Repost from Codesum.blogspot.com
First week reflection. The key to learn coding is to see what is possible. And understand that you can do it too. It isn’t just for some genius out there 🙂
http://codesum.blogspot.com/2013/02/first-week-at-coding-dojo-coding.html
My first article with the Women 2.0 Beginner’s Battle Chest.
http://www.women2.com/the-wonderful-quest-of-a-new-programmer/
Dear Linkedin,
I am so flattered for one second when I received this email. I saw the blog posts online and know there are top 1% most viewed profiles and the internet is filled with wonderful discussions. If I were to put a tag for this post, it will be #facepalm
Are you saying I am elite yet I am just one of your 200 million? So much faith in the future of jobs.
Fun exercise for my awesome statistician friends!
Let’s go through this exercise.
Linkedin just named me as top 5% viewed profile! Hooray, but you heard about the 1%, so I am nothing, this is just saying among 200 million, i am one of the 10 million.
And if you look through there infograph, US has 74 million users!, so that percentage reduces even lower, and Mr. President only has 500K+ views, so that’s is to say being top 5% my profile is only viewed hundreds of times or fewer.
Am I on the right track? This is sooooooo fun~~~
Awww the beauty of marketing/sales and the hidden side of stats. Love it. Is this a face palm or not? We kindly notify you of your un-uniqueness.
The above link has been posted on Facebook, look forward to hearing replies on FB and Twitters. I will repost here.
Salute foodies: Happiness b(u)y Food. blog post was a great success. I thought I would yelp more as a Yelp.com Elite member since I am already a chatter box. What is a Yelp Elite? Translates to I am crazy about food and people know it.
I discovered List.ly today, finally I found a place to put my “pins” from Snip It, which is in RIP mode. While my most popular section was Career and then Design on Snip It, I thought nothing was more fitting and uniquely me to start a list of awesome curated cookbooks. And there I did it! I made the best out of my Snip It and Pinterest, and updated it to be That Yelping Girl list on List.ly
Some highlights:
I am inspired today by one of my favorite apps – Tiny Post, inspiration images, new year resolutions, Google style personal project time, and vintage designs of Ittalla glassware… and I am in need of generating meaningful projects to write … Continue reading
The new feminism is for women to help women at work?
Especially in high tech?
Head >> Weapons of choices:
[Fast Company][Article: Every Office Has Its Bullies : Here’s How to Outwit Them]
[Stanford Professor : Robert Sutton][Book:Robert Sutton’s No Asshole Rule]
[Author: Katherine Crowley, Kathy Elster][Book: Mean Girls at Work: How to Stay Professional When Things Get Personal]
Commentaries:
[Continuing from my previous post…] Business case examples aside personal actions drive Gandhi style changes. As a champion of the way of Positive Externality, I practice good business on a daily basis. Here are some simple examples:
Recently a tough topic for me to think about is women in technology. There are plenty of women in technology now, and we can definitely be there. I myself was an ex-tech consultant though I had a more social science background. People can be open minded. One issue seems to be that the balance and the power are both intricate, regardless of industries.
At one point my friends, co-workers and myself all have a slight preference of male bosses rather than female ones. As female professionals we feel at times we are judged more harshly and unfairly by our female coworkers and supervisors (the Fast Company article explains this perception issue). Regardless if it is oversensitivity or competitiveness, the peace and balance are fragile if exist in the first place.
Fast Company had an interesting article today, I recommend all young female professionals read it.
Wasn’t expecting it to be about (women and) the following very helpful and current topics –
– The article is actually about women and the new feminism of women helping women at work!
– About young women who are tech savy that are ticking the traditional matriarchs off
– Differences in styles and perceived styles of female bosses
Apparently, a book is already in the pipeline~ buy it here on Amazon
Mean Girls at Work: How to Stay Professional When Things Get Personal
Recently a friend’s Facebook status got 19 likes in a matter of hours reads:
Those who claim to be passionate about business are really saying they haven’t figured out the right way to make tons of money yet.
My party-pooper comment almost shut down the thread, giving a passionate speech about how I care because my parents are inspiring business(wo)man and my mentor changed the American healthy juice industry.
The truth is people associate business with greed, nasty competitions, and plain not nice people. I don’t blame them even with my war banner I still feel deflated at times. I am on the mission impossible still though: proving good business. Businesses that are win-win situations, making profit while benefiting society, taking us humans one step closer to Nirvana.
