Driving, backpacking, photography, and coding remotely.


I'll write about this adventure soon! In the meantime, check out the other tales.

- [Avoiding military bases in a U-Haul](/posts/u-haul)
- [Drone shots on Mount Cardigan, NH](/posts/mount-cardigan)
- [Traversing the highest continuous paved road in America](/posts/trail-ridge-road)


Journey to the West

Journey to the East

Basically the beach but just without the water part.

Sandy steps

Big and bendy adventures in TX


I met God the other day! All He said were “hello test batch #3,141,592,653,589,793,238,462,643,383,279,502,884.”

A strange encounter

My personal toolbelt of apps designed well for humans.


As someone with a UI/UX design background, I'm often pretty critical when trying out new apps. I'm a pretty picky user and hence it takes some time for me to settle on an app that fits. This list curates apps that I thought were well-scoped and well-designed.

### [Typora](https://typora.io) — a truly minimal markdown editor.

![Typora](../assets/post-images/appbelt/typora.png)

### [Tab Space](https://mytab.space) — a cache for your internet browsing.

![Tab Space](../assets/post-images/appbelt/tab-space.png)

### [Notion](https://notion.so) — your second brain.

![Notion](../assets/post-images/appbelt/notion.png)

### [Pocket](https://getpocket.com) — a unified read later list.

![Pocket](../assets/post-images/appbelt/pocket.png)

### [Flow](https://moleskinestudio.com/flow/) — a natural notebook.

![Flow](../assets/post-images/appbelt/flow.webp)

### [Roadtrippers](https://roadtrippers.com) — an Atlas for America.

![Roadtrippers](../assets/post-images/appbelt/roadtrippers.png)

### [Archimedes](http://www.archimedescalculator.com) — should be the default iOS calculator.

![Archimedes](../assets/post-images/appbelt/archimedes.png)

### [Tot](https://tot.rocks) — a whole new clipboard.

![Tot](../assets/post-images/appbelt/tot.png)

### [Paletro](https://appmakes.io/paletro) — ⌘P anywhere.

![Paletro](../assets/post-images/appbelt/paletro.png)

### [Photomyne](https://appmakes.io/photomyne) — digitize the past.

![Photomyne](../assets/post-images/appbelt/photomyne.png)


📱 Appbelt

My all-time movie picks. Grab some popcorn!


Here's my all-time movie picks.

_Interstellar_, 2014

_The Matrix_, 1999

_Ex Machina_, 2014

_Parasite_, 2019

_Inception_, 2010

_Whiplash_, 2014

_The Social Network_, 2010

_Dunkirk_, 2017

_The Greatest Showman_, 2017

_The Man Who Knew Infinity_, 2016

_The Big Short_, 2015

_The Founder_, 2016

_Rogue One_, 2016

_V for Vendetta_, 2006

_Snowpiercer_, 2013

_The Imitation Game_, 2014

_Forrest Gump_, 1994

_Titanic_, 1997

_The Shawshank Redemption_, 1994

_Steve Jobs_, 2015


🍿 Cinema list


I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this [conjecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collatz_conjecture) for which this HTML website is too small to contain. /s


Proof of the Collatz conjecture


There is not enough knowledge hierarchy in academia! Every person can only read \\(n\\) papers, and unless we undergo significant genetic modifications, that number will stay a constant. Yet as more and more research papers are published each year, the collective academic consciousness will grow to be more scattered. A scholar in one hemisphere may remain totally unaware of recent breakthroughs by scholars in another. Researchers may unknowingly duplicate or contradict each other's work. Literature reviews help, but frankly academic is growing so rapidly that it is now only a bandage. Today and tomorrow, we need a knowledge hierarchy. I'm calling for "layered" literature reviews that build atop each other. We need annual digests for every reputable scholar. Journals need comprehensive quarterly synopsis. This century marks the awakening and wiring up of a *collective academia brain*. The first agenda item should be organization and ontology.

Academia's hierarchy crisis

At the scale of the universe, the law of large numbers becomes deadly. The human race needs to develop a new framework of interstellar geopolitical thought.


Photo by [NASA](https://unsplash.com/@nasa?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/s/photos/cosmic-warfare?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText).

The law of large numbers tells of a scary future about cosmic sociology. The universe is incomprehensibly vast. With certain inputs, the [Drake Equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation) tells us that there should exist boundless numbers of extraterrestrial civilizations beyond our Solar System. This number can grow so large as to make nearly all probabilistic events occur with certainty.

What's scary about this? Almost all of our actions that propagate beyond our Solar System carries inherent existential risk. Sending the Golden Record on the Voyager probes, for instance, involved risk, albeit miniscule. Failing to regulate radio waves that get lost into deep space is also a risk, far more substantial. That we don't have any laws or deterrence systems against anyone from sending signals revealing Earth's location, is an enormous risk.

While we've been familiar with understanding risk levels as probabilistic events, we're not prepared to consider them as deterministic events. Suppose we evaluate the risk that any extraterrestrial civilization which detects our rogue radio waves will then exhibit evil warmongering intentions as `0.001%`. This number may seem small, but with the law of large numbers combined with the sheer magnitude of numbers from the Drake Equation, we can effectively assume this is `100%`. While any one civilization is unlikely to respond in a threatening manner, that the billions of civilizations out there will all remain neutral is a near-zero possibility.

