Confessions of a researchaholic

2025-05-26

Animated brushes

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 8:38 pm
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Animated brushes (e.g., AmberDraw) and motion brushes (e.g., Adobe Fresco) are complementary ways to “draw” single-frame animations.
Recently I have had a lot of fun experimenting with the former, either creating animations from scratch or adding animated brushes over a static drawing.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DKJCGO5xhdY/

https://www.instagram.com/kub1ai/p/DKGbzm1xMiv/

https://www.instagram.com/kub1ai/p/DKGbtKgRL4l/

https://www.instagram.com/kub1ai/p/DJ2lz9WSjDt/

https://www.instagram.com/kub1ai/p/DJ2ljWgSpkM/

https://www.instagram.com/kub1ai/reel/DJlLgXYOmWh/

https://www.instagram.com/kub1ai/reel/DJkv9BOSXcr/

2025-05-25

Slow motion

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 11:29 am
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I realized a while back (maybe during my teen years) that my brain tends to move too fast for by body to catch up, causing fast (and thus unclear) talking, hand writing, and body movements.

The instructor of one of my physical classes also made similar comments, so today I performed one these forms in a super slow motion. It was more physically demanding (as I need to hold each position longer) but also more mentally relaxing (as I can focus inside myself).

AI, job, and creativity

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 9:03 am
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[After watching this YouTube video about people pivoting to blue collar jobs due to AI]

Let’s say AI replaces or discourages certain creative tasks (like writers or artists).

Eventually nobody is willing to or able to perform such tasks, or only a few highly skilled people can and will.

And then only the AI can create such artifacts, like novels or paintings.

Would such creations just regurgitates of the original human creations? If so, would we lose forever the capability to create something really new?

Or have the humans already lost the capability to create something new, and are just recombining existing ideas?

And/or like all past technological advancements, AI will help us open new ways to create things that we have never imagined before?

2025-05-05

Unnoticed review assignments

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 5:33 pm
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Upon noticing a reminder email about upcoming reviews due for a conference 3 days ago, I realized that I haven’t received any prior notifications about the assignments and thus haven’t started reading the papers yet. It is not a good form to miss reviews, especially for a conference that I previously chaired, so I spent an intense long weekend reviewing these submissions.

2025-05-02

Fresh paint on the train platform

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 8:01 pm
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While waiting for the train I saw some workers painting an area of the platform with bright green color, which looked fresh, vibrant, and cheerful.
Unlike more complicated paintings that we might be self-conscious about quality, a simple rectangular region provides less room for worries.

I came back to the same spot 2 days later and found the painted areas marking spots for bike boarding, which should be helpful to let the passengers know where the bike trains will stop.


2025-04-15

Early deaths of former colleagues

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 5:50 pm
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While waiting for an evening train I noticed a familiar face in this recommended article on my mobile phone, and was shocked to discover that two of my former MSR Asia colleagues are among the deceased.

I don’t know how much their deaths are related to the work pressures, but it is a good reminder that we should take care of our health.
There is a certain truth that “pain is temporary, suck is forever”, but none of these matters if one is not even around.

2025-04-09

Genius Makers

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 8:32 pm
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I highly enjoy reading this book by Cade Metz as a brief history of machine learning (and mostly neural networks) and a tabloid on the main characters involved. You probably won’t learn much about the actual science, but you will likely be entertained and inspired.

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.


2025-04-06

MUNI to the de Young Museum

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 6:32 pm
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Instead of driving, I experimented with taking MUNI bus 28 to the de Young Museum from the Daly City BART station. The stop was right north of the Golden Gate Park entrance, and I can walk through the Rose Garden on the way to the museum. The bus has a pretty frequent service (every 12 to 15 minutes, not too bad relative to the bay area public transport standards), wasn’t much slower than driving by my own along the (usually jammed) 19th avenue, and I could take time sighting the street and observing the fellow passengers. The bus was quite bumpy though, but fortunately I was well conditioned from riding the mini-buses in Hong Kong.

There is another MUNI line 44 that can lead directly to the museum, which I plan to try next time.

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