Confessions of a researchaholic

2026-01-15

Pottery

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 9:49 pm
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For someone starting 3D modeling digitally—not counting the pottery class as a kid when he spent most of the time throwing clay to the ceiling—he found manual modeling to be both challenging and satisfying. The challenge came from technical precision (e.g., wedging the clay to the right stiffness, centering the clay on the wheel for throwing, trimming the clay to the right shape, and glazing the clay to the right combination of layers and colors), while the satisfaction arose from intuitive direct manipulation and the visceral feeling of clay in hand.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DTj650-lkIv/

2026-01-12

Cold water exercise

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 1:29 pm
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The swimming pool was cold, no longer heated after the winter heating was turned off due to budget cuts. So he did some high-intensity exercises for about an hour to warm up before spending fifteen minutes (about a quarter of his usual swimming time) in the cold water.

The initial shock felt more like pain than cold, but it subsided after a few laps. It felt rewarding afterwards, especially with the hot spring soaking.

He then took a cold-water shower while waiting for the hot water to gradually arrive, experiencing similar cycles of sensations.

2026-01-05

Post-holiday rust

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 10:19 am
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After a holiday, he returned to work and started with implementing a new feature as a warm-up.
After merging the first pull request, he realized it was buggy — he had forgotten to test another major aspect of the prototype — and ended up needing three more pull requests to complete the job.

2025-12-27

Book computer dream

Filed under: Imaginary — liyiwei @ 7:43 pm
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I was about to give a presentation but couldn’t find the file. I searched the computer/tablet which I planned to present with only to find it to be in the form factor of a book, and I scratched through the pages of computer circuits and components.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DSytL0hkopG/

2025-11-30

Home alone in a gloomy weekend morning

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 10:42 am
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is a good chance to see whether you are a good companion to yourself.

2025-11-29

Two bronze sculptures

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 5:45 pm
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Two bronze sculptures by two artists in two separate exhibitions in adjacent gallery rooms at the Cantor Arts Center, both used the female body to express the artists’ perspectives on culture and feminism.

The two exhibitions are both very interesting and worth visiting.
Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior shows intricate drawings, paintings, sculpture, and motion graphics by the Pakistani-American artist exploring themes of identity and cultural hybridity.
Cunning folk displays artifacts, notably detailed etchings, of magical/folk-lore practices.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DRsFje7D7KC/


2025-11-02

Hannah Cairo disproved the 40-year-old Mizohata-Takeuchi conjecture

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 11:16 am
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Most kids don’t like math, but this one managed to love it enough to self-teach advanced topics and eventually disprove a long-standing conjecture in harmonic analysis while still in high-school.
She treats math as art and it reflects on the way she designs her presentations and probably also approaches problems.



2025-11-01

Día de los Muertos at Davies Symphony Hall

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 5:03 pm
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I was aware of this unique event a few months back but didn’t get a chance to see the detailed program until the morning of the performance day. After sampling a few pieces and finding them engaging, I bought some of the last remaining seats. The performance was uniquely Latin American, with a mix of musical pieces and dance/costume movements.



2025-10-25

Gerrymandering and math

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 3:04 pm
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California’s proposition 50 turned out to be one of the most challenging voting issues that I have encountered, taking me a few days to think through. In the end it boiled down to this: if someone did a bad thing, should we do another bad thing to counter it?



During the process I also encountered some interesting related research, such as this podcast about math and redistricting (and social science more generally).

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