jayliew
In search of the product/market fit with ½ the capital but 2X the optimism

Recent News
Hello there and welcome to my personal web site! If you're looking to learn more about me: I'll be posting latest developments on my blog from now on. Read the Sunjay Times here: http://times.jayliew.com

If you're looking for that other thing that I do, here's a picture of it. Or that other newer thing that I've been busy with.

* Some of the details below are now a little out of date, I'll update this site when I find some spare time (Sorry!)
The Sunjay Times
The Sunjay Times is a collection of my thoughts, my writing scratch pad. Best taken with a dose of reality after a meal, commonly known to User 2.0 as a "weblog". Check it out here: http://times.jayliew.com
Some Stuff I've Built
Contact me
» E-mail: moc.stupid spam bots eat this!weilyaj@weil *
» Office E-mail: jli...@websense.com **
» Office tel: +1.858.320.9714
» Ham radio/FCC callsign: KD5TGZ (licensed since July 2002)
» Mailing address: 10240 Sorrento Valley Road
San Diego, California 92121
United States (What? you still write snail mails?)
» LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/jayliew
» FriendFeed http://friendfeed.com/jayliew
» Twitter http://twitter.com/jaysern
» Shelfari http://www.shelfari.com/jayliew

* To combat spam femme bots, I've used a combination of Javascript and CSS code to obfuscate my e-mail address. If you are having trouble viewing my email address, please enable Javascript and CSS on your browser.

** This email address is a reCAPTCHA puzzle, click on the three .'s to solve the CAPTCHA (while helping restore old book texts into digital format!)
Technical Publications
This section is reserved for and contains materials I have or will publish for public consumption.

» Title: The Probability That A Matrix Of Integers Is Diagonalizable
» Abstract: The presenters investigate the question of the probability that a randomly chosen n by n matrix over the integers is diagonalizable. Such a probability is couched in terms of a variant on "natural density." Specifically, let n and k be positive integers, A(n,k) the number of diagonalizable n by n matrices over the integers with entries in the interval [-k,k], and B(n,k) the number of n by n matrices over the integers with entries in the interval [k,k]. Then, for fixed n, the presenters consider the value of A(n,k) / B(n,k) as k goes to infinity. To this end, they examine a (more computationaly amenable) lower bound on this probability by studying the number of n by n matrices over the integers in the interval [-k,k] that have n distinct eigenvalues.
This paper is also published in The American Mathematical Monthly's June/July 2007 issue (Vol.114 #6). * Online access requires MAA membership
Fun stuff!
Yes, this is my web page and I will post whatever I want to post. The following are a collection of links to places on the web that contain information I find interesting or useful. (or stuff that doesn't really fit anywhere else on this page)

Product Management

yep, I passed Pragmatic's Practical Product Management Certification Test

  1. Seven Traits of Successful Product Managers (Michael on Product Management & Marketing
  2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Product Managers - Webinar with Alyssa Dver
  3. How to be a GREAT Product Manager (Boxed Set with Bonus Features!)
  4. How To Be A Good Product Manager
  5. All About Product Management
  6. Silicon Valley Product Management Association
  7. The Agile Product Manager
  8. Product Marketing Blog by Steve Johnson (Pragmatic Marketing)
  9. (The) Pragmatic Marketing
  10. Product Development and Management Association
  11. Michael on High-Tech product Management & Marketing
  12. San Diego Product Management Association

Cloud computing, SaaS, PaaS, Web 2.0, mobile + internet, iPhone/Android

My Google App Engine scribble wall: http://liew.appspot.com (Update: Google sign-in now *required*—you can thank the spammers)

Y Combinator / Startup School

  1. Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

Ice Hockey

  1. Hockeyfights.com
  2. NHL's channel on Youtube
  3. San Diego Ice Arena
  4. Anaheim Ducks

American Mathematical Society's Mathematical Moments

  1. Aircraft Design
  2. Securing Internet Communications
  3. Routing Traffic Through the Internet
  4. Eye-dentifying Yourself
  5. Storing Fingerprints
  6. Deciphering DNA

Security research miscellaneous

I developed an application code-named Lexi-Rep (Lexical Reputation) used internally by security researchers at the Websense Security Labs. My research was demo'd by my CTO at a closed door security summit on the Yahoo campus. Read more here: http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=147581&f_src=darkreading_gnews

Excess time utilization

  1. How to Build a Computerized Android Robot Head for $600.00
  2. Building a megapixel digital camera from a flatbed scanner
  3. 747 Simulator - Virtual Flightdeck Project
  4. How to 0wn the Internet in Your Spare Time
  5. K3PGP Laser Radar Setup
  6. Cloudbounce Technical Information
  7. Don K.'s Laser Page
  8. Getting Started in Laser DX
  9. Build your own electronic lock with a key card
  10. Building an infra-red transmitter for your PC, the $1 solution

Geeky techie stuff for computer science nerds

  1. Hitchhiker's Guide to Biomorphic Software
  2. The Java Language Specification
  3. Timeline of the future (.PDF)
  4. How To Think Like A Computer Scientist
  5. SPARC Architecture Manual (.PDF)
  6. Far Eastern Economic Review
  7. A Way to Revolutionize x86 CPU Performance How multimedia and non-multimedia applications can benefit from MMX, SSE, and SSE-2
  8. Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory
  9. Disasters of programming errors in real life
  10. OpenVMS user's manual
  11. An Interview with the Old Man of Floating-Point
  12. The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine (.PDF)

People I admire .. hope to get to know and be friends with some day.

