Category Archives: Life

Yet Another Employment Announcement (And More Moving)

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I wrote in my New Year’s Retrospective that my greatest fear for 2012 was that I would not get as much done as in previous years due to working a regular job for the first time in years.

That concern turned out to be quite prescient as within a couple of months, things quickly changed. While I enjoyed increasing my proficiency in Django and hanging out with cool co-workers, I found that I couldn’t break into areas that I was really interested in, specifically mobile. I decided to look for a new opportunity where I could grow as a mobile developer.

I’m happy to announce that I’ve accepted a new gig with Canopy (whose name is going to change soon), a spinoff of a company called LanguageMate. Canopy is based in Ann Arbor and specializes in language applications for medical professionals. I’m working on a neat tool that helps nurses and doctors communicate with patients who might not speak the same language. I think it’s an interesting space and presents a lot of interesting challenges in interface design, marketing, end user support, and other aspects that revolve around mobile development.

I believe this will be a better fit as I’m now able to work on a startup that is investing heavily in mobile. On top of that, I think it’s great that the app actually does something meaningful. Sure, a photo sharing app might sell for a billion dollars, but has it ever saved a person’s life?

Right now I’m in the middle of another move. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be back in Ann Arbor (for the 4th time) on Friday. I’m looking forward to hanging out there again, spending more time with Emily, and eating at BTB every day.

I am really thankful for all the friends I made at Threadless, and I feel bad leaving them so soon. Having said that, I am really looking forward to making a big impact at a small startup that really needs my skills. Here’s to an interesting second half of 2012!

New Tumblr: People Walking Dogs

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When Betsy left to work at Razorfish, I decided to commandeer her desk. It’s really nice. It has lots of natural sunlight and a good view (minus Atkins’ head). One thing I noticed right away is that a lot of people walk their dogs along the street in front of said window. Maybe it’s just the unseasonal crazy nice weather. Anyway, I decided to start a Tumblr of pictures of people walking their dogs. Why? Why not?

Mostly this is a way to practice my camera phone slinging skills. I’m not used to swiping up to get to the camera (it’s a new iOS 5.1 gesture)! Also, I have a theory that once something becomes sufficiently easy to do, there’s really no reason not to do it. So, while it lasts, please enjoy my photos of people walking their dogs outside my office window. Hopefully I will get a book deal soon.

Whole Foods Cereal Shill

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I was at Whole Foods today getting some groceries when I came across this mini food testing area at the end of an aisle. There were two nice sales people (one lady and one dude) who were hawking cereal. The type of cereal was super organic and it came in a pouch. The lady bragged that all of the ingredients were on the front of the bag in large type. The cereal was available for testing in cereal form, baked into a cookie, and blended into a smoothie (which was apparently made with apple cider and yogurt or something).

Sidenote: While I was deciding what to taste test (I eventually went with the smoothie and it was not bad, and followed up with a chunk of cookie), an old Asian lady walked up to me and started talking in Chinese. I tried to tell her that I don’t really speak Chinese, but I forgot how to say “I don’t know Chinese” in Chinese. It’s kind of absurd, anyway, to say you don’t speak a language in that very language you’re saying you don’t speak. Anyway, she mumbled some more stuff and then said “Chinese.” Like, yeah, lady, we’re both Chinese. I guess she walked away after that.

So anyway, here’s the real part of the story. I’m tasting the cookie and am about to leave when another woman walks up to the food tasting area. The sales guy asks if she wants to buy some cereal and she’s like “oh, I already have some at home! I love it! I’m just going to have some samples.” And they get into this conversation about how great the cereal is. I caught some more of their conversation as I walked away. Only later did I realize that the cereal-praising lady was probably a shill! It was literally the oldest sales trick in the book! I mean, no one gets that excited over cereal, right? She was really into it; a little too much into it to be believable.

Perhaps I am just cynical, but I would love to hang around Whole Foods to see if the same lady came over and did that multiple times. The sad part is that I can see the shill bit working on quite a lot of people. It probably didn’t work on the Chinese lady, though. She didn’t speak English.

2011: A Hung Truong Year In Review

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Last year I wrote a review of the stuff I had accomplished in 2010. It was useful for me to look back and realize that even though I felt I hadn’t accomplished much, I really had. I figure I should do the same this year, so here’s what I did in 2011.

