Tony Tam: Recent Episodes
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Dear Cate,
Upon graduation, I was asked what I was feeling. Was I a relieved, proud father? None of those! I saw you transitioning gradually into a confident, thoughtful woman who brighten up when she is creating.
Whether it is writing, drawing, animating and yes, god forbid, even coding!
My hope for you is to trust your instincts, lean on the words of your teachers and mentors, your friends and your believe in your talents and ability to do the hard work.
Create, my daughter! The world is full of cookie cutters, full of 9 to 5, we don’t need you in that world. We need you to be brave, struggle and bring your creation to live.
Loving you from the day when you were born, proud of the woman you have blossom into, in awe of your creativity.
Dad
First year.
I’m 8 months into early retirement and the words I would use to describe this experiment is satisfying and normal. It has been satisfying because I’m able to spending the precious time I have left on things that are meaningful to me. This could be
- time just hanging out with my wonderful wife
- time spent exercising with tennis matches
- time learning how to build a neighborhood book exchange
- time learning how to fix 20 foot long ceiling cracks
- time contributing to open source to add transcripts to my favorite podcast app, AntennaPod
- time spending outside gardening
- time painting a deck so it won’t deteriorate
- time traveling with my in laws in France just to hang out and learn more about each other
- time taking classes at San Francisco State University for my Master of Education degree
What I have noticed is that I’m not spending time on zoom dealing with non-sense in the corporate world. I do not miss my corporate high tech world where 80% of my time is in meetings or responding to emails and Slack. I love engineering, building, creating.. give me more of that in this next phase of my life.
Retirement has felt normal because I don’t feel the guilt of not contributing to society. I have done my part of walking on the expected path, worked for 30 years, raised a wonderful daughter who is about to graduate from college. that has been fulfilling, but this is the phase of my life for something different; something where time becomes the most valuable asset. I am willing to trade money for time.
WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-models-gave-up-photoshoots-to-sell-their-ai-likenesses-9bfef6a1
A possible way to earn passive income, it’s great that the human gets to approve each campaign.
Platforms like AI Fashion give models an opportunity to appear in paid campaigns just by providing old images of themselves and letting AI do the rest
This morning, it was time to take care of the staircase that looks worn down and on the verge of breaking down.
- Sand down the old paint
- Prime
- Paint
- Done
PrimedPainted
During my morning walk around the backyard, I saw this bird nest inside of the lychee tree I planted last fall.
It is very easy to forget to appreciate the beauty of this place we call our new home and the wonders of life (plant and animal) that wakes us up at 6am each morning.
Podnews offers a good overview of what is happening in the Podcasting transcript world.
https://podnews.net/article/podcast-transcripts-why-and-when
I have been writing code to enable AntennaPod to display transcripts
So far these 3 PRs have been merged
- Parse the
- Parse podcast:transcript url and store in SQLite
- Download and store the transcript raw data
- download and store transcript text
- Semantically parse the transcript in SRT and JSON format
- Transcript semantic parsing
I am currently working on displaying the transcript on the currently playing episode screen
- Transcript displaying on cover fragment
From the staff of KQED Forum on Discord
- What’s one thing you’re looking forward to in 2024?
- What’s something that you did in 2023, big or small, that you’ll never forget?
- If you were given $50 million that had to be spent by December 31st this year, how would you use it?
1) in 2023, I will never forget giving myself permission to take a 2 year sabbatical from full time work to work on making things with my hands, controlling my own time instead of being tied to a corporation.
2) In 2024, I look forward to building more Neighborhood Book Exchanges with reused wood
3) With $50 million dollars, I would setup a scholarship that can sustain 100 years of giving away money to encourage immigrant kids to strive for degrees in the arts.
NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/05/business/roger-lee-layoffs.html
Roger Lee has cataloged hundreds of thousands of tech job cuts on his site Layoffs.fyi. He still believes the industry will “100 percent” bounce back.
