Author: Tony Tam
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World Health Org. – Q&A on coronaviruses (COVID-19)
Don’t let TV news and websites get you all stressed out about the coronavirus. Stay informed with WHO, the definitive voice worldwide. The incentives of news media is to scare us and get us to be glued to the webpages or TV screen. The following are quoted from https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses 23 February 2020 | Q&A What…
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Mark Twain: quote on wisdom
Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you would rather have talked. – Mark Twain
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Debugging Android Auto As A Developer
In order to debug Android Auto cd ~/Library/Android/sdk ./platform-tools/adb forward tcp:5277 tcp:5277 ./extras/google/auto/desktop-head-unit On your phone/emulator, turn on debugging then in Android Auto Settings -> Start head unit server Reference: Setup for Android Autos – https://developer.android.com/training/cars/media Setup your testing environment – https://developer.android.com/training/cars/testing See Tony’s PR contribution to AntennaPod
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link: When Things Click: The Power Of Judgment-Free Learning
Removing praise and criticism from learning. What good teacher do If a student does not learn, it’s the teacher’s fault, not the student. Brake down a skill into learnable pieces Inspire students to achieve more https://www.npr.org/2020/02/03/802422904/when-things-click-the-power-of-judgment-free-learning
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link: Android Studio plugins
Let the machine help you build/make Android apps. Start with some of these plugins. https://blog.codota.com/top-17-plugins-for-android-studio/
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Tosh Hall: Overcoming Hearing No
About Tosh HallGlobal CCO Close Bio Tosh oversees the creative product for all our offices, including work for AB InBev, Dunkin’ Brands, Target and UNICEF. His work’s been recognized at Cannes and by D&AD, The One Show, Clios, New York Festivals, Tokyo TDC, Graphis, Communication Arts, Print and AIGA—and featured in Forbes, The New York…
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link: Here’s The Powerful Letter The Stanford Victim Read To Her Attacker
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra?bfsource=relatedmanual
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Book readers on San Francisco Muni
I have started to notice more physical book reading on Muni.
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GoodPodcasts.org: Software Engineering Daily – “The World Through the Lens of Software”
Read more at https://GoodPodcasts.org/2020/01/30/software-engineering-daily/
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Scare of the Coronavirus? How many people died in 2009 from the flu virus worldwide?
“Worldwide, seasonal influenza epidemics cause 3 million to 5 million severe cases every year and kill up to 650,000 people a year, according to the World Health Organization. CDC report https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html It is more contagious according to the NYTimes.
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Don’t fight Google Search, switch to DuckDuckGo
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Who Actually Grew Up in San Francisco? — The Bold Italic — San Francisco
“San Francisco has often been called a transient city, a destination for young creative types and techies before they bounce off to places unknown. But to stereotype this city as a way station is to ignore the families who set down roots here generations ago. We did a callout for multigenerational San Franciscans and were…
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Good Podcast: Design Matters
Why Is Design Matters a Good Podcast? Debbie and her team do their homework in researching little known facts about their creative guests. Because of the research and preparations, her dialog and questions elicit surprising insights from the creative people she talks with. We favorite and bookmark many of her episodes in order to good…
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Android SDK Documentation Offline Viewing
Having documentation right at your finger tips for Android SDK. Open it in your browser at file:///Users/tonytam/Library/Android/sdk/docs/index.html
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Learning via SF Public Library
Grow 1% a day, start with free resources from SF Library (or your local library) Start reading this blog article.
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Podcast Ecosystem : Fun Facts
When I started working on a hackathon project to publish the Splunk .conf videos from our conf.splunk.com site into a podcast form, I learned a lot that I didn’t know. This learning through hands on work has led me to contributing software code to an open source project call AntennaPod. I will write more later…
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“The future is here – it’s just not evenly distributed”
“The future is here – it’s just not evenly distributed” – William Gibson. When we come up with a good idea. If we take that idea and prototype and demo it, even when no one cheers you on, remember that they are just not in the same future as you yet. If it was a…
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Lettering and Type
I am often inspired by creative types. I heard about Jessica Hische when she was interviewed on Design Matters podcast. I found her Lynda.com show “The Creative Spark: Title Case, Typographic Artisans” I’m inspired by their workspace and how they customized their tables to fit their tools Her beautiful homepage http://jessicahische.is/ Her 2 books “Tomorrow…
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Men in Tech In Positions of Power Making the Industry Look like a Cesspool
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Reminder: Pull your free credit report
This is free and a huge perk from our government to pull your credit report (without a score) https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action
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Link: Salary data on levels.fyi
https://www.levels.fyi/2019/ – I have no idea how accurate this salary data is, but it’s pretty outrageous how much software engineers are paid.
