Badminton lovers, I will see you on court as soon as we can safely be back on court!😭
-
Talks at Google: Ep 84 – Ryan Holiday: “Stillness is the Key” http://talksatgoogle.libsyn.com/ep-84-ryan-holiday-stillness-is-the-key [00:41:15]
Routine, having enough, saying NO, doing what is most important early.
-
– Make it your identity
– Take the smallest next step
– Make good habits easy
– Create the environment for good habits easy and bad habits hard
– Find a partner
– Do it every single day
-
Finishing what you intended with minimum wait and high quality.
-
As a developer, why test manually when you can have the machine do it for you for UI testing?
Check out Saucelabs.com and Sauce Connect here
-
The Workers Who Face the Greatest Coronavirus Risk https://nyti.ms/33j5mwB
-
It’s been a while since the sport of badminton has seen another great backhand smash. Taufik Hidayt was the defacto backhand king. See videos on DuckduckGo search.
Victor Axelsen of Denmark has been working on his backhand smashes and I believe it’s the new birth of the backhand smash. I’ve seen him use it at least 4-5 times a match.
Here is one of his best smashes on the backhand. I don’t like that he spins around, but hey, very effective!
-
We used to have shareware and that was how programmers could give you software for free. When 2% of people pay for ‘free’ software, the rest of the world could get the benefits of free software.
Because people don’t pay for mobile & desktop apps developers started adding very annoying ads into software causing some unintended consequences.
- Tracking and collecting of personal information even though that information is not needed for the application. The advertisers demand it because of ad targeting.
- The customer is slowly shifting from the user of the application to the advertisers. This causes the programming to optimize for where ‘best’ to show the ad in order to get the most attention. How often do they show the ads to get engagement? How annoying could they make the ads in order to drive the users to subscribe, or delete the app and look for alternatives.
This is my call to action
- For your favorite free app, free application, find out how to pay the programmer directly. Example: I use KeePassXC to securely generate and store my passwords. I use it multiple times a day, I pay $1 / month to keep the software in active development.
- Pay the subscription tier if your application allows for it.
- Find alternatives to applications that are ads driven businesses, because your attention and time is being sold to advertising companies.
-
This idea from Google is currently under limited available release. Learn more at https://whats.new/
.new is a domain extension exclusively for performing new actions online: any act that leads to creation can have a quick and memorable .new shortcut associated with it. Help your customers take action faster. Less time clicking means more time creating. -
- Do one thing at a time, turn off notifications
- Saying no to almost everything, pretend if the ask is for tomorrow, would you say yes?
- Turn off email notifications
- Switch to paper
- Getting outside
- Every meeting tends to fill the time allocation, push to finish early
- Carving out alone time
- Read books to be exposed to different topics
- Opt out selectively on news
Listen here
After Hours: Healthcare Companies We’re Watching, and Productivity Hacks
https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/03/healthcare-companies-were-watching-and-productivity-hacks
-
About Facebook
Nor does she mince words when taking on one behemoth in particular. “I hate it,” she writes. “The company is one of the biggest mistakes in modern history, a digital cesspool that, while calamitous when it fails, is at its most dangerous when it works as intended. Facebook is an ant farm of humanity.”
-
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-coronaviruses23 February 2020 | Q&A
Protection measures for everyone
Stay aware of the latest information on the COVID-19 outbreak, available on the WHO website and through your national and local public health authority. COVID-19 is still affecting mostly people in China with some outbreaks in other countries. Most people who become infected experience mild illness and recover, but it can be more severe for others. Take care of your health and protect others by doing the following:
- Regularly and thoroughly clean your hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or wash them with soap and water.
Why? Washing your hands with soap and water or using alcohol-based hand rub kills viruses that may be on your hands. - Maintain at least 1 metre (3 feet) distance between yourself and anyone who is coughing or sneezing.
Why? When someone coughs or sneezes they spray small liquid droplets from their nose or mouth which may contain virus. If you are too close, you can breathe in the droplets, including the COVID-19 virus if the person coughing has the disease. - Avoid touching eyes, nose and mouth.
