Hung Truong: The Blog!

Save the Date! Attend My Panel at SXSW 2010! 3/15/2010

Wait, did I really forget to mention that my SXSW Panel submission for Student Startups was accepted? I really have been busy at work.

I just got news from Hugh (the guy who invented SXSW) that my panel is going to happen on Monday, March 15th 2010! That’s 3/15/2010 for you numerical types. The panelists will be Ellen Chisa from Alight Learning, Ben Congleton from Olark and Rishi Narayan from Underground Printing. I’ll be moderating the panel.

Please comment if you are going to be at SXSW and will be attending! If there’s anything you want me to cover, you can note that in the comments, too. See you at SXSW!

The Worst User Experience I Have Ever Seen

For some reason Chase “upgraded” my card to some random blah thing instead of my Freedom something something. That’s not the point of this post. The point is that I was looking at the ways I can redeem my bonus points. There’s a way you can “pay yourself back” for a previous purchase you made.

It’s pretty obvious the people who handle Chase’s rewards site are total hacks. They want you to type in the purchase date and price of something you bought. Think about that. You have to go grab your statement, find the date, find the price. Then you insert it by hand. WTF? No interface to see what you’ve bought that is eligible for redemption? It’s like they don’t want you to redeem your points. Oh. Wait.

I titled this post “The Worst User Experience I Have Ever Seen.” But I don’t think this even counts as an experience. It’s more like a total disregard for usability.

Grocery Store Antics!

I had a really weird dream in-between snoozes this morning. I’m writing this post on my iPhone on my way to work (don’t worry, I commute by bus).

The first part of my dream was at some kind of museum. It was a place where I had gone as a kid. I saw a hallway with a bunch of mechanical educational arcade type games. They were old. I think one was of Dick and Jane. I felt the kind of nostalgia that you get going to a place you used to frequent as a kid but rarely as an adult. Think back to elementary school when they’d send you to the same place every year or semester. Like the natural history museum for me.

The museum quickly got boring so my dream transitioned me to shopping at a grocery store. I think it was Meijer. Shopping got boring in the dream (which strangely never happens in real life) and I resorted to riding my shopping cart around with another dude who kinda seemed like my friend Matt Strand. But I don’t think it was him.

Then some security guards came up to us with “energizer” brand binders (I could tell because they were drumming them like the energizer bunny, except vertically because the bunny has a bass drum and these guys were playing them like snares). They were going to take us to the manager’s office on the 9th floor or something. I tried to make small talk with the guards. Like “I bet a lot of people mess with the shopping carts and ride on them!” I was trying to make it appear less lame that a 26 year old got caught goofing off. Then my second snooze alarm woke me up.

It seems impossible that my long dream happened in the span of 10 minutes but I guess that’s how our brains work!

iRobot Roomba 530: Review!

I brought home a bundle of joy yesterday. No, I did not adopt a child or animal. But I do have a new pet: the iRobot Roomba 530 vacuum-cleaning robot!

I’ve wanted a Roomba for a while. It makes perfect sense: it’s a robot, which I love. It’s a vacuum cleaner, which I also really like. It’s also kind of a pet. I have to say that the way it moves around is pretty cute. There are really nice, nuanced touches. Like how it beeps as it backs up when it leaves its docking station. Or how it slows down a bit when it knows it’s gonna hit the wall. And it hits the wall a lot. It also plays a sort of sad sound when it runs out of batteries. The Roomba definitely has a personality.

In addition to just being a cool nerdy object, the Roomba does a pretty decent job. It picked up a bunch of gunk the first time it swept through my apartment. It seemed to prefer the living room, maybe because it was dirtiest? Or maybe because it liked the feel of the shag rug. I’m not sure. The algorithm that determines where the Roomba goes seems non-deterministic. So it ends up doing something different each time, but I think the algorithm also ensures that it hits all the spots a couple of times, and it apparently knows when it’s found some dirt, in which case it goes back for more. There are some really nice details about the design of the robot. It’s circular, which means it can turn with a 0 degree radius. It has a rotating brush thingy that helps it get stuff that’s in a corner. It’s also pretty short, so it fits under my couch and my bed. It’s only gotten stuck like once, and that was an edge case where it used a table leg as a ramp.

So far I am very happy with my Roomba. It’s cute, functional and gives some serious nerd cred. I realize that it’s only a matter of time before my Roomba gains sentience and tries to kill me in my sleep. For now, though, it’s worth saving the trouble of having to vacuum by hand all the time.

Ender’s Game – Book Report!

I recently re-read Ender’s Game. The first time I had read it was in middle school, probably around 6th grade. Now I’m in ~19th grade or so. Or maybe grades stop when you get a terminal degree. Anyway, I thought it’d be interesting to write up my thoughts about the book. I previously wrote about them in web form, yet the editorial quality was a bit lacking. I actually dug up the “OSC” page I had made and here’s a screencap:

What you can’t see is that the red text on top blinked. I’m not even joking.

So what did I think of Ender’s Game this time around? I still liked the story, but I had quite a different perspective this time. I first read the book when I was around 11-12. The same age as the protagonist when he’s at the top of his game. I must’ve read the book more for the action and less for the things happening behind the scenes. There’s a twist ending that I won’t spoil, but since I already remembered that, the story was a bit different the second time for that reason as well.

I think that when I was reading the book for the first time, I wanted to be like Ender. I wanted to be a genius (I always thought geniuses were pretty interesting). I wanted to do things that other people could not. I wanted to be recognized for talent. Maybe things haven’t changed much since middle school, but I feel I have a different perspective now. I see Ender as a victim, more than a hero or a genius.

One thing I didn’t find very realistic was that Ender is basically put into boot camp at the age of 6. And he takes all the punishment up until he’s something like 12 years old. Are kids just that good to listening to adults? I think that in real life, there would be a lot more AWOL kids running around asking to be sent home. I guess Ender wanted to avoid his evil brother back on Earth.

The book seems much more violent this time, too. I guess that when I was in middle school, I couldn’t get enough of the gore and brutal beat-downs. But imagining little kids kick the crap out of each other is kind of sad. Lord of the Flies is cool because the kids just kind of naturally gravitate to going insane, but Ender’s Game has adults who egg them on.

It’s interesting to think of what I remembered from reading the first time and how it translated to the second time I read the book. For example, there’s a description of a “desk” that Ender uses to play a realistic video game. Ender goes from environment to environment, killing giants and being killed in numerous ways. I remember imagining the game looking something like Mario 64, since that was what was around at the time. This time I thought of it as much more realistic. The interesting part is that the game’s specifics were never really described. Your imagination was required to fill in the blanks and the image in my head ended up being different than before.

I may or may not continue reading the Ender Wiggin series of books. I remember not liking the next book in the series as much as the first, then quitting in the middle of the third (or simply sleepwalking through it and forgetting the entire plot). Pair that with the fact that Orson Scott Card has some very negative beliefs that I don’t agree with and it’s hard for me to get into his books. I’ll give Ender’s Game **** (pretty good). I guess I’ve become more critical in my advanced age.