Chan's Personal Blog

The Relaunch of VanessaJeweller.com - Behind The Scenes

This year, I was back in Victoria for three weeks for my annual Christmas vacation. I thought it was going to be quiet time, but I came across a project that amounted to three weeks of raw execution. My task, to modernize and relaunch vanessajeweller.com website in three weeks.

I rarely do private commercial websites these days but this project piqued my interest. I did a quick market analysis and found about a dozen jewellery stores in the Greater Victoria website. Many of the stores that are ranked high on search engines weren't really great websites to begin with. Besides the major jewellery store chains, a lot of competitor websites looked like something out of early 2000s. I felt there was an opportunity to crush the competition with everything that I know about the web now.

Web Development in 2005

The vanessajeweller.com website was first put up in 2005. Here's a screenshot of the old website we were working with:

Some of the primary problems:

Low quality photos.
Not a lot of content.
No content management system.
No search engine optimization.
No data analytics.

Looking back at 2005, it's pretty incredible to think about how much technology and the internet has changed since then. As a web developer, a lot of the modern conveniences we take for granted simply weren't in place back then.

Here's a taste of what the web was like in 2005:

Social media wasn't a big deal. Facebook for businesses wasn't around. Twitter didn't even exist.
Digital photography wasn't on-par with traditional film cameras yet. DSLR cameras were insanely expensive. Remember when you had to scan photos into the computer?
Open source content management systems were still very complicated to use and setup.
The mobile web as we know it today simply did not exist. There were no android or ios devices.
Web developer tools such as FireBug didn't exist. Debugging CSS/HTML/Javascript was a pain.
Internet Explorer 6 controlled 89% of the market. Firefox 1.5 had just come out, and controlled 6% of the market.
Tableless CSS-based websites were starting to gain traction. XHTML 1.0 was apparently the next hot thing.

Hack Day

I only had finite time to work on this project, and the whole thing needed to be shipped before I left Victoria. In the spirit of hack day, I started brainstorming on how I could rapidly bootstrap a professional looking site with a little cash and a little time.

Photography

Priority one was sexy photos for the website. I needed professional looking jewellery photos to maximize the wow factor of the site. I spent a night on the internet scouring for tutorials on jewellery photography. After I was done, I felt like Neo out of the Matrix saying, "woah, I know jewellery photography." A critical piece that I needed was a macroscopic lens; unfortunately they cost at least $400, and I wasn't going to drop that kind of cash for a one-time project. I ended up finding a place in town that rented them for $20/day.

Next, I needed a good digital camera to take photos with. My brother had a DSLR camera available, and he had taken quite a number of courses in photography, so I recruited him to the project. You can take a look at his side of the story on his blog.

Step three was lighting for the photography. A lot of the professionals were using white LED lighting to light up their jewellery. Normal lights give off a yellow-ish light which doesn't look good. I serendipitously found a solution for this while attending a games night at Patrick and Rebecca's. They were outfitting their cabinets with LED strips; they were completely self-contained, very inexpensive, and required very little soldering. I used to have to design circuits and solder together wire, resisters, and LEDs which was a lot of work. My friend Chad happened to have the LED strips with the exact colour temperature I needed, and Patrick gave me a couple power supplies. We bootstrapped together a LED light source, and we were on our way.

Finally, I figured out that we needed a couple plastic backgrounds to stage jewellery on. I needed a white plastic to give off a soft-reflection, and a piece of black acrylic for a dramatic reflection on a black background. I was able to source my materials from a local plastic vendor, and that set me back $60.

The Day Of The Photoshoot

With all our materials in hand, we did a day of photography on site.

My brother and I at the photoshoot, using LED lighting, white plastic background, DSLR with macro lens, and a light box.

Staging jewellery on a black acrylic background.

Final product shot of engagement ring.

It took us about a day to finish photographing everything. My brother produced about two hundred photos. We went through the shots, and made a shortlist of thirty shots that would make it to the website.

The Web In 2012

With the photos in place, it was my turn to throw in my expertise. When I was scoping out the project, I knew I wanted to focus on the following areas:

Content Management System.
Search Engine Optimization.
Social Media Integration.
Site Speed Performance.
Data Analytics.

Each of these site features were areas that I could comfortably beat the competition in. Each of the features actually all support search engine optimization as well (which affects your Google/Yahoo/Bing rankings), so it was crucial to have a coherent strategy.

Content management systems have become commoditized and the open source versions of this software are very full featured, so I went with Joomla. There was no sense in reinventing the wheel. In addition, one of the non-profits committees that I sit on recently made a motion to move their site to Joomla, so I figured it was in my interest to learn Joomla. I spent about eight hours reading documentation, reviewing tutorials, playing around with its code, and was ready to build a site on Joomla. Cue Neo saying, "Woah, I know Joomla."

Having the content management system taken care of meant I could focus on writing content for the website. In addition, it gave me the infrastructure to host a blog on the site which is quite important because Google favours sites with fresh content.

Performance is another critical aspect of web development these days. Google has said site speed matters in search engine ranking these days, so it's very important to get it right. I spent a couple days optimizing the website code, and managed to shave off 500 milliseconds from the site so far. More optimizations to come as I collect more live traffic data.

The social media aspect of the website is still relatively new to me, and I will learn this as I go. Preliminary data is quite impressive, and I'm seeing more social referrals than organic web search referrals. That being said, a couple data points doesn't mean much, so we'll have to see the long-term trend on this.

The Finished Product

After three weeks of writing content, coding, and optimizing, I finally relaunched vanessajeweller.com.

I was quite happy at the speed of the project. We went from idea to finished product in three weeks. It was a nice change of pace. The websites that I typically work on these days are used by tens of millions of users, and you need to setup a ton of infrastructure to support that kind of traffic. When you operate on that kind scale, it's hard to launch things fast.

The other takeaway is just how much more a web developer can do today in 2012. If you asked me to build such a site back in 2005 in three weeks, I would have told you that it was impossible. As a programmer, we live in exciting times because we have so many tools, platforms, and infrastructure to build on top of.

