Louis Tsai

Low-budget Meetup recording tips

2024-09-01T00:00:00Z

During pandemic, while organizing GDG Berlin (& later Berlindroid) Meetups, I learned a lot more about live streaming & video editing, from events such as DevFest DACH Online. And once we started hosting events IRL again, I started the habit of recording the talks. After a few failed attempts, here's what my setups are at the moment, and what mistakes I have made, so that you don't have to.

But what do they look like?

Here are a few more recent examples:

I literally edited it 24 hours ago

This one forces me to learn how to do some transformation & animation, so that was fun

Are they gonna win any award? Absolutely not.

Equipements & Setup

Disclosure: The following section includes Amazon Affiliate Links.

Not counting the iPhone, the following costs around €200 for these accessories. And it should be quite easy to find something cheaper that works well enough.

iPhone 11 Pro (256GB) (Amazon.de but just buy any newer iPhone, or the last 2 years of Android phone where the video becomes acceptable)
Hollyland Lark M1 wireless microphone (Amazon.de). It's pretty damn good.
Rollei C6i Tripod (Amazon.de). Not the best tripod for video work.
Manfrotto PIXI Clamp (Amazon.de) to mount my phone to my tripod. Or just use Duct Tape 🤷
Belkin 3.5 mm Audio + Charge RockStar (Amazon.de) or Apple Lightning to 3.5 headphone jack adapter (Amazon.de)

Clearly this is a single-camera setup, so that I don't have to figure out how to stitch multiple clips together, or match the color grading, or sit in front of the camera to pan to speaker whenever they started walking, etc. I just find a spot that the camera can see the screen, while not getting in the way of other people, that's it.

Using backpack as weight for the tripod is not a bad idea per se, but if you want to pick up your phone that you left in the bag during setup, well you are not going to do that......Shot at HUMANOO Berlin office

Lesson learned

I learned best by trial-and-error (thank god I am not a doctor), and here are those errors:

PWM LEDs & Projectors will make everything unusable

Unfortunately I don't have the original clips anymore, but they kinda look like this but 10x worse

Even with working audio it is not something I would like to entertain. And that leads to the next point and the backstory:

Your most expensive camera might not be your best choice

It was 2022 I believe, I have (to this day) a Fujifilm X-T2 from 2016, and with a few descent prime lenses. So when I first get started, it seems logical to use the best camera I have. However, once I saw the clips with all the flickering, I know I have to re-think everything.

It does very minimal processing = it has absolutely terrible PWM flickering.
It has really short internal recording limit (10 min). After all it was already 6+ years old.
If it is in "Boost Mode" for too long, it overheats and shut itself off......

On the other hand, while my iPhone 11 Pro is not the latest model, and has way smaller sensor size, it is however designed to allow beginner like me to shoot, and get useable footage 95% of the time. So that's what I ended up using for most of the cases to this day.

Lightning & Audio are very important

While it is more popular / common to discuss what camera or lens to use, given that I am recording basically just (unfortunately statistically speaking) 1 guy the corner of the room, the image quality & cinematography isn't really what people pay attention to. It is the content that people are after, and if the video doesn't have something too distracting, that would be nice.

For useable content, apart from making sure the exposure to the projector screen/TV is correct, the most important is definitely the audio. I have always been a gadget nerd, so I already know a little bit about different kinds of microphone exist. So it doesn't take long for me to figure out lavalier microphone ("lav" for short) is what I need. And another hour of YouTube video watching later, I found a specific model that is not too expensive & has good quality, and that's what I have been using to this date.

Now the content is audible, the last major hurdle I ran into was noise, visual camera sensor noise. Sometimes the rooms are too dark, and it makes the speaker and their movement distracting.....

(If the timestamp doesn't work, go to 15:21)

This was recorded (from X-T2 via HDMI to OBS) during DevFest Berlin 2023, and the image quality drop so much when the light, graciously load by the venue for free, ran out of juice. Thankfully this was more of a lecture-hall setup, so I don't have to worry too much about speaking walking around and pointing things "in the dark" for the camera, but still.

Now before events, apart from setting the camera up, I will also try to see if it is possible to have some spotlight pointing at/near the speaker, and in a lot of office space & event space, all you have to do is ask 👍

Learn how to edit

Just like photography, the videos you get from the camera is not going to be perfect. But unlike photography, there is actually some (semi-)professional-grade software that you can use for free! If you have a macOS device, you can get started on iMovie. I made this back in 2015, and I'd say apart from the resolution, it held up not as bad as I thought!

But if you want to get serious, I would highly recommend DaVinci Resolve. It is a Freemium software, that has most of the bells and whistles that one might need. Cropping, stitching, colour correction, and most recently, trying to reduce the flickering of those god damn PWM LEDs again.

But most importantly, because it is a popular software, there are countless resources online. If I want to do something, I just go to YouTube and find the latest tutorial. From what is & how to do J/L-cut, how to fade-in/out & other animations, how to (try) to rescue some audio clip, and more recently, what does the Fusion tab actually do.

I learned how to animate audio transition & (attempt) to apply noise reduction around 21:12, when the I boosted the lav mic to get some of the room speaker audio to an audible-ish level.

Lastly, Double check everything

Forgot to charge my phone or the microphones (or both)
Forgot to turn on the microphone & got a whole session of no audio
Forgot to bring the right cable to connect the wireless mic receiver to my phone, because for some dumb reason the 3.5mm requires different pinout for camera audio and phone audio 🤬
Forgot to make sure there is enough storage on the phone, cause I was just travelling and downloaded too much music & movies to watch on the plane ✈️
Forgot to unplug the charging cable, and the phone stops recording cause it overheats.....

Hope this helps if you want to get started on low(-ish) budget Meetup recording. And if you have any tips & tricks, or questions to ask, just leave a comment below, or DM me on any of the social media platform that is not run by (allegedly) bigots 🤷

GPUI: Getting Started

2024-04-13T00:00:00Z

A series of me learning how to write Rust & build GUI application using GPUI

Prerequisite

You are on macOS, cause GPUI only works on macOS at the moment.
You have Rust installed

Step 1: Create new project

For those not familiar, cargo is the package manager for Rust, and it also has a simple cargo init function that initialise a full folder for you.

Once it's created, open that folder with your choice of IDE/Text Editor.

Step 2: Add GPUI as dependency

And in Rust, you add dependencies in the Cargo.toml file. As stated in their README, as it's not stable yet, there is no versioning (and promise of and forward/backward compatibility that implied from versioning), so you need to tell cargo to just get the whole thing (the nomenclature is a "crate") using git.

# [package] and everything else above
[dependencies]
gpui = { git = "https://github.com/zed-industries/zed" }

Once you are done, you can run cargo install to be sure package manager fetch everything it needs.

Step 3: Run some example

Again in the repository, they have some examples you can get started with. Once you copied something, just run cargo run.

What is it like getting back to coding after ≈2y

2023-12-02T00:00:00Z

For close to 2 years, I hopped over to be a team lead instead of a developer (story for another time). And now that I am back for about 3 months, just want to write down a few surprises and discoveries so far. Also this forces me to write something.

The Android ecosystem changed a lot

Even though I wrote quite a few posts about Jetpack Compose back then, they were mostly high level concepts, and some basic examples. Now that I jump back in and got to do some real features in Compose, I definitely discovered that I am pretty out-of-touch with how things are done these days.

And to some extend it also includes everything else. Google have been doing the "Modern Android Development" push, and a lot of the things there are new to me as well. Technically I can use everything I know from 2 years ago to build all the features, but they are not gonna be code people gonna be maintaining very soon, and that includes me. That's kinda the live of developer these days, tech stack move, and for most people you just have to move along with it.

Oct 2020, the time when I was being a temp-team-lead

Why things feel a lot slower? 🐌

Back in my days, every Android project has 1 app module and that's all. And then modualization happens, we all dealt with it at one point, and that's suppose to make things fast again. But now in 2023, I feel like things are just as slow if not worse than 2019, even with the new Apple Silicon chip, which is AMAZING. Things often take minutes to compile, and sometimes things get flaky and I have to recompile the whole world again.

I understand the part where we have also grown our team, code base, everything for the last 2 years, but even just navigating in Android Studio feels like a hassle sometimes, even just playing with my pet project Metro-Compose, which is in no way a big project, has more random Gradle / Android Studio issues and failed to resolve dependencies or something. WTF is happening?

This is in no way a comprehensive view on what is it like back to coding, but if I don't click publish now, I will put it in draft for 2 years until I forgot. So this is probably a good point to take a break, and prepare myself to actually start writing something technical again soon.

Some notes on Steam Deck

2022-04-30T00:00:00Z

If you have been near any gaming community on the internet for the last 3 months, you probably would have heard of Steam Deck from Valve. While it doesn't have PS5-level hype & popularity, it definitely is still one of the hottest topic in the circle.

