Confessions of a researchaholic

2013-06-30

How to keep motivated

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 12:05 pm
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[My attempt to answer the question “I can’t keep myself always motivated in research, and I wonder what’s your method to do so?”]

I am actually not sure how to answer this, because I take it for granted. It is like someone asking you how to keep motivated in eating or sleeping.
But let me try.

Interest

Lack of motivation is usually a sign for lack of (genuine) interest.
If research is not what you really want to do for yourself, you are wasting your life; do something else instead, before it is too late.

Competition

The world is becoming increasingly competitive. People in your fields are getting better faster than, say, how Shanghai has changed in just 20 years.

Would your future prospect (in job, family, etc.) be enough to keep you always on the edge? If not, I cannot save you from being doomed into eternal mediocrity.

2013-06-26

Time transfer

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 1:47 pm
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Summer tends to be boring and slow. I wish I could transfer June to August into the end of December. Winter is much more exciting but tends to run faster than I can catch.

PS
If you are my collaborator and you try to take a summer break, you will regret in the winter. Just mark my word.

2013-06-20

Silver lining of non-intentional screw-ups

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 5:13 pm
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I will be able to see consequences of experiments that (even) I would normally not conduct.
🙂

2013-06-16

Sociability

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 10:54 am
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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

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 8:01 am
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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

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 4:41 pm
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[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

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 7:41 pm
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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

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 11:25 pm
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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

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 7:18 pm
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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.

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