Ming’s Wisdom

Keeping track of finances can be difficult and time consuming, so it’s best left for others to do it for you, saving your time and effort. I recommend Mint for personal budget and bank account tracking. I’ve used it for roughly a year now (or more), and have found that having a summary view of all bank accounts, loans, investments, and credit cards can be very insightful. In addition, all new transactions from all accounts are automatically updated for you without needing to enter them yourself. You can also look at all your month’s transactions to analyze how much you’ve spent on different categories of items, and find trends in your budgeting. I’ve definitely had some trouble with Mint not connecting to some of my accounts as well as it should, but all in all I’d still say it has added enough value to my life that I’d keep using it.

Nutrition is another difficult set of information to keep track of, and most people don’t really track it, since there are dozens of nutrients and vitamins to add up to make sure your daily values are sufficient, and at the same time the need to keep track of protein versus good fat versus bad fat versus complex carbohydrates versus simple sugars etc, as well as PH balancing, etc. I’ve recently discovered NutritionData, which turned out useful in finding the nutrition values of almost all foods, such as 1 cup of chicken soup with skin. It allows you to save the foods and portions that you’ve looked up, and keeps track of your recipes and their nutritional values. Simply going to the site and checking out a few foods can get you thinking about nutrition and how different foods could complement each other for a balanced diet.

It’s always been a mystery to me why some of us get sick easily when riding in cars, boats, or roller coasters, while the rest enjoy those stomach-churning motions without any ill symptoms. A couple months ago I finally figured it out.

I was watching a Discovery documentary on the evolution of ancient sea creatures from several hundred million years ago, and the realization hit me during the narration of how certain animals in the ocean have their closest living relatives being a species that lives on land. They key fact I learned was that the sensitivity of the inner ear (which helps animals balance), is gradually changed as a species moves into the ocean or onto land. Species that live on land require a sensitive inner ear for good balance and always keeping their head up. An example of when this comes into use is when you roll off your bike, and you are able to keep your head up to avoid injury of hitting it on the ground. However, for a species that lives in the ocean, this is not needed as much, but an inner ear that is too sensitive could overload due to the 3-dimensional freedom involved in living underwater.

The next piece of the puzzle is solved by the principle of evolution. Those animals that have a more sensitive inner ear will be less likely to hurt their head during a fall on land. Those animals that have a less sensitive inner ear will be more likely to have more agile movements in water without getting nauseated. In the history of the earth, some species have undergone a move from land to water or water to land, and over the next few million years their inner ears have evolved to increase or decrease in sensitivity to adjust to their new environment.

By this logic, humans, as land animals, should on average have fairly sensitive inner ears, at least in comparison to ocean creatures, and all get car sickness. But why then do some people get nauseated in cars and some don’t? The answer to this question lies in what if the earth floods and we as a species move to the ocean over the next several million years. Nature has provided us with natural variation (due to sexual reproduction), so that a whole range of sensitivity occurs in different people’s inner ears. In case we stay on land, those with sensitive inner ears will carry on the species, and in case we are pushed to the ocean, the ones with less sensitive inner ears could survive. This gives us as a species the ability to survive in a changing environment (and potentially one day become like the dolphins, whales, and sea lions, if that’s the direction we need to go to survive). So now you know why you have car sickness, and your buddy doesn’t. The two of you join forces together to carry on the survival of our species.

I’ve been working with Johnny on a huge re-make of our website. Recall ticketwatchr.com that we announced almost two months ago, well we’ve redesigned it completely and even changed the name. Check out http://www.slickseats.com/, the next step of the evolution of the project. It’s solely focused on the buyer’s experience purchasing tickets to sports, concerts, and theater.

This has been a huge learning experience in creating a website in an effective fashion, as over the past few months we’ve come from having almost no experience in this area, to being able to complete the SlickSeats projects in a couple of weeks. Hopefully more great projects will come out soon , but for now, check out the website, give us your feedback, and keep us in mind if you need to buy tickets to something!

A lot of us have taken medicines in the form of a pill. However, most of us probably have never thought about the distinct sequence of motions that produce the action of swallowing a pill. I’ve found that more often than not, a successful pill-swallowing involves the following:

1. Put pill in mouth, on top of tongue.
2. Gulp a small mouthful of water, but do not swallow.
3. Pill floats in mouthful of water near center of mouth.
4. Swallowing pulls pill with water.