That's why I am not gonna do a review, or tutorials, because not only are there ~~literally~~ virtually thousands of videos on YouTube, there is a very high chance that any future updates from Valve will completely change how it works, which currently happens about twice a week (if you are on the Beta channel of software updates) 😅

@mrradtastic
I literally died when I found out this happened #rant #literally
♬ Literally just screaming - Mr Radtastic

Game compatibility

In general, just go to ProtonDB, as well as the official verification badge to see if the game you want to play is compatible or not. Here I am just gonna list a few specific cases that was not super clear to me:

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020: It is mark as no, not because it is too heavy of a game or something (that I know of), but because the part where it asks user to sign in to their Xbox account does not work. Either the communication protocol or something is not supported, or if you get the input screen showing, somehow there is no way to enter numbers for some god damn reasons, not even with Bluetooth keyboard 🤷‍♀️ 🤨 😑
A lot of mouse-first games that got verified: There are apps that have good full controller support, like Euro Truck Simulator 2; there are games that with full controller support that is just ok, like Dorfromantik (unfortunately, using a 4 way joystick to navigate a hexagonal map is not as intuitive as I'd like); and there are games that works by basically just using the touchpad as mouse, like Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. So your milage will definitely vary depends on what you want to play 🍀

Generally speaking, Proton is both better and worse than I though it would be. I am amazed how many games just works, but somehow it is not ready yet for the 1 game I want to try the most on Steam Deck (no I am not doing Windows on Steam Deck. I might as well just use my gaming PC)

How "anti-glare" is the "Premium anti-glare etched glass"?

I just started using this matte screen protector for my iPhone about a month ago, and I am already in love with it 😍

If normal phone screen glass is a 1, and one of those matte screen protector is a 10, the Steam Deck anti-glare is probably like a 3.5 in terms of reflectiveness. So this should NOT be the sole reason why you pick the 512GB model. Just pick it if you don't want to bother with dealing with storage upgrade.

Other issues/room for improvements

Hidden SSID Wi-Fi AP does not work (well technically it worked once and then never again), I haven't got around to figure out how to report bugs (that does not involve typing the whole ticket description using the trackpads)

The 2 trackpad is definitely gonna take a lot of time to get used to, because a) they are tiny AF; b) there are 2 of them; c) they have absolutely terrible haptics (compare to Magic Trackpad), and d) they are emulating trackball and has the inertia and everything.

One thing to point out around all the noise complain, is that it also really depends on what games you play. Cause when I play driving simulator, the extra fan noise actually don't bother me at all. It's when I closed the game and realised how fucking loud it has been the entire time 🌪🌪🌪

Oh and the included wiping-cloth-looking thing looks awesome, but it is terrible as a wiping cloth, at least for the anti-glare glass. Just put a typical microfiber cloth that can soak up skin oil and stuff 🧼

These are the list of very random, and definitely not planned out thoughts on my Steam Deck. I am very excited to see what else it can play next! And for those who are still waiting for your email from Valve, stay strong 💪 💪 💪

Samsung Galaxy Book Go (Snapdragon 7c, 4GB) review

2022-04-21T00:00:00Z

It has been a few more months since my original first impression of the Samsung Galaxy Book Go, and now I would like to share more of what I have learn from it:

Previously...

Windows 11 on ARM / Samsung Galaxy Book Go first impression

I bought yet another gadget again, this time it’s a LTE-enabled ARM-based Windows laptop

Louis TsaiLouis Tsai

To quickly recap what I wrote down in my first impression:

It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c SoC, with 4GB RAM, so don't expect to do anything remotely intensive here
It has LTE, which is one of the biggest celling point for me
Not a lot of native apps for Windows on ARM

🛠 Hardware 🛠

How's the internet? 🕸

As this is LITERALLY the biggest reason why I bought this in the first place, at least I am (mostly) happy to say that yup it works as expected. I don't really have to hunt for Wi-Fi, I just took out the laptop and start working on stuff. However, then I fall into the reality of the German Internet.

Seriously now: why is internet so bad in Germany anyway?

We are all frustrated to discover bad internet service in Germany. This post explains why the biggest economy in Europe has it so bad.

Settle in BerlinBastien Allibert - SiB

Performance 🏃

In terms of performance, it's still the same as before: it's not fast, but enough for most popular web apps, and maybe a bit more. Compare to my Ryzen 3600 PC that I build back in 2020, you can definitely easily tell that webpages load slower. But it's not to a point it's annoying or anything. And if you want benchmarks, there are quite few online publications that has done it already, so just check these out

The only slightly interesting thing I have done i around the software I used: since there is only 4GB of RAM, I was particularly cage-y on how much RAM each program was using, and in which I can clearly see that Firefox was using quite a bit more when compare to Microsoft Edge. So that's what I have been using only on this machine right now.

They both have 1 website opens and that's all

Battery life & heat management 🔋

As an ARM-based laptop, this is probably the most common expectation, that it has great battery life, and be extremely cool to touch. In this case I can confirm both to be correct, kinda.

Battery life wise, yes it has been doing good and I have never run out of battery on the street, but also to be fair I haven't been using it very heavily while on the go, at most just couple hours of music play back + a few more hours of writing. And given that you can't do much computational heavy things here to begin with, I'd say my experience will probably be true for most people as well

(And 1 extra thing: so far the battery health is still doing great 👍 After 16 full cycles, I still have 102% of the rated capacity of the battery 😝 so that's nice)

If you want to know how to check this, see this: How to Check Your Laptop Battery's Health in Windows | PCMag

Other room for improvements

The weakest point of this device at this point is probably its display: it's clearly some TN panel, and the viewing angle & color reproduction are just not great. Does it matter if I just use the machine for writing? Technically no, but if you considered how many low-end tablets and phones have been using IPS displays already, it just kinda grinds my gear to see that is still not as common as I'd like for laptops in this 300-ish Euro price point.

You got your typical washed out color of a TN panel, the second you are not perpendicular with the display

Another weak point is definitely the speaker, but given that I am using it to write on the street, I will be using headphones anyway. So it's not a dealbreaker for me for sure.

There is also 1 thing that I missed: any form of biometrics. My work machine has one (MacBook Pro with TouchID), my PC has one (I got a cheap Windows Hello webcam by Lenovo), and obviously the last 4 personal phones I owned all have fingerprint or face unlock. And I was actually slightly tempted to get one of those USB fingerprint reader, but a) I don't really know what's the chance of that working on Windows on ARM, and b) I don't like it sticking out of the laptop to begin with.

Why you should buy a webcam for Windows Hello to log in faster

If you’re using a desktop or any PC that doesn’t come with Windows Hello, you should check out an external webcam that supports Windows Hello.

Windows CentralSean Endicott

One final gripe on the hardware: I still don't know how to safely open the bottom cover of the laptop. I know there are screws below the feet, but after I took them out, I am having a very hard time take the bottom off, it's so strong I feel like I might break something if I try any harder. I don't know if there are like hidden screws, or some glue or something, but other people (which is just Lon at the moment) seems to be able to open it quite easily in his review, so I don't know how he did that 🤷

From Lon.TV

💿 Software 💿

Windows 11 on ARM

Regarding the normal daily user experience of Windows 11 on ARM itself, yea so far still the same perception as the first impression: most thing works just like the normal x86/x64 counterpart, the differences mostly comes from the fact that I got Windows 11 Pro on my PC, and Windows 11 Home on the Galaxy Book Go. However, this is the point when it start getting "interesting"...

As an occasional gamer 🎮

I know most if not all of my Steam games won't be native, but it would still be nice to know what I can use to relax, which I did managed to get one working: Dorfromantik. It is a very fun puzzle-ish game for like world-building, and it is not something super heavy (obviously). And it did pretty well for sure, which is especially cool since it has no fan whatsoever, which makes it one of the quietest gaming experience ever.

And to make things a little bit more fun, I decided to then give Steam Remote Play a try. The first time I try Remote Play is with my cheap Android TV from TCL, which ended up very bad cause the stuttering in MSFS 2020 is just too much to be playable, even though the TV is already connected to the router via a Ethernet cable, and the desktop is extremely close to Wi-Fi router already. But this time, when I was up playing Factorio (super fun game, but also addictive AF), there are definitely times that I even forget that it is not running on this laptop to begin with. So at least the laptop is fast enough for that 👍

As a developer 🧑‍💻

I still remember the days when my brand new 11" MacBook Air that powers my school work and work work, with just 4GB of RAM, which happens to be the same amount of RAM this machine has. Unfortunately, time has change, and 4GB is not gonna cut it for Android Studio anymore 😢

So if I want to do some fun programming, I will have to find something else, and that leads to

C# and .NET: Not really, since Visual Studio don't have ARM build (they don't even have a x64 build until like 6 months ago), and from my relatively limited understand of that ecosystem, the IDE is a very important piece to for the entire developer experience of the ecosystem
Anything Java-related (including Kotlin): Sure there is native build of JDK, but again IDE is a big issue, as I am not really doing anything Java-related without IntelliJ, which does not have ARM build either. And I have tried IntelliJ, it is insanely laggy at the moment
Node.js: Close but no
Rust: while technically no native build either, they are the first one to point out that a) they have native ARM build for Linux, and b) maybe you can leverage that by using WSL, directly in the installation page

So that's why I ended up trying, and that leads to this whole fiesco where the entire laptop is bricked, and combine with the fact that there is no way to just "format the entire drive and re-install Windows myself" option for this laptop (I don't know if it's Samsung's fault or Microsoft's fault), which leads to the whole "trying to figure out how to do repair with 3-tier laptop OEM in Germany" situation......

