New Favorite Running Route In SF - Tony Tam

New Favorite Running Route In SF

April 23rd, 2005

I’m sorry to say, Google Maps satellite view is really cool

Today’s long run is my favorite route yet. California Street has 2 huge hills that made me really fall in love with SF as a running city. Just as my legs were burning from running uphill, the switch comes and I get a nice smooth downhill. The old victorians is a nice distraction, then all the little stores along the entire route really provided an incentive to keep on running.

Here is route:
1. Folsom & 4th to Ellis and Van Ness 0.1
2. to Arguello Blvd & Geary 2.2
3. to Arguello Blvd. & California 0.3
4. to California & Arguello 3.2
5. to 4th & Mission 0.8 miles

Log: 6.6 miles

Stores to check out later: Arch Rival (running store), 24 hours Cala foods, Whole Foods on California, the victorians along California, Crepe and Coffe

Prev. Running Tag.San Francisco
Who Wakes Up The Earliest In Downtown SF?

April 19th, 2005

I started running today at 5:20am down Ellis and Polk and to my surprise the prostitutes were already awake and working. I saw a total of eight along my run. When I ran back from Union and Polk one of the girls already got into a Taxi yelling her destination to the other girls. I guess it’s a safety thing. Then 30 seconds later I saw a police car drive by, pretty much ignoring the situation.

At around 6:00am the drug dealers ( or I thought they were ) were waking up.

Then 6:15am, the conventions goers were waking up, probably because they couldn’t sleep or for their free continental breakfast at 7:00am

The homeless were still asleep.

In summary, the hardest working bunch were the girls. It’s really kinda sad. I thought prostitution was illegal except in Las Vegas?

Log: 4.4 Miles
Running: Trails Of Castro

April 17th, 2005

One guy at Best Buy asked me what I did for fun on the weekend, I said I ran for fun. I run because I can run and the longer I run the happier I am.

Saturday I did my 6 mile training route to russian hills, along battery street and back to yerba brena gardens. It was a very early run at 5:00 am and I got kinda lost and hungry. Thank goodness for Starbucks.

On Sunday I was just going to do an easy 4 mile run to mission dolores but I ended up running to portola (near twin peaks) for a 8 mile run. The view from twin peaks is the best view in the city.. I ended up doing 200 of my 1000 pushups on the overpass on portola. I’m kinda crazy, I know. Castro street has some very cool shops. The gay community has good tastes in clothes and furniture.

Log: 2005/04/16 North Beach 4 miles
Log: 2005/04/17 Twin Peaks 8.2 miles
Log: 2005/04/18 1.2 miles Lafayette
Log: 2005/04/19 Russian Hils 4.2 miles
Log: 2005/04/21 4.0 miles on treadmill
Chest muscles have healed, pushups, pushups come to me

April 12th, 2005

It’s back, the pushup craze. My muscles have healed like I thought it would after the last fiasco when I torned my muscles. Here is a more sane version of 1,000 pushup in 24 hours, d0ing 50 reps and spread it over time. This time I didn’t tear the muscles. Next milestone : 1,500
Running routes over the weekend

April 11th, 2005

Over the weekend I was feeling down. Ran to Coit Tower twice following the north beach route.

On Saturday morning I ran there once, the hill was a challenge. Then on Sunday morning I ran around downtown. on Sunday night I was insomniac and I started running around 4:00am, very creepy along the trail going up to the tower.

I think I’ll die one day while running, but god it feels good to not be tired.
What I Want For Yahoo! News

March 24th, 2005
Yahoo! News is among the top 3 news web sites in the world competing
with CNN and MSNBC for the #1 spot. It’s a pretty simple and
barebones web site operating with a small team of engineers and
editors. The goal is to partner with the major news wire service
as well as some big name news publishers to build a news web site that host news content and provide an integrate experience for end users.

