Git Triple And Double Dot Notation
Many git commands accept either a single revision or a range. For example, git log or git show. This is similar to a file glob but for git commits.
Posts by Category
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programming
Exception Handling
Never use exceptions. Always use an if-check to avoid errors.
Just-In-Time Compilation
Just-in-time compilation is realtime, dynamic compilation. It’s recently become a popular way to execute code. By diving into how it works and the concepts i...
Best Practices To Write A Makefile
I read these two blogs on Makefiles: An opinionated approach to (GNU) Make and Tips for your Makefile with Python.
Debounce In JavaScript
Debouncing is a technique for buffering user interaction: multiple inputs are reduced and deduplicated.
Use Line_profiler Without Magic
I found this excellent blog post, from Lothiraldan, on how to unmagickify line_profiler.
Running A Python Script Vs. A Module
If you have a python file named src/main.py and want to run it, it’s pretty straight forward:
Bypassing JS Paste Blocker
Many sites use JavaScript event handlers to prevent copy or paste actions. The idea is that they can prevent you from copying text, which is borderline idiot...
Git Smudge And Clean Filters
Git-lfs is a great solution to managing large binary files in git. It makes clever use of git filter capability to operate.
OSX Sound Output Switcher
I wrote a simple AppleScript to change the audio source in OSX. This was useful because I have several sources available for sound at any given time:
HTTP Cookies Are A Mess
Wow, are HTTP cookies are mess. I’ve had the displeasure of learning this and discovering how web browsers have been bolting and duct taping this system toge...
Python Metaclasses
I’m working on a Python 3 migration and have been refreshing myself on the changes. One of the syntax changes is how a class’ metaclass is set: Python 2 look...
Elasticsearch Aggregation
A few years ago, I learned to use Elasticsearch. It took awhile for me for grok and wrap my head around, to map it to my SQL foundation.
Fizzbuzz As A Programming Interview Problem
I used to use fizzbuzz for programming interviewing purposes. There’s going to be strong opinions regarding this and I think it’ll be interesting to present ...
Python Decorator
Python decorators are a syntactic sugar. They appear declarative and are used in that manner, yet they’re actually imperatively executed. I believe this mism...
Profiling Vim Plugins
I previously posted about profiling vim performance during startup. This was useful for debugging what changes in .vimrc was expensive.
Bracketed Paste Mode
Bracketed Paste Mode is a feature of terminals, which is used for signalling extra information to programs. By adding markers to wrap the text payload, a pro...
Finding Hard Or Soft Symlinks
When you have a symlink, it’s trivial to use ls or realink to resolve what files it points to. When you have a hardlink, you don’t even need resolution.
Running Commands With Environment Variable
Environment variables are essentially global variables, when it comes to the shell. In spawned child processes, environment variables are not propagated by d...
Python Variable Swapping
I read this stackoverflow post on python tuple swapping and decided to take some notes.
Python Generators
Python generators are an advanced concept that don’t see a lot of use in application programming. It’s relegated to the domain of frameworks or libraries tha...
Markov Chain Text Generation
When you read about computers generating text, such as a chatbot or AI-generated book/research papers, you might have heard the term Markov Chains. Let’s dis...
Make gmail unread count useful again
Ever since Google killed Inbox (rip), I’ve been unable to find a way to fill that void in my workflow. Inbox let you batch together emails into bundles, whic...
moreutils
moreutils is a suite of tools that I feel every unix user should be aware of. These tools are not essential tools but having them in your toolbox is what can...
Git log For Merge Commit
Merge commits are unique objects in git. Beyond normal commit stuff, they have multiple parents.
CSS :is() pseudo-selector
The :is() pseudo-class function is a selector that acts as a boolean OR. It’s blazing hot, fresh out of the oven: it’s only available on modern browser from ...
ISP Speed Tests
I recently switched internet service providers. While the installer guy was here, he gave some tips to ensure I would be making full use of the increased ban...
Mechanical Soup
There’s a python library call MechanicalSoup. It glues together BeautifulSoup and Requests, to allow for automating parsing and submitting of forms.
Typer
Typer is python package for building python CLI. It’s built on top of Click, which is also a library for parsing CLI arguments.
Pseudo-randomness
Randomness is often used in computing. The world is unpredictable and probabilistic and we want to model many things like this. Whether it’s rolling a dice o...
Python Heapq
The Python standard library has a heap data structure, called heapq. It allows for implementing a priority queue. It’s a little strange to use, as it’s compo...
Graph Traversal Algorithms
Today we’re going to talk about graph traversal algorithms. These are the more well-known ones that handle your main use cases, such as shortest path or depe...