Samsung Galaxy Book Go Fiesco

Not too long ago, I wrote my first impression on the Galaxy Book Go. Unfortunately, immediately after that I managed to brick my machine the machine bricked itself. So here is a few notes, hopefully it can prevent someone from having the same issue. Currently the machine is not able

Louis TsaiLouis Tsai

Ok so that ruled out directly coding on the machine, so the next thing that I tried is to see "can I code remotely", which leads me to trying out a couple of options, which all failed

JetBrains Gateway + IntelliJ running on the other machine: same problem as IntelliJ: Gateway has no ARM build, and the x64 translation is just too painfully slow
Windows's build-in remote desktop: No it does not work, and when I try to figure out how to fix the issue, multiple solution are related some kind of firewall settings, which is only available if you get the Pro version, which I am absolutely not gonna pay hundred of Euros for that
VNC: I tried a bit, but it was for some reason very slow

And at this point, I didn't even bother to investigate what's the issue with VNC, I just shut the whole investigation down and just call it a day.

So TL;DR: no, I haven't got any real coding done on this machine.

Photo by Elisa Ventur / Unsplash

Note to self: Oh right there is Golang

But writing this whole section did prompt me to look again on what are the popular languages, and it seems like Golang does now have official native build for Windows on ARM, and from what I remember, it's totally do-able to stick with VSCode or other IDE-lite editors, so that might very much be what I will try next

So is this a good laptop?

TL;DR: it depends.

First if you just have disposable income, you will probably just buy it because you can 🤷‍♀️

And for everyone else: the biggest celling point of this laptop is still the built-in 4G connection. If you can live with tethering from your phone, or just use Wi-Fi when you sit down, then you probably can get a better laptop in the same price point, or something cheaper.

And for those who needs the untethered internet, if you plan to do anything remotely computational heavy, DO NOT pick this laptop. If you need important software that has no native ARM build, DO NOT pick this laptop. Here just pick something else from this list.

Check out these excellent Windows laptops that come with LTE support

Need a quality Windows laptop that can stay connected while on the go? Check out this roundup of the best devices complete with an LTE modem.

Windows CentralCale Hunt

And finally, if you would like to do a lot of Netflix/YouTube/other long-form video platform, I'd say it's a maybe check if you can get a separate tablet with IPS display and speaker that don't sound terrible to do that, and in a lot of cases they are also not too expensive to begin with. Like the Samsung Galaxy Tab A7, or Lenovo Tab M10 Plus, both seems like they will be more enjoyable expereience.

Finally, for everyone else, who uses their laptop everywhere, needs the keyboard for input, ok with not running too many weird apps, this would be a great laptop for you! 🤗

Random Compose Project #2: Metro-Compose

2022-04-16T00:00:00Z

Almost 2 years ago, I wrote a blog post about creating a Windows-95-like UI with Jetpack Compose. And since then, I have barely touch it for more than a year, because

I started doing less and less coding day-to-day as I take on more management roles
I stuck at Compose (and still am)
Maybe the UI library would have been better to target desktop UI building (which is possible now thanks to JetBrains, but I am kinda too lazy actually finish that up)

So naturally, the only logical thing to do would be to create another pet project, in this case, travel from the 90s to the early 2010s, still in Seattle, and that's how Metro-Compose is born.

GitHub - louis993546/Metro-Compose: (WIP) Build Metro (WP8) app on Android using Compose

(WIP) Build Metro (WP8) app on Android using Compose - GitHub - louis993546/Metro-Compose: (WIP) Build Metro (WP8) app on Android using Compose

GitHublouis993546

Disclaimer: This is still not a tutorial/how-to of Jetpack Compose at all. This is just blog post of my experience of using it.

There has been a few different (dead) UI that I want to "bring back", and the WP7/Metro vibe that Microsoft have going on about 10 yeras ago, is probably the easiest one to get started with: It's flat AF, it's square AF, and it has the most consistent design across the board (which in hindsight might not be the best idea for a product, but that's discussion for another time).

Source: https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-confirms-launch-partners-for-windows-phone-7/

Oh and for those who are curious, the others that I want to try (if I ever got the time & energy) would be

The never-come-into-fruition webOS redesign, codename Mochi
Whatever the Motorola E680i / A1200 is using, cause nostalgia.

And for the basics of what I wanted to create, it's actually pretty straight forward this time: Unlike the Compose95 project, I don't have to come up with new ideas on what to actually build (because building the full Windows 95 experience on a tiny phone is not practical to begin with). I can literally just build what the entire phone experience would be like, so that's what I have been doing on-and-off for the last year. I even got myself a Nokia Lumia 920 to play with

So here are some of the things I have build & learned

Launcher (and the grid that makes it all possible)

Obviously the first thing that anyone would see is what the "launcher" screen looks like, and that also was one of the most fun part of this pet project:

Originally WP7 only does a 2-column-grid of cells, and gradually they evolve to support both bigger and smaller cells, and up to 3/6-column-grid (depending on how you count it) system. And so the challenge I have here is to figure out a somewhat flexible API to define what cells are on screen, without having them always doing like a full blown coordinate system.

It has been a while so I don't have all the details, but what I remember is that I basically just go to the implementation of Column/Row, and try to figure out what they are doing inside, in which I found Layout, which seems to be the one with all the API I need to build this thing. And all I have add on top of it is just sprinkle on some simple counting to see "ok, you want a 2x2 cell, can you go on the current row, or do I need to create a new row for you" kinda calculation. And for most cases it works really well! I just have to figure out how to actually finish it by

Figure out how to do drag-and-drop in compose
Figure out what is the minimum amount of data I need to store to properly support ordering
Figure out what is the 2022-way of storing this kind of data. I heard data store a few times, or should this be a table in SQL? Or is SharedPreference good enough???
How to do the WP8 style wallpaper?

If you are curious, here is the code.

Get myself familiar with Gradle and modualization (again)?

One thing about building a fake OS is that I got to build seperate "apps" that has nothing to do with each other, which makes it a great candidate to try out modualization with very little consideration. And to give you an idea of how it grows over time:

Starts with 2 module: the demo and the metro (library with the themes)
Start spitting out modules from demo: first there is calculator, then there is settings and metro_settings
After looking at some build scans, realized that the demo is still relatively much bigger then the others, and start splitting the home screen out as well: vertical_tiles_grid become its own thing, and then the launcher, app_drawer, app_search, basically try to get demo as thin as possible
Realized that now half of the module now has all the same boilerplate in their build.gradle, and just the other day a good colleague was talking about convention plugins in Gradle, so I give that a try and so far so good 👍

While it was quite fun doing all these, turns out you can keep doing this forever and it will never be perfect. Who would have though!? /s

Given that a clean + --no-build-cache assembleDebug only takes <12s on my shiny new Mac Studio at this point, I think it's safe to say it's more than good enough for me to continue developing on this for quite a while. Maybe at some point I will need to figure out why configuration cache always fail the build on CI, but again 12s for basically clean build is perfectly acceptable.

Just have fun with GitHub Actions

Given that this is "suppose" to also be a library that people can use to build Metro-style apps, I get myself to try to figure out how to publish the library to the internet. If I remember correctly, I did that shortly after the whole "jCenter will be discontinue soon" situation, and also publish to Maven Central still kinda sucks, so I just did the lazy thing and publish it to GitHub Packages, which then of course only makes sense if I use GitHub Action.

And as someone who has been using internal/specialize CI/CD at work for the last 3+ years (and before that I have tried CircleCI iirc), it's kinda nice to know what's everyone using. So I ended up setting up

API check (for the library)
Build
Publish to Play Store
Upload library to GitHub Packages

And it ended up being way more fun than I though it would be. Now everytime I push something to main, a few hours later my Android phone will also be able to update the app (if it doesn't have the debug build already 😝). Could I have done that with other CI/CD? Probably. Do I think it might not be the best idea that MS/GH is kinda IE-ing the entire CI/CD market, by providing action for free because they have the money? Yea kinda. But as a sucker for freebies, I'll take it 💰

Honestly at this point I am mostly just building the demo app at the moment, most recently a Wordle clone (Oh my god it would have been the perfect WP7 style app if it exists back then), and not really doing much with the library. But that's what it takes to keep this side project fun, that's why I will do.

All I am saying here is that this is NOT to promote the library (cause it might never get ready), or get you to try out/contribute, but they are always welcome 🤗

Happy Easter everyone from 🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪

Help Ukraine 🇺🇦

2022-02-26T00:00:00Z

Unless you have been living under a rock, you probably are aware of the atrocity that Putin is pulling in Ukraine.

If you are living not in Ukraine like me, here are some ways you can help

Spread awareness

It's actually a bit surprising that how "normal" all the social media that I uses regular gets after you scroll pass the first dozens of post. Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, all the same for me. So first thing I would like you to do is to keep spreading information to the world of what the fuck is happening, and keep this topic in everyone's mind.

The last thing we want is for this invasion to turn into another "just another daily update". That's what happened to the entirety of Syria; that's what happened to protests in Hong Kong; that's what happened to Taliban even though it has only been a few months.

