Happy Seattle Morning

I woke up this morning to the glorious sound of pattering rain. When this happens, I usually get super excited and end up running around the house, thowing open all the windows and doors -- I like to create the illusion of being in the rain, without actually being in the rain. And if it's cold, like it was this morning, I have to turn on my space heater and put on a jacket (or just crawl back into bed); whatever it takes to let the rain in.

I love the sound and smell of rain, and that nostalgic, melancholy aura that it produces. Most likely, it is a subconscious ode to the four years spent living in Seattle, where the phrase "partly cloudy, with a chance of rain" is all it takes to be a weather forecaster. A lot of stuff happened during those four years at UW, and my memories are jam-packed with crazy undergrad drama that ranged from the ridiculously great to the excruciatingly painful. But perhaps the one unifying theme was that, whatever it was, it most likely took place against a misty grey, if not rainy, backdrop. In many ways, the rain brings me back to Seattle.

Most people think Seattle == Rain == Depressing. But it's not so simple. Sure, it was annoying to have to wake up sometimes to the fourth consecutive day of rain or to have to trudge to class with the rain blowing in your face and your umbrella blowing inside out. But after awhile, you start to realize that it is the rain that gives Seattle its emblem of transcendent beauty: its true blue skies, crisp fresh air, majestic mountain view, myriad shades of lush green. You learn to not only tolerate the rain, but to also appreciate it. And on sunny days, Seattle is by far the most gorgeous place in the world...

Here in San Diego, it doesn't rain much at all. And even when it does, it's usually like this pathetic, wimpy version of rain, where it pours for like a whole five minutes and then the freaking sun is back out. Which is why today's long and fierce episode of rainfall was so, so great, despite my pants getting completely soaked.

My other Seattle-turned-Sandiegan friends and I have formed an unspoken new tradition. On mornings that greet us with rain or grey or anything reminiscent of Seattle weather, somebody is obligated to send out an email saying "Happy Seattle Morning!" as if to remind ourselves of our "homeland" or some cheesy crap like that.

And just for the record, for anybody who has ever teased me with the totally original and hilarious line "Why are you carrying an umbrella? Aren't you from Seattle?" this is for you: Being from Seattle doesn't make us waterproof or have some strange desire to get intentionally wet. It just means that we don't whine about it like the average Californian who is too superficial to understand the beauty of rain and throws a tantrum whenever they can't "work on their tan".

Um, just kidding? ;)

Islam 101

For the past two months or so, I've been leading a "study" on Islam during our bi-weekly bible studies at CEC. Though our bible study (which is probably more accurately defined simply as a group of friends who meet regularly to discuss our faith and religion) is accustomed to studying unconventional "bible study topics", this has been quite a unique experience for me.

I put the word "study" in quotes because I don't really know what to call it. Given my roots and background, I know very little about Islam besides what is emphatically portrayed by the media. I also have very few, if any, Muslim friends. In fact, as lame as it sounds, my first spark of interest came this past summer after reading a book -- Sam Harris' book, The End of Faith. Now, that book in itself is a post for another day. But the short version is simply that Harris' arguments against a violence-riddled/insane-asylum-worthy Islam were so blatantly simplistic, obvious, and biased, that they practically begged for further inquiry/corroboration.

So, I sought out a couple of more books. I started off with an English translation of the Quran, and Mateen Elass' A Quick Christian Guide to the Muslim Holy Book. Some may argue that learning about another religion from the perspective of one's own religion is a terrible method by which to begin, given that objectivity will probably not be one of its greatest merits. But in hindsight, I'd argue otherwise. I'd argue that for the beginner, the selection of information presented (as to draw curiosity) is more important than comprehensiveness and objectivity. After all, it was Harris' athiest rant that drew me into Islam in the first place.

Elass' book functioned in a similar way -- but with more substance and less attitude. It provided me with exactly the information needed to further provoke my curiosity for Islam. Most of these issues addressed were theological in nature: The book compared and contrasted the personalities of God and Allah, the roles of Muhammad and Jesus, the origins of The Bible and The Quran. It explored the differing frameworks for good/evil, purpose of mankind, and sin/redemption in the two faiths. It also told a fascinating story of two bodies of people with an immense amount of historical overlap, yet wildly different ideologies and expressions for worship.