Python List Append vs. Extend
Python list objects have both append and extend methods. They are both used to mutate the list instance and add more elements.
Reverse Polish Notation
If you’re asked to add 2 numbers, you are probably mentally imagining 2+2. What about:
Slack Custom CSS
The Slack desktop app is an Electron app, a framework for developing distributing web applications. Electron is a stripped-down web browser, powered by Node ...
Euclid’s Algorithm for Calculating Greatest Common Divisor
The greatest common divisor between two numbers is the largest common factor of either numbers. e.g. 8 is the GCD between 16 and 24.
Interplay of RSA and Diffie-Hellman
Diffie-Hellman and RSA are two related concepts in cryptography. A common misunderstanding are the roles that the two play. An often asked question is:
AppleScript to Toggle Natural Scrolling
I recently tried using a mouse at my work station, instead of Magic Trackpad. OSX has a setting for Natural Scrolling behaviour, which is the opposite for mo...
Python Key Functions
Several python functions, such as sorted and max, accept a key parameter that acts as the comparator.
CAP Theorem
The CAP theorem states that it’s impossible for a distributed data store to maintain all 3 guarantees:
Object Storage vs. Block Storage
In the world of system design and cloud computing, there is the choice between object storage or block storage. For AWS, this is S3 (Simple Storage Service) ...
NoSQL Database Types
NoSQL is such a bad name. It was chosen to contrast against the ubiquitous relational databases. Simply because it was different. This category has grown so ...
Summed Area Table
A summed area table is a handy data structure for calculating summed area in a matrix. It is a pre-computation table that allows for O(1) area sums.
Kadane’s Algorithm
Kadane’s algorithm is also known as Maximum Sum of Subarray. It’s an algorithm for finding the contiguous subarray with the largest sum.
Timsort
Timsort is the sorting algorithm that python uses for sorted. It’s a really cool sort algorithm that’s rooted in real-world practicality and throws a wrench ...
react testing library vs. enzyme
Recently, I tried out react-testing-library by converting a set of tests from enzyme. Here are some of my personal thoughts and insights from this experience.
Generics with Flow
Generics are a type system concept that allows for dynamic typing, as opposed to static typing.
Vim exrc
When vim starts up, it reads configurations from many different locations:
Conditional Logic
There a few conditional statements that we intuitively know and use daily. However, it’s easier to use and know but has been hard for me to know which is whi...
How Python super() Works
I was trying to understand what the use of super in python was for and why we needed to include it with every constructor. I read this great StackOverflow an...
Mocking Module-level Functions in Jest
In python, it’s pretty straightforward to mock a module level function.
Calculating Lines of Code Committed in a Repository
Recently I applied black python code formatter to a repository at work. I was the one to bite the bullet and format all existing files. I was curious to know...
Font Ligatures
Font ligatures are a typography concept, where adjacent characters can be interpreted as a different glyph altogether. A common example in handwriting is >...
JavaScript Packaging With Peer Dependencies
Peer dependencies
Margins Vs. Padding
Both margins and padding can help to achieve the whitespace separation between elements. You can generally get the design you want with either but there will...
Jest/Istanbul Coverage Ignore
Limiting Jest Coverage Noise
Flow Intersection Types and Casting
I’ve talked about Flow types in the past but I had more recent dealings with it. A coworker was struggling to appease the type system when trying to work in ...
Mixins, Composition, and Inheritance
I recently read about mixins, which is a general design concept, and not some framework specific terminology. In python, at least. It seems that similar conc...
Windows Terminal
Microsoft is working on a better terminal, which will improve the WSL experience. It’s available if you install the Windows 10 May 1903 update. This update i...
Window Lock Screen With Idle Timeout
Lock Your Computer
Shallow Vs. Mount
Enzyme is a library for testing react components. It handles the mounting and manipulating components.
Black Python Formatter
Black is a python code formatter. It has minimal reconfigurability and is opinionated so that you don’t have to be. What that means is that you hand over con...
Building a NES Emulator - Part 2
This article helped to illustrate the understanding I’ve put into this article.
Building a NES Emulator - Part 1
For hackathon, I decided to start up my life-long dream project of writing a NES emulator. I studied computer engineering in school and the material is not e...
Generating Raw SQL From SQLAlchemy
SQLAlchemy is the python library that is used as an abstraction layer to different ORM. It implements pythonic patterns and whatnot. Whereas many ORMs are ju...
Flow Intersection Type
While working on some React components, I ran into some flow issues. They hurt my head to understand and I’m hoping that by writing some of this down, I can ...
