BS Guru

It was just a few years ago when we were still debating the use of mobile games for cognitive and visual exercise especially among seniors.  It has now been very clear more seniors have access and have adapted to a relatively small mobile screen for the convenience of communication, accessing information, and for entertainment such as gaming.  I have been following this company, BumbleMeow (I like and have permission to use their CookieAMA images for my blog's illustration) and I am glad to see they posted a tech talk for this exact topic.  If you are interested in or have work related to cognitive and visual exercises, I highly recommend you spend a few minutes to check out this tech talk ( Alternative uses of BebeBoop beyond a mobile game ).  K nowing how to leverage this mobile game, users may use it for mind refreshing, stress relief, hand-eye coordination, pattern recognition, eye strain relief among other cognitive and visual trainings.   It is very hard to find mobile games,

The holiday season is in full swing, so are scammers unfortunately.  I wish I could visit more community centers helping seniors and other more vulnerable groups.  It is shameful for scammers to target seniors (you will grow old one day too, dip s*).  It is frustrating seeing people, especially seniors, keep getting scammed compromising their identities, personal information, safety, and savings.   Old school scammers used to be easily identified and still spamming low effort scams through email accounts with hideous typos and low quality images.  However, we now have to deal with more sophisticated scammers with high quality images, realistic looking fake web-sites, spoofed email senders ... etc.   It is extremely challenging to help others avoid being the next victim. 1.   Too much time, too little things to do We know not to open or read spam emails.  Who has time for it anyway? Bingo!  No matter how many times you warn them not to open or click on any unknown emails and links, seni

 Image credit: CookieAMA mobile app IFC ("Independent Film Channel") used to joke about themselves that they present good 'artsy' movies that did not sell.  'IFC' mobile games/apps are those with good and original designs built by independent developers neither AAA companies nor funded by AAA companies, who often go against the trend (aka starving artists) providing unique designs and experiences.   How to define a good mobile game? I want to say a fun game with good design and story but let's be realistic, people jump into a mobile game not for fun but for a conversation, a bragging right and to feel superior in a digital world, the 'alternative' world they live in.  It is not about a game but 'I am in'.   While people continue to complain about micro-transactions and data privacy concerns, they continue to play those games and take a blind eye on how their personal data are being exploited everyday.  Some may consider it as a small 'p

One of the cool features of iOS 17 is creating your own iMessage stickers using photos.  The edge detection is not perfect but good enough for adding a personal touch to spice things up.   It is a new feature so as always, typical confusion how things work, how to get started and somewhat ... buggy.  Apple claims it works on both iPad and iPhone; however, there is no option to create stickers on iPad 'yet'.  You may create stickers either from your photo album or accessing your photo album through iMessage directly but both have some issues. What we know so far:  1.  The edge detection seems to conflicting with its OCR especially with lower resolution photos.  Photos with text have issues to be recognized and added as a sticker (well, at least we know OCR works well 😅).  We tried to turn off live text under Language and Region but it does not solve the detection issue (higher resolution photos seem to be ok without turning off live text either way). 2.  Direct access to photo

Image Credit: BebeBoop Mobile Game   Seriously, how ignorant can one get still denying wasps are beneficial insects with a badass outfit?  They are the best natural pest control, the generous pollinators (aka pollen junkie), and the soil aerators!  No matter how hard we tried to explain to our neighbors, they had already made up their mind wasps are bad and should be eliminated, period!  The wasps massacre happens every year whether professionally done or 'IED' by my neighbors.  Yet wasps come back every year while they keep complaining fleas and ticks in their backyard.  And you wonder why? We never had ticks and fleas problems in our backyard because we never went crazy killing wasps who meant to help the ecosystem including pest control naturally. We couldn't stop our neighbors from killing wasps at their property but the owner dropped an 'IED' to our front yard years ago at least 10ft away from their property line.  I was furious and made sure they knew it was n

  Precaution: PPE (not a joke), you need a pair of goggles and wear a mask if you intend to make real deal hot sauce 1.  In a saucepan, medium roast some chili flakes until you start smelling the spice (I use Sichuan chili flakes, this part is optional but will give better flavor).  Never use high heat as it will burn the chili flakes.  The ratio to fresh chilis is around 1:10 (i.e. 1 part of chili flakes to 10 part of fresh chilis) 2.  Add a batch of good chilis into a saucepan with just enough water to cover the chilis+ 10% more, bring it to boil and simmer it until softened.   3. Lower to medium heat and based on the cooked down chili 'soup', add approximately 50-60% of rice vinegar*, 10%-18% sugar, 5% salt, 12%-18% garlic powder.  I use garlic powder as it gives a bit of garlic sweet to it.  Fresh garlic may not have the right balance of flavor and consistency which often over power the chili sauce.  I may add 5%-10% fresh garlic when I can find good garlic from a produce

