Menu Sidebar
Menu
Tai

Tai

I'm a product person by trade. Doing VP-ish stuff around Toronto.

On to WordPress

I grew a bit frustrated with Octopress.  Too much work to keep multiple development environments in sync.  Then Apple broke my ruby installation in a recent Mountain Lion example.  So I decided to bite the bullet and install WordPress.

Not too sure how I feel about that.

My original reasons to moving to Octopress was that I could use the best text editor and get out of the hassle with updating my installation and focus on writing. I think that in the end, it worked, but the ever present config issues lingered.

In fact, I appreciate the web based interfaces for authoring and administration. Having it centralized and accessible from any browser is a bonus. In fact the only consistent client that I had was the locally hosted version on my VPS. Granted I had to use VIM to do all my authoring, but I suppose some would think that advantageous.

Tai

Moving Away from Octopress

UPDATE: This is an archived post from my previous site running Octopress. You’ll notice that I did indeed move platforms. -Tai

One of the interesting things I’ve noticed in my virtuous cycle of blogging and writing: I get into a definite funk.

When I moved to Octopress (from Drupal), I had hoped that moving towards using my base, text-editor (now Sublime Edit) would help lower the barrier of entry for me.

I was wrong.

Turns out, I’m not at my desk as much as I thought I would be. Often times, I am doing other things. One thing I’ve found is getting it setup on different platforms is kind of a pain (don’t even bother on Windows).

I deployed to my VPS on prgmr.com, but now I’m working solely in Vim (not my cup of tea), and moving around my private ssh key to get terminal access somewhere is something I’d prefer not to do. (I even considered making a portable USB flash key for this).

I spend a large amount of time on my iPad and smartphones (I own several and swap monthly).

So I’m taking a look at other options–specifically WordPress.

My thoughts on moving from UX to Product Management

So I stopped practicing UX at Kobo. Haven’t touched the stuff in over 9-months. I don’t even have Omnigraffle or any Adobe products installed. I don’t even know if I could graffle my way out of a wireframe.

A bit of background

Back around February, Kobo made some changes in the Product and Design were managed. It effectively eliminated my position, at the time “Director of User of Experience”.

I would say that I hired myself out of a job, as the core team of architects that I hired all became leads to their respective platforms.

I was offered either to head up user research (boring) or take over the product management role for our mobile apps.

For a long time I felt uneasy about it; I had spent over 10 years building this identity based on user experience, it was very hard to separate from it. There were days where I realized after talking to Tony or Iain (or anyone from the UX team) was the high-point my day.

Everything changed–my relationships with the teams change, how management saw me changed. It was an identity crisis; a struggle.

Nine months later, I’m promoted to Senior Director of Product Management for Kobo and all other product managers report to me.

ASIDE: It’s funny, I often vacillate on how to interpret it, but over time, I realize that while it was great for them, it was even better for me.

However, like an unwanted break up, time heals all wounds.

That said I shouldn’t be complaining. Things have worked out pretty well for me.

Finally back up

Over the past 6 months, I made a few error in judgements that have affected my ability to author stuff on the blog.

I started worrying about migrating content from my blog

Stupid. Really stupid. I have most of the posts available as staic HTML (it was a Movable Type powered blog). In the end, I’ve decided that it is easier for me to FTP them up and statically manage it rather than let octopress manage it.

I started messing around with hardware (new SSD in my late-2008 Macbook Pro, work laptop died, new Hackintosh build)

I think that it was an error to attempt so many hardware changes. The SSD purchase has given my Macbook Pro a new lease on life, but it has been buggy (or rather the nVidia SATA controller is a POS) with many beach balls (even with the newest firmware for the Vertex 3).

I can’t do anything about my woes with company hardware. But setting this stuff up each time is kind of a pain and updating to Mountain Lion didn’t help.

I’m considering doing all of this in a Linux VM that I can copy around, but that seems to defeat the purpose, nor would I be able to use my preferred-text-editor-of-choice. Xubuntu 12.10 is quite nice now. It’s more than functional without the learning curve that Unity brings to the plate with Ubuntu. Runs great in a VM on both my Air and Macbook Pro.

