November 7, 2019

Good bye Mr. Snowball

2005:
Wasn’t particularly an eventful year.
Lots of things hasn’t happened yet.
The first iPhone wasn’t due for another 2 years.
I wasn’t even in college, just a kid fresh out of High School.
And yet one thing made that year particularly memorable to me, to all of my family.
This guy right here.
I still remember vividly the day he came into our lives, such tiny little creature, with piercing blue eyes. So small and yet nothing seems to be scaring him. Footsteps, loud noises, nothing could even make him turn his head.
(We soon found out that’s because he’s completely, utterly deaf 1f642 which is also why he never had a formal name, because nobody could’ve called him. He was simply known as “The Snowball”)
Then he’d proceed to spend the next 14 years of his life brightening up our days, without fail.
Today is no different really. After spending most of the days being awesome, he took a hearty meal from his favorite bow, went back to his favorite box, took a nap, and decided not to wake up again.
Today is a beautiful autumn day. I guess if you could choose how and when to go, today is as good as any.
Still, it’s never easy losing a friend who was with you for almost half your life.

2005-2019
Rest in peace buddy, you may have left our lives, but you will never leave our hearts.

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September 14, 2019

Kết thúc mười năm

Hôm nay tình cờ lôi quyển hộ chiếu ra, phát hiện đã đến ngày hết hạn, tự nhiên nhớ lại cái ngày này đúng 10 năm về trước, cảm giác hân hoan khi nhận được nó vẫn còn như in.

Có nhiều thứ từ cách đây một thập kỷ mà mình ko còn có thể nhớ nổi nữa, nhưng cuốn hộ chiếu này thì mình vẫn nhớ như in, vì bối cảnh đặc biệt mà mình nhận được nó.

10 năm trước là kỷ niệm 60 năm thành lập hãng hàng không JetBlue, bọn nó dân chơi offer 1 cái deal cho phép mình mua 1 cái vé $600 có thể bay đến bất cứ sân bay nào mà JetBlue có hoạt động trong lãnh thổ US. Và đó là khởi đầu của tất cả, chuyến ‘road trip’ đầu tiên trong cuộc đời, chuyến đi mở mang đầu óc đầu tiên. (trước thời điểm đó mình thuộc loại hardcore introvert, cả tháng chỉ có đến trường rồi về nhà chơi game, ko ra khỏi nhà, nếu không có bà chị lôi đi chuyến đi này chắc giờ mình vẫn tiếp tục lesor lắm).

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August 14, 2019

Moving on from bad services

I’m an loyal person, once I use a service, I tend to stick with it, even if the service quality goes down, I’d tolerate it.

But there comes a time when man must put his foot down and say “That’s enough!”

So the last month I’ve decided to switch services for many things that I’ve used for a long time:

Mobile carrier:

I’ve been a faithful Mobifone user for as long as I have a cell phone, dating back all the way to 2005 I think when I got my first phone (a Motorola L7, I could still remember it vividly). But this month I’ve decided to switch to Viettel, they’ve come a long way, and is just better overall.

Internet Service Provider:

There aren’t really any different between the major ISPs here in Vietnam, every year they get pretty much the same amount of dreadful downtime. But recently, FPT was discovered to have shady pricing schemes with their customers, so now once again I’m sticking with Viettel as my main ISP.

Banking:

I’m sure most of you can relate to this one, you use Vietcombank, realize their service is completely and utter shit, but you still have to use them anyway, because your company pays your salary through them. It’s a common issue, nobody likes them, but everybody uses them, so they don’t give a shit. They burden their customers with all kinds of bullshit fees, treating them as if they’re a burden. Well, this last month my company managed an incredible feat: breaking free from Vietcombank. (or as I’d like to call it, relieving 2000+ accounts from their burden).

We switched to HSBC because it’s convenient for my UK-based firm, but really, their internet banking is a completely different beast. I’ve never since that kind of UX since, well, kindergarten. But that’s a story for another day.