Anyway, let me know what you think about the new site. I'm always look for feedback.

Chan Productions Joins Internet Blackout Against SOPA/PIPA

Yesterday, Chan Productions participated in the internet blackout in an effort to protest the SOPA/PIPA bill which is being debated in the U.S. Government. Other large websites such as Wikipedia, BoingBoing, Reddit, etc. blacked out their websites in protest. This is what our website looked like yesterday:

For accessibility, this is the blackout message I had on the site:

american politicians have introduced SOPA/PIPA legislation
which could damage the free and open internet
the success of chanproductions was only possible in a world with a free and open internet
for 24 hours we are blacking out the site in solidarity
and in defence of the internet

learn more

fight the future

The dust has settled from the online protest, and Digital Trends has compiled statistics about the blackout:

75,000: Approximate of websites that participated in the blackout, according to SOPAStrike.com, which helped organize the protest.

162 million: Number of people who saw the Wikipedia blackout page

4.5 million: Number of people who signed Googles anti-SOPA petition on Wednesday

1.458 million: Number of people who signed other similar anti-SOPA/PIPA petitions, according to activist websites Avaaz.org and Fight for the Future (FFTF)

35,000: Approximate number of people who sent letters to their senators and representatives as a result of the blackout

25: Number of senators who publicly opposed PIPA after the blackout went into effect

We'll see if this was enough to kill the bills. Learn more about SOPA/PIPA.

The Best of Chan 2009

I'm a tad late, but better late than never I guess. I just finished putting together a collection of 100 photos from 2009 that highlights the year for me. I noticed an inordinate number of food photos in the collection; I think my friends are right, I've become a foodie.

Please enjoy the pictures and the accompanied music (hit play on both widgets).

The Best of Chan 2011

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to present to you, the annual 'Best Of Chan' photo collection. This is a collection of my favourite moments from last year which have been curated from my Flickr photo archive. It brings back a lot of memories of all that had come in 2011, both the challenges and victories. I've also put together a sound track to complement your viewing experience, so please hit play on the Grooveshark Music Player below and lets start the slideshow.

Soundtrack:

'Venice Rooftops' From The Assassin's Creed Soundtrack - Jesper Kyd
'Set Fire To The Rain' - Adele

Enjoy!

P.S. I've got other 'Best Of Chan' albums from previous years as well. Here's the 2010 edition, and the 2009 edition.

Where Were You On 9/11?

With the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America, I came across a pretty incredible story from the Washington Post entitled, "F-16 pilot was ready to give her life on Sept. 11."

Late in the morning of the Tuesday that changed everything, Lt. Heather Lucky Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders: Bring down United Airlines Flight 93. The days fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it.

The one thing she didnt have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throw at a hostile aircraft.

Except her own plane. So that was the plan.

Because the surprise attacks were unfolding, in that innocent age, faster than they could arm war planes, Penney and her commanding officer went up to fly their jets straight into a Boeing 757.

I had a number of conversations about that fateful day. The typical question is always, "where were you when 9/11 happened?" I noticed that a lot of Americans view the event as exclusively an American event; however, it definitely affected all of North America, and Canada was definitely affected.

One of the conversations went like this:
American: Where were you on 9/11?
Chan: On a Canadian navy base.
America: Wait, Canada has an army?
Chan: ...
Chan: Who said anything about an army?
America: Why would Canada need a military?

In either case, to prove that Canada does in fact have a military, this was where I was on 9/11. Home of the Pacific Fleet:

The other really strange thought is that there are kids right now that know nothing about 9/11 because they were born after it.

A Delicious Reading Experiment

A year ago, I was lamenting how I had finished reading only two books. I was thinking, that's not good, I'm not reading as much as I used to. Was I get dumber? I had noticed that with my schedule, I rarely had large blocks of time that I could spend reading. Instead, I had these slivers of time available in-between tasks, 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there. This disjointed schedule was much better suited for reading articles and news on the internet.

It was hard to quantify exactly how much I was reading on the internet though. With a traditional book, you had page numbers, and back in my childhood days, we would always record how many pages you had read as a learning metric. Unfortunately with internet articles, it's hard to judge since every site varies in page layout, font, etc.

To help count how much I was reading online, a friend at work introduced me to Delicious, a social bookmarking utility. Basically every page I visited, I could bookmark and tag with metadata. It was also nice that my blog could pull the latest articles I was reading from Delicious (which you see on the left rail here).

Managing bookmarks on Delicious was incredibly useful because I used to use Firefox to manage all my bookmarks, but it was incredibly hard to find old bookmarks. If I was on another computer, I wouldn't have access to those bookmarks stored locally on my other computer (yes, I'm aware latest version of Firefox solves this problem with sync). I've also had Firefox crash on me, and I lost all my bookmarks before. So, it was settled, I would store and share all my bookmarks online with Delicious.

August 31st, 2010, I embarked on my quest to measure how much I read online. In one year, I have amassed 3679 bookmarks.

Here's some stats that I crunched.

Domain	# Bookmarks
news.yahoo.com	620
www.businessinsider.com	497
www.wired.com	494
www.youtube.com	105
www.nytimes.com	79
www.bbc.co.uk	64
www.guardian.co.uk	56
i.imgur.com	49
finance.yahoo.com	47
www.rockpapershotgun.com	38
www.telegraph.co.uk	37
www.time.com	34
en.wikipedia.org	32
english.aljazeera.net	31
techcrunch.com	27
www.washingtonpost.com	27
www.cbc.ca	25
online.wsj.com	24
www.huffingtonpost.com	20
www.reuters.com	17

Bookmarks By Day Of Week

Looks like I read the most on Mondays.

Become a fan of me on Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/the_chan!