I still don’t know why I re-built my Hackintosh PC. It was an unnecessary side project (but the thing is a beast – i5 3750k, 32 GB of ram + 2 SSDs + 3 TB of storage). Runs both Windows 8 pro and Mountain Lion beautifully.

All distractions building up a tension or desire for me to write again.

Glad to be up and running and hopefully, it will be a bit more regular.

-T

Text Editor Wars – Return of the jEdit

UPDATE (2014-09-13): I’ve been using Sublime Text since mid-2013.  It’s so awesome.

Apologies for the pithy title, but it’s so easy to use Star Wars allusions with jEdit.

I discovered jEdit back in 2003, while working in my first Information Architect role back in OnX (now called Momentum). It was surprisingly fully functional, even back then.

Prior to that I had been using either Dreamweaver or Homesite (I still miss Homesite). Two features stood out for me:

  1. Tag completion that made sense: Typing </ would automatically close the previous open tag. I had always found the “immediate” auto completion of tags very obnoxious.1
  2. Highlighting of the end tag in the gutter and on screen: I have still yet to find any text editor that has as clear of a highlighting system as jEdit.
  3. True Cross-platform GUI: I know that MacVim and Aquamacs exists, but jEdit was the first text editor that made sense. It was also one of my first introductions to FOSS software.

The jEdit project started to stagnate after the 4.2 milestone release. Slava Pestov retired from the project to pursue his studies and work on his Factor programming language project and around 2008. I felt that this was a severe blow to the project and it languished. One could also argue tht at 4.2, the editor basically had it all, but there were several developments on the Mac OS X editor front (namely Textmate) that made me envious. There were also frustrating changes to Java that lead to several regressions in jEdit code.

This started was a very long and wayward search for the next editor. I’ve tried the big three on Mac: MacVim, BBedit, and Textmate. They all have their strengths and shortcomings.

Given that I worked almost exclusively in HTML and CSS at the time, I also ran multiple versions of Dreamweaver. It became oh so much more useful after it adopted the same convention as jEdit for closing tags. I tried Vim, but I couldn’t get used to the interface. Textmate’s per character undo drove me insane, but I loved the bundles. Espresso worked well, but struggled with anything that wasn HTML/CSS. I’ve had an on-and-off relationship with BBedit. For some reason, it never felt that modern to me (although the latest version basically addresses many of my issues).

I’m glad that the community of developers have picked up jEdit development again and I am eagerly awaiting the final 5.0 release which is shaping up to be quite great. Having spent the past few days setting up my jEdit again, I’m reminded why I enjoy using it so much. Just feels right for some reason.

Yes, it’s Java app. It also doesn’t feel like a first class citizen on OS X (doubtful that it would feel like that on any platform given it’s Swing roots). It’s also missing some niceties from more modern editors like Live HTML Preview.

If jEdit were not available, I’d have no issues with BBedit. It’s a phenomenal program, and I can see why it has been around for 20 years.

  1. In fact, the only editors that I have ever found that used this convention was Geany, Espresso and Dreamweaver. Aptana and BBedit have their own shortcuts for this, but I always found it more natural to just to attempt to close the tag. ↩

IKEA SLITBAR chef’s knife review

Updated (2012/10/31) – Added some more thoughts about the knife’s usability and design aspect.

Updated (2014/11/24) – Added some more thoughts after using the knife for 2 years.

Updated (2017/01/02) – Another update.

ASIDE: I originally started this post April 9th/2012,  but never got around to finishing it.

At the time, I had just come off nose surgery, and spent my first weekend in IKEA. Not the ideal way I wanted to spend my time recuperating, but we needed a toddler bed for Emily, who had turned 2 years-old the past Friday (April 6th). I was all up for getting her out of her crib and having her sleep with her sister, Evelyn.

Trips to IKEA are often fraught with disappointment and surprise.

Trips to IKEA are often fraught with disappointment and surprise.  As a kid, I hated it. My parents never let me and my brothers play in the ball room. What kid wants to look at furniture? Especially if it’s furniture not for them… That said, often times I find great stuff like the IKEA OMSORG Shoehorn, or the IKEA 365+ IHÄRDIG spice mill. There are also the disappointments, the most notable for me is their KAFFE press.

