An incomplete series of lists detailing what I built, wrote, cooked, talked about, and read in 2019.

Projects

• Finished my sixth year reading 52 books in 52 weeks
• Led the engineering work for the relaunch of Recode on Vox
• Started writing a novel (and completed my National Novel Writing Month goal of 25,000 words in 30 days)

Writing

• The Weight of Words: Self-Acceptance Doesn’t Have to Be a Solo Journey (Catapult)
• Lean in or lie down? Balancing jobs, side projects, and hobbies (Medium)
• My Discomfort with Comfort Food (Eater)

Speaking

• Essay reading: Slant’d Issue 02 Launch Party (March, Slant’d)
• Keynote: Lean in or lie down? Balancing career development, side projects, and hobbies (April, Flawless Hacks, Slides)
• Workshop: Side Projects — Pursuing Your Interests...

I’ve now read 52 books in 52 weeks for the fifth year in a row! I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for half a decade now. (See blog posts from 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.)

What I did differently this year

I didn’t change up my reading habits as much as I have in previous years, since I feel pretty situated in my current routine (borrowing books from NYPL, reading on my commute/in the evenings/on the weekends). I still use my intense book-tracking spreadsheet to track some metadata around the books and authors I read. The final count ended up being 46 books by women, 28 of those written by women of color, and 10 books by men, 6 of those written by men of color.

This was...

An incomplete series of lists detailing what I built, wrote, cooked, talked about, and read in 2018.

Projects

• Finished my fifth year reading 52 books in 52 weeks
• Helped coordinate a sponsor for Flawless Hacks
• My sister and I launched season two of our podcast, Sweet and Sour, with a focus on independent Asian Americans creatives and entrepreneurs
• Completed The 100 Day Project, where I wrote 750 words of fiction every day for 100 days
• Selected to participate in AAJA’s Catalyst, a media entrepreneurship program for founders of color

Writing

• 52 Books in 52 Weeks, Year 4 (Personal blog)
• What I learned writing 750 words of fiction every day for 100 days (Medium)
• The Discomfort of Comfort Food (Slant’d)
• A few essays yet to be published
...

BACK ON MY BULLSHIT aka I read 52 books in 52 weeks for the fourth year in a row! (See blog posts from 2015, 2016, and 2017.)

What I did differently this year

Last year, I made a conscious effort to document and diversify my reading with the help of a very intense book-tracking spreadsheet — and it worked! So I continued that trend this year, and read mostly books by women/people of color again. The final count ended up being 33 books by women, 23 of those written by women of color, and 21 books by men, 15 of those written by men of color (plus 2 books that were each coauthored by a man and a woman).

In response to a NYT tweet crowdsourcing “books by women...

An incomplete series of lists detailing what I built, wrote, talked about, and read in 2017.

Projects

• Finished my third and fourth years reading 52 books in 52 weeks
• Helped organize speakers and workshops for Flawless Hacks
• My sister and I wrapped up season one of our podcast, Sweet and Sour, with 14 guests, 17 episodes, and 1 live show
• Led the publishing-side engineering work on a new packaged content storytelling format, launched with The Recode 100

Writing

• 52 Books in 52 Weeks, Year 3 (Personal blog)
• Aesthetics and Absence: Asian American Representation Onscreen (Medium)
• A NYT tweet on books by women ‘didn’t play well.’ Here’s why. (Columbia Journalism Review)
• Teaching and Brainstorming Inclusive Technical Metaphors (Source)
• Getting Started With UI Templating...

What started as a dumb challenge to myself to read 52 books in 52 weeks is now in its THIRD YEAR. Also I somehow turned this into a lightning talk I gave at a conference last year. (See blog posts from 2016 and 2015).

What I did differently this year

For the last two years, the percentage of female authors I read has hovered stubbornly around 30% and last year, I realized that if I’m not conscientious about the books and authors I’m reading, I tend to read mostly books by (white) men. So this year, I made the active choice for at least half the books I read this year to be by women/people of color. The final count ended up being 42 books by women, 20 of those written...

An incomplete series of lists detailing what I built, wrote, talked about, and read in 2016.

Projects

• Built a prototype of I Want In, a platform connecting gamemakers and playtesters, at #SNDMakes in Chicago
• Read 52 books in 52 weeks from February 2015 to February 2016
• Built a prototype of Babbage, a low-hassle matching service that structures and schedules half-hour online feedback sessions for projects or career advice, at #SNDMakes in San Francisco
• Design and development for North by Northwestern’s Commencement 2016
• Design and development for Hunny Mag’s first digital issue
• Started a podcast with my sister called Sweet and Sour

Things Written

• Connecting gamemakers and playtesters at SNDMakesChi (Personal blog)
• Why you should do a news designathon (Knight Lab)
• On casual racism (Personal blog)
• Read More

BACK AT IT AGAIN WITH THE 52 BOOKS (I’m probably going to regret making this February 2016 meme reference very soon). I read 52 books in 52 weeks for the second year in a row!

What I did differently this year

Unfortunately, I did not stick to as strict a schedule of reading a book a week. There ended up being waves of not reading anything at all and waves of intense reading, like when I read eight books in the last two weeks of December in an effort to finish my first Goodreads Challenge of 52 books in a single calendar year. Because I was taking so many liberal arts and humanities classes to finish out my English minor and distribution requirements for graduation, I decided to include books I read...

I’m studying in the student center with two people for a plant quiz (I’m referring to my biology class called Plant-People Interactions which I tweet about a lot). One of the topics for this quiz is alcohol - beverages made from fungi to be specific - and that means we cover the plants and processes that result in wine, beer, distilled liquors, etc. When we start reviewing the section on sake, this guy turns to me and says “this is all you!”

Neither me nor my friend initially says anything. I’m honestly just trying to process what I just heard. This guy assumes I’m Japanese and he just assumes that means I know all about sake. A thousand options run through my head. Ignore it, sweep it under the rug, laugh it off, take the higher...

At SNDMakesChi, Team Printer’s Row designed and prototyped I Want In, a platform that connects gamemakers and playtesters. We tested our initial hypothesis - that playtesters are important but hard to find - by talking to some game developers who responded to our teammate Charlie’s Bat Signal.

We learned that game developers often test with friends and family or find testers from the same sites and online communities, have a low budget for QA (and in some cases a random volunteer may be better than a hired person for QA), and find it challenging to get quality feedback from testers. We developed two personas: a gamemaker and a playtester.

Gamemaker:

• Need specialists...