Royal Family Kids Camp 2011

I just got back from a week in the mountains serving in Royal Family Kids Camp (RFKC). It's a summer camp dedicated to neglected and abused children which is sponsored by my church. This year, we had about 30 kids. Each cabin had two kids, two camp counselor, and one assistant counselor, so the kids get a lot of attention and supervision. The rest of this blog entry will just be a number of mini-stories from camp that comes to mind.

Home of the Underdogs

Before camp started, I was talking to some of the organizers of RFKC, and one of the problems they face was a marketing problem, in that people didn't know what RFKC was. I spent the week thinking about a clever unofficial tagline for the camp. I've come up with "RFKC: Home Of The Underdogs." There's two meanings behind it. First, if you look at the kids that attend the camp, they are the ultimate underdogs of society. The second meaning was by the people who volunteer to help out at camp. I looked through the rosters and thought, this is quite a ragtag band of people, how could this group of people possibly pull off a successful camp; yet, by the grace of God, we're able to pull off a great camp. There are definitely a lot of underdogs on staff.

Everyone loves an underdog story, and I love betting on the underdog.

I Am Chan

Since the kids are in the state foster care system, there are a lot of extra privacy and security concerns for the children. One of the restrictions is that we can't let the kids know our last names because the system doesn't want the kids trying to contact us after camp is over. Unfortunately most people call me 'Chan', 'Chan Can', 'Channy Chan Chan', and other variations. There were a number of times that the other counselors would inadvertently call me 'Chan' and I would give them this shocked stare; they would pause and then realize their folly and try to quickly change the subject before the kids caught on.

Hoarders

One of the things highlighted in our training is that some neglected kids who are not fed properly will develop a habit of hoarding food. Hoarding is a defence mechanism for them because they don't know when the next time they will be fed. This year I actually witnessed this behaviour in some of the kids. During meal time they would grab a plate of food, eat a little bit, hide some food in their clothes, and go up for more food and repeat. They also had a tendency of eating very quickly. We would explain to them that they didn't need to rush or hoard because they could eat as much food as they wanted, and there was plenty of food, but that doesn't work for the first couple days. Once you have a couple days of consistency, where you prove that there is plenty of food, and they won't go hungry, then their defence mechanism goes down and they start trusting you and start eating normally.

A Test Of Wills

Monday is typically the hardest day in my opinion because you get your kids, and the kids and counselors don't know each other very well yet in terms of social/cultural norms, expectations, and boundaries. We had one kid who was 11 years old who was quite challenging because mentally and physically he had developed slower and was more like an 8 year old. The kid was also attention starved, and would constantly talk and make noise to get attention. The constant talking made it quite interesting for bedtime because he would keep everyone up in the cabin. The other two counselors had the night off, so I had to take care of the situation. As a result, I stood next to the kid's bunk and told him that he needed to lay down and not make noise. I also explicitly told him that I could literally stand there all night. The challenge was on, and for the next 30 minutes he kept trying to test this boundary, and I didn't yield. I stood there and shushed him every time he started making loud noise again.

By the 30 minute mark he had given up and started sleeping; however, I had a feeling he wasn't going to get into a deep sleep, so I stood there as a precaution. Fifteen minutes later, he woke up again and tried to misbehave but he saw me standing there and gave up and slept. I assume when he fell asleep the first time, he lost track of time (it helps that the room doesn't have any clocks, and he didn't wear a watch) and when he woke up the second time, he must have thought I was really going to stand there the whole night if if needed.

The irony is that this kid would always complain about being tired and wanting to sleep during the day.

God Moments

All of the counselors arrive at camp a day early (Sunday) in order to setup and prepare. That Sunday night, Pastor Art gave communion and addressed us all about how important this camp was. He noted how we were doing God's work and we would be helping mend, restore, and encourage these neglected and abused children. The verse Psalm 82:3 came to mind, "Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed." As of late in my prayer life, the phrase, "if you tell me something worth fighting for, I'll fight that war" was a recurring theme. That Sunday night, I just knew through and through that I was in the right place, at the right time, with the right cause.

One of the exceptional things about this year was that all of the kids in the cabin this year wanted to pray at nights. Normally you have to coerce kids into doing things like pray, but they were all wanting to do it. Even during they day they would ask if they could pray at night. The kids were even fighting over who could pray during meal time. I guess that's a good problem to have.

On the final day of camp, it's easy to just turn your brain on autopilot and just cruise to the finish line because you're tired and the kids will be going home. Everyone stayed diligent and there were some pretty incredible stories from the final hours of camp. For my team, the kids were participating in the Hope Tree activity where they were writing down their hopes and dreams, and we would pray for that. It was kind of heart-wrenching that some of the simple things that we take for granted like seeing your own family is such a distant dream for some of the kids. Some of the kids opened up and talked about why they were in foster care because of what their parents had done, and it was just shocking hearing what people would do to children. What an incredible cost to children and society. In the closing ceremonies, the kids were just so appreciative for everything we had done for them. A lot of them didn't want to go home because for they felt like this was a real family.

The hardest part is coming home, and watching the kids go back to the environments they have to live in. [Read full story]

Continue reading "Royal Family Kids Camp 2011"

Things I Learned In 2010: Humble Confidence

I'm kicking off a series entitled simply, "Things I Learned In 2010" as a way to reflect on last year. I've been working on my battle plans and strategy for 2011 and I find it's always important to look to the past's lessons to inform the future. So I thought I'd write about my inspirations from last year before unveiling the 2011 theme.

Let me set the stage for the first topic of 'Humble Confidence'. In 2010, I saw a number of leaders (whom I respected greatly) step down from their respective roles and move on to other endeavours. These changes obviously took a while to get used to and adapt to because of the big shoes that had to be filled. People spoke of these leaders with high-regard and almost reverence. Their reputations precede them. I've heard it said that their presence is felt even when they are not physically around. I pondered what made these leaders great? What was the commonality amongst them?

Last year I also had the opportunity to give a talk about managing finances, and I invited some successful businessmen to help out as guest speakers on specific financial topics. These again were people I held with high regard, and I wanted to know what their secret was. This was definitely a change for me because I come from an environment full of negative encounters with genuinely evil people behaving very unethically when it came to business.

