A few days ago a lens was knocked out of my eye glasses.
After carefully putting the lens back and ensuring that everything is in shape, the glasses still produced weird optical distortion.
Finally, I realized that the lens is symmetric in boundary shape but asymmetric in optical axis, and I have put it upside down.
2018-01-21
Symmetric confusion
2018-01-17
2018-01-15
溫故知新
I heard this teaching about life-long learning from Confucius when I was a little kid, but it took time to appreciate what it really means. Instead of assuming we will continue to master what (we think) we already know, constant reviewing what is already there in our heads and help learning what is new in the future.
2018-01-03
Transformation (not sure good or bad)
What I told students prior to a major deadline:
10 years ago: you should work hard as there is little time left.
1 month ago: go for the Kobe Bryant jersey retirement if that is important for you (later – BTW I am glad that Kevin Durant made that game winning shot).
2018-01-01
Bean-counting
This has been a widely discussed topic, but when it comes to academic publishing, focus on quality over quantity.
Take my PhD adviser as an example. At this moment, he has “only” 27 journal papers and 40 conference papers according to dblp, but nearly 40000 citations, including 10+ papers with 1000+ citations, according to Google scholar.
In comparison, there are people around his seniority and in our fields (for calibration) with roughly 10-times publications but only one-tenth of citations.
(Citation is one of the mostly commonly used measure for quality/impact, but others are possible, such as products.)
He once told me that the best timing to publish papers is when people beg us to do so (using Brain Curless’ first SIGGRAPH paper as an example). That is probably too extreme, but publishing low quality papers not only wastes our time (it is better to go out and play) but also dilutes our reputation.
2017-12-31
Atiqullah
One of the best things I like about taking Uber/Lyft is to meet different people who are otherwise completely outside my ordinary social circles.
Some examples include a Mongolian lady who told me about the Mongolian birthmark, a reggae musician, an Iranian retiree, and an avid Trump supporter.
Today I met an Afghan who worked with the US military in Afghanistan as a translator and IT staff, and recently migrated to the US. The military helped him settled down with green card and other stuff like driver license. But since his family is around (including a new born daughter), instead of the military he is looking for civilian IT jobs, but without any luck so far due to lack of proper degrees.
(If I were to hire programmers or engineers I want to see what they can do instead of just certificates.)
I recommended him some CIA jobs (sent to me a while back for unknown reasons) such as security, information, engineering, and language.
2017-12-17
2017-11-26
Immigrant
A neighbor wants to remove a palm tree because it blocks the view and does not belong to northern California.
The tree has been there since the beginning of human settlement, and has grown very well.
Who can decide whether others belong?
I say whoever adapts, belongs.
2017-11-24
Thanksgiving
I would like to thank those who ever stabbed me in the back, because you have made me a better person.
I will live the rest of my days preparing that someday, somehow, someone will stab me again.