Category Archives: Daily Scribble

My random thoughts of the day.

Daily Scribble

Hit and run

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Today I have a mysterious hit and run.  I was driving on the Sea to Sky Highway coming back from Whistler.  The road condition was pretty bad, it was snowing and the road is icy.  I drove slowly and very careful.   There was a pickup truck in front of me suddenly put on its brake, probably because the car in front of him also break.  I brake at once, but the ABS is not working.  I couldn’t turn either, the wheels has no tracking.  My car is slowly hitting the back of the pickup truck, slide to the side of the road and have half of the front buried in the snow.  The airbag is not deployed and we have 3 or 4 seconds to prepare for the impact.  Very luck, we were not hit by cars fellowing us, so no one in the car is hurt.  The first car following us somehow has very fast reaction, they manage to cut to the left and pass us.  The car fellowing turned sideway and pull over ditching into the snow.  There were quite a few cars ditched into the snow behind us.

It’s in snowing, it’s dark and it’s on the highway.  We remember the safety tips, stay in car, call the insurance company, call the tow truck company and wait for help.  I can see a few cars stopped about 50 meters ahead of us.  Probably they can’t break and have some collisions.  I would expect the driver of the pickup truck come over to get my driver license, but no one ever come by.  The police came but they ignore us and go straight to the cars stopping in the front.  They didn’t come back to ask us anything either.  When the tow truck finally came, the pickup truck is already gone.  I hit someone and he ran away, I guess it is still a hit and run.

I don’t know  what is going on.  I definitely hit someone, the front of my car is damaged.  The fend flew away, the hood and a side panel is deformed.  The pickup truck seems didn’t realize he was hit.  The good thing is that no one reports the collision to ICBC and make a claim, I can keep the same safety status.  We have speculated a few theories why the pickup truck ran away.  One possibility is the pickup is so strong that there is virtually no damage to its back.  Another possibility is the driver had alcohol, so he want to get away before the police come.  The most probably but hard to believe scenario is like this.  When our tow truck drive away, we do see a car have similar damage in the front as my car.  Remember the car following us who manage to dodge us?  I think they rear end the pickup as well.  The pickup couldn’t tell two hits from one hit, so just copy down the driver license of the other driver.

After many hours of troubles, my car finally arrived at the body shop.  I hope my car is repairable.  It would be a lot of headache if my car is totaled.  I would have to shell out extra money to buy a new car.

Daily Scribble

Booking my flight to India

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This afternoon, I was booking my flight to India.  There are not many airlines flying direct to Bangalore.  I am not adventure enough to take an internal flight inside India, so my options are limited.

The most straight forward path is taking Air Canada/Lufthansa, making a transfer in Frankfurt.  The connection time is perfect, not much time is wasted in the airport.  The itinerary looks great except it is flying via Europe.  India is exactly 12 time zones away from Vancouver, so flying west should be the same as flying east.

Only Singapore airline have direct flight to Bangalore.  Somehow, the travel booking websites somehow couldn’t route the flight via Singapore.  They always route it through Europe.  I have to print out Singapore airline’s flight schedule and try to work out the connect flights myself.  Singapore airline only flies 3 days a week form Vancouver to Singapore, so I can’t leave on Friday as planned.  The flight arriving at 11p.m and the daily flight from Singapore to Bangalore is at 10p.m.  The timing of the connect flight is not looking good.  I can also fly to San Francisco first, then to HK, then to Singapore and catch the direct flight to Bangalore.  It will be 3 stops compare to 1 stop taking Lufthansa, not very desirable either.

At the end, I book with Lufthansa to save the trouble.  For the 2nd trip, maybe I will stop by HK and try the SFO route of Singapore airline.  Too bad that HK has no direct flight to Bangalore, yet.  Dragonair will have daily flight to Bangalore starting May 1.  Taking Cathy Pacific and Dragonair, stop over in HK would be the best flight itinerary.

Daily Scribble

Big endian vs little endian

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The endian is one of the most confusing concept in computer design. I remember it took me so long to remember their difference in year 1 computer course and then I forget which one is which shortly.  The endian answers the question what is the proper byte order inside the computer, to be more specify, which bit should travel first. The big endian thinks the most significant bit should go first, while the little endian believe the least significant bit should go first.