After a couple lunch time discussions with peers about what makes these leaders great, we concluded these were common attributes they had all possessed:

Had a humble confidence.
Had their facts straight, and talked straight with you.
Had a genuine interest in you as a person, rather than treating you as a resource.
Had unquestionable integrity.

When I was back in Canada, I was watching a lot of Dragon's Den, and there was this clip from season 3 where they interviewed the Dragon's (venture capitalists) about what made a good business pitch?

Robert Herjavec reinforces the point that successful pitches involves people with a humble confidence. These are folks who are not overly confident and seem arrogant. These folks are also not underwhelming in confidence to a point that they seem weak. The key is humble confidence and having your facts straight. Have you ever watched a presentation crash and burn because the person is spouting shaky incorrect facts, and they get destroyed in the question and answer period? Have you ever seen a leader take all the credit of his success without acknowledging his team, and you see his team members grumble under their breathe? It's an absolute train wreck.

The reason why I introduced good business pitches is because I think leadership implicitly requires you to pitch well. One of the keys to leadership is being able to articulate a vision and convincing people to follow you in that vision. I'm a firm believer in the idea of the marketplace of ideas, where ideas compete with each other, and the best ideas should survive. Being able to convince people that your idea is good is critical to your success in the marketplace of ideas.

In closing, I think one of the secrets to great leadership and success is the ability to maintain a humble confidence, no matter how far you've come, how much you've accomplished, or how big your salary is.

I'll end this quote, "For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." - Matthew 23:12

The Oddest Interview I Had In 2010

Last year, I interviewed a ton of programmers at work. Our interview process is a multi-layered approach; each layer acts as a defence intended to filter out candidates along the way as they run the gauntlet. The first line of defence is with our recruiters who makes first contact with the candidate, chats with them, and ask some simple technical questions. The second line of defence is the phone screen interview with one of our programmers. The final line of defence is the on-site interview where the candidate meets with several managers and programmers. The reason for all these hoops is because it's actually very expensive in terms of time and money when you get a bad candidate come through.

One day I get an e-mail from our recruiter informing me that an on-site interview was being scheduled. I took a look at the candidate's resume and found something quite peculiar, the candidate had a bachelor's degree in writing, and a master degree in journalism. Don't get me wrong, the degrees are perfectly fine, but this isn't the usual educational background that I see for programmers. Interestingly enough, the candidate had also published several books about a programming language that use. I assumed that if you could write a book about a subject and have it published, then you would be a domain expert in that area. So this was going to be an interesting interview.

The interview day finally comes, and it's my turn to interview the candidate. I do my usual introduction, and then immediately ask him what his story was. How does a writing major transition to the world of computer science? The candidate asserts that writing good software and writing are actually very similar disciplines, it all comes down to syntax and grammar, and being able to express yourself creatively. A part of me was somewhat skeptical about this analogy because I remember all those painful math and algorithm courses that I took in university. Is every writer out there really a closet programmer just waiting to be discovered?

I jump into the technical portion of my interview and ask the candidate to write some code on the white board. I present a fairly simple programming task and the candidate seems to be stumbling through it. I go through a couple questions related to what he had written on the white board, and asked how he could optimize the code to run faster, and he was completely stuck. I look at one of the functions he had used on the board and asked him if he could implement a simple naive version of it by hand, and he could not. Long story short, the technical portion of the interview didn't go well at all.

I left the room fairly unimpressed. I met up with a colleague who had interviewed the candidate earlier just to trade notes. I asked my colleague if he had read the candidate's book before. My colleague said he read snippets of it on Amazon.com, and it was absolutely garbage. I thought to myself, how could a bad programming book possibly be published? In academia, when you publish a paper, they're typically peer-reviewed which ensures a certain level of quality. My colleague laughed at my naivety; he explained that book publishers/editors aren't necessarily domain experts in good programming practices, and that's why there are a lot of really bad programming books out there. Just because you could publish a book about programming doesn't mean you're a good programmer.

This was an eye opening experience, and I definitely learned something that day.

Dragon's Den - CBC

So I'm back in Victoria for Christmas vacation, and I'm watching the CBC again, and I come across the show "Dragon's Den." I absolutely fall in love with the show. The concept is, you have entrepreneurs going on Dragon's Den, pitching their ideas to five venture capitalists for funding. I'm encouraged by this show because when I took entrepreneurship in business school, the main source of funding they recommended was through government grants and agencies. I hope a show like this helps foster a culture of angel investors and venture capitalists in Canada.

It's pretty valuable to watch people pitch their ideas to a room full of very skeptical investors. On the flip side, if you've got money to invest, it's pretty valuable to develop a healthy sense of skepticism and ask the right questions when presented with an investment opportunity. These investors are even more brutal than Donald Trump, and it's strangely refreshing.

I really like how you get to see both sides of a business deal from the perspective of the business owner and the investor.

For the business owner:

How much control of my company am I willing to give over to investors?
Is the valuation of my company fair?
What expertise do I lack?
What expertise do I want from potential investors and partners?
What's the exit plan for investors?

For the investor:

What's the risk/reward of this investment?
How much money does the business owner have on the line?
Does the owner have good knowledge of the market and competitors?
How long until I get a return on my investment?
How much of my time do they need and what are my roles and responsibilities?
Is the business model realistic or too good to be true?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of this business?

Here's an example of a pitch where the entrepreneurs have a business plan, but clearly didn't do their homework on their idea, and don't understand the market that they're getting into. In this video, the owners are pitching a digital wall calendar.

This other clip is a great business pitch, but the entrepreneurs are too innocent and naive. It's a family business pitching Cosy Soles.The venture capitalists tell them if they weren't on the show, they would destroy them by taking advantage of them. Take away is, beware of investors bearing gifts and understand your financing options.

I'm finding this show very useful because I'm starting to be approached with investment opportunities, and this helps sharpen my business sense. I'm also in a position to pitch investment ideas as well (both personal and work), so learning how to present well is key to success.

