Party on Saturday

One attendee brought a machine that has alcohol in its belly, and you use a web app to mix drinks that pour out of the machine.

I like my hair in this outfit. Maybe will cut my hair permanently this style!

Half Dome!

The best thing about climbing Half Dome is that afterwards people will assume you are pretty fit.  In actuality, the person on the cables immediately in front of me was overweight.  But you'll still get loads of positive affirmation about your physical fitness after your summit.

You can see Half Dome in the distance on the right.

Waterfall on the way up.

I went with a group of 25 people.  The organizer divided us into six teams: Team Cheetah, Team Falcon, Team Bison, Team Giraffe, Team Turtle, Team Hedgehog.  I was on Team Turtle.  I was the slowest Turtle!

On top of the sub-dome, facing the last part of the summit.  You can see the line of people going up the cables.

Team Turtle started climbing an hour before Team Cheetah (they were still sleeping when we left the Yosemite cabin), but the Cheetahs had been on the summit for two hours by the time the Turtles got to the top.

The house I lived in at age 5

Since we were in Salt Lake City for my cousin's wedding, my brother and I decided to go look for the house we lived in.  I lived there from ages 5 to 8.  He lived there from 0 to 0.5.  

First I messed up the address and we went to a cemetery.  My brother looked at the tombstones to figure out if the cemetery was new.

We lived in the ground floor of this house.  We paid $100 per month in rent.  This woman is the current tenant in the basement.

The walkway into the backyard and down into the basement.

I spent so many hours in this crevasse between the house and the fence.  At least one hour per day.  I imagined it was a magical land.  Once I found kittens there, so it really was magical.

Entryway to the main door.  

It was a sociable home.  There were chinese neighbors who came over every day.  It was a really comforting sense of community.

Zombies and punny grilled cheese (SIGGRAPH part 2)

The first time I went to SIGGRAPH (computer graphics conference) was 2003 and I felt stuck in a rut.  I'd lived for five years in a city that didn't really fit with me (Seattle).  The whole five years, I felt like a fish out of water, vaguely dissatisfied in a way I couldn't name.  By the end, I wondered what was wrong with me, and how I could change my personality to become more of a content person.

Then I went to SIGGRAPH and I was so deliriously happy, every minute.  I went to amazing talks on camera technology and environment maps.  I presented my sketch on cloud rendering.  I looked at the latest motion capture technology.  I skipped most meals because I was so energized that I didn't need to eat.

I decided I didn't need to change my personality.  I just needed to move.  Two months later, I moved to California.

I went again to SIGGRAPH the next year, to present on rain and snow rendering.  Then not again for eight years, until last week.

The expo floor. There is a lot of eye candy at SIGGRAPH (in terms of beautiful renderings, not booth babes).

These zombies were advertising the 3-d software package used to create the TV show "Walking Dead".

O M G.  Here you see three panels pieced together to form a panoramic display.  You move your viewpoint around the scene via a joystick.  I experienced a tsunami of awe and coveting.  

I saw at least 3 motion capture exhibits on the expo.  Every time I go, there are more mo-cap companies.  Eventually it'll be like Starbucks -- every exhibit on the floor will be a mo-cap studio.

...

The food booths in the main convention center looked bad.  There were long lines for a Chinese take-out box and a sandwich on a plate.  They did not look fresh, or tasty.

Then miraculously there was this grilled cheese stand.

When I got up close to it, I realized all the sandwich names were puns on computer graphics luminaries.  Ed Catmelt sandwich, labeled as "tech achievement"!  Perlin Peach for a sandwich with ricotta and peaches!  (That's what I ate.)  The Phong.  The Blinn.  I literally cried out in amazement when the sandwich names sunk in.

Then I wondered...  does this stand only exist for SIGGRAPH?  Do they change the sandwich names every week for different conferences?  Do they always ask find a conference organizer to help them devise the sandwich names?

The Perlin Peach was an exquisite sandwich.

As I was standing there, I was seized with a fervent desire to contribute enough to the world to get a cheese sandwich named The Wang for one week.

Cousin's wedding!

My 22-year-old cousin got married today in a Mormon church.

The pastor gave specific instructions.  The groom is to avoid going out to eat with old girlfriends.  The bride is to avoid complaining about marital arguments to her girlfriends.  

It is rather binding to put these into the wedding speech since you are agreeing to those covenants!

My brother, me, and my uncle and aunt (groom's parents).

Because this is in Utah, there is no alcohol at the wedding.  For yesterday's rehearsal dinner, one of the groomsmen drove a keg from Colorado so that there would be beer there. 

Siggraph!

I am at SIGGRAPH 2012, the premiere computer graphics conference. I am so excited that I willingly woke up at 4:30am to fly down to LA for it.

Motion capture system, being demo-ed on the exhibition floor.

A poster on algorithmically converting photos into impressionist paintings. There are many examples of doing this, but this technique emphasizes edges rather than blurring them. It ends up with sharp edges on a blurred background.

Poster on improving vector line art. This was the most clearly-communicated poster on the floor. It actually has a plot and characters.