Donate

I know the analytics of my blog site via Plausible.io. I know that most of my readers are focusing on my gadget posts. That's why I know you can probably afford donate to help the Ukrainian Army, people, or both

Here is the info that one of my Ukrainian friend has shared, each with a short description of what each organization focuses on. Now go take out your credit card.

Как помочь Украине

Списки организаций, которым можно перевести деньги с разъяснениями.

MediumOstap Karmodi

Look after your friends

You may have some Ukrainian friends; or you may have some Russian friends who are ashamed of what Putin is doing; or you may have friends that have personal connections with their own friends in Ukrainian. No matter what's the background, let's try to do your best to make sure they are holding up.

#FuckPutin

First impression of being a team lead

2022-02-05T00:00:00Z

Finally after 2 years of preparation, I am officially some kind of manager in my current company. And I want to share a bit of my first impression so far:

Background

I have pretty much been nothing but just a developer ever since my first job. Sure there are some cases where I try to play with Sketch when there was no designers; and sure there are some cases where I take over some topics when the topic owner was on an extended break or something. But nothing series has happened so far.

And then when I got hired by my current company, somehow I got hired as an senior dev, which immediately opens the door to a lot of management opportunites/responsibilities, and after a couple of trial runs (intentional or unintentional 😅), plus some team change in recent months, it is finally time for me to officially become a team lead.

So what's new

Nothing change over night when my title got change, but that is mostly because I have been gradually taken up more and more responsibilities already in the past months. But generally speaking, that means

Way less time coding 🧑‍💻
Way more meetings 🗣️

Nowadays, I'd be lucky to be able to spend couple of hours to focus on a coding task. And so I mostly only do tickets that I know are small and take little to no time, such as some simple configuration changes.

😓 This is the most insane week I've had this year so far 😓

And what's my first impression/early review so far?

SO 👏 MANY 👏 MEETINGS 👏 SO 👏 LITTLE 👏 TIME

@standardizedstressed
Corporate be like #corporate #DuetDoWet #28DaysOfEucerin
♬ original sound - Eli

Just to be clear: this is not necessaily a complain/rant on what I am working on at the moment, nor representative for the place that I work in. This is just my personal impression

Ok with that out of the way, let's jump into my experience: I already know that there will be million meetings, and in a lot of ways, I already have been participating in a lot of meetings for ongoing projects anyway. But being a team lead definitely takes it to yet another level, since you are now also responsible for pretty much all the (potential) future projects coming up. And just like almost every other companies I have worked on before: the apps team was build years after the web team, and we have a lot less people while the bosses are requesting/expecting the apps team to have the same output. That's life I guess 🤷🤷🤷

I can see why managers typically likes to go back to office, but I still don't think it's a good idea

@corporate.bro
Managing a team remote is hard… it’s mostly just talking to yourself on Zoom. #9to5 #CorporateComedy #remotemanagement #hybridwork
♬ original sound - Ross Pomerantz (Corp)

It is now almost year 3 of the pandamic, and most people are already adjusted to working remotely already, and I am certainly one of them as well. Hell I even wrote a blog post about it. And after taking up a lot more of the daily tasks of a manager, I started to see some of the pain points of managing people remotely. You have probably experienced situations such as

Don't know what to talk about and ended up talking about the weather for 15 minutes
10s awkward silence that feels like forever
Awkward thumbs up and/or finger-gun
Clearly no one is paying attention to what's happening on screen
"Let's give you 10 minutes back" or other equally cringy way to end meetings

And it can certainly make being a manager a less enjoyable experience, not gonna lie. And in a lot of ways, working in-person can eliminate a lot of these situations, but is it actually a good idea? Cause the more I think about it, the more I feel like these are just signs for either deeper issues, or that is just the way it should be in a remote world. For example

If 6 people sit together and have nothing to talk about but weather, maybe that's because there is a lack of a healthy and relaxing team atmosphere, and you should look into that immediately.
If people are often silent after asking "any questions" or "any feedbacks", is it because you have already lock them in a 2hr meeting and run through every possible questions, or is it because the 2hr meeting makes no one wants to continue?
Awkward thumbs up is actually not a bad thing and I stand by that 👍😬👍

It is not exactly easy to tell your brain to ignore all the awkwardness and silence, but as a manager, I feel like it's my job to help the team achieve more than the sum of their parts, and if that need to exclude me to achieve that, I will step aside no questions asked.

I really need to get used to making decisions on behalf of the team really quickly

Obviously not gonna go into details of what decisions have been made/needs to be made, but generally speaking, you will probably be asked to help decide what project your team will work on, or what is the timeline for certain things. And as long as you have a reasonable amount of domain knowledge, you will have to get used to providing those answers and making decisions for said answers.

The biggest reason behind this idea is that as a manager, I want to have my team members to be able to focus on what they are good at, which in most case is coding. And while it's extremely useful to loop someone in to help see if there is any red flags for upcoming projects, it can also be extremely distracting to the team. So you will need to find a balance where you can comfortably say "I decided this based on what I know, but keep in mind that once the devs got the time to look at it in details, my decision could become completely invalid". Maybe you can get each team member to chim in with 5% of their energy; or you can loop in the one member that you are trying to promote to manager to take on these additional responsibilities. No matter which way you do it, you will need to be able to make decisions and owned up to it.

Give your team members proper credits

One of the "perks" of being a manager is to got to attend a lot more meetings, often with other higher-level employees in the company, which means you are now entering the very coorporate world of communication. And especially for the highest level of employees, this is probably the only chance for them to meet with people who is still "technically" a developer, and I have definitely received a fair share of "Thank you so much Louis for making ___ happened". And this is the part where all the stereotypical bad manager stories comes in, where the boss only take credit but never the blame.

Well, don't do that 😂 It's very easy to say "In fact, I am merely delegating", or "And I want to specially shout out to ___ from our team as they are the one that actually make this happened". It takes literally 2 seconds, gives the higher up more insights of who is in your team, and this is particular important in a remote world. If the assumption from this video is correct:

@benhires
Ego > Principles #capitalism #wfh #egodeath
♬ original sound - BenHires

Not being seen = you might as well just stop working. And as a team lead, which I feels like a big part of my job is to make sure my team get the growth they want/need/deserve/all of the above, this also means that you should make sure the people who are responsible for (or at least have influences on) promotion/salary raise knows about what your team has actually managed to achieve.

What's next

Not much will change for me in the near future (at least not that I know of). And I will keep (trying) to make my team's life easier and more enjoyable, while trying to not piss off too many bosses of other teams along the way 🤞 And if something went wrong, you will probably fine out first on Twitter 😅

And speaking job, obviously we are hiring. Currently our team has a couple of Android positions opened, and if all goes to plan we might have more on both platforms coming up. So stay tune! 👀

Job listing as of time of writing

Short Reviews: Jabra Elite 75t

2022-02-02T00:00:00Z

I think I bought this wireless earbuds about 2 years ago, and so far it hs been one of if not the best gddget I have.

Pros

Extremely comfortable
Extremely good battery life
The case is pretty damn small, and can eaily fit in most pockets
Getting Active Noise Cancelling feature like a year later is definitely a great surprise 😍
The base is ridiclously strong (but not in a shitty way)
Works great with both Android and iOS

Cons

I have the version without wireless charing, which is a bit annoying
The auto-pause can't really tell if you just chuck the headphones into pocket, and not actually in your ears

If you are in the market for a pair of comfortable wireless headphone, I would highly recommend you to consider the ones from Jabra. In my local electronic store, the 75t is being sold as low as 90 euros, which is really competitive with other newer low-end wireless earbuds. And the newer models (Elite 7 Pro/Active, and Elite 3) are also receiving rave reviews from all the tech reviewers online. And not gonna lie I am really tempted at the moment 👀👀👀

1 year review of Apple Watch Series 6

2022-01-27T00:00:00Z

About a year after I got an iPhone 11 Pro, I got myself an Apple Watch Series 6. And now it's been a bit more than a year with the Apple Watch, let me share a bit of what I like and not like so far.

Firstly, same disclaimer as the previous post: this is not a spec review, counting features, or what a typical review-for-a-recently-release-product. There are so so so many good reviews in those aspects. What I want to do is just to share from my personal opinion, what I care about.

Why I decided to get an Apple Watch in the first place?

Apart from susceptible to advertisement, and just a general "I need to buy something to give myself a small dose of dopamine", one of the biggest reasons is that I want something to help monitor my health. I have used Fitbit back in 2015 I think, and overall I am quite satisfy with it, since it did drive me to be more active in general. However, once I start working professionally (i.e. 8 hours in front of the computer), I just can't get used to having the metal clasp constantly pressing against my wrist, so I let it go. And with Apple's more and more aggressive marketing on their watches' health tracking ability in the mist of a pandamic, I finally decided that it's about time.

What did I like?

Unlock my iPhone when I am wearing a mask

If my iPhone has TouchID instead of FaceID, this wouldn't have been a problem. #FirstWorldProblem

But on a slightly more serious note: this has been a great addition to make using my phone in the pandamic way less annoying, and probably slightly more secure as well, since it's so easy for anyone to just read my passcode from my shoulder 🤷

The fit and finish

One thing that Apple almost always got right is how their product physically feel in your hands. It's extremely well-made, and everything feels really secure. And even after a year of abuse, all it has are a bunch of scratches, but apart from that everything still feels perfectly fine.