One of the Bay Area’s best free services is tucked away in a Berkeley library
Other donation, reuse sites
- https://www.urbanfarmgirls.com/
- https://reclaimedroom.com/
- https://urbanore.com/
- https://urbanore.com/ecopark-store/
- https://www.scrap-sf.org/donatematerials
- https://www.placemakersinc.com/index.html
- https://www.placemakersinc.com/donations.html
- https://heritagesalvage.com/contact/
- https://greenlynx.net/
- https://www.creativereuse.org/donation-guidlines
- https://www.instagram.com/building_resources/
The best and worst states to retire in 2023, ranked This is based on weighted score based on affordability, healthcare, weather, well-being and crime.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/cruise-waymo-s-f-24-hour-driverless-taxi-service-18285010.php
Proud to be Asian American! The Unsung Asian American Hero Behind the Golden Gate Bridge
I’m curious whether these tools that claim to auto generate code will be able to help those who don’t have CS background. My own anecdotal evidence after trying these tools. (FYI: I have 25 years of software engineering experience). My hot take is that these tools will make engineers ~30% more productive and it will […]
When the irrigation system in my San Francisco home was leaking (as seen in this video) my initial thoughts were to hire out and have someone else fix it for me. But my tinkering brain wanted to try to fix it myself. The first problem was figuring out what the different parts of the irrigation […]
https://www.theverge.com/23795154/squarespace-ai-seo-web-social-algorithms-anthony-casalena
API Pep Talks: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome More than 80% of people experience imposter syndrome, a recurring thought pattern of self-doubt despite one’s actual accomplishments. It makes you feel like you don’t deserve to be where you are—that you don’t belong. It particularly shows up in our Asian American communities, from growing up as a perpetual foreigner to […]
Over the last year, my daughter finally wanted to get her license, hooray for a city kid finally wanting to take the step at 22. I have to say, it’s nerve-wracking the first time to take a new driver on the freeway. She drove from San Francisco to Cupertino for some Bingsu all on city […]
I’ve had this on my list for a long time, to build my own Little Free Library littlefreelibrary.org . Here is my first try at building one from all free/recycle materials.
I’m planning on taking a 6 months sabbatical and will then explore a new role. It’s time for a break after 27 years. (4 years at SGI , 16 years at Yahoo, and 7 years at Splunk). Appreciate any tips about companies, roles, or sabbatical tips that I should check out.
If I worked with you before and want to reconnect, I’m happy to hop on a quick call. https://tonytam.org/
Link
In this paper for my ITEC 830 class, I explored using PY4E to teach Python to high school age kids.
free-cs-for-all-_-py4e-python-for-everyone-finalDownload
Today while doing my favorite activity (visiting a public library), I saw that a pamphlet promoting San Francisco Tech Week 2023 is May 7-13 (ref). I noticed there was a session Javascript for Beginners organized by Mission Bit (https://www.missionbit.org/)
The San Francisco library system has been leading the way to enable every San Francisco resident to have free access to learning material, a safe physical space to hang out, a community hub and free access to state parks and local museums.
The next logical step is to partner with local non-profits to provide Free Computer Science For All. I was excited to learn more about Mission Bit. On their homepage they have an inspiring goal.
Bridging the Tech Divide : Mission Bit inspires youth of color to explore the world of STEM with project-based computer science education that embraces their identities.
They also cite a statistic that resonates with my personal mission of providing Free Computer Science For All. 98% students of color!
About: https://www.missionbit.org/about/
The team is led by Christina Ortega, as their CEO. linkedin, and a team of 9 people who help run programs to bring Computer Science to high school students.
There are 13 instructors and instructor assistants who help run their in person and remote classrooms.
What is unique is their 8 student advisory board members.
Like most non-profits, they do have a team of 10 at the board of directors.
Financial and outcomes
I reviewed their Mission Bit Annual Report 2022 and their financial statements for 2020 and 2019. It was surprising they had government contracts of $348,836. At closer look, it was the pandemic loans. Their financial report look pretty healthy in 2020, but of course Covid may have thrown a curve ball.
Mission
Mission Bit aims to inspire youth of color to explore the world of STEM with project-based computer science education that embraces their identities.
Classes (https://www.missionbit.org/classes/)
Mission Bit provides free coding classes, workshops and summer bootcamps to underserved and underrepresented communities. They also provide field trips in the bay area to make connections with the people in the tech community.
They provide semester-based coding courses to residents of San Francisco to students attending a high school site with limited to no computer science offerings.
