PK Shiu
Ten Things to bring to College / College ...
Ten Things to bring to College / College Student Survival Kit
PK Shiu
I sold my car with CarMax
I sold my car with CarMax
PK Shiu
Creativity on a Paddle Board
Creativity on a Paddle Board
PK Shiu
Do your job well, thoughts on Martin Luther ...
Do your job well, thoughts on Martin Luther King Jr. Day
PK Shiu
Top 5 Podcasts for 2016
Top 5 Podcasts for 2016

Hong Kong Kowloon East Kwun Tong District Travel Guide

I spent sometime in the Kwun Tong District while visiting Hong Kong. It is a underrated area. If you are a Hong Konger like myself, you would not mind the industrial vibe of the area. It is a relatively affordable area to be home base for visiting Hong Kong.

Hotel: Nina Hotel Kowloon East

Nina Hotel is a small hotel chain in Hong Kong. The Kowloon East location is on edge of the Kwun Tong Industrial district. The building probably was a older building, with a very narrow footprint but high ceiling. I stayed at the higher floors and the rooms are very spacious even by western standard. The high ceiling really helped as well. There is a restaurant in the hotel serving various buffets. I have not tried it but the food looked ok.

Tea House: Kam Kee Cafe

My go to cafe is the Kam Kee Cafe minutes from the Hotel. Kam Kee is a chain that serves very authentic Hong Kong style bakery items and dishes, like baked beef tongue with spaghetti. Not to mention Pine Apple Buns and Hong Kong milk tea. The Cafe is on the second floor. You can see the ocean from some of the seats.

Like most restaurants in HK, this cafe uses a QR code to web site system to order. Very easy and fast. Pay with the Octopus card on the way out.

Street Snacks: King Bakery

King Bakery is a chain that serves different types of egg tart as well as the street style fish balls and rice rolls. This location is great for quick breakfast or snacks but they seems to close early in the evenings. Their iced lemon tea is passable.

Hung To Cafe

This is a old style restaurant walking distance from the hotel. It has good roast meats and all the usual standard food. Great take out place.

Aegean Place

Across the street from Hung To Cafe, it has several small food stalls. The food is passible.

EJ Cart Noodle

A small Japanese noodle bar that is right across from the hotel. The food is very good. Try the fried chicken cartilage.

Transportation: The Ngau Tau Kok MTR station

The Ngua Tau Kok MTR is the main transport stop for this area. There are also a lot of MTR buses that stop around the same location. From the hotel, you can either walk through the Millennium City building and the sky walk, or around the east side on Lai Yip St and through the underground tunnel.

Transportation: Kwun Tong MTR station

The Kwun Tong MTR station is the next stop. It is right next to the APM mall, a very large, very vertical mall. There are more places to eat inside the mall and the station is not that far away on foot.

Yue Man Square: History meets modern

On the north side of the main Kai Fuk Road, between the Ngau Tau Kok an the Kwun Tong MTR station is Yue Man center. It is a interesting small shopping center / office building that has a underground street market. The street market is a recreation of an actual old time market that the new building displaced.

Old Kwun Tong District

On the north side of the Ngau tau Kok station is the older area of Kwun Tong. There are street markets and local eating places. Even for me the older eating places are too local for my taste. I am sure there are some gems there but I did not have the time to find one.

Kwun Tong Promenade

The promenade is a highlight for this area. It is a very short walk from the hotel. The view, the small shops and restaurants are fun to visit. I visit there often.

Cruise Ship Terminal

While you can see the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal and the park easily from the promenade, there is no easy way to get over there. I have yet to visit.

 

Scraping DUPR Data​: Public vs Private API

As a pickleball player, I love DUPR: A data science based quantitative way to rate players. As a technologist of course I want to get to the raw data to run my own analysis of my pickleball community and beyond. Unfortunately they have yet to release a public API I wrote a scraper to pull the dataset I needed. Here is the source code on github.

Improving developer experience for my own customers is a top priority. It is interesting to reverse engineer someone else's API. Understandably the DUPR API is very much a backend for frontend API. Developing a public facing API would means changing the design, including:

  • normalize entities so that they are not returned in slightly different format and shape depending on which "screen" the API is designed to support

  • replace sequential integer based keys with UUIDs - in the DUPR case there are seaming logical ID fields that are not populated

  • reduce the variations of calls to get to similar objects

  • change authentication to support OAuth style token exchanges and provide a system to system level authentication on top of individual user level authentication

  • base on API callers role, hide some of the administrative data

Ideally their own front ends would then need to change to only use the same public API, which takes time and effort and taking time from feature work.

