Confessions of a researchaholic

2023-05-04

Squid back brain

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 4:04 pm
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This is a story-let inspired by real-life events.

He likes to work out at the start of every day, without which he would could not ignite the engine of this body and mind and feels awful throughout the day.

Later last year, he started to notice some soreness at his lower back when he was dead-lifting.
He thought that was caused by misaligned posture, or maybe he is just getting old.

One night, while tossing and turning in bed, he accidentally felt a small lump at his lower back.
He went to see a doctor, who told him that it was a benign nerve tumor and he could either live with it or have it removed.

Later that night, he dreamed about the back lump trying to tell him that it was not an ordinary nerve tumor but an extension of his brain, which was formed after he ate some san-nakji (live octopus) during a recent trip to an Asian country known for that cuisine.
Specifically, since octopus was eaten a live, parts of the genes encoding distributed brains was spliced into his DNA along with his recent mRNA covid vaccination, which he injected per requirement just prior for the trip.

After some pondering, he opted to remove that lump, brain or not.
To the chagrin of the surgeon, he asked to take the lump home after the surgery, and ate for dinner, but cooked in a tako-yaki style, not raw like san-nakji.

As to whether the nerve tumor is really a brain, he does not know yet, but will see if he will become more or less creative and productive, especially for his lower body movement.
For now, at least he no longer feels the squeeze of the lump.

2023-04-30

Magnolia cone

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 9:26 pm
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Found in a two-mile walk in Palo Alto.

2023-04-26

Sketch creativity

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 7:30 pm
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It was told that I would be too run down to have meetings after the surgery, but I managed to come back 10 minutes prior to the start of the seminar and gave a live talk without any issues.
But just as a back-up plan, I also pre-recorded a rehearsal.

2023-04-23

PhD student recruiting philosophy

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 10:58 am
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Throughout my research career I have been very conservative in recruiting PhD students, especially for those whom I would be the (de facto) advisor.
(I am a bit more relaxed for hiring interns as the collaborations are shorter term and thus the risks are lower.)
I prefer to have deep involvement for each student and project, and the cost of having a student not suitable for independent research is higher than the risk of occasionally passing on a top candidate.

However, there are other professors/researchers out there who have been very successful in managing large groups.
So definitely go for that if your style is like a VC incubating startups, you have enough funding, and your projects require teamwork (e.g., one student probably is not going to build a new operating system or programming language).

2023-04-22

Happiest moments of the day

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 10:48 am
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My happiest moments of the day are when I finished my physical trainings, especially at weekend mornings, which made me realize that physical, mental, and relationship health are the most important things to me and everything else is icing on the cake.

2023-04-21

Office virtual background

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 9:50 pm
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Empirical evidence suggests that the best background for virtual meetings is a photo of my office taken at exactly the same camera view of my office webcam so that I will appear to be joining meetings from my office regardless of my actual physical location.

2023-04-18

Single review paper committee member

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 11:00 am
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It turns out that I only need to review one paper as a committee member for a top venue thanks to “the large number of IPC members”. (Cannot go any lower unless we want to list someone who does not review any paper as a PC member.)

Expanding the committee to include more members can lighten the individual workloads, but also reduce the visibility of each PC member for calibration purposes.
I wonder what the sweet spot would be as a function of the number of submissions and the number of PC members.
1 is definitely slow while 20 is high (based on my recent SIGGRAPH/SIGGRAPH-Asia PC experiences), while 4 to 8 feels about right to me.

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

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