Granted, Elass's book did absolutely no justice to Islam as a faith, nor as a culture. It did not acknowledge Islam's diversity, history, or struggles. But in all fairness, it wasn't meant to; it was enough that I was not only more apt to reading about Islam more generally and comprehensively* after that, but also had formed a very specific set of questions in mind -- about Islam, about Christianity, and perhaps most interestingly, questions about my own faith in places that I would've never thought to look.

This whole process naturally led to the formation of a study within my bible study group, a place where I have always been able to bring my struggles, my interests, and my questions to an open table.

I don't do much more than facilitate discussion at these meetings. Everybody reads assigned material and I prepare questions for discussion. The quality of discussion seems to always be at the mercy of the groups' preparedness/energy level and completely independent of the quality of questions and agenda I have prepared -- that is one thing I have learned :)

Most exciting, of course, is when people contribute novel or substantial ideas during the brainstorming process. Two broad questions that seem to keep resurfacing are: 1) How do we reconcile the New Testament God with the Old Testament God, and 2) How does culture, the century we are living in, and national ideology/values influence and shape our view of scripture and God, if at all? These are loaded questions, and we continue to ponder.

_______________________________________________

*Some pretty good books that I've read in whole or in part: The Vision of Islam, What Muslims Believe, No god but God, Islamic Interpretations of Christianity.

Blah Friday

Probably the only thing more American than being super excited for Black Friday is being super unexcited for Black Friday. But, whatever. This won't be a post about anti-consumerism or Buy Nothing Day, or even a promotion for the new Morgan Spurlock documentary, What Would Jesus Buy? I happen to fall into the second category for no better reason than feeling generally ho-hum about most of the items hyped up for sale (cameras, GPS systems, and kitchen blenders seemed to be the theme of this Black Friday).

If anything, the fuss just makes you feel stupid for not taking 'your slice' of the sale pie. During our Thanksgiving potluck, I tried getting excited by ruffling through the stacks of Black Friday ads with everyone else. First, I tried to convince myself that I needed a new camera. Then I tried to imagine how cool it would be to have a GPS navigational system in my car. I also felt obligated to check out the shoe section in every single ad; I've been looking for a nice pair of boots that won't make me look ridiculous while walking past palm trees in 60 degree weather, and it'd be irresponsible to not at least look for a sale, right?

But, really peoples. Shopping requires inspiration. Good shopping can never be forced, and a sale isn't a reason to buy. Most people come home with a bunch of stuff they don't need if they choose to rush into the mish mosh without a clear, premeditated goal in the first place. Half of the people I talk to end up returning the majority of the things they buy, and the other half end up standing in hour-long lines for a pair of gloves -- yay.

As for me -- I felt awesome waking up at 1 pm on Friday morning, and lounging around all day in my pj's, doing research and watching old episodes of Scrubs. However, just when I thought another Black Friday had come and gone, I went onto Amazon.com for the sole purpose of browsing some possible DVD titles to rent for the night. Which is when I came across this:

What in the WHAT?? The best, emmy-winning season of the greatest show ever on 4 dvds for only fifteen dollars?!?!

So, this was supposed to be a post about how unnecessary and futile Black Friday is. But now, all I can say is... if you want to watch Season 2 of The Office, come over to my place.

I'm Made of Gingerbread, So...

Watching Knocked Up today for the second time reminded me how hilarious Kristen Wiig is. While Katharine Heigl and Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd were all completely brilliant and perfect for their parts, my greatest laugh-out-loud moments definitely came from the two, short Jill/Alison scenes:

Somehow Wiig manages to plant the bratty high school girl into the sophisticated business woman. Basically, it's Mean Girls aged by about 10 years. Absolutely love it.

Not too far of a departure from that character is Penelope Morris, a recurring character from SNL who is best described as a "habitual braggart". If you watch this video and don't immediately adore Kristen Wiig (and I mean Kristen Wiig, not Penelope Morris), I will give you a quarter.

(If you can't see the video above, go to this link).

My Fireblog: Trip to Paris. I mean, Perris.

Sign on San Diego's "fire blog" has been the most up-to-date source of news, including info on new areas that have been evacuated and/or caught fire. But for those of us without land lines, and without knowledge of how to register cell phone numbers with the Reverse 911 system until like two days into the whole fiasco, this website also served as our freaking lifeline. It's kind of sad to have to rely on the internet to tell you when you might have to run for your life... Because of this, I gave it a permanent spot on my desktop and refreshed it more frequently than I did my undergrad transcript when grades were supposed to come out. And that's saying a lot.