Why? Hands touch many surfaces and can pick up viruses. Once contaminated, hands can transfer the virus to your eyes, nose or mouth. From there, the virus can enter your body and can make you sick. - Make sure you, and the people around you, follow good respiratory hygiene. This means covering your mouth and nose with your bent elbow or tissue when you cough or sneeze. Then dispose of the used tissue immediately.
Why? Droplets spread virus. By following good respiratory hygiene you protect the people around you from viruses such as cold, flu and COVID-19. - Stay home if you feel unwell. If you have a fever, cough and difficulty breathing, seek medical attention and call in advance. Follow the directions of your local health authority.
Why? National and local authorities will have the most up to date information on the situation in your area. Calling in advance will allow your health care provider to quickly direct you to the right health facility. This will also protect you and help prevent spread of viruses and other infections. - Stay informed on the latest developments about COVID-19. Follow advice given by your healthcare provider, your national and local public health authority or your employer on how to protect yourself and others from COVID-19.
Why? National and local authorities will have the most up to date information on whether COVID-19 is spreading in your area. They are best placed to advise on what people in your area should be doing to protect themselves.
Protection measures for persons who are in or have recently visited (past 14 days) areas where COVID-19 is spreading
- Follow the guidance outlined above. (Protection measures for everyone)
- Stay at home if you begin to feel unwell, even with mild symptoms such as headache and slight runny nose, until you recover.
Why? Avoiding contact with others and visits to medical facilities will allow these facilities to operate more effectively and help protect you and others from possible COVID-19 and other viruses.
- If you develop fever, cough and difficulty breathing, seek medical advice promptly as this may be due to a respiratory infection or other serious condition. Call in advance and tell your provider of any recent travel or contact with travelers.
Why? Calling in advance will allow your health care provider to quickly direct you to the right health facility. This will also help to prevent possible spread of COVID-19 and other viruses.
People with no respiratory symptoms, such as cough, do not need to wear a medical mask. WHO recommends the use of masks for people who have symptoms of COVID-19 and for those caring for individuals who have symptoms, such as cough and fever. The use of masks is crucial for health workers and people who are taking care of someone (at home or in a health care facility).
WHO advises rational use of medical masks to avoid unnecessary wastage of precious resources and mis-use of masks (see Advice on the use of masks). Use a mask only if you have respiratory symptoms (coughing or sneezing), have suspected COVID-19 infection with mild symptoms, or are caring for someone with suspected COVID-19 infection. A suspected COVID-19 infection is linked to travel in areas where cases have been reported, or close contact with someone who has travelled in these areas and has become ill.
The most effective ways to protect yourself and others against COVID-19 are to frequently clean your hands, cover your cough with the bend of elbow or tissue and maintain a distance of at least 1 meter (3 feet) from people who are coughing or sneezing. For more information, see basic protective measures against the new coronavirus.
- Regularly and thoroughly clean your hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or wash them with soap and water.
-
Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you would rather have talked. – Mark Twain
-
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
-
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
-
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/
-
Leave things better than you found it. Do no harm. Persistence. About
Tosh Hall
Global CCOClose 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 Times and The Wall Street Journal. After receiving his BA in economics and journalism from UNC Chapel Hill, he worked for Revlon and Landor Associates.
Tosh teaches at the School of Visual Arts and lectures worldwide. He was recently named one of the 50 ‘Most Creative People‘ by AdAge.
-
I have started to notice more physical book reading on Muni.
-
“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.
-
“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 flooded with responses from people wanting to tell the stories of their clans.
This photo essay spotlights six “native” San Francisco households who have some special stories to share. The word native is in quotes, though, because even within these groups, the original homesteaders initially arrived here from another city or country. But they all are proud to call San Francisco home.” – The Bold Italic Editors
-
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 deeper and learn more about here guests later on.
-
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
-
Grow 1% a day, start with free resources from SF Library (or your local library)
Start reading this blog article.