January was a pretty big month for me. I had entered my apps into a University of Michigan contest and Checkmate ended up winning 3rd place. I also “released” Instascriber, which got picked up on a couple of tech news sites, including LifeHacker. At the end of January, I socially engineered a Facebook poll to virally get around 60,000 responses before Facebook shut it down. That was pretty fun.

February was a bit slower. I think I mostly ported Mapskrieg to App Engine (though I since reverted it back to the PHP version since App Engine raised their prices like crazy). I think I also interviewed at a couple of places for jobs, but didn’t have any sustained interest from anyone (or with anyone, really).

I must have spent most of March doing iOS programming, because the only blog posts I have are the one about UISplitViewController and the release of <3 Threadless for iPad. The iPad app release was pretty big for me since I had not previously released an iPad app that was much more than a simple scrollview with a main view attached.

In April, I released another iPad app, Mapskrieg. This was a really good way for me to get better with iOS development and to write my own API to use in the app. I believe April is also when I started interviewing for other jobs, including one at Bebarang. I also started working on a freelance app for the University’s Enriching Scholarship event. I guess I never announced it on my blog previously, but here’s the app I worked on.

In May, I started working with Allen Kim on Bebarang, the Netflix for baby clothes. I moved to New York in June, and stayed there to work on the startup for July and August as well. My summer experience deserves a blog post of its own, which I started writing and sorta forgot about. It was really awesome getting mentorship on the ins and outs of starting a business. I got to meet lots of incredible people and learned a ton. I also got to eat some really good food and experience New York. I am super grateful for the opportunity to work with NYC Seedstart and Bebarang. Unfortunately, things just didn’t work out, and I left the company at the end of August.

In September, I noticed a job posting at Threadless, and contacted my pal Chris about it. I attended the Threadless Family Reunion and got a job offer that I couldn’t refuse! I moved to Chicago (actually a suburb of it, Oak Park) in October and I am currently working on cool things at Threadless, including an awesome looking redesign of the site. So far I have learned a ton about actual software engineering (as opposed to the cowboy coding that I’m accustomed to). It is majorly sweet that I’m getting paid to get better at Django and Python (oh, and contribute to the code base, of course). I really couldn’t ask for a better turn of events than to work at a company I’ve long admired (and bought from).

In December, I took a trip to California to hang out with my family (much of whom also traveled to California to hang out). I went to the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot but forgot my fucking bumpersticker!!!! I am really pissed about that. I discovered that my niece and nephew really like Minecraft, and I think I will write a separate blog post about that.

Looking back, I feel I got a lot accomplished in 2011. I think I finally found a good balance between doing whatever the heck I want (and getting paid little) and being a complete corporate slave (and getting paid slightly better). I learned that maybe being a startup founder is not for me (at least in this stage of my life). I want to make an impact in whichever field I work in. I’m still figuring out how to maximize that (while still enjoying life and hanging out with other people, like my girlfriend). I feel like I am finally at the point where my hard work and accumulation of experience have paid their dividends, and it is now up to me to continue working hard and improving every day.

I think my greatest concern for 2012 is that I won’t accomplish as much as I have in previous years. Working a full time job can be hard on side projects, so I’ll try to put in a good effort on keeping those and my hobbies alive. I also want to work on my health, as living in New York and eating all of its food has added a few pounds. I started playing DDR again. It’s fun.

I have a few ideas for side projects that I’d like to work on. One is an open source ifttt clone that anyone can install (on their own server) and write modules for. Another is a redesign of Anime Nano (and maybe a rewrite in Django). I also want to get an aluminum base plate and photopolymer plates made for my letterpress. Finally, I would like to blog more often; shorter blogs, longer blogs, blogs about wacky stuff that I experience.

I want to look back to this blog post in a year, and hopefully I’ll have accomplished many or all of my “resolutions” by then.

An Important Announcement About My Employment Status (And T-Shirts)

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If you know me or if you read my blog, you know that I have been a huge fan of Threadless since I first found out about it in 2005. For a while, Threadless was pretty much the only thing I wrote about on this blog.

Last year, I developed an unofficial mobile app for browsing and sharing cool Threadless designs on the iPhone and iPad. This caught the attention of Threadless and I got to visit their sweet office!

I had the chance to visit again for the Threadless Family Reunion and an interview of sorts, and I was offered a job! I am happy to announce that I will join Threadless at the beginning of October.

I am really looking forward to making Threadless even more awesome (and now from the inside as opposed to hacking together an API for myself)!