atypicalset -- 亦云?

"hello world\n"

2008-10-21T20:19:00.002-04:00

geeks rock, in UCSD :)

wall~e~

2008-08-01T23:53:00.004-04:00

It's been a memory loss since I was last in a movie theater. Catching Wall~E~ (read with pauses and curled tones) before he disappears into DVD was worth a TGIF evening.

He is at least 700 years old, inquisitive, persistent, sentimental, and more than a little lonely.

Love, life -- the theme contains simple things of universal pursuit, and has been laid out well.

small pleasures at the Guggenheim

2008-04-13T22:56:00.005-04:00

I spent the Sunday afternoon off at the Guggenheim. The main attraction was the impressive "I want to believe" by Cai Guo-Qiang, which certainly warrants another post (soon hopefully). I almost walked out of the museum door before half-heartedly picked up a museum catalog -- and that drew me back to the 3rd floor annex for the Karl Nierendorf collection. It seemed at first sight to be "just another dose of modern art" but ended up exceeding the modest expectation. There were several sparkles from a rather extensive Paul Klee collection along with his peers that very much placed thing in historical context.
Another one that attracted my eyes with the vibrant colors and shapes was Kandinsky's Small Pleasures (Kleine freunden). Pleasures are colorful, they come in all different shapes, and the overall picture is a mess once life is full of them! Aren't we all constantly indulging in many small pleasures: cook a few experimental dishes, read the economist, surf facebook, take pictures, post them to flickr and watch the new comments with excitement, read the audiobook Long Tail while waiting for my train ride, secretly taking note that most of my likes and dislikes are also in the "long tail", and spending a spring afternoon watching urban flowers, and fill my brain with imaginative museum pieces. Why not?

Paradise and the Peri

2008-04-07T23:36:00.020-04:00

what is this, a free ad? yes, you smart. I'm singing this oratorio with the hudson valley singers in two weeks, and why not use my uncensored (and also unread) internet corner for a little publicity?

Only recently did I read and understand this epic oriental story. Making lists is a cliche way of summarizing experiences, let me put up with three items of threes for now:
There were three layers of stories in Thomas Moore's original Lalla Rookh: the traveling princess and the poet-storyteller, the quest by the Peri, and the three human stories intertwined with the Peri's own fate. Reminds me of the Arabian Nights. Three different artistic flavors in the original English, translated German, and the musical language, all more or less foreign to my ears. What I only heard in CD and has yet to be seen, is the magic coordination that Eugene make out of the three parts: the soloists, the orchestra, and us the chorus.

I'm proud to be part of this creation -- from a corner of the second soporanos, and I look forward to the performance:

What	Paradise and the Peri, an Oratorio by Robert Schumann
Who	Eugene Sirotkine, Conductor; Soloists - Carissa Castaldo, Natalya Kraevsky, MaryAnn McCormick, John Bernard, David Eckstrom and Robert Garner; Hudson Valley Singers, Chorus; New York Metamorphoses Orchestra
When	Saturday, April 26, 2008, 7 PM
Where	New York Society for Ethical Culture 2 West 64th Street (at Central Park West), NYC

Tickets? just email me or leave a comment here for a discount :)

Finally, I'd like to share a vivid listening experience by 张一帆 (in Chinese) three visual dipictions of the original poem, coutesy of J. Vail. Both of which I very much enjoyed.

left to right: Peri, Peri and the fallen warrior, Peri and lover's last sigh.

the "kite runner"s

2008-03-27T00:57:00.003-04:00

I meant the 2003 best-selling novel and the recent film, of course.
Did not want a picturesque movie image that was plastered all over the web, and found the cheerful cartoon boy.

This is a reading note long overdue. With Hoseinni's second book lying on my cabinet with cover turned, I was afraid that my words for "Kite Runner" and its movie adaptation would decay to epsilon and overwhelmed by the new readings if I don't put something down now.