Remote Desktop:

Just by uttering the word Remote Desktop you probably would’ve guessed what I’ve been using for the last 10 years, yes it was TeamViewer, I’ve been using them ever since their first days, when nobody even know who they are. While I’ve never been a paid customer, I believe I’d paid my due by being a super active evangelist. I’ve installed TeamViewer for everyone I know who might need help, I’ve showed a handful of people how to use it. I played my part in building up the popularity that they have today, and what do I get in return?

A big FUCK YOU is what.

My account was flagged as a ‘potentially commercial account’, and connection time was limited to 30 seconds. Yes you read that right, 30 fucking seconds! Holy mother fucking shit

Luckily, like with all things in life, eventually something better will come along and kick the shit out of it. In this case, that thing is called “AnyDesk”. Not only does it work so much more reliably, it also doesn’t leave a fucking nagging message after every session. Seriously, that thing annoyed the shit out of me.

December 12, 2018

Supporting Firefox

With the news about Edge switching to a foundation using Chromium a lot of the conversation has centered on browser engines slipping into something of a monoculture. I believe these fears are coming from a good place – a monoculture certainly is not desirable, and a persistent challenge from competitors keeps tech at its best. Compounding this news was also a link floating around stating that Mozilla Firefox was staring at a market share of below 9%. What gives me pause, however, is that much of the advocacy for Firefox seems to stem from the fact that it’s not Chrome. The pure logic of such a strategy is clear, but is it particularly convincing as a technique?

Speaking more broadly for a moment, we as a society apply a lot of pressure on people to do stuff – to save the planet, and make the world a better place, and all the rest of it. Much of it is advocated through what I would describe as almost ‘fear-based’ language – kind of “do x or y will happen” type scenarios. To be fair, much of it is set up that way. There’s no real selfish benefit to e.g recycling, its pretty much about the altruism. In fact, if you read the news, the stakes are pretty high it would seem. For me, the conversation around Firefox strays too close to these heavy ultimatums. I think this kind of conversation is naturally fatiguing, and creates a particularly negative means of ushering new users into the platform – almost as hostages, rather than excited participants.

It’s time we analyse what Firefox does better than Chrome, and sing those praises. For instance, it’s arguably easier to avoid tracking with Firefox if that’s your speed. I’m sure there are other things – does Firefox beat Chrome out for speed? Or is it better featured in some areas? Perhaps Firefox is lacking things; I’ve been using WebSockets a lot recently, and Chrome’s frame-by-frame view of a WebSocket connection is invaluable. As far as I’m aware, Firefox doesn’t have this (yet). These aren’t concrete suggestions, but maybe ideas of where the conversation can go.

I think about Chrome’s usurping of Internet Explorer (IE), and I wonder (antitrust and all aside) would Chrome have usurped IE if it wasn’t for IE stagnating? I remember when I was younger and jumped ship to Chrome – personally, it wasn’t about using Chrome because it wasn’t IE, it was about Chrome beating IE in a foot race and offering me a clean user experience.

Firefox is a fantastic browser, and the need to grow its market share is more pressing than ever. By making people excited to use Firefox rather than wary of using Chrome, I believe we can more effectively galvanise support for Firefox, and improve the health of the browser ‘market’ all round.

December 11, 2018

What the f*ck is Moca?

So if you live in Vietnam and use Grab, you’re probably aware that they recently ditched GrabPay (their internal payment gateway) for a 3rd party, Vietnamese based solution. While that didn’t come as a surprise since they were pressured by our government for a while already, what did come as a surprise is their choice of provider: Moca.

I thought for sure they were misspelling Momo or something, as it stands they are the largest digital wallet app in Vietnam as we speak, and is an obvious choice if you’re looking for a service like that. Surely Grab, a multi billion dollar company wouldn’t choose a non established name right? But nah, they gonna go with Moca, a name most people have never even heard before in their life. But that’s ok, competition is always good for the end users, provided that the competition is, well, competitive. Let’s go ahead and check them out. A quick google search bring me to their homepage:
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What the fuck is this shit? The English website is damn near empty, with nothing but an address and a Facebook Fan Page plugin. It’s amazing how that logo still managed to clip some of the minimal amount of content this page has
Ok that’s a little alarming. But surely you can’t judge a mobile app by the absolutely pitiful look of their desktop website. So let’s fire up Grab and check out the real thing:
dumb moca
Ok what the fuck is this shit? You ask me for my name, I enter my name, then you validate it as a motherfucking pin? What the living fuck is wrong with you? Hire a fucking UX person, hire a fucking QA team. You want to build a product, get a fucking team to build a product. Jesus fucking Christ.
Sorry for this rant again. I’m okay with beta software being buggy, I’m very much not ok with production software that millions people use on a daily basis being buggy.
November 19, 2018