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Thought Experiment:What If You Disappear Tomorrow
At work, what would change, would people truly miss you? In your personal life, what would change and who would mourn you? Now, start to do more of what is important and less of what is not valuable.
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There Is No Life Script
While listening to a podcast about the child free life (not childless life), a reminder that there is no script for life.
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FavTools: Podcast: BeyondPod for Android
You can Google all the the possible Podcast apps out there, but I suggest you settle down with the paid version of the BeyondPod app. (This is my recommendation for people who subscribe to a lot of Podcasts!!) Why BeyondPod? Any podcast app worth downloading must have Change how fast the audio plays Adjust how…
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Advice: From Someone Wise
My gift for you this year is PRESENCE. May you be utterly present in your life this year. Deeply aware of YOUR magnificence and of everything around you. Conscious of what makes you flow more freely. Confident in who and how you BE. Grateful for every moment. Living NOW. Birthday Blessings!
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quote: When people know they are going to die, …
When people know they are going to die..
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podcast: CAFE Insider podcast, “Impeachment: The Opening Act
In this clip from the CAFE Insider podcast, “Impeachment: The Opening Act,” co-hosts Preet Bharara and Anne Milgram break down the latest developments in the House’s impeachment inquiry and discuss witness strategy.Listen to the full episode with a free 2-week trial of the CAFE Insider membership. duration: 16:54, Played: 8:22 Published: 11/11/19 5:15:13 PM Episode Download link (17 MB): https://rss.art19.com/episodes/3060f680-3cf9-4fab-8e66-897ec9582b50.mp3…
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link: Developers mentoring developers
https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/developers-mentoring-other-developers/
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Happy 49th Birthday Week
I believe in celebrating life, this week I want to celebrate my 49th birthday for an entire week. Even doing a small thing for myself. Sunday – annual family dinner for 3 generation of men, with my father in-law, my little nephew and myself! Monday – Dinner with my lovely wife at Esperanto and a…
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link: Torch Coffee
https://www.torchcoffee.asia/
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workflow: How I read articles online
When I want to read any online article either on my desktop or mobile, I save the link into Pocket in order to get the same minimimalist, no ads view on my phone or desktop. This removes any ads, any sidebar (more info) and gives me a consistent view into any online article. The color…
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link: Facebook employees speak out
Unfortunately, the business model of selling ads drives the wrong decision for your users.
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link: Future of warehouse work
“The next decade is a story not about job loss, but more so about changes in job quality,” said Beth Gutelius, associate director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who authored the paper along with colleague Nik Theodore, a professor of urban planning and policy. “Technology has…
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Quick, what is the % of female graduates in computer science?
Before googling for the answer, what do you think is the % women who receive computer science bachelor’s degrees in the United States in 2019? 50% 40% 19% See answer here
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Asian American Creators on Patreon
Asian American Creators on Patreon, and non-definitive list.
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Public Library: West Portal
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San Francisco: Streets Of Embarcadero
On the N inbound. You can see Oakland across the bay.
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Older People Rule
As I’m getting closer to 50, either I feel young or 50 year old body is not that fragile yet. I’m still competing with 20 year olds on the badminton courts, smashing and moving just as hard and fast. The advantage of being older is that we don’t care as much what others think anymore.…
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Artist: Hyun Jeung’s prints
During a random walk in Paris, we saw some beautiful prints of flowers in the window of an artist studio. The 3 of us stood there admiring them and the artist waved us in. See Hyun Jeung’s background www.hyunjeung.com And of course checkout the amazingly beautiful work. This week she sent out a new series.
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Be opinionated, but be willing to listen
At work when I am interviewing for candidates to join my team for Engineering Productivity, I look for certain attributes. Having an opinion based on authority and experience I am looking for someone with one or two areas of deep expertise. Also you should have a strong opinion but here is the kicker, you need…
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Photo: Spider at my door
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Our SF : SF Fire Department
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Moment Lens
Recently I purchased a pair of used Moment Lens (macro and wide) for my Pixel 3a phone. This is an experiment using the macro lens
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Half Moon Bay
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Sunflowers on Parnassus
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Pantone 534 C
Pantone is the perfect place to find that right shade of blue. Tonight for a SF Badminton bag, I selected to use Pantone 534 C.
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Why Blue Shield Theater?