It’s been a while since Yahoo! New has changed, here is what I want it to do.
1. Never have a dead end, when a user finishes reading a story or photo give them something to do, something else to consume. Think couch potatoe, think Tivo, passive consumption of stories and photos
2. Make navigation easier and more intuitive, don’t make users hit
  the back button if they want to read thru a list of headlines in a
  certain category
3. Don’t force the users to see what they don’t want to see, allow
  options for users to get rid of content to make the page to their
  liking
4. Different version of the news site for different devices. Here are my priorities
5. Palm Treo 650 version (cause I have one)
6. Maybe do lots of javascript to allow for client side optimization and navigation
7. Palm Treo 600 version
8. Get a Treo 650
9. WML version (cause people tell me it’s the largest instal base of internet phones)
10. Very fast loading with just headlines? How to navigate better so there is not delay ongoing back and forth? Maybe show more data in one burst and less back and forth.. Decrease the number of headlines as you read..
11. Mac version. Skinnable version in iTunes look?
12. SBC DSL version
13. 2-3 images, larger size. Offer super size photo? How about flash version ofthe slideshow. Prev and Next are actual thumbs
14. User categorization and bookmarking
15. bookmark urls, add tags, see other tagged articles, show my ratings & tags as RSS feeds, see other people feeds as rss
16. PDF version of the site for people to print and share. Maybe even skinnable PDF versions for $0.10 a pop?
Paris Running: St Germain

March 23rd, 2005

Paris is the perfect city to run. Lots of walkways, interesting buildings, lots of street lights for night running.

First day in Paris, trying to beat the jet lag and Angie was running out of coffee beans and need some to go with pain au chocolat and her fruit pies. At 9:30pm on a Sunday I was telling her not to expect much cause stores usually close at 8:00pm

3.5 km From our apartment at 166 Suffren, ran to Eiffel Tower, then to Trocadero for some
late night tourist crepes.
2.5 km Then along the Seine to Place de la Concorde
2.5 km Turn right on a small yellow and red lit bridge over to the left bank and run along Blvd. St. Germain
Right turn to Jardin Du Luxembourg There we go, a small store that is opened at
10:30pm, bought some ground coffee (St.Placide metro station)
0.7km Turn right again on Rue Vaugirard
2.0km My heart finally felt in groove, up the pace and run back to 166 Suffren

Log: 11.2 km / 1.6 == 7 miles

Loving these shoes
Can You Think Like A Computer?

February 18th, 2005

I’ve been working in the computer industry for 12 years now. I get a lot of requests throughout the day with people asking me to troubleshoot technical issues they they are stumbling with. Most of these are troubleshooting issues such as why can’t I login from one place to another.. Why doesn’t this work? 99% of the time I can help them with it.

This got me thinking why it’s comes so easy to me when I troubleshoot problems. I realize that it’s because I think like a machine. I actually imagine myself in the machine doing what the machine is doing.. Why I might be failing.. I follow step by step what the machine is trying to do, and I arrive at the obvious reasons why certain things are not working.

Machines are stupid creatures, very very stupid. It’s easy to follow their simple brains.
Chez Karine: Software Engineer Turned Chef : lend your support

December 4th, 2004
First there was Cynthia At Furenzu and now George has a friend at Chez Karine. A tiny trend: Women software engineers turn chefs!

I dropped by with Kate to say hi and spend some holiday cash. Wow! I was knocked off my feet!

My first taste was the Sablés Chocolat which was bittersweet chocolates with hint of fleur de sel, yeah salt with your chocolates! I couldn’t stop eating it and wanting to taste the salt again.

To validate that this is indee a new trend in chocolates: check out the NPR interview : Savoring Salt and Chocolate with the Award Winner 2005 NASFT Outstanding Confection, Milk Smoked Salt Caramels with Welsh smoked sea salt

I picked up a few pastries yesterday and every one of these gems were amazing. If you have a holiday party, contact Karen and place an order from her Fall 2005 Menu Don’t buy your dessert from the standard bakeries.
1. Support your software engineer and independent chef
2. your guests will be impressed by the presentation and flavors of these desserts
3. You will have a connection to an amazing chef and get to sample her creations for years to come