SQL Null Value Gotcha
I was recently using a written query and fixed a bug in it. Let’s look at an example query:
React Ref Forwarding
I needed to implement impression logging on a React component and wanted to use the intersection-observer package. This is react library to interface with th...
N+1 Problem with ORM
I was helping my colleague with an issue we saw in a slow API endpoint. We wanted to increase the number of days of data we returned, from 2 to 30. The expec...
asyncio
I read this stackoverflow post that explained python asyncio very well. I’ve tried to understand asyncio a few times in the past year but they’ve all been fa...
Filesystem Mocking with pyfakefs
pyfakefs is a python testing library for mocking out filesystem IO.
PyPy and JIT Compiling
I’ve been hearing about PyPy for a while now and how it’s 8-17 times faster than CPython. I finally sat down and spent some time to read up on this.
Windows Task Scheduler
Windows Task Scheduler can be used to schedule tasks to run at a specific time of day. It’s the equivalent of cron on unix. Unfortunately, the interval sched...
Unicode Encodings
Unicode is an industry standard for representing text in many languages. Before unicode, ASCII was typically used to encode text into bits.
When Python 3 Cannot Handle Unicode Encoding
I deployed my youtube playlist script to my C.H.I.P. so that I could set up a weekly cronjob. The code is highly portable, not depending on many libraries an...
Cross-compiling to ARM
I’ve been trying to make my C.H.I.P. into a headless server, for running scripts. It’s low power and quiet (no fan) so it’s a perfect use case. It’s like an ...
Verifying Downloads With GPG
Many open source projects will provide pre-compiled binaries for convenience. They are often signed with gpg key and provide a checksum. Why do all of this? ...
Downloading Files Faster With Aria2
I found this nifty wget-like tool named aria2. wget can only download a file with a single connection. aria2 is capable of chunking the target file and downl...
Python on Windows
Normally, all my programming work is done in a unix environment. All my tools and knowledge is heavily centered in the unix/ubuntu world. Even on a Windows m...
PocketCHIP
For hackathon at work, I wanted to play around with PocketCHIP that I bought a few years ago.
timeout cmd
I was investigating performance regression, to do with caching (or missing places that needed caching). I would run pytest and wait for it to complete and se...
Exec a command for each git commit
Ever wanted to git bisect but not actually bisect? As in, you just want to run a command but on every commit.
Vim Spellcheck Keybinding
Vim has spellcheck capability but it’s awkward to use. Whenspell option is set, typos are highlighted in vim. The z= is used for spellcheck suggestions and r...
Including Markdown in Jekyll
For this blog, I wanted to write recipes and refer to them in blog posts. The blog posts are static and won’t change but I will continue to iterate on recipe...
Python Coverage, TravisCI, and Coveralls
I setup coverage for pytest-antilru and wanted to report this to coveralls. This was much harder than it had to be because TravisCI and Coveralls documentat...
Saving Requests Data for Testing
I wanted to contribute to mealpy and had grand ideas. But the timing was unfortunate, as I only had 2 more days left on my meal plan until I put it on hold.
Including Files in Jekyll
Jekyll wants to be a blogging-first platform. For reasons I don’t know why. Blogging as a primary feature is fine and all but I don’t see why the architectur...
ES6 Features
I took a refresher to learn about ES6 and the new language niceties (Source). Note that these are relative to my previous experience with Javascript, circa 2...
TravisCI and Tox
I recently had the displeasure of configuring TravisCI to work with tox. TravisCI has a “build matrix” system, where you can configure different environment ...
Git Archive on SHA
What do you do when you want a file in a git repo? In GitHub, you would view the raw file and save that to disk. You can clone the repo, get the files you ne...
Running Python Tests Real Fast
Writing tests is great. Writing many small and granular tests is great. At some point, it begins to look silly when you’re changing one function and rerunnin...
Using AppleScript to Connect to Bluetooth Headset
I learned how to use AppleScript to write a macro that would connect to a bluetooth headset (airpods). AppleScript is a scripting language for MacOS that can...
umask Fun Times With WSL
Recently, I noticed that the ls colour output of my directories was strange. ls uses use different colours and formatting to denote file attributes: Symli...
stdio Buffering
What is line buffering
cooking
Types Of Pie Crusts
There are a few types of different pie crusts, when discussing traditional French pastries:
Sandwich Bread
Another summer and it’s another season of tomatoes. Every year I try to get in on the tomato season and this also means making BLTs and tomato sandwiches, wh...
Learning Espresso - Frothing Milk
Steaming milk is tricky business. From the hands of a skilled barista will produce luxuriously frothed milk. Let’s take a look into the techniques and scienc...