-
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 about what I learned about contributing code to open sourced software, bug me if you are interested.
Interesting Facts About The Podcast Ecosystem
- The entire ecosystem revolves around the iTunes store for Podcasts.
- Most podcasts apps (both iOS and Android) uses the iTunes top podcast directory and iTunes search API interface to discover and find podcasts. If your podcast is not listed on iTunes, you will not get found. So most podcast publishers will always list their podcast on iTunes first.
- iTunes has a podcastsconnect.apple.com for publishers to register their podcasts. Here is where Apple mandates the publisher to add in <itunes:explicit> <itunes:summary> and <itunes:category> tags. Which helps them with the next step in building a nicely categorized genre direcetory
- Apple has built a very useful directory of podcasts by country using 112 categories. {US, China, Germany .. etc}
- Apple provides a toppodcast API for mobile apps to build a browser interface for users to discover podcast by genre. Want to see the top travel podcasts? https://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/toppodcasts/limit=100/explicit=true/genre=1320/xml
- genre=1320 the Places and Travel category in all countries (China Places & Travel as an example by changing the url to ‘/cn/’)
- Most podcasts apps (both iOS and Android) uses the iTunes top podcast directory and iTunes search API interface to discover and find podcasts. If your podcast is not listed on iTunes, you will not get found. So most podcast publishers will always list their podcast on iTunes first.
- I worked at Yahoo News for 16 years as well as My Yahoo. Back in the 1999-2005 times, most news agencies published their full story or new snippets in the RSS format in order to be aggregated by Yahoo sites. RSS is simple and ubiquitous. Still used for syndicating all blog articles and all podcasts around the world. Learn more here on wikipedia.
- There are 892,254 podcasts around the world. 59,198,524 episodes. [ref listennotes.com]
- There are other companies out there trying to get into the market. Google gave up on podcasts but had since launched a default podcast player and a podcast store. Spodify is also recognizing this is a nascent ecosystem and has built in podcast into their app and has bought two podcast publishing brands to create premium podcasts.
- There is a podcast about the podcast ecosystem, podnews.net. Roughly 3 minute per episode and a very good website if you wanted to get into the learning more about the industry.
- The largest mobile app out there? The jury is still out , checkout this 2020 article comparing the market share as reported by Chartable, Lybsyn and MiDia [ref].
- RSS is one of the great equalizers. It’s simple enough for a one man shop [ref] [ref] to build a search engine. It doesn’t not need another aggregator, even though iTunes currently plays that role. It’s extensible enough to support future needs such as better categorization, metadata, monetization, automated ads, subscription, protected feeds.
- Why do podcast hosts always say “Please rate us on iTunes, it will help us get discover.”? It’s because there is no other central store for ratings and most importantly, it leads to discovery. Even though Android is 70% of the world of mobile phones. Google has given up on this growing marketplace and now it’s trying to come back into it.
- I very optimistic about the future of podcasting and the creators. I subscribe to 150+ podcasts and I love learning from very different perspectives from the hosts and most importantly the guests. I’ve started to contribute software code in order to continue to learn about the podcast ecosystem from the perspective of a Android mobile app.
- What I learn while contributing code [pull requests | issues]
- Chapter markers in the MP4 streams. Are a thing in Germany but because most podcast clients don’t show and honor it, most US podcasters (90%) don’t add chapter markers. See my pull request here.
- Thinking truly globally and thinking about accessibility looking at geo-location and language is important for non-US growth. Look at this bug I’m fixing in AntennaPod.
- Even though of iTunes has a global directory, for every language and country many apps don’t provide a seamless experience for non-US. This is an opportunity to create better user experience across the world. See my fix to add browsing by country and genre here to AntennaPod
As Mary Meeker writes in her 2019 State of the Internet report, page 50, Podcast Listeners will grow 2x in four years from the base of 70MM.
- The entire ecosystem revolves around the iTunes store for Podcasts.