Therefore, for Earth to survive this new interstellar era, we must treat all risk as certainties and gamble nothing.


A great danger of cosmic sociology

It's a headache to plan out your degree. Here's a graph approach to efficiently solve course allocation via the Edmonds-Karp algorithm.

A max flow approach to course planning

When we came to Dartmouth, we saw academic planning needed to meet human-centered design. We built D-Planner to help every student discover courses they like, keep track of requirements, and plan their academics thoughtfully.


D-Planner started with a couple of students who thought deeply about how they wanted to design their four-year degrees at Dartmouth.

Our college offerered a plethora of fascinating courses across countless fields of studies. We curious creatures wanted to explore everything; we wanted to read the Epics of Homer, examine the geopolitics of Asia, learn to converse in basic Japanese, unravel the mysteries of cellular mechanisms, and wire together logic gates to build a Von Neuhmann architecture.

But with only 36 credit hours and ever-rising tuition bills, we had to choose wisely.

Designing our degrees was an arduous process. However, the college provided few helpful resources to guide us. Students suffered indecivieness faced with unprintable, never-ending lists of courses. They had to constantly replan after reading outdated information. They were completely lost in amidst the twelve academic terms without a way to map together course dependencies and major requirements. During the week of course selection, everyone hoarded hundreds of Chrome tabs holding scattered course information and drew complicated flow diagrams to map their degrees.

![The frustration of planning courses.](../assets/post-images/d-planner/planning.png)

We built D-Planner to help every student visualize their academic trajectories at Dartmouth. As students who went through the same process, we knew our users' most vital needs. Our design process was well-informed through personal anecdotes and numerous conversations.

The key element of D-Planner is that the platform's dashboard shows a student their entire four years at Dartmouth in one glance. This bird's eye view empowers students to visualize the big picture and plan far into the future.

![Demo of D-Planner's main dashboard.](../assets/post-images/d-planner/demo.gif)

Students seamlessly drag and drop courses between each academic terms to simulate different possible academic journeys they could take. D-Planner strives to keep track of the small details for students so they don't have to, computing course prerequisites, when they're offered, and other factors. For instance, we alert the student when they try to drag a course onto a term where it's not offered.

![Screenshot of D-Planner's search features.](../assets/post-images/d-planner/course.png)

D-Planner's second mission is to empower discovery and inspire exploration. Our powerful search features allow students to easily traverse through the master catalog of 3,000+ courses and find what fits their needs. We aim to broaden each student's choices and give lesser-known courses a share of the center stage.

![Screenshot of D-Planner's search features.](../assets/post-images/d-planner/misc.png)

With over 800 students onboard, 1,300 thoughtfully-planned degrees, and 27,000 bookmarked courses, we're excited to empower every student to narrate their own academic journey.

Reach out to the active maintainers (Ziray Hao, Adam McQuilkin, and Jai Smith) any time via [hello@d-planner.com](mailto:hello@d-planner.com)! We always appreciate everyone who has contributed: Ben Cape, Christina Bae, Adam Rinehouse, Raul Rodriguez, Madeline Hess, Gillian Yue, and Regina Yan.


Design your academic journey through college

There's two B-to-B ratios homo sapiens should be proud of. We've always celebrated the first: our large brain-to-body radio. But it's about time we also honor the second, our remarkably large butt-to-body ratio.


Human buttocks are at the foundation of our advanced civilization. How? They give us the ability to _sit_. And not just any sitting, but prolonged sitting while retaining free command of our arms. We take this for granted, yet such is quite rare in the animal kingdom.

Most four-legged animals rest by collapsing all four legs, thus rendering them effectively immobile. Without arms, they won't be typing on a keyboard in their leisure time.

![Bison taking a rest on a grassy field.](../assets/post-images/human-butts/bison.jpg)

Some two-legged animals, most notably other primates, do contend with us on this front. However, the human gluteus maximus is the largest of all primates. As such, other species tend to squat more than sit.

Sitting is keystone to humanity's emergence as an advanced species. Sitting creates time for socialization and productive activities. Whether it's crafting an obsidian axe or implementing the latest and greatest progress web app, both tasks share one trait: they require us to be still for a sustained period of time.

There are many crucial checkpoints in our evolution. Cooking our food increased energy efficiency which gave us more leisure time, and bigger brains enabled us use that leisure time intelligently. However, it's our glorious glutes that allowed us to draw the blueprints for the 1903 Wright Flyer from a comfortable position.

"But why couldn't we have just adopted standing desks?" cries out a newly-converted standing-desk-workshipping-entrepreneur. It's the reason why most IDEA standing desks are adjustable: we can stand for far less than we can sit for.

Actually, most of us can walk for longer than we can stand still for. Continuously standing still is a very unnatural activity for our bodies. This is because we're never absolutely motionless. Our lanky bodies are an unstable system that can topple over to the ground if it weren't for the constant minute adjustments made by our lower-leg muscles. These constant but small adjustments gradually tire out those muscles.