Gyro, Donair, Shawarma, Al Pastor
The Turkish doner kebab is a wrap, filled with meat cooked on a vertical spit. Outside of Turkey, it’s taken off like a rocket ship in Germany. It’s the domi...
Meringue
Meringues are a mixture of egg whites, beaten with sugar. At its core, it’s about the foam produced by the egg white protein. This foam is light and airy, pr...
Learning Espresso - Tamping
One element of espresso puck preparation is tamping. This is the act of compressing the puck in the portafilter. It turns out that it’s less complicated than...
Signs That Your Bakes Are Done
Telling when your bake is done is an important skill to have in baking. There are many different signals we can look out for.
Dutch Baby Pancake
Dutch baby pancakes are a type of popover that is popular in America. They are baked in a pan, similar to popovers.
Learning Coffee - Pressurized Portafilters
A portafilter is where coffee is placed, when brewing espresso. It’s made to withstand the water pressure of espresso machine, typically 9 bar (130 psi or 90...
Learning Coffee - Espresso
I recently got into espresso. For years, I’ve been brewing coffee with pour-overs and decided to take up espresso. I’m going to write a series that will foll...
Cold Oven Cake
There’s a style of pound cakes that are not baked in a preheated oven. It’s basically a pound cake with half as much baking powder. Here’s a recipe from epic...
Chile Relleno Pancake
Chile rellenos is a classic Mexican dish. It’s comprised of a green pepper, stuffed with cheese, battered and fried.
Apple Pull-Apart Bread
I baked a pull-apart bread, which is like a different structure to a cinnamon roll.
Japanese Sweet Potato
I love roasted sweet potatoes (yaki-imo). They’re basically potatoes but as a dessert. Like many other tubers, they host a plethora of nutrients and fiber.
Pairing Pasta Shapes And Sauces
This is bound to be a contentious topic. But I’m not here to gate-keep on tradition. I’m here to summarize collective culinary knowledge about pasta shape pa...
Biang Biang Mian
I made biang biang noodles and they were great! I followed Chinese Cooking Demystified and it’s always a great read. They talk about the history and cultural...
Beef And Broccoli
Beef and broccoli is a classic chinese dish. It’s simple to make and uses basic ingredients.
Annatto
Annatto is a seed of a tree that is native to the tropical regions of Latin America. It’s used as a food dye and a spice.
Biscuits and Gravy
Biscuits and gravy is a regional breakfast dish of the American South. It consists of American biscuits, smothered with white gravy made from sausage or baco...
English Muffins
I love english muffins. They have a wonderful chew, a soft crust, and a large crust surface area to filling ratio.
Red Velvet Cake
Red velvet cake has an interesting history and evolution. It’s traditionally reddish chocolate cake, layered with ermine frosting. Modern recipes will add re...
Green Onion Cake
It’s [been long time] since I got back on the horse but here we are. I made green onion cakes again and have made improvements to my recipe with learnings fr...
Banh Bo
Bánh bò are sweet steamed rice cakes. Their signature aspect is the honeycomb structure, which is the result of air bubbles produced by yeast.
Madeleines
Madeleines are shelled-shaped cakes. They’re made with a genoise batter but they’re not baked in conventional cake tins. They use a custom pan that has a sha...
Lemon Curd Bar
Lemon desserts are a novel treat for me. I’m beginning to develop a palate for them. The zest imparts a ton of bright, floral flavour. The juice is a flavour...
Sugar Glaze
A sugar glaze is a simple glaze comprising of powdered sugar and liquid. It’s used for glazing donuts, muffins, coffee cakes, pastries, etc.
Rolling A Burrito
Rolling a burrito is surprisingly very tricky. Those guys rolling burritos in 2 seconds flat? They’re skilled artisans.
Cake Pan Sizes
I’ve used this cake pan conversation chart at Sally’s Baking Addiction to scale recipes. Sometimes a recipe is written for a loaf pan but I want to use a bun...
Banana Bread
I’m finally getting around to writing down a banana bread recipe. I’ve been burned by not maintaining my own canonical recipe, with preferences and tweaks. I...
Clafoutis
Clafoutis is a baked dessert that resembles a flan. It’s traditionally filled with berries. It’s served warm, with whipped cream or powdered sugar. I learned...
Bread Baking Fundamentals
Baking bread is one of those things in life which is both simple and complicated. Easy to get into, difficult to master. Here are some of the fundamental kno...
Chocolate Depression Cake
History
Xoi Man
One of my mom’s favourite dishes is xôi mặn, a low brow, comfort Vietnamese food. It’s a savoury, glutinous rice dish that can be topped with a variety of to...
