Author: Michael Yung

Michael possessed over 30 years of experience in Information Technology with focuses on complex application development, database technologies and IT strategy. He also spent the last 20 years in Internet technology, eCommerce development / operations, web usability, computer security and Public Key Infrastructure technologies.

Favourite PC database software

About 35 years ago, when everyone got their “copies” of dBase and Clipper in Hong Kong’s Golden Arcade, I purchased the Foxbase. The package came with foam can coolers to thank the supporters.

That’s the path I went thru to earn some extra cash in the good old days. What about yours ?

dBase II > dBase III > Clipper > dBase IV > FoxBase > FoxPro > Visual FoxPro > FileMaker > FileMaker Pro

“Nothing runs like the fox.”

One Book At A Time – 2022

I told myself earlier this year I needed to read more SciFi, Blockchain and AI books. However, it’s a year with a lot less time to read …

It’s also year with a new Kindle – the big brother Kindle Scribe. Look forward to have better reading and note-jotting experiences with this great new device.

Anyway, here are my favorites this year :

  1. Winning the Right Game : How to Disrupt, Defend, and Deliver in a Changing World – A great strategy book about ecosystem innovation / disruption. Don’t miss it if you want to learn more on top of industrial disruption.
  2. 所謂「我不投資」，就是 all in 在法定貨幣 – Probably the best crypto foundation and investment book in Chinese, period.
  3. Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains – The ideas behind Ethereum in the words of its founder, Vitalik Buterin. You will find that every crypto idea has been brewed for years.
  4. The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything – To me, it’s the best book of the year, for IT professionals. Lesson learned – the Metaverse is not what you think.
  5. Exhalation: Stories – Nine excellent SciFi short stories, from Time machine, to Robot, Metaverse, Video Artificial Memory and Quantum Machine. Some of the best SciFi short stories I ever read.
  6. Children of the new world – If you are fans of SciFi short stories and Black Mirror, and if you love the movie “After Yang”, don’t miss this book. Not as good as Exhalation and Stories of Your Life though.
  7. Stories of Your Life and Others – Another eight short SciFi stories from Ted Chiang (Exhalation, above) and great read. Note that some of the stories are Science Fictions, some are Fictions about Science.
  8. The Blockchain Innovator’s Handbook : A leader’s guide to understanding, adopting and succeeding with this disruptive technology – Post-COVID information about Blockchain, with 3 parts (This time it’s different, The journey, Making it happen). Good for business professional to understand and to promote the technology within your organization.
  9. The Bomber Mafia : A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War – I learned a lot about Second World War and Bombers from this book … bombing is not as easy as what you see from war movies.
  10. Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy – Will the search engine giant survive after AI and Machine Learning ?
  11. Scary Smart : The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World – The book that tells you why Ethical AI is important … “The course of action we take at any given time is also the result of a value system that guides us and sometimes restricts us from making decisions that contradict our values.”
  12. Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control – One of the most important AI books ever written, everybody should read it.

Previous years’ book list:

Very First Selfie

This week’s #ThrowBackThursday is about a selfie picture … in a hospital.

15 years ago this week, with the Dopod C720W Windows CE smartphone, I took my very first selfie … a few days after a 8 hours “open-chest surgery” to fix a serious heart valve problem.

It’s called open-chest surgery because to access the heart, surgeons need to cut through the breastbone and spread the ribs. That’s why sometimes people call this operation “Cracking the chest”.

Unfortunately the chest cracking surgery did not solve the problem and I needed to have another 6 hours surgery two weeks later …

Other than the selfie, I also used the mobile phone to access Internet, browse the web, search for health information. More importantly, to log into my server and record my experiences with the WordPress blogging platform.

Stay healthy.

Blog : https://lnkd.in/dWkcc6Bv

Dopod : https://lnkd.in/gsrnV9p4

#TBT