![Graph showing frequent muscle adjustments needed to keep us standing.](../assets/post-images/human-butts/graphs.jpeg)

<p class="image-caption">What goes on under the hood when as stand still: periodic and subtle muscle exercions! Data from this <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1664994/">paper</a> from <em>The Journal of Physiology</em>.</p>

Walking around, on the other hand, uses our far stronger quadriceps and glutes to help maintain balance. Our dual-leg system are in a constant cycle of load-shifting when walking which allows our muscles to rest. Moreover, constant motion generates pressure on the veins to increase blood flow.

Now we all have another reason to appreciate our hindquarters, and another reason to read articles like [this](https://www.glamour.com/story/this-is-what-sitting-all-day-does-to-your-butt).

P.S. The cover image for this post is courteous of [Mel](http://melissanigro.com).


Our butts are essential to the development of modern civilization

Recent advances in longevity research can help the environmentalist cause by fixing a broken incentive system that has long stagnated action.


Science has [turned back the dials of age](https://www.gwern.net/docs/longevity/2019-fahy.pdf), and longevity research has been a growing field. Environmental advocates should celebrate. Why? Humanity's lethargic attitudes toward climate change comes in large part from an incentive misalignment. We can't readily feel the negative impact of bad environmental policies right away. Even in our lifetimes, these impacts may not manifest fully. The majority of the damage will come after we are long gone, and we so kick the can of problems down the road.

But if we begin to live far longer than the modern 120 year expectation with the advent of revolutionary advances in longevity, we will face more of the environmental consequences of our actions today. What we do today _will_ actually matter because we'll be there to live out its effects. Hence, boosting longevity is a means to fix the broken incentive system that has stagnanted environmental activism since. Humans need to be held accountable for their actions.


Longevity and environmental action

Reflections on how luck has played a role in my life.


I've always been a curious follower of [Veritasium](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHnyfMqiRRG1u-2MsSQLbXA)'s adventures. I like them because they explore cutting-edge science as well as the nature of life and society. [One video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I) of the latter which left an impression on me was about the role of luck in our lives.

[Derek](https://www.veritasium.com/about)'s concluding advice: dream, pursue, work with the belief that you are the author of your success, but always reflect in hindset with an appreciation for the luck that propelled you along the way.

I strongly believe by acknowledging the role of luck in all of our paths, we can create a more empathic society. We can celebrate each other's achievements while deeply understanding the unpredictability of chance. Society can offer a warm embrace that listens to stories of both win and loss, of both fortune and misfortune.

I wanted to give an appreciation to all the luck that I've somehow stumbled into in my life.

1. My parents are hard working, especially my mom who was the first in our Chinese family to attend college and immigrate to America.
2. When I immigrated to America, I could only print "hello world." My first teacher in second grade devoted a lot of her time to tutor me in this new language and put me on my feet.
3. In that year, I created lots of miniature books filled with messy drawings, half-formed English, and funny titles. They were dumb, but my teacher gave them love and praise, which strenghthened my confidence in that year of transition.
4. In third grade, while my English skills were still budding, my teacher gave me _Old Yeller_, by Fred Gipson. Her confidence in my abilities empowered me to reach outside my comfort zones and sparked my love for learning. I consumed that book passionately.
5. By the sheer luck of the Connecticut magnet school blind lottery, I got a ticket to attend the Academy of Aerospace Engineering high school.
6. My geometry teacher shared his love for proof-based maths. The class was rigorous and difficult. But my brain became hardwired to love the euphoria of devising logical geometry proofs following Euclid's propositions. Since then, I've loved deconstructing complex, murky problems with logic and fundamentals.
7. My European history teacher treated every. single. one. of our academic questions with a passion that filled the room. No stupid questions — that was her motto. My inquisitive nature was born there. She taught me to be curious, sceptical, and reflective.
8. Our school had a connection with local aerospace companies in Connecticut. I had the opportunity to work in quality engineering, handling and inspecting real aircraft components just after my senior year. I learned the responsibilities of employment, the exactness of engineering, and how to talk to my boss.
9. In the first week of college, I sent an email pitching a course planning app idea to a computer science professor, expecting no response. Instead, he returned with encouragement, guidance, and good criticism. He's been a mentor since.
10. And all the countless moments in-between which guided my path.


🎲 The dice of life

Apple told me to never leak these new OS wallpapers.


I'm a huge fan of Apple's collection of macOS wallpapers that feature stunning natural wonders: El Capitan, the Sierras. Mojave dunes, Catalina coast, and more.

But it's time we also appreciate the hidden wonders from our next door neighbor — Mars.

I've curated a collection of captivating wallpapers that capture the red planet in its glory. These are courteous of NASA's rich galleries, coming from both the Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Curiosity Rover. [Here it is](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1h2f2tULpPkKMD_nbeIJZ66IifKkXNewz?usp=sharing).


marsOS wallpapers


People tend to avoid admitting to their own faults. But Billie Eilish got a whole crowd to confess in unison, chanting that  "maybe I am the problem." Definitely refreshing in a finger-pointing and blame-shifting society.

