The Uber Conference

I attended the Uber Conference in Denver.

This is the first time I ever attended a company-paid conference... There was a full day workshop that cost $300 alone. It was incredibly costly at more than $2500. Plus hotel of gosh $155 a night if you have the discount. ($200+ if you don't). You will also need car rental to get from the airport to the conference... The total cost is a LOT of $. Unless you are extremely rich you will not want to pay for such education/vacation on your own.

Employers! You really should pay your people x-$4000 and then say you give them $4000 for training expense. The conference is really an employee empowerment... and your employees may probably use less than that each year. You get to hear experts share their knowledge... however, for an hour-and-a-half sessions it is hard to go deep. There were many sessions going on at the same time, so you must choose 1 of many in each time slot.

This means: even if you pay a lot of $, you will not get very deep understanding unless you actually go deeper on your own. And sometimes it is just a lot easier if you get to hear a human talk about things than go through things on your own.

There were some lecturers that I really like. Like going back to school with your favorite professor. The guy gives notes as he goes and put on a shared google doc. The guy even used complex numbers as test case example and then used e^iπ = -1 as test case and that immediately strikes a chord with me.

There were a couple sessions I did't like: there was a mean looking guy who don't explain wacky acronyms and the demo shown was a video. The guy didn't even type commands on the keyboard. If you are mean looking I don't care really what you have to say.

There was one guy who can draw a lot of laughter but I don't even know what's so funny.. and I need some slides so I can follow along especially if you don't speak perfect English. It is not radio you know. I want something to look at. I do not understand why that guy get high marks.

Oh there was a session on hardware (Arduino and Raspeberry Pi) and all you show me is a picture of the various ports that I can easily look up myself and show me some blinking lightbulbs? and code already all typed up and running. Didn't get much out of that. People pay thousands I expected a bit more. Little computers... can I make it to play ppt file all day attached to a monitor? Can I attach some wheels and make a toy RC car... Can I turn it to a MAME machine? (apparently somebody have done this one)

I also get something out of what tools people use. I see maybe 80% Mac and 20% PC. and I only saw a couple Windows 8 (I can easily tell by their Start button or lack thereof). I did not see one Surface (that thing is supposed to replace your laptop, yeah right). Many tools (the installations) run only on Mac/Linux! Seems like java developers prefer the Mac. People like SubLime as editor on the Mac... This is the only editor that I know that let you choose files on left pane and show you text on right plane.

Notable sessions I went to:

• Spring workshop - Spring got easier! That Spring Tools Suite is worth checking out if you do Spring for a living. Look you can just do new->Controller and things will be cranked out for you and it is even easier to do this in Groovy.
• Groovy - every java developer should take a good look at this. It makes java lot simpler and even fun.
• Gradle - making builds... makefiles, then ant, maven, now people do gradle... It is interesting to see people got fed up with one thing will then create another.
• Angular - it seems easy to create a one-page ng-app! But I am a bit nervous so many things behind the scene. I want to see the onclick events and stuff but they are hidden from me.
• Go - no, not the traditional oh-my-deep-and-difficult board game, the google programming language. This thing has no classes! But you can still do interfaces and stuff and its strength in concurrency. Go whacked the while loop and do-while loop and go with for-loop only.

Basically anything created by Google I have some interested in, ok perhaps except the glasses. I wish I have time to listen to Scala. The designers of Java and Groovy all endorsed Scala! The groovy creator guy even says he would have never created Groovy if seen Scala.

Look, nowadays you need to embrace functional programming and closures. It used to be totally separate paradigm from OOP. Semicolons after each statement are now so passé.

This clojure thing (didn't attend the talks) is like completely LISP! I am glad I remember my LISP things: car, cdr, cons... and of course lambda.

Long live Pascal! Go and Scala like Pascal-style type on the back, unlike C/C++/Java. People do miss writeln in Pascal with println.

The conference makes learning a bit easier because there is a live human being telling you things that you can find on the web... though they have only able to scratch the surface of each topic. Nothing replaces you hands-on working with things for some time.

The conference is like 95% male and 5% female. This is the first time I see long line in the men's room and no line in the ladies room. All presenters use Mac computers.

This is a programmer's vacation. I enjoyed this conference.

More Street Fighting

An update of Street Fighter IV is coming! It is the fourth update. I still have not played on one... not willing to spend money on a new gaming system just for this. But I actually should be able to play on the PC... but my graphics card probably can't handle.

More new characters and old characters join. Now there is Hugo, Elena and Rolento.... and I welcome Poison as a playable character! Even without playing for real I can still see some youtube videos in action.