SOMA changing fast
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Be onguard about your data with anything on Facebook
Wednesday’s report from TechCrunch of an “exposed server” that “contained more than 419 million records over several databases on users across geographies, including 133 million records on U.S.-based Facebook users, 18 million records of users in the U.K., and another with more than 50 million records on users in Vietnam.”
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Why we read
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Calgary Central Library
Wow, I had not expected this of Calgary, Canada. The new Central library is a must see for anyone who loves public libraries. The architecture from the outside and the curved ceilings outside draws you in. The large community spaces when you walk in Then taking a tour, I realized the incredible amount of details…
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NYTimes: How Payal Kadakia Danced Her Way to a $600 Million Start-Up
How Payal Kadakia Danced Her Way to a $600 Million Start-Up https://nyti.ms/2KCHzQH
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Each Of Us Has A Part of The Solution, Together We Have The Whole.
Each Of Us Has A Part of The Solution, Together We Have The Whole! Splunk is a company of thousands of talented individuals, distributed across product development offices in 8 offices in the U.S., AUNZ, Europe, and Asia. How do we do our best work collectively and continue to push innovation while expanding at hypergrowth…
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Hiring practice thoughts and questions
I’m looking for a list of best practices, (maybe mechanics) with data to back up recommendations: For example, starting with resume reviews all the way to closing the candidates. (some random thoughts ) 1) In the resume tool: Do you create a set of standard templates to send? Do you try to respond by a…
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Link: Silent Meeting
Photo: Calder & Picasso exhibition in Paris 2019 Amazon popularized the silent meeting No powerpoints Send a 5 pager ahead of time Sit in the meeting for 20 minutes to read and comment Then open up for discussion Give this a read on medium.com “Silent Meetings” are meetings where most of the time is spent…
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Link: “Honeymoon Hashtag Hell”
NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/fashion/weddings/honeymoon-hashtag-hell.html Ms. Huang Smith said she felt compelled to prove to the world that her honeymoon was as “epic” as her wedding.
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Happy Father’s Day 2019
We do not have to conform to the norms of bread winners. We can communicate our weaknesses to our children, show vulnerability and strength.
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Sunday Recommend: Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America
This Sunday I was inspired by many articles, here are 2. NYTimes: A Mother Takes On the Gun Lobby Shannon Watts, Founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America SF Chronicle: College admissions scandal: New details released on Stanford sailing coach – “The parents who conspired to bribe Vandemoer and other coaches did so…
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Sunday Recommend: Path to Ride-Share Profits Begins With Higher Prices
What I learned Reasoning based on data, and it’s hard to argue with – this is a skill I need to learn. Driving for Uber or Lyft will be a minimum wage job because there are always drivers coming in to fill the roles when the earnings rise, driving down earnings. Drivers will leave when…
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Are Elites Really Making the World A Better Place?
Spoiler Alert, the answer is No.
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link: You Accomplished Something Great. So Now What?
(The photo is taken of a poster of the move “Always Be My Maybe”) – such a funny Asian American movie, must see twice! “Arrival fallacy is this illusion that once we make it, once we attain our goal or reach our destination, we will reach lasting happiness,” said Tal Ben-Shahar, the Harvard-trained positive psychology…
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Link: Talking On The Phone In The Car
I found this article funny and warm. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-car-phones.html
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Podcast: Chris Lattner creator of LLVM infrastructure, Swift programming language
I geeked out listening to this podcast following along the career of the creator of one of most successful compiler platform LLVM.
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Emma Watson’s book club “Our Shared Shelf.” – While reading NY Times Sunday
While reading NY Times physical Sunday paper, I came across an article about Bumble’s CEO Whitney Wolf Herd’s work week diary. While the article was inspiring to see a day in the life of female CEO, I thought the mention of Emma Watson’s book club “Our Shared Shelf” is even more interesting. From a cursory…
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Podcast of the week: Truth Be Told
I started listening to a summary of this podcast “Truth Be Told“. As a man of color, there are topics that struck a chord with me. Including whether we should name our kids with our ethnic names & why people of color marry the dominate race.
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Useful sites of the week : Grammarly
Grammarly – Premium version to help me to correct grammar before I hit that Send button. https://www.grammarly.com Others have recommended (yet to try) https://undraw.co/illustrations – Open-source illustrations for every project you can imagine and create. Free photos https://unsplash.com/
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Falling in love with a book
I started reading the book The Pragmatic Programmer, published In 1999! It is such a fantastic book with very relevant tips for professional software engineers. I am just on chapter 2 now, but I have already marked up the book about important ideas that I need to follow up. How did I skip this vital…
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Note taking iteration 2019
For note taking, I optimize for 3 things Being able to quickly create a document and worry about categorization later. Having access to the notes on any of my 3 machines, and phone Being able to find my notes later To do this, I’ve tried the following. Evernote, Google Docs, Google Keep, One Note. Several…
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Mom, did you know?