This is by no mean a criticism of the DUPR architecture. In fact over the time I have been using it they have drastically improved their weekly recalculation performance of their scores. They also need to focus on integrating tournament data sources like pickleballbrackets.com. The pickleball data marketplace is a mess running on old technology stacks. Let's hope DUPR can pull them together.

Finally, this was also an excuse to dig into SQLAlchemy. I am so spoiled by the Django ORM. Will the Django folks hurry up and make the ORM a standalone library?

Cross posted on LinkedIn.

Ten Things to bring to College / College Student Survival Kit

Besides the usual bedsheets and clothings, what are some tools that a college freshmen should bring to college? Here are some recommendations:

1) Keychain Flashlight that can double up as a safety light

Everyone has a cellphone with built in light. Who needs a flashlight? You do when you need to have some ambient light AND use your cellphone at the same time. This one is very small, and has a red light option. Very useful to clip it onto your backpack when walking at night around campus.


2) Leatherman Wave+ Multi-tool

When a student is at home, there is probably a tool box full of tools that she can use when she needs to tighten something, open something, etc. The Leatherman Wave+ has the right collection of tools that are needed often: Scissors, screw drivers large and small, knife, can opener.

Pro-tip — you can get it engrave as a gift as well!

3) Command Hooks and Strips

College dorms do not like students putting holes in the walls or damaging the paint services. The “Command” brand products got this figured out. Put up hooks to hang things, use strips to attach things to the walls, the possibilities are endless. You can also get some multi-packs at Costco if you are a member. Get creative with them.


4) Portable Laptop and Phone Charger

Students will be on the go and having a small and powerful charger with her in her backpack helps keep laptop and phone charged. The new ANKER 735 is very good and small. Don’t forget extra cables!

5) Apple AirTags

If you are in the Apple product family, AirTags are really great, especially with the current generation of iPhones where it does very accurate location of items. Put an AirTag in the backpack, one in the wallet. One on the water bottle. Things will get lost. We used to use Tiles but they do not work as well IMHO.

6) Organization Boxes with Lids

Keep supplies, foods, and other smaller items organized. As an IKEA fan I like these boxes. The small, medium and large ones are particularly useful.

7) Gel Seat Cushion

Most dorms have hard chairs. You cannot bring your gaming chair or your AERON with you. So get one of these gel seat cushions to make sitting on them better. There are a lot of these on Amazon. We have two random ones and both are fine.





Remember Flip Phones?

Cleaning out the basement and found my collection of old phones. I was never a Motorola Razr person since there are much cooler flip phones from Sony Ericsson. Here are some photos I took of them before donating them to STEAM event.

Note that I did saved my Nokia 8000 and framed it — for me, that is the best cellphone design of all time.

First EV Road Trip in the VW ID.4

As an early adopter for technology and cars, I took delivery of one of the first VW ID.4 in March last year. We have yet to do a long road trip until now. We drove from Lexington Massachusetts to Charlottesville Virginia and back for a college visit. These are the take aways:

  • Driving speed matters to range -- we were driving average of at least 75 MPH and the range drops notably. The car seems to be able to compute / update the range estimate. The actual result is that we needed to charge to a higher percentage, State of Charge (SoC) sometimes.

  • While the stop and wait for charging is new, I personally do not mind it at all. It helps with bathroom and food breaks, as well as stretching the legs.

  • The ID.4 is really comfortable for long trips. The spacious interior, the lower noise level, and the ease of driving. Our other car is a Kia Telluride. I find the ID.4 easier to drive, and the Telluride is already a very good car.

  • - Took me awhile to figure out the UI for ABRP Pro app on my iPhone. I need to export the charger location to Apple Map to get good driving direction. Using the map inside ABRP did not work well for me.

  • - The chargers at these Walmarts and other locations in CT, NY, etc are much newer and nicer. My "local" Electrify America station at the Burlington Mall is much worse -- only one charger get full speed, and one out of three often is not working.