Volunteer and Donate
For such a great cause, I have donated and signed up to join their demo day on May 12! https://lu.ma/icadtrdg
It was a good morning hike with @LatinoOutdoors and @CalNatResources #EarthWeek #EarthDay #EstamosAquí pic.twitter.com/lC6OiAnAFg
— José González (@JoseBilingue) April 24, 2023
ChatGPT: I have been a software engineer and engineering manager for over 25 years. I worked for SGI, Yahoo and Splunk. I’m currently getting master degree in eduction in ITEC from SFSU. In my new phase of my career I would like to work in the eduction space teaching computer science. On a weekly basis, can you give me some book recommendations so I can learn from how other have taught computer science to grades 6 to 13? If there are resources in sfpl.org, that would be great
Certainly! Here’s a list of book recommendations that focus on teaching computer science to students in grades 6-13. Most of these books should be available at sfpl.org, but be sure to check the availability before planning to borrow them.
Week 1: “Computer Science Illuminated” by Nell Dale and John Lewis
Week 2: “Python Crash Course: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming” by Eric Matthes
Week 3: “Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age: A Guide for Pre-Service and Early Career Educators” by Louise Starkey
Week 4: “Teaching Computational Thinking and Coding in Primary Schools” by David Morris
Week 5: “The Art of Teaching Computer Science: A Teacher’s Guide to Engaging Learners with Computational Thinking” by Rob Miles
Week 6: “Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python” by Al Sweigart
Week 7: “Web Design with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery Set” by Jon Duckett
Week 8: “Blended Learning in Action: A Practical Guide Toward Sustainable Change” by Catlin R. Tucker, Tiffany Wycoff, and Jason T. Green
Week 9: “Teaching Programming in Secondary Schools: A Practical Guide” by Viera K. Proulx and Richard Rasala
Week 10: “Code Breaker: Increase Creativity, Remix Assessment, and Develop a Class of Coder Ninjas!” by Brian Aspinall
Week 11: “Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions” by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
Week 12: “Computer Science: A Very Short Introduction” by Subrata Dasgupta
Remember that some of these books might require more than a week to go through, depending on your familiarity with the topic and your available time. Be sure to adjust your schedule accordingly. Good luck with your new career in education!
ChatGPT: I have been a software engineer and engineering manager for over 25 years. I worked for SGI, Yahoo and Splunk. I’m currently getting master degree in eduction in ITEC from SFSU. In my new phase of my career I would like to work in the eduction space teaching computer science. On a weekly basis, can you give me some book recommendations so I can learn from how other have taught computer science to K-12? If there are resources in sfpl.org, that would be great
Of course! Teaching computer science to K-12 students is a fantastic endeavor. I have compiled a list of book recommendations that focus on teaching computer science to younger audiences. Most of these books should be available at sfpl.org, but be sure to check the availability before planning to borrow them.
Week 1: “Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding” by Linda Liukas (For younger students, K-3)
Week 2: “CS Unplugged: An Introduction to Computer Science without Computers” by Tim Bell, Ian H. Witten, and Mike Fellows
Week 3: “Scratch 3.0 Programming for Kids” by Raj, S
Week 4: “Teaching with Blockly: A Guide to Integrating Block-Based Coding in the K-12 Classroom” by John R. Zdrodowski
Week 5: “Creative Coding in Python: 30+ Programming Projects in Art, Games, and More” by Sheena Vaidyanathan
Week 6: “Python for Kids: A Playful Introduction to Programming” by Jason R. Briggs
Week 7: “Super Scratch Programming Adventure!” by The LEAD Project
Week 8: “The Official ScratchJr Book: Help Your Kids Learn to Code” by Marina Umaschi Bers and Mitchel Resnick
Week 9: “Get Coding! Learn HTML, CSS & JavaScript & Build a Website, App & Game” by Young Rewired State
Week 10: “Help Your Kids with Computer Coding: A Unique Step-by-Step Visual Guide, from Binary Code to Building Games” by Carol Vorderman
Week 11: “Computer Science for Fun: A Collection of Ideas and Resources for Teaching Computer Science” by Phil Bagge
Week 12: “Teaching Coding through Game Creation” by James Shea
As you go through these books, remember that some may take more or less than a week to complete, depending on your familiarity with the topic and your available time. Adjust your schedule accordingly and enjoy your journey into teaching computer science to K-12 students!