"Performance"

No, I am not using it to do any heavy calculation or something. The main reason why I apperciate it is because I have seen how bad can it be. Back in 2018, I did have a mid-range Wear OS watch Misfit Vapor, and it is just so ridiclously slow. Opening any app tooks seconds and seconds of waiting, and as someone who is more self concious that I'd like to be, I definitely don't want to be standing in the middle of the street, staring at my watch like an idiot. And Apple Watch easily passed that bar.

Apps

Since there were several viable smartwatch platform for Android, what ended up happening is that app makers rarely got enough reasons to justify adding support to any of the platforms. But on iOS, with the magic of ecosystem lock-in, it's a lot more likely for apps to have iOS companion apps, and that definitely makes the watch itself a lot more practical.

How it motivates me to get up and move

There has been a lot of different ways different smartwatch platform uses to motivate people to move: usually they start with steps per day, and then some added exercise time, and slowly and slowly there are more huristic and some "magic number" that tells you if you are doing great or not. And the way WatchOS does it happens to be the right way that keeps me slighly motivated to get moving. It's ring system is easy enough to see at a glance, but it also has an insane amount of data available to you from the Health app and the Fitness app. And in fact, I have been closing my rings for the for the entirty of 2022 so far (with a little bit of cheating involved 😅)

What I didn't like about it

Notification sucks

It's more of a software things for all Apple products, but the running joke of "iOS notification sucks" is still definitely a thing, especially from someone who use Android for 10-ish years before. Either the notification just don't stick around in a visible enough way, or the notification itself is just a dumb one and I need to pick up my phone to even see the content.

Apps

While there are quite a lot more apps, but a lot of the apps are so simple (probably by design) or buggy that just force you to just pick up your phone anyway. Not shaming or anything, but here are some examples:

Todoist can't switch to see other list (e.g. I just want to see the grocery list)
Spotify does not have a easy way to search. And the fact that it forces itself to show up means I accidentally trigger volumn change with my jacket sleeve constantly
Toggl app is just buggy AF, about once a week I have to uninstall and reinstall it to get it to sync again

Siri is still very far behind

Oh don't even get me started on Siri. Pretty much the only thing it can do consistently is

Set timer
Turn off my bedroom light via HomeKit

Meanwhile, Google Assistant can give you pretty good result, and not just display the content as a list, but actually pick up the answer from the webpage and read it out loud. And unfortunately that is the most important use case of voice assistant that I want from it

💸💸💸

So far this watch has been a surprisingly good investment (for my health and convenience), but I think I might get a less expensive model since it will probably get the same job done anyway

Weird Gadget review: BlackBerry-style wireless keyboard (Trust 17930)

2022-01-01T00:00:00Z

In light of my unhealthy tendency to make rash decision, especially when it comes to gadget or anything technology-adjacent, I guess I might as well get the most out of it, and actually write down if those gadgets are worth it or not :shrug:

What did I get?

The gadget in review today is the "Trust - Handheld wireless keyboard with touchpad", it cost me 21EUR (w/ shipping), from one of the sketchy-est eBay listing I have seen.

The only thing sketcher than this would be listings with 1 image that is clearly screenshot of another listing

Thankfully I do received the correct item, although it might be return product or something, since the package has clearly been opened before, especially the wrapping around the 2 included AAA batteries.

Why I bought it?

In the last few weeks, I have been using my PC in my living room more and more, and it would definitely be nice to be able to do some simple navigation without the need to find some surface to use my mouse.

And while there are a lot of different kinds of couch-friendly wireless keyboard on the market, you got to admit this does really stands out from the crowd, plus it's also slightly nostalgic for me. I never used BlackBerry or old school Palm devices, but I did have a cheap feature phone from alcatel with QWERTY keyboard for like 2 months (when it got stolen 😢).

Is it good?

Ergonomic wise, it's not great, but also not terrible. Using the keyboard is great, cause it just feels like holding a phone; but using the trackpad is pretty annoying, you pretty much is forced to use 1 hand to hold it, and the other to use the trackpad. Thankfully it's not really suppose to be use hours on end or anything, it's an annoyance that I can shrug it off (emoji here)

Typing wise, it's just OK, but 50% of it is because of the general core concept: there is no easy way to tell which key your thumbs are resting on without looking, which means you ended up moving your head up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down ..... You get the idea. I am pretty sure similar issue will happen to other couch keyboards, except for those with some bums or something to let you know what you are hovering.

Layout is one of the bigger issue I have with this, since it moves most of the non-character keys to the top, and that breaks any mental model of what typical keyboard layout it. The worst example is 100% for sure the god damn arrow keys. Lay it out horizontally!? Really!?

And the biggest issue I have with it is definitely the touchpad, but it is also the move forgivable, because it's not until a few years ago that touchpad has become somewhat acceptable on Windows, so it's just another dime a dozen (emoji)

Is it a good purchase?

While I don't have hands-on experience with other tiny couch keyboards, given that it's in the same price range, while not having anything too deal breaking, I'd say it's a good purchase for my own use case. And if you are interested, you can try to search for "Trust 17930" in the shopping sites that is available in your region. From what I can tell, it has been discontinued for years, so your mileage definitely varies.

Use cases where getting a desktop computer makes sense 👍

2021-12-28T00:00:00Z

As stated about 4 months ago, I build my own PC. Here are some of the use cases that I can confirm that desktop computer is good for

1. Gaming

Assuming you can get any reasonable GPU in reasonable price, it's really hard to beat gaming on desktop: it has better price-to-performance-ratio than laptop (again, assuming you can grab a GPU in normal price); it has the most open ecosystem (Steam, Epic Game Store, or install whatever game you have laying around); and said ecosystem allows a lot of pretty unique experiences: from playing MSFS in VR, to playing Among Us with friends while talking to your friends on Discord, and not having to subscribe to some monthly subscription that seems to go down once a month. It has become the biggest reason why I turn on the computer almost every day!

2. Working continuously on heavy computation tasks

Technically this is not experience of my current PC, but my previous work machine in the last company: about 2 years ago in another company, when they are swapping machines for our Android team, I requested an iMac, instead of MacBook Pro like everyone else, and I absolutely did not regret it at all! (except the part where I left like 4 months later, which makes me feel kinda like a jerk. Sorry Stefan 🙏)

https://twitter.com/louis993546/status/1410313810221621259

From what I can remember, the build time of the project went from like 3 minutes to just a minute, and my colleague's maxed out MacBook 15" at the time not only cost like 50% more, it is also only able to match my machine. So my advice to basically any Android dev would be: if your company's project suffer from long build time, instead of directly jumping into modualization, just try to ask for better hardware first. Most likely it will get its worth back in no time 😂

You don't have to go as crazy as Dropbox though (I think 🤔?)

That's it. It's not a long list at all. That probably explains why most people I know are getting laptop nowadays. And I definitely miss the ability to, for example, type out this blog post anywhere in the world, which is why I also got myself a cheap(-ish) laptop for just that (which unfortunately turned into a big mess).

But at least at the time of the writing, I do not regret the decision of getting a desktop PC. Gaming has become bigger and bigger part of my daily routine, and I do not expect it to change anytime soon with the new COVID-19 variants coming in. Just the fact that I can exercise by playing Beat Saber is mostly making it worth it 🥰🥰🥰 All I need to be careful is not to knock my right controller on the bench again 💸

And it cost 140€ to get a pair of replacement controller 😑

My Tips & Tricks for (barely) surviving Working from Home

2021-12-22T00:00:00Z

Just like everyone else, the last year and a half has been challenging to say the least. I am sure everyone has learn some things during this period, so ~~before this will probably all comes to an end~~ scratch that fuck new variant, I just want to write down a few more things that I have learned.

Things that I'm glad that I did

Learn how to cook, and cook more often

Just like most people, my first few months of WFH consists of mostly junk food (instant ramen), followed by a few months of extensive food delivery. And it doesn't took long before I realized that not only have I been spending a lot of money on crap, they are also unhealthy AF.

So in order to combat that, I found a bunch of "simple" recipes on YouTube that I always wanted to try, and give it a shot. And who would have though that the more I practice, the more edible the food becomes (or I just get used to the taste of my shitty cooking, but hey if it works it works). Nowadays I force myself to continue to cook more, by

For every unnecessary food delivery/restaurant visit, I have to put 10x of the amount to my long term savings 💸
Get a bunch of microwave-safe lunch boxes (i.e. glass not plastic) to make it easy for me to cook once, eat for days. That means I have less excuses to be lazy and not cook and order
Get a few things to make cooking and re-heating easier: Microwave (50 euros), Rice Cooker (20 euros), and a knife that I don't fear accidentally cutting my hands off every time (30 euros, but I'd argue that it should be priceless) 🔪

Collection of all the random recipies I have tried

It took me probably a full year before I realized how much time and energy I was spending on Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube. Sure they do provide a great way to escape from the fact that I am stuck at home, and maintain some sense of connection with the outside world. However, it slowly reveals itself to be able to really control my mood. It was hard to focus at anything else.