<figure>
  <iframe width="100%" height="538" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y0qclryy-o4?start=222" title="TV by Billie Eilish video" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</figure>



Maybe I am the problem

Drone adventures atop of New Hampshire's dense forestry.


New Hampshire is the home for my college experience at Dartmouth College. Mount Cardigan is one of many lovely peaks in the state. We took a short hike up with our drone for sunset.

<figure>
  <iframe width="100%" height="338" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/75YFaQbvLns?start=73" title="Cardigan YouTube video" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</figure>


Mount Cardigan, NH

A fun design project for CS25 UI/UX Design.


This was a fun team effort to find a need area and design a product for it. We started shyly with user interviews and digested these insights into user personas and journey maps. After staring blankly at these UX diagrams, we exploded into creativity, sketching crazy ideas without an ounce of embarassment. We continually refined these app ideas into higher-fidelity sketches, wireframes, and true-to-life mockups. Like Ph.D.s with their new doctorates in hand, we excitedly shared our designs with users for more testing and feedback. Some advice were music to our ears, some we didn't want to hear; but all were helpful. Weeks after, we ended up building a good chunk of the designs with React Native. No, it's not in the App Store, but we learned a lot.

My role on this team was mostly in design. I mostly conducted a lot of user research and the high-fidelity mockups and poster designs.

![Project poster.](../assets/post-images/passon/poster.png)


PassOn: share your passions, together

I hate it when I can't recall something that's so relevant to the moment. Here's a system I'm building to improve peripheral memories.


If you're like most digitally connected humans of the 20s (2020s, to be clear), endless streams of information rushes through your awareness each day. Push notifications, email subscriptions, endless-scrolling social media, and news feeds ping you at every minute of the day, creating a Chicago rush hour of information trying to squeeze into the peripheries of your consciousness.

We consume so much, yet retain so little. I actually do learn interesting facts during YouTube binges; I do find thought-provoking opinion pieces amidst mountains of journalism; I do pick up noteworthy shenanigans from social media feeds. But these infrequent gems of knowledge get drowned out amongst the all-too-noisy backdrop of today's Information Age.

As I droned on for the past few years consuming and then losing gigabits of information, I started to wonder why I should even bother to read something if I'm going to forget about it. I reflected a lot on how I absorb information and how it departs without a proper goodbye.

From here, I started a project whose goal is to create a robust system to collect and endure new information that I absorb and then recall them with a rythm based on that information's relevancy to my daily flow.

I partioned my brain into two distinct levels. The "core" level holds information that get recalled and augmented through my day, my L0 cache, if you will. For instance, I reference my knowledge in software engineering and UI/UX design for work on a daily basis and I also keep important updates about my family and closest friends through everyday conversations. I'm not worried about losing this kind of information because their frequent usage ensures their endurance. When I accumulate more bits for these areas, those bits funnel directly to this persistent store.

What I do worry for is the "peripheral" level. Information stored here don't get used on any predictable or frequent basis. On occasion, they may be recalled in big bursts. Take, for instance, my memory of Unity's keyboard shortcuts when I'm creating a VR project. I'll have these shortcuts in hot memory access for a couple of months, but they quickly grow cold after the project's completion. In other cases, information is recalled with a predictable basis but at a very low frequency. A poignant example is the password to my FASFA account which I use once a year (hence I've adopted password managers).

Some examples of core level information:

- Full-stack software engineering principles
- UI/UX design patterns
- My most committed clubs at college
- Everything rock climbing
- Shooting photos
- Events surrounding my family and close friends
- Basic life errands, like what to shop for groceries

Some examples of peripheral level information:

- An emerging furniture design trend that I love
- Latest iPhone leaks
- A new word I learned: protean
- What happened during my last car servicing
- A really profound shower epiphany
- Insights from a neat conversation with a colleague

One key characterstic about the peripheral level is that knowledge can slowly gravitate toward the core level if repitition or predictability increases. Peripheral knowledge also tend to coalesce into larger blobs as they enter the core level. As a college student, I'm strongly considering entering the tech industry. Thus, my knowledge base about that field lies at my core level. However, through countless career fairs, infosessions, news articles about X, Y, and Z companies, I accumulate scattered bits of information that unite together to evolve my perception for the tech industry. These small bits of information first started at the peripheral level, but merge together with other semantically-adjacent bits and eventually all converge toward my core level.

Now, the inverse is also true, wherein knowledge at the core level can fall into the outer rims of periphery. However, core knowledge tend to be far more stable. The overarching knowledge categories at the core level core are more centralized and comprehensive, whereas the categories at the peripheral level are very distributed and can have a variety of sizes. For instance, a broad category at the core level can be "work-life balance in the tech industry," whereas at the periphery level, a category can be merely "recent remote work policies by Facebook."

The Öpik-Oort Cloud is a theoretical sphere of matter enclosing our solar system. It's inner and outer boundaries are estimated to span 2,000 to 200,000 astronmical units (Sun — Earth distances), and its outer boundary is considered the edge of our solar system. The spherical cloud is kept in equilibrium by the forces of Sun's gravitational pull and gargantuan galatic tides from nearby stars and the Milky Way. It's hypothized that certain types of comets, including Halley's Comet, originate from the Oort Cloud, formed via disruptions of equilibrium by giant outer planets.

