Reflections on the role and importance of my grandfathers.

I can still hear the rumble of the tires running over the brick roads. That’s how we knew we were close. It’s hard to gauge time after 10 hours in a car. Once we felt that rumble, no book could hold…Keep Reading

When foreign words become part of the language

The other day while driving, my kids were asking me how to say different words in Chinese. They usually ask about things that they see out the windows, trees, homes, cars, etc… But one of them was the…Keep Reading

DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL document database provided by AWS

Two methods in DynamoDB allow us to fetch or write many items at once, and . They allow us to fetch or write many items, across multiple tables, in a single call. But there are a few caveats we must…Keep Reading

DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL document database provided by AWS

Most of the methods in DynamoDB take an object as their first parameter, which provides the necessary information to perform the requested operation. These options include things like the table name…Keep Reading

I often hear Chinese is a hard language. But is it really? Why should you learn it?

Usually when I tell people that I speak Chinese, their reaction is to tell me how hard the language seems to be. My response usually consists of an explanation as to why I don’t think it is as hard as…Keep Reading

Most things I've designed looked like I was an engineer. But over time things have improved!

In the last few months, I have spent some time off and on redesigning my website. It originally started as an exercise to practice doing some design work in Figma, and it quickly turned into a full…Keep Reading

Take some time to be reflective, see what life has taught you.

Today is my last day at Instructure. Over the last week, I have reflected many times on what I have learned through the last 5 years. The company has done a lot to enable me and my family to…Keep Reading

CSS in JS is all the rage, but how do you target nested components?

TL;DR Using a pattern of CSS overrides in Emotion can enable you to target nested components within a React application. Problem It is a common pattern to use CSS to target elements nested within…Keep Reading

Automatically generate component unique test IDs for React

TL;DR An interesting approach to generating unique identifiers that can be used to target elements, during testing, in your React component render tree. Preface Because React Native does not have any…Keep Reading

Who doesn't want to play Pacman and Galaga?

I’ve wanted to build an arcade machine for a long time. I used to go to an arcade in my mall where I grew up until it closed. Then as an adult, the only arcades worth going to were the nickel arcades…Keep Reading