ChatGPT: I have been a software engineer and engineering manager for over 25 years. I worked for SGI, Yahoo and Splunk. I’m currently getting master degree in eduction in ITEC from SFSU. In my new phase of my career I would like to work in the eduction space teaching computer science. On a weekly basis, can you give me some book recommendations so I can learn from how other have taught computer science? If there are resources in sfpl.org, that would be great
It’s great to see your passion for education and interest in teaching computer science! Here’s a list of book recommendations, one for each week. I’ve included a mix of pedagogical books and some computer science classics to help you build a well-rounded understanding of teaching in this field. I’ve also checked sfpl.org for availability, and most of these books should be available there. However, be sure to double-check before you plan to borrow them.
Week 1: “Computer Science: An Overview” by J. Glenn Brookshear and Dennis Brylow
Week 2: “How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python” by Peter Wentworth, Jeffrey Elkner, Allen B. Downey, and Chris Meyers
Week 3: “Teaching Computer Science: A Practical Approach” by William J. Gibbs
Week 4: “Computer Science Education: Perspectives on Teaching and Learning in School” by Sue Sentance, Erik Barendsen, and Carsten Schulte
Week 5: “Algorithms Unlocked” by Thomas H. Cormen
Week 6: “Minds and Computers: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence” by Matt Carter
Week 7: “The Art of Computer Programming” by Donald E. Knuth (This is a series of books, and you can choose one volume to start with)
Week 8: “Teaching Computer Science through Inquiry and Reflection” by Uri Wilensky and Corey Brady
Week 9: “Python Crash Course: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming” by Eric Matthes
Week 10: “Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship” by Robert C. Martin
Week 11: “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software” by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides
Week 12: “You Don’t Know JS” by Kyle Simpson (This is a series of books, and you can choose one volume to start with)
Remember that some of these books might require more than a week to go through, depending on your familiarity with the topic and your available time. Be sure to adjust your schedule accordingly. Good luck with your new career in education!
10 strange, but proven, tricks to help you focus when working from home : Fast Company – Staying focused and maintaining productivity can be difficult.
Tesla Faces a Tougher Road Ahead in China : WSJ – As rivals jostle to showcase their latest EV models, Elon Musk’s company skips the country’s biggest auto show in years
Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity : whitehouse.gov – The United States faces persistent and increasingly sophisticated malicious cyber campaigns that threaten the public sector, the private sector, and ultimately the American people’s security and privacy. The Federal Government must improve its efforts to identify, deter, protect against, detect, and respond to these actions and actors. The Federal Government must also carefully examine what occurred during any major cyber incident and apply lessons learned. But cybersecurity requires more than government action. Protecting our Nation from malicious cyber actors requires the Federal Government to partner with the private sector. The private sector must adapt to the continuously changing threat environment, ensure its products are built and operate securely, and partner with the Federal Government to foster a more secure cyberspace. In the end, the trust we place in our digital infrastructure should be proportional to how trustworthy and transparent that infrastructure is, and to the consequences we will incur if that trust is misplaced.
This is a paper as part of my Instructional Technology Masters of Education program – ITEC 830 Design of Learning Environments with Emerging Technologies – https://bulletin.sfsu.edu/courses/itec/
My Masters focus and thesis will be Free Computer Science For All
Download PDF paper
code.orgs-mission-to-enable-every-school-to-teach-computer-scienceDownload paper
With so much banana, it’s time to try some banana bread with lulo citrus.
The bread came out a bit wet, but very unique tart flavor.
Vegan Banana Bread (Healthy + Easy)
A good Saturday in Kona. Starting the day with one hour of tennis with my ball machine refining my single handed backhand at 7am at my favorite tennis club Royal Kona Tennis.
Then a visit to the Keauhou Farmer’s Market for morning coffee at White Nene Coffee, banana mac nut bread, ono fish freshly caught off the coast of Kona.
After a fun morning, I spent 4 hours taking care of my coffee, fruit, avocado orchard. Mainly dealing with the weeds and water system.
https://www.ssa.gov/news/cola/
For folks who are thinking about retirement and their future benefits, your social security benefits adjusts annually based on the cost of living. For a high inflation year like 2022, the adjustment is a whomping 8.7 percent in 2023.
Here is the full PDF from the ssa.gov website
cost-of-living-adjustment-cola-information-_-ssaDownload
I am a huge believer in Celebrate The Wins In Your Life and I’ve reminded my direct reports and mentees at work that it’s important to stop and savor the moment when they have arrived at a milestone in our long journey of work and life. These are birthdays, important anniversaries, work recognition.. etc
Over the last several years, I’ve made a transition from an individual contributor to management and I was given the opportunity to lead multiple engineering teams. While I was already doing the work, my title didn’t reflect the scope of responsibilities. In late 2022, my title officially changed to Director of Engineering of Developer Ecossytem.