Early Sunday afternoon, I began to smell smoke. It was hot and dry and eerily silent despite strong winds; the palm trees outside my bedroom window made foreboding crackling sounds as it rustled. By Monday morning, the air had a dead yellow tint to it, and I could see ashes collecting at the bottom of our swimming pool. The sun was a bright red ball in the sky, and at dusk it produced a magnificent, almost synthetic-like sun set with gorgeous shades of bold orange, reds, and pinks. Too bad it would be at the cost of so many homes and exasperated firefighters.

Sometime on Monday night, we came to this realization. There were four fires bordering the north, east, and south sides of us, and two of the three major highways out of the city had been closed. The powerful Santa Ana winds were not expected to die down until Thursday. It seemed like a new county was being given the "go" every hour or so, and Del Mar and Solana Beach -- only about 15 miles north of us -- had just been evacuated all the way out to the coast. Two fires raged within 15 miles of Qualcomm Stadium, the evacuation shelter for our area, and it was already a fifth of the way full, having not evacuated any of central San Diego. The air was hardly breathable and it was hot and stuffy inside the condo with all windows and doors closed.

All of this makes it perfectly logical for me, after receiving a call from my energized-and-adventure-prone friend at 2 a.m., to jump the gun, pile into two cars with five other people, and "book the hell out of the city" on the last open freeway. Yeaaa. And that is all I am going to say about *that* little fiasco...

Two discoveries that came out of this whole experience, both of them (unsurprisingly) singing Google's praise:

1. GOOG-411 is actually really useful when fleeing a fire into an unknown town. We arrived randomly in Perris, CA at around 5:30 a.m., because we were too tired to drive any further, and were far enough away to have clean air and a peace of mind. When the fancy, built-in GPS system on our car failed to give any valid hotel numbers, GOOG-411 saved our butts. It is the sole reason for me being asleep in a hotel room by 6 a.m. Later, we used it to find restaurants, starbucks, video rental stores, movie theatres, etc.
   While Verizon Wireless (and other similar carriers) offer 411 services that charge by the call and make you talk to a real person, GOOG-411 is totally free and completely automated through speech recognition. That means, you don't feel bad when you hang up mid-call. It's 'text message' option (which texts you all info including address and number) is also extremely useful, especially when hotel personnel have enunciation problems...

2. The open source aspect of Google maps has played a huge role in monitoring the status of the fire. Sites like latimes.com, kpbs.org, and signonsandiego.com were able to offer interactive Google maps that pinpointed not only areas of evacuation and fire, but also shelters, road closures, smoke advisories, homes destroyed, etc.
   Its inherent feature for being able to tie information to location and then search through listings also proved indispensable for this purpose. For example, details about the number of homes destroyed, acres burned, firefighters on the job, etc. were tied to each fire (click image to enlarge).
   
   It is a powerful interface for relaying geographically significant information and I think very useful natural disaster related applications can be built by combining this interface with the "wisdom of the crowd". For example, it would've been helpful if the average person could contribute reports on what they see/hear/smell of the fire their location on the map. They could even discuss planned evacuation routes, report on traffice in the area, their way of getting contacted for evacuation, etc. (replacing the several active forums that have sprung up over the last couple of days).
   Shelters/firefighters themselves could contribute to information and numbers, providing more abundant, reliable, and up-to-date information. Information (data-mining? or just good old manual input) from blogs, news reports, or radio broadcasts could also be stripped and added on. Perhaps a digg-like rating system could be put in effect that would allow most popular/reliable reports to show up most visibly (i.e. on the least zoomed in version of the map). If monitored correctly, information would flow bottom-up instead of top-down -- something that has been proven successful more than once.

For the record, I was pretty impressed at how smoothly the evacuations seemed to progress. If only they had broadcast info earlier about how poor grad students who don't own land lines can sign up for Reverse 911. Is this some kind of occupational-profiling?

SoCal On Fire!

This was one of the hundreds of headlines I've seen in the last two days. On the many interactive google maps that have been put out by various news stations, it literally looks like Southern California is on fire, with over 15 different fires raging in parallel:

Some pretty crazy photos have been collected here.

While people in La Jolla (where I live) and most of central San Diego have been untouched for the most part, others were not as fortunate. Hundreds of people have lost homes, and hundreds of thousands have been evacuated. If you are from the San Diego area, UCSD has put out a page that describes how you might be able to help. Otherwise, cash donations can be made to the American Red Cross here.