First there was all the COVID news; then there are how racist US still is with #BlackLiveMatters; and then there are all the HK National Security Law, and the US insurection; and shortly followed by #StopAsianHate

Finally aound 2 months ago, my brain finally clicked, and I have managed to snap out of Twitter and Reddit for the most part. It will still take me a while to get away from YouTube, since it does have an insane amount of educational and other useful content (e.g. all the recipes I mentioned above).

Last 2-3 months, I managed to almost completely stop using Twitter

Give myself an isolated space for work

Left: before, in which the back of my chair is touching my bed; Right: after, it was taken when I just finished assembling the desk, but you get the idea. It has almost nothing around it.

One of the biggest issue I have with my last apartment is that I don't have enough space, and it's almost impossible for me to keep my work life away from my personal life. Like if it's physically impossible to keep your work computer from your peripheral vision, you brain will just drift there automatically. So despite how ridiculously expensive it is, and the fact that the contract is like 50 pages and all in German, I decided to move it to a quickly available newly build apartment building, so that I have a dedicated office space.

After more than a year of this setup, I am very happy to report that yes, it has been an pretty awesome choice. My brain is now able to very easily switch from work mode to not-work mode the second I step outside the room. And the fact that there is just more space in general means that I actually can work on some other space when I feel like it, such as my couch or dining table.

Things that I wish I would have done

Don't isolate yourself

At the beginning, I can justify not going out by a) to reduce transmission, and b) that's literally the law. But after the society is getting used to slightly better personal hygiene, and the start of vaccination, I was still very much just staying home for often 160 hours a week, only go out to get groceries.

Don't buy everything I saw

I do understand that I am definitely in a very privilate and lucky place to be able to bitch about this bad habit of mine, but if you have seen the 2 stupid blog post I wrote in the last 2 years about all the crabs I've bought (1, 2), you can probably see that I have adopted excessive shopping as a coping mechanism. It's not that the things I bought are bad or useless, it's just that 80% of them are "nice to have that make my life 0.0001% easier for now", and I will have to deal with all of them, from where to keep them, to how to transfer/sell them when the time comes to move. Some examples includes

~~A phone tripod and a proper tripod: I have used them a total of 5 times, all inside the house~~ Well I changed my mind (for now). A proper tripod is super useful to help take photo "scan" of film negative that I started taking.
Things for hobbies that I don't have a clear plan on how to sustain: Drum set, Analog photography, etc.
Things that I though would improve my WFH situation: X-T2 (as Webcam, but the MBP is already stressed to its max), additional Wacom-compatible Stylus for reMarkable (Just carry the orignal stylus around. It's not that hard), etc.
Games on Steam that I don't play: Untitled Goose Game (I honestly don't know why I don't play it), DEFCON (war game is not exactly my thing), Overcooked (people are playing Overcooked 2 so why did I bought the first one?)

https://twitter.com/RajBrueggemann/status/1472702842456657922

Now what

I wrote most of the stuff above before the new variant (guess which one I am talking about 🤣), and I guess I will need to keep what I have written in mind and stay put for the forseeable future 🤷‍♀️

Stay safe everyone! And have a happy holiday ahead 🎄🕎 🎊 🤗

Samsung Galaxy Book Go Fiesco

2021-12-22T00:00:00Z

Not too long ago, I wrote my first impression on the Galaxy Book Go. Unfortunately, immediately after that ~~I managed to brick my machine~~ the machine bricked itself. So here is a few notes, hopefully it can prevent someone from having the same issue.

Currently the machine is not able to boot up, it is stuck in the boot screen. And if you managed to get into recovery mode, none of the reset option works either. They either failed, or even after reset success it's still stuck.

And right before that, I was trying to install WSL2 and Ubuntu from Windows Store, and next thing I know, the machine is not able to boot. And for the first time, I managed to click the right reset option in recovery, and it just reset the machine from Windows 11 back to Windows 10, and I just forgot about it.

But then when I try to use WSL again, not only did it managed to got bricked again, I clicked a different reset option, and then the machine remains stuck in boot, and this time the other reset option dos not work anymore either. And the auto recovery spit out some error Automatic Repair couldn't repair your PC … Log file: C:\Windows\system32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt, and from it, it says Boot critical file c:\efi\microsoft\boot\cipolicied\active.... .cip is corrupt. And since there is no way to create some USB boot drive on non-Surface arm64 devices, the only thing I can do is to send it for repair.

Fingers cross 🤞

Update (Jan 2022): Firstly just want to say that I still don't have the laptop with me. Here's what has been happening so far:

Took forever to reach Samsung DE
Finally get a call from them, and they refer me to (what I assume) their repair partner in DE (CTDI)
Found a shop in Berlin call CTDI, went there, but apparently that shop only deals with Apple Repairs (which is also weird since that shop is like 5 minute walk from the actual Apple Store)
Ok then let's call the number for CTDI: Call #1, they said they will send me an address to my email. Nothing happened
Call #2: Got them to say the address on the call, and found it on Google Map (with a 3 star review, which should have been a sign)
Pack everything, and send in the package
Call #4: Trying to see if it's possible to get it before Christmas, but seems like they have a backlog already, no problem, my bad. Talk to you in 2022
Call #5: A week into 2022, called again, still in process, ok.
Call #6: Another week passed, called again, and this time they say it's in progress, and will write me email on any update, but then still no email update
Call #7: Another another week passed, called again, they said "oh it's been shipped to the fire station near you", which a) how and why!?, and b) now that I think of it smells like a fucking lie. And yes I did went to the nearest fire station near me, and obviously no one there knows WTF I am talking about. And as a result, I tried a couple of emails I found from the internet and their off hours phone recording, all of them bounced.
Call #8: Called again just to ask if there is any update, the person on call cannot see what is the status, and gave me a email to reach out to. And of course that would be a different email.
Email #1: Sent them the info, and got a reply that "oh yeah it has been sent out last week and here is the UPS tracking number", which is not even in the RIGHT FUCKING FORMAT.
(Update): Got an Email #2, this time they provided a valid tracking number. So I went to the fire station (again) with all the info, and again obviously they don't have it, cause it doesn't make sense for them to hold package for anyone. So now going back to both CTDI and UPS to see if any of them has anything.
(Update #2): FINALLY GOT IT BACK!

I am not giving up just yet, but I know I have to be prepare that it might be lost (either they are just so incompitent and lost the package, or it might straight up be a scam)......

I don't need the new MacBook Pro

2021-10-29T00:00:00Z

I don't need the new MacBook Pro

_{I don't need the new MacBook Pro}

iPhone 11 Pro long-term review

2021-10-03T00:00:00Z

It has been almost 2 years since I replaced my beloved Pixel 2 with an iPhone 11 Pro. And I feel like it's got to be long enough for a proper review, right?

Since it's been 2 years since it's release, I won't be going through the basics. There is more than enough day-one review that has all the specs, how it compares to previous iPhones, and more. Instead, this review will be a subject view on it's Pros and Cons, based on my own personal needs and wants. And let's start with the biggest gripe with my old Pixel 2:

Battery Life

The Nexus/Pixel line's battery life has been the butt of the joke until semi-recently. And Pixel 2 is no exception to that. I can unplug it at 8am, and already getting dangerously low battery at lunch time. And that is definitely the best quality of life improvement I have had with the iPhone 11 Pro: Unless I completely forgot to charge the battery the night before, I do not have to worry about not having enough juice until I got back home.

And of course, if I am not interested to use the phone to begin with, most phone will probably be able to last me through the day (sadly Pixel 2 was not even able to pass that bar). And that brings us to

iOS

Even though I have been an Android user (and not to mention Android Developer) for 10+ years now, I actually had an iPhone before my first Android: I used an iPhone 3GS for about a year, and after than I have also been using other iDevices on-and-off (iPod Touch, iPod Classic, iPad mini, iPhone SE, and later iPad Pro). So switching to iOS is relatively smooth. Other than losing WhatsApp history, and have to find (and pay) for some apps, I am mostly able to get everything up-and-running. Of course there are apps that cannot exist on iOS (e.g. File Explorer, actually good browser, etc.), but since I know about that expectation, it was pretty must just fine.

So I can use the phone for a whole day, and I don't hate the OS in general. Now let's talk about things that I love about Pixel 2, namely the

Camera

The Pixel 2 camera was so ahead of the curve, even to this day it's still excellent. And as a photography-wannabe, I absolutely enjoy using it every single time. So how does the iPhone 11 Pro camera compares? TL;DR: it's fine.

Some random pictures I have taken on the iPhone 11 Pro in the last 2 years

On a technical level, the iPhone 11 Pro camera has all the potential to be better than Pixel 2. And Apple has also implemented their own version of Night Sight, which is pretty impressive. However, the Pixel team has picked just the right amount of vibrant color & contrast to make your photo pop in general viewing and sharing situations, and that is something iPhone is still too shy to do until this year

so while the flexibility of 3 lens is great (wide angle is so much fun), at the end of the day, I'd still it's merely "good enough". There is also the part that I got the phone shortly before lockdown, which probably limits the amount of fun memory associations 🤷

Pretty much any photos from Pixel 2 ended up looking amazing.