Here is a video of the trip -- this is a long video.

My Best Purchases in 2021

A friend asked an interesting question at year end: "What was your best purchase in 2021?". As I was thinking about this in my car, I realized had the answer with me right there. Availability bias not withstanding, these are my top three purchases:

  • VW ID.4 - A major industry change is happening. Are you ready for it?

  • Apple MacBook Pro 14 inch M1 Pro - Apple finally listened to their core customers before it is too late.

  • Sony ZV-1 Digital Camera - The user generated video content market is exploding, validated by Sony

The Electric Vehicles are coming

VW made the right move to create an EV that is more like regular ICE (internal combustion engine) car, but better value, fun looking and driving. This strategy attracted a lot of first time EV buyers. Having driven my ID.4 for almost a year, it is obvious to me that electric vehicles are the future. Quiet. Instant torque without needing a big engine. No worry about idling and that gas smell. The ICE car industry is at a pivoting point. What is going to happen to all those gas stations? How will condo building dwellers charge their cars in the parking lot? There are a lot of business opportunities in the EV world.

If you are interested in the ID.4, check out my YouTube channel and subscribe. I need the subscriber count.

Apple Finally Listens to Their Developer Fans

While apple sells a lot more iPhones and iWatches then MacBook Pros, the people who build the apps uses MacBook Pros. For years now, they have been telling Apple: We need ports. We need better keyboard. We need speed. No one uses the Touch Bar. I feel like Apple waited until the hard core users almost gave up on Apple to release this amazing new machine, with the new M1 Pro and M1 Max CPU. Again we now have a solid, fast, quiet, usable laptop for development work, either for OSX, iOS, or just general software development. Building docker images are twice as fast. I can leave the charger behind if I take the MBP out to work for the day. And I like the more "boxy with feet" look. Easier to carry to start.

Who wants to be a YouTube Influencer?

When I think of user generated content business model, I think of TripAdvisor back in the 2000. There are enough business cases written on them. Who knows from hotel reviews, to Medium articles, we ended with user generated video content being the most consumed media online (according to my kids). It is edutainment and infotainment at their bests. You can learn to play the piano, fix a toilet, program a ML vision recognition app, all from YouTube.

Sony recognized this and released the ZV-1 camera with features directly support video content creation, including product reviews and Vlogging. It also makes a pretty good webcam for zoom without any additional software. This is what I use for online meetings. This is what I use to film most of my product reviews. This is what I use to take photos out and about.

These three items surprisingly gave a glimpse into my 2021. With Vaccination, we started to leave the house more, driving around in the ID.4. Having time at home I worked on a lot more programming side projects, like geareg.com. I did a lot of bag reviews, written and as videos. I started the second YouTube channel for the ID.4 as a second experiment into Monetization of content.

I hope your 2021 is equality interesting. I am ready for 2022.

RIP Sir Clive Sinclair, Thanks for starting my Computing Career

The actual MK14 board is under all the wiring of an additional board I added later

The actual MK14 board is under all the wiring of an additional board I added later

I have been interested in electronics since I was 10 years old. My father was a tinkerer and we always had hand build radios and stuff around the house since I remembered. When I was in boarding school, yes, like Hogwarts but without too much magic, I started reading about digital circuits. Then this microprocessor kit came on the market, the MK14. Here are the specs:


mk14_3-10270178-O.jpg

  • The MK-14 was a training board sold in kit form

  • Cost £39.95

  • CPU: National Semiconductor SC/MP 8-bit processor

  • 256 bytes of RAM

  • 512 bytes of ROM with the basic drivers

  • 9 7-segment red LED display

  • membrane keypad

  • some additional I/O ports

I bought this kit with money I saved and built in bit by bit during boarding school study hall time hiding in the common bathroom because it has a large window for the soldering smoke to air out. I vividly remember the head master caught me, asked me what it was, and said something like “interesting” and left. I took that as a official permission to keep skipping study hall for the next few days to finish the soldering.

Creativity and Logic

Learning microprocessor architecture, how to program in assembly language, and then do the assembly by hand really set my study and career choice. I ended up at Imperial College studying Computing Science. The MK14 experience was a combination of absolute logical thinking, and creativity. Programming a tiny computer is creative? Thinking up something fun to program, make that works with a keypad and a 7-segment LED display, then fit it into 256 bytes of RAM. That requires creativity.