// connect the metaphor

// talk about implementation (Notion API, repetition algorithms)


Personal Oort Cloud

Some books I consumed during COVID that I'd recommend.


Here's some books I consumed during COVID that I'd recommend.

_Recursion_ by Blake Crouch

_Three-body Problem_, _The Dark Forest_, and _Death's End_ by Cixin Liu

_The Redemption of Time_ by Baoshu

_Where the Crawdads Sing_ by Delia Owens

_Cloud Atlas_ by David Mitchell

_Flatland_ by Edwin Abbott

_Self_ by Yann Martel

_1984_ by George Orwell

_Brave New World_ by Aldous Huxley

_Animal Farm_ by George Orwell

_Damocles_ by S.G. Redling


📚 Books of quarantine

A neat puzzle solved with TypeScript's powerful recursive typing.

## Background

I wanted to showcase a fascinating TypeScript puzzle I encountered during a project with [AWS Step Functions](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/step-functions/latest/dg/welcome.html). For those unfamiliar, Step Functions are state machines with each state containing a certain function. These functions can be making a Lambda call, querying DynamoDB tables, broadcasting events to SQS, etc.

Naturally, each state in the machine had an input and output interface. The core rule is that if `stateA` feeds into `stateB`, then the input interface of `stateB` must be a _subset_ of the output interface of `stateA`. Conversely, the output interface of `stateA` is a superset of the input interface of `stateB`.

I worked on an SDK for AWS Step Functions built on TypeScript. My goal was to leverage the power of TypeScript's static typing to help developers manage the input and output interfaces for the states in their state machine. For instance, I wanted the IDE to warn the developer if their state IO interfaces did not match up correctly.

Therefore, I need to design a notion of "subset" and "superset" type relationships using TypeScript.

## Subset

Designing subset was pretty straightforward. I started with:

```tsx
type Subset<T> = {
  [K in keyof T]?: T[K];
};
```

This requires that fields in `Subset<T>` only come from fields in `T`. Here's a demo of this:

```tsx
interface Foo {
  foo: string
  bar: number
}

// this is good!
const subset: Subset<Foo> = {
  foo: 'foo'
}

// this is bad, field `moo` doesn't exist in `Foo`
const notSubset: Subset<Foo> = {
  foo: 'foo'
  moo: false // IDE underlines this
}
```

But we've only designed subset logic on the first layer for these interfaces. In other words, this won't work:

```tsx
interface Foo {
  foo: {
    bar: number;
    moo: boolean;
  };
}

// should be good, but IDE says we're missing field `bar` in `Foo`
const shouldBeSubset: Subset<Foo> = {
  foo: {
    bar: 1,
  },
};
```

Hence, we need to apply our subset logic to every level, recursively. We can easily do this because TypeScript offers recursive typing!

```tsx
type Subset<T> = {
  [K in keyof T]?: Subset<T[K]>;
};
```

Now this finally works at any depth level. Here's a [playground](https://www.typescriptlang.org/play?#code/C4TwDgpgBAygrgIwM4WAHgCoD4oF4oDeAUFFANoDSUAlgHZQDWEIA9gGZQYC6A-AFyxEKdBkpcsRAL5EidYBABObAIYBjaADEWLQiVJQ22gUmAK6AcwDce0gmUKBxfc6gBbI1FpxXCRdZf65h4I2gA2EMq0-vrS0kSqLLQmUEhCqALwyKhoWiw4+E76dg66AaRBLAKmcBA2ULFAA) to demo.

## Superset

Designing the superset type was tricky. I started with:

```tsx
type Superset<T> = {
  [K in keyof T]: Superset<T[K]>;
} & {
  [ExtraField: string]: unknown;
};
```

This is saying that the superset needs to contain all of the fields in `T`, along with any extra fields handled with `unknown`. However, we now need to handle "base cases" in recursive typing where values are of `boolean`, `number`, `string`, or `Array`. Why? These base cases can't be resolved with `Superset<T[K]>` because `Superset<T>` only handles objects.

```tsx
type Superset<T> = {
  [K in keyof T]: Superset<T[K]> | T[K];
} & {
  [ExtraField: string]: unknown;
};
```

By simply adding the `| T[K]` base case, we handle the base cases for primitive types. Now this works! Try it in this [playground](https://www.typescriptlang.org/play?ssl=24&ssc=2&pln=1&pc=1#code/C4TwDgpgBAygrpATgZwsAPAFQHxQLxQDeAUFGVANoDSUAlgHZQDWEIA9gGZSYC6AXLAQQUaLNR64APt3EBuYgF8oAMiKlyFAKIAPYIgCGAMVoQANgBMByPQwDm-KHHpN6bAO715C4sQbBhHPoAxtCGbGxq5FAc4VY29LbyUQBG+ogCJFFRALaxUPRw2cnCSVlktnnJ4aYQ+p7qZN7exEFs9NZQyEIiwALwSKgYYWy4BJnkMWwCAOQAFmambNMANA1QqemRZVC5U1AAjKvbUBV7enAQR9uzeXMLS1dli3sUh1AATDxrCo9QYHn7RRAA).