Minor Pros and Cons

Beyond the points above, there are a few more things that a relatively minor that I want to mention:

It's an iPhone

Getting accessories is so much easier; and I assume it's gonna be the same when it comes to repair as well. When the Pixel 2 USB jack is broken, I can't really find anyone to fix it in Berlin. And when something went wrong with the iPhone, I can probably still take it to Apple Store or just any repair shop and see what they can do 👍

No, I am not paying 180€ to repair a USB port on a 600€ phone that was used for 1.5 years, and also having to ship it across the country 😑

Another honorary mention is the Apple Watch, i.e. the only reasonably good smartwatch on the market. Let's see if Wear OS 3 (from not Samsung) can actually match what Apple have right now 👀

It's a bit bulky

I assume this is the trade-off when you get a bigger battery: the device is just a bit too big and heavy for my taste. I'd wish Apple think of the mini series a few years earlier.

Qi Good, Lighting Bad

I got my first experience of wireless charging since Nexus 4, and I am absolutely delighted that I can finally use it again. And to whoever decided that Pixel does not need Qi, FUCK YOU!

On the other side, now I have to deal with Lightning, unlike figuratively every single other gadget that I have. So let's see if EU and I can get our wish 🤞

(Not about the phone itself) Not having to worry about data & storage

I got the 256GB variant with a contract and a shit ton of data, originally planned for using it in the summer of 2020, but we all know how that went. Still, not having to worry about how much data and storage I have left is actually very freeing.

What's next?

If I remember correctly, none of my Android phone managed to last more than 2 years. I either get bored, or broke something that just cost too much to fix. And that is one of the thing I want to change, which so far the 11 Pro is on the right track to break the record. With Apple's usually great software update track record, iPhone's unnecessarily fast SoC, and the fact that most phone refreshes are kinda boring nowadays, it seems likely that I will be able to use 11 Pro for years to come. And with that in mind, I am glad that I got this phone. All I have to do now is try to keep it in a case even though it makes the phone even bigger.

Let's try to not have this happen again......

Windows 11 on ARM / Samsung Galaxy Book Go first impression

2021-10-03T00:00:00Z

‼️

Update: full review is up here

I bought yet another gadget again, this time it's a LTE-enabled ARM-based Windows laptop

My main intention is to use this as my writing laptop, no matter where I am, I will be able to not only write, but also research on the topics that I am writing. So before jumping into it, let's give it a few a quick look.

Part 1: The laptop

The laptop I purchased is a Samsung Galaxy Book Go

Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c
4GB RAM
128GB storage
LTE-enabled

So not the most impressive hardware for sure. However, I am hoping between the low-power hardware and fan-less design, I will be able to use it comfortably use it anywhere I want (incl. on my lap) for extended amount of time. And so far, I have been using the laptop for about 3 hours, and it's currently sitting on my lap, so it seems to check out so far

And the biggest reason why I got this laptop is because of it's LTE. The worst part of working in coffee shop is always the Wi-Fi, and with my unecessarily large data plan, I am hoping this can be an issue of the past. And it's also so far working mostly fine. It did took a while to get the network setup corretly (a bunch of software issue that I will talk about below),

And unlike iPad, this actually has a (mostly) functional full-feature OS, and the whole device is cheaper than the keyboard. On the otherhand, I get this insetad of Chromebook, because a) there ain't much LTE-enabled Chromebooks I can see, and b) I was scared by my Pixel Slate's terrible experience. So no Chromebook for me for the forseeable future.

Part 2: The software

There are 2 main part of the software: Windows on ARM, and Windows 11.

My first impression is that while Windows on ARM definitely has quite a bit of potential (not as buggy as I would expect for such a low-level changes), it also definitely suffers from the lack of native software. And that is particularly important on this device, since the 7c SoC is not the fasting thing around, and I am avoiding using x86/x64 software as much as possible, especially things that's design to run in the task bar. That means

No Spotify (just stream from my phone)
No Toggl Track (just run from my phone)
No Todoist (just use the web)
No Bitwarden (just use the browser extension)

And it is particularly annoying if you don't want to jump to Edge or other Chromium-based browsers, which has PWA support to simulate a few of those apps. I am looking at you Firefox 👈👀

There ain't much apps I need to pin, since almost everything is in the browser anyway 🤷

And for Windows 11, I actually have been using it on my main desktop for a while now, and I don't have much complaint so far. There are definitely quite a few bugs to sort out, especially around the Qualcomm networking drivers. But I am not sure if that's just Qualcomm being Qualcomm, or something Windows 11 is not good at. There is 1 thing that I will missed out on, which is the Android app support. Apparently it will require at least 8GB RAM, which is unfortunate but understandable.

This is my first impression of the device so far, let's see if I have enough strong opinion to write a full review for this device in the future 🤞

Update (2021.10.07): I collected the list of apps I have used/tried/saw working into this little page (Source), hope that is helpful to someone 🤗

Review more crabs I bought during quarantine

2021-08-05T00:00:00Z

A few things has changed since we last spoke

Nikon FM

It's broken now. The mirror is stuck, and it has been a bit pain-in-the-ass to find places to repair it (that does not cost more than the camera itself). I feel like there is a lesson to be learned here 🧐

Pixel Slate

I sold it 👋

Logitech K780: 7/10 (+1 from last time)

The cons that I mentioned last time are not as annoying after a few months have passed:

The extra width from the numpad is not as annoying as I remembered
Now that mostly-easy-to-use wireless adb feature becomes part of Android Studio (Canary), the issue with blocking the USB port is not really a problem anymore 👍

And after trying out a few keyboard (you will see below), I feel like I was probably too harsh the last time around.

There are also things that I just forgot to mention

Xbox Controller: 7.5/10

I first got it when my friends said it would be easier to do Steam Remote Play with a controller for games like Unrailed or Overcook. But at the end, I ended up using it to play a lot of GTA 5, Euro Truck Simulator, and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.

Pros

When it works, it works great

Cons

It's already drifting a little bit, and it's making my FS2020 sessions a lot more annoying than I expected.
Technically not the controller's fault: but the Bluetooth on my machine is just inconsistent + laggy. I ended up getting the wireless dongle as well to work around it.

At the end of the day, I can still use it to enjoy all the games that I have bought on Steam, and that is all that matters 🤗

So here's what has changed since October 2020

A new PC: 8.5/10

I will definitely write a full blog post to explain the full story of why I got a new PC, so I will leave it here for now. This is all you're gonna get:

LG 4K Monitor: 6.5/10

After getting a new PC, the next thing I need to sort out is the display. While I do have a borrowed monitor from the company, it's a shitty 24" 1080p display that just makes it feels worse than using the 16" MBP display. So I ended up getting another monitor. The exact model number is 32UK550-B, and I choose it because it's one of the cheapest 32" 4K monitor that has some HDR & color accuracy certification.

Pros

32" 4K is amazing for productivity (once you get all the keyboard shortcut setup properly)

Cons

It's very HDRn't, and I feel like HDR looks worse than SDR
The viewing angle of the VA panel is not as good as the IPS in my Dell monitor. Who would have thought 🤔
32" is actually a lot bigger than I expected, which forces me to move quite a few things around. Absolutely first world problem.

And now it's my work monitor, since I can easily have multiple windows opened at once, and combine with ~~Spectacle~~ Rectangle, it definitely makes my life easier (until MBP decides that 4k is too much and decides to spin it's fan up to 11). But if I can choose again, I would probably just say "screw it" and get a better 32" 4K monitor.

Rapoo 9300M Keyboard and Mouse Set: 1/10

This is more or less an impulse purchase: I was thinking about getting a DE layout keyboard to get myself less excuses in typing German. And I ended up picking this up in a local electronic store after trying it out.

Pros

It looks nice
The keystroke feels nice
Pretty affordable

Cons

Moving the "+-*/" and "Enter" key in the numpad to above it is the stupidest decision
While keystroke feels nice, the underlying mechanism is THE WORST. You can literally fully pressed it on the edge of each key, and it won't be registered as a keystroke.

I know that the company can build good peripherals, cause I have a Rapoo mouse that I enjoyed using (until I replaced it with a bigger Logitech), and iirc I also have used Rapoo keyboard back in HK. But dude this one is just bad. Thank god there is return policies in Germany 🇩🇪

Epson ET-2726: 7/10

I don't really remember what happened here: I know I wanted to see if normal printers can print pictures better than my Canon Selphy printer, but I definitely don't want to be stuck with buying expensive AF cartridges. And one thing led to another, I found out that inkjet printer with ink tank exists, and some of them are actually not super expensive.

Pros

I no longer have to plan to print documents. I can just do it whenever I want. For example, 12hrs before my vaccine appointment, I realized that there are forms that I have to bring, and no print shop will be open before my appointment.
I ended up using it mostly for it's scanning feature, to digitize old documents, postcards from Postcrossing, and more, and that's great. I have thrown out so many old papers that I don't need a physical copies anymore.

Cons

So far photo prints from it seems worse than my Selphy printer, which now that I think of it seems perfectly reasonable.
The scanning software is OK at best, so just like every scanner ever existed.
It's totally my fault, but I don't know that you can't just scan film on any flat bed scanner, which totally foils my plan.