The term big endian and little endian is coined by David Cohen in his legendary paper On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace. The terms are originated from Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. In the tale, there are two countries Lilliput and Blefuscu go on war for what is the right way to break an egg, on the big end or on the little end. They are big endian for the former one and little endian for the latter one. In the tale, Swift is satirizing the holy wars between religions with the egg war. Which end to break the egg is such a silly question that people should eat their egg any way they like. However if two computers want to communicate, they have to share the same endian. So, it is some sort of holy war in the computer world, and either side is not going to give up easily.

The little endian have their idea coming from daily language, such as English. We write characters from left to right, start with the first character, second character and so on. Thus, they think it is natural to send the least significant bit first. The big endian are inspired by the mathematicians. In maths, we write from left to right begins with the most significant digit. Each camp has its merits and has been rallying troops for the endian war.  The paper was published in 1981, almost a quarter century ago. Today, the computer world is still split along the line of endian with different protocols, architectures on each camp.  This give us lots of headache when we are building chips to bridge different protocols.

It seems the endian war will never end. As Cohen said, agreement upon an order is more important than the order agree upon. Shall we toss a coin?

Daily Scribble

Selling Innovation to the CxO

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I just come across a very interesting article, Selling Innovation by Blast Radius.  I would like to share its insights with my fellow readers.  In business world, every one knows the importance of innovation.  Be innovate or get leave behind.  If you are working in the startup, it is easy to try something new.  It is what a start up is for after all.  But if you are working in a big company, the corporate culture, tradition are usually on the way of innovation.  The key to run an innovation project in a mature company is get the blessing of the CxO.  This article gives 8 useful tips how to get CxO on your side.

There are two types of innovations, incremental and disruptive.  Incremental innovation is merely product improvement, even big company that on regular basis, so it is already part of the system.  Disruptive innovation is a high risk, high reward venture.  The key to run a successful disruptive innovation project to have the buy-in of the CxO and keep him interest through out the project.  The key is to think like the CxO, address their concerns so that you can gain their trust and build up your credibility.   Here are the 8 tips:

1. Be passionate but balance.  Don’t down play the risk factor.  If you don’t disclose enough risk to satisfy the CxO, he will invent some for you.
2. Measure creativity.  Number is your best friend, it shows your achievement.  If you don’t have a number ready in hand, don’t be afraid to invent some useful indicators.
3. Change course willing.  If something is not going well, you better have a fix before others tell you how to fix the problem.
4. Giver direct answers, even when the answer is “I don’t know”.  People smells dodge answers, it hurts your credibility more than a plain “I don’t know.”
5. Ask for regular review.  CxO hates surprises.  They will kill your project if they don’t know what you are actually doing.
6. Don’t take all the credit.  It is NOT your project.
7. Defend without being defensive.  CxO is not cheerleader.   It is his job to challenge you, don’t take it personal.
8. Did I say be passionate but balance?

This article is quite enlightening, highly recommanded.

Daily Scribble

Aftermaths of long vacation

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I just come back form a 3 weeks long vacation in HK.  Every time I go to a long vacation, there are tons of aftermaths waiting me come back to deal with.  When I am on vacation, I couldn’t do laundry often.  Together with the dirty clothes before my vacation, I have to wash 4 loads of clothes, double the amount of my usual load.  Three weeks is not a long time, but my mail box is already full of bills and junk mails.  It took me quite some time to sort out my mail and to my surprise, I receive a X’mas card from an old friend.  Too bad that it is too late to send him a reply.  Thanks Lenny.  I do have internet access in HK, so I am up to date with my personal email.  However, I won’t check my work email while I am on vacation, my mailbox is really full.  It took me almost a day to clear the pile, catch up with the discussions and make response to those not so urgent questions.  Nevertheless, the most time consuming task is to catch up the last 3 issues of Economist.  On average it takes 3 hours to read one issues, so I am still at least 9 hours aways cleaning up the long vacation aftermath.