The way I celebrated
Friday – treated Cate and Katherine to one of our favorite restaurants in San Francsico at Catogna
Saturday – visited my parents and sister’s family
Sunday – Omakase Japanese meal with Cate and KT
Monday – Treated myself to a big bowl of Pho
Tuesday – hot chicken sandwich at Kezar cafe
Wednsday – bought a new electric toothbrush to take care of the weakest part of my health, UTR tennis match
Thursday – dinner with Felicia and Katherine
Friday – a bonus celebration at Cybells to try out vegan pizza, UTR tennis match
Adobe’s CEO Sizes Up the State of Tech Now https://www.wsj.com/articles/adobes-ceo-sizes-up-the-state-of-tech-now-11673151167
Write a cypress.io test open the browser to Google, search for 100″ TV and click on the first advertisement shown
chatGPT is great at scaffolding up some code, then the engineers comes in and does cleaning up. thank you robot
See this little screen recording of me running the cypress.io script
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cq-k77AsiIGhFD0cscWSZX9Ed02sp6bm/view?usp=share_link
“Write a GoLang program that can play the game of Math 24 and if the players gets the wrong answer, provide the answer.”
ChatGPT Answer (limitation, not able to validate anything more than simple addition)
package mainimport ("bufio""fmt""math/rand""os""strconv""strings""time")func main() {// Generate 4 random numbers between 1 and 10rand.Seed(time.Now().UnixNano())n1 := rand.Intn(10) + 1n2 := rand.Intn(10) + 1n3 := rand.Intn(10) + 1n4 := rand.Intn(10) + 1// Make sure the numbers can be used to solve the equation 24 using only addition and multiplicationfor n1+n2+n3+n4 != 24 && (n1*n2 != 24 && n1*n3 != 24 && n1*n4 != 24 && n2*n3 != 24 && n2*n4 != 24 && n3*n4 != 24) {n1 = rand.Intn(10) + 1n2 = rand.Intn(10) + 1n3 = rand.Intn(10) + 1n4 = rand.Intn(10) + 1}// Ask the player to solve the equation 24 using the 4 numbersfmt.Printf("Solve the equation 24 using the numbers %d, %d, %d, and %d\n", n1, n2, n3, n4)fmt.Print("Enter your answer: ")// Read the player's answerreader := bufio.NewReader(os.Stdin)input, _ := reader.ReadString('\n')input = strings.TrimSpace(input)// Check if the player's answer is correctanswer := strconv.Itoa(n1) + strconv.Itoa(n2) + strconv.Itoa(n3) + strconv.Itoa(n4)if input == answer {fmt.Println("Correct!")} else {fmt.Printf("Incorrect. The correct answer is %s\n", answer)}}
chatgpt-2022.12.11-math-24-interation-2Download
It’s that time, the 7-year job itch. As a rule of thumb, I tell myself to be open to exploring opportunities and not stay in one company for too long. I was at Yahoo for way too long (16 years) and now with Splunk for 7 years. It’s healthy to be open to different roles […]
What’s new ∙ View “New Episodes” list now in a dedicated screen called Inbox, with swipe actions (@ByteHamster)∙ Use swipe actions and quickly toggle Favourites on the Episodes screen (@ByteHamster)∙ View a list of (unplayed) episodes in Android Auto (@tonytamsf)∙ Scroll to the top of lists by long-pressing the toolbar (@ByteHamster)∙ Bug fixes around authentication […]
After playing badminton for over 15 years, for the last 2 years, I have become a daily tennis player. Join me at https://sf-tennis.org!
Start your morning around 8:30am 1. Sunset Farmer’s market 2. Pastries and coffee at Arizmenti Bakery – cherry cornmeal scones, berry muffins
State of Splunk Careers 2021: Accelerating Salaries & Opportunities for Practitioners An interesting read about how Splunk practitioners have higher compensation, more portable skills, and career advancement.
Emotional indie movie that captures you with beautiful national park and a touching story https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6740154/
We all have in our households. There are many items in our house in San Francisco that we use almost daily. This is a music stand that we use to hold our projector when we bring it out to watch movies / tv shows.
