👋 Hey there! I'm TJ. I write about data products, technology, software, and economics.
I'm a husband and father, living in Singapore, and from the Philippines. I explore data engineering and accounting at Titanium Birch.
Every time, I am tempted to dive into Wordpress, only to be sent fleeing by the sheer complexity and bloatedness of it all. It all seemed simple enough and I was determined not to use any themes or plugins, but even the default theme left a lot to be customized in a janky web editor.
Moving Shares from Shareworks Solium to Interactive Brokers
Stock and Crypto Market Values. Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash
I was lucky enough to be part of two companies that went public via an IPO: Uber and Grab, both ridesharing companies.
A common platform for managing and distributing these employee shares is Shareworks/Solium (now part of Morgan Stanley at work). While it’s great for seeing your stock compensation as you earn it, it’s not really a platform that you could use once those shares are granted to you and tradeable in the public market.
Book Notes: Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte
In 2023, I wanted to improve how I retained and utilised my personal knowledge. I’d always been one to keep my digital files well stored and organised, but seldom were able to use it to any real advantage. In this book, the author introduces the PARA method, a lightweight way to organise your knowledge that maximises actionability.
Digital gardens, Parenting, and Coffee
Newborn Sleep Patterns
Welcome to my digital garden
I’ve long lamented the inactivity of my website - but not for lack of trying. In the old website, I had 10 drafts sitting in the inbox queue, but could never bring myself to hit publish because they weren’t exactly as polished as the other posts from almost a decade ago.
On Newborn Parenting
Photo by Kelly Sikkema (Unsplash)
We recently added a beautiful baby girl to our family, and it’s been a wild ride. Since tech workers are a fairly new phenomenon, I suspect that a majority of tech workers are now currently in the same life stage. As this happens, I suspect that tech companies will change how work is done, now that more and more of the workforce leaves their 20s and moves into their 30s.
Nerfing Google Analytics to be more privacy-friendly
Photo by Lianhao Qu on Unsplash
I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. I’m only sharing how I navigated privacy legislation and attempted compliance on a personal website.
I recently revamped my personal website to connect more closely to my “second brain” which is in Obsidian. It’s now published via Obsidian Publish. I’m pretty happy with it so far!
As I polished it up, I realized that I wanted to understand how readers read, interacted, and understood, especially as they go through the digital garden part of the site, hence my exploration of website tracking tools.
How the 2008 Financial Crisis Still Affects Us
I had recently stumbled upon this video that stitches together the great recession of 2008 to the crisis we are experiencing now. It’s a great video, and I recommend watching it in its entirety.
One thing I found super fun to build was a map of the root causes and effects stemming from 20 years ago all the way to today, and I wanted to share it here in case it helps anyone make sense of the mess.