-
“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 good idea when you first proposed it, then it’s worthwhile to push forward. We should be able to tie the impact of our work to our own pride in the projects we create, the people who benefit directly from our work. We should not seek the validation of others ‘above’ the food chain.
-
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 I’ll be Kind” and “Tomorrow I’ll be brave”
Follow up
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Hische and her work on “Don’t Fear the Internet” and Skillshare courses.
case, Typographic Artisans” -
This is free and a huge perk from our government to pull your credit report (without a score) https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action
-
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.
-
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.
-
While listening to a podcast about the child free life (not childless life), a reminder that there is no script for life.
-
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 many episodes to download
- Find and add podcasts by name and by RSS URL
- Build playlists automatically
Reason 1: You can map the bluetooth next button to skip over 30 seconds of advertising. When you are driving or using your headset, this is a MUST have.
Reason 2: Map the bluetooth prev button to skip to end and remove the podcast for episodes that you have no interest in. When you are driving or using your headset, this is a MUST have.
Reason 3: Mark episodes as favorites so you can go back and listen, you can interact with description with show notes and links inside the notes.
-
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! -
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
- Episode feed: Stay Tuned with Preet – http://feeds.wnyc.org/preetbharara
-
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 live theater show in the Mission. I was inspired by passionate people who go out on a limb.
Tuesday – Taro smoothie with red bean mixed it, coffee at South Park cafe
Wednesday – Playing badminton with my sfbadminton.org group of friends.
Thursday – Pastries at Jane bakery
Friday – Bopomofo in L.A. to check out the cafe opened my one of the founder of WongFu production.
Saturday – Dim Sum with family in San Diego, morning pumpkin bread and taro red bean in Atlas World Market
-
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 is the same, fonts are consistent.
Problems Pocket solves for me:
- Ads from online articles
- Different formating and color on every news, blog site
- Unwanted non-ads content promotions on top, side and bottom
- Content I want to read, shared with me, but not organized in one place
- I want to read content later, non-synchronous to the time when it was shared tome
- Listen to text content via audio when I’m driving, doing dishes or sweeping leaves
Flow:
Get a link (mobile or desktop) ->
Share to Pocket ->
Read now on Pocket or read it later ->
ArchiveGet a link (mobile or desktop) ->
Share to Pocket ->
Listen to the text via audio ->
ArchiveHere is a quick video.
-
Unfortunately, the business model of selling ads drives the wrong decision for your users.
-
“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 led to workers being pushed harder and also their privacy getting violated.”
-
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
-
Where we spend our time and money reflect our true priorities. I have decided to support Asian American creators (artists, singles, podcast creators, etc) through Patreon.
If you have not heard of Patreon (it’s a play on the word Patron). It’s an online platform to provide a money payment to creators so that they have a predictable monthly income in exchange for exclusive content . It’s a platform for the the most die hard fans to support the artists who give them joy.
Asian American Artists on Patreon
Wong Fu Productions – https://www.patreon.com/wongfuproductions
They are the OG of You Tube videos by Asian Americans for Asian Americans. they create shorts, films and web series. A lot of artists got their start as Wong Fu interns or employees! From Patreon: When we first started Wong Fu Productions, we had no expectations. We weren’t expecting to be well known or popular. We weren’t expecting to be role models or a voice for Asian Americans in media. We weren’t even expecting to get paid!
A lot has changed since those simple days in the mid-2000s. Most for the better! We’ve created hundreds of videos that have touched millions of peoples’ lives around the world.
Kina Grannis – https://www.patreon.com/kinagrannis
She creates videos and music and has over 1,712 patrons. She also starred in several Wong Fu videos. From Patreon: ” I think music is a magical thing. It has comforted and healed and inspired me throughout my life, and that is what I hope to do for others with the music I create. I want to connect with people and help them feel less alone (and I want them to help me feel less alone, too!). I want to bring hope and happiness to peoples lives. I want to help people feel. If this is something you believe in, something that feels important to you in some way, then this is the place where you get to be a part of all of that.“
Ross Draws – https://www.patreon.com/Rossdraws/
Ross Tran creates illustrations and engagement YouTube videos and shows you how to get better drawing digitally. From Patreon: Thanks to all of you amazing souls who have joined the adventure with us on Patreon! We’ve continued to hit goals and have blossomed into one of the most successful Art Channels in existence. We get to create super fun, educational, energy-infused Art Videos and it’s all thanks to you! I’m so honored to have many of you be part of the epic journey and this is only the beginning.