The zen of business may be classified in economics as a positive externality, which refer to a positive byproduct of economic or socioeconomic transactions. E.g. you hate your neighbor, he is OCD, particular and not friendly, he doesn’t even talk with you because he’s so introverted. He shuts himself in his garden all day long planting trees and flowers. There, he did some good to you and the world:
His garden purifies the air for the local community
His garden makes your street more attractive
His garden even increases the vicinity’s housing price!
Okay more real world examples:
Creating the win-win situation is not just my personal strive. it is actually economically viable and desired. Policies makers frequently consider how to create win-win’s when making incentives for positive behaviors and pay attention to Do No Evil.
Today my favorite pin board was “merged” with Yahoo. Somehow it meant more than just being bought, it meant only one option left : download your data… Snip.it is dead? Could this possibly be? Gone r the readership of my two most popular sections – Career and Design. Yesterday I just made a brand new collection called Pink Career which is a dedicated section for women.
Phoof gone r the hundreds of readers the pins. No unfortunately I can’t go back to Pinterest because most of these are useful web pages NOT pretty pictures. To fill this void would take multiple social media sites.
The describe how I feel it is hard : I feel empty, betrayed, strayed and confused. I shouldn’t feel so about just an Internet service yet it cut so many real connections
Imagine tomorrow .. Suddenly.. Facebook is gone forever .. Where do you pick up where you left.. The thousands of connections or hundreds..
Virtual they mean nothing yet the grief I feel is real. So maybe it does mean something : RIP Snip it R I I? Remembered in Internet?
Sometimes pass the new year, Internet news will publish a list of disappeared websites. I never knew how it felt to belong to one of those lost communities
I have 700+ real Facebook friends 500+ real linkedin connections yet the loss of 700+ readership on Snip It is dauntingly real. Why?
All followed few commented yet the loss is real. It was a ritual to share my favorite web page discoveries of the day. And web page discovering is such an important part of the day.
One day our children will shutdown Facebook what would happen to us? We will need loss counseling? Gosh never thought about this true nightmare till now. Regardless how smart you are, evolutionarily we are programmed to stay in groups. We value these groups be them virtual or not.
Coding / Computer Programming can be difficult. Some agents try to explain it in layman’s term, gamified terms, poetic writings, and sometimes just plain crazy. Regardless, it will work for some and only some.
Codesum(code basics) has been popular among the P2PU peer learning community where coding is taught for free in a non-traditional way. Just wrote a new post about coding, languages, metaphors, and all the non-sense. For poetic beginners…Bon Appetit
http://codesum.blogspot.com/2013/01/ruby-begins-new-day-and-on-my-rails.html
Met with friend and Product Manager of Instacube (think table top digital photo frame streaming Instagram… and way more: facebook, hashtags, lots of potentials) at a demo party.
Two Colors: White & Black (resembles an abstract image of the app’s well-known icon with colorful stripes)
System/General Spec: Android, micro USB charge, light weight on hands
Design: three buttons on top (Circle, Grid, Heart)
The heart is particularly cute, upon pressing, will super impose a temporary big red heart on the picture and “Like” the picture. The heart goes away, the Like stays for your Social Network to see.
Functionality:
– Live streaming Instagram account, hashtags (we tested photos on spot with #instacube and it was instantaneous!)
– Touch screen, pinch to view a grid of photos, tap to focus on one, more tapping/swipe on the photo reveals detailed information about the photo, account info, and caption
Overall the product seems quite ready. This is particularly surprising to me because Instacube is relatively new and has had a short development period so far – consider it almost freshly pressed and off the shelf on Kickstarter. It says a lot about the D2M team. PM is dreaming big for the future because the cube can do so much more than just Instagram, the system is build to expand and will be able to integrate with many partners. In fact Instacube already landed quite a few, e.g. Stratus. There are great potentials. Diligent engineers are thinking more than just hardware, it is about the software and Social Network. D2M cares all about design, but as a stellar design firm it will now also champion the entire life cycle of the product and take it to market. How it unravels is yet to be told.
The object is relatively thick, but it is light weight and does not feel burdensome. In fact, it has comfortable steadiness, makes party guests at peace when toying with it. I wasn’t afraid that it would be fragile.
Some concerns:
-Screen is slightly faint (can’t compare to iPhone retina, but it looked great on marble kitchen top in a house party).
-Android system is versatile but Instagram is also the poster child of iOS for a long while, will be interesting to see how Instacube will wrangle with aesthetics vs practicality vs functionality.