Both are beautiful. But maybe I saw the film when I was at ~20% down the book and I knew almost nothing about Afghan or central-Asian culture, I felt that many important cues were missing from the brief visual account. For example, what is different being a Pashtun or a Hazara, why are kite-running important, the backgrounds and culture that lies behind to answer "why" for the happenings. I enjoyed both presentations, nonetheless, and much more for the book for its simple language and authentic Afghan narratives. Borrowing a literary cliche from my old chinese textbooks: most characters (except Amir) are flat in the film, but they are three-dimensional in the book. They laugh, they cry, they think, ... and you are with them there.

On the other hand, this book, together with "China Road" mentioned earlier and the Iranian film Persepolis, gave me a fresh angle towards nationalism, globalization vs separatism ... but that would be the topic of another post.

Crossroads of the West

2008-02-16T00:12:00.003-05:00

"Crossroads of the west"
-- does anyone recall the origin of this phrase? Similar to the game of 50-state license plates, this is part of my game of the state quarters.
-- no surprisingly, this is the tag line for Utah, the fifth and last 2007 quarter that made its way onto my collector map.

Let me also peruse this excuse to restart year 2008, why not: Chinese New Year isn't over yet, and I will be looking out for the first quarters imprinted with 2008 :) Of course shrugging off disappointments in 2007 and early 2008 and indulging in a few new wishes would also be nice. Say, actually visiting the marvelous sceneries in Utah, or the attainable: gathering all state quarters, only five more to go :)

Tomorrow will be another sunny day, for sure.

the half-decay periods of blog ideas

2008-02-11T22:46:00.002-05:00

Once a while, an itch to write creeps up -- be it inspired by reading, stimulated by travel, or stung by actual or imaginary mosquitoes. Some ended up being a post on an infrequent blog, like this one; some continued to itch for sometime but ended up nowhere, like most.

I wonder how long the itches would last with the normal wear-and-tear of life. Is there a half-decay period for the urge to express in writing? The geek in me wanted to launch into a three-sectioned discussion about the nature of motivation, and what the internal fading and the external grinding can do to writing itches, while the blogger in me said that this is utterly unnecessary. The commonsense in me hopes that the happy thoughts and positive revelations would fade slowly, while frustrations, anger and disappointment would decay fast -- since they are supposed to just stay as itches, albeit being no less true to ourselves than any of the better feelings.

I had thought the revived blog would focus on external subjects such as books, films, gadgets, and maybe food and travel to come. This is certainly a diversion. This said, I am hoping to salvage and revive some of the nicer itches from over a month ago, and one thing about exponential decay is that it will never be exactly zero :)

superbowl xlii

2008-02-04T00:02:00.000-05:00

i've always been a fake soccer fan through a project in early grad school days. today i also certified myself as a fake football fan -- watched the superbowl xlii from beginning to end, and came to understand it quite a bit, towards the end.

american football is an accessible sport, by complete novelties and fake fans. someone said 10-yards-at-a-time is the way to american dream, quite true! and this takes a lot of strength, skills, courage, wisdom, teamwork ... and can be appreciated at any depth. being a fake fan, it suffices to enjoy the drama and the story of a winning underdog -- football is also round, at least in some directions! and btw, ny giants won, why not?

needless to say, this was my first game, with a joyful small crowd at jimeng and huiming's apartment ... bookmarked with this blog post :)

"China Road"

2008-02-03T23:34:00.000-05:00

I was driving along the east PA stretch of I-80, when the narration for Rob Gifford's China Road slowly filled the egg-shaped compartment of my bug2k, and completely occupied my heart. For the "ocean readers" (洋人), this book is a faithful first-hand travel account backed up by years of experience living and working in China. For me, one of the ordinary souls among the "old hundred names" (老百姓), I just cannot help but resonate with Gifford's vivid literal translations, candid descriptions and poignant observations. I helplessly found tears flood behind my glasses in one moment, and smile creep in with tears in the next.

