During a dream on Oct 10 2023 morning I saw a guy with a hair that can flip open from the back like a carpet to reveal his scalp.
October 13, 2023
October 11, 2023
Bengali fish curry
Sometimes I looked at the company lunch menu even when I was not in the office, to feel a sense of connection and anticipation.
https://youtube.com/shorts/8w3jOkLL5vk
October 9, 2023
Katalin Kariko on perseverance
Very inspirational story on how to deal with setbacks (focus on what is next and do not hold grudge).
Comparatively I have had a much easier career.
October 8, 2023
Squashes
Inspired by some squash arrangements I saw in a company cafeteria, I realized that I could draw a few individual squashes and rearrange them later for different compositions.
Cafe Zoe
Visited this local cafe for a photography exhibition and drew some patrons sitting outside afterwards.
October 6, 2023
Waiting in line
As long as I have a drawing surface with me (e.g., a sketchbook or a smart phone with a drawing app), I can observe people around without getting bored during idle times.
October 3, 2023
A tree in the wind
[The post title has nothing to do with the content below, but it was suggested by GitHub co-pilot and I decided to keep it for fun.]
In addition to convenience/portability, another advantage of using a mobile phone as the drawing surface is discretion: I can draw in public without attracting much attention as people will think that I am just another cell-phone user, which is not the case with a tablet or a canvas.
Does anyone still remember physical paper submissions?
I heard some PhD students making fun of the SIGGRAPH dual/conference track format of (at most) 7 pages of texts and figures plus 2 pages of figures only, thinking it is something “new”.
They are too young to realize this is not new at all, and probably very old.
Before I even started my PhD program, the proceedings (1) were physically printed and (2) had separate color pages to reduce costs.
So it was common for people to put all their color figures at separate pages in the end of the paper.
I also remember that the first few times I submitted papers to SIGGRAPH, I had to mail in 6 copies of printed papers and VHS tapes for videos early enough so that they would arrive at the conference office before the deadline (while also late enough to maximize the time I can work on the submissions).
Imagine the horrors of debugging ink-jet printers and video production software/hardware in the 1990s.
I heard the story (not confirmed) that Dennis Zorin (when he was a PhD student) and (his then adviser) Peter Shroeder had a Fedex guy waiting in their office while finalizing their submission(s).
I even hand carried all the physical materials from MSR Asia’s submission to SIGGRAPH 2006 in a large suitcase (like a smuggler) and flew from Beijing to Redmond to reduce the total shipping time.
Nowadays, we can submit everything electronically at the last minute prior to the deadline, with network bandwidth/latency/reliability being the only bottleneck.