Hope everyone has been having a great 2016 so far! Here's my resolution for the rest of the year: When I think something nice, say it aloud. For example, I recently told a startup founder that I thought she is building a really great product. My resolution also works for more trivial things, such as telling someone I like their shoes or jacket (I've done both this week!). For social media, I've been trying to Like more posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (why not?). Last year I tried to not say anything mean on social media... which proved rather... Continue reading

Originally published on Medium. Republished on Lifehacker. I started running a year ago. I had just begun a new job after leaving my own startup. I was tired of being a founder and desperately needed a break. I wanted to have a calmer lifestyle and I wanted a hobby. Running seemed like a great choice for a hobby. As a computer programmer, my brain gets a great workout but my butt sits in a computer chair all day. I thought that a little bit of exercise would balance it out. I didn’t entirely start from scratch. In the past I... Continue reading

Originally published on The Pastry Box Project. It’s strange to think that I might not make another web app. I’ve been working on iPhone apps for the past year and have done very little web development. If I were to make a new app today, it would be an iPhone app. It’s difficult for me to see a scenario where I would choose to build a website, or even a mobile website, over a native app. I use my iPhone for everything these days. I feel nostalgic for the web as it was in 2007. It was great to be... Continue reading

Originally published on The Pastry Box Project. I don’t believe in talent. I believe that passion combined with hard work produces results. But how does one find what they’re passionate about? Some people are lucky to find what they love to do when they’re young. I tried all kinds of activities when I was a teenager. I took piano lessons. I learned to sew and knit. I played soccer, softball, lacrosse, and ran track. I studied French and wrote short stories. However, none of these felt like my true passion. I went to college to study design. I had always... Continue reading

Originally published on The Pastry Box Project. Developers hate interruptions. Of course everyone dislikes being interrupted, but being interrupted while writing code is particularly tough. Coding requires a lot of concentrated mental energy. We mentally untangle logical problems, seek to simply solutions, and cover all edge cases. Often we’re trying to mentally calculate several things at once. Interruptions are frustrating because we may lose our train of thought or forget an edge case. It’s also really difficult to focus on a new task while our brain may still be working on the previous problem. I recently returned to working in... Continue reading

Originally published on The Pastry Box Project. One thing that really bugs me about iPhone apps is that users need to be constantly updating to get the latest version. By updating, I mean going to the App Store and clicking the “Update” or “Update All” button. Users have a bunch of reasons not to update apps—they forget, too busy, don’t want to wait for the download, have an older phone or OS so that updates won’t work, or they just don’t know that they need to at all. Of course web applications don’t have this problem. Every time you visit... Continue reading

Originally published on The Pastry Box Project. When thinking about the future of OAuth it’s helpful to remember why OAuth was created. I was lucky enough to be part of the original group of API providers who created OAuth so I know that OAuth was (mostly) intended to solve two common problems with API authentication: SSL/TLS was expensive and complicated. Websites shouldn’t be storing passwords of other websites. Of course #1 is past-tense for a reason. SSL is now commonplace for web applications. APIs can simply do all their authentication over SSL, which is a really good thing. There’s no... Continue reading

Originally published on The Pastry Box Project. I love the new iOS 7. I installed iOS 7 on my iPhone immediately after it was released to developers. My co-workers thought I was crazy. “Your primary phone?!” they all asked. Yup. I like to live on the edge. But seriously, I have a few good reasons to love iOS 7. First, it fixes my number one gripe — that it’s such a hassle to update iPhone applications. I wrote a whole post on the topic a couple months ago for the Pastry Box Project. I wasn’t too optimistic about ever seeing... Continue reading

Originally published on The Pastry Box Project. I tell people that I chose to work with Django and Python because of the great documentation. That’s not the whole truth. I believe now that I chose Django because it is a well-documented convention for building web applications. Every Django app I’ve built looks like a stereotypical Django app. I didn’t have to make any difficult decisions about coding style, how code relates to other code, or where code resides in files. I recently joined a team of iOS developers tasked with building a brand new app and was nearly blindsided by... Continue reading

Originally published on The Pastry Box Project. When I write about my personal experiences I start to think about the reader. Do my thoughts resonate with you right now? Is this a thought you’ve had in the past? Have you moved on to other thoughts or does this idea still linger? Sometimes as I’m reading I know that I am not quite understanding the concept on the same level as the author. I credit some of this to inexperience — I’ve never been a parent so I can’t fully empathize with others’ parental sentiment. Otherwise I’ll wonder if what I’m reading is... Continue reading