Recursion with TypeScript

A passionate company, driven identity, and a know-nothing college first-time freelancer. What could go wrong?


I offered to do a branding experiment for the [Spinach Angels](https://www.spinachangels.com/) investor group who was looking to refresh their identity. Their name came from the idea that they were the "vitamins for startup growth." Their approach is being close-knit and ultra-supportive for their portfolio companies and taking vital guiding roles during their seed stages.

![New logo designs compared to the original.](../assets/post-images/spinach-angels/transition.png)

They ended up not going for this brand direction, since it was a bit too casual. Nonetheless, this was still a fun excursion for my first dip into freelance work.

![Landing page designs.](../assets/post-images/spinach-angels/landing-page.png)


A branding experiment for an angel fund


Perhaps the most grave awakening in modernity is that to the universe’s mortality. Like humans and all life, it shall also succumb to a dark death, in a long time but a finite time. The 19th and 20th centuries saw an explosion of theories that painted the universe as a trillion year symphony, and we finally understood our place in it. But ultimately, a trillion years is still shorter than pre-modernity’s Edenic sense of indefiniteness. A Second Coming with no preset date and an unending afterlife in Heaven. Oh how the ignorant were blissful. Modernity has given humanity the courage to lift its head towards the future, but by looking up we saw the existential dread of an approaching void. Curiosity has killed the cat. We invented the microscope but in turn uncovered the universe’s terminal cancer diagnosis that is the second law of thermodynamics. God is dead.

Terminal diagnosis of entropy

Founded in 1799, The Dartmouth, Inc. launches its mobile app in 2021.


<a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-dartmouth/id470772769?itsct=apps_box_badge&amp;itscg=30200" style="display: inline-block; overflow: hidden; border-top-left-radius: 7px; border-top-right-radius: 7px; border-bottom-right-radius: 7px; border-bottom-left-radius: 7px; width: 125px; height: 42px;"><img src="https://tools.applemediaservices.com/api/badges/download-on-the-app-store/black/en-us?size=250x83&amp;releaseDate=1318982400&h=dfce91242f0b42efb687aeda88b04cda" alt="Download on the App Store" style="border-top-left-radius: 7px; border-top-right-radius: 7px; border-bottom-right-radius: 7px; border-bottom-left-radius: 7px; width: 125px; height: 42px;"></a>

With 222 years of history, _The Dartmouth_ is the oldest collegiate newspaper publication. Paper has been our tried and trusted medium through these ages. Fresh copies are printed daily and disseminated to the hands of students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

Yet regardless of how established our history is, the landscape of journalism is changing. Students rarely have the time now to appreciate printed type. With our phones buzzing endlessly with social media and news feeds, we had to pivot to cater to this new market.

As the technology director of _The Dartmouth_, I spearheaded the initiative to build our mobile app for iOS and Android. In designing the UI, I wanted to capture the delightful aspects of traditional print while catering to the ease and mobility of the digital world.

The reader view embodies a minimalism that you find on paper, hiding UI distraction that interrupt the story-telling.

![Showcase of the app's reader view.](../assets/post-images/the-dartmouth-app/reader.png)

I also wanted to showcase the unique art and cartoon columns that we publish which enrich campus journalism so much. Each had their dedicated page as they did in print.

![Showcase of the app's cartoon column.](../assets/post-images/the-dartmouth-app/cartoon.png)

Of course, I also wanted to leverage the benefits of a digital format. I created a way for students to discover stories that are important to them. Powerful search features let them traverse through years and years of Dartmouth's history and learn about the college through the eyes of students who came before us.

![Showcase of the app's discovery features.](../assets/post-images/the-dartmouth-app/discover.png)

In addition, simple yet powerful tools like bookmarking and sharing articles help users stay engaged with the app and our authors.

As the active maintainer for this project, it's a great honor to have led the digital reinvention of _The Dartmouth_, catapulting its well-respected history into our current age. Please reach out to me at [tech@thedartmouth.com](tech@thedartmouth.com) if you are excited about the future of journalism and want to contribute!


Bringing two centuries of history into the digital age

School would definitely be closed on snow days.


A bridge between Eastern and Western United States, Trail Ridge Road traverses over the Rocky Mountains' Continental Divide as the highest continuous paved road in the United States. It's a moderately winding path that sneaks between breathtaking, impenetrable 14ers flanking on both sides.

![3D view of the road's path.](../assets/post-images/trail-ridge-road/path.gif)

We took our Subaru for a workout, driving up the more than 3,000 foot elevation gain. None of us flexed our NASCAR skills, however, as the road was tightly hugged by sheer cliff dropoffs — guardrails are not welcomed here. Some mountain martial arts was on the agenda, though.