Sharing a link https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/heilmeier-catechism DARPA operates on the principle that generating big rewards requires taking big risks. But how does the Agency determine what risks are worth taking? George H. Heilmeier, a former DARPA director (1975-1977), crafted a set of questions known as the “Heilmeier Catechism” to help Agency officials think through and evaluate proposed […]
In a response to this LinkedIn post. Sometimes I think people in tech companies treat interviewing like a hazing ritual because they went through the same process, they think the next set of new hires also needs to jump through the same hoops. For junior engineering positions, each open position gets 200+ resumes, and they […]
Jay is a local San Francisco artist. We love his bold and large form artwork. Check out his other pieces https://www.jaymercado.com/ This one large installation was originally in a bank and we fell in love it instantly for the power, color and emotions. This is a painting of harvesters in Watsonville
First book I have read about the Nordic mythology and I love the normalcy of the unusual babies.
This is a data-packed presentation on where the tech trends are and where we are going in 2030. See the presentation https://www.ben-evans.com/presentations Quote from Evans: The most exciting themes in technology today are transformative visions for 2025 or 2030: crypto, web3, VR, metaverse… and then everything else. Meanwhile, hundreds of start-ups take ideas from the […]
Sharing a post here https://medium.com/hackernoon/feels-like-faster-vs-makes-us-faster-828686facc7e
My wife’s family celebrated the birthdays of 3 people, my 6 year nephew, my father in law and me! This card I received gives me such joy!
After 7 years, my investment in a sushi restaurant has ended with a buy out from the primary investor/owner. My best friend, chef/owner wanted to keep running the restaurant, but it no longer fit my long term investment of time and money. What I learned from this experience Running a restaurant is very difficult because […]
We have bought a 2nd home in Hawaii! My wife and I have decided to not wait until we retire or until it’s the “perfect” time. There really isn’t the right time to make a life altering move, might as well take the step and see where things go! So far, this is best decision […]
Very inspiring profile of Tracy Chou’s journey to build Block Party tool to combat online harassment. https://www.fastcompany.com/90686948/inside-the-life-of-a-tech-activist-abuse-gaslighting-but-ultimately-optimism
Cheryl Ainoa’s talk https://vimeo.com/628586581 I love how she goes back and forth between management or IC looking by evaluating what gives her energy.
I've argued that building software is much more of an Art than Science. The teams who follow the agile manifesto strictly over plan this artistic endevor of birthing software from nothing with T-shirt sizing, rule of thumb and or fibonacci numbers in 2 week increments of a sprint. What I've observed in the real world of software engineering in 20 years is that during the planning and estimation process:
See this post from Casey Newton’s Platformer newsletter about Twitch engineers leaking the entire source code. I wonder if there any effective way to prevent this from happening?
I wanted to share a great visual diagram of the learning path of a web developer. click through for the original image https://www.ladybug.dev/episodes/web-developer-learning-path
I spend a lot of my weekend time working on improving the AntennaPod podcast app to contribute features and bug fixes in order to help make my own podcast listening experience better. Also it helps me learn Android development. That was WHY I started contributing. In this journey, I also learned how to work in […]
Music stand for my laptop that I move around for Zoom meetings and I can stand or sit. Double monitors Art for inspiration 2 Pots of flowers to keep my happy Books to keep me learning A garden to keep me grounded
Being older feel like I have spent a long time with the people in my life consistently, spending 30 years honing my engineering craft. I have internalized more of this world and becoming a little more wiser. I have built small but tight communities around my passion areas. I look forward to learning more, playing […]
We don’t even know this problem exist. How do we know it is even needed? How do we get to a better state with these unknown unknown problems? My co-worker Michael L. wrote an internal page about how he thrives on these type of Unknown Unknowns problems. I’m reminded recently that I get a lot […]
If you want to be an effective engineer in our industry, get ready be good at the following Basics 0 – This is the basic toolbox as an engineer Be proficient in your favorite IDE (Visual Studio Code seems to be the most popular right now) – my personal favorite is still VIM. git – […]
” Do what you love” is for amateurs. “Love what you do” is the mantra for professionals.
