Blog posts
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Weekly Review – 2020/08/09 – 2020/08/16
Past Week Published 8 blog posts within a week. I’m developing a cadence, aiming for one (very) short blog posts a day and one medium blog post per week. I think this target is manageable and S.M.A.R.T and will help force me to get in the habit of shipping small fragments instead of never shipping…
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Creating my own digital library
After reading Daniel Wessel’s post1 on creating a virtual library, I’ve decided take the leap and convert the majority of my books — classic literature will remain sitting on my book shelf — into digital form. To accomplish this, I invested in a Fujitsu ScanScan IX500. The scanner runs for about $400.00. I selected this…
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I’m a messy person: it’s time for a change.
I’m pretty embarrassed of how disorganized and messy our house looks and feels. I forget the color of the bathroom tile since its hidden from view due to dirty clothes sprawled out across the entire floor. I’m afraid of raising my standing desk for fear of a monitor toppling over due a caught wire and…
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Guitar practice journal #1
Today I practiced my guitar for 20 minutes, a generous amount of time these days (if you are parent you’ll understand). During this practice session, I worked ear training: I looped the song The Funeral (Band of Horses) on my iPhone and played along, plucking the individuals notes in chord progression on my Traveler’s acoustic…
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Logical Writing & Steven Pinker’s Coherence Relations
Have you ever read a passage that flows (i.e. has cohesion) but it just … doesn’t make any sense, no matter how many times you read it? You can lexically parse the passage (i.e. makes grammatically sense) but you cannot grasp the meaning? If so, the passage probably lacks coherence. What is coherence? According to…
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A healthy (no oil), quick (15 minutes prep, 15 minutes cook), plant based instant pot dish
If you are looking for a quick, delicious, healthy (no oil), plant based meal that takes only 30 minutes (15 of those minutes are waiting for the dish to cook in an instant pot) to whip up, look no further. Check out Jill McKeever’s video on “The Red Lentil Stew From Instant Pot”: I’ve taken…
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A No-Excuses Guide to Blogging – Excuse #5 – “I don’t want to be wrong”
Many people (including myself) fear that we will be perceived as a fool if we publish on a post blog that contains a mistake, a public mistake. Nobody wants to be humiliated publicly. This fear is encapsulated inside of a quote that Sacha shares: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to…
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What vacation looks like with a 10 month year old
Summary I never could’ve imagine what being a parent (to a 10 month year old) looks like while on a vacation at the Suncadia Hotel (in the midst of a pandemic). When our daughter sleeps sprawled out on the cloud like king size bed, us two parents are quietly scarfing down our cold dinner while…
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Swapping values of two variables with XOR
As programmers, we know that we can swap two variables by using a temporary variable. That’s fairly simple and intuitive: given two variables (x and y) that you want to swap, you store x in a temporary variable z, copy y to x, then finally copy z (the temporary) to y. But I learned recently…
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Waiting for one day …
“If you want to be successful, find out what the price is and then pay it.” Scott Adams I agree with that Scott Adams wholeheartedly. I also think this rule can be more broadly applied: “If you want something — anything — find out what the price is and then pay it.” This quote reminds…
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Week 1 and Week 2 of compilers
Last week, I couldn’t carve out enough time to write a post on my reflections for week 1 of my compiler’s course so I’ll do the next best thing: write a post that combines week 1 and week 2. The quarter kicked off on January 10th and since then, I’ve felt a range of emotions,…
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Top 6 photos from first family photo shoot
Below are my top 6 photos I cherry picked from our first family photo shoot that took place a couple weeks ago. As some of you my already know, my daughter Elliott was born recently, on October 3rd (2019). And shortly after, my wife had arranged for a professional photographer — Stephanie BC — to…
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Almost half way through M.S. in Computer Science
I’m almost half way through the OMSCS (online masters in computer science), last week marking the end Spring 2020, my third term in the program. And although I’m looking forward to taking compilers next semester, my mind often wanders into the distant future , my mind fast forwarding to the time in which I’ll be…
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Masters in CS paying off
Taking computer science courses are already paying off in my career. Nothing too significant (yet) but I am witnessing small wins. For example, this past summer I suffered through HPCA (high performance computing architecture), a course historically only offered in the longer semesters (e.g. fall, spring). In the course, I learned a lot of theory:…
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Next up: Compilers (theory and practice) and reflecting on fatherhood
For next semester, Spring 2020, I enrolled in what I expect to be one of the most difficult (yet rewarding) courses: compilers – theory and practice. I’m stoked and at the same time, feeling very nervous. I’m stoked for several reasons. First, according to the previous semester’s syllabus, I’ll be learning a ton of theory:…
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Information Security – Project 4
This afternoon, I started on project 4 for introduction to information security (IIS). This goal for this project is to have us students learn more about web security and consists of three objectives, manufacturing three web attacks: cross site scripting, cross site forgery and structure query language (SQL) injection attack. And although I’m very familiar…
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My wolf pack
At work, I’m subscribed to an e-mail distribution group called “dogs@amazon.com”, a list dedicated to anyone interested in dogs. And today, I read an e-mail that broke my heart. A fellow Amazonian just had their second child and they are now giving away their 3 year old Labrador because they can no longer give it…
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Week 1 of master’s in computer science
January 7th, 2019 marks the first day of my computer science master’s program through University of Georgia Tech. The week leading up to the first day was somewhat stressful since I was mid flight (returning to Seattle from London), my plane hovering over the massive blue sea, while I frantically typed away on my keyboard…
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History of i,j,k variables ?
Any time you read code (in production or from a textbook), you’ll often see the control variable, when employing for loops, being declared with the variables i,j,k. And for most of my programming career, I’ve never really questioned why we specifically choose those three letters. Why not m (a great letter), or c or d or…
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No exercise (or tennis) this week
I’ve been limping around for the past week, pulling a muscle in my left thigh. No fault other than my own, though. One evening last week, Jess and I hit the gym together, exercising at the Northgate 24 hour fitness (which is apparently one of the more popular 24 hour fitnesses in Seattle, due to…
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Linear algebra – exam 1
Earlier this morning, before starting the work week, I took my first linear algebra exam at the nearby Northgate Testing center. The proctored exam covered the first four modules in the course, topics including: Gaussian elimination (row echelon) Gaussian Jordan elimination (row reduced echelon) Adding, subtracting, multiplying matrices Calculating the inverse of matrices (using identity…