![Martial arts at 10,000 feet.](../assets/post-images/trail-ridge-road/martial-arts.jpg)

At around 11,000 feet, we appreciated a whole new perspective of the Rocky Mountains. During most visits to this grand range, all the peaks tower above you in domineering awe. Yet here, we stood among them on an equal plane. Viewing the park in this top-down way truly conveyed its grandeur.

![A top-down view of the national park.](../assets/post-images/trail-ridge-road/perspective.jpg)

There still were, of course, many peaks that towered far above us. My camera offers them the most respect.

![Pictures of Rocky Mountains' peaks.](../assets/post-images/trail-ridge-road/mountains.jpg)

This excursion was part of my Colorado adventures in the spring of 2021.


The highest continuous paved road in America

We built a platform to empower the nation's largest and oldest collegiate outing club.


The Dartmouth Outing Club is the largest collegiate outdoors club in the nation, running over 500 wilderness excursions per year, ranging from short day hikes to week-long backpacking trips in Peru. It also claims the title as the oldest, with a long history founded in 1911.

Yet it wasn't until this year when digital technology came into the picture to help with the club's operations and foster a stronger outdoors community at Dartmouth College.

Many excursions go out every week, and it's always been a headache tracking these expeditions. The whiteboards at the office in Robinson Hall was often overwhelmed with notes.

![Image of flooded whiteboard calendars managing trips.](../assets/post-images/trailhead/status-quo.png)

The other problem came from outside the Club's operations. Most students weren't aware of the plethora of opporutnities to get outdoors. Most trips are fully-funded and free for students, but many students aren't in the loop to know when to sign up.

Trailhead emerged with the sole mission of promoting outdoor culture at Dartmouth College. This involved increasing accessibility to opportunities, inspire students to find excursions that fulfills them, and help plan all underlying, busy logistics.

The first two aspects were spearheaded by a design-first mindset when creating Trailhead. We brainstormed ways to make outdoor trips dicoverable and fun. We built powerful search features to help students find what fits their interests and physical abilities.

![Demo showing how students around campus can find and sign up for trips.](../assets/post-images/trailhead/demo.gif)

![Designs showing what trips look like on the platform.](../assets/post-images/trailhead/tiles.png)

The third aspect drove feature develpment to make trip maangement as seamless as possible for the tireless staff members of the Outing Club. These include birds-eye calendar views, trip forms, gear inventories, vehicle fleets, and membership lists.

![Showcase of trip management dashboards.](../assets/post-images/trailhead/calendar.png)

Since Trailhead's launch last fall, we've helped over 1,600 students get outdoors on over 650 trips! If you're passionate aobut the outdoors at Dartmouth and technology, reach out to the active maintainer Ziray Hao. We greatly appreciate all the hands who helped bring Trailhead to fruition: Benedict Tedjokusumo, Regina Yan, Justin Luo, Dorothy Qu, Emma Rafkin, Morgan Sorbaro, Ashley Song, Sydney Friedland, and Grace Thompson.


Designing for the outdoors

Someone told you to count the most frequent words on Twitter in any given day! Here's a few algorithms to help you.


[Project GitHub](https://github.com/ziruihao/twitter-stream-algorithms).

## Data stream algorithms

The classic college introductory algorithms course nags bright-eyed students to focus on time optimization. Big-O-big-O-big-O is all we can think of and achieving that logarithmic runtime is the end-all-be-all. But what about space? This is an aspect of algorithms that I wish introductory courses touched more upon. There arises some fascinating problems (and approaches) when the major constraint is not time, but space. And in today's age of massive data lakes and unwledy pipeline streams, these space-oriented algorithms are very relevant to industry.

Data stream algorithms tackle problems with large quantities of streaming data with a focus on space optimization. It's relevant to situations where engineers could not feasibly rely on there being enough storage to run traditional `Ω(n)` algorithms (`n` or more). Most approaches are random algorithms that relinquish the search for deterministic solutions in lieu for feasible solutions.

// demo simple counting algorithm

## Algorithms in action

I wanted to try out some of the algorithms I learned from [COSC 35](https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~ac/Teach/CS35-Spring20/), taught by Professor Chakrabarti at Dartmouth College. The course was heavy on theory, focusing on proofs of correctness and bounds derivations. I wanted to see them in action against real world data.

### Twitter

Twitter offers a near-realtime API for a slimmed-down portion of its main platform stream.

### Shakespeare

I also decided to try out these algorithms on a stream using words from 100 of Shakespeare's works. The raw text was accessed from [Project Gutenberg](http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/100/pg100.txt), cleaned, and extracted into 219 separate works, each containing around a few thousand words. The stream chooses a particular work and feeds the words the same way as the Twitter streaming process.


Twitter stream algorithms

Hear about how we stumbled upon Los Alamos National Laboratory in a suspicious U-Haul, swam across White Sands National Park, and avoided missile ranges — all to fix a broken car.


Travel advice: if you found yourself in a U-Haul driving through the [Los Alamos National Laboratory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos_National_Laboratory) in New Mexico — home of the Manhattan Project — the military officer at the gate will tell you to turn around. Shucks, because the way back is 50 miles of winding mountainous roads. The trick is to put on an innocent, lost face and politely ask them to search through your truck. And if you're the average Joe who doesn't carry explosives for leisure, they'll let you through fine! This is a proven technique, and you just saved extra commute by short-cutting through this remote research site hidden in the New Mexico Jemez Mountains range.

