Author: Tony Tam
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Watch Out For Self Criticism
Last night I prepared a batch of patê fermenté and this morning I used it to make some fresh bread for breakfast. Kate helped with kneading and mixing and she made a snail bread for herself. When it was finally done, I thought it was not very good at all and was going to suggest…
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Latte Art Lesson #1
Recently I’ve been thinking that it would be cool one day if I became a part time barista. The art/craft of making expresso interested me after I listened to 2 podcasts from pf.net and coffeegeek.com. There is a 3rd wave coffee movement to lift up the consumption of coffee to the level of the wine…
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Facination With Door Knobs
When I was in Tuscany I couldn’t stop taking pictures of door hardware.. Here goes
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Story Of 2 Girls
C. decided that she liked the name ‘K.’ and she wants her alias to be ‘clara’ so we actually changed her name officially in school to ‘C.’. She had me write out this story for her and she supplied the drawings and the words.
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Getting Crazy With Cappuccino
Today my $500 Mazzer Mini grinder and my $60 Reg Barber tamper arrived and I pulled half a pound of Bluebottle coffee and started pulling 15 shots of espresso to tune it. I finally hit the perfect cup of cappuccino after the 16 th shot. It was sweet and actually better than Rituals.. All worth…
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Hiring For The Team
Image is from Kontra coffee in Copenhagen with my reflection, they are showing off their World Barista Championship trophies hiring the right engineers has always been a challenge. Do you hiring the best technical person but his personality may not fit well in the team? Do you hire someone who can learn quickly but is…
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Everything Will Fail
Lesson of the day for engineers. Whatever large system you design, some component of it will fail one day. It’s a valuable exercise to draw a diagram of every system, machine, load balancer, DNS servers and start drawing a big X on each component and ask yourself what happens when that component fails. 1) What…
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Seeing Yahoo! From 10,000 Foot
(photo is from Barcelona) As an early engineer in the ‘trenches’ I saw Yahoo! from a 5 foot angle. I focused on what I needed to do immediately to keep the site running. As a 7 year veteran, I see things from 50 foot. I see the business, I try to see and understand the…
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your worst critic?
My worst critic is myself. It’s my way of pushing myself. Today during a Y! News meeting, I was knocking something on Y! News, then my co-worker Chris stepped in and said some words of encouragement. “Look at what sort of data we are delivering, in a consistent, fast and dynamic way to our users.…
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Time With Mom
Weekend with mom was very fun, my mom just turned 65 this year. Pick her up from SF and drove to Oakland to have a facial together. Had a very nice nap. Mom: “my friends would like to go to Europe next year.. pause” Me: “Do you guys enjoy tour packages?” Mom: “No we hate…