This past Saturday, I was browsing their kitchen centre when something caught my eye:

Image of IKEA SLITBAR Demascus Knife

The best purchase of 2012

I bought it on a whim and I’ve been really impressed with it. It actually might be the best thing I’ve purchased all this year (and the diamond honing rod is a great deal as well).

I re-profiled the blade so that it uses a 30˚ edge (one side was already 15˚) — this took forever on my Spyderco Sharpmaker. VG10 steel is much harder than my other knives.

I also took some 150-grit sand paper to round out the edge of the spine where it meets the bolster for more comfortable handling.

That said, the knife pops the hairs off my arm, and it has retained an incredible edge over the last 10 months. It’s a bit bigger than I would like with the tip being a bit too rounded. The knife is Asian inspired, with a slight belly so it works wonderful for “straight-chopping” and “rock-chopping” motions.

The VG10 blade has a tendency to rust if I leave it in my sink too long, but I think that’s more about me than the knife.

Word of warning — the fit and finish of the knife is not the best. Of the knives that I saw back in April, many of the knives on display and in-box had a noticeable edge between the pakka-wood handle and the bolster. In some cases, there is a large glue-gap between the two as well. Moreover, the grind can be a bit inconsistent (although in practice, I don’t think it will matter once you sharpen it). By far the biggest thing that I notice is the knife tip can be chipped.

Still, amazing for the $79 price point.

Pros

  • Great value for a VG10 steel blade
  • Very Sharp out of the box, but can be made sharper with the right tools
  • Full bolster design
  • Great warranty

Cons

  • Fit and finish could be better
  • Spine edge is uncomfortable
  • A bit large for small hands

UPDATE (2014/11/24):  I’ve been using the knife for over 2 years and it is still the main workhorse of my kitchen. I sharpen it once a year using the Spyderco Sharpmaker and use my honing rods frequently. I’ve notice that the VG10 blade has a few chips on it. I wouldn’t call the blade brittle, per say, and it hasn’t really impacted cutting performance, but I could see how that might annoy people.  Then again at $80 CAD, I’m not too gutted about it. The thing that is beginning to look a old is the resin-infused handle.  I’ve tried polishing this with some Brasso metal polish to add back some lustre, but I still find it dull-grey.  The SLITBAR diamond honing rod hasn’t fared too well over the last 2 years.  It’s a heavy piece of steel, but I was probably a bit too rough and enthusiastic with it.  Most of the diamond surface is gone.

UPDATE (2017/01/02): I really treated this knife like crap this year.  I don’t know why, but I would leave it in the sink overnight and left it unsharpened for over a year-and-a-half.  I did manage to pick up a brand new honing rod (a Zwilling J.A. Henckel’s Professional) in a neighbourhood garage sale and I was pretty religious on using it prior to use.  It kept a good edge all year (not great, but serviceable), but I think that’s more about the thin profile of the blade.  Many more chips and pitting along the VG10 edge, but the cladding has remained intact.  A lot of this is just rough use on my part and leaving it in contact with other metals while wet.  Just sharpened it on the Spyder Co and it made such a huge difference.

Luma Labs Cinch Review

I ordered the Cinch camera strap the morning that I got the email on December 26th, 2011. I’ve wanted a Luma Labs sling ever since they first came out.

Thoughts after using it over the last 4 months:

  • Stable
  • Comfortable
  • Easy to use
  • Versatile
  • Beautiful

The one thing that I don’t like:

No swivel. While simple and stable are great, there are times when I need to use my tripod and I have to take it off. However, putting it back on again requires me to undo the buckle strap from the tripod mount, attach the mount back to the camera and re-thread the strap, otherwise I have a lot of twists in the strap. A swivel or quick release would solve the issue.

It’s not a big deal. It functions beautifully 95% of the time.

It strikes me that a swivel or quick release was probably in the works had not Black Rapid been issued their patent.

Definite fan of it and I’ve already convinced two others to purchase it.