This was part of a mini road trip my friends and I took from Padre Island, TX to Denver, CO. I plotted for you what our route roughly looked like. It wasn't the most direct path by any means. But we got our hands on a cool 15' U-Haul truck with our car in tow, so why not live it up and explore the corners of Southwest America at a generous 12 MPG?

![Map of the route we took from TX to CO.](../assets/post-images/u-haul/route.png)

Why the U-Haul? Our car, the trusted 2014 Subaru Outback (yes, [the one we traversed the Continental Divide in](/posts/trail-ridge-road)) died two hours into this trip. The car's had trouble before, but I guess after it saw the ludicrous GPS route we plotted, it decided to cash in on its PTO.

Our only other option was to fly home and ship the car back (jetBlue wouldn't let us count the SUV as extra check-in luggage). But this kills the adventure we had planned and shipping a car isn't cheap. So we put our management-consulting-striving-cost-cutting-analyzing brains together and realized that the blunt of the cost was having a service transport our car from TX to CO (over 1,000 miles!). Bootstrapping hustlers we are, why don't we do that ourselves and avoid the equity dilution?

![Fitting right in at the U-Haul rental center.](../assets/post-images/u-haul/u-haul-rental.jpeg)

Luckily, there were U-Haul rental sites near our car's death bed. Probably the youngest customers at the rental desk, we saw the hesitation in the representatives eyes as she calculated the likelihood that these three nomadic 20-year-olds would return their truck in one piece. Fate had the odds in our favor, and we got the keys an hour later.

![Loading our SUV onto the U-Haul trailer.](../assets/post-images/u-haul/loading-car.gif)

Give a few college boys keys to a truck-trailer, and where do they go? Roswell — we really wanted to find the aliens. Our first destination and our stay for the first night was at a campsite just outside of where those from planet Xiashiavenith landed. We had brunch at a McDonalds shaped like a saucer.

![Shenanigans at Roswell.](../assets/post-images/u-haul/roswell.jpeg)

We set sail for the natural wonders of White Sands National Park, and the less-than-natural military bases that encircle the park.

![The vast, endless white dunes.](../assets/post-images/u-haul/white-sands.jpeg)

Advice for travelers: the endless rolling sand dunes are deceptively repetitive. If you think you know where you are, you probably don't. We almost got lost between these sandy peaks, but the fun we had swimming through the soft terrain wouldn't have made that so bad.

![Swimming at White Sands National Park.](../assets/post-images/u-haul/swimming-in-sand.gif)

But if you do get lost, there's a few military bases surrounding the National Park that can help guide the way. They are known to post helpful road signs for the curious traveler.

![Road signs signifying nearby military bases.](../assets/post-images/u-haul/military.jpeg)

For that night, and most nights on this trip, we discovered the convenience of essentially having a mobile home. The 15' truck offered plenty of first-class sleeping quarters in the back. Sleeping pads are _highly_ recommended.

![Our sleeping arrangements in the back of the U-Haul.](../assets/post-images/u-haul/shelter.jpeg)

Over a thousand miles of driving later through mountain ranges, forests, deserts, towns tiny and big, gas low and full, campgrounds legal and illegal, we made it into Colorado. Our final memorable destination was the [Rio Grande Gorge Bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Grande_Gorge_Bridge), a unique divide that separates Eastern and Western United States.

![The immense height of the Gorge Bridge.](../assets/post-images/u-haul/gorge.jpeg)

This rather comical trip did teach us important things. We learned that there's often crafty ways to solve stubborn problems. The "unconventional" is only so because most people don't stretch beyond their comfort zones. We learned that adventure lies at every corner of the world, under every small rock alongside unbeaten paths. Our journey was certainly not about the destination, but about how we chose to spend each mile we traversed, and how we avoided running out of gas multiple times.


Avoiding military bases in a U-Haul

Ever wanted to become a master at pong? Just train against yourself for thousands of epochs. How fun.

Designing simple RL-trained pong agents to play against each other

Print "Hello world" they said. But build the computer from scratch, they said not.


I'll write up more about this perplexing adventure when free time finds me again. But here's a brief synposis.

The final project for CS51 Computer Architecture was to print "Hello world" via a computer program. Now the twist: what programming language? Unspecified. What runtime? Unspecified. What operating system? Unspecified. What assembly language? Unspecified. What computer architecture? [Y86](https://esolangs.org/wiki/Y86). So that's where we started, first by wiring together all the critical components for a simple Y86 CPU: RAM, memory (instruction and data seprated because we like [John](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann)), ALU, various addressing and splitting modules, and so many wiring paths threatening to become non-planar. With our logic board filled to the brim, we began designing our assembly language and finite state machine.

Here's where free time ran away from me; I shall add more to this article soon. Spoilers for the ending: seeing the characters `H e l l o w o r l d !` emerge out from the computer's wires in binary representation of ASCII was among the more stasifying moments of my computer science journey.


Ziray
Hao

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