Samsung Galaxy Tab A7: 7/10

One of the project that I am (/was?) working on is call Compose Composer, which aims to allow users to build apps (using compose) on Android Tablet. I build the basics of the app using emulator, and while it works, it's definitely annoying.

Pros

The speaker is pretty great
The display is pretty great
Android 11 already. Nice! 👍

Cons

It's pretty slow. My now 3-year-old iPad Pro is still way faster.
Why does it have a camera hump. Just put a shittier camera in it, so that it don't stick out the back
The SD card is suspiciously slow
The power button is way too close to the volumn buttons

It's a cheap(-ish) tablet that helps me to get my job done, and that's all it needs to do.

IKEA GRIMAR tablet Stand: 9/10

This is very much just a shoutout to how good this stand is.

Pros

It's a good tablet stand, that is not stupidly expensive

Cons

I hate camera hump on the back of tablets

Tolino Shine 3: 8/10

I have already briefly mentioned it in my reMarkable 2 blog post that I got this eReader. And I got it instead of Kindle because I have spent too much time on Twitter, and I have started to hate what Amazon (the company, not the forest) has become. Plus their obsession with (semi-)propritory format is just annoying AF. And for the reason why this instead of other eReaders, it's mostly because it's the cheapest 300dpi eReader that has a reasonable digital book store.

Pros

The screen looks nice
It forces me to look into Thalia, the German book store, and turns out it does have a pretty big selection of English books as well in reasonable price 🤑
I did ended up reading quite a few books on it, which is all that matters

Cons

I do envy Kindle Paperwhite with it's flush screen and waterproof design
Micro USB 🤦

Second-hand Nokia Lumia 920: 9/10

Another another project that I am (/was?) working on is call Metro Compose, which aims to build what the Metro design (Windows Phone 8) looks like using Compose (and a bonus Metro Theme library if I feel like it). And for about a week, I build the basics of the UI using videos and pictures I found online, but of course in order to get it as close as possible to the real thing, It'd be better to get a real thing, and the Nokia Lumia 920 (esp. the yellow one) is definitely one of the phone that I wished I would have owned back then.

Pros

I absolutely adore the build quality & chose of material. More phones should be made of this kind of hard plastic 👍
The device has no cracks or dents, from the outside it looks barely used
I still quite like the design of WP8. It's a bit form-over-function, but because of how consistent it is, I actually don't mind that at all 😍

Cons

No working store
No reasonable way to side-load apps
There is a huge dead line of pixels in the middle, which is somewhat annoying

Now I just have to get my lazy-ass up and get back to working on the project…

Belkin BOOST↑UP Wireless Charger: 8/10

I have too many Qi charging pad at home already (all from IKEA), but one thing that always annoy me is that they are all flat, and sometimes I just want to have my phone play videos while it's charging wirelessly. And when I saw this on discount, my impulse just takes over and buy it on the spot.

Pros

It works as advertise
It's great when it's on discount

Cons

It has some coil whine

And here are some things that I don't want to give it a score just yet:

Second-hand Fujifilm X-T2

I spotted some descent deals on eBay for X-T2, and I want to give "using camera as webcam" a try as well. It just arrived a few days ago, first impression very nice, but let me try to bring it outside first.

Some random macro tubes

I think I bought it because I want to trying taking pictures of the films, but since I still don't have a proper light sauce, nor a way to secure the negative on a flag surface, the tubes are still waiting to be utilize. I would like to plan some other macro photography sessions, but first I need to learn some basics first, so that I don't just ended up taking picture of how dusty everything is.

Staedtler Noris Digital Jumbo Stylus

Another semi-impulse purchase is another stylus for the rM2, the idea is that I don't have to worry about carrying the official stylus around the house, I can just have 1 in the office, and 1 next to the bed. But for the last week, I haven't use my rM2 for writing much (since we got the week off work), so it's just sitting there, waiting to be used.

Logitech Z120 Speakers

I just adjusted my work setup, and put the laptop to the left hand side. Which means now all the sounds comes from the left, which bugs me more than it should. So I ended up grabbing a cheap (but not too cheap) speaker to put right next to the main monitor. So far it seems fine, but it probably can use a bit more intensive testing first.

Rollei C6i Tripod

Oh boy last time I mentioned that I don't know why I bought a small tripod, and this time I somehow convinced myself that "yea I should totally get a normal tripod to bring it to photo trips". And for months I was just using it as a weight for the curtains, but a few days ago I set it up (i.e. took the 1 leg off and use it as monopod) for my new WFH webcam setup. We'll see how that goes.

Others

There are also a few gadgets/electronics that I have bought, but I don't have much to say about them. Like the Shure SE215 headphone, which is nice, but I am not an audiophile to tell you the pros and cons.

I hope this will be the last post of the series, i.e. I will get the self control to not waste so much money. If not, maybe I should invest in better home security setup. Oh there is a new fancy security camera, wonder how much does it cost… 💸💸💸

How to use Fujifilm X Webcam 2 again?

2021-08-01T00:00:00Z

Just got myself a second-hand Fujifilm X-T2, and decided to try using it as webcam for work, and it took way longer than expected. So here's a short doc on how I got it up and running.

Step 1: Watch this video

This tells you 90% of what you need to know

Install the software
Restart the machine
No, it's not stuck on the placeholder webcam, you just need to turn on your software of choice to actually trigger the webcam to start

Step 2: Make sure your camera has the right settings

Instead of putting all the requirement in the same place, some of them are in this part of the website instead. For example, in X-T2, you need to make sure "Connection Setting" is set to "USB Tether Shooting Auto".

(P.S.: Tested both USB 2.0 cable and 3.0 cable, both works)

Step 3: Profit?

💸

Again thank you so much to Fujifilm for making everything so intuitive and so easy to find

🙄

Weekly Journal Template for reMarkable

2021-07-29T00:00:00Z

I just watched this video, and I would like to give this journal system a try. But I don't want to buy a notebook just yet, so I whip up a simple reMarkable template for that.

How to add template to reMarkable

The awesome folks at reMarkableWiki has wrote down exactly how to create template, as well as how to SSH into the tablet. I do have a few extra notes that I want to add, mostly because I am using a Windows machine:

It looks like Windows Terminal / PowerShell 7 has ssh built-in. Alternatively, you can use PuTTY
StackOverflow answer on how to copy file from your machine to another SSH machine

Tips on creating template

Apart from the notes in the reMarkableWiki (mentioned above 👆), here are a few extra notes:

You don't need fancy software for that, Figma is perfectly adequate for that
Remember to put a background (Just #FFFFFF is fine). Otherwise the eraser seems to get really confused and turn everything black
For horizontal template, rotate it by 90 degrees (see the example below)

This is the template. Just save as image and you should be good to go. And remember to modify the templates.json file + do the restart instruction as well.

Louis Tsai

Low-budget Meetup recording tips

But what do they look like?

Equipements & Setup

Lesson learned

GPUI: Getting Started

Prerequisite

Step 1: Create new project

Step 2: Add GPUI as dependency

Step 3: Run some example

What is it like getting back to coding after ≈2y

The Android ecosystem changed a lot

Why things feel a lot slower? 🐌

Some notes on Steam Deck

Game compatibility

How "anti-glare" is the "Premium anti-glare etched glass"?

Other issues/room for improvements

Samsung Galaxy Book Go (Snapdragon 7c, 4GB) review

Previously...

🛠 Hardware 🛠

How's the internet? 🕸

Performance 🏃

Battery life & heat management 🔋

Other room for improvements

💿 Software 💿

Windows 11 on ARM

As an occasional gamer 🎮

As a developer 🧑‍💻

Note to self: Oh right there is Golang

So is this a good laptop?

TL;DR: it depends.

Random Compose Project #2: Metro-Compose

Launcher (and the grid that makes it all possible)

Get myself familiar with Gradle and modualization (again)?

Just have fun with GitHub Actions

Help Ukraine 🇺🇦

Spread awareness

Donate

Look after your friends

#FuckPutin

First impression of being a team lead

Background

So what's new

And what's my first impression/early review so far?

SO 👏 MANY 👏 MEETINGS 👏 SO 👏 LITTLE 👏 TIME

I can see why managers typically likes to go back to office, but I still don't think it's a good idea

I really need to get used to making decisions on behalf of the team really quickly

Give your team members proper credits

What's next

Job listing as of time of writing

Short Reviews: Jabra Elite 75t

Pros

Cons

1 year review of Apple Watch Series 6

Why I decided to get an Apple Watch in the first place?

What did I like?

Unlock my iPhone when I am wearing a mask

The fit and finish

"Performance"

Apps

How it motivates me to get up and move

What I didn't like about it

Notification sucks

Apps

Siri is still very far behind

💸💸💸

Weird Gadget review: BlackBerry-style wireless keyboard (Trust 17930)

What did I get?

Why I bought it?

Is it good?

Is it a good purchase?

Use cases where getting a desktop computer makes sense 👍

1. Gaming

2. Working continuously on heavy computation tasks

My Tips & Tricks for (barely) surviving Working from Home

Things that I'm glad that I did

Learn how to cook, and cook more often

Spend less time on Social Media

Give myself an isolated space for work

Things that I wish I would have done