48 - winter-red-flowers

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中

Taken at Haizhu Square in Guangzhou. So many flowers blooming in winter 🌸—calling Guangzhou the “City of Flowers” is spot on.

Interesting Tools

Vector Shelf
https://vectorshelf.com
A website providing free vector assets, all with a very Japanese aesthetic~~

Apple Store Price
https://app.vbr.me/
Look up regional price differences across Apple App Stores worldwide~

Learning

Harsha Suryanarayana
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92S4zgXN17o&list=PL2_aWCzGMAwI3W_JlcBbtYTwiQSsOTa6P
A legendary Indian programmer explaining algorithms and data structures, recommended by Liang Wenfeng. Bilibili has translated versions available.

Coding-interview
https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview-university
A wildly popular repo; I’m sure many of you have come across it already.

Reading

《Vibe Coding》
https://github.com/tukuaiai/vibe-coding-cn
The AI coding methodology from the past couple of years. I haven’t quite gotten the hang of going full “hands-off to AI” mode yet—feels like things could easily spiral out of control;
For personal projects it’s fine, but for production code at work, I’d worry it becomes completely unmaintainable.

Life

Lynan’s Kansai Trip
https://lynan.cn/the-journey-in-kansai-2025
Originally planned to go to Japan at the end of November for autumn leaves, but tensions flared up unexpectedly so I couldn’t make it—have to push it to next year.
Lynan’s travelogue is really good, especially those crisp HDR photos.

Codex
Subscribed to Codex in December. Previously I only used Claude, so I picked up a GPT Plus sub to compare:

• Coding capabilities are totally fine, BUT ask it to review code and you’ll get an endless list of nitpicks and tasks that never finish;
• Speed feels a bit sluggish—maybe OpenAI’s server infrastructure isn’t quite on par with Google’s?
• Quota is plenty; about 70% left over every day.

Google One
https://one.google.com/ai-nye
Google AI Pro discount: $6.49/mo or $99/yr.
Grabbed the $6.49/mo deal (3-month promo) to give Gemini-cli a spin.
Gemini vs. Codex:

• Snappier speed
• Handles frontend tasks much better
• Code reviews don’t drag on endlessly

Insulin Doctor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gryta3KZKU4
Simply explains the relationship between hypoglycemia and obesity. This kind of scientific health knowledge is genuinely helpful for middle-aged and older folks~~

Personal Reflections

• Knowledge only turns into wisdom when it serves others and is put into practice!

When I was younger and hot-headed, I’d sometimes cut people off while they were speaking just to point out flaws in their points.
Even if their proposal wasn’t perfect, once you interrupt them, no matter how brilliant your own solution is, they’ll just perceive you as showing off.
As a result, great ideas were often ignored, and I’d end up needlessly rubbing people the wrong way.
I was aware of this at the time, but always told myself, “We probably won’t cross paths again anyway, so who cares if they take my advice?”
Looking back now though: if you carry on like that, what if a key mentor or benefactor was in the room?
Could you end up missing out on valuable opportunities simply because of your own tactlessness?

Before speaking up, step into the other person’s shoes to see things objectively—framing your thoughts differently might just make all the difference in getting them accepted~