What to do with about 10 minutes before the train arrived?
Adding some colors, even just rough regions, can greatly enhance the visual appeal of a sketch.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/217024435/PortraitsMotoGStylus2025/modules/1236093195
January 16, 2025
January 13, 2025
January 10, 2025
Baby driver
Bumped into this movie on a long flight as I was looking for something light and entertaining amidst external noise and internal drowsiness. It turned out to be much better than I thought, essentially a (rap) musical wrapped in actions instead of a mindless action flick.
A good movie is like a novel research project; one never knows apriori what it really is about or feels like, not from the title, synopsis, or even the trailer, until completing it.
January 7, 2025
Community piano
Saw and photographed this cute community piano on September 24 2024 and finally got a chance to add some motion graphics to it.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/216256361/CommunityPiano
January 5, 2025
Straightforward mystery
I was mystified by the code structure of a repo until realizing that I was on the wrong branch.
January 4, 2025
Painting style LoRA experiment
Watercolor painting and pencil sketching style experiments (conducted during company shutdown with some spare time and compute).
- Download tens of art works from my dad’s FB page.
- Train a LoRA over this ink style model.
- Generate outputs via prompts similar to the painting titles from the aforementioned FB page.
A few results look interesting while most are uncanny or boring.
My dad commented that AI cannot replace human artists.
January 2, 2025
Dinner after train 666
At the departing station for their evening train, he thought about ordering a meal box, but she preferred going for a restaurant at the destination station.
Upon arrival her original choice had a 20-minute wait, so they went to a nearby alternative.
It was slightly passing his usual dinner time, so he lost patience waiting for the food.
She looked flustered, but the food arrived soon after.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/215937081/SoftTrainNumber
The vegetarian by Hang Kang
I read this book for the first time in 2016 after it won the Booker prize, and re-read it again during a recent period of no internet access.
The story centers around a woman who started by refusing to eat meat and gradually transitioned into refusing to eat anything at all as she believed she is becoming a plant. The book is divided into three parts from the perspectives of three different characters: the husband, the brother-in-law, and the sister of the main character. The plot is very imaginative and sensational (Korean pop style), especially the second part, while the third part is much darker and meditative.
The book is a good read, but I am not sure about the Nobel literature prize.
Funeral
A funeral is more for the living to bound than for the dead to transition.
The start of the year at an isolated place.
It is the morgue’s interest to have a long and elaborate funeral.
3-part incantation by 3 monks for 3 hours.
If a spirit keeps attaching to me after the funeral, will it show up behind me during a virtual conference call?
Many family members spent a lot of time chatting, while some sat there staring blank.