Ode to Audio

Every quarter is different, but there's always this very distinctive turning point about four weeks in, when you go from "i'm so excited about this course I'm taking!" to "JUST GET ME OUT OF HERE ALIVE." in the span of like 3 days. I think this might be day 1 of 3, so I thought I'd be nice and blog before I joined the dark side. Also, for the record, professors who give out easy introductory assignments and follow it with a second, massively harder assignment after the drop deadline, are evil.

So, one of the courses that I am really excited about this quarter (!) is Serge's object recognition course. Not that I am all of the sudden interested in computer vision... but there has actually been some ongoing research that tries to apply methods from (visual) object recognition to auditory object recognition. Briefly: object recognition determines if some specific object appears in a certain image; auditory object recognition determines whether some specific auditory "event" (i.e. spoken word, musical melody, sound of a door slam) has occured in a given audio clip, usually with a noisy environment.

For me, auditory anything was pretty much a non-existant concept to me before coming to UCSD, especially since most all of UW's speech/audio people resided in the EE dept, and few mingled with us. In general, it is also true that the computer vision field has flourished in the last two decades while its auditory counter part has not. Is there a bias for one sensory system over the other? Maybe. From my undergraduate perspective, any mention of the term "recognition" automatically applied to the computer vision field -- robots/machines that could "see" the way that humans do. It was always about hardware dogs that could play soccer, or search engines that could find pictures based on image content, or systems that could recognize hand gestures... the list goes on.

So when I was first introduced to the idea of computer audition -- engineering intelligence that can "hear" the way that humans do, I had one of those great "O_o" moments. Which is precisely what led me to UCSD in the first place.

I think my initial interest in computer audition was partly sentimental. Like many people, I'm crazy about music. Specifically, classical. I don't know much about signal processing or even music theory (sadly, even after many years of piano playing), but the simple fact that my auditory system has allowed me to enjoy so much music over the years seems to warrant at least some sort of return....as weird as that sounds.

Apart from being just really interesting, the field opens up a whole new world of possible technologies; many that can complement those that are being/have been developed in computer vision. If an intelligent machine has eyes, why not ears? These applications will have great educational, musical, informational, military, and medical impact; all of them inspired by aural abilities that most humans take completely for granted everyday. For example, we are currently thinking about possible technologies that may help the deaf or hard-of-hearing community.

The following is a set-up that gets right to the "heart" of what we wish to be able to do computationally. This is written by Albert Bregman in the classic book, Auditory Scene Analysis:

Imagine that you are on the edge of a lake and a friend challenges you to play a game. The game is this: Your friend digs two narrow channels up from the side of the lake. Each is a few feet long and a few inches wide and they are spaced a few feet apart. Halfway up each one, your friend stretched a handkerchief and fastens it to the sides of the channel. As waves reach the side of the lake, they travel up the channels and cause the two handkerchiefs to go into motion. You are allowed to look at the handkerchiefs and from their motions to answer a series of questions: How many boats are there on the lake and where are they? Which is the most powerful one? Which one is closer? Is the wind blowing? Has any large object been dropped suddenly into the lake?

Solving this problem seems impossible, but it is a strict analogy to the problem faced by our auditory systems. The lake represents the lake of air that surrounds us. The two channels are our two ear canals, and the handkerchiefs are our ear drums. The only information that the auditory system has available to it, or ever will have, is the vibrations of these two ear drums. Yet is seems to be able to answer questions very like the ones that were asked by the side of the lake: How many people are talking? Which one is louder, or closer? Is there a machine humming in the background? We are not surprised when our sense of hearing succeeds in answering these questions any more than we are when our eye, looking at the handkerchiefs, fails.

Home Is Where Your Stomach Rests

The first thing that happens when I arrive at home in the Tri-Cities at 3 pm in the afternoon is not a round of hugs or unpacking of suitcases or hearing about my brother's latest adventures at the DMV. It's being plumped down at the dining room table and getting food shoved in my face.

Before I have even arrived home, our next door neighbor has already brought by a huge bowl of brown sticky rice. My mom has a bowl of fried rice waiting on the table and is busy throwing fruit into the blender. My dad is ladling a bowl of soup for me and my brother is asked to re-heat all the left-overs from lunch. A grandma from church stops by with some home-made red-bean pastries. Within about 5 minutes of my setting foot into the house, I am sitting at a table covered with an assortment of mismatched dishes.