List of people, and some links to articles that captures slices of what I like about them.

Elon Musk

Max Levchin

Peter Thiel

Shai Agassi

Steve Jurvetson

Paul Graham

Ann Winblad

Carly Fiorina

Tina Seelig

Keith Ferrazzi

Chris Gardner

Timothy Sykes

Paulo Coelho

Steve Wozniak

David Maister

Mark Cuban

Jacques Brel (April 8, 1929 - October 9, 1978)

George Eastman (July 12, 1854 - March 14, 1932)

Randy Pausch (October 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008)

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Carl G. Jung's Psychological Type

I'm an ENTJ!

From Wikipedia: ENTJ (Extraversion, iNtuition, Thinking, Judging) is an acronym used in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) publications to refer to one of the sixteen personality types.

ENTJs often excel in business. They are assertive, outspoken, confident, outgoing, energetic, charismatic, fair-minded, and unaffected by conflict or criticism. However, other traits may lessen the impact of their strengths. They may appear argumentative, confrontational, insensitive, intimidating, and controlling. They can overwhelm others with their energy, intelligence, and desire to order the world around them.

Portrait of an ENTJ.

Miscellaneous trivia about me
My bookshelf
Update - I have recently found a decent social-networking site for book junkies called Shelfari. It's pretty neat. I probably won't be updating this book list here going forward. Check out my profile and bookshelf on Shelfari: http://www.shelfari.com/jayliew

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog


If you have yet to discover the magical return on investment from reading books, please make today a special day — get yourself a book and edumacate yourself. Below is a non-comprehensive list of books I have in my possession, which most of I have finished reading and felt thoroughly helpful. Looking back, these were the flavor of books I was solely focused on during my computer science college days. These days, my tastes have shifted more to business, entrepreneurship and strategy.
My favourite quotes
These are some quotes I read over and over to remind myself. I hope you may find them helpful, as much as I did.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. The danger lies in refusing to face the fear, in not daring to come to grips with it. You must make yourself succeed every time. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
— Eleanor Roosevelt

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
— Thomas Edison

You can have anything you want if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.
— Abraham Lincoln

As long as you're going to think anyway, think big.
— Donald Trump

The best way to have an edge is to live on one.
— Donald Trump

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly
— Robert Kennedy

Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.
— Martin Luther King Jr.

Illegitimis non carborundum. That's Latin for: Don't let the bastards grind you down.
— Gen. Joseph Stilwell

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
— Helen Keller

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
— Henry David Thoreau

There's no substitute for hard work. If you work hard and prepare yourself, you might get beat, but you'll never lose
— Nancy Lieberman-Cline

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
— Theodore Roosevelt, from a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910

You can give up, sure, but the truth is that when you give up, you have to live with that fact for the rest of your life. For me, living with having given up in tough times is a much worse fate than certain failure. If you fail, then by definition you have tried. But if you give up, you didn't.
— Jason Calacanis (article from Silicon Alley Insider)

There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstance permit. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses, just results.
— Art Turock

A lot of geeks are pale, bespectacled, wear dark clothing and don't get out much - the stereotype exists because it is very often true. I could pass for a non-geek but it would be inaccurate. As you get into your late twenties and thirties you get into the era of 'the revenge of the geek'. Geeks run the world. Condoleeza Rice is a geek, Bill Gates is clearly a geek, many of the big filmmakers and writers are geeks, lots of military people are geeks. Anyone who has heard Donald Rumsfeld talk about military hardware knows they are in the presence of a geek. Geeks use their powers for good and for evil.
China Mieville

Greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers things of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity freedom.
— Barack Obama

Trying seems to be a start for getting things done. You get to know the right way by doing it wrong
— Barbara Pack

It doesn't matter how many people don't get it. What matters is how many people do.
— Tim Ferriss

Robustness is when you care more about the few who like your work than the multitude who hates it (artists); fragility is when you care more about the few who hate your work than the multitude who loves it (politicians).
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb via Tim Ferriss

Freedom is just another word for entrepreneurship

You know what? Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another. School, then college, then work... Fuck that. And fuck the Air Force Academy. If I want to fly, I'll find a way to fly. You do what you love, and fuck the rest.
— Little Miss Sunshine

Every man dies, but not every man truly lives
— William Wallace

Make hay while the sun shines

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