February 2012
1 post
Cultivation
A once great visionary once said:
Technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.
This is perhaps one of the most important points to keep in mind when we engineers—makers of stuff—are designing and building products. If not for ourselves, who else are we creating it for?...
January 2012
8 posts
What the Hell Happened to You, Google?
Remember back in the day when everyone was enamored by Google? Its “Don’t Be Evil” mantra was echoed across the Internet, respected and loved by all. That slogan was coined back in 2006. Nonetheless, the slogan’s guiding principles served at the core of its foundation in the early days when it was only Larry, Sergey, and a couple of other engineers.
Now, look at what has...
Profits and Revenue
Apple announced its Q1 2012 earnings today. Here’s a re-cap:
$46 billion in revenue
$13 billion in profit
37 million iPhones sold
15 million iPads sold
5 million Macs sold
15.4 million iPods sold
Google, for Q4 2011, posted $10.6 billion in revenue. Apple’s profits this quarter beat the former’s revenue. Talk about perspective (this quarter is a new record for...
"The Meaning of Life"
One often whimsically muses over the “meaning of life” as a means to either pass by time or engage one’s self in a spiritual joust with the mind. The epigram has undertaken a rather philosophical connotation throughout the past millennia, inspiring some to even go travel around the world in search of the catchphrase’s significance. What remains curious, however, is the...
December 2011
1 post
The Vision
Steve Jobs’ Vision of the World:
When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call...
November 2011
1 post
October 2011
7 posts
“Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at...”
– Anonymous
The Picture of Dorian Gray
So, I recently finished Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. I figured I could share my minute sentiments on the matter.
Did you know that I used to almost always mix up The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and The Picture of Dorian Gray? Although entirely different works of fiction (the former is somewhat semi-biographical), the books’ authors were both of Irish descent,...
3 tags
September 2011
2 posts
Two Goals
I suppose it’s rather silly of me to list down “goals” for the new school year but I feel it’s better for me to have some written reminder since I usually tend to forget these things.
I basically have two goals for the new school year: read and write more. For the first goal, it boils down to reading at least something for leisure per day (since the school year started, I...
Classically Trained
For the first time in awhile, I opened the cover lid to my old black Pearl River piano that my parents bought for me when I was in the 4th grade. It has always been dormant in my house when I left for college. It still has the same fine black paint on it, without any visible dents, and this is mostly due to my mother’s impeccable care for my possessions, especially objects holding great...
August 2011
3 posts
Ode to Tea
Withered, dry, and self-effacing, the tea leaf is a fascinating offspring of nature’s resplendence. With the finest of its kind grown and nurtured in the heartland of Asia, it is the second most popular consumed beverage in the world. Yet, the intrinsic humility of the plant itself has yet to be fully appreciated. Often prostituted and stripped of its former glory, the tea leaf undergoes a...
From Engineer to Market Analyst
My email to Horace Dediu, founder of asymco:
Me: What motivated you to essentially “switch” career paths [from engineer to analyst], and on that note, what advice could you give to a person, such as myself, who is keen on leveraging his computer science education to better understand the market?
Dediu: My motivation was that I was frustrated working in a failing company and being...
However Vast the Darkness, We Must Supply Our Own...
Playboy: If life is so purposeless, do you feel that it’s worth living?
Kubrick: Yes, for those of us who manage somehow to cope with our own mortality. The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow...
July 2011
1 post
The Resignations of a Dying Artist
He sat there comfortably, slowly swaying back and forth in his self-fashioned oak rocking chair while the innocent breeze of Montauk gently kissed his old and wrinkly skin. He felt, as any artist approaching his acclaimed demise would, a sense of halcyon enlightenment. It was near midnight, and the air was not as oppressive than it had been during those dark nights of soulful alienation. As this...
June 2011
2 posts
Airport Lounges
For me, there is something eerily comforting about the feeling of sitting in an airport lounge. Aside from the alumnium-coated seats and a clean minimal design enshrouding the marbled decor, I have come to relish the peaceful observational seat of taking note of transient passengers. The situation itself is mildly comedic in its own peculiar way, especially since airports house perhaps the most...
"Just Be Yourself"
“Just be yourself.” There is something uniquely irritating about always being told just to be oneself in situations where practical guidance is required. One wants to ask, “Who else’s self can I be?” To do so, though, would be to deprive a benign platitude of the slight significance it does possess. The directive does not mean much, but it means well: one is to act relaxed and assume an...
May 2011
3 posts
Hey Idiot, Take a Break
One of my biggest strengths is also one of my biggest weaknesses: I work too hard and too much. My father, whom I have the most profound respect for (though I don’t tell him that), has always told me to do my best in everything that I set my mind to. For the past couple of years, I interpreted that as working extremely hard. But there’s always another side to his often...
Square Signals: The Problem with... →
andymatuschak:
I sat down to my very first Caltech math problem set with the adorable exuberance that only a freshman could muster. Pencils sharpened, whiteboard ready, textbooks unwrapped, I read the first problem:
I read it again, hoping I’d missed something—additional constraints or guidance, perhaps?…
WatchHans Rosling, “The Magic Washing Machine”
April 2011
1 post
How to Become a Math Whiz
David Shenk:
Keep working on your problem set after you get stuck. Don’t just sit and stare at it: think hard; until you’re exhausted; then come back the next day and try again. This will be uncomfortable, but that discomfort is the feeling of your brain stretching to accommodate new abilities.
Shenk’s aphorism is a succinct recapitulation of my computer science education here at UCSD...
March 2011
7 posts
My Writing Sucks. So Does Yours. But Yet We Still...
