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The Most Minimalist DIY Diary

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Over the last few years, I've been on a quest to find a diary format simple enough for me to commit to daily usage without any effort. I'm now very satisfied with my final iteration, a suite of Siri Shortcuts, but I also learned a lot about designing habit-forming processes along the way. First Attempt: Google Doc July 2018 - July 2021 I knew that to get myself started on any diary habit, I had to reduce my day down to three simple questions: What did I do for lunch? What did I do for dinner? What else did I do out of the ordinary (e.g. brushing teeth, etc.) on this day? (and other miscellaneous notes/learnings) I would then fill out the answers in a Google Doc. This format worked well for about three years, which, given my laziness, was quite the accomplishment. I even wrote a brief Python script to populate the date headers when I started a new doc every month.  What's cool about this approach is that Google Drive can search the text written in these docs. For example, I...
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Publishing Youtube Tutorials Quickly with One by Wacom and Google Jamboard

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For the longest time, I have been struggling to find the perfect setup for publishing Youtube videos in which I can hand-write explanations without having to perform a million takes – all within a reasonable budget. With my latest video about BigQuery arrays , I have found a recording process that I am very happy with! This process is based on the One by Wacom tablet and Google Jamboard. Components One by Wacom tablet Small Size  (~$60) Google Jamboard (Optional) Blue Microphones Yeti, with pop filter. (~$120) QuickTime Player, or any other screencasting software. iMovie, or any other video editing software. Google Drawings, for Youtube thumbnails. One by Wacom  Disclosure: I received a free One by Wacom tablet from Wacom through schoolhouse.world . I believe the  One by Wacom Tablet (Small ) (~$60) is hands-down the best teaching tool for online instruction. It is one of the most basic ways to input handwriting to a computer. It's not suitable for artwork, but ...
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Lessons from Teaching My SAT Reading Series at schoolhouse.world

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I had the privilege of designing and teaching my own free 8-week SAT Reading tutoring series over this past summer 2021 at schoolhouse.world ! In this post, I walk through a couple of principles and techniques that significantly enhanced my teaching, and I prove their effectiveness through all the quantitative and qualitative student feedback I have received. What is schoolhouse.world? schoolhouse.world (SHW) is a free peer tutoring platform started by Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, with comprehensive tutor certification and training policies in place to foster a safe learning environment. Anyone can tutor and become a student! Discover more testimonials at https://schoolhouse.world/stories . Takeaways Even though I have TA'ed before at UC Berkeley, I learned so much through this series about teaching effectively due to one key challenge: student attendance was completely voluntary. If anything I did were unhelpful, students could simply decide to quit. I really needed t...
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Tutorial: DIY Website-Blocking Focus Timer on MacOS

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  Enhance your productivity with a website-blocking focus timer using just 30 lines of Bash! Click "Read More" to access the Youtube video, explanation, and source code.
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Tutorial: SQL Analytic Functions

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SQL analytic ("window") functions compute a value for each row of input based on other rows, collectively known as a "window". The window is defined using OVER and can be refined using PARTITION BY, ORDER BY, and ROWS/RANGE BETWEEN. The value can be from a numbering function, navigational function, or an aggregate analytic function. To learn more, check out my Youtube video. For a text reference, BigQuery's article " Analytic function concepts in Standard SQL " is a great resource. Below, you can find the text referenced in the Youtube video, as well as some bonus content not in the video.
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Learning About My Brain From Typing Z-A

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Recently, I challenged my girlfriend to see who could type A-Z the fastest on  Speed Typing's "Type the Alphabet" page . She won :( Regardless, I loved how the site presented the results so clearly and colorfully. I then thought, "Hmm, I can use this site to study how my brain works." I'll just keep repeating this simple task to try out new techniques and observe how my performance changes.
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