couch

I'm thinking of buying this couch:


What do people think? It would go in this space, to replace the two white couches:


The ottoman would get in the way of the coffeetable though.

cocktails and candor club

I am in Berlin for another day with Neha, Omar, and Malcolm.

My first real conversation with Malcolm was in a Google micro-kitchen. He told me about "Candor Club", an organization he formed. The members would identify each other by wearing pins. In Candor Club, you need to reply to questions honestly, i.e. avoid telling white lies.

I joined Candor Club. I am a fan.

Last night we went to Red Door, a bar down the street.



We realized that none of us wanted to buy drinks, so after sitting for a few minutes, we got up and left.

The waiter / bartender asked us why we were leaving. Omar and I can't speak much German, so we waited by the door.

Neha: "Wir sind ... [looking at us] how do you say 'crazy' or 'nutty'?"

Malcolm: [earnestly] "Die Cocktails sind zu teuer." (The cocktails are too expensive.)

Neha: [joining us at the door, and then walking outside with me and Omar] "Ahh! Why did Malcolm tell him?"

Me: "Well, he asked."

Neha: [with consternation] "The waiter is not in Candor Club! Now we can never go back!"

Me: [doubled over from laughing]

my house

Hehe, I just saw this on fmylife.com:

Today, my parents, who are out of town but driving back tomorrow, called to see how I was doing. While they were gone I threw a party, but when asked I told them no, to which my dad responded " Well I'm currently looking at pictures on facebook of our kitchen with beer and a bong on the table." FML

which reminds of a conversation I had last week in Hamburg...

Friend: "How many crazy parties do you think your brother has thrown in your house by now?"

Me: :(

Friend: "You've been gone how many days?"

Me: "He did tell me that at least ten people disapprove of my couch. Which made me wonder how many people have come to my house."

Friend: "Yeah, when you get back, he'll tell you that he did a poll. A thousand people like the couch. Two hundred dislike it. Then there are the ones who didn't vote... because they were too drunk. There are a thousand of those."

Me: :(

watchmen movie

I'm in Berlin. Yesterday I went to the Sony Centre and watched an english version of "Watchmen".





Some people will say that I should take advantage of Berlin to do Berlin-specific things instead of watching movies. My travel theory is that you should do whatever you feel like at each moment, without constraints. Unfortunately I have found almost no one who shares this philosophy.

Anyway, I was shocked at how violent the movie is. I cannot believe the amount of gory limb-hacking and head-axing that is permitted in R-rated movies now!



I was confused by one part of the movie plot.

!SPOILER BELOW!

I don't understand why Dr. Manhattan changes his mind on Mars. He's already seen the future and told Lori, "Our conversation will end with you in tears, but there is nothing for me on Earth." Then it happens, and he suddenly changes his mind.

Is it just because the actual event (seeing her in tears) is more impactful than when he read the future? That part did not make sense to me.

the "where am I" meme

FriendFeed had a meme some time ago where people posted a photo and asked, "Where am I?"

This might be too easy, but let's try.

hamburg

I am in Hamburg. Before coming, I did a Google images search, and the results looked dreary and cold. It looked like a sterile port. For example:





But the city is actually gorgeous! The buildings look very well-preserved, and downtown is located right next to a peaceful lake.

I felt refreshed just from walking to my hotel, dragging my luggage after a eight-hour train ride from Prague.

My hotel told me they were giving me a free room upgrade. The room looks nice, but just like the standard room on the hotel web page. If I were running a hotel, I would tell every guest that I'm giving them a free upgrade, just to make them happier. I would keep a broom closet as the "non-upgraded room" so that it is still truthful.

a few conversations I found amusing

I'm finally getting around to posting these conversations from last year. They gave me a laugh; your mileage may vary.

...

Talking to my brother, a while back.

Tom: "Did you know you have to fly into JFK to get to Yale?"

Me: "There's no airport near Yale?"