MK14 History

Reading the history of the MK14, perhaps Sir Clive Sinclair was not too enthusiastic about it at the beginning. His partner Chris Curry was more involved. But Sinclair later come out with the ZX80, ZX81 and the Spectrum, which have started may other computing careers around the world. Most people will think of the ZX80 and Clive Sinclair and the start of the affordable hobby computer revolution. Some of us will go a bit further back in history with the MK14.

Photos

All the photos above are taken many years after I have added other circuitry to the MK14. The large capacity and transformer on the left is a power supply. The PCB with all the hand wiring contains some additional IO chip and a music / sound generator. The keypad is hand built, and the LED display I remember is the original display, desoldered from the main board.

Here is a photo of an actual MK14. Credit to Andrew Steers.

MK14.jpeg










I sold my car with CarMax

Reducing monthly unnecessary expenses is the key to financial wellness. With COVID we are not driving very much. With two fairly new cars sitting in the driveway depreciating makes no sense. Especially with a fairly new car in good condition, I want to sell it while the depreciation is slow(er).

The car is a 2018 Audi Q5 with 14K miles on it. It is an easy car to sell. However I am willing to trade time and effort with selling it for less by going the wholesale route. I went onto carmax.com. Used their online appraisal tool to get an “offer”. I also went to the Audi dealership that I brought the car from and they were happy to buy the car back also, but at a lower offer than what carmax quoted. I was surprised. After some negotiations they up the offer by $100. Not enough.

I made an appointment the next day on carmax.com. They appraised the car for me and actually came back with an amount that is $500 more than the online appraisal. Since I brought my auto loan info and the second car key with me, they were able to complete the entire transaction within 40 minutes. They did all the paperwork, and I walked away with a check.

If I spend some time I am certain I can get one or maybe two thousand more by selling the car privately. I would need to spend many hours answering inquiries, arranging test drives, sanitizing the car each time, and eventually deal with the paperwork needed. While technically investing that amount of time is still worth it from a pure financial point of view, this carmax way is far less stressful.

Reducing monthly unnecessary expenses is the key to financial wellness. Take a look at your monthly spending.

Creativity on a Paddle Board

Paddle board, or a SUP, is the hip way to travel down waterways. You probably heard of Yoga on a paddle board as well. How about creativity on a paddle board?


On a mini vacation, my two middle schoolers rented paddle boards on the Lady Bird Lake in Austin. Unlike typical adults, they were not satisfied with just standing or kneeling on the board and paddle with their paddle. I watch them paddle standing up, sitting down, paddling backwards, and forwards. They tried lying on their stomach paddling with their hands, lying on the back doing backstrokes. They tried tying the two boards together and peddling as a team, facing the same way, facing the opposite way.

By Austin Kleon
Buy on Amazon


Borrowing from Austin Kleon in Show Your Work, we are all amateurs. Being an amateurs free us from the constraints of afraid of looking stupid in public. These kids are experimenting beyond what a professional athlete may be willing to try. As technology advances, there are far too many new inventions and discoveries in all fields. Most of us will always be amateurs. Instead of worrying to make mistakes or look silly, we need to hold on to the amateurs spirit and go beyond our comfort zone. Experiment. Try new things. Fail fast but keep learning.

Do your job well, thoughts on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Mid January is still New Years resolutions making time. I find annual goal setting is much more effective, especially using the processes by Michael Hyatt. Irrespective on how you are planning your year, doing your job well is likely to be one of the goals.

On Martin Luther King’s Day, this quote of his comes to mind:

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well’.

Here is an example: Last Friday, I was at the airport about to board a 6pm flight heading back home for this long weekend. When I got to the gate, the gate agent announced that the flight is going to be delayed for 2 or more hours because of weather. Since they are waiting for weather update, everyone just have to keep checking back every 30 minutes. I can see the stress level of all the passengers raising.

There is no point in running back and forth between the airport lounge and the gate. So I found a good seat and waited at the gate. I have music and movies on my iPad, noise cancelling headphones charged, todo lists to review, plenty of things to keep me occupied. I see a constant stream of passengers going up to the gate agent, asking the same questions, getting the same answers.