Angela Duckworth : When you quit on a good day. As said on Guy Kawasaki’s podcast. Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People: Angela Duckworth MacArthur “genius” grant winner, researcher, and author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. https://cdn.simplecast.com/audio/5179940e-b8f5-4d80-ab1a-d23cb4bed0b0/episodes/20edc8b3-a3a0-4867-b506-603c8e607457/audio/8a452c24-ba43-46e8-8bb6-1652667262ed/default_tc.mp3?aid=rss_feed&feed=A7fI4ltj [00:45:36]
We are learning to work differently No daily stand-ups, just unblocking meetings – so that people with different schedules can be flexible Do short demo videos (< 3 mins) instead of meeting face to share and do them frequently – high fidelity info 1 weekly demo – realtime meeting – where we sync up where […]
Nuri Farmer in Korean makes these beautiful dried persimmons, http://nurifarmer.com/ But you might be able to get them here https://japanesetaste.com/products/hoshigaki-ichidagaki-japanese-dried-persimmons-premium-high-quality-kaki
5th and Mission Podcast defends our great city by the bay. https://chtbl.com/track/5A8B9F/traffic.megaphone.fm/SFO3142218045.mp3 [00:00:00]
For far too long, contractors, people of color, H1B visa holders are treated as second class workers with no way to speak out as a collective.
I’ve had 39 submissions to my favorite Podcast App – AntennaPod in 2020. Which makes me #7 on the contributor list. That was a good learning journey for me. For the next leveling up to be #6, 140 of my submissions would have to be accepted. That would take 2.5 years given my current rate […]
https://distributed.blog/2020/12/16/episode-26-jack-dorsey-and-remote-collaboration/ And I think I have three jobs, I think there are three reasons why the company hires me every day in my role. And the number one is to create a healthy team dynamic. That’s the interconnection between the members of the team. It’s the ‘how we work together’ it’s the purpose that aligns […]
20 years ago, while I was the lead engineer for Yahoo News, I was asked to build a very basic feature to allow users to send news articles via a simple email link. That feature was simple: let users click on a link to send the news article with the URL, title and a brief […]
Then follow this instruction, which essentially as a new version of bash and enable it in /etc/shells and uses chsh to change the user’s shell
When I get an original drawing tailor to my favorite Teen Titans character from my talented artist daughter.
What portion of your team’s time is spent planning vs. designing and writing and testing software? Even when you did a great job in planning, how often is your plan exactly on target? When you hit the target of what you plan after 3 months, is that plan still the right thing to solve? My […]
As software engineers, our job is to create useful services for other humans or other services that depend on our services. In the idealized world, we write software, deploy, and move on. In the real world, we have to think about Writing software Debugging our own software for bugs Testing it locally for the change, […]
At work, someone wanted to talk with me about answering the question of “Do people at work feel zoom fatigue?” What would be a good way to look at this question from a data perspective? I proposed the following question, now that we don’t have to commute, shouldn’t we have more time in the morning […]
Software Engineering Daily: Cloud Native Computing Foundation with Chris Aniszczyk and Dan Kohn Holiday Repeat http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2020/11/24/cloud-native-computing-foundation-with-chris-aniszczyk-and-dan-kohn-holiday-repeat/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cloud-native-computing-foundation-with-chris-aniszczyk-and-dan-kohn-holiday-repeat [00:36:41]
Investment thesis Is this business going to be stronger 10 years from now? Is this business dominant and unique in the industry? For every dollar it earns, how much of it does it keep for itself? Do you love the product?
My superpower in life and at work is “troubleshooting.” I’m an engineer who helps other engineers when they are stuck. This could mean very detailed technical issues that engineers run into that takes them hours to solve. They will bring that problem to me, and usually, through some questions and answers with me, we can […]
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 persuasion is to first build that […]
On my 50th birthday, at 6:27am my father at 81 years old, sent me a happy birthday message! He has been my role model, his quiet way of being there for the family, showing and doing rather than talking, his love for me and his expectation that I should reach my potential and his beaming […]
I love contributing to products that I use daily. One of those is the open source Android podcast player AntennaPod. For my 27th pull request: Discovery filter by country & hide discovery on first subscribe screen to the source code project I wanted to accomplish the following. Give people who are offended by certain top […]
I love listening to podcasts, all 111 podcast feeds. In 2020, I wanted to go deeper and understand the podcast ecosystem. I first generated a set of RSS feeds for 12 categories and submitted to Apple’s itunes podcast directory.
https://a16z.simplecast.com/episodes/substack-writers-wGdX5CRs This episode, part one in a two-part series on the Creator Economy, explores the process and economics behind creating an independent newsletter. In this candid conversation, host Lauren Murrow talks with four Substack writers—an artist, a technologist, a journalist, and a clinical researcher-turned-psychedelics scholar—about how to find and foster an audience, the calculus behind going paid […]
AntennaPod Subscriptions 16 Minutes News by a16z Website • Feed A Place of Care Website • Feed a16z Podcast Website • Feed ACM ByteCast Website • Feed After Hours Website • Feed Akimbo: A Podcast from Seth Godin Website • Feed All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg Website • Feed Android Developers Backstage Website […]
does not mean you did not harm someone. White privilege, or just not even realize what privileges the elite have. They don’t even give it a second thought that they are harming others less privileged.