Originally published on The Pastry Box Project. Downloaded a new social app. I heard it was interesting and it seems easy enough to check it out. Went to the app store, downloaded the app and there it is on my iPhone home screen. Okay, nice design. Have to sign up or login to continue. Full name, username, email address. Check. Need a photo of me? Okay I guess I can use this one that I took a couple months ago and still have on my phone. I wish I had some better photos of myself on my phone. Who ever... Continue reading

Originally published on The Pastry Box Project. Fear. What’s the worst that could happen? (Thanks to @sckain for suggesting the topic for this post.) Continue reading

Originally published on The Pastry Box Project. After dropping and cracking the screen of my iPhone last month, I bought a new iPhone 5s. I soon became obsessed with Touch ID. Touch ID allows you to press your thumb to your device to unlock your phone. You can also purchase items from the App Store, iTunes, and iBooks. It’s a convenient way to quickly authenticate on the iPhone. What if you could also use Touch ID as auth in other apps? Imagine being able to sign up for a new app just by pressing your thumb to the phone. No... Continue reading

Originally published on The Pastry Box Project. I love this time of year — between Christmas and New Year’s. It’s generally a quiet and productive time for me. I’m able to get lots of work done on projects while eating leftover Christmas cookies and candy. I wish you all a productive holiday quiet-time and a happy new year! Continue reading

Happy 2015 everyone! Last year I resolved to run more races. While I didn't quite reach my goal of running a race every month, I did complete quite a few: Commitment Day 5k (January) Kaiser Permanente 5k (February) Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon (April) Bay to Breakers (May) SF 2nd Half Marathon (July) Portland Half Marathon (October) Manchester Road Race (November) Today I'm flying to LA to run the New Year's Race and am also training to run the Phoenix Marathon in February. I've decided not to make any resolutions this year. I'm looking forward to 2015, thinking about all... Continue reading

It's that time again... blah. Here's a quick update on last year's resolutions: Writing a post a month for The Pastry Box Project - done! I was late on quite a few posts (eek! sorry.) but I managed to get all 12 done. You can read them all here. Fixing up my open source projects - nope. Sadly, I didn't do very much open source work this year :( Running 1000 miles this year and 100 miles a month - done! I also hired a running coach (Angela Tieri) and ran my first marathon in Honolulu (Dec 8), both of... Continue reading

Happy Valentine's Day! Super cute, right? It's not a totally original idea (here's a bike route one) but it was really fun to make. I've been running a lot lately and using the Nike+ Running iPhone app to track and map my runs. I've also been posting some of my longer or more interesting runs on Path. Here's how I planned the route - It was really easy to sketch out the map. I just took a screenshot of downtown San Francisco in Google maps and drew right on top of the image using Acorn. Then I used Runningmap.com to... Continue reading

I have a confession. I really like Snapchat. To write it off as just a sexting app is to underestimate the power of its simplicity. I've been sending snaps to friends for a couple weeks and there's something very liberating about taking a quick photo. It can be a crappy photo. It can be silly. I don't need to spend 15 minutes setting up the perfect shot or scrolling though filter options. Snapchat is just a simple way to communicate with someone else. On the communication spectrum from lightest (texting?) to heaviest (email?) it's probably even lighter than texting. Crazy.... Continue reading

I have a few resolutions for 2013: I'll be writing for the Pastry Box Project once a month all year long. The Pastry Box Project selects a group of 30 people who are influential in their field and has them each write one post a month for a full year. Here's my first post from today, Thursday 10 January. You should really follow the whole blog - there's some really great posts! My second goal is to fix up my open source projects. I'm pretty good at occasionally releasing code as open source but I'd like to be better at... Continue reading

For my latest product, Grove, I wanted to allow users to quickly log in or sign up with an existing account, such as Twitter or Facebook. A while back I collected some data to determine how many people were using Facebook, Twitter, and OpenID to log in to TypePad. It was fairly obvious to me that people liked logging in using existing accounts. My new product, Grove, provides hosted IRC servers for teams. Since IRC appeals mainly to developers, I thought it would be great to allow people to sign up and login with GitHub. So our team created both... Continue reading