Department of Philosophy - Symbolic Lab @ 3:24pm

• Your brain is really like a muscle. The less you use it, the less it can function as well as you like it to be. It degenerates and suffers from memory loss. Gosh- two days ago I tried doing this geometry problem participating in the Department of Mathematics Competition. It was torturous to think in sines and cosines again. It was painfully slow to do maths. Angles… Equations… Ugh… I need to start using my brain again!!!
• I am so glad I took up the Tennis class. Even if the instructor doesn’t teach us much, it’s good regular training practice. It’s amazing how my forehand strokes are starting to improve with just a few pointers from my instructors. Bent knees, changed grip, use left hand to guide… Now I need to work on my backhand and serves.
• It all started with getting a Canon S80 p&s camera to take better pictures. Now I’m getting into the whole realm of digital photography. It’s so interesting and so much to learn. Been reading forums and photography tutorials and articles. Given my bad memory, photography is one good way to capture my memories! Taking good pictures is strangely self-satisficing, like drugs. I gotta resist getting a DSLR for now. Shopping for a decent tripod now… KIVing this.
• I really have to decide my final project for my Maya animation class. A person doing a perfect golf-swing… The story of a hiccup girl… Modeling my dream car… I need inspiration!!! Shane Acker really gave me quite an inspiration. Maybe I should just do a feature film for the heck of it.
• The latest topic in my Investment class deals with options, something that sounds so foreign before that day. It’s actually possible to reduce your risk of owning stocks by doing a whole bunch of different strategies. Straddle, collar, covered call, protective put… Essentially you get other people to insure your own stocks, aka cover your own ass. In this trading world, when one person wins, one person has to lose. My hope is to be the former, as much as possible.
• Pending work to be done: Finish up my Maya 3D animation of the man walking up the stairs and opening the doors… I need to learn how to change from IK to FK. Maybe if I have time, I will animate him fall down the stairs!!
• Pending movies (lying in my HDD) to watch: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, 神雕侠侣, King Kong…
• Pending stuff to learn: Options trading, FX trading, Maya Effects…

In my security class about 2 years back, my professor mentioned about using visual passwords and visual hashes to help in user authentication and stuff (the details of which I totally gave back to him). I thought it was really cool to be able to convert strings to formula which generates a picture or ‘abstract art’ I call it. Now I stumbled upon this site which allows us to create all sorts of Random Art, simply by typing in anything you want. Essentially, the program takes your string of words and create a mathematical formula to define all those pixels. Then it spews it out as a square picture, unique to your string.

Its possible contribution to the security world aside, I’m pretty amazed and impressed by some of the random art created by the program. Some of my favorites pieces by this digital Picasso:

Of course I couldn’t resist making some of my own masterpieces. Can’t believe I can’t even match a computer!!

After tasting the Cheesecake Factory’s Original Cheesecake, I was really amazed such a simple plain cheesecake could be so yummy. This time I decided to experiment making a cheesecake with one of my favorite liqueur, the Grand Marnier. Something tells me the tinge of orange essense may go very well with the cheese. It wasn’t bad at all!

Ingredients:

• 10″ ready-made Graham Pie Crust
• 8 ounce cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
• 5/8 cup white sugar
• 1 tbl cornstarch
• 2 tbl Grand Marnier liqueur
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 eggs

Making:

1. Bring all the ingredients to room temperature. Pre-heat the oven at 325F.
2. In a large bowl, beat cream cheese and butter until smooth.
3. Mix in the sugar, cornstarch, sour cream and whipping cream. Mix them thoroughly.
4. Add the Grand Marnier and the vanilla extract.
5. Stir in the eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly between each addition.
6. Pour the mixture into the Graham Pie Crust.
7. Bake in the oven for 50 minutes at 325F.
8. Turn off the oven and allow to cool with the oven door open for one hour. Then chill the cake for at least 3 hours before serving.

Finally got round to sorting and publishing the photos we took at Vancouver last week. This time, Aperture really helped me out with the workflow and quick processing. Love the program pictures here!

And yes!! I look like “celebrities” like Jet Li, Dalai Lama and Wen Jiabao.

MyHeritage put the face-recognition technology to the most creative use - trying to match your face to the well-known people around the world. It’s strangely addictive uploading your photos and seeing who you actually may get mistaken for. The higher the percentage, the higher the match obviously. I literally burst out laughing when I saw those matches. It’s funny most of my matches are non-asians, more to the likes of Eminem, Chester Bennington, Bill Gates (ouch!) and Robert Downey Jr.

Current mood: Feeling a million bucks

It’s amazing how getting back into the sports momentum makes one feels so refreshed and awake (the fatigue aside). After getting back from Vancouver, mm and I started the jogging regime and working out in gym.

Had my first golf and tennis lessons today. Not bad for a first lesson in golf, it got me all hyped up for the gentleman sport. As for tennis, I’m quite glad I haven’t touched the tennis racquet for quite a while (With the Pittsburgh weather, I don’t really have the choice…). I’ll have to re-learn all my strokes once again, while forgetting how I played last year. We’ll see how it works out. Bring on the good weather!!!

Lori Grunin has a very good writeup about the 15 most common photo-taking pitfalls, complete with examples and ways to correct them if any. Sadly, I fall prey to a number of these flubs, such as “It’s a complete blur!!” and “So far away“.

Scratch one up for a decent tripod.

Finally back at Pitt! We had a fantastic trip to Vancouver. Food and more food. At last we found a place to contend with Toronto for the best Chinese food place in North America…

Watch out for the photos…

I have used Weather.com and Accuweather.com, but none is as accurate as the almighty Weather Forecasting Stone!

For the latest project in class, we were given a room with a number of primitive polygons like a tube and a box, and we are supposed to color it up with textures and shades. Alot of people tried rearranging the objects to create the best looking room possible. I decided what the heck - lets drop the room and do something more interesting.

Here’s my composition piece on a scene in a sewer. The lighting contrast is bad, but what do you expect from a sewer anyway. Enjoy! Here’s a bigger version.