The gate agent could have been getting annoyed. But instead she was calm, answering all the questions as best as she can, keeping a smile on her face. This went on for two hours. I can see that her calmness and niceness rubs off on the passengers. It was as good as it can be, on a winter Friday evening, on a delayed departure at the airport, before a long weekend.

The gate agent clearly did her job exceptionally well. I thanked her for it as I board. Can we all do our job equally well, especially under pressure?

How to prepare banner images for squarespace templates

Squarespace is great. You can choose from several very good looking templates for building your website. Most of them support large banner images that works across desktop, laptop and mobile phones. Two of the most popular templates are the Bedford template, and the Harris template.

Because these templates are responsive, you need to be careful when creating any banner image, especially if there are specific part of the image that you do not want to be cropped by the responsive layout. For example, if you show a headshot of a person, you want to carefully control which part of the face is always visible.

To help you (and I) understand the responsive template works, I have created this test image. If you use this image when you design your site, you can see how the image will be cropped by squarespace, and plan you actual image accordingly. In general, on desktop, the top of the banner image will be cropped, to around 200 pixel. On the iPhone, the left and right sides of the image will be cropped, to around 300 pixel. The bottom 200 pixel of the image will be below the fold.

You should then:

  1. Create a image that is 1500 wide x 1000 tall,
  2. Set the banner image to be centered (which is usually the default),
  3. Make sure there are 200 px worth of space on the top,
  4. 200 px worth of image on the bottom that you don't mind being below the fold, and
  5. 300 px worth of space on the left that you don’t mind getting cropped.

Test Image

Download this test image for your own use:

Test grid image for experimenting with responsive banner image layout

Test grid image for experimenting with responsive banner image layout

 

Template Examples

See how the York and Bedford templates crop this image on laptop (1280x800) or iPhone (640 x 960):

Boston MBTA Website UX Fail

Recently I needed to purchase a MBTA Charlie Card, a Boston area subway stored value card. I know that it is available only at selected location. Luckily the MBTA website has a sales location look up page , or so I thought.

This webpage present a select list of cities and towns, with a single action button for “Find Sale Locations”. I picked the town closest to me, click the button, and got a message “No sales location is available for the area”. Try again. Same thing. This webpage is asking me to find a town that has a sale location by trial and error, instead of filtering the list box to only contain towns that have a sales location.

You can watch this video to see how bad the UX is, or just try it yourself on the website. How can a developer not understand that this is a terrible user experience? How can a product owner agree to this implementation? Do you have UX like this within your product?

Start Up Lessons from a Slimey CEO

If you have a middle schooler in your family, you will know that homemade slime is sweeping the schools in the US. Even WSJ wrote an article on entrepreneurial middle schoolers building businesses to sell homemade slime to their friends. 

As an investor (Dad) to one such slime business CEO (11 year old daughter), I have a first hand view of how she is building her business. Not surprisingly, many of the principles apply to other start ups:

Back of Envelope Proof of Finance Model

Her slime business started when we were driving around town hunting down clear glue in retail shops for her to make slime for herself. When trying to locate a source online we realized that there is a 5x markup for glue at the retail level compare to buying volume. A bit of math back and forth between the two of us convinced this potential investor that there is a business, and the budding CEO decided to take on the responsibility.

Lesson: Difference between a hobby and a business often is the financial model.

Leverage Technology Early

The CEO first worked out the pricing model with pencil and paper. As a tech savvy investor I spent some time teaching her how to use google sheet to verify her model, and she immediately see the benefit of having a easily updatable pricing model. We also decided to use another sheet to track orders and production status. That turned out to be extremely useful as orders flow in.

Lesson: Technology is a time saver. Seek out help if you need to as early as you can.

Energizing your Early Potential Customers

When the CEO's older brother's friends were over at the house, they asked whether they can try their hands on making slime. Instead of turning them down, the young CEO offered up her supplies and taught them how to make their own slime. The boys were impressed with the process, and the product. Soon, one of the boys became a evangelist for the slime business at school. Reaching a differ market segment (an upper grade) he brought in a lot of new sales.

Lesson: word of mouth marketing is important, especially at the beginning. Energize potential early adopters.