Maybe it is the winding mountain roads, drab winter fields and isolated country houses that zoomed by my windshield, maybe it's the lonely long drive, maybe it is the chronic nostalgia ... but, does it matter? Big thanks to Wilson and Ming for recommending the wonderful book, and I shall go on to enjoy the remaining chapters.

skiing: left and right

2008-01-19T13:38:00.000-05:00

This photo was taken at the Boreal ski resort, right off the west stretch of I-80 in the Lake Tahoe area. It ended up getting the most comments from my friends among the ski set on Flickr -- maybe this is just the artifact of staying as the first picture on the photo page, but the experience in boreal was somewhat special.

What first puzzled me was the trail map: no explicit route was drawn to show the dozen-or-so ways to come down as what I used to seeing in the ski places around PA or NY. The reason soon became clear as I descended from the lift: there are probable routes, but there is basically unlimited possibilities for coming down! From the wide opening areas, to a impromptu detour via a side slop, to zooming by among the sliver-lined trees. The entire mountain is covered by a thick layer of powdery snow, and there are plenty of seemingly pristine grounds for my ski to leave a fresh trail on.

Now that I've finally tried the snow-covered slopes in both the "right" and the "left" coasts, I'd just say that the Californians are a spoiled bunch!

p.s. a group of my friends are speeding down Hunter Mountain today. I'm stuck at home writing code and figures, whining from a blog is a good outlet :-)

my china map ...

2008-01-15T14:24:00.001-05:00

long anticipated and resembling the earlier maps ... i hesitated for no time to get mine :)

create your own China map

a pet or not a pet

2008-01-10T23:53:00.000-05:00

Thought i'm as far away from a pet person as anyone can be ... but i just wasted at least half an hour upon following a pointer to Pleo, and am seriously tempted by this baby dinosaur.

wow!
He has instantly down-ranked of my diligent Romba on the robot gadget honor roll.

I'll probably even adopt one once he grows a bigger appetite (in terms of battery life). For now, I'll just waste more minutes watching him purr, sniff and tred around on youtube.

two very different art of management

2007-12-20T21:24:00.000-05:00

(1) "Zen and the art of research management"
I saw this article hanging in the hallway of a research institution when I interned a few years ago. It was a pleasant short read over a cup of coffee, and I thought: that's true wisdom of running a lab!

The article somehow crept back to my mind recently, but I just could not recall what the wisdom really was. So I asked Jian, who is currently interning there to find, take a picture and share it. He came back with bad and good news: the frame is no longer in the hallway, but there's a google book link containing it:
http://books.google.com/books?id=cIpZis5f0rMC&dq=zen+and+the+art+of+research+management&pg=PA223&ots=Rpcy1voOo-&sig=wy6nQ91RA8h6tTixjH4YW3yEjE4

Now I understood the reasons for taking it off the walls, after reading it again this time ... the idealistic research lab wisdom is no longer true, that institution isn't an exception either.

One more complaint ... google just hid from the book preview (in the past two weeks) my favorite part about a toy budget and the dark room for shocked accountants upon discovering it! alas.

(2) "Mao and the Art of Management" This one is a sarcastic holiday entertainment.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=10311230

Mao is on the cover of the Economist this week .. fashioning a Chirstmas hat, followed by a sarcastic short article on how his art of management should set examples for struggling modern executives. There are many unsupported claims, amid the many places of black sarcasm that made me laugh and sigh (as a China native, naturally).

well, "the single most important lesson: if you can't do anything right, do a lot" ;)

"Ratatouille" and "Enchanted"

2007-12-18T10:32:00.000-05:00

Two fairy tales -- in real-life human shape and animated mice.

It is easy to get enchanted with the disney simple story, complying laugh with the occasional scratch of our common itches, and leave the theater light-hearted. It is also easy to indulge in the delicious culinary tricks towards the making of ratatouille, the ups and downs of the plot, and numerous humorous remarks.

I'd rather ignore some of the life-messages bundled with the show. Being fairy tales, they can't be blamed for loading messages on the surface. I'd rate them as very good entertainment, nonetheless.

cheers,

"The Uncommon Reader"

2007-12-17T11:23:00.000-05:00

The Uncommon Reader is a fine and fun novella, a pleasure to read. Enough said about this little best seller of the year -- it is on the list of this week's Economists, ... did the NYT list also came out?