Happy mother’s day. Today, my sister and I told my mom things she never knew. We hung out with kids who had a bad influence on us. Teaching us to smoke elementary school in China. Getting into fights in middle school with kids who bullied me. I bullied kids and was angry. I shoplifted with…
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Reciprocate
In the last few weeks, I’ve learned the power of the following Reciprocate I asked a team of 6 people for help. They have commit 2 weeks of work and 5 hours of time to do face to face presentations. In return, I give them what they really want, direct access to people who can…
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Overheard through the office cubicle
Person X: “I don’t know why my kids would choose UC LA when they’ve been accepted at UC Berkeley!” Tony: “Where do you live?” Person X: “10 minutes away from the Berkeley campus” Tony: “Well, what do you think?” Person X: “uhhhh”
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BTS enamel pin, from @ceik0
This BTS enamel pin is made by ceikzero ( Instagram @ceik0 ). Thoughtfully designed, meticulously refined. Shipping to you from San Francisco and soon to be from Boston. If you have to ask what is BTS, this pin is not for you.
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Book: Quotes from Skin In The Game that warrants more thought
I’m coming to the end of the book “Skin In The Game”. It’s not an easy book to read but I find the author is able to make some arguments that are not mainstream but very convincingly. Page :217 “you will not have an idea about what people really think, what predicts people’s action, merely…
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Solitude
I know I am an introvert. I relish the solitude of reading, writing, thinking by myself. Solitude doesn’t mean I like to be alone all the time. Just some span of time, where I am by myself with my own thoughts. When I can get these thoughts out on paper, I feel energized. This seems…
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Starting change
Asking people to change is hard. The person asking for change might be asking others to move 10 steps ahead. The people being asked to change 1) Might not be convinced 2) Think it’s too hard and unknown 3) They don’t trust the person asking them. My experience in pursuation is to first build that…
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What does not belong?
Another way to think about “everything in it’s place” is to look at “What does not belong?” You can apply this simply in organizing a drawer in your home. You can also apply this in backlog grooming at work. Out of 50 things on my plate, what doesn’t belong? What is extra that I’m…
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Valid criticism of Obama
While reading the book “Skin in the Game”, I saw several negative references to Barack Obama. At first I chalked it up for something for me to think about. After the latest reference on pg 156, I thought for brief moment to brush it off as a conservative author taking shots at a democratic president.…
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Scott Stowell On “Design Matters”
I have listened to every episodes of Design Matters with Debbie Millman. One of the episodes I bookmarked is the one with Scott Stowell. I really enjoy hearing from people in different fields than the high tech industry in which I work. Scott talked about how as a small child, he learned the craft of…
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Learning at Splunk via Technical books
6 offices in San Francisco, Santana Row, Vancouver, Seattle, United Kingdom, Boulder and Sydney are received 145 copies of 3 books. Pragmatic Programmer, The Code Complete & 97 Things Every Architect Should Know. Happy reading fellow engineers!
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Meeting time, maker time
Everyone needs maker time at work. Otherwise either you work more at home, or you often feel unaccomplished. My maker time is about 60%.
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Walk over and ask to see a demo
(The photo is one of my favorite pencils I borrow from my daughter. I finally used up all the lead in the pencil) 20 minutes, that’s all it takes. “Could you show me how you work?” Let’s turn on screen capture. Oh, interesting, what else? Why do you like this over, let’s say this other…
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Wecroak : An app to remind you that everything is temporary
It’s a fact, we will all die. What is important for you? learn more about the app www.wecroak.com Or listen to the co founder on Recode Decode podcast. You can find it.
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Have true world class set the bar high
Last week, a highly analytical person at my company demonstrated how he used Splunk to deep dive into customer issues. The level of sophistication and depth was truly inspiring. In our life, I am reminded to always look for someone who operates at world class, level 10. Who set the bar for us to want…
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Inspired by creative folks: Book – Dear Data
This week I picked up the book Dear Data by Giorgia Lupi, Stefanie Posavec. In this color and wimsicle book, the 2 authors who live across the Atlantic write weekly hand draw postcards to each other, using inforgraphics to tell each other a data centric view of a weekly topic. During my 10 page a day…
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Doing your best work
When there are stakeholders, there is a deadline and you are uniquely capable to do it.