Over the year we’ve upped the production quality of the Video Demos and bringing you more exclusive content such as Merch!
Andrew Huang – https://www.patreon.com/andrewhuang
He creates a huge number of music tracks 2,000, super creative sounds! From Patreon: I’m Andrew, a producer of many songs and many videos. I post musical videos every Monday and Thursday, and by pledging $1 per week you’ll help me to keep creating new and better things. In return I’ll send you all the music I release for however long you remain a patron – usually around 100 songs a year! There are also other rewards you can find out more about on the right. You also get a lot of music right away, and three sample packs. As soon as you become a patron you’ll be taken to a page with links for Patreon-exclusive music downloads, including many of the songs from my videos plus my gigantic b-sides compilation Abandon which in itself is 1,426 tracks and 53 hours long.
ceik0 – https://www.patreon.com/ceik0
This artist built her brand on Instagram @ceik0 drawing and selling BTS pins, posters, key chains and many more engagement. She is a college student in MA. From her page: “Hi, I’m Cate! I’m an (aspiring) artist and full-time college student currently based in Massachusetts. I sell pins, charms, prints, and stickers at my shop, and I post drawings and updates to my Instagram. The products I create are mainly BTS-inspired— they’ve been such a positive influence on me both artistically and personally, and drawing is my outlet for that happiness and motivation!“
Alex Wong – https://www.patreon.com/Alexwongsounds
He creates stories through music. Very engaging artist in sound and singer.
From Patreon: I started this page two years ago as a way to open a window into the process of making my second solo album, The Elephant and the Seahorse. It was amazing to get to interact with my patrons during the creative process because I love when art is a conversation and not just a monologue. What I didn’t expect was how much that conversation would change my whole approach to creating! Knowing that I was sharing my new, unpolished creations with a community of people who were actively listening, rather than just throwing them into the abyss of the internet and hoping for a like or two, motivated me to create more freely and boldly than I ever thought possible. It even inspired me to start creating WITH MY PATRONS, as we did in the video for The Quiet Voice (above).
Minji Chang – https://www.patreon.com/firstofallpodcast
She is the host of the First All Podcast. From Patreon:
Thanks so much for stopping by! My name is Minji Chang, host of First Of All, your weekly podcast snack for your soul.
First Of All is a real, unfiltered conversation on career, family, love, & modern culture. As your host, I’ll be bringing in my friends & special guests from all walks of life to kick back in my virtual living room. Together we’ll laugh (warning, I’m loud), cry (it’s okay, let it out), drop whatever knowledge we have, & speak our truth on weekly featured topics plus a special advice segment called IMO (In My Opinion) addressing questions from you, our beloved listeners. Get ready for good times & all the feels.
-
On the N inbound. You can see Oakland across the bay.
-
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. I hear the same advice from many 60+ year olds. And now I’m slowing to “get it”
-
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.
-
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 to be willing to listen to another opinion. Diversity of opinion, recognizing that there is another perspective and be willing to listen.
Be able to talk about a topic and deep dive.
When answering a question, I will continue to push you to explain or expand deeper. I want to discover how deep you know a subject matter.
Know how to communicate which means listening
I will let you talk and respond for as long as you want, in the meantime I am looking for how long you talk non stop before checking in and see if you have answered my questions. Part of communication is listening.
-
Spider taken with Moment Lens and processed with Snapseed 
Original unprocessed -
SF FD Fire Yydrant -
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
-
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.
-
SOMA changing fast
-
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.”