This sequence prevents mishaps such as when swallowed too fast, only the water goes down while the pill is stuck on the tongue. The key is that the pill floats to the middle of the mouth so that it follows the flow of the water. Sure, most people already know how to swallow a pill, but this could be good knowledge in case you need to teach a kid or younger sibling, who often have trouble with it.

Next is a tip on keeping your laundry wrinkle-free. I’ve long used washers and dryers, but clothes would come out wrinkly, even if I thrash the clothes around to shake out the wrinkles after taking them out of the dryer. This usually involved quick heavy movements of the hands while holding the clothes, pulling the clothes up, then quickly pulling back down, to cause a wave movement in the clothes and lots of pulling force to pull the wrinkles to become straighter. Well doing this after taking clothes out of the dryer works okay, but doing this after taking clothes out of the washer and before putting into the dryer works great. If you do it between the washer and dryer, your clothes will come out with much fewer wrinkles.

This next tip most people already know about, but it’s useful enough to put out there again. Get your gas at night or early morning when the temperature is colder. Gas stations measure how much you pump using volume, not mass. “Pounds” or “grams” are measurements of mass, while “gallons” and “liters” are measurements of volume. Mass measures how much you really get, volume measures how much space it takes. And because fuel expands in heat, the same amount of fuel takes up more space (gallons) when it’s hotter, and more gallons means you’re paying more for the same amount of fuel if the temperature is hotter. So, pump gas in the coolest time of the day and you’ll save a little bit of money on gas.

This is an focused study of a recent event that reveals multiple failure points in our society and institutions. This case specifically studies recent activities in Humboldt squid movement and the commotion that followed.

The Humboldt squid is a large squid commonly found in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, around 200 to 700 meters in below the surface. In recent years their habitual territory has apparently expanded north to California through Alaska, from their original location off the coast of South America. This fact, paired with anecdotal evidence from aboard fishing boats about their aggressive behavior, quickly spiraled into sensational stories of alien-like creatures of the deep with massive tentacles invading the lives of humans everywhere. Before reading on, watch this excerpt from PBS on the subject: http://www.kqed.org/quest/television/the-fierce-humboldt-squid.

Go back and watch the linked video if you haven’t yet. Some of the following will pull information from that clip. I will break down the rest of the article into the different aspects of our society that have fundamentally gone wrong to make these recent events possible.

First of all, there’s been a failure of both the general public and the scientific community to sit quietly and observe all that the world has to offer. There have been dozens of documentaries (airing frequently in recent years) produced by widely-respected television channels such as Discovery and PBS that claim the squid are instinctively aggressive and cannibalistic, to the point of eating anything they come across. Almost all of these documentaries draw off observations from squid-fishing boats, where the squid are found in a fight-or-die stressful situation with many of its neighbors being hooked to their death by people. Observing squid while your boat-mate is actively participating in slaughtering the squid’s partners would not lead to the same results as observing them in their natural habitat.

Worst part is, this is coming from professors from leading research universities. In the video, a Stanford professor says, “This squid, only thinks about two things, one is eating and one is reproducing. Even though they have big brains, I don’t think they spend a lot of time philosophizing”, and assumes that during times when he cannot observe the squid, that they are probably feeding. This would not be an unexpected comment from a non-scientist, but for a professor who has been studying marine biology for 30 years, a summarization of an agile and highly developed animal species to have only two types of thought processes paints a grim picture of the state of education in our society, especially considering that this professor probably teaches a lot of soon-to-be misinformed students. In addition, he studies the squid behavior hitched on a fishing boat, from a vantage point at the water’s surface, while dozens of lures with sharp hooks attract squid to their death while other squid watch. It also brings up the question, what exactly, are the qualifications that an individual must have, in order to become a Stanford professor?

And on top of that the whole commotion reveals a huge lack of responsibility, both for the environment and for accurate portrayal of facts in the media. These documentaries simply state that we are facing a huge problem of squid invading the territory of fisheries and are causing fishery economic numbers to go down. They do cite climate change as a cause for the mass migration, but most people’s solution is to hunt and eat more squid, instead of fixing the root problem of what we’ve done to this earth to cause that climate change. This is all aired on our most trusted channels for learning on television, Discovery channel and PBS. The clip linked to in this article is from PBS, from a northern California public broadcasting channel that claims it “provides consistently high quality public media that informs, educates, entertains and engages… reflect the value we place on human dignity, lifelong learning and the power of ideas, and on the importance of community service and civic participation”. Yet their summary of the show which aired last year, says “Packs of fierce Humboldt Squid attack nearly everything they see, from fish to scuba divers”, having no proven case of Humboldt predation on humans. All the while, northern California is actually considered one of the most educated areas in the country, yet no one decided to dig deeper into the story. Discovery channel is no better, airing repeated series of shows such as “Squid Attack” without giving viewers full background information so that the viewer at least has the opportunity to ponder the possibility that the squid are not vicious creatures invading “our” territory. Again, they have access to some of the best minds in the world, yet most shows on the Humboldt squid have been accounts of their cannibalistic behavior, and no one decided to question it.