Tune your product line Often

Initially the slime company offers basic slime as well as many add on options: different colors, scents, fluffy and more. Their customers were delighted. After taking in a large batch of orders, the CEO, who is also the primary slime maker, realized that it takes too much time to fill each orders because each order has to be individually tuned. They changed the product line, announcing to their new customers that they will make batches of the same product and rotate through the product line periodically.

Lesson: Design your product for manufacturing. If the cycle time is too slow, reduce product variety.

Manage Your Partners

The slime company has four founding partners. They brainstormed their business together. Once orders started to come in, it became obvious that not everyone has interchangeable expertise. The CEO is also the only person that fully understand the techniques in making, especially the more complicated, slime. The founders has to divide up the work functionally to maximize outcome.

Lesson: Leverage founding members individual strengths.

Customer is Always Right

Not too long into the business, one customer asked for a refund because she was not happy with the product. While the partners all know that there was nothing wrong with that particular custom made product, they kept their cool and accepted the return and refund. It is important to keep the customers happy. At the same time, they updated their order form to explicitly says "no refund"

Lesson: Customers are always right even when they are not

Competition

Surprisingly, the slime company has no real competition in this middle school community. There were a few people who started to sell slime but soon gave up after they realized how much work it takes to make and sell.

Lesson: Business is hard. Perseverance and hard work is the only way to succeed.

Remote File Editing on the Raspberry Pi using sublime Text 3 and iterm

If you are developing software for the Raspberry Pi, you will want to edit source files on a faster machine than on the Pi. I connect to my headless Raspberry Pi from my Mac and edit python files remotely using Sublime Text 3 and iTerm

What you need

1. On the Pi: Install rsub

sudo wget -O /usr/local/bin/rsub https://raw.github.com/aurora/rmate/master/rmate

chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/rsub

2. On your Mac: Sublime Text 3 install rsub package

Open Package manager, use the "Install Package" command to install "rsub"

3. On your Mac: iterm: setup a ssh session to your Raspberry Pi

In the ssh command, add  -R 52698:localhost:52698

See the image below. This session will log into your Raspberry Pi at the specific IP address, sign in using the default "pi" username, and also enabled reverse port forwarding, forwarding connection on the Pi to port 52989 back to your Mac so that sublime Text can edit the files.

4. Use rsub to edit files

On the Pi, just type rsub filename and Sublime Text 3 on your mac will magically open up that file remotely.

Reference

This article describes the process in greater detail.

Top 5 Podcasts for 2016

2016 is the year of the podcast. While there has always been podcasts on more specialized topics enjoyed by their fans ( penaddict , All Sorted, ATP ), 2016 sees a lot of big name media figures started to enter the industry. Just when people are declaring radio is dead, podcasts, playing on mobile phones, are growing. Nielson announced that they are going to start monitoring on-demand audio, podcasts numbers.

Here are five podcasts that you might not have heard of, and you should start listening to them.

1) The Productivity Show by Asian Efficiency

This show is all about productivity. Compare to others, this show really gets into the details. The hosts are really into personal workflow management and productivity. Asian Efficiency sells paid content on top, but the podcast is very genuine and facts packed.

2) Gastropod

If you love food, you probably want to learn more about origins of food and food culture. This podcast takes a deep dive into various food related topics from honey to Sriracha with everything in between. Think of this as the serious version of Spilled Milk podcast, but just as entertaining.

3) 99% Invisible

This show is suppose to be about design and architecture, but it takes design in the broadest sense. You will learn about a lot of things around you that are there by designed, even if you don’t know it.

4) Flash Forward

This podcast, each month, takes a possible future scenario and work out in details what if it were true. What will happen if space pirates dragged a second moon to Earth? What if someone found a way so that we never have to sleep again? Think of this as the ultimate what-if exercise. This show has a very timely episode about fake news.

5) NION radio

NION radio by Nick Onken was just rebranded. It used to be caled Shoptalk Radio. Nick interviews a different creative artist each episode. He has a contact network that get him to speak with big names as well as less known, at least to me, personalities. Especially for me, as a technologist, this podcast gives me a view into a different space that normally I have little knowledge of. Sometimes this podcast is like the more grown up version of pop fashion.

6) Startup Podcast

Bonus pick: I often think of this one as the one that started the legitimization of podcast in the media industry. Make sure you start from Season 1, where Alex Blumberg of NPR fame, document, in the podcast, how he started this podcast company. You will learn a lot about the startup world and the world of VCs right from the inside.