Chocolate Mug Cake With Mayo
Chocolate mayo cake is an well-kept secret. It works really, really well.
Tinga Poblana
Tinga de pollo (chicken tinga) is a mexican dish that is composed of shredded chicken in a spicy, tomato-based stew. A similar dish made with pork exists cal...
Banh tet chuoi
Chinese New Year is also a big deal in Vietnamese culture. It’s called Tết and the biggest celebration of the year, akin to Christmas.
Tamales
I love tamales. There’s something about that is reminiscent of Vietnamese dishes, wrapped in banana leaves. The surface texture is slimy due to steamed starc...
Pork Ragu
I recently discovered that you can make ragu with different meats. I also thought bolognese, with ground beef, was the most common and preferred way. When I ...
Ground Beef Hash
I discovered this delicious dish from Blue Apron. They call it Beef Over Curry Spiced Rice. What makes this recipe very appealing is the simplicity of the di...
Scottish Meat Pies
After watching the Great American Baking show, I was inspired to make some hand-raised pies. In the U.K. and Australia, these are very common pastries but th...
French Onion Soup
When I made prime rib for the holidays, I served it with a chimichurri sauce. With the fond, I made some au jus. This served as the base for the beef broth.
Sourdough Discard Pancakes
Sourdough Discard
Pound Cake, Sponge Cake, Yellow Cake, Victoria Sponge
I’ve always been confused by the difference between pound cakes, victoria sponges, butter cakes, and american yellow cakes. I think I’ve worked out what the ...
Prime Rib with Chimichurri
I made prime rib for the first time this Christmas. It was pricey and lots of a meat for a single person to eat but I really wanted to embark on this experim...
Murasaki Potatoes
Trader Joes carries these Japanese sweet potatoes under the name Murasaki Potatoes. These are indeed sweet potatoes and cousins of the orange-fleshed ones we...
Role of Eggs in Baking Cookies
Eggs tenderize a cookie by providing fat (yolk). It helps a cookie to spread by adding liquid (egg white).
Cookie Science
Over the last few years, I’ve been reading Serious Eats and trying to comprehend the roles of ingredients when baking cookies.
Fudgy, Cakey, and Chewy Brownies
Brownies come in different varieties: chewy, cakey, and fudgy. These varieties vary the ingredients to move the brownie along a spectrum of pastries, from ca...
Miso Soup
Ever since coming back from a 2-week trip to Japan, I’ve been exploring Japanese cuisine more in-depth. I attended a cooking class, where our instructor intr...
Ube Vs. Taro
Both ube and taro are tubers. They are commonly confused for one another.
Instant Pot Rice
I’ve been very perplexed about how to cook rice in an instant pot. Every blog and recipe I’ve stumbled upon has said they were able to cook rice perfectly in...
Detroit Pizza
Detroit-style pizza is a type of pizza that’s baked in a square dish pan. It has the following characteristics:
Udon Noodles
Making udon noodles from scratch is surprisingly easy. It’s very similar to ramen noodles in hydration, although the characteristics of the dough change how ...
Hario V60 Brewing Methods
There are several popular methods for pourover coffee, with the Hario V60. I’m going to try them out over the next few weeks and see how they work.
Pumpkin Bread
It’s fall and that means pumpkin season. We get bombarded with pumpkin bakes and pumpkin spice, so I made some pumpkin bread to get in on the fun.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Now that I’ve got a hang of making cinnamon roll to consistency, I’m moving on to chocolate chip cookies. I want to work towards making a cookie that’s cragg...
BBQ Spice Rub
I’ve using this spice rub for years, ever since I discovered it on amazingribs.com. It’s balanced in spicy, sweet, and aromatic.
Steaming Sticky rice
Customarily, sticky rice is steamed instead of boiled, have firm, unbroken grains. This is done with a bamboo steamer, which is permeable to steam but doesn’...
How to Eat Crawfish
Seafood boils are delicacy of the South, specifically Louisiana and Cajun cuisine. When I visited Houston, I was able to try the Viet-Cajun crawfish boil. An...
Che Dau Xanh
I made some che dau xanh and was surprised how simple it is. I was inspired to make this dish after reading this recipe from runawayrice. It’s a simple puddi...
Sticky Rice (Xoi)
I ended up with a bit of leftover coconut milk, from a previous recipe. I could have made che but then I would need to get more ingredients (beans, agar agar...
White Sandwich Bread
I continue my quest to become a better bread baker and tame the yeast beast. My latest achievement was to bake white sandwich bread (wonderbread). This bread...