The human reaction to the whole series of squid migrations also brings up a question of how much compassion do we really have for our fellow species. Our views (as a society) on many of the issues we face are of “us” versus “them”. The squid are not one of “us”, and therefore they can be thought of as creatures without emotion, without logical thinking, without communal bond. In fact Humboldt squid have the biggest nerve fiber of any creature on earth (this includes humans) and a large, complex brain structure. They live in communities of up to a thousand, and hunt cooperatively to gather small fish and krill. Yet when scientists saw one particular behavior, they reacted with one common explanation. In the particular circumstance when squid were being pulled out of the water with hooks by fishermen, other squid immediately came up to the hooked squid, and grabbed them with their tentacles. Scientists concluded that they must be extremely aggressive creatures and are seizing the opportunity to eat their friends while they are weak. As an intelligent creature that lives and hunts cooperatively in large communities, in a situation where food is not scarce, eating each other would not seem to be the logical action to take when a predator is near, making this somewhat of an odd explanation to offer. Other scientists cite that they have found pieces of Humboldt squid in others’ stomachs, though this still does not prove that they are habitual cannibals, as even the nicest of humans has resorted to cannibalism when faced with scarce food/life or death situations as in extreme after-plane crash survival cases. I have yet to see any scientist offer up evidence in attempt to prove that the observed behavior under fishing boats is indeed an act of opportunistic eating instead of trying to pull a friend back from a vicious human predator. Almost everyone listens to the scientists (after all, they are the scientists), and happily offer to hunt down the squid and eat them. This same type of thinking of “them” as all cold-blooded creatures incapable of intelligence and bonding, has created many of the problems we have faced as a society. Stereotypes and racism both stem from an intrinsic distrust of “them” with an arbitrary boundary drawn not based on individual personality but on skin color or other attribute. Religions intolerant of the style of thinking of “them” have caused division among people, and even wars. In fact it was a view that “they” are not as intelligent, that “they” have no emotions, that justified slavery for hundreds of years.

The world has improved over the years and some have become more tolerant of others, but there’s a lot more to improve on, and the small incident of our perception of Humboldt squid are only a peek into how people’s collective minds can lack a compassion for the others that share our earth. Overall, even a piece of news that hasn’t gotten much attention on CNN or the world news, can show us so much about the current state of affairs. If you’ve read to this point, you’re probably a very intelligent and educated person who cares a lot about the world, and you might never have realized that even in this day certain segments of the world (*ahem* well known universities) are probably not quite as compassionate and environmentally responsible as you thought, that education and media truthfulness are still in a sad state, and even the most respected “experts” cannot always be trusted.

Squid brains: 1, Human intelligence: 0.

A little snapshot of us in action!

It amazed me when I opened up this site and looked at my last article, it was a whole month ago! Life has definitely changed in the past couple months now that I look back on it. My decision to leave the corporate world and enter a world of new possibilities almost 3 months ago was definitely the right choice to make. Looking back, these are the things that have changed:

1. There is no longer anyone to tell me what to do. The only things that determine what I do now are what makes sense to me and what inspires me.
2. Work becomes fun. I’ve had moments where I just didn’t want to leave the work I was doing that day, and didn’t want to go to sleep because I wanted to keep working, and jump up at 8am to do work before breakfast.
3. Life becomes a fast-paced craziness. Starting the moment I wake up, ending around 1am, every day is extreme productivity. Not the kind of productivity where you simply get stuff done. It’s the kind of productivity where you make decisions that will affect you for the next two years, on top of getting stuff done. This comes with a side-effect of forgetting what day of the week it is, and sometimes what month it is.
4. I see a future. It feels like the past 4 years of working for others can be summarized as this: neglecting my own development. Moving up in the corporation really doesn’t count as developing your own abilities, it’s just doing more to develop a group of people that has already taken the time to develop themselves. Unlike earning a salary, everything done now to create income sources builds up, where every action taken multiplies your previous effectiveness by some multiplier.

