kaiyen: pepper

kaiyen: pepper

the life and times of Allan Chen

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by the pond




by the pond

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

This is one of those photos where my own opinion was undermined by peer pressure. Of course I have a preference for my own photos – they are my “creations” and I take pride in them. But sometimes I take a photo of which I am really proud, yet no one notices and I begin to question myself.

This particular image got almost no notice on flickr, and no comments. It still hasn’t been viewed by many people (26 as of this writing) and I lost confidence in it.

Well, the fact is that I’m very proud of this photo. The shallow depth of field isolates the foreground reeds (are they reeds? no idea. the are long tall bits of “nature”). The colors reflected on the pond are really what I wanted, from the blues to the greens and the cloud. And the background, with the “land” appearing again, really works, I think.

This is another image taken while hiking – this time in Colera County Park. This pond is right at the entrance and is great for photos, in black and white, too.

January 26, 2009 Uncategorized 2 Read more >

Credit a little less frozen for the right customers, plus TARP in action

Pfizer lines up biggest bank deal since March, tapping U.S. aid – MarketWatch

The article sums up the importance of this deal pretty well, but it’s nice to see that the paranoia about liquidity is a bit less intense for the right customer (though no, you and I are not the “right” customer just yet), and that TARP has had a positive impact for at least some lenders.  After all, when that paranoia is at the point where even the commercial paper market is compromised, how can one start thinking about lending for purposes of buying out other companies? 

The whole TARP thing is even more intriguing since many banks rejected for fear that customers would lose confidence in a bank if it accepted this “bailout” aid. 

January 26, 2009 Articles from the Web, , , 0 Read more >

Review: Kevin Walsh, IDIS, Leavey School of Business

At a glance

  • Workload:  Light
  • Teaching Style:  Guest lectures, some interactive sessions
  • Interest in students: Unclear
  • Relevance to outside world: High

Overall Professor Rating: 3-4 (hard to tell due to so many guest lecturers)

Overall Course Rating: 4 (but them guest lecturers are good!)

IDIS 612 is an interesting course.  It’s basically all guest lecturers, but they are good ones, as Professor Walsh knows a LOT of people in some seriously powerful positions.  I recommend the course to anyone wanting to take a qualitative and, in all honesty, easy course while taking another, much harder one in the same quarter.  You get a lot out of it, while not beating yourself up with two difficult courses.

The Review

This is the latest of my reviews on the professors I’ve had while an MBA student at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business. There are lots of sites out there that provide feedback and rates – ratemyprofessor is the most notable. The SantaClaraMBA Yahoo group also has a big database of comments and lots of additional information in its message archive. That database can be a bit hard to wade through, and the comments are short and often just link to other threads, which are themselves pretty short and superficial. Only here can I write as much as I want  🙂

I review professors from a variety of perspectives.  First, I explain the context(s) under which I took the class.  Time of year, time of day, etc.  Then I talk about the quality of the class and the professor, and finally about the professor as a person.  After all, we are trying to learn about our interactions with people, so knowing that side of a teacher is critical, too.  So these would be interactions outside the classroom, etc.  I also just write whatever it is that I think is relevant or will be helpful to others.  That is my overall goal.

This review goes way back to Fall 2008, so just last quarter.  It’s a bit later than I had hoped to do, as is obviously the one for IDIS 696 Social Benefit Entrepreneurship, which I also took last quarter and will write in the next few days.

The facts

I took IDIS 612 in Fall 2008, Mondays and Wednesdays, 5:45-7 (this is the new first slot in Leavey’s 2-course-per-night schedule).  Professor Walsh is an adjunct with significant ties to Silicon Valley and a number of high-ranking executives, from start-up CEO’s to marketing presidents at large companies.  

Them’s the facts (slim as they are). Now read on for the review.
(more…)

January 26, 2009 Reviews of Professors, , , 1 Read more >

photophlow – great start, slowly fading…

PhotoPhlow is this great chatroom/flickr integration that makes use of the latter’s API to allow users to not just chat, but search through various parts of flickr – my photostream, all of flickr, a particular theme, etc – and share them with the group.

PhotoPhlow appeared with a big bang, with a group of users surging forward, then slowing a bit, then surging again as it gained popularity.

However, while usage is still high, it seems (there are always a decent number of people in at least the main room, and one of my groups is pretty busy), the developers have kind of let things just…sit there for some time now.  For instance, lots of people stay logged in all day long, even though they are not there.  Now, many don’t bother to put their status as “away” which is just rude unto itself, but even if one does that, the listing of people in a PhotoPhlow room doesn’t indicate that.  So you might think there are 5 people in a group room (5 is a pretty decent number), only 1 person might be there.  Not much chance for conversation.

