I haven’t figured out how to control the spread and mixing of watercolor painting (physically or digitally), and thus conducted this experiment to use clipping masks for regional control using a mushroom that I spotted in the neighborhood.
March 16, 2025
March 13, 2025
Pleasant surprise by a party companion
I have been to three main types of parties serving food: buffets, small bites, and sit-down meals.
Buffets offer maximum flexibility as I can walk around eating whatever and talking to whomever.
I usually have difficulty with small bites as I don’t know what, when, and where will be carried by the waiters.
Sit-down meals tend to have the best quality, but also be most time-consuming and least flexible.
However, in a recent sit-down party, I was seated next to someone who has an unexpectedly interesting background as program managers working for several major tech companies. I learned about stuff that I wouldn’t usually hear from other researchers/engineers.
I guess this is one example benefit of stochastic sampling in social events.
February 18, 2025
Holiday time for exploratory fun
Monday the 17th is a holiday and I was pondering whether I should start a work task that I aimed to finish by the end of the week or spend time on more exploratory research. I decided to go for the latter as I realized that during my usual workdays I often feel enough obligation towards my collaborators for the former and I am the only one who can push myself for the latter.
My decision turned out to be correct for this particular one, as on Monday I had some fun tinkering with \href{https://glicol.org/}{computer music language} (that I have zero background with) and on Tuesday I immediately hit on issues that required responses from my colleagues upon starting the work task.
And I also spent some time doing some silly doodling:
February 16, 2025
Sports-themed Sunday
While walking to visit this sports-themed exhibition at SFMOMA today before its closing, I noticed some black-chauffeured cars in the neighborhood and realized that the NBA All-Star weekend was happening around.
February 10, 2025
Scam Inc
Fascinating podcast series of the scam industry located in the Thailand-Myanmar border, from the victims (whose psychological weak spots are exploited), the scammers (who often deceived job seekers), to the crime syndicate behind.
This BBC report provides a good visual on the ground.
February 1, 2025
Sticky rice ball
A sticky rice ball with a fried dough stick and sweet or salty filling is a traditional breakfast in Taiwan.
January 29, 2025
Pencil-style experiment with structural reference
Pencil-style experiment following this earlier one with structural reference via line-art ControlNet, essentially drawing portraits of one family member via the artistic style of another.
January 26, 2025
Single-authored SIGGRAPH submission from a recent collaborator whom I have yet to meet in person
I just looked at a single-authored SIGGRAPH submission from a recent collaborator (with a first-authored SIGGRAPH paper before even getting into a graduate degree program), intentionally after the deadline to ensure that I wouldn’t be tempted to contribute anything to his solo effort (as I just did) before the review process.
I like the work and hope it will get accepted so that we could finally meet in person at the conference.
(Hopefully the Canadian visa would be easier to obtain than the US equivalence, as otherwise he would not have any co-author to present the paper.)
January 25, 2025
Spilling tortilla chips
She spilled the bag of tortilla chips all over the place.
He sighed, and later realized that he should have made a humorous comment.