-
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 in the design of every aspect of the library really pushed the limits of what a public library could be.
- The library creates a space for a book lover to meet with their community, read books, hang out and look out.
-
How Payal Kadakia Danced Her Way to a $600 Million Start-Up https://nyti.ms/2KCHzQH
-
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 rate? How do we overcome the boundaries of timezone, physical location, and organization rigidity in order to create the most innovative products and solutions for our customers?
After working on Engineering Productivity at Splunk for the last 3 years, I struggled to understand WHY I chose which projects I devote time and attention to. There was a common thread, there was something there to the madness.
The list of seemly random efforts all have some type of common theme that my beloved wife, Katherine point out this weekend when I ask her for her always piercingly accurate perspective.
Here is the laundry list of random efforts:
- GO URL Shortner – Community bookmarking
- Founding Engineer bootcamp – 6 hours of hands on workshops
- Founding #weekly-tech-talks – weekly tech talks for thousands of engineers
- Starting engineering book of the quarter – 2 books per quarter to every engineer
- Founding Friday Tips – Weekly technical tips from Tony’s perspective
- Starting #ama-[any person] and starting the first #ama-with-VP-eng
- Voice Of The Customer – Bring in customers to talk to engineers about use cases
- Founding and participated in numerous Slack communities (#bookclubs, #coffee-geeks, #badminton, #women-in-tech, #hackathons, #women-engineers, #noob-splunk-eng)
- Mentoring 8+ engineers (7 female engineers and 1 male) – Intentional choice
- Writing technical documentation on how to get things done
- Tools to enable engineers to publish, write more docs and be found
- Answering questions on Slack
- Founding of impactfulengineer.org – Inspiring Engineers Through Interviews With Engineering Leaders
- #eng-blog – public Splunk Engineering blog
- Bringing in world-renowned technical speakers
- Helping with really random questions from engineers (helping to advocate for a East Bay shuttle from Dublin to San Francisco)
In my next post, I will try to talk about the common themes I have identified
- Building Communities
- Working and Thinking In Open
- Continuous Learning & Growth Mindset
- Amplify and Leverage
- Diversity Leads To The Best Solutions
- Breaking Down The Silos
-
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 certain number of days? Do you contact the candidate directly, or always let the recruiter do it?
2) In the resume review, what assumptions do you make? Do you assume that you have biases, the resume may not present the candidate perfectly? Whose time do you optimize for? Meaning, would you rather cast a wider net and have your screeners pick out the candidate from the phone screen?
3) Each part of our funnel (resume review, technical phone screen, recruiter phone screen) what are we optimizing for?
4) When we are hiring for a single position, do we keep the hiring panel the same so we can easily calibrate? Who are our best interviewers, and why are they good?
5) For the interview panel, which managers make you feel your time is well spent? And why? Is it because they set the expectations, they give you good questions to ask? Does the hiring manager have good follow up, clear decision-making process on whether they move forward with a candidate?
6) Finally, within our own company, who has gotten this hiring pipeline down to a science and doing it really well? (and how do we know when we are doing a good job for ourselves and for the candidate applying?)
7)
-
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 thinking and discussing the topics at hand. Functionally, they are based around a “Table Read” that everyone at the meeting reads silently, comments in and then discusses. An assigned facilitator leads the comment synthesis and discussion to ensure the meeting is valuable.
-
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.
-
We do not have to conform to the norms of bread winners.
We can communicate our weaknesses to our children, show vulnerability and strength.
-
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 precisely to gain a lifelong commercial advantage for their children in the form of a degree from an elite university,” Rosen wrote. “And the defendant, too, benefited, insofar as the bribes were paid, at his direction, to a fund he controlled, which benefited the team he managed, and thus enhanced his standing within the university and his career — all of which he has admitted.”
- SF Chronicle: Elizabeth Warren can win the democratic nomination! – At least she has a plan!