Lobby of one of the conference hotels.

long-ago amusing exchange

Reading journal from the past.  In 2008, talking with another Googler:

D: "How many employees are we at? 30,000? 40,000?"

Me: "Oh my God, surely not!"

D: "At least 20,000."

Me: "That's not so bad."

D: "You can justify that? 'Oh, we're a whale, but we're not yet the blue whale.'"

olympics and the diverse human race

From 2008, right before I went to the Beijing Olympics:

Tom: "You're going to the Olympics next week! Are you excited?"

Me: "Kind of, but I've been to Beijing so many times already."

Tom: "This time will be different. The air will be a lot better. And there will be lots of foreigners."

Me: "There are foreigners here in America."

Tom: "The foreigners here are Americanized. The ones in Beijing won't be."

Me: "That's true! So I'll see one guy in a turban, and another guy playing a ukelele?"

Tom: "More like one guy wearing a Tommy Hilfiger shirt manufactured in India, and another guy wearing a Tommy Hilfiger shirt made in Jamaica."

fascinate

I'm reading a book called "Fascinate", about how to captivate people with your company's brand.

Alarm is one of the triggers that fascinates people. If you alarm people, they will be more likely to talk about your company.

Often companies (and people) shy away from creating any negative backlash. But that actually can create more fascination.

Martha Stewart steampunk bathroom

My college friend Aaron is the Martha Stewart of Caltech.

It is lovely to attend a party with homemade food, rather than chips or store-bought food.

Also he designed his home to have a steampunk bathroom.

Friendship is nice

Tonight I went over to Melissa's, and we watched Olympics. Melissa is the cofounder of Minted.

I am glad she came into my life. She told me that if she were to do her wedding over, she would make me a bridesmaid. She told this to another friend of hers, who got super jealous.

I like being ranked a closer friend than someone else. It makes me happy! Because it sucks to be in the shoes of the jealous person, so you milk it when you can be the envied friend.

These are photos of the heart necklace I got her. It has two chains, and you break it in half, and each wear one half. I got it when she was moving to work remotely in Shanghai for six months. Occasionally we wear our halves to board meetings, for solidarity.

Which lamp shade?

I have this family-heirloom lacquer lamp, which was made by my mother's lacquer company 30 years ago.  She may have hand-carved it herself.

I am buying a lamp shade for it.  Which one is better?

A: B:

survival school photos, part 2

Ajax in the stream, on the last day of hiking.

Canyons above juniper field. This photo is beautiful, but slightly stress inducing because the photo-taker is clearly not standing in shade.

Cooking on our penultimate night.

Stream during solo. We were each assigned a section of the stream. The instructors asked us to reflect on the fact that as we used the water, we were upriver and downriver of each other. If one of us polluted the water, it would affect everyone downstream.

Packing my versa-cloth with items I need to use throughout the day. My pack is already done, behind me.

In the rain, reunited after solo. We were giddy from being around humans again.

On the last day, we crossed a stream about 30 times. Parts of the path near the stream were sandy like a beach.

On a break.

Just after daybreak. We looked like vultures.

Walking through trees. Since I was often slower than others, this view of their backs is a familiar one for me.

I loved survival school so much. I can't wait to go back next summer. It is peaceful and pure.

I feel like everyone should want to go to survival school. Logically I understand that many people don't want to fast and get bitten by mosquitoes and have the skin on their hands crack from dryness. But emotionally it seems unfathomable that the majority of people will choose to live their entire lives without experiencing the wonder and pure joy of survival school.

Minted white party!

Second annual Minted white party in Calistoga.

Most of us took the party bus from the office to Calistoga. Here we are walking off the bus, up to the house. 

Me with Melissa, my wbff.

Mariam hired a magician, who was surprisingly talented.  He had one of my engineers hold an object, and his girlfriend put her hands around his, and then he morphed the object inside their hands.

The magician came around to each table but skipped Melissa's.  I couldn't stop telling her how great he was, making her very jealous.  Then I got to use a line that my brother morphed from the jelly meme: "Be jelly donut!"

Snack table, overlooking trees.

It was nice to meet my coworkers' significant others.  At one point, our executive admin came off the dance floor to pull in her fiance.

"I thought I'd be able to hide, since it's dark," he said.

"You're all in white!" she said.

...

Our print-quality specialist Joe told me, "My birthday used to be my favorite day of the year.  But now it's the Minted white party."  I saw him dancing avidly on the makeshift dancefloor, then suddenly sitting quietly by the smores fire pit.

"Why aren't you dancing?" I said.

"I want to make sure to enjoy every part of the party fully," he said.

Our executive admin bought the white curtains for party decor!

On the bus back, my coworkers sitting in the back of the bus sang songs for the entire ride.  They sang the song "One, you're like a dream come true, Two...  Four: repeat steps one through three.  Five -- "

"How do you ever get to step five?" someone asked.

"Step four is to repeat steps one through three, and then you're on step five."

Also, Joe did an imitation of a pro wrestler with a Minted twist.  "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!  This baby shower comes with skinny wraps!"