Confessions of a researchaholic

January 2, 2025

Dinner after train 666

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 8:04 pm
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At the departing station for their evening train, he thought about ordering a meal box, but she preferred going for a restaurant at the destination station.

Upon arrival her original choice had a 20-minute wait, so they went to a nearby alternative.
It was slightly passing his usual dinner time, so he lost patience waiting for the food.
She looked flustered, but the food arrived soon after.


https://www.behance.net/gallery/215937081/SoftTrainNumber

The vegetarian by Hang Kang

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 8:00 pm
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I read this book for the first time in 2016 after it won the Booker prize, and re-read it again during a recent period of no internet access.

The story centers around a woman who started by refusing to eat meat and gradually transitioned into refusing to eat anything at all as she believed she is becoming a plant. The book is divided into three parts from the perspectives of three different characters: the husband, the brother-in-law, and the sister of the main character. The plot is very imaginative and sensational (Korean pop style), especially the second part, while the third part is much darker and meditative.

The book is a good read, but I am not sure about the Nobel literature prize.

Funeral

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 2:47 pm
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A funeral is more for the living to bound than for the dead to transition.

The start of the year at an isolated place.

It is the morgue’s interest to have a long and elaborate funeral.

3-part incantation by 3 monks for 3 hours.
If a spirit keeps attaching to me after the funeral, will it show up behind me during a virtual conference call?

Many family members spent a lot of time chatting, while some sat there staring blank.


December 31, 2024

Shell scripts

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 7:03 pm
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Try to use bash instead of source to execute scripts in separate shell environments, especially in a nested fashion to avoid side effects, such as variable pollution and exit status propagation that could lead to mysterious bugs.

December 30, 2024

Flipped middle toe

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 9:15 pm
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Draw from an earlier dream partially reflecting a jammed toe in reality.


December 16, 2024

Facial “lotion”

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 9:42 pm
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The facial “lotion” that I have been applying in the past fortnight turned out to be cleansing gel.


December 15, 2024

Target-aware light projection

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 6:46 pm
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Went to watch Let’s Glow SF 2024 across several sites and found the effects to be most impressive when the content is customized with respect to the structure of the target display (e.g., virtual clock tower on the physical ferry building).

December 14, 2024

Art papers

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 6:07 pm
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I took a look at the art papers in SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 primarily due to the unusual preface and, to a lesser extent, the much lower (and thus more precious) number (28 only!) and acceptance rate (15.9%) than the technical papers program.

Unlike the technical papers which have clearer review criteria (novelty, importance, utility, readability, reproducibility, ethics, etc.), I agree with the art papers chair that it is not clear what is an art paper, not least a good one. I found some of the papers interesting in the technical or philosophical perspectives, while some others left me scratching my head. But I guess this is what art is in general – more about expressing/sharing novel viewpoints/experiences than scientific discoveries or practical utilities.

December 12, 2024

A post of insignificance

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 4:25 pm
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Just walked up to the 15th floor and found my PhD adviser sitting in a cubicle before returning to my office on the 8th floor.

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