Tuyen’s Blog

Someone asked me the other day about upgrading to a new laptop.  Specifically they wanted to grab a new MacBook Pro (non-retina) to upgrade from their 2011 MacBook Pro which seemed to be getting slower for them.  Applications loaded slower, startup seemed to take forever, etc.  As I am a current user of a 2011 MacBook Pro, I was a little confused as to what they meant by slower since my machine is still very snappy for a 2 year old machine.  When I showed them what I meant by cold booting my machine from off to login screen in less than 15 seconds, they were floored.  Even when their machine was brand new, it never booted that quickly.  Opening up applications was even faster.  The difference between our machines?  I have an SSD and they have the stock 5400RPM hard drive.  My recommendation to them was to keep their still pristine looking laptop and simply swap out the hard drive for an SSD.  The one I run in my MacBook is a Crucial M4 512GB.  They're relatively cheap - Amazon has this particular model for less than $400 - and it truly is like upgrading to a brand new MacBook.  It's no wonder Apple is starting to move all of their products over to SSD. 

The great thing about the non-retina MacBooks is that it's still relatively easy to do upgrades yourself.  Check out the tutorial from the iFixIt guys.  Remember to back up all of your data before doing any hard drive swap out.  To me, CPU and RAM upgrades haven't provided nearly the same punch as going from a standard hard drive to SSD.  Once you've experienced it, you'll never go back and you can keep that old trusty laptop even longer before needing to upgrade.

Still not 100% confident in my HTML/CSS/Javascript skills but had an opportunity come up for me to jump into Ruby.  So far I'm picking up the very very very basics of it and so far so good.  Struggled forever trying to toggle between integers, floats and strings and getting my puts to work.  But had that a-ha moment last night when it clicked.  Methods was actually very easy to pick up.  Some of the higher math functions seem oddly configured but that's a minor issue.  Now working on flow control.

For those looking for a very good beginner's tutorial, check out Chris Pine's Learn to Program.  Of course, there's always Codecademy and LearnStreet as additional resources.  What I've found though is that reading Chris' tutorial and actually doing the coding in a "real world" environment with an actual text editor and Terminal forces me to do things with less training wheels.  There are times when things don't work no matter how many times I rewrite them but once they finally do work, that amazing a-ha moment is immensely greater than doing things in a more hand holding fashion.  I also find that when I'm not fed the answer and have to actually hunt and figure it out myself that it sticks with me more.  The journey of discovery is much more important than the destination.

So eight days into my code education and I've brushed up on the basics of HTML.  As someone who mainly used GUI's to create HTML pages, I'm pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to hand code HTML.  On to the next lesson!

I am by training, a product person. I've spent the last 10+ years of my life conceiving of concepts and corralling enough cats to get a product from idea to reality. The one bottle-neck I always seem to encounter is that beyond rudimentary HTML/CSS (and Apple IIe BASIC), I can't code. It hasn't stopped me from getting products built but it seems to be the biggest lag as it relates to getting things out of my head and into production. I'll have an idea or a new feature for an existing one and then spend a fair amont of time conveying that to other people to get them to make it all work. It's in that conveying that most of the lag exists. As a problem solver, something needs to change.

Today I walk a path I should have taken 10 years ago when I was younger, had more energy and less responsibilities. I am teaching myself how to code. I don't expect any short cuts and probably won't produce anything worth diddly anytime soon. I'll lean on friends and colleagues who are actual real coders and hope I don't annoy them too much with my questions. One benefit of learning to code today is the wealth of resources out there from online books to tutorial websites like Codeacademy, Learnstreet, etc. Most of my time will be spent pouring over these but I've already started writing actual code. Mind, you it's stuff similar to this:

10 Print "Hello"
20 Goto 10

But hey we all have to start somewhere. I'm starting at the bottom and seeing how far I can get.