Thinking about mathematics

I found an amazing Quora answer on “What is it like to have an understanding of very advanced mathematics?” in my RSS at both Boingboing.net and Kottke.org:

[blockquote]
  • You can answer many seemingly difficult questions quickly. But you are not very impressed by what can look like magic, because you know the trick. The trick is that your brain can quickly decide if question is answerable by one of a few powerful general purpose “machines” (e.g., continuity arguments, the correspondences between geometric and algebraic objects, linear algebra, ways to reduce the infinite to the finite through various forms of compactness) combined with specific facts you have learned about your area. The number of fundamental ideas and techniques that people use to solve problems is, perhaps surprisingly, pretty small — see http://www.tricki.org/tricki/map for a partial list, maintained by Timothy Gowers.
  • You are often confident that something is true long before you have an airtight proof for it (this happens especially often in geometry). The main reason is that you have a large catalogue of connections between concepts, and you can quickly intuit that if X were to be false, that would create tensions with other things you know to be true, so you are inclined to believe X is probably true to maintain the harmony of the conceptual space. It’s not so much that you can imagine the situation perfectly, but you can quickly imagine many other things that are logically connected to it.
    [/blockquote]

That’s just the first two bullet points.

It’s an amazing read.

Personal anecdote regarding math (well physics, really)

My wife’s father-in-law has a Ph.D. in Physics and is a semi-retired Nuclear Physicist. When I read this Quora answer, it made me think of him.

His sheer genius is pretty impressive, and in one instance, when my wife and her friends were getting their asses kicked by 3rd-year Quantum Mechanics, he offered to help.1

The conversation, as I understand it, went like this:

My Wife: “Dad, we need help in Quantum Mechanics or the three of us are going to fail.”

Father-in-law: “Okay, give me a weekend to study up.”

And that was it. He retaught himself Quantum Mechanics in a weekend.

Over the next week, he taught my wife and her friends Dan and Bryan quantum.

Unbelievable.

I mean, I was pretty good at math and physics, but I could not relearn something like high school calculus in a weekend, much less teach a person how little I know about it.

Personal anecdote #2 regarding math

I’ve always been good at math and physics, but never brilliant.

One of the points in the article really resonated with me:

  • Your intuitive thinking about a problem is productive and usefully structured, wasting little time on being aimlessly puzzled. For example, when answering a question about a high-dimensional space (e.g., whether a certain kind of rotation of a five-dimensional object has a “fixed point” which does not move during the rotation), you do not spend much time straining to visualize those things that do not have obvious analogues in two and three dimensions. (Violating this principle is a huge source of frustration for beginning maths students who don’t know that they shouldn’t be straining to visualize things for which they don’t seem to have the visualizing machinery.) Instead…

Ah. This is the exact problem I fell into when reading those popular physics books while still in university. I was pondering, over the span of weeks, on what does a blackhole look like in 3D space. Often, it is depicted as a weighted ball sitting on a stretched out blanket (2D plane), but this belies its complex nature–it actually looks like this from any angle you look at. It’s hard to visualize.

There’s a point where my understanding of mathematics and physics couldn’t help me anymore with understanding things like superstrings and general relativity. No simple metaphor or visual mental model would help anymore. Things just couldn’t be intuited because they went against common sense.

However, it did pique my future-wife’s interest in me when I sat down at her table in the student union and asked her and her physics buddies “What does a blackhole look like? No, seriously, what does it look like in 3D space?”

I guess she thought, “Why would a guy studying gym want to know about this?”2

I can’t say it worked out too badly for me in the end.

  1. They all have degrees in physics, but you’d never know. In fact, my wife often says that her degree, a hybrid business and physics degree, does not qualify her to be business consultant nor a physicist. ↩
  2.  I have a degree in Kinesiology, the study of human movement and performance, with a specialty in ergonomics and human factors. ↩

MG Seigler writes:

Here’s the thing: while some try to paint comments as a form of democracy, that’s bullshit. 99.9% of comments are bile. I’ve heard the counter arguments about how you need to curate and manage your comments — okay, I’m doing that by not allowing any.

I’m Starting to feel more comfortable leaving them off.

Newer Posts
Older Posts

Pixels & Widgets

A blog by Tai Toh

© 2024 Pixels & Widgets | A blog by Tai Toh