Category Archives: Daily Scribble

My random thoughts of the day.

Daily Scribble

Anki, flash card program

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anki

A flash card software works like an old fashion flash card. You write new words on the side of the card and definition on the other side. You randomly draw cards from the deck to test how well you remember the words. A flash card software has more bell and whistlers, like search, filter, timer, progress tracking, etc. I can’t believe someone actually willing to pay $15 to buy iflash, an flashcard software.

I am not referring to download the software for free off the net instead of paying it. I am talking about how could anyone charge such a ridiculous price for such a small piece of software. The function of the software is pretty basic, it stores a list of words and randomly flash the word to test you. Any high school students can write one for his computer programming class project. If you are really desperate, you even write one using Excel. Best of all, there is actually a much better freeware version out there!

Anki is an open source flash card program support Windows, MacOS, Linux and a few other platforms. The stand alone software not only has every single feature of iflash, but also comes with an online version. You can synchronize your flash cards database to their server and retrieve the deck of cards anytime, anywhere. I just don’t understand why would anyone buy iflash?

Daily Scribble

The world according to Hong Kong people

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50230688

This world map suppose to be making fun of the shallow mind of Hong Kong people. However, I am quite proud of our geography knowledge. Comparing to the stupid Americans who can’t even point out their own country in the map. At least we can name the relative location of all seven continents on Earth. We also know more or less some accurate information about those places. It may be stereotyped, but that’s the best you can do if you are asked to introduce those places within one line. There are still some places we are unable to name. But hey, we don’t travel there, we don’t buy stuff from there, we don’t export our goods there, who cares about those irreverent countries?

Daily Scribble

ecoEnergy inspection

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We just have our ecoEnergy inspection for our new place over the weekend.  The Canadian government is giving out ecoEnergy Retrofit Home Grants to encourage home owners making their home more energy efficient.  Before your renovation, you can get an eco-inspector to measure the green rating of your home.  Then eco-inspector come again after the inspection is done.  The government will reimburse part of the renovation cost base on green rating improvement.

The most interesting part of the inspection is testing the air leakage of the house.  First the inspect closed all windows and doors, then he install a big fan in the front door and sucking air out from the house.  The fan create a pressure difference between the house and outside.  Depending on the sucking power of the fan and the pressure difference, he can calculate the air leakage of the house.  When there is a large difference in air pressure, I can put my hand in front of wall sockets or door gaps and feel wind coming through the gaps.  The optimal air leakage is 30% of the air in the house is circulated every hour.  If too much leakage, the house is losing too much heat.  If too light leakage, the air will becomes stall in the house.

Since  I am not a environmental friendly person, so I don’t really care about the green rating.  It will take many years to recoup the renovation cost on electricity and gas bills anyways.  Pat is more evnironmental friendly and she insists on the eco-inspection.  It turns out our house is already very energy efficient because it is quite new.  We are already using double layer windows, water saving toilet and Energy Stars appliances.  Basically we don’t have to do anything.

Daily Scribble

Picking color

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Color Whell

Designing your house is not an easy task. No wonder interior designer charge a lot to make your house looks nice. My parents are very practical people and since I moved out of their house, I have been living in rental apartments, I always live in places with minimal design. In fact, I never have any colours on my walls except the generic beige colour. The closest design experience I ever have is buying IKEA furnitures and arrange them to fit inside my room.

I am a baby to home design, so I have much to learn. The first lesson in home design is choosing a colour scheme for you home. I found this task very challenging. When presenting hundreds of colour sample from paint manufacturer, I am totally clueless on how to pick the right colour. To make it worse, men is genetically colour insensitive, since we only have 1 pair of X chromosome, which controls the colour sensing neurons.

I have been reading general rules on picking the right paints from BBC Home Design. I know there are three basic colour schemes. Tonal scheme picks colours within the same hue in different shades. Harmonious scheme picks colour next to each other on the colour wheel. Complementary colour picks colour on the oppose side of the colour wheel. Natural colour like black, gray, white or wood colour does not fit inside the colour wheel and they general blend in well with any other colour. I know what is a warm colour and what is a cool colour. I know contrast can draw focus and make the room appears to be bigger.

After picking the right colour, then we have to select where to buy the paint and what finish should we use. I like paints from Benjamin Moore, but it quite pricey and maybe too expensive for my budget. There are 6 level of finish﹐ Matte﹐ Enamal﹐ Eggshell, Satin, Semi-Gloss and Glossy, from flat to shiny. Matte is most common for walls. I would like to try Enamal on hallways and Eggshell on Kitchen. The question is how does it look when mixing different finish.

I don’t have strong preference on colour. I like blue in general but it may not looks very well on walls. I don’t like making subjective decisions. I am happy with Pat’s pick on colour as long as it is not is in pink, which is a girl colour. I tried Pat’s idea to the 3D house model. The colour shows up on screen is not the same in reality, but the program helps me visualize how the paint looks like on wall. We tried a few different colours, but honestly I couldn’t tell what’s beauty and what’s not. I know how to check whether the colour violate the rules of colour wheel, but other than that they all looks the same to me.

Family Room:
family_room

Living Room:
living_room

Daily Scribble

More thoughts on interview

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My project team is hiring again. This round we have 3 opening for verification position and 2 opening for design position. I have been interviewing every day for the past two weeks and met over 10 candidates. I have met some good ones and some bad ones. It is only a few months apart from last round interview, but I am surprise by the quality of the candidates. We get much better candidates in this round.

I guess the job posting is out for a few months, so we have accumulated lots of good resume. In last round, we have some good new hires, but its not a tough decision picking out the wheat from the chaff. This time we have so many good candidates that we actually has think harder to rank the candidate and pick the best one. Since there are more good candidates than our opening, we have to reject some otherwise decent candidates. If we were still in 2000, when the company is growing like crazy, we would hire those candidates without a second thought.

Come think of it, timing is a really important factor in your career and it is out of your control. When I graduated in 2000, it is really easy to get a job especially when you have good grades. Nowadays when the job market is tight, having good grade only gives you an interview, but the hiring decision requires a lot more. Most of my candidates have master degrees. I am not sure is it because of the job market is pretty dead a few years ago and push lots of jobless new grad into the master program. But not having a master degree is definitely a disadvantage in today’s job market.

When the dot com bubble burst, I always whim about I was graduating a year or two years too late that I had missed golden days. Looking at my candidates, most of them just graduate a year or two after me and they totally missed the train and end up drifting between jobs and school, went through multiple layoffs. Looking back, my graduation timing is not too bad after all, at least I still able board the last train leaving the station.