What I wanted to say a few words about, however, was my twisted declaration of reading it and the consequences.
me (changing nickname on gtalk): "a common reader" -- who said only the queen can indulge in the pleasure of reading, although only the queen's pleasure is worth documenting :)
dong (in the middle of some night): ... you read Virgina Woolf, too ?
liling (a day or two later): "dear common reader - i love Richard Russo's books"

Well, not only did I put up a cliche it seems, it's an ambiguous one as well !

hmm, the pleasure of a common reader has long been understood and elaborated. But still, why do we read? How many of us want to start writing after reading? ...

Let me just end this post with quotes from the short essay The Common Reader, Virginia Woolf. Thanks to search engines that enabled random serendipity on the web: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91c/chapter1.html
" The common reader, as Dr. Johnson implies, differs from the critic and the scholar. He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can come by, some kind of whole—a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a theory of the art of writing. He never ceases, as he reads, to run up some rickety and ramshackle fabric which shall give him the temporary satisfaction of looking sufficiently like the real object to allow of affection, laughter, and argument. Hasty, inaccurate, and superficial, snatching now this poem, now that scrap of old furniture, without caring where he finds it or of what nature it may be so long as it serves his purpose and rounds his structure, his deficiencies as a critic are too obvious to be pointed out; but if he has, as Dr. Johnson maintained, some say in the final distribution of poetical honours, then, perhaps, it may be worth while to write down a few of the ideas and opinions which, insignificant in themselves, yet contribute to so mighty a result.
"

"Atonement"

2007-12-17T00:58:00.000-05:00

A very moving story, well done, I enjoyed it.

Haven't read the novel .. but it should be better, there are a few loose wholes in the film plot and sometimes it's rushed. there are also different interpretations of Briony's motivation (jealousy vs. ignorance) on wekipedia, but i think the film interpretation seems better.
Not sure if flashbacks are in fashion, so many movies use it, some without adequate reason -- feels like a narrative instrument used in its own sake. Why do we have to know the results first and entrust our patience to the director for unfolding all the question marks?

"i am legend"

2007-12-16T14:46:00.000-05:00

I just saw this at the Palisades IMAX, fresh out from release. a typical hero movie ... i'd rate it as "okay" (spoiler below).

The good: imaginative - cure for cancer turned disaster.
The bad: camera work - close up with a lot of motion, yes they intend to make us nervous, but it's way over done and i'm dizzy.
The ugly: cliche has it for a solo hero, wounded, made great discovery and died for the cause. guns, medicine, ghosts. the best friend (dog) of the hero dies. An angle comes to the rescue because she believes in god (! GWB's propaganda?)

Will Smith did a decent job, but how much can you act as almost the sole actor in a whole two hours?

Randomly Revived

2007-12-16T12:31:00.000-05:00

After more than a year of silence (1 yr 7 months, to be exact) ... i'm here writing another blog post again, finally.

A lot has happened and gone unnoticed. I've accumulated more than 2GB of GMail (what did i do!), got a Facebook account and started enjoying it with 65 friends, migrated my online album onto Flickr and making a new year resolution to put up more ...

Upon receiving a nice annual holiday letter from my friends Ming and Wilson, it struck me that so many little things can be documented so that life won't just flew by. This said, I'm going to put less effort in polishing what I put down, and simply just put more things down.

I'm going to start with what I read, what I watch, and other little things. Hope this will last -- and it never hurts to start upon a random motivation, does it :)

visited places

2006-05-05T21:37:00.000-04:00

I've seen a flagged map on the wall belonging to my much-traveled labmate ... thought it'd be nice to document my own footprint but the spots are far too sparse it gets discouraing to even start.

Not until I came across this lazyman's tool, with numerous merits: it is free, digital, public-viewable; it is click-n-generate for dummies; it has very coarse resolutions so a few big countries really count. wow.

Without delay, here are my two maps. Hopefully the "communist red" will soon grow and grow ... cheers.