Recently my friends at SFBadminton.org and I have switched to tennis due to COVID-19. I play everyday for about 1 to 2 hours practicing my serves and with my new ball machine, basic hitting forehand and backhand. When the strings on my new EZONE 100 finally broke after 1 month of daily playing, I asked […]
Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wants you to become a ‘learn it all’ https://traffic.megaphone.fm/LI3005002923.mp3
Here is a Google Map of all the San Francisco Public Tennis Courts or http://bit.ly/sf-tennis-public The stars are the single courts if you prefer not to hit balls into other people’s courts.
During COVID-19, my attention has turned towards learning tennis. In the mornings I practice 1 to 2 hours of just serving as I try to understand the learn about the game. This morning, I was able to understand the correct grip to get the slice for the tennis ball.
The Ezra Klein Show: Best of: Jia Tolentino on what happens when life is an endless performance https://www.vox.com/ezra-klein-show-podcast
This life is your experience, you have control over it, no one else. Meet people, students, faculty! Find your people. Be wrong often. Ask for help Worthy of your time Be Nice Shower your world with the best of you can offer.
A linear life is a nice idea. But as 2020 has taught us, life is way more like a game of chutes and ladders. We’re up. We’re down. We’re sidelined by a global pandemic. Unexpected change can feel disorienting, but according to author Bruce Feiler, navigating through is also a huge opportunity for growth. Bruce sits […]
https://a16z.simplecast.com/episodes/podcasting-audio-trends-ecosystem-future-5OvJFfje Episode Notes This podcast (first recorded in 2019, now being rerun) — is a podcast about podcasting: But it’s really all about audio. A lot’s changed… and a lot hasn’t. How do we define “podcasts”; how does the feeds ecosystem currently work; what content and entertainment experiments might change how people not just consume, […]
After Hours: Season 3 Finale: Stories to Watch This Summer and Summer Recommendations https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/05/season-3-finale-stories-to-watch-this-summer-and-summer-recommendations [00:37:25]
Interview about Wendy Liu’s book https://play.acast.com/s/intelligencesquared/abolishsiliconvalley-withwendyliuandcarlmiller
The 2 founders of Boba Guys give really great advice to Asian Americans to Over Index towards being out there We need Asian Americans to be leaders Throw out more energy Speakup more, don’t worry about being too loud (just yet) Punch up and take the mike listen to episode1 and episode 2 on Rock […]
Here is a quick refresher on the differences between Sponsors and Mentors. 1 page PDF here from Maryann Baumgarten, (previously of Stanford and now at Facebook)
https://medium.com/accelerated-intelligence/the-no-1-lifelong-habit-of-warren-buffett-the-5-hour-rule-57884dce03f3
In order to suppress linting warnings that do not make sense, one can use the @SuppressLint decorator. In order to know which warning string to use, here is a quick time. Thank you StackOverflow Tonys-MacBook-Air:tools tonytam$ pwd /Users/tonytam/Library/Android/sdk/tools Tonys-MacBook-Air:tools tonytam$ !. ./bin/lint --list | grep -i used "UnusedAttribute": Attribute unused on older versions "UnsafeDynamicallyLoadedCode": load […]
While trying to implement a feature for AntennaPod to allow users to auto skip intros and endings in this pull request #3975, I need to be able publish the event when a preference has changed and for a previous object with state that has already read the value of the preference to refresh it’s content. […]
Take a look at this 3 minute video of how you can use a large monitor to read NY Times almost like you are reading a real newspaper. When I don’t have my real newspaper, this New York Times Replica is the next best thing. The layout could be exactly like a the print paper, […]
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
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
https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/03/squares-cofounder-on-discovering-and-defending-innovations [00:27:03]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 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 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.