 Image credit: CookieAMA mobile app For whatever reasons hot sauce and chili cook-outs seem to always be a hit among tech teams.  Hot sauce, chills, chili cook-outs, hot sauce challenges ... etc.   It is funny to see those with reflective skin always brag about food in scoville units while the naturally sun protected skin group are always gobbling up without a sweat and back to their desk asap.   Our GM used to bring his own blend of chili mix to our lunch meetings and there were always people who couldn't wait to kiss up how special and spicy it was.  I arrived late due to a production issue at one of the lunch meetings and was seated next to my GM and crap! there it was his special blend of chili peppers.  As always people kept asking for it to keep my GM happy but when he gave it to me, I passed it on to my colleague and he was not pleased.  I was known to have rare allergy issues so it was easy for me to say 'I can't take any chance not showing up at work later.'  

It 'only' took Google seven years to take Google Domains out of beta in March this year.  Given their forever beta reputation, it was great news we could finally get comfortable with Google Domains for domain registration.  The service is relatively easy to set up especially for small businesses or personal sites which all you need is a custom domain name with blogger service or static web hosting.   Guess what? It was out of beta just so they could hand it to Squarespace as a 'final' product.  Seriously, W.T.F.     The sketchy part in the email is 'After this migration period Squarespace will be solely responsible for providing domain services to you.'.  Damn! the classic 'you are dead to me'.  Squarespace is a web site hosting company not a domain or web services providers.  We can't find any information whether they will start charging domain hosting as a separate service or all domain hosting will be part of the web site hosting (i.e. $23/month o

Image Credit: CookieAMA mobile app Ideally, you don't want to come to me for this type of advice 😓 Developers usually went online and found mostly depressing comments such as less than 1% would appeal, never heard from apple, have been waiting for weeks without any replies ... etc. You should know better by now those comments did not have any merit.    I had helped a company to appeal their app which was rejected by the app store initially.  The company filed an appeal and was approved successfully in 3 days in 2023.  The developer was very upset when he saw the email and already accepted his fate that nothing could be done especially after reading things online, reddit ... etc.   If your app was rejected by the app store, sounds corny but seriously, do not freak out.  Most developers jumped to the conclusion thinking their apps were perfect and WT#.  Unless you don't want to or don't care to solve the problem, you need to calm down and start looking into in what criteria

Image credit: CookieAMA mobile app A software company decided to merge two failed CRMs and marketed it as a new product.  It is not algebra where multiplying two negatives becomes a positive.  This is no different than expecting a couple sets of horribly bad genes produces a genius miraculously.  Of course we knew it was an attempt at salvaging two failures but it was still piles of s* when you were assigned to work on it.  There are always causalities, just a matter of how many if not all. Salvaging projects/products is a common practice but very few succeed and more often result in sacking those hardworking employees who were assigned to the impossible.  Some may jump the ship before its sunk (you are a d* but I can understand).  When more people left, the remaining ones worked half ass looking for their lifesavers while all H-1Bs got all the 'thoughts and prayers'.  The probability of salvaging two failures at this point was doomed.   Tasks started moving offshore and lettin

  "We don't even care whether or not we care" It sums up those who have been working in tech for years witnessing never ending re-orgs becoming emotionless.  New boss, new policies, new directions with more responsibilities, oh ... I mean extra mile(s).    The definition of extra mile is all the work you are 'willing' to take on outside your role and responsibilities unwillingly (in many cases) in addition to your personal goals, team goals, company goals, stretch goals ... etc.  It is a pyramid scheme in tech.  The CEO wants x, your GM wants y+x, a pool of managers/directors want z*+x+y, and everyone gets the x,y,z* plus whatever you signed yourself up for. You are so passionated about accomplishing something at the beginning of the year but half way or a few months later, WHAM! a re-org hits then either all your existing goals become irrelevant or worse, a double whammy mounting with twice, triple, quadruple of the x,y,z* until the year end.  Your self assessmen

Image credit: CookieAMA mobile app   The deadline is approaching, all mobile apps in google play must target api level 33 by 8/31 or they will not be allowed to ship updates.  Godot is aware of the drop dead date yet there is no commitment to have an update for the 3.5 stable export templates in time.   'That's what open source is all about', we are all free to contribute. They have the fix  implemented in version 3.6 and 'cherry picked' for version 3.5.3 but are not yet committing to release either before the deadline. In case Godot doesn't release the fix in time, the workaround seems relatively simple by setting the target SDK to 33 in the android export dialog.  It will give you a warning 'target sdk 33 is higher than the default 32.  This may work, but wasn't tested and maybe unstable.'   We tested it and our apps work fine, phew~  There are only a handful devices in the market with Android 13 installed and more difficult and expensive to find t