Those super finishes are such awesome animations. Lot more new elements to the game... but still familiar.

Check out Oni, oh my, he is a even bigger badder Akuma!

Big list of characters!

What happened to Alex? He is supposed to be the new main character starting with SFIII. Guess no one liked him. Many of SFIII characters are in. But I don't like the brothers Yun/Yang. I want the Urien/Gill brothers instead!

I lost count on the number of releases since Street Fighter 1 in 1987.

IM GM

Instant Messenger is great. I started using it since the beginning. It lets you communicate quickly and quietly even if you are talking to someone who sits next to you. I watch such tools evolve... now onto phones.

More than one people have greeted me with "Hello GM"

Now I did not know I got promoted to "General Manager". Ah it was followed by a question, so I suppose that person wants a better chance of getting an answer so greeting me with glorious title.

Then I realize, oh it must be "Good Morning". How sincere is such greeting.

Then at the end I was greeted with "TY".

My mind already associated "TY" with this guy from Pit Fighter.

So I suppose to really thank someone you should spell it out.

Should I say "SY" at the end of conversation? To mean "See ya" or ... you decide what it can stand for.

Perhaps your math education is just shallow

I came across this interesting book review here: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/2014/05/31/how-not-to-be-wrong-book-review/

This chart here captures my attention:

All the math that most people ever had, including that complex looking integral on lower right are shallow stuff. This means, most of you haven't seen any profound things yet. Those on the upper right are difficult and profound. I guess I have to read the book to see what's simple and profound.

Now I have something to say about sin 2x = 2 sin x cos x.

Seen this? All high school students should have. This follows immediately from the Addition Formula: sin (x + y) = sin x cos y + cos y sin x. Remember! sin (x + y) is not sin x + sin y! Don't believe me? Compare sin 90° vs sin 30° + sin 60°. (I specifically chose choices so that you don't need a calculator) Grab a scientific calculator if you don't even remember your special triangles.

Now the proof of the Addition Formula is actually not so straight forward. Draw a right triangle, split an acute angle to x and y.. and assume you know sin x and sin y. Trying to determine sin (x + y) (which is opposite over hypotenuse of that triangle you just drew) is going to be over-your-head for vast majority of people....even for many sharp high school students. Now even if you get that... what if your angle is greater than 90 degrees? Ok, I assure you the Addition Formula still holds for every real x and y. This is not so straightforward. That is why the proof should be in your book. This is why this formula deserves a box around and even worth remembering (I did since high school). Sure, look it up on the web if you're interested.

The author is putting this in same category as 1 + 2 = 3. I would move that to higher up in the shallow-profound axis.

For that integral in lower right... to evaluate that my first intuition would be u-substitution. Alas, does not work. Probably need to try by-part or trig-substitution (and I won't bother actually trying to evaluate this problem from thin air). So yes this is complicated... but still shallow. Most people's entire math education is just shallow... unless you are in graduate school or a professor.

I probably won't ever get out of the "shallow" quadrants... and that's totally fine. At least I understand my shallow topics.

Santa Barbara Rampage

Another shooting in America... this time a 22-year old frustrated at not getting a girl... or friends, "rotting in loneliness".... this is his revenge to the popular kids.

He even wrote a long 140 page manifesto which give people (psychologists, news reporters) lots of materials to study from. Not all mentally disturbed shooters can do that. It is unfortunate that people who get this email didn't contact the police in time that could have prevented such tragic shooting.

First, this is tragic... and it probably all started with the divorce of his parents.

and unfortunately the professional help he has been getting aren't helpful enough.

But the more tragic aspect of this is... he is able to get guns... powerful ones. The only fortunate aspect of this incident is that number of death can be higher.

So sure that will generate some talk but nothing would be done. Don't be surprised at all if there are more shootings like this. I am sure he is not the only person rotting in loneliness. You can be the next victim. Even if 99% of the entire population is wiped out still nothing will change. Sorry, your right to live < others (crazy and not crazy)'s right to own guns.

The world should set its expectation straight.

Here is MY manifesto.

• If you are 22 and have not dated anyone it is perfectly fine. You are JUST 22. Even at 30 and 40 is still fine. Even after that is still no reason to start shooting.
• Hollywood is featuring every college student having sex with every other college student and just... wrong.
• You go to school for an education... other things can come later.
• You are certainly not alone not meeting your Miss Right by the end of college.

Parent of the shooter: do you regret the devastating effect of your divorce?