Confessions of a researchaholic

2025-07-26

Pug into boiled egg

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 11:41 am
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I noticed that two of my recent quick sketches, one of a sleeping pug and another of an irregularly shaped boiled egg, have similar overall structures, and experimented to see how video generation would interpret their relationships.

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

2025-07-24

08d dial dream

Filed under: Imaginary — liyiwei @ 3:40 pm
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In my earlier morning dream, I was going to the TPE airport seeking to pay parking. They took only TWD but I only had USD.
Someone told me to dial 800 for help.
I looked at my (old style dial-only non-smart) phone and saw (the number/text) 08d.
I asked that person what this was, and they said it was for the 800 help line.
I then gradually woke up, feeling leg cramps and tightness.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DMtdiYJSC9B/
https://www.behance.net/gallery/231447175/Dreams/modules/1327348269

2025-07-20

Honey Bucket

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 11:36 am
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Walked by a Honey Bucket portable toilet and wondered how AI would interpret the logo.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DMVym75yeH2/

2025-07-19

English muffin pizza

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 10:19 am
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“English muffin pizza” means a pizza in the size of a muffin instead of a pizza topped with muffins.

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

2025-07-16

Pizza with ants topping

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 4:20 pm
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After a day of jury service and before attending an evening fitness class, he bought a box of pizza from a nearby pizza shop for dinner. He ate two pieces and brought the rest inside the box to the class.

When he arrived at home after the class, he found the pizza crawling with ants, and realized that he had left the pizza out for too long without refrigeration.

After a quick web search, he found that the ants are a potential source of protein, and that the pizza is still edible, so he washed away the ants and ate the pizza.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DMMCB9rsw-C/

2025-07-05

Impression of an artist selling paintings on the street

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 10:27 am
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While waiting for the traffic light near the intersection of Jefferson and El Camino Real on May 20 2025, I saw this artist in a hoodie and facial mask sitting against the wall outside a Whole Foods store, with several paintings and a sign that read “painting for sale”. I did a quick sketch on my mobile phone upon arrival at the Caltrain station, but could not figure out how to proceed it until today when I used it as a composition reference for Adobe Firefly text-to-image generation.

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

2025-05-11

Baby Cindy climbing kitchen cabinet dream

Filed under: Imaginary — liyiwei @ 10:14 am
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Depicting the (often very vivid) dreams I have is one way to hone creative processes and measure the advances of related technologies.

This is a dream that I had on May 2 2025 during which I saw my baby niece happily and agilely climbing the kitchen cabinet to get some snacks.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DJhZH91PWwB/

2025-04-07

Flattened rodent

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 10:30 pm
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A few days ago I noticed a dead rodent flattened on the driveway, so decomposed that it is hard to tell whether it is a rat, a mouse, a gopher, a mole, a vole, or something else.

I transferred the dead body to the compost bin via a pair of tree branches.

Today, after the garbage was collected, I found the dead body still stuck to the bottom of the bin. So I picked it up (via the same pair of tree branches), stuffed it inside a gopher hole nearby, and covered the hole with the surrounding soil.


2025-04-05

Artist versus communicator

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 7:19 pm
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My dad likes to make witful observations about international relations (one of his college majors). He made another one during our conversation this afternoon, which formed a very concrete picture in my mind.
I would like to visualize it with high quality and low latency, so I found a drawing that fits my mental structure with a quick web search, generatively expanded it via Photoshop, used it as reference for Adobe Firefly text-to-image generation, generatively replaced the top of the well in Photoshop, and finally added a decal over the frog’s back via Adobe Fresco.

This whole process took a significantly shorter amount of time than if I were to manually draw the whole thing.

I guess one distinction between a communicator and an artist (or a communicator mode versus an artist mode that could be switched within every individual depending on the needs and situations) is that the former has a pretty precise goal in mind and aims to complete the task as efficiently as possible, while the latter often starts without a clear goal and then gradually reaches the outcome via an iterative exploration process.

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