Confessions of a researchaholic

2022-07-04

Kronberg

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 11:28 am
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Upon arrival at FRA I learned that my connection flight to PRG was delayed to the next day, so I took Lufthansa’s offer for free taxi rides and hotel stay in Kronberg, which turned out to be a very nice town with a historical district (including a castle) and nice restaurants.

2022-07-01

Dead bee

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 10:26 pm
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Another dead insect!

https://youtu.be/WPwgHdUTepk

2022-06-25

California prionus

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 8:26 pm
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Summer time all kinds
of bugs play their symphony
in the bushes and trees

2022-06-24

Crane fly

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 9:31 pm
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The large size of this insect eased the observation for sketching.

2022-06-22

Midjourney

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 4:03 pm
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I did some experiments with Midjourney’s prompt-based image generation.
(I am glad that the site imposes GPU compute constraints as otherwise I might be tempted to spend endless time exploring the rabbit hole.)

The first one came from a real life experience I encountered the very same morning: A painting by Joan Miro of a laptop computer that still works after being cracked open by heat coming from the office window, after some iterations here is one I like:

The second one also came from a real-life experience, which I iterated to bring out the vegetables from: A vegetarian descendant of Genghis Khan

2022-06-18

Pavement cubes in Prague

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 9:22 pm
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I noticed that sidewalks in Prague are predominantly paved by the same types of stone/concrete cubes, whose size and shape might cause (or at least less effectively prevent) the underlying layer to gradually deform over time.
I also saw a construction worker manually put one cube next to another to pave a surface.
So I guess these cubes have low enough manufacturing/material costs (via economy of scale) without too high manual labor costs (low hourly wage for construction workers and/or the curved streets are less amenable for machine construction).

Striped sofa

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 5:39 pm
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The sofa has been around me for such a long time, asking when it will be drawn.

https://youtu.be/qkQSwF7IrEs

2022-06-17

Monumental reckoning

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 10:37 pm
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Initially I thought these black objects were some kind of construction cones surrounding the plinth only to find out that they are artworks representing African slaves facing the (now empty) space occupied by the (now removed) sculptor of Francis Scott Key.

2022-06-12

Kline coffee dripper

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 10:26 pm
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The hissing sound of a coffee machine inspired the design of this motion graphics.

https://youtu.be/FN1eNb61ARM

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