If you are looking for a good podcast app on iOS, I recommend overcast made by Marco Arment.

Download the app, subscribe to the podcasts, and have a enjoyable time learning about different things during your commute!

Paragon Induction Cooktop makes Hong Kong Style Ginger Milk Pudding 薑汁撞奶

The magic of the Paragon induction cooktop is that it allows precise temperature control during cooking. After I unboxed my Paragon, Cuisinart cookware set to arrived,  first thing I tried is to make Hong Kong style Ginger Milk Pudding. ( 薑汁撞奶 ) because getting the milk to the right temperature is a key part of this recipe.

Ingredients:

for 2 half cup servings:

  • 1 cup ( or 250ml) Milk
  • 2 tsp sugar (or add honey later)
  • 4 tsp fresh ginger juice

Steps:

Find good fresh ginger. Use mature ginger if possible. Remove the skin and grate the ginger. I like to remove ginger skin using the edge of a knife. You can use other methods. Once grated, squeeze out the juice from the ginger. Distribute the ginger juice into serving bowls.

Measure out the milk. Program the Paragon to heat the milk to 165F and hold for 5 minutes. I just picked 5 minutes because it seems like a reasonable time. If you want to experiment with different hold time, I like to hear your result.

Once the milk is done, pour the milk in the bowls with the ginger juice at the bottom. You want the milk to naturally “kick” or stir up the ginger juice. But do not stir the mixture otherwise. Let it sit and cool for about 5 more minutes. Then the ginger will naturally curdle the milk, and you have a nice Hong Kong style dessert.

(My 10 and 11 years old helped with the prep and photography.)

 

How to be a Successful Leader

What are some common life experiences for successful leaders? Listening to the stories from a group of successful senior managers from different functional areas reveal several common threads.

Make Changes, Take Risks

Many leaders changed their field of study during college or graduate school. Some switched industry once they started working. Some switched profession completely. The common theme is that when one is not finding passion in her current position, she is not afraid to make a change. Ability to follow one’s heart. Ability to recognize something is not working, and take action, even if it is risky, is a good leadership trait.

Consulting

Many of these managers spent part of their career in consulting. This is perhaps obvious, as a top tier graduate from college is likely to be recruited by a consulting firm. Consulting is also a great way to network and get noticed in an industry. More important is that consulting is a way to compress a career, gaining experience at a faster rate than a typical full time employee. One typical downside is that consultant’s work life balance is likely to be poor. 70+ hours week is common.

Family Support

Career paths have ups and downs. Personal lives have highs and lows.  It is seldom that both personal and professional paths move synchronously. Not surprisingly family support often is a key factor in helping someone move forward.

Mentors

Many leaders have a mentor in their lives. From a college professor, or a relative, or a boss in her early career. Having someone to turn to for impartial advice helps one make smart choices.

What about You?

How does your life compare to these themes? Matching or not, the ability to evaluate your situation and take action to change when needed, sit on the outside of the employer/employee relationship as a consultant, find mentor to get advice, build up a support network from your family, are good ways to become a better leader.

2015 Year In Review

2015 is another year full of changes. But of course, it started with a lot of snow. We had our own snow fort in front of our front door.

It was a record breaking type of year. We are all very glad when it finally got warm and snow melted.

Kids

G started middle school in the fall. He adjusted extremely well. It is me that is confused, and having to learn a whole new set of processes. Picking your own classes? New PTA? Teams and after school activities. By now we are very settled. G gets to walk over to the elementary school to simplify pick up sometimes, and walk home with his friends for play dates (or whatever middle schooler call it these days). More independence and freedom. That is what middle school is all about.

In contrast M’s entering the next grade in Elementary is piece of cake. Work load has increased somewhat, but the school also seems to have reduced the workload in general. Given her hard gymnastics practice schedule, she is just about managing.

G tried a few new things this year. He tried Boy Scout. He went on a few hikes and over night trips. At the end he did not like it enough to continue, but he did have a few "first" experience. While I have zero interest in firearms, both him and I learnt to shoot a basic raffle for the first, and maybe last time.

G also started volunteering as a middle school volunteer at the town Library. I really want to have them learn to do volunteer work and I hope this is a good start.