Awesome show. There's plenty of clips of this show floating around on YouTube. I heard in the U.S., there's an equivalent show called Shark Tank, where two of the venture capitalists from the Canadian show appears on.

The Best of 2010

I've gone through my photo archives in Flickr, and have curated a collection of photos that best highlight the year that was 2010 for me. There were a lot of new experiences and challenges, some epic victories, and some extraordinary failures. Please hit 'play' on the Grooveshark Music player below before starting the slideshow as the music complements the slideshows. The slideshow has a 'full-screen' button for optimal viewing.

Those viewing this blog article from Facebook will need to click here to view the slideshow and hear the music.

I'll have a more thorough review of 2010 article later.
Enjoy!

Operation Snowbird

Dear Canadians,

This December, I will be executing Operation Snowbird which will be a daring winter migration from California to Victoria. I will be home from December 18th - January 17th this year. Call me up when I get back in town, my calendar is wide open at the moment, and dinner/lunch slots will go on a first-come-first-serve basis. I intend to feast while I'm in Victoria, and I'm going to be making my rounds to all my favourite restaurants.

On the bucket list is also to try curling while in Victoria. Any takers? Also I want to get in as much ice skating as I can while back home. Skating is REALLY expensive in San Jose, California, who would have thought?

Anyways, looking forward to seeing friends and family for Christmas. It has been too long.

-CHaN

A Time For Everything

It's nearing the year end and I'm in the middle of taking inventory of all my successes and failures of 2010, and beginning battle planning for my goals and aspirations for 2011. I'm anticipating yet another year of turbulent change, so it makes anticipating strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that much funner to plan for.

In such a time, I draw solace in Ecclesiastes 3:1-11:

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

What does the worker gain from his toil?
I have seen the burden God has laid on men.
He has made everything beautiful in its time.

It begs the question, what time is it?

Watch Me On Fox Business Network

Fox Business News was filming in Silicon Valley yesterday, and they made a pit stop at Yahoo! HQ. I happened to be walking by during the interview with Juniper's CEO, and you can see me walking in the background in a blue shirt at the 3 minute mark of the video.

Enjoy! I hope this helps me get discovered as a TV personality.

Top 10 Search Terms For Chan Productions

I was recently looking at my site's visitor data. I was interested to see if the addition of my delicious bookmarks on the left rail under "What I'm Reading", was helping with traffic. Looks like you folks like the feature, and traffic is up due to it.

In either case, I found some interesting data about search engine traffic. These are the top query terms that people search who end up on my site:

Roast Pork Tenderloin - This is my signature dish that I cook
Coast Capital - This is due to the epic rant I have against this credit union.
J2EE Sucks - I really don't enjoy coding in J2EE.
Chan Can Cook - Has to do with my cooking?
Church Mortgage Burning Ceremony - I've got an article about this.
Sen Zushi - My favourite restaurant.
Chan Productions - This site.
Jeremy Postale - This guy was doing a vanity search on himself, and found his name on my site.
Nanoose Bay Camp - A beautiful camp that my church is involved in.
Mighty Fish Taco - I like fish tacos?

Anyways, interesting query mix. Four of the top queries are related to food, so I guess that makes this a Foodie blog for 40% of the time.

Shopping For Credit Cards - Citi Forward Visa

So for the last two Sundays, I've had the privilege of speaking to young adults at church about managing finances. Last week, I focused my talk on credit cards since a lot of people run into troubles with them. I highlighted that if you build up a good credit score, then you can gain access to credit cards which have amazing features. I was ranting and raving about the Visa card that I had, but unfortunately no one in the room could apply for it because it's exclusive to the Royal Bank of Canada. I realize that I was being an unsatisfactory tease for doing that. As a result, I did some research on American credit cards and I'm going to suggest a few cards that I came across. It's a convenient time for me to write this since I'm looking into ditching my awful American secured credit card, so I'm in the market for a new card anyways. A number of folks have been asking for suggestions on credit cards, so here goes.

The first card I'm seriously considering is the Citi Forward Visa.

Overview

Card	Citi Forward Visa
Interest Rate	12.99%-19.99%
Annual Fee	$0.00
Rewards	5 points per $1 spent on dining, books, movies and music; 1 point for other purchases.
Credit Score	Good
Balance Transfer	0% for 12 months

Here's all the disclaimers about all the fees and how much balance transfers will cost.

Points Value

The first thing I always look at is how much the points are worth in real dollars. I went to their rewards site, and found that you can trade in your points for flights, movies, dvds, gift certificates, cash back, etc. To measure real dollars, I looked at the cash back reward. They say 8,000 points gives you $50 cash.

So lets do the math, $50 / 8000 points = $0.00625/point.

If I spend $1 on dining, books, movies, or music, that gives me 5 points. $0.00625 X 5 = 0.03125. That's equivalent to 3.125% cash back. That's not bad at all.

However, for all other expenses, $0.00625 X 1 = 0.00625. That's equivalent to 0.625% cash back which is lower than the average reward.

The biggest expense I have is actually eating out, and movies, so if I spend all my entertainment dollars on this card, then it's worth it. For all my other expenses, I would use my other card because I get the equivalent of 1% cash back on that card.

Assume I spend $400/month dining, and $100/month on movies/books, then that's $500/month X 5 points X 12 months/year X $0.00625/point = $187.50/year cash back.

Bonus Points

The Citi Forward Visa offers a couple of bonus point offers:

6,000 Points after you make $250 in purchases within the first 3 months
2,500 Points when you sign up for Paperless Statements within 3 months of account opening
100 Points each billing period when you pay on time and stay under your credit line

Lets assume that you can meet all of these criteria, lets do some math.
6,000 points + 2,500 points + 12 months X 100 points = 9700 points X $0.00625/point = $60.62. This means in your first year, you get that much cash for free if you fulfill their bonus points offer.

I really like that this card rewards you for paying your credit card bill on time every month.