Path of Tencent

So recently I sent an email to Grinding Gear Games regarding recovering an old guild that me and my friends created 4 years ago. It was a lengthy email explaining my situation. I was very disappointed when it was declined, not because my request wasn’t granted, but because the response I got was a generic response that was most likely generated by a bot. Back in the old days, any request sent to their support address was handled by actual human beings, and the whole experience feel human.

Now all I got are these trashy, automated responses

I used to think being bought out by Tencent was actually good for GGG’s future, boy, was I wrong. No wonder why people call this game Path of Chinos these days

#sad

November 6, 2018

Sites with Bad UX Ep01

Skype:

• Chat screen disabled while the app load latest message.
What the actual fuck, I just want to scroll up like 3 lines to copy a phone number that I forgot to jot down, motherfucker. Why I have to wait for the latest message to load?
• Instance of the app embedded in Franz or Station won’t be able to view full sized image unless you have Skype Web logged in AND get this, open in a tab in your browser! Who the stupid fuck thought it’s a good idea?

Microsoft:

• Toast message uses an arrows instead of the timeless cross symbol, holy motherfuckingshit, one of the biggest tech companies in the world and still couldn’t afford a single UX designer.
• If you use Windows 10 you know they come with a malware masquerading as an AV called Windows Defender. Since it’s an OS-bundled malware, it’s worse than other malwares in that it cannot be removed, only temporarily disabled. Just like their stupid motherfucking Update prompts (I guess, because I’ve never personally been bothered by one of those prompts before, but I’ve seen people raging about it on the Interwebs)

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October 1, 2018

Oct 2018: A little update

So it’s been exactly 5 months since I last quit my old job, and I’ve yet to find a new one. Definitely did not think it’d be this tough to find a new job, I was over confident in my skills.
I’ve burned through the last of my unemployment check
My and my wife had burned through half of our savings trying to conceive a child (and bad coin investments).
So far all had been for naught, and we might need another 100 mil for IVF.
My dad still has kidney stones, might need surgery.
My mom’s leg is going bad, might need surgery. (Update: the diagnosis results came back, it is very possible my mom has lung cancer, just like my grandma. I wasn’t ready for this, but I have to)
If I don’t get a job some time this month, I’ll definitely be cutting into the rest of my saving.
I guess this is what you’d call rock bottom.
Is it time to abandon my passion as a graphic artist, and look for something else? Never thought this profession would be so treacherous, you get over 30 and suddenly you’re unwanted trash.
Is it time to abandon Hanoi? This backwater place has such an under developed industry that it appears to be content with operating without any decent graphic artist.
August 15, 2018

Working on Linux: Restore Firefox’s normal behavior

Configure Firefox without About Config with an Add on 01

One of my main gripe when switching from Windows to Linux is that my favorite web browser Firefox doesn’t behave exactly the same way it does on Windows. Specifically, 2 things that bother me the most are:

  • The Backspace button doesn’t go back to the previous page
  • Clicking on the url address bar doesn’t automatically highlight the entire line.

Fortunately, it’s possible to change those behaviors simply by fiddling around with the settings a little bit. You’d want to go to your about:config page and change the following values:

  • Find browser.backspace_action and set the value to 0 (default is 2 or something). This will make the backspace button behave as it does in Windows.
  • Find browser.urlbar.clickSelectAll and set the value to True

And that’s about it. Personally I can’t understand why the developer would choose to keep these little annoyances. If it was just for a versions or two then we could accept it as bug but it’s been many years since these behaviors were implemented. The fact they’re still there mean that they are intended. Maybe they were made by Mozilla devs who are actually Microsoft moles who want to low-key diminish the user experience in Linux, I guess we’ll probably never know.