Visited countries:

create your own visited countries map

Visited US States:

create your own visited states map

an enjoyable conversation with machines

2006-03-07T00:50:00.000-05:00

A neat translation robot that exceeds expectation :)
He is at http://us.dict.cn/

Here is my conversation with its MSN variant:

Date 3/7/2006	Time 1:01:07 AM	from xlx - *-less	to dict.cn	Message hello
3/7/2006	1:01:07 AM	dict.cn	xlx - *-less	['heləu, he'ləu] int. 喂,哈罗
3/7/2006	1:01:11 AM	xlx - *-less	dict.cn	how are you
3/7/2006	1:01:12 AM	dict.cn	xlx - *-less	你好
3/7/2006	1:01:21 AM	xlx - *-less	dict.cn	happy
3/7/2006	1:01:22 AM	dict.cn	xlx - *-less	['hæpi] a. 快乐的,幸福的
3/7/2006	1:01:24 AM	xlx - *-less	dict.cn	cool
3/7/2006	1:01:25 AM	dict.cn	xlx - *-less	[ku:l] a. 凉的,凉快的，酷 ad. 冷静地 n. 凉快 v. 使变凉 vt. 使变冷
3/7/2006	1:01:28 AM	xlx - *-less	dict.cn	fun
3/7/2006	1:01:29 AM	dict.cn	xlx - *-less	[fʌn] n. 乐趣,玩笑
3/7/2006	1:01:35 AM	xlx - *-less	dict.cn	郁闷
3/7/2006	1:01:36 AM	dict.cn	xlx - *-less	[yù mèn] vapor
3/7/2006	1:02:17 AM	xlx - *-less	dict.cn	news?
3/7/2006	1:02:19 AM	dict.cn	xlx - *-less	新闻中心-新闻要闻
3/7/2006	1:02:19 AM	dict.cn	xlx - *-less	上海市长称迪斯尼乐园筹建工作正在进行 (http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2006-03-07/12158382708s.shtml) 吴敬琏:政府资源配置权力过大阻碍经济体制转变 (http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2006-03-07/11209286726.shtml) 教育部谈助学贷款问题将曝光违约生名单 (http://news.sina.com.cn/c/edu/2006-03-07/10458381713s.shtml) 政协委员质疑大学高收费：学费20年上涨25倍 (http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2006-03-07/10398381642s.shtml)
3/7/2006	1:03:33 AM	xlx - *-less	dict.cn	bye
3/7/2006	1:03:34 AM	dict.cn	xlx - *-less	[bai] int. 再见

"Dear Amazon.com Customer," ... an acute dumb outcome of machine learning

2006-03-07T00:17:00.000-05:00

This is not a technical note regarding machine learning.

"Dear Amazon.com Customer,"
"We've noticed that customers who have purchased Halo: Combat Evolved are also interested in The Godfather (DVD-ROM) for the Windows XP. For this reason, you might like to know that this game will be released on March 21, 2006. You can pre-order your copy by following the link below."

I am truly impressed that machines accurately capture this correlation to intuitive typical human nature. However the conclusion is wrong, as it so focuses on the data that it blatantly ignores:

1) Compared to the rest of a user's entire profile, a few entries in the transaction history can be outliers.
2) Predictions should be context-dependent, where context can change, for the good or bad.

After all, machines doesn't know all, and they aren't smart enough yet to fortune-tell on people -- it'd be boring / sad if they are.

Born engineer, or engineered to be ?

2006-02-23T00:29:00.000-05:00

I wasted 5 minutes on a personality test on "perfect majors". This sure is a silly excercise at this stage of my life-long education ... I was nontheless amused to see that Engineering topped my list with quite a margin. Huh, is this measuring the natural tendency, or the current skill and mind shaped by training?

At least I can congratulate myself either on having chosen well, or been converted well. Now let me get back to some real engineering work -- coding.

Here is the result, btw.

Engineering

92%

Chemistry

83%

Psychology

83%

Philosophy

75%

English

75%

Mathematics

75%

Biology

75%

Linguistics

67%

Sociology

50%

Dance

42%

Anthropology

42%

Journalism

25%

Art

17%

Theater

17%

What is your Perfect Major?