Rewarding Fiscal Responsibility

There's two rewards that this card offers which rewards fiscal responsibility, which makes me feel this is a great card for young adults. The first was already covered above, you get 100 points for every month you pay your bill on time, and stay under your credit limit.

For every 3 month period that you pay your bill on time, and stay under your credit limit, Citi will lower your credit card's interest rate by 0.25% (maximum 8 times, or -2% total). If you don't carry a balance on the credit card, then this isn't really a benefit. However, for those who do carry a balance, this could be a nice way to gradually save some money since debt gets a little less expensive.

Card Benefits

Here are some additional benefits with the card:

$0 liability on unauthorized charges (ie fraud)
Cellular Telephone Protection -
If you pay your monthly cell phone bills with your Citi Forward Card and your cell phone is damaged or stolen, you have supplemental insurance coverage that reimburses you for a replacement phone
Extended Warranty -
The terms of the original manufacturers' U.S. warranties (of one year or less) may be extended up to one additional year on most items purchased on your card
Auto Rental Insurance -
You're automatically covered when you reserve and rent a covered vehicle with your Citi card and decline the car rental company's collision loss/damage waiver insurance.
Retail Purchase Protection -
Most items purchased with your card are eligible for protection against accidental damage or theft up to 90 days from the date of purchase
Travel & Emergency Assistance -
You're protected when youre traveling in the U.S. and abroad. Travel & Emergency Assistance services include medical and legal referrals, lost luggage assistance, emergency transportation, translation services and more

Conclusion

I think if your biggest expenses every month is dining, books, movies and music, then this card is right for you since it offers a generous 3.125% cash back (equivalent). I've seen other cards that offer 5% cash back, but it's isolated to a narrow class of expenses, such as only for gas. You know your spending habits, so you'll have to calculate how much money you might make off this card, and if this is the best for you.

I really like how this card also has features that reward good fiscal responsibility, it has no annual fees, and has a whole whack of extra benefits. The benefits I use most would be the cell phone insurance, the extended warranty, and the rental car collision insurance.

(*) Next week I'm going to go over a credit card that caters to investment-minded people.

Disclaimer

Credit cards are a two-edged weapon. It can bring amazing benefits, and it can bring amazing destruction. Credit cards are not for everyone, and I only recommend this card if you're financially responsible. All these benefits the card brings are instantly negated if you're paying 19.99% interest.

This does not constitute financial advice. Please consult a financial advisor for professional advice.

Full disclosure: I do not own shares of Citi or Visa at the time of writing this article.

Delicious

My blog entries as of late has been sporadic at best. In an effort to at least keep the site up with fresh content, I've recently started using Delicious which is a social bookmarking service. On the left hand side of the website, I've added a "What I'm Reading" section which updates every 3 hours. Typically I blog about interesting articles that I come across anyways, so I think this is a nice addition to the site.

If you want to subscribe to my Delicious feed, you can use check out it out here (RSS / http://www.delicious.com/the_chan).

Hopefully this will make your visit here a bit more valuable even if I don't have blog posts, at least you'll have fresh bookmarks. I also wanted to try to keep track of how many articles I read a day as a metric.

Royal Family Kids Camp

So I was volunteering at Royal Family Kids Camp as a camp counselor for a week, and I've made it out alive. To bring everyone up to speed, it's a camp for neglected and abused children. From the training sessions, I was seriously preparing for the worse, but I actually ended up with pretty well behaved kids. I had two boys, both of them were ten years old. We shared a cabin with two other boys and two other counselors. Our group got along really well together. Compared to other kids camps geared towards troubled kids that I've done in Canada, this one was way easier.

My kids were pretty easy going. None of them decided to go running off, so I didn't have to chance any of them down. Lights out was at 9pm, and they were sound asleep by 9:30pm which was shocking. It helped that the older folks like the camp director shared a wall with our cabin. We told the kids that they'd be in a lot of trouble if they woke up the director. My kids also took showers every day which was great, because that's something I religiously enforce. In years past, I had kids who refused to shower even if they smelled horrible. My cabin was also always on time to events which is great, because that's how I operate. Hands down, I had the best cabin.

On the other hand, the girls at the camp were pretty crazy. There were a couple alpha females who were constantly fighting over popularity, who was prettier, or something. I personally witnessed a couple shouting matches between those campers. Based on that, I conclude that boys are way easier to deal with, women are complicated, lol.

I have to say, the nurses at the camp were a God-send. We had a number of kids come to camp with unresolved health care needs, and the nurse's station was fully stocked with everything they needed. One of my kids had a severe cough which wasn't treated properly, another had an infection due to improper hydration. We took them to the nurses every day for treatment, and by the end of it, they were patched up pretty good.

Each day consisted of the following (roughly):

Wake up @ 7am, shower
Breakfast
Morning chapel
Crafts
Lunch
Swimming
Archery
Rest Time
Wood working
Recreation Time
Dinner
Night time service w/ Camp Fire
Prepare for bed at 8pm
Lights out at 9pm

Wednesday was one of the highlights because they did a big birthday party for all the kids because some kids never have a proper birthday party. We had a pretty good BBQ lunch, with plenty of bacon. Dinner time they had cake and balloons for everyone. There was a bottleneck during the cake serving portion, so I stepped up and went into kitchen stadium mode and got everyone served in under 10 mins. That operations management course I took finally pays off. When the kids got back to their cabin, they had a bunch of birthday loot waiting for them. I have to say, it was some pretty good stuff they got Walkmans, CDs, DVDs, etc.

Thursday we took all the boys fishing at a lake near the Santa Cruz mountains. This one kid had an amazing time, he was this super shy kid who came to camp super sleepy because his parents never went to bed at reasonable times. The first time I met him at woodworking, he was falling asleep. We're out at this lake for about two hours, and no ones getting any fish, and I'm constantly dealing with kids and their tangled fishing lines. Ten minutes before we leave, the shy kid gets this little fish and reels it in. He was the happiest kid in the world. That was definitely a highlight of the week.

