Confessions of a researchaholic

2023-04-16

Outside the mandates

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 10:15 pm
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Recently, during the preparation for an invited talk on a topic I have been working on for a while, I realized that even though I am familiar with the topic, I have yet to organize my thoughts into a coherent story, and I am glad that this invited talk motivated me to do just that.

Giving academic talks is outside my current main job duties and thus I wouldn’t be as incentivized to do that as teaching courses as an university professor or shipping products as an industry researcher.
But this experience made me realize that there are activities outside our official job mandates that can still benefit our careers in a less direct way or in a longer run.

2023-04-09

Compsite sketch

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 7:59 pm
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After two quick pencil-on-paper sketches around the de Young Museum I came back home later to draw a digital composite.

Left: attempt to draw a sculpture in the Kehinde Wiley exhibition but it was too dark for me to continue

Up: quick sketch of a Mayan effigy vessel

Right: quick sketch of a guy sitting on the grass inside the Shakespeare garden

Bottom: attempt to draw a dog near the guy above but had to leave

The potential of being on both SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia technical papers PC in the same year

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 10:40 am
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I have already served on the SIGGRAPH 2023 technical papers program committee and just got asked to do that for SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 as well.
I have not yet decided (at this moment of writing) whether to turn down the latter or do both at the same year, but either will be the first time in my career, and I will feel bad about potentially disappointing the paper chairs or spending another month’s worth of evenings of reviewing papers.

2023-04-06

Benefits of reviewing papers

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 2:44 pm
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Reviewing papers can take a lot of time and effort, but also has the following benefits:

It is a good way to build reputation and relationship with the research community by writing an informative opinion on time and participating in the discussions to reach the final recommendation.

If you submit to a venue, it is only fair to review for that venue, especially if you have complained that your submissions have not received good/fair reviews due to lack of expertise or efforts from the reviewers.

It is a good way to learn about the latest research, as you might not feel pressured to keep up to date with the latest research in your day job otherwise.
Writing a good review (see above) requires deep enough understanding of the paper beyond the usually cursory glance at the published papers.

It is a good way to learn how to get your own submissions accepted in the future by looking at how decisions are made and what the reviewers are looking for.

Accept only reviews that you think you have the time and expertise to do a decent job, and do not feel bad about declining reviews, preferably within a few days of receiving the request with suggestions for alternative reviewers so that the organizers can find replacements in time.
Other things being equal, prioritize review requests from higher-quality venues for which your reviews would tend to make a relatively bigger impact.

2023-04-04

Motion graphics with Chinese characters

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 10:23 pm
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The idea behind this experiment came to my mind while I was reading about futurism typography.

2023-03-29

ACM authorship policy

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 2:41 pm
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So ACM is updating their authorship policy in response to generative AI tools.
You can find more about that in this survey.

I do wonder, though, what if a paper is written entirely by AI without any humans involved?

2023-03-26

Optometry visit

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 8:58 pm
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I manually traced the vector contours over the photographs captured by my mom to highlight the cute hand gestures and facial expressions of my niece performed during an optometry visit.

Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 5:49 pm
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I went to see this exhibition today and was astonished by the details and accuracies of these large scale oil paintings and bronze sculptures made all within the past two years!
How did the artist accomplish such combination of care, size, and speed?

2023-03-25

Adobe Firefly

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 6:37 pm
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Had fun with Firefly
I particularly like
the textured text styles.

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