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In the areas of learning and development
(This post is not for you, it’s for me) It started out as 5% of my time. Just a 4-hour hands-on workshop with new hires once a month. Now it’s the following 1 engineer working on developing a hands-on workshop that will track start, finish, and verification. Able to track usage, validate answers and replace…
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Heard on HBR podcast, the triangle of a job
It is often not possible to get all three 1. job satisfaction and meaning 2. money 3. lifestyle Most jobs can give you 2 out of 3. You may have to adopt a side hustle to fullfil the missing piece.
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Cat person
I am a cat person. My personality matches a cat. I like people watching and lazying in the sun. I move slowly, only pouncing when there is something that intensely interests me. I have a deep-seated fear of dogs biting me randomly. I also raised a cat person and now she is 18!
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Let’s meet at 5:37
It’s an odd time to tell someone else to meet. Why not 5:30 or 5:35? It is a lot more precise and shows that I have planned it out. I mean what I say. It’s odd, I know. But it’s precise, exact and intended. Let’s meet at 5:37. See you in 9 minutes. Could you…
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SF Public Library: Merced Branch
Getting There The Merced Branch of the San Francisco Public Library system is 1/2 block from the 28, K buses. Right acrossed from the Stonestown mall. There is plenty of street parking with 2 car parking for 10 minutes. What is different? One standout of this library is the central garden space with maple trees…
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No skin in the game?
(The photo was posted in the Chinese section of the SF Public Library near Stonestown shopping mall, written in simplified Chinese. It takes a lot of effort for me to read in the simple form. It basically says that it’s up to us as individuals to learn and thrive in a democratic society. There are…
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Are you on the diagonal?
In the book Skin In The Game, the author (pg. 61) stated a saying by the brothers Geoff and Vince Graham: I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist. The author’s argument is that we cannot apply…
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Spending habits in 2019
In 2019, I wanted try something a bit different than 2018. In 2018, I didn’t buy anything that was not a consumable. In 2019, I wanted to be less extreme and only buy non consumables once every quarter. In Q1 2019 – I have bought 2 pairs of shoes and that is it. Something else…
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Mis en place
I remember my mom tried to teach me this when I was young. Put things back in it’s place. Of course she said it in Chinese. She was not very successful in teaching me. I was not a great listener when I was young. I am still struggling with this at home, everything back in…
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Skin in the game: regulation vs. being sued
Take a company like Facebook. They leave millions of passwords in plain text, they created the news feed where dictators use the various Facebook products (Instagram, FB, Whatsapp) to spread fake propaganda, they violate our privacy repeatedly (even those of us who don’t use it, but are connected to people who do) and hijack our…
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Tech Mentorship Final Proposal
Target audience: Female engineers at the 2, 3, 4 levels Purpose Introduce them to engineers, at least 2 levels beyond, who can help them with Expanding their technical breath, depth and quality. Review their work and help them think about ways to increase their impact. Improve their problem solving skills. Expose them to opportunities they…
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Proposal – Tech mentorship success / failure – Part 3
(follow up to part 2 of tech mentorship) What does a success mentorship look like? Both mentor and mentee are getting something out of the experience. They meet regularly, or the mentee feels free to reach out when they have issues/questions to work out. They hold themselves accountable to each other, if their are action…
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Proposal for tech mentorship v2
Continue from Part 1 https://tonytam.org/2019/04/07/proposal-for-technical-mentorship-draft-1/ Target audience : P2, P3, P4 Guidelines for matching : 2 levels separation Why be a mentee ? Ask question of someone who have been where you are at, give you a perspective that you normally don’t see, spend time with you to help you grow technically in a safe…
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Proposal for technical mentorship (draft 1)
The goal of this proposal is to define how we build a culture of career growth for our technical staff in any individual contributor level. During the career of a software engineers, several key factors contributes to their career growth Innate skills and self motivation The type of projects they are exposed to and have…
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Thank me when you are 30
One my favorite movie scenes is when Sydney P., in the movie”Guess who is coming to dinner?” said to his father, something like “It’s your job to raise me, you brought me into this world”. “When it’s my time, I will do the same for my children”. There is no need for children to thank…
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My advice to you, dear daugther
Dear daughter, For your 18th birthday, and on my 48th year, I wish to write down something for you to refer back to in the next 30 years. I wish to tell you a few simple thoughts to help you to build a life for yourself that 30 years later, you would look back and…