Tom: "No. It's so hard to get there! You have to fly to New York, get greeted by Hagrid, row across the water. [makes rowing motion with one hand]"

Me:

---

At an all-day conference with other Googlers. The organizer was announcing the day's agenda.

Organizer: "Breakfast is served at your hotel, but we also will have breakfast available here at 9am if you want to eat again. Sessions until noon, then lunch back here. We'll provide cookies in the afternoon during sessions. Full dinner at 6. Then it's breakout discussions, with midnight snacks available."

Person sitting next to me: "Wow, we're hobbits."

Me:

---

At Buddha Lounge in downtown Mountain View, with a few friends.

Jay: [watching a cute girl at the bar]

Me: "Why don't you go talk to her?"

Jay: "I'm thinking of something witty to say."

Me: "What do you mean?"

Jay: "I want to make a good impression, so I'm thinking of something interesting to say about the music, or an observation about that guy who's dancing weirdly."

Me: "You're over-thinking it. She's going to be influenced a lot more by your demeanor and body language than by your first sentence. Just go up and introduce yourself."

Jay: "What, like ask what her name is?"

Me: "Yeah."

Jay: "That's so boring! I should ask her something interesting."

Me: "Fine, you can ask her what her name is, and then what it means."

Jay: "How about if I ask for her middle name?"

Me: "Um, I guess."

...

Later on, I was telling my brother about this.

Tom: "Well, that wouldn't work for you!"

Me: "Why not?"

Tom: "You don't have a middle name."

Me: "Yes I do."

Tom: "You have a middle name??"

Me:

making a facial model from a single photograph

A colleague sent me this youtube video, which I think is awesome:

They can construct a 3-d model of a human face from a single photograph, by combining two learning systems that look for facial features. See how authentic Tom Hanks's 3-d model came out:

I was surprised to see that this technology was presented in SIGGRAPH '99, an entire ten years ago, yet it's not prevalent today. The paper and other information can be found on this page about the Morphable Facial Model project.

Forget creating my own creature in Spore. I want to upload photographs of myself and everyone I know, and use them as the faces of the characters in the next game I play:


Performance might have been an obstacle in the past. The paper says each construction took 50 minutes on the SGI R10000 (approximately a 200MHz processor). The resulting model uses 70000 vertices. I bet that could be reduced, with some tradeoff in accuracy of the face.

I am waiting to use this technology with Rock Band. Also I think it would be popular among some people with the Hot Coffee mod.

a few photos from Vienna

The most striking thing I saw in Vienna was an exhibition by artist Gerhard Richter, at the Albertina Museum.

Usually photography doesn't captivate me, but I was riveted by this exhibit.




It looks as though he's just blurring the photos, or applying a swiping effect. Perhaps one day I will try this on my own photos to make them more artistic.

Here are my own boring unaltered photos from the past week in Vienna:


The inside of St. Stephen's cathedral, at night.


Venetians on the street, dressed up for Mardi Gras.


A sculpture in a square.


A car getting towed. This is different from the US, where tow trucks drag the car on its two rear wheels.


Austrian food has a lot of sausages, pickles, schnitzel. It was good, but after a few days, my body craved vegetables.


An Austrian friend said that cold cuts and breads is a common dinner. I like this practice of eating the most extravagant meal midday and having the dinner be a denouement.


Driving from Tulln, a suburb of Vienna. I took this photo from the car. Hey, I just noticed that it has the blurring and swiping effect. Watch out, Gerhard Richter!


The Albertina Museum was one of the most lovely museums I've seen.


The cafe inside the Albertina. Unfortunately it stopped serving food and drinks by the time I got to it.


The salon of Sisi, former empress of Austria. She met the emperor Franz when he came for a brief stay at her parents' palace. He was there to meet Sisi's older sister, Nene. But when he saw the lovely Sisi, he fell right away in love.

Sisi refused to accept him, out of loyalty for her sister (girl code!). So Franz pressed her hand by holding a betrothment ceremony. In front of everyone, he walked in with the engagement bouquet, right past Nene with outstretched arms, and presented the flowers to Sisi. What a scandal! Truly they were the Brangelina of their time.