Protein Fluff
Protein fluff is magical food when it comes to a cut. It’s highly filling and has great macros.
Green Onion Cake
You know those chinese pancakes? The ones that have green onions and are flaky? I think these are a great way to use up excess green onions.
Hotdog Buns
I tried my hand at making hotdog buns, following the foodwishes recipe.
Queso
I made queso blanco dip, which was as an appetizer dish that I discovered Tex-Mex cuisine in Dallas.
Buttermilk Pancake
I’ve been trying to figure out how to use up buttermilk. I made Texas sheet cake from SeriousEats but it didn’t stand out to me. I also tried making buttermi...
Banh Bao
I took another stab at making banh bao again. This time, I made filled buns using egg and ground turkey.
Baking Bread Pudding
Recently, I had a bad batch of sourdough bread. I didn’t stretch the dough enough and overworked it during shaping. The resulting loaf didn’t proof well and ...
Cinnamon Rolls
I’ve been practicing with yeasted doughs and cinnamon rolls have been my most consistent bake. I use the recipe and technique from King Arthur’s. But I picke...
Baking With Yeasted Doughs
I started baking with yeasted dough recipes a few months ago. I’ve avoided yeasted doughs all my life and they’ve always been a mystery to me. Now that I’ve ...
Banh Bao
I’m fed up with bad recipes. There’s too much inconsistency and variations, which result in large room for error. Baking is a science and 2 tsp vs. 1 tbsp of...
Black Bean Brownies
I’ve wanted to make black bean brownies for awhile now, ever since I heard many people raving about how they can be indistinguishable from the real thing. I...
Substituting Dry Beans
Most recipes that use beans, call for the canned beans. Canned beans are convenient, as they’re ready to use immediately in a recipe. I prefer to buy dry be...
Keeping fried foods crispy
How to Keep Deep Fried Foods Crispy What’s the problem? I always wonder why some fried foods get soggy or soft as short as 30 minutes after cooking. Even wh...
technology
How To Extend Wifi Range
In a home network setup, there is typically only one modem or access to the internet service provider. From here, access is shared amongst clients in the hom...
ssh-agent
It’s common to use public key infrastructure (PKI) with SSH. The keys used can be very long and cryptographically secure. It’s much preferred over authentica...
Garage Door Remote Control
Garage door remote controls have an interesting history in their evolution. They used to be simple radio transmitters, which worked fine when few people had ...
Document Backup In The Cloud
Cloud storage has been around forever. With more devices than ever, cloud storage is a convenient way to share and synchronize data. It’s also very easy as a...
Digital Vaccine Cards
Cities in America (New York and San Francisco) are beginning to require proof of vaccination to enter certain places, like gyms, restaurants, and indoor even...
Raid - Redundant Array Of Independent Disks
Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) is a technology for connecting together many physical hard drives into a single operating unit. The motivation to...
Virtual Vs. Resident Memory
Whenever I’ve needed to look at how much memory a process is using, I’m never actually sure what value to use. There’s resident memory, virtual memory, swap ...
Car Washing
Washing a car is not super complicated but there are somethings to keep in mind. Like when washing dishes, you need to make sure it’s dishwasher safe and whe...
Adding Labels Using Imagemagick
Years ago I wanted to edit a video clip, add a label, and make a gif. I wrote about it in this gist. I’m revisiting it now and posting it for discoverability...
Smart Apostrophe
Smart apostrophes/curved quotes are… interesting. There are over 30 characters that are considered quotation marks in Unicode. The most well-known are the qu...
Bladeless Fans - Air Multipliers
Dyson fans are advertised as bladeless fans or air multipliers. The technology behind it is quite fascinating.
Multi-Core Processors
Multi-core processing has been mainstream for the last 15 years. Prior to that, there was a reluctance to design programs around concurrency.
Color Wheel
I watched this video on youtube from the Technology Connections channel, discussing the colour brown. It was extremely fascinating.
Video Streaming and Progressive Playback
Have you wondered how web browsers stream videos? Am I dating myself if I said I remember when “video buffering” was a problem?
Patching Snes Roms
International Patching System (IPS) is a file format for applying patches to snes roms.
culture
Marriott International and A&W
Marriott International is the largest hotel chain in the world. The name Marriott comes from the founder’s family name, J. Willard Marriott and Alice Marriot...
Taco Styles
In a previous post, I listed different Mexican foods. Today, I’m going to dive a little deeper into different styles of tacos.
Mexican Foods
In the recent years, I have learned a lot about Mexican cuisine. I finally feel worthy of unironically declaring “I love tacos”. Follow me on a journey to ex...
