My year
It’s that time of the year again when Facebook does this tiny viral app thingy again that displays “Raphael’s Year”. Like I needed a reminder another year is up? It was rather innocuous…it didn’t show anything particularly harmful or crazy this year. Which got me thinking I wasted the entire year doing nothing interesting at all. What got me particularly concerned about this particular incident was that it got me thinking…why does time seem to go so fast? This year really felt like a blur. It got me...
read moreWriting struggles
Helllooooo strangers? Are you still there? Really I can’t imagine that there’d be anyone that would be out there reading this ‘ol blog anymore. Then again I can’t imagine that personal blogs like this are even read at all anymore. All the ones save for the really giant blogs I read are all but given up these days. I guess I can understand why…all my original reasons to blog at all before have now been substituted by something else. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and a whole slew of social media options now satisfy...
read moreReunion jitters.
My highschool graduating class had our 1st reunion ever this past weekend. It was our 25th anniversary since graduating. Shut up, I know that’s fucking old. I’m not sure I really wanted to attend this event. Leading up to the weekend I kept debating with myself whether I would go. I asked my friends and family…”What for? Anybody I had wanted to see I was probably already in contact with all these years. If God wanted me to see these people he wouldn’t have created Graduation” Yes I know, it was a very...
read moreGood reason to get old
I might bitch a lot about getting old lately. Watching a kid grow up before your eyes and an ever increasingly sore body will do that to you. But I WILL tell you one area where getting old is great — Business! Back before I turned 30 I once had a personal visit with local celebrity, Emme Tomimbang. Kids don’t know her here now, but she was pretty well known on TV here back in my day. Anyway, we were talking and she asked me, “How old are you?” I told her, “I’m about to turn 30 soon”. “Oh...
read moreGrowing up fast
So the little mini-me has been growing up fast. I can’t even begin to figure out how to document his progress here fast enough before some other major milestone is met. He started Summer school today for the first time outside of his normal pre-school and I think I freaked out worse than he did. Dad was getting stomach cramps this morning and had trouble sleeping….turns out he had little or no problems at all. He got of the car….walked off to class with his mom and told her to leave. Hmmmph. I guess he handles change better...
read moreHitting balloons
Having only been a parent for a few short years now, I’m just constantly aware of how amazing this process is. Here we have a little human being that started out being this little fragile pink warm object that did nothing but drink milk and poop. Now, 5 small years later he’s making friends of his own, figuring out how to handle difficult situations, developing new muscle memory for his body, trying badly to master skills as a standup comedian, reading, swimming, etc etc. Over the years I couldn’t stop myself from thinking...
read moreIt’s been crazy…
So my “big project” came and past. I guess it’s about as successful as I could hope for. Overall I’ve been getting kudos all around the campus…faculty has been happy. Students have been happy. And that means reasonably good news for me. I keep waiting for the shoe to drop… maybe I missed a security issue here? Maybe someone up the ladder hates the site and asks the administration staff to take it all down? Maybe some accreditation body out there somewhere finds we didn’t follow some obscure rule on...
read moreHuge Origami Elephant
The art of Origami always fascinated me but I was never really good. Too this day I can’t figure out out how to blow the crane origami the right way so it puffs up nicely. I remember I once had an origami book that showed a process how to take 2 colored sheets of paper and weave them together to make something like a soccer ball…again, it involved blowing air into the thing and it ended up being many a failed attempt. Anyway, I thought this giant full-scaled paper Origami elephane by artist Sipho Mabona was super neat. Too bad the...
read moreBiggest project of my life
In a couple weeks I should be able to debut this College website I’ve spent maybe the past year and a half working on. It’ll be little nuts, not because some 100k visitors hit this site per month, or 4k per day. Heck, I’ve done similar site swaps for an ISP back in the day where just a slight change means being bombarded with phone calls all day long. I think the freak out will most likely come from faculty and staff members of the College who have somehow avoided hearing, meeting or seeing me in all my countless visits and...
read moreDear Son…
Dear Kingston, Your mom and I took you to your first Kindergarten interview this last weekend. It was weird and I was somewhat reluctant to do it. I think to myself, “What kind of questions would they ask a preschooler?!” but I know the truth of the matter was that was likely that they wanted to meet your mom and dad — feel us out, see how involved we are with you. Whatever, I did it, and I think I represented our family just fine. Mom was quiet most of the time because she knew I was the loud mouth of the family who could...
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LoweStudio Inc was founded by me, Raphael Lowe, a Honolulu based illustrator and web designer. I presently design and manage a few dozen commercial websites, but my main focus these days is acting as the head developer for Kapiolani Community College and teaching