I will be able to see consequences of experiments that (even) I would normally not conduct.
🙂
2013-06-20
Silver lining of non-intentional screw-ups
2013-06-16
Sociability
Public speaking is the number one fear reported by people in the US.
Many people, at least in the US, like to go to parties.
For me, it is the exact opposite.
The bigger the audience, the easier I feel.
Giving a large conference talk is the most comfortable; I totally control the script and there are so many people that they become anonymous, blank, and non-human.
Teaching a class is slightly trickier; I am still in control but have to interact with students sometimes, potentially disrupting the flow and raising my awareness of their human presence.
Small talking in a social gathering is the most energy consuming; it is entirely ad hoc and I have to read people and react in real-time.
Is this extrovert or introvert? I guess it is something orthogonal. Maybe it is “sociability” before I can find a better term.
Around 38:00 mark on Hannibal season 1 Aperitif (at the end of Will Graham’s class on criminal psychology):
Jack Crawford: I also understand it is difficult for you to be social.
Will Graham: I am just talking. I am not listening to them. It is not social.
2013-06-14
Aromatic association of cities I have lived in more than 1 year
They say olfactory memory is the most visceral as it is within our primitive brains.
Taipei: soil within sidewalk pavement cracks
Kaohsiung: (strong) industrial waste water
Stanford: dry grass
Palo Alto: coffee
Mountain View: swimming pool chlorine
Emerald Hills: trees
Beijing: gun powder (sulfur)
Seattle: sea-weed/salt
Hong Kong: (humid) bean curd
2013-05-21
Lvdi Wang visiting HK
[People usually send out email announcements for visitors. But I find it very boring. So I am going to take a different approach that is more interesting and fits my style better.]
Lvdi Wang, a MSR Asia researcher in computer graphics, is visiting Hong Kong from June 8 to June 12, 2013. If you are a faculty or student who would like to meet with him, let me know.
Here are some reasons why it is to your benefit to meet him, especially if you are a student, and more so if you are a student working with me now.
Lvdi is a very smart guy. In fact, he is one of the smartest students I have ever worked with. You can benefit a lot from discussing with him about your research.
He is also a very nice guy, nicer than the usual kind of smart guys who could make you a bit uncomfortable.
[Look at his publications and photos under his website for the two points above.]
He is not my longest collaborator, but likely knows my style well enough to give some *happiness* guide, especially to my internal students. (I am not saying anyone should have any grievance given my liberal style; how many professors out there allow their students to work anytime anywhere? But just in case.)
You might want to ask him about “nothing is impossible”. I am going to quote from his case if you ever tell me “it is not possible to accomplish that”.
😀
2013-04-17
We are what we think we are
I heard some recent conversations among faculties about why they should not take the very top students because they might go somewhere else in the end.
WTF
If even you do not think you are the best, how could you make others believe in you?
I think I am as good as anyone out there, so my strategy is very simple: take (as my internal students) only those who are so good that I will regret for not taking. If they deflect to other places in the end, fine, because I will likely at least keep some of them. And even in the worst case I get no students, I can just single author SIGGRAPH papers. (I seriously miss the fun.) Or spend some time away living in Nepal. All these beat wasting time on not-so-good people, or worse, thinking I am one of them.
2013-04-02
Ancestry
According to my family history I am of northern Chinese descent. DNA analysis indicated that it might have to go a bit further north, across the Great Wall. Specifically, since my paternal haplogroup is C3*, it is closer to the Mongols than the Manchus (whose emperors carried C3c, a related but different thread). There is also a non-trivial chance that my Y-chromosome came from Genghis Khan, who has left a wide genetic footprint across the former Mongol empire.
To clarify, the paternal haplogroup only traces the Y-chromosome, not the entire ethnic composition. I am pretty sure it is not uncommon for northern Chinese to have some Mongolic blend.
Furthermore, my maternal haplogroup is D4e3 (likely coastal Chinese). So I am probably some combination of Mongolian and Han Chinese.
My grandfather once told me that our last name came from one of the seven warring states. Clearly, he thought we were (pure) Han Chinese. I am having fun imaging his reaction upon hearing his true ancestry.
I plan to use this to explain away my past and future behaviors.
😀
2013-03-25
Inertia
People tend to work on things which they have prior experiences with.
This is good for coherence; few have the talents to jump between completely unrelated things. But it can also be bad for creativity; we tend to lose the prospective after sticking around something for too long. Achieving the right balance is not easy, at least for me.
But it can become a bit easier with the presence of stern warning signs. It is time for me to move on, before it kills me.
Self: time to code the next new thing. Do not slack off. People are watching.
2013-03-15
Burnout
A recent PhD graduate whom I know well, who has been doing quite well in graphics research, just took a non-research job in a non-graphics position, among several postdoc offers from top research institutions.
The reasons he cited are numerous, but the 2 main ones are:
. He likes graphics research, but he is getting bored and tired of the SIGGRAPH game, including deadline crunch and dealing with reviewers.
. He would like to learn something new and try a different life style.
In a nutshell, I think he is burned out. I hope I have done my best to help him achieve work-life balance (I did that quite well myself, even when I was a grad student), but I guess it is just too hard for normal people to be much disciplined.
Then I realized that I probably also had some kind of burnout around my graduation. I took a non-research position as the first job, even though it was in a graphics company (NVIDIA). I also wanted to try learning new things (hardware architecture) and living a different style (engineer).
So I guess it is probably OK. People are not meant to be doing the same thing all the time. This is also why I like to try different job sectors and geographical locations.
There are two things to watch out, though, all based on my personal experiences: passion, and rust.
Passion
I have a very simple rule to choose jobs: do what you really like, and be very good at it.
Sometimes, when people get burned out, they might temporarily settle for something that they neither really like nor really be good at. But eventually, you will know if the job is not for you. I did not realize how much I like doing research until after I was not been able to spend enough time on it for about 3.5 years after my graduation.
The important thing is to get out there as quickly as possible. Otherwise, you will eventually become one of these people who are not really happy or good at their jobs but also cannot quit.
Rust
People tend to get rusty for skills that they have not practiced for a while. This is particularly so for advanced skills, like research.
So, make sure you do whatever you can to be active in research during your non-research job. Otherwise, you might not be able to come back, even if you want.
I have been trying my best to be engaged in research during my NVIDIA days. I even managed to publish a single authored graphics hardware paper. But it still took me about 2 to 3 years to get back in shape for SIGGRAPH after joining MSR. The difference between SIGGRAPH and other graphics venue is like the difference between playing professional sports and working out in a gym.
I guess SIGGRAPH is probably an extreme case, but I hope you get what I mean.
2013-03-03
Intrinsic
A really beautiful woman can shine without makeup or enhancement12.
A truly capable man can function without job title or institution13.
1Replace man and woman above with unisex nouns if you like. I do not mean to be a sexist; the sentences just flow better.
2To sense whether that someone is for you, see her true self; wake up early on a Sunday morning, sneak beside her bed, and watch her sleep.
3I spent my early childhood listening to my grandparents’ stories on how they survived WW2 and how untrustworthy governments can be. I became one of the few in my (and younger) generation with this innate distrust of institutions. (Self psycho-analysis indicated this is a main source of my inclination towards individualism + self-reliance and my philosophical difficulty working in a company.) If you have no idea what I am talking about, try “Wealth, War and Wisdom” by Barton Biggs. (The book succeeded in conveying the sense of institutional distrust, even though I do not agree with all the points.)