Just saw the below demo and immediately downloaded the app.  The really stupid part is that I believe Apple pulls its data from Yahoo! Weather.  Just another example of Apple really dropping the ball as it relates to the default (UNDELETE-ABLE) apps they have on the iPhone.

I've been using Sendhub for a few days now and love it.  Best integration to date I've seen of a hosted phone service.  I am a Google Voice user and it's not bad but Sendhub is a major improvement.  The iOS app actually functions closer to what making calls is like on the native iOS Phone app.  Pricing seems decent though would love a tier in between the $25 and $50 level.  I could see this being something I implement for employees moving forward who BYOD.

Are we seeing the 2002 Barry Zito?  It's hard to believe that he hasn't lost since August 2nd of last year!  Kudos to him for finally living up to that huge contract.  Ironically Zito's $18M a year average on his contract makes him only the 9th highest paid pitcher in 2012 (and likely to fall in 2013 when new contracts are announced).  Of course he stunk from 2007 to 2011 as one the highest paid pitchers in the league but it never seemed to be for lack of trying.  My hope is that he rewards the Giants faithful by resigning with them for a discount next year.  But then again, baseball is business and he's getting hot just in time for contract renegotiations.

This is a must read.  It's pretty sad that it takes a foreigner to teach me new things about my motherland.  Neil Fraser is an engineer at Google who made a recent trip to Vietnam and found that Computer Science is being taught at all levels.  What surprised me even more was that he said some of the school work they are doing would allow half of the 11th graders to pass the Google interview process.  That's worth repeating ... 11TH GRADERS PASSING THE GOOGLE INTERVIEW PROCESS.  How many 11th graders in the US could say the same?  We need to wake up to the fact that the world is passing us by in terms of educating the next generation.  I for one shall be enrolling my daughter for computer camp as soon as I can.

Been absent for a while but now I'm back.  Been very busy lately but hopefully will be able to post more.

Warriors!
Beat the Lakers last night.  Strong performance from Curry and Lee.  After a slump last month, they seem to be rolling.  Still need more production from Bogut.  He's definitely an upgrade from Biedrins or Ezeli but for $14M a year, he should be doing more.  Question is will he get healthy/better next year?

T-Mobile iPhone ... FINALLY!
News hit today that T-Mobile will finally be getting the iPhone.  I have to admit a certain fondness for T-Mobile.  I joined when the original Sidekick came out and never had an issue with the service.  The only reason I switched to AT&T was the iPhone.  If their LTE footprint were a bit wider, I might be convinced to join up again.  They seem to be much more reasonable with their subscriptions and this new "un-subsidy" is a good idea.  It's also reported that the T-Mobile version of the iPhone 5 actually is a newer version than the one with AT&T, Sprint or Verizon.  It makes use of the HD Voice calling feature talked about during the iPhone 5 launch and has access to more radio bands across the world.  Overall, glad to see more competition in the wireless marketplace.  Could only mean good things for consumers.

Co-working Spaces
I recently moved out of the large office space my company has occupied for over 2 years.  Just didn't need the space and needed to be more economical.  We found some co-working space nearby in Jack London Square.  So far so good.  From a financial standpoint it makes a lot of sense.  Month to month rentals, shared resources, etc.  The one benefit I haven't quite seen yet is the creativity/buzz when people from multiple businesses hang out in one space.  Maybe it's the quality of the tenants as most of the folks seem to be lawyers, contractors, etc.  Would be great if there were more start-ups in the co-working space but that will take time.

Received my iPhone 5 bright and early today. After a few SIM related glitches, I was able to get online and test out the new LTE connection. First, a comparison with standard WIFI. Below is my speed test of my home network (Comcast Performance - 20MB down and 5MB up per their specs).

Pretty respectable. I sometimes can get 10MB-15MB down but 5MB+ is the usual norm. Now check out the speed when I turned WIFI off...

Holy... freakin'... shnookies...

I have a feeling that I'm about to be throttled by AT&T quite frequently...