Confessions of a researchaholic

2021-03-31

Total return swap

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 10:27 am
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I listened to this WSJ podcast about recent block selling from some banks caused by a total return swap.

Apparently, it is possible to structure financial instruments into various forms as long as there are counter parities on each side.
In that particular case, a bank purchased a set of stocks and swapped the variable return (dividends and capital gains/losses) with a fixed return, and had to sell the assets when the counter party failed to pay for capital losses, causing further downward spiral.

2021-03-30

Rag on a handle

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 10:13 pm
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I guess it is a sign of lockdown that I would sit in front of a refrigerator and draw this.

2021-03-27

Dying baby maple

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 5:05 pm
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It showed sign of surviving a transplant last year but appeared to be dead now.

2021-03-25

Butterfly cut

Filed under: Imaginary — liyiwei @ 9:15 pm
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The idea came to my mind immediately after the evening training.

2021-03-23

Animated logo

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 9:08 pm
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This is an experiment with Spark logo-maker and Fresco motion.
I plan to add an animation driven by a black-white Character Animator puppet.

2021-03-22

NFT art

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 3:15 pm
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Some information that I have found helpful in understanding the recent NFT art phenomena.

A good NPR podcast introducing NFT.

CNN on NFT art boom.

NFT is obviously not the first asset bubble.

Beeple’s 69-million NFT, and why the buyer thought it is worth the price.

Aaron Hertzmann’s article about the similarities and differences between traditional and NFT arts.

An NFT is essentially a URL and the block-chain does not store the artwork itself.

As expected, one of the major NFT art exchanges may have security issues, even though their system does not seem to be compromised.

The auction process may be off the blockchain but with reduced computation and energy consumption.

2021-03-21

Perfume bottle

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 2:10 pm
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This is my first modeling with Blender after a real physical perfume bottle.

2021-03-17

Gyoza

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 9:06 pm
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Some exercise in drawing and motion.

2021-03-14

Dogfooding

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 7:23 am
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Literally!

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