I did like how each cabin was assigned a dedicated photographer for some of the days. They took photos of the kids and assembled a photo album for each of them. Counselors then wrote notes of encouragement for the kids. I thought this was pretty special, and a great idea. Unfortunately personal cameras were banned as a precaution to protect the kids, so I have no photos of the camp to post on Flickr

I think the most surreal moment was on the last day, when we put all the kids on a bus to send them home. All the counselors and staff had all their equipment and we were leaving the camp, walking across a bridge, and our job was finished. For some reason it reminded me of the end of the movie, Black Hawk Down, where the tired soldiers had to exit their battle zone by foot after fighting for days.

After I came back, people asked what I missed most while at camp. I have to say I missed having an adult conversation that lasted for more than 2 minutes. When you're hanging around kids 24/7, it's pretty hard to have a serious conversation. Second question I get asked the most was, what was the hardest thing about camp. I have to say needing to be 'on' all the time because you have to be there for the kids even if you're tired or don't feel like it. There's not really alone time, and I'm definitely someone who cherishes 'me' time after being around people for a long time.

In either case, mission accomplished. I'm happy that I did this, and I proved to myself that I'm not getting to old or busy for this kind of thing. It reminded myself, this is why we fight for things we fight for.

Thanks for everyone's prayers and words of encouragement.

Summer Mission

This year, I've been striving to try to restore things in my life that I used to do before I moved to California. One of those things I used to do was volunteer for kids camp in the summer. Well, this year, my church had a dire need for male camp counselors for their summer kids camp, Royal Family Kids Camp, which is geared towards foster kids. I answered the call, and now I find myself packing and getting ready to go to camp for a week, starting this Sunday, and coming back on Friday.

I'm pretty surprised by the ratios that they have at this camp. I'm used to watching five kids from the ages of 7-12 year old while at camp. At this camp, you only have to watch two kids, and you have an assistant with your cabin. It's mostly due to the fact that these kids are abused and neglected children which can be a handful.

I've been checking out the camp facility's activities, and they're going to have

Swimming
Rock climbing walls
Fishing
Hiking
Archery
Zip Line
Mole Hole Slide
etc

I'm personally looking forward to rock climbing and archery the most.

I've been joking that this is technically my first overseas missions trip. It's not your run of the mill third world country that tends to dominate missions trip destinations. I guess I could make it sound like one though. The people of California have been devastated by a financial tsunami in 2008, leaving many counties with double digit unemployment. The people have been suffering from a tyrannical socialist dictator who is bent on destroying the country.

This week, pray for me that I have extra extra patience with the kids. I have already prepared a reward for myself at the end of the finish line. I promised myself, since I'll be eating kiddie food for an entire week, when I come back from camp, I'll treat myself to a nice grown-up dinner, where there's no screaming kids around.

See you all in a week. I'm not going to have much computer access. Sorry, there also won't be any photos from camp due to security concerns for the children.

This is my summer mission.

Steve Carell Spoofs Lebron

Awesome video of Steve Carell spoofing Lebron's announcement on ESPN.

Secrets of the Samurai Sword

With The Daily Show on a summer break, I began to search for some other TV content to fill time. Naturally, I wandered over to PBS to see what they had. I came across this fascinating documentary entitled, "Secrets of the Samurai Sword." The documentary does a good job of explaining the cultural, spiritual, and scientific aspects of the Samurai sword. It's quite fascinating that even though 1,000 years ago, the Japanese swordmakers didn't understand the science behind their craft, but were able to create such effective weapons.

If you go to the 33 minute mark of the video, they do a live demonstration of a katana blade in the hands of a grandmaster swordsman. An archer fires an arrow directly at the grandmaster, and the grandmaster is able to defend himself by cutting arrows out of the air. Here's a clip of it:

Another interesting aspect of samurai swords is how they are rated. The more bodies a sword can cut through in one stroke, the higher quality the sword is. There's talk in the video about legendary five body blades which are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If you jump to the 46 minute mark, they go over the meticulous work required in polishing finished swords. They use whet stones to polish the swords, and the stones can go for thousands of dollars. The sword polisher spends ten days polishing these swords.

I'll end with a passage from the Samurai honour code.

The Way of The Warrior: Think Not Yourself As Established

A man who thinks he is already established is unwise; a man content with fixed views won through considerable effort has already fallen into a trap. Without a moment of self-content with what little one has found out, one should keep thinking his accomplished results as being still unsatisfactory and not good enough, exploring the right way to the attainment through one's whole life. Truth lies in no place but in this course of pursuit itself.

[Update] For Canadians who want to watch this video, you can watch it here.

Denmark Pays Foreigners To Leave Country

With the immigration debate raging in the US, I came across this timely article from Denmark entitled, "Foreigners to get 100,000 kroner incentive to leave Denmark."

The Danish Peoples Party (DF) has strengthened its immigration stance by securing an agreement to pay anti-social foreigners 100,000 kroner to leave Denmark.

As part of the on-going budget negotiations, the governments traditional ally DF said it secured the agreement late last night.
Refugees and those who come to Denmark under family reunification schemes currently get 28,256 in repatriation support if they leave, of which 11,000 is a bonus. The bonus is usually paid out a year after the recipient returns home and their right to Danish residency expires.

The new deal would see 100,000 kroner given as a bonus if a foreigner returns home and gives up their residency rights in Denmark.

Neither the government nor DF has yet elaborated on what constitutes an anti-social foreigner, but have said that it would be aimed at those who cant or wont integrate.

According to DF party leader Pia Kjærsgaard, the move will save the state a significant sum in local costs which are administered by local and regional councils.

Society will save a lot on an immense number of charges and problems. We already know that there are problems with nursing homes and have been problems with hospitals and health charges, Kjærsgaard said.

Go Denmark for making immigrants feel welcome in your country. I wonder what the political reaction would be like in Canada/US if a party were to introduce an idea such as this. It's kind of sad that they view immigrants as a liability on society.