Anyway.  Great idea, great implementation, but it’s just…”there” now.  Sitting there.  Doing nothing.  Kind of sad.  Stagnation sucks.

If you want an invite to use it, by the way, let me know and I’ll send one to you.  I think I have a few left.

January 26, 2009 General reviews, photography, 0 Read more >

shadows




shadows

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

I have finally gotten around to a semi-regular schedule of hiking, having gone 3 of the last 4 weekends. I would go this weekend as well except I have a wedding.

Obviously, hiking gives me a good chance to not only photograph, but also work on seeing scenes that in all honesty look otherwise rather basic and wondering whether there is a photo there or not. Things like noticing the light, the shadows, and perhaps considering how a bit more contrast might make a difference.

This is very much the case in this photo. In color, this is a fairly bland photo. The sky is all white and blown out, the trees diminished by the expanse of grass in the foreground, and only a small bit of visible shadows. But the play of light was interesting, if not dramatic, in person.

My hope was that by converting to black and white and then increasing contrast, I could make the shadows really jump out, and silhouetting that tree on the left would really change the mood.

In this case, I was very much “seeing” in black and white, and while I used the computer to add contrast, this isn’t any different than what I might have done in a traditional darkroom.

January 23, 2009 Uncategorized 2 Read more >

When the government spends $700 billion, you’ve just increased demand by $700 billion

The other day, my macro-economics professor stated something similar to the title of this post in class. While government spending and demand creation is not directly linear, an interesting point is made.

When the government actually spends, say, $700 billion on roads, bridges, green energy, etc, it injects that money directly into the actual economy. Construction crews, engineers, architects, etc all get hired back on to build things, researchers are brought back into the fold to work on new energy efficient materials and processing methods, etc. Those people now have salaries and will spend at least some of it on “stuff” which will help create jobs at the companies that make “stuff” and so on and so on. Yes, many of these people with new jobs will also save a lot rather than spend but overall you will get new jobs plus more spending which leads to even more jobs.

However, when you give tax cuts, there doesn’t have nearly the demand-creation yield rate (a term I just coined…) as direct injection of money. This is because if, say, 50% of people in this current economic environment will save rather than spend, and 40% of a $700 billion stimulus plan is actually in the form of tax cuts, then we get:

$420 billion directly injected
$140 billion spent from tax cuts

And while $560 billion is a lot of money, the other $140 billion is, too.

January 22, 2009 Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts, 2 Read more >

My, how far IBM has come

IBM seen remaining steady with earnings report – MarketWatch

Between IBM being the “slow, plodding behemoth” from a decade (and a half?) ago and its significant transition from a product company to a service one, this is a pretty impressive sign.  It’s still a “bellwether” for the overall tech economy, and its transition to a service company has made it better able to withstand the current economic situation.

January 20, 2009 Articles from the Web, 0 Read more >

Team of Rivals…

I have had this thought in the back of my head for a while now and it’s now formed into something that I want to articulate into something here.

Another comparison that has been made constantly is that Obama has followed Lincoln’s precedent and created a cabinet that is a “Team of Rivals.”  Also the title of a great book by Doris Kearns Goodwin, the reference is to how Lincoln’s cabinet included many of his biggest rivals in the Republican party, including William Seward, the favorite going into the convention, as Secretary of State and Salmon Chase, who had an undying and almost heartless pursuit of the presidency even for the 1864 election, as Secretary of the Treasury.

However, if you take even a slight look at things, Obama’s cabinet isn’t a team of rivals.  You can’t even create a team of rivals today.  Seward and Chase were major players to be nominated for the Republican ticket.  The process was of course extremely different than today – there isn’t a big campaigning process that lasts for a year and covers the entire country.  But at the convention, via the means utilized at the time, they were really #1 and #2, with Lincoln eventually taking advantage of the split to get the nomination.  They were true rivals.  

Who played those roles for Obama?  Well, he had a major rival, sure – Hillary Clinton.  No question there, and she is going to be the Secretary of State, as was Seward.  But can you really call Joe Biden or Bill Richardson, both of whom put their names in the ring for the 2008 nomination but dropped out very, very early, “rivals?”  Is he really building a cabinet in a way that is different than past presidents – getting the right people around with the right skills?  (The Panetta nomination is still about Obama picking someone with the skills that he feels are right for the CIA, whether everyone else agrees or not).  

One thing that is definitely similar but the timing is way off – Lincoln helped create the Republican party in the several years before 1860, and his cabinet helped solidify its leadership.  Seward hadn’t even moved from the Whig to Republican party until relatively late in the game.  

In a sense, Obama’s campaign was the culmination of the rebuilding of the Democratic party.  At the least, after Gore lost in 2000, things were pretty much in disarray.

January 20, 2009 Getting Political 2 Read more >