Phatic Expression
A Phatic expression is a communication construct that serves a social function while providing no intrinsic value. Small talk and pleasantries are common exa...
What Is A Hot Take
What Is It
Dia de Muertos
November 1 and 2 is Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead), holiday in Mexico. It’s also celebrate in similar forms in the surrounding Latin American countries, as...
comm
comm is a unix tool that is useful for doing line diffs between two sorted files. It let’s you view lines that are unique to file1, lines unique to file2, or...
Kuai Kuai Culture
There’s a unique practice in Taiwan of placing green snack bags on top of electronics. This is Kuai Kuai, a regional and modern superstition (earliest docume...
JFK International Airport
New York City was great to travel to and visit. It has culture, great food, and good public transportation (decent enough for a tourist).
New York Pizza
I was able to experience New York pizza on my recent visit to NYC. They know what they’re doing with pizza there.
New York Bagels
All my life, I’ve never been into bagels. I’ve suspected that I don’t like the food item as a concept but have been self-conscious that maybe I’ve been eatin...
How to Eat Crawfish
Seafood boils are delicacy of the South, specifically Louisiana and Cajun cuisine. When I visited Houston, I was able to try the Viet-Cajun crawfish boil. An...
Chouquette Meetings
I know a manager that brings croissants to the office weekly, for his team’s standup. I’ve been invited to attend these a couple times and they start out ver...
gaming
Full Motion Video in Video Games
Full-motion videos (FMV) are used in video games for cutscenes, which serve to narrate and drive the story. The alternative is to render the cutscene in-game.
Dithering
Dithering is image processing technique, that aims to reduce colour banding.
How Bullets Work In FPS
I recently watched a video that explained how bullets work in First-Person Shooters. The two common model are hitscan and projectile. There are compelling tr...
Max Payne 3 Review
I just finished Max Payne 3 and it was a blast. This concludes my playthrough of the Max Payne trilogy.
Phantom Hourglass Review
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is a first-party game from Nintendo, for the Nintendo DS. This game pushes many experimental gameplay elements that ma...
Max Payne Review
I recently replayed Max Payne. I can’t believe this game was released 19 years ago! It has aged incredibly well and was at the forefront of gameplay mechanic...
Conker’s Bad Fur Day Review
Ah yes, Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Every pre-pubescent boy’s childhood memory from the early 2000’s.
Dead Space Review
I recently completed Dead Space, on PC. It’s a 2008 horror FPS game. Similar to Resident Evil 4 but with the tighter FPS experience, like Call of Duty.
Thomas Was Alone Review
I played Thomas Was Alone, an indie platformer from 2012. It’s a beautiful and elegant game. Somehow they managed to fit in a compelling story about a bunch ...
Final Fantasy 6 Review
Final Fantasy 6 has been on my backlog for the longest of time. It’s been my mark of shame, not having completed it all these years. This year marks the 25th...
Half-Minute Hero
My friend gifted me Half-Minute Hero pack, which includes the first and second game. The premise of the game seems simplistic, at first. But somehow I manage...
language
Learning Spanish - Creer Vs. Pensar
The Spanish verbs creer and pensar may be confusing to English speakers, upon reading the dictionary definition.
Learning Spanish - Verb Types
There are a few different verb types in Spanish: transitive, intransitive, reflexive, reciprocal. Learning these grammar constructs can be very helpful in un...
Learning Spanish - Adjective Placement
In Spanish, adjectives usually follow the noun. But there are some adjectives that precede the noun. In these cases, it changes the meaning of the adjective.
Phatic Expression
A Phatic expression is a communication construct that serves a social function while providing no intrinsic value. Small talk and pleasantries are common exa...
Learning Spanish - Infinitive Verb
Definition
Learning Spanish - Prepositions
The spanish A preposition was tricky for me to understand at first. It translates to the English to/at preposition. The reason it’s tricky is that Spanish gr...
Learning Spanish - Using the Indefinite Article
What is an Article
Learning Spanish - This and That
The spanish words for this and that are confusing. Here’s a rhyming mnemonic to help you out:
Learning Spanish - Pronouncing ‘J’
I’m trying to learn Spanish through Duolingo and I figure it might be fun to write about a few of the lessons or fun facts I learn about the language.
Learning Spanish - Accents and Other Diacritic
Today we’re going to discuss accents and other diacritics. These are marks on top of vowels and consonants that alter their pronunciation and meaning.
review
Max Payne 3 Review
I just finished Max Payne 3 and it was a blast. This concludes my playthrough of the Max Payne trilogy.
Phantom Hourglass Review
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is a first-party game from Nintendo, for the Nintendo DS. This game pushes many experimental gameplay elements that ma...