Work

World Bank HQ Washington DC

World Bank HQ Washington DC

Having moved back to Boston, I started working with Ubuntu Capital to create a jobs and credit platform for Uganda.  Building something new from scratch is always exciting. As a side project I have yet to travel to Kampala. So technically I cannot add that to the list of countries I worked in just yet. Taking a meeting at the World Bank was a first for me though.

I also started a new full time job at Curriculum Associates. This was a focused effort in finding work in the education technology field. CA, as we called it, is a wonderful company. Great work-life balance, and a organization filled with truly nice people. And we have a lot of parties.

Curriculum Associates Annual Party

Curriculum Associates Annual Party

Play

En Guade

En Guade

Both G and I started fencing. It has been a blast. It really is as much a mental game as a physical sport. I feel like my Chinese martial arts and weapon training does come into use a bit, not necessarily in actual moves, but the spatial and movement awareness really help. This shows even more with G, as he did quite a bit of sword training last year.

M meanwhile is advancing with her competitive gymnastics, which means we spend even more time driving back and forth to practice and competition. Which led to our final upgrading of our 10 years old minivan. We went from the Sienna to the Sedona. More features for the money, but whether the new brand is going to hold up over time.

STEM and Robots

FLL Robot

FLL Robot

Another family of equality STEM focused minds talked us into doing First Lego League for the first time. It was a lot harder than I thought, took a huge amount of time from us coaching it, and from the kids working on it. I thought it was just about programming a robot, but it is much more than that. We all learnt a lot from it. Our team did just well enough (we got to the states final) to make us want to do better next year.

I also started, at the start of the fall school year, both coaching a bottle rocket team for Science Olympiad, and co-teaching a Girls Who Code club at the town Library. Both topics are very important to me. I also find that being able to interact with these middle and high school kids give me more insight and will help me understand G and M as they enter middle schools.

Reflection

Christmas Tree

Christmas Tree

Looking back, this year is yet another year of changes and doing new things. Perhaps part of this is propelled by the natural progression of the kids lives. Perhaps I just naturally like to take on new challenges. It has really been another great year. We gotten so busy that I had to buy our Christmas tree two days before Christmas. But we did it and the tradition continue. 


Mindfulness

I was reading Thich Nhat Hanh's "The Miracle of Mindfulness" last night, which recounts, in its chapter 7, the story of the Emperor's three questions, written by Tolstoy. I won't go into the whole story -- it's the typical "ask everyone in the realm for the answer, don't find it, go on your own search, find a sage...." -- but of interest to GTD are the questions themselves:

  1. What is the best time to do each thing?
  2. Who are the most important people to work with?
  3. What is the most important thing to do at all times?

The answers seem to be available in a "mind like water" state:

  1. What is the best time to do each thing? - Now
  2. Who are the most important people to work with? - People you are with
  3. What is the most important thing to do at all times? - the thing you are doing

Free up iPhone Memory and back up iPhone photos and video

It is iOS9 upgrade time. Which means it is also time to clear out all the photos and videos that you took on your iPhone.

Automatic Backup of Photos and Videos on iPhone

I used to use aperture until Apple stopped development of Aperture (and iPhoto). Aperture would automatically download my photos and videos on my iPhone onto my main computer. The new Photos app does not do that in a right way. You have to either use iCloud to store all your photos, or there is no easy way to selectively leave some photos and videos on your iPhone and have a copy of it on your laptop/desktop. If you delete a photo on your photo stream, it will be deleted on all your devices including your main laptop/desktop.

Use Dropbox Camera Upload

My solution is to use my Dropbox pro account's camera upload feature. This is only feasible if you have a paid account. Out of my paid 1T storage, I am ony using a fraction of it. So why not use the rest to be a (semi temporary) storage space for all the mobile photos and videos?

All you have to do is to enable camera upload on your dropbox account, and probably disable "use cellular data" to save some LTE usage. Then all your photos and videos will be synced to your dropbox storage.

At a later stage, you can import the photos from dropbox into your photo management software for more permanent storage and processing.

Deleting Photos but iPhone memory is not freed?

iOS now has a Recently Deleted feature to give you a chance to recover accidental deletion of photos. Therefore if you really want the photos and videos off your iPhone, you hvae to go into the "recently deleted" folder, and really do a "delete all"