- NYTimes: A Mother Takes On the Gun Lobby
-
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 the wages get to minimum wage
Drivers are 4 times more price sensitive than riders, a resonable guess is that 80 percent of the price burden will fall on passengers, 20 percent on drivers.
-
Spoiler Alert, the answer is No.
-
(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 expert who is credited with coining the term.
-
I found this article funny and warm.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-car-phones.html
-
I geeked out listening to this podcast following along the career of the creator of one of most successful compiler platform LLVM.
-
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 look, the book club has over 250K users on Good Reads.
From her list of books recommended in the book club, I ‘ve put this book on my library hold list “Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race”
-
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.
-
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/
-
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 book to help us in our craft?
-
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 drawbacks with all of these systems are:
- Once the number of notes gets very high (~2,000) when trying to find records and grouping them is hard, and I have to learn the way each of the tools group notes.
- If I wanted to add related things to the note (images, presentations), I’m at the mercy of one of these tools (whether they handle it well)
- Finding the records again, it’s a hit or miss with these tools
I was recently inspired by the creator of Wolfram, where he creates all his artifacts right in his Unix file system, and he maintains 3 major versions of how he layout his folder structure as he learns to get better.
So, here is my new method:
- I created a directory structure that matches my life + work. So starts with 3 directories at the high level `Personal,` , `Work` ,`To Organize`
- I have this directory synced via Google Drive
- When I need to take a note, I create a file in VSCode and start taking notes (mostly look like Markdown, but not 100%)
- When I’m done, I’ll do some cleanup and maybe format it in Markdown and put it into a folder under `Personal`, `Work`, `To Organize`, I try to keep the depth of folders to be under 3
- If I have pdf, images presentations, I add them into the folder with the notes. Each note, try to name it `0 README.md` so the file would appear first (edited)
Some other notes
I do not tag, I did that a lot in Evernote, but I find it not very useful 1-2 years later.
Lastly, I don’t know how this will work once I have 2,000 notes. I’m relying on the fact that I can use Unix search as well as VSCode search.VSCode is optional, any text editor would work fine in this scheme.
I can also rely on Google Drive search if needed.I’m assuming I can optimize search via many other on disk/folder searching tool
-
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 kids of her good friend.
I am 48 years old now, and I learned my mistakes. I know who I do not want to be.
-
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 listen and help them achieve their goals.
- I help people, listen to what they are looking for, deliver what I promise quickly and with quality. They reciprocate many months later, much more than I give them with direct access, confidential information that helps me and most importantly they speaker highly of me when I’m not there.
- I contribute to groups where I’m not even asked. In return, people give me feedback whenever I asked them.
What did I learn?
- Empathy goes a very long way, putting ourselves in the shoes of others.
- Don’t say no immediately. Don’t do the easy thing and push back *every time*.
- Listen, ask clarifying questions until I hit the nail on the head, then move as quickly as possible to deliver value.
- Build trust, everything is easier after that.
-
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”
-
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.
-
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 by asking them — they themselves don’t necessarily know. What matters, in the end, is what they pay for goods, not what they say they “think” about them, or the various possible reasons they give you or themselves for that.”
Also on page 217: “”This is why I have been against the state dictating to us what we “should” be doing: only evolution knows if the “Wrong” thing is really wrong, provided there is skin in the game to allow for selection”
Also on page 217: “Recall that skin in the game means that you do not pay attention to what people say, only to what they do, and to how much of their necks they are putting on the line. Let survival work it’s wonders.”
Page 218 “To repeat, we do not have enough grounds to discuss “irrational beliefs.” We do with irrational actions”
So much good quotes: page 219: “There is a difference between beliefs that are decorative and different sorts of beliefs, those that map to action”
Also. On Page 219 “How much you truly “believe” kin something can be manifested only through what you are willing to risk for i”
Page 221″ “Rationality does not depend on explicit verbals tic explanatory factors; it is only what AIDS survival, what avoids ruin.”