-Instacube is a child of technology and social media, but its root Instagram is also a child of art and creative minds, will be interesting to see how the two worlds meet.
Stanford trivia: did you know that Instagram founder got his idea about the app from Stanford in Florence? And now Instacube also has some cardinal splash.
Just recommended a book for a friend who wants to open a restaurant, become a chef not by apprenticeship but somehow his own way. That’s really cool, also really hard.
A book by Tyson Cole the owner of Uchi, a restaurant in Houston and Austin. It is an inspiration that he sort of broke the taboo of Japanese traditions. Innovation on Japanese food is a destiny but also a risky plank. He walked the plank and there is Uchi (I am a Yelp’er foodie, love food, and this is my top 2 Japanese restaurants in the US, maybe the top top is Ikko in Orange County, and I live in San Francisco~). Tyson hasn’t been to Japan for that long either. He definitely isn’t the otaku nor the kaijin that are obsessed with Japan.
Here’s your amazon link to the book. http://t.co/2qWiyC8j
I want to just say a few words about food. Chinese are obsessed with food, and from my friend’s picture from Korea, gosh Koreans are obsessed too. Chinese even begin the greeting of daily life with a “Have you eaten? 吃饭了吗”
We Sichuanese Chinese will die for the best chili pepper and spice. We eat in the morning (2AM), throughout the day and at late nights. It is such fond memory to see people driving BMW and Benz to port at a street shack to eat that hot pot on a very very hot evening.
Food is what we die for. Food brings the peace that all nations so need. You may not like a nation but you may like their food. And there comes emotional struggles.
I would pay for a 30 dollar piece sushi but sushi is about more than that. Did you know that sush is sort of a fast food? It is a convenience food that was supposed to be eaten with fingers and that is why it is so portable and bento-style. Sushi boats are supposed to be pretty cheap in Japan. Yet Sushi is like a delicacy in the United States, even in Ukraine!
And interestingly, I used to hate sushi and raw fishes. Now I still can’t stand bad Q sushi but will seek out the best. America changed that for me! Crazy indeed. Americans who are not supposed to know about sushi changed me and converted many. California roll is rather the introductory to the sushi ritual, and in fact the Japanese have reverse imported these into Japan~ gaku iinyu. Wow. Without the humble California Roll there wouldn’t be a sushi me.
Any one discovered Mexican food via burritos? Invented in Texas I heard? I was shocked when I discovered that too.
And once I was in the Vatican, wanting a taste of the “Italian” coffee. I was so angry at the fact that a cafe nearby right at where we lined up was serving americanos to Americans. When I asked for macchiato I was first denied then had to wait 10 min. To be fair, I was this small Asian lady who discovered Caffe Grecco near the Spanish Steps, which I bypassed, and I skipped all the lines in Gucci. And the joy I felt when I learnt that Lord Byron and Goethe once sat in the same place, oh the black marbles and the velvety benches
We are the nation of Starbucks though~ Starbucks actually democratized coffee! Shocking social discovery indeed. Even the founders of Starbucks were so obsessed with the beans and technical’s, but not making it drinkable and affordable. It was a gentleman’s drink not an American drink. Starbucks in my pseudo economist eyes are American inventions of “affordable luxury”. And that’s why I love Starbucks, even though I am a local cafe girl: the Philz and neighborhood jewels: the names that I can’t even remember
Food should be democratic. It should be open and tolerant. I do not like to be made stupid for having an adventurous heart to try. This American way of eating food is such a spirit that is so very American. As we are the land of many technical inventions, we are also the proud land of food discoveries and renovation. Dare I say I am proud of my country for that – for the food? Yes! And sometimes not so much when food is the cause of our No.1 illness.
A quick note about Yelp, a community that I so love. Its got minus’es : we yelp we can be annoying, you know like puppies can sometimes too. But gosh I love that it give people a voice. Think about it, before yelp there was not much consequence for terrible service and terrible memories. Memories from terrible food and restaurants can really haunt, after all my whole point is that – food is culture. And to me Yelp is like the voice of democracy of food. Hoping saying this will make people like yelp slightly more. And for yelpers to not be “yelp terrorist” and abuse their powers.
Food is culture. Food captures so many memories of grandma, neighborhood, local, innovation, and dream. Happiness by food, buy food for happiness. Inspired by my high school friend said many years ago: I would spend all the money I have on food. Yes it may be gone after you eat it, but it is soooooo good. And you need it, for your soul and body.
TheOpTips 