Hung Truong: The Blog!

Snorlax Owns You!

I’ve been playing Pokemon Pearl for a while now, and I still haven’t found my favorite pokemon, Snorlax. He’s totally awesome since he’s huge! I remember giving him Ice Beam (I think) back in the original Pokemon game and he literally owned everyone, ever.

This video I found confirms my belief that Snorlax owns. And he owns hard. Just check out the play by play commentary of Snorlax helping like, everybody!

PS This is totally NSFW due to multiple F-bombs proclaiming the awesomeness that is Snorlax.

Writing an App for the Facebook Platform

Right now I’m trying to write an app for the new Facebook Platform. I’m finding it highly distracting, since I’m literally ON Facebook while trying to get work done. It’s sort of like trying to type up a term paper, while SWIMMING IN A SWIMMING POOL!

Nevertheless, it’s a somewhat simple app (nothing in NP-Complete space) so maybe I’ll have it done by tomorrow.

PS The “i can has cheezeburger?” application is probably the single best one I’ve encountered so far.

The Fantastic Plastic Machine – The Guy

While I was waiting for the plane to board in the Oakland airport a few days ago, I was messing around with my Macbook. I tried getting an internet connection, but the stupid airport (the actual airport I was in, not the wireless card on my Macbook) wanted me to pay for it. Oh, they let me check out the Oakland Airport website, though. But that’s not interesting.

Anyway, I opened iTunes and started listening to a podcast I had saved. Some business podcast that had a guy talking about Google. He was supposed to have an insider’s scoop, but what he gave was a super high-level description of things that I already pretty much understood before.

Then I noticed that there was something in the “shared music” section. I guess the airport still allowed me to get on some kind of local area network. So I was listening to this dude’s shared music (something like, Hernando Fernandez or something, I forgot his name). A lot of it was R&B or random electronica. One of the artists that caught my ear was named The Fantastic Plastic Machine.

I listened to a few songs before I had to start boarding. I wrote down the name of the artist for future reference though. Funny: apparently FPM is a Japanese j-pop-ish artist. So when I listen to music blindly, I choose J-Pop. It’s a bit different, though.

Some now defunct company published some FPM stuff a while back. I wonder if it’d be legit to download some of the music? Otherwise I’d have to buy some out of print CDs or import… Anyway, I thought it was pretty neat to be able to discover a new artist through the kindness of a random Oakland Airport guy. Thanks!

Mahalo: Worst Idea Ever (This Month)

What’s with all these stupid startups that have been coming out recently? First Truemors, and now Mahalo!

Mahalo is a “human powered” search engine. Apparently humans can do a better job of giving search results than an algorithm can. The idea is that Mahalo pays grunts to make a personalized page for a common search term, like “iPhone.”

But let’s look at the results page for iPhone in both Google and Mahalo… First result is Apple’s iPhone page. On both Google and Mahalo. Second is… Engadget. For both. Third in Google is a link to Google News, which is probably more relevant than Mahalo’s third, which is Wikipedia. But Wikipedia is Google’s #4.

So thanks, Mahalo. You’ve done a pretty good job of giving me GOOGLE’S SEARCH RESULTS PAGE! Oh, and if the search term you’re looking for doesn’t exist on Mahalo yet, you get Google’s search results…

It’s probably just naive to think that humans can do a better job of giving relevant (up to date) search results by hand. It has to be stupidity to think that this can scale. There’s a reason that algorithms are invented. Perhaps Mahalo isn’t trying to compete with Google. But then, what is it trying to do?

Also, I liked this idea better in 1996 when it was called about.com.

Google Street View Easter Egg!

Google just released a new feature in Google Maps that lets you see a 3d view of streets in a few select locations. One of these locations is in Silicon Valley, so I figured I’d check out Google Headquarters (it’s a lot easier than stalking them in person). I remembered from my visit that the Googleplex was on Ampitheatre Parkway, so I just went there and looked at the street view.

While circling the Googleplex (in a non-threatening manner), I found an easter egg! There’s a bunch of googlers in green shirts, with one riding a motorcycle! Neat! I’m guessing they were on the team that did the mapping or had something to do with the street level feature.

By the way, the street level views are freaking sweet!!! There’s incredible detail (you can zoom in) and every few feet there’s a 3d panorama to view. Incredible. If they could get this for every city, I really think sightseeing in person would become obsolete.

PS, I still want to work at Google very, very badly.