Page 221: “Not everything that happens happens for a reason, but everything that survives survives for a reason”
-
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 in opposition with my work, in which I have to interact with almost every engineers at my company. I enjoy one on one interactions, or even one to two. I find that we can exchange and learn from each other. These learnings usually can be translated down on paper and be applied more broadly.
This week, I’ve also made a decision in my career to focus on being an individual contributor and not pursue engineering management. Being an IC gives me energy. Being a manager to only a few people gives me energy.
(Again, this blog is for me, not for you )
-
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 trust through many small acts. Once the trust is there, then the conversation can start about change. Trust is in credibility difficult to build especially with people who you don’t work with daily. So give it time and patience.
Start with trust, then move to step 1 and step 2. That’s it, this is short, I know. It’s for me, not for you. -
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 working on that doesn’t advance my goal of working on the “very next most important thing for my customers?”
Next phase, “What is missing, what don’t I see?”
-
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.
I flipped through the index and found all the references and I do agree with most of his criticism of Obama. I think his greatest achievement is getting universal health care, but his greatest fail is leaving us with a much divided nation which allows someone like Trump to be president. Making a fortune off of a memoir (his and Michelle’s) … I don’t really know what to make of that.
pg 12: “complicit Obama administration that wanted to protect the game and the rent-seeking bankers”
pg 108: “I said in the Prologue 1 that the Obama administration was complicit with the Bob Rubin trade. We have plenty of evidence that they were afraid of rocking the boat and contradicting the cronies”
pg 138: “When, on leaving office, Barack Obama accepted a sum of more than $40 million to write his memoirs, many people were outraged”
pg 156: “Actually, the best actor is the one nobody realizes is an actor: a closer look at Barack Obama shows that he was even more of an actor: a fancy Ivy League education combined with a liberal reputation is compelling as an image builder”
-
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 book making and color separation from his watching his parents. At an young age, he was able to do color separation, which really made him stand out in the school newspaper and in his first internship or job. His interview reminded me of how important it is to ask for something you want, even though you might night have 100% of the skill to do it. (I know it’s random)
Give this episode a listen https://designobserver.com/feature/scott-stowell/36778
-
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!
-
Everyone needs maker time at work.
Otherwise either you work more at home, or you often feel unaccomplished.
My maker time is about 60%.
-
(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 thing X?
Oh, that’s interesting you do it this X way. I always thought people doing it the Y way.
-
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.
-
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 to achieve, while knowing we will not get there.
-
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 reading commitment, I was able to deeply read the first 2 postcards. The first was about tracking how often they check the time (watch, computer, phones, laptops, hearing it). Each of the author created vastly different ways to represent the data. Giorgia uses different tick marks, with annotation and group the data vertically in columns. Stefanie uses a dial format like a clock using the distance from the center to represent the days of the week.
Each method has it’s pros an cons, depending on the question one wants to answer. Visually, I could tell that Stefanie spent a lot of time checking the time in her car in the beginning of week and end because she was traveling? For Giorgia, Thursday was a light day in clock watching. Mornings and noon time in the later end of the week was not clock watching.
-
When there are stakeholders, there is a deadline and you are uniquely capable to do it.
-
(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 getting started guides written on wiki pages.
- the same engineer running 2 hour bootcamp every other week, and 6 hour bootcamp every other week.
- same engineer managing developer compilation farms
- a principal engineer developing deep learning courses, coding styles, prototyping common tools, writing doxygen documentation inline to help hundreds of engineers learn our code base better
- nifty tools used by engineers daily (url shorteners, license key servers, documentation servers, common docker image build)
- Friday tips written for developers to get stuff done
- Weekly tech talks series (ML, Internal)
- Piloting apprenticeship programs to bring non-traditional CS programs
- Managing learning paths
- Managing Saucelabs relationships
- Prototyping tools to learn more about the pull request data
- Managing mentorship programs for women in tech, as well as company wide mentorship, helping with deep and focused mentorship programs
- Running area mentorship programs
- Recording and distributing other deep dive technical talks
- Engaging with Learning and Development to work on learning initiatives for engineers.
Tony Tam 