Max Payne Review
I recently replayed Max Payne. I can’t believe this game was released 19 years ago! It has aged incredibly well and was at the forefront of gameplay mechanic...
Conker’s Bad Fur Day Review
Ah yes, Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Every pre-pubescent boy’s childhood memory from the early 2000’s.
Dead Space Review
I recently completed Dead Space, on PC. It’s a 2008 horror FPS game. Similar to Resident Evil 4 but with the tighter FPS experience, like Call of Duty.
Thomas Was Alone Review
I played Thomas Was Alone, an indie platformer from 2012. It’s a beautiful and elegant game. Somehow they managed to fit in a compelling story about a bunch ...
Final Fantasy 6 Review
Final Fantasy 6 has been on my backlog for the longest of time. It’s been my mark of shame, not having completed it all these years. This year marks the 25th...
The Matrix: 20th Anniversary
The Matrix hit its 20th anniversary, originally released on 1999-03-31. This has always been, and continues to be, one of my favourite movies.
science
Pythagoras Cup
The Pythagoras Cup is a practical-joke device that is used to demonstrate greed.
Calibrating Instant-Read Thermometer
To calibrate an instant-read thermometer, it’s common to temp either ice-water or boiling water. At sea-level, this is 0 C and 100 C, respectively.
Calibrating Oven Temperature
It’s always annoying to deal with an oven in a new kitchen. Ovens are not very precise and well designed: temperatures can be off up to ±25 C (50 F) and ther...
Taking Medicine With Food
Many medicines have instructions that related to consumption alongside food or avoiding such. There are 3 periods when medicine can be taken, relative to a m...
Air Quality Index
I learned about the Air Quality Index today. You will too. Let’s go.
Canal Locks
I recently watched this video which discussed how locks worked. While locks themselves are simplistic, this video explores the complicated engineering soluti...
Blood Pressure
Systolic blood pressure is the pressure that the heart exerts when it contracts and pumps blood out.
fitness
Gym Session Length
I’ve recently returned to the gym, after a 4-month break due to gym closures amidst the pandemic. This gym moved outdoors onto the sidewalk. I’ve needed to a...
General Gainz Program
I switched my workout routine from Jacked and Tan to General Gainz around September 2019. I previously wrote about how Jacked and Tan was structured so I tho...
Anatomical Terms of Motion
Muscles in the body can only apply force by contracting. Most muscles in the body have muscle group pairs that allow muscle control in both direction, where ...
Calculating Macros for Any Dish
About Me
Protein Fluff
Protein fluff is magical food when it comes to a cut. It’s highly filling and has great macros.
My Current Workout Routine
My routine has iterated continuously for the last 1.5 years. I’ve fine-tuned for time-efficiency, equipment availability, and muscle areas of focus.
thinking
Grocery Store Queuing
When you go to the grocery store, there’s always the dreaded checkout lines to contend with.
Moral Hazard
Moral Hazard
Osborne Effect
The Osborne Effect is the phenomenon where a product announcement induces a negative feedback loop in the companies revenues. Sometimes, when a company annou...
Thought Experiments
I watched a video from TopTenz that discussed 10 thought experiments. I found it very fascinating and wanted to give my thoughts.
math
Stable Marriage Problem
Stable Marriage Problem
Sorting By Rating
I recently read this post about SteamDB’s rating algorithm. SteamDB sorts games by popularity. This is defined as games that have a lot of total review traff...
Hamming Codes
Hamming codes are an error-correcting code. The upgrade from a parity check is that it is capable of detecting and correcting errors. It scales quite well, r...
building a nes emulator
Building a NES Emulator - Part 2
This article helped to illustrate the understanding I’ve put into this article.
Building a NES Emulator - Part 1
For hackathon, I decided to start up my life-long dream project of writing a NES emulator. I studied computer engineering in school and the material is not e...
finances
Call and Put Options
Call and put options are different ways to invest money, on top of trading stocks. They’re great ways for the uninformed to make terrible, uninformed financi...
Backdoor Roth
IRAs
movie
The Matrix: 20th Anniversary
The Matrix hit its 20th anniversary, originally released on 1999-03-31. This has always been, and continues to be, one of my favourite movies.
analogy
Multi-Core Processors
Multi-core processing has been mainstream for the last 15 years. Prior to that, there was a reluctance to design programs around concurrency.
trivia
La Jolla Is Not A City
La Jolla is a neighbourhood in San Diego. But you can see addresses that seem to say otherwise.
baking
Brownie Vs. Cake
What’s the difference between a brownie (or blondie) and a cake?