Pardon the preface below. It won’t seem germane at first, but trust me, it’ll all come full circle soon enough. I usually don’t listen to podcasts as they typically tend to be boring (hey, that’s not surprising!). But recently, I wanted to start doing something more interesting during my commutes to school instead of trying to make sense out of U2’s song lyrics....
Manners
Perhaps the most vibrant electronic and synthetic pop album I’ve ever listened to, Passion Pit’s Manners hits the nail on the head when it comes to rich and warm electro synths. I can’t really comment on their previous album [and EP], but Manners sure delivers. And not to mention, their well-earned credit is much deserving. Hailing from Cambridge, Massachusetts, Passion Pit...
Designspiration
After seeing rands’ tweet on design, I had to check the site out myself. Their collection is what one, an ignorant one for that matter, might call a hipster’s heaven. Nonetheless, I saw some pretty neat art on there and I thought I could share them with some of you. I highly recommend heading over there yourself and see which ones you might like and dislike. Who knows, it might inspire...
What Dreams May Come
Sigmund Freud once said [something along the lines of] that “dreams possess the key to our subconscious.” Now, I’m no psychologist nor am I a person to agree with Freud’s research but those words stirred up some curiosity in me. Do you, like myself, often forget dreams one to two days, a week tops, after experiencing them? Or, do you often forget your dreams the morning of,...
14 Rules
Saw this on Reddit last week. Although this dealt with the technology sector, I think the theme(s) here transcend any field.
1. Be the go to guy.
2. Know a business sector inside and out, you won’t do well if you’re just a programmer.
3. Cultivate your contacts and make sure the guys that you report too ALWAYS look good in the end even if it means re-doing something to make it...
On Politics
I have never been much of a fan of politics. Aside from participating in the social activity of pretending to be excited about politics during presidential elections, I don’t really care. I’m not the only one who feels this way, though; most Americans, if not the world, get a really nasty vibe when they hear the word “politics.” In fact, the word has become rather married...
Apple's 'post-PC' World
Joshua Topolsky
In this new world, Apple no longer has to compete on specs and features, nor does it want to. There is no Mac vs. PC here — only “the future” versus “the past.” It won’t be a debate about displays, memory, wireless options — it will be a debate about the quality of the experience. Apple is not just eschewing the spec conversation in favor...
February 2011
2 posts
Why Star Trek is Awesome
To encapsulate the Star Trek franchise and everything about it in this blag post would simply be impossible. Put simply: there’s just too much awesomeness. Gene Roddenberry has created a culture and most important of all, an idea, that will stand the test of time. It is an idea that saw the genesis of ideas and thoughts during the time of Socrates, to the technological ubiquity in our modern...
Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?
From Rolling Stone:
Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie...
January 2011
4 posts
The Moral Repercussions of Killing the Internet
This blag post may be late to the party, but my mind’s been kind of dwelling on this issue for the past couple of days. So, for those of you who live in a cave, the government of Egypt has shut down the nation’s Internet. Sparing the irrelevant information of how they did it, I’m rather going to focus on the repercussions of enacting the kill switch, and what this means not only...
How Much Does Your Life Weigh
Ryan Bingham, Up in the Air
How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you’re carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life. You start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks, [and] then you start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV—the backpack should be getting pretty...
Dresden
I’m not one to write a music “review” but ever since I discovered the UK-based band Dresden, I’ve been meaning to share my thoughts on this humble group and its terrific eponymous album. Not to be confused with The Dresden Dolls, Dresden would probably fall under the umbrella genre(s) of electronic and indie rock, though the songs in its album are hard to classify since...
The Responsibility of Intellectuals
Noam Chomsky:
Twenty-years ago, Dwight Macdonald published a series of articles in Politics on the responsibility of peoples and, specifically, the responsibility of intellectuals. I read them as an undergraduate, in the years just after the war, and had occasion to read them again a few months ago. They seem to me to have lost none of their power or persuasiveness. Macdonald is concerned with...
There really isn't much of a "tablet" market →
marco:
There’s an iPad market, and the iPad could be classified as a tablet, from a hardware-centric viewpoint. But the market for non-iPad tablets is about as big today as it was before the iPad, which isn’t nothing, but it’s close enough to nothing that Apple doesn’t need to worry about it.
How many…
December 2010
4 posts
The Road Not Taken
One of my favorite short poems written by the American poet, Robert Frost.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim Because it was grassy and wanted wear, Though as for that the passing...
Fair and Balanced, News You Can Trust
Hey Glenn Beck, slow down a bit, yeah? Too much information is coming out of your mouth, and it’s hard to digest when I’m chewing on too much bullshit already. Being a computer science major—which often entails writing software (what a surprise!)—usually necessitates keeping up with what’s going on in the tech world. More specifically, what technologies are being...
Of Tweets and Twits
I don’t think most people understand what Twitter is and why it exists. I don’t even think I know at times. But I’ll tell you what: it’s an awesome tool, news/update feed, and an intriguing perspective on the odd and fascinating thoughts of (extra)ordinary people, especially those who are important to you in some way or another. It’s not supposed to be Facebook, nor...
“To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we...”
– Julian Assange, “State and Terrorist Conspiracies”
November 2010
3 posts
An Exchange Between Data and Spock
“Unification, Part II” (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
Spock: He intrigues me—this Picard.
Data: In what manner, sir?
Spock: He’s remarkably analytical and dispassionate, for a human. I understand why my father chose to mind meld with him. There’s an almost Vulcan quality to the man.
Data: Interesting. I had not considered that, and Captain Picard has been a...
As I See It: You Listen to Crappy Music →
jjangsangy:
I have a problem with Far East Movement.
The 50th Anniversary of UCSD, we invite them to preform for us. They’re popular, huge fan base of Asian-American as well every other ethnicity. They proclaim to be making a revolution, a movement for Asian-Americans in American pop culture. But without a…