Vivian Qu

Sep 07, 2024

Can it Creami?

The history and design of the ultimate ice cream machine

design

Apr 01, 2024

The office

Designing the house machine for working

design

Mar 10, 2024

Architecting happiness

Working on home improvement projects

design

Mar 10, 2024

From thought to theme

Brainstorming yearly theme names

Feb 04, 2024

An ongoing list of great books

My holiday book picks over the years

Dec 15, 2023

Do things fast

Why you should practice moving quickly

Sep 10, 2023

Coming into focus

Finally seeing myself as a runner and good engineer

Jul 23, 2023

The app review experience from hell

Misadventures in working with Chrome extensions and Google OAuth

Apr 30, 2023

Building the Recite Chrome extension

Rediscover your reading gems in new tabs

Apr 02, 2023

Holiday book gifting

How to recommend books so people will actually read them

Jan 16, 2023

Friends & fist-to-five

Making lightning-fast decisions about where to eat dinner

Dec 19, 2022

Stacking PRs

How this technique levels up engineers

Dec 04, 2022

Outdated vs. Complete

In defense of apps that don’t need updates

Sep 25, 2022

Great reads for eng managers

An ongoing list of resources on being a good manager

Sep 11, 2022

Juggling software projects

Changing your work mindset to level up your career

Sep 04, 2022

Engineering growth expectations

Open-sourcing my version of an engineering ladder

Apr 02, 2022

Working without an engineering ladder

Advice for engineers and managers at early-stage startups

Mar 11, 2022

An existential essay by GPT-3

How an NLP model feels about NLP models and the human condition

Feb 04, 2022

Clarity, grace, and humor

How a book about the elements of writing is really funny

Jan 26, 2022

Patterns of engineering disasters

An incomplete collection of failed rewrites, refactors, and other engineering mishaps

Jan 01, 2022

High-leverage architecture

The business impact of documentation and exploring architecture automation

Mar 01, 2021

Baseline bodies

Loving your aging body and fixing a sedentary life

health

Feb 15, 2021

Deconstructing digital gardens

How we can build better knowledge systems

Oct 18, 2020

Learning to build better software from maps

Applying cartographic concepts to tech

Jun 16, 2020

The amateur's guide to making a podcast

My first time making it out of the German forest alive

podcast

May 06, 2020

Compensation 101

What I wish I knew before I started my job search

interviews

Feb 16, 2020

2019 in numbers

Reflecting on going there and back again

Dec 31, 2019

How I applied to 40+ tech companies and (mostly) survived

Quitting your job to search for a new job full-time

interviews

Dec 09, 2019

Saving time with React Native

Actual developer data from launching a React Native mobile app

Sep 17, 2019

Simulated annealing: a life framework

Making good decisions despite being biologically bad at making them

Jul 12, 2019

Zen and the art of handstands

or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Body

health

Feb 22, 2019

Part 4: Matriarchy meets the modern world

How can a centuries-old culture deal with Communism and increasing exposure to the modern world?

Sep 03, 2018

Part 3: Three-step guide to falling in love

How does love work in a matriarchal society? We find out how to court a Mosuo woman and when couples are considered officially married

Sep 03, 2018

Part 2: The (family) future is female

How the definition of family is radically different in matriarchal society.

Sep 03, 2018

Part 1: What I learned from “Women’s World”

Notes from my journey to visit the Mosuo, China’s last matriarchal minority

Sep 03, 2018

3 tips to outsmart Disney theme parks

The local’s guide to 'The Happiest Place on Earth'

disney

Jun 01, 2018

How Disney World solved the user tracking problem

disney