So it’s really crazy how in the past whole month I have not had 20 minutes to update this site. You must be wondering what I’ve been up to. Well I’ve taken a lot of time working with Johnny to improve our ticket-selling automation code, with good results. We’ve sold some tickets already through the new code (e.g. with less manual work), and we’re super excited.

There’s something else up my sleeve though, done in a slightly larger team, that’s going to be exciting for a lot of you. It’s still in the works, so stay tuned for our release announcement in the near future =).

Today we’re launching the Beta of TicketWatchr.com, our first project since I’ve quit Apple. It’s an online store where you can search for and buy event tickets (sporting events, concerts, theater, etc). We have a feature called Watch It that we think is pretty intriguing, so that you can keep track of ticket prices on our site, so that if you think a ticket’s current price is too high, you can keep a watch on it to get notifications if that price drops.

Johnny and I have been working hard on this site for a while now, so we’d love for you all to check it out, and tell us what you want and what you think can be improved. And since the site is fully functional, if you need some tickets, you can use it to buy the tickets to your local concert or game. =)

It’s been two weeks since the last time I’ve written, so what have I been up to in this time? I’ve been reading The 4-hour Workweek. It’s quickly become my favorite book of all time. I feel that the focus of the book is not solely on reducing the amount of work you do, instead this book is a philosophy to live by in order to become more effective in life, in a fun way. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who would like to become very successful in any aspect of life. If you’ve ever wondered why some people are so gifted, and are always more successful at school without much studying, can have more friends than people you’ve met in your life, run a huge corporation while still having time to hang out on the weekends, this book explains exactly how it’s done.

Some examples of techniques described in the book:

• 95% of what you’re doing currently probably doesn’t contribute to your ultimate goals, so stop doing them
• you have more stuff than you need (every one of you). they take up valuable time and mind-space, so get rid of them
• do enough to get the results you need, and stop stressing about the diminishing returns that require 5x the effort
• time is a measurement of wealth just as important as money
• giving others the power to make decisions, so that you don’t need to waste time making them

Many of the ideas introduced take much more involved explanation that I won’t go into here. I felt that some of the concepts have really shown me a new way of thinking. I recommend that everyone read the book and at least give its ideas a chance, and possibility get much more in return.

Let me know if you read it and what you thought of it!

It’s been around 2 months now since I’ve started this site (technically 8 months, with the first 6 months having no time to write in it), and it’s been a pretty good success for being 2 months old, at least to the standards of what I was expecting. I wanted to let everyone see the current state of my site.

Money spent:

• 19.90 domain
• 22.90 hosting

Money earned:

• 0.00

Unfortunately Google hasn’t seemed smart enough to find interesting enough ads to captivate my lovely readers.

But here’s some more encouraging news:

You can see here that in the two months that I started actively writing for the site, the number of page visits has increased to 55 in July, and 124 in August. Since I don’t have data for January through June, an accurate depiction is to just imagine a flat line at zero from January all the way to June, since there was no content on the site yet. I think this is a pretty good growth, especially considering August isn’t even over yet, and already has double the visits of July.

Another achievement I’m pretty proud of is getting bots to crawl the site. Google crawled the site once in May, and it would be another two months before it crawled again in early July. Now, with multiple pages available and updated content every so often, Google comes several times a day, and I also get other sites like AskJeeves, Yahoo, and some blog search bots. It definitely feels like a sense of accomplishment.

To view the site from a different perspective, here’s a map of the world, color-coded for visitors (only readers, bots are not included) to this site:

To my pleasant surprise, I’ve gotten visitors from several countries. The bulk is still in the U.S, but there’s one from Canada, China, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, UK, and Netherlands. That’s very cool. In the U.S, I’ve gotten visits from Florida, Michigan, Georgia, and California. Now drilling down into more detail about the biggest cluster of readers:

There’s 7 visits from San Jose, 7 from Sunnyvale, 8 from Berkeley, 6 from Emeryville, 1 from San Francisco, etc, around the ratio I expected. However, the big surprise here is the big orange dot down south. Orange County apparently is the one largest concentration of readers of this site to date, and they come back repeatedly and stay for enough time to read a few articles. And the interesting thing is, I don’t know of anyone that knows about this site who is currently in Southern California, so I’m very intrigued who the mystery reader(s) are =).