Eileen on the train. We had a pleasant train ride.

I like train travel in Europe. It's efficient, since you can arrive 15 minutes prior to departure instead of 90 minutes for the airport. Also there is more personal space around each seat, and interesting scenery out the window.

goulash rap

Exiting a thermal bath in Budapest, with college friends Eileen and Mike. Eileen is really good at making up songs, so I got the idea that we should invent a song about our time in Budapest.

Me: "What genre of song would it be? I think it should be about goulash."



Mike: "I suggest a rap."

Me: "Oh wow. That would be good, because I also want it to be a song about technology since we've been talking about the internet a lot. Fortunately, goulash rhymes with both bash and flash."

Mike: "Also cache."

Me: "Good one! Oh, and hash."

Mike: "Crash."

Me: "Wait, but it's pronounced 'goulash' (short a), not 'goulahsh' (long a). So it actually doesn't rhyme with any of these."

Mike: "What are you, British? Just say 'goulash' (long a)."

Me: "No, that's not right. The song is ruined."

(It's too bad, because later I also thought of "backslash" and "john nash").

life updates

Hello from Budapest! This post is coming to you from the heart of Hungary, land of gothic steeples and goulash.


Recently I've been mulling over whether to blog more about software, since confidentiality is no longer as much of an issue. Many of you know this, but for those who don't, I decided near the end of 2008 to move on from Google, after five amazing years. It was wonderful working on Desktop (stories) and Gmail and Lively (warm wishes to the hardcore users who worked around the clock to keep the product experience going with newlively.com), and now it is time to try new things.

At the moment I am traveling and fiddling with a couple of web site ideas. I spent the past couple of days in Budapest with my college friend Eileen. A few photos so far:


Art Noveau palace. It is now a Four Seasons hotel lobby.


Interior of Matyas church, with very pretty stained glass.


Eileen preparing to eat chicken with paprika and cream sauce. We've been eating a lot of paprika.


Me in a restaurant. The food is so good in Hungary!


We went into an underground labyrinth which created a spooky effect with lighting and drums from hidden speakers.


... until we came across this "excavation" in the labyrinth.


View of the Danube. Budapest is divided into the Buda section and the Pest section. In this photo, I believe we are looking at Pest, from Buda.

tf-idf library

Recently I needed to use tf-idf for a personal project. I couldn't find a suitable library on the internet in python, without complicated dependencies. I ended up writing a simple one. Here it is, in case anyone else would find it useful.

http://code.google.com/p/tfidf/

No n-grams or stemming, but it computes basic tf-idf. Thanks to Alex for reviewing.

life imitates art, websites imitate webcomics

I've recently become addicted to reading the new website fmylife.com, where people share unfortunate incidents from their life. Here are some user entries of note:

Today, I looked at the facebook of the girl I really liked, and I saw she wrote on her friend's wall "Last night was the biggest mistake of my life." We hooked up last night. FML

Today, my boyfriend of 2 years sent me a text messages saying, "Don't worry I'm gonna break up with her soon. Love you." FML

Today, I submitted my picture to a rating website. It was rejected because I didn't clarify which person I was. The picture was of my dog and me. FML

Today, I arrived at my parents house for dinner. When I got there, I noticed that they had gay pride flags hanging from the porch, and gay rights bumper stickers plastered to their cars. There was also a huge "We accept you, Nick" banner hanging from the garage. I'M NOT GAY! FML

Alipe pointed out that the site is an implementation of this achewood web comic.

FMylife traffic is doing quite well. I think the site was previously popular in France already.

don't read this if you are offended by blasphemy

If you are the type of person who, upon hearing the Lord's name taken in vain, covers their mouth and says "Oh my!", you need to stop reading now.

My friend "Matthew" and I were in a museum, looking at himalayan art. One statue featured Shiva and his goddess.



Me: "I know a couple of Indian guys named Shiva. Do you think it's strange to share the same name as the highest deity, who rules all of creation? You don't see that in the States."