A Ballet Reflection

2006-02-06T18:54:00.000-05:00

Remember the recreational ballet teacher told the class that ballet is the art of taking great efforts for perfection but making the elegance look effortless (an unauthorized rephrase of the actual saying). Of course I am in the place of appreciating this rather than excuting it in ballet ... but doens't it hold true in a broader sense than ballet?

A few examples:

We enjoy a lively technical seminar topped with impressive demos, oblivious of the sleepless nights spent designing and implementing them.
We praise the cozy, pretty, yet utilitarian setup at friends' homes, ignoring the accumulated amount of time they spent brewing inpirations, searching and performing little adjustments.
We indulge in the delicacy from a friend's kitchen, putting aside all the trial-and-error and meticulous study they did on the recipe.
... ...

We the spectators appreciate beauty and creativity, small or large; we the actors strive for the effortless display in this result-driven world. As actors we enjoy far more than the results, made to stay are knowledge, wisdom and moments of revealation. Nonetheless as actors we need communication, understanding and unwavering support during all the efforts that make these happen. This is what friends and family are for, and this is we shall provide for them as well.

审美疲劳

2005-07-12T21:31:00.000-04:00

... 是必然现象吗？

一张CD听了几个星期，忍不住换上另一张听个新鲜；
一样的风景透过办公室的窗户看了五年，总琢磨着为什么不能换成幻灯片；
类似的话在论文里讲座里以所有可能的形势重复了许多遍，沮丧地想什么时候才能旧曲换新词，莫让听众心烦？

Enjoyment and Articulation

2005-06-02T21:08:00.000-04:00

"Share the excitement" -- this is what all researchers like to do, and actually do by presenting their motivation, reasoning and findings.

The same applies to art and humanities, the subjects of feelings rather than reasonings. I was quite surprised at this simple revealation as I read a collection of short essays on aesthetics by Zhu Guangqian. Feelings that cannot be articulated are internal, those can would become universal, as he pointed out using examples of poems from the Song dynasty. This is not to jeporadize art and literature in our overly rational minds, but to justify the amount of work it needs to stand up, defend, and advocate for what we love.

Put away the grumblings when people don't understand our enjoyments of a music piece, save the energy complaining about the indifference we reiceive after screaming at a refreshing literary reading. Try to reason and articulate their merits, and see what can happen.

Strikingly Beautiful

2005-03-14T21:18:00.000-05:00

It's like coming across two beauties, in one week.

1) Maxim Vengerov -- violin master class on the art of encores by the energetic prodigy.
Seeing him, it naturally became apparent when music is alive, where the pieces are vivid, and why all of these is well worth our ecstasy.

2) Louis Kahn, in "My architect, a Son's Journey".
Two hours full of beautiful shots, from the Salk institute, Indian Institute of Management, National Assembly Building of Bangladesh, or just the little house he build in the suburb of Philadelphia. Also beautiful is the making of this documentary, it's a charcol sketch of the main subject, succint, vivid, exposing beauty and shorcomings directly.

These are not only visual and aural enjoyments, but food for thought as well.

Linked

2004-12-09T01:12:00.000-05:00

Simply enjoyable.
I've never been looking forward to bed-time readings more than these few days, and the cause is "Linked" by Barabasi from NYPL.
A very accessible whirl-view of network theory densely populated with a wide range of applications, there are places where people with different technical background will involuntarily "aha", as I did. Can't wait to be through the rest of it; can't help wandering a little into the subject, and get a bit more technical - but just a tiny bit, not more ;)

Guest Book

2004-12-05T13:43:00.000-05:00

Using blog comments as guestbook is just a lazy idea, but I'm still wondering why it didn't quite work out for my last blog. Doesn't hurt to give it one more try:

This is a place for any casual note or whatever you have a slight urge to say :)

Finally Revived

2004-12-05T12:14:00.000-05:00

After six months and a few disk crashes it's time to revive my very modest blog. For those who aren't yet bored enough after my home page, here is one more page for procrastination.