March was a long month and a lot of things happened. At the beginning of the month, I spent 48 hours competing in a hackathon using Canadian Open Data (more on that later). Then I went down to NY for work during March Break. Surprisingly, the weather was exceedingly nice. It went up to 18°C (as my phone reported)! Then I had to fly back later that night and the next day there was a big snowstorm in Toronto. The weather was still pretty crazy but it settled into a cool Spring weather by the end of the month (still less than 10°C)
The big (at least most interesting to me) news story of the month was the Malaysia Airlines plane that went “missing”. How, in this technologically connected world, do you “lose” a plane is beyond me. It’s been almost an entire month and they’ve only narrowed their search down to a particular area of the Indian Ocean. They still don’t know the motive (if any) or the reason why the plane was diverted and ended up there. I suppose they will have a better idea once they’ve located the plane, but that doesn’t seem like it will happen soon!
In addition to the actual hackathon, I spent a lot of time this month actually improving A Healthier Commute. On the code side, I’ve been prototyping how I can track driving trips and have been somewhat successful (under optimal conditions). There’s also been a lot of work on the product side, mainly because I was one of the finalist for the event. I had to produce a bunch of videos, prepare a presentation and a bunch of other paperwork-type things. Then, I had to practice the presentation a lot (I figure I did it maybe 100 times from initial conception, through the tweaks, until I actually pitched it). It’s almost like another job!
But, it’s been fun. Mostly because I don’t really do this that often and there is a guaranteed audience (to hear my presentation at least) so it’s not like I’m doing all of this into a vacuum and just posting about it on my blog. In any case, the pitch went relatively successful and I ended up placing second in the competition. So not only was it exciting and interesting, it was rewarding!
Hi! and welcome to the eclectic personal blog of Kevin Quan. Come in, stay awhile, peek into the nooks & crannies, and learn a bit about me and my interests.