Matthew: "I know some Shiva's too. As well as Ganesh, Pavarti."

Me: "It's not a bad idea. All right, I'm going to name my kid 'God'."

Matthew: [chortling]

Me: "That's right. My kid will be called 'God Wang'."

...

Later I told the plan to another friend "Andy".

Me: "But I plan to have two kids, so I don't know what to name the second kid."

Andy: "That's true. You can't name one kid 'God', and the second kid 'Frank'."

Me: "Yeah, Frank would feel so unloved by comparison, and angry."

Andy: "Oh, I'm pretty sure the 'God' kid will be the angrier one."

photos from Tibet

Over the Christmas holidays, I visited my college friend in Tibet. Wesley was at Caltech at the same time as me, and worked for a few years afterwards in Silicon Valley. He went on a world trip at one point, and met a girl in Tibet. Now they live there happily.


This was a common Tibetan style of architecture. The wood is assembled without nails or screws.


My favorite cafe to eat breakfast was called Fragrant Valley Cafe. I went there every day until they recognized me. It was nice to be a "regular" somewhere.


The "western breakfast" at the cafe.


I experienced fatigue as a result of altitude sickness from being at 3300 meters. Fortunately, oxygen cannisters are sold throughout supermarkets and drugstores.


The oxygen cannister has a date printed on it. Does oxygen have an expiration date?

We did experiments of inhaling oxygen while running up a steep hill. It helps.


There was a bar inside the Old Town section named the Google Bar. I surprised a Tibetan by showing how their bar's name matches the logo on my scarf.


The nearby Tiger Leaping Gorge is good for hiking.


At one point, the trail went through a small waterfall.


Wesley and I spent some of our time writing code together, just like the old days in college. We ate watermelon seeds while programming. We consumed a bag of watermelon seeds every day.


On Christmas Eve, the owner of Fragrant Valley Cafe held a party. His friend cut down a pine tree from outside of the town, and made it into a Christmas tree.

In this photo, I'm wearing a Tibetan hat with a Lhasa dress. Wesley said this is as incongruous as a cowboy hat with a Scottish kilt.


Me with newfound Tibetan friends. This is the Tibetan outfit that actually matches the hat.

...

Tibet was lovely, but I missed one thing from the States. I remedied this upon my return:

you know you live in silicon valley when...

Walking down the street with my fashionable friend "Ellie".

Me: "Those are really cute hat and gloves. Where did you get them?"

Ellie: "The hat is from Old Navy. The gloves are from Juicy."

Me: "I should go buy a hat like it. But shopping is so draining... I guess you love shopping."

Ellie: "I could shop every day, for hours."

Me: "You must think it's weird that I hate shopping. Since you love it so much, it must seem strange."

Ellie: "No, there are plenty of things that I don't like, which everybody else likes."

Me: [expecting her to name some universally loved activities, like going to the beach or really good restaurants]

Ellie: "Like... programming."

Air Force One is also a taxpayer-sponsored jet, Mr. President

There's a CNN article quoting Obama making a boastful joke about his plane:

"Hey guys, what do you think of my -- this spiffy ride here?" the president asked the group of reporters traveling with him on the presidential plane.

"Thanks for giving me a reason to fly Air Force One," he told the House Democrats after his flight, which took him away from a week of fighting for the economic stimulus bill.

After the flak Obama gave the auto Big-3 CEOs for taking their private jets to Washington, I am disappointed that he turns around and brags about his own jet.

Mr. Obama, you've said a lot of things lately about how executives shouldn't show off their extravagant lifestyles when they're not delivering financial results. Last time I checked, the economy of the US is in dire straits. You're the chief. So why are you parading your spiffy jet? If any American CEO made the same joke standing aboard their own jet, would you not chastise them?

UPDATE: I'm not saying that he should stop using Air Force One, and should fly JetBlue and sit next to me in 23B. I'm saying that he should stop bragging about it, jokingly or not.