Floor Hockey League

So the latest news with me is that I joined my church's hockey league, and I'm helping teach and organize the league. Its been at least three years since I've last played. I used to do floor hockey at my home church in Victoria as well for a couple years.

The current league plays on a tennis court which one of the families of the church privately owns. We practice twice a week, and we play a game every Saturday. We're one week away from the team captains drafting their teams. I've been busy training noobies in the fundamentals of hockey. I'd like to give a special thanks to Doug and Adam from North Douglas Church, who taught me everything about floor hockey.

Two weeks ago, I picked up all my hockey gear. I've got shin guards, knee pads, elbow pads, and a nice light composite hockey stick. I'm really digging this hockey stick though, it's pretty stiff and responsive. The light weight of the stick allows me to get off shots quicker. I'm also hoping it lasts longer than a wooden stick.

The position I seem to do well right now is the offensive defencemen role. My defense has been described as "squirrly" and "clean". We'll see where the team captain puts me on the team though.

As one of the organizers of the league, I'm putting together an official order of service. Every game will start with the following:

All players assemble at the center for prayer.
Singing of the Canadian National Anthem.
Singing of the American National Anthem.
League Commissioner will declare the beginning of hostilities. Game begins.

They've put up an American flag on the hockey court, so I'm countering by bringing in a Canadian flag today. It's also cool that there's another Canadian playing in the league as well.

In either case, I'm off to a hockey scrimmage to represent the good folks of Canada.

Yahoo! Labs Presents Dr. Lawrence Lessig

Couple weeks ago, I had to pleasure of attending Yahoo! Labs' Big Thinkers Series, featuring Dr. Lawrence Lessig. His talk was entitled, "Innovation Corruption," aka what is wrong with Congress.

Here's a short intro to the talk:

His message was consistently simple and resounding: government and business are corrupted by money. This corruption becomes a roadblock to innovation because regulation is designed not for the social good but to maximize the money to Congress. The only way to fix this is to get money out of the system a system Lessig referred to as the economy of influence.

The three major players in the system are lobbyists, members of Congress, and interests. Lessig compares lobbyists to suppliers, or pushers inside the economy of influence. The boom of lobbying has pushed Congress into a pathological dependency on campaign cash. Money passes from the hands of the interest groups to the lobbyists, from the lobbyists to Congress in the form of campaign donations, and through legislation, money passes from Congress to the interest groups. This vicious cycle of a system has a significant effect legislation gets bent away from the public good because policy gets bent to those who pay.

The vast majority of Americans believes that money buys results, said Lessig. Because of money in the system, Americans have become cynical. Theyve disengaged, and the countrys democracy has become less responsive and more corrupt.

His ideas help explain some of the present problems that face America:

Why is our Internet speeds slower than the rest of the world?
Why did we bailout Wall Street in the financial crisis?
Why do we have an obesity epidemic?

And there's much much more. I thoroughly enjoyed the talk.

Enjoy.

Creme Brulee

A couple months ago, I realized that my culinary skills had a major hole in it. It dawned on me that I didn't know how to make any sort of impressive dessert from scratch. I figure in the event of a special occasion such as a date night, I would have to field a a proper multi-course meal with dessert. After much soul searching, I decided attempted to make Creme Brulee from scratch. I imported some Madagascar vanilla beans, bought a kitchen torch, borrowed some ramekins, and away I went. It wasn't too difficult to make, just time consuming.

Delicious results. I passed this out to my food tasting guinea pigs, and they seemed to respond positively to it.

NATO Secrets Compromised In Polish Plane Crash

I was reading Inside The Ring on the Washington Times. It had a fascinating piece about the Polish plane crash which killed the Polish president and a ton of top officials a couple months back.

NATO code compromise

The recent crash of a Polish military transport that killed most of Warsaw's senior civilian and military leaders was not only a human catastrophe for a key U.S. ally. NATO sources said that, in addition to the loss of nearly 100 pro-U.S. Polish leaders, the crash provided Moscow with a windfall of secrets.

The crash killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski in western Russia on April 10 and decapitated Poland's military, killing two service chiefs, key military aides and several national security officials, many of whom were carrying computers and pocket memory sticks that contained sensitive NATO data.

Perhaps the most significant compromise, according to a NATO intelligence source, is that the Russians are suspected of obtaining ultrasecret codes used by NATO militaries for secure satellite communications.

The compromise of the codes is considered what electronic spies call a "break" for Moscow code-breakers. New NATO codes almost certainly were issued to allied militaries immediately after the crash.

But if the Russian electronic intelligence service, known as the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information, was able to recover and use the communication key code from the wreckage, electronic spies will be able to decode months' or perhaps years' worth of scrambled communications that are routinely gathered electronically for just such an occasion.

The coded communications, if decrypted, would reveal some of NATO's most intimate secrets, such as plans for defenses and even the identities of agents or allied eavesdropping sources.

Other Polish and NATO secrets also were believed to be aboard the jet, and so far Russia's government is refusing to cooperate fully with Poland's government in providing details on the cause of the crash, or even to turn over the Polish jet's black boxes.

Very troubling. This makes you wonder if the Russians had anything to do with the plane crash.

Russian Solution To Oil Leaks

With an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico right now, I came across this article entitled, "Nuke That Slick," which describes how the Russians dealt with oil leaks.

As BP prepares to lower a four-story, 70-ton dome over the oil gusher under the Gulf of Mexico, the Russians the worlds biggest oil producers have some advice for their American counterparts: nuke it.

Komsomoloskaya Pravda, the best-selling Russian daily, reports that in Soviet times such leaks were plugged with controlled nuclear blasts underground. The idea is simple, KP writes: the underground explosion moves the rock, presses on it, and, in essence, squeezes the wells channel.

Yes! Its so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union, a major oil exporter, used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities.

It'd be interesting to see what would have worse consequences; having a nuke go off and dealing with the nuclear hazards, or having the oil continue to leak.