’50s-style rock-and-roll) that played around Oʻahu every month or so – I kinda miss doing that. And I had a novel published on Amazon Kindle Worlds before they shut that program down. I’ve been working on rewriting it as the first in a series of novels using my own original main characters.

I adore Star Wars. And Star Trek. And The Fifth Element. And Battlestar Galatica. And, well, sci-fi in general. No, wait – let’s just say “movies” in general.

I used to enjoy dying my hair all sort of whacky colors. It’s been all the hues of the rainbow at one time or another. I don't really do it anymore, mainly for three reasons:

  1. My employer for a while had a policy forbidding unnatural hair colors, so I had to break the habit;
  2. It gets expensive having it bleached and dyed every few weeks;
  3. The ol’ hair ain’t what it used to be, and to be honest, I worry that the repeated bleaching would make it fall out even faster, and I just don’t need that added level of stress in my life right now!

I used to live in Hawaiʻi and I enjoy learning as much as I can about the history of those beautiful islands and their rich oral traditions. I understand a little of the language [maopopo iki iaʻu ka ʻōlelo hawaiʻi; e ʻōlelo kāua!]. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say I love the Hawaiian language for all its nuances and beauty. If I could, I would spend a lot more time studying the language, taking classes, and practicing speaking with native speakers.

I’m also fascinated by the ancient Hawaiian calendar. Being someone who thought they were going to be an astrophysicist as they set off for college, I’ve never been a big fan of the Gregorian calendar we use today. The lengths of the months are irregular and long-since divorced from the phases of the moon as months were originally intended. And don’t get me started on how the “new year” beginning on the first of January has very little astronomical significance, if any. Drives me nuts. Everything is extremely arbitrary with very little rhyme or reason. In contrast, the Hawaiian calendar is composed of months that match the lunar cycle exactly, days have names, not numbers, and the new year is based upon observations of astronomical significance (the rising of the Pleiades star cluster at sunset). Of course, lunar months don’t add up evenly to an entire solar year; periodic alignment in the Hawaiian calendar is performed via the addition of intercalary months — much like our February leap-year day. These “extra” months are also added based upon astronomical observations. I appreciate that kind of scientific relevancy, and I’ve written an iPhone app, Mahina, to calculate the current lunar phase and roughly correlate it to the Hawaiian calendar.

Anyhow, please feel free to peruse and enjoy some of the random stuff I do.