Maybe it's a Chinese thing, or maybe it's because everyone back at home thinks I work too hard (har har) and am malnourished because of it. Whatever it is, their idea of a nice welcome is to stuff you silly. And I'm not complaining...

Summer Love

Um, wow. Last post = how my AI final went? I had no idea that my poor blog had been trapped in the nooks and crannies of abandoned cyberspace for this long. Guess I'm here to rescue it (again).

Notable stuff that has happened since last post:

• Somehow passed complexity/theory class.
• Submitted a paper for the first time!
• (4 months later) Got a paper rejected for the first time... :(
• Summer.

Ah, the glorious days of summer. In sunny San Diego. As a grad student. I'm honestly not sure if one can achieve a more superior combination. (Um, okay, I take it back. Anything involving the notion of "grad students" can't possibly be optimal). But a good three months of 9-hour-a-night sleep, undistracted research, and playing in the sun is pretty much paradise for me. Here are some highlights/recommendations/discoveries of the summer:

• Casual Food: Extraordinary Desserts, Yogurt World, and Sushi Deli.

• Really BIG (and good) food: Hash House a go go.

• Annual "four musketeers" reunion. Cyndi, Steeni, and Ophers came to visit [me|San Diego]; we've been best friends since elementary school and I always like to show then and now pictures (though I can't seem to find them at the moment...)

• Organ concert at Balboa Park. Really, really pretty + great musicians, though be forewarned that you will be surrounded by old people and their dogs.

• Surfing at La Jolla Shores! Though, only twice. Maybe more, once I get over my fear of either drowning or breaking my back.

• Reading. For fun. What?

• THE BEACH. Coronado, Ocean Beach, Shores. Good for: reading papers, bonfires, s'mores, and making your swim suit feel loved (especially those that never got to see the light of day in Seattle).

• Walking around Mt. Soledad, with a gorgeous view of all of La Jolla. It's twice as good if you bring a book, blanket, and sack lunch :)

• Cute coffee shops: The Living Room, Influx, and Rebecca's Coffee House.

• Camping at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, an hour east of San Diego. Pros: Beautiful scenery, nice hiking trails, great company. Cons: HUGE, FURRY MOTHS IN THE BATHROOM THAT WANTED TO EAT ME. And having my car towed.

• Karaoke at Min Sok Chon. You get to sing your favorite 90's hits while watching dramatic korean teens agonize over their undying (and often, tragic) love. Under a disco ball. While sipping Soju.

• Shout House! Piano Bar. Only place where you will ever witness "I Like Big Butts" played (skillfully) on the piano.

• Pacific Bar & Grill in PB. Bar in the front, good sized club in the back. No gross, creepy boys on the dance floor either (yay).

• Onyx in downtown. Really awesome live, jazz music, with no cover! Jamming begins at 10 pm. The room is small though, so if you don't get there on time, you will probably be standing...

Only two more weeks left of this summer love affair. Sadness :(

My AI Final Went Something Like This

Why I Haven't Blogged In Like Forever

Last Thursday marked our very last OS lecture. It marked the very last day in which we would sit in cold, rigid chairs, trembling and shaking for the duration of 1.5 hours, praying to the heavens: please, please do not call on me to explain that horrendously boring and esoteric section of the paper that I, for the life of me, could not stay awake long enough to read...

Welcome to grad OS. During every Tuesday and Thursday lecture, we'd discuss two landmark papers in the operating systems field. Pro: We got to read *the* original papers that spawned the most fundamental concepts in the field, like multiprogramming systems, virtual memory, monitors & semaphores, UNIX, paging algorithms, file systems -- and even more on revolutionary, but failed ideas that never made it into the undergrad textbooks. Con: By "discuss", I actually mean "grill", as in, the professor would cycle through a stack of notecards with our names on it, asking us to answer technical questions about the assigned readings everytime our names came up. He'd go through the stack of cards multiple times during each lecture, forcing us to learn some rules of...survival ;)

"Time-consuming" doesn't quite cut it. Maybe a description that involved words like "sacrifice" and "soul-devouring" would be more accurate. There were only two lectures per week, but it seemed like every non-OS lecture day was spent in frantic preparation for it, either in the form of writing papers, or reading papers. For example, two papers, each running from 15 to 25 pages long would be a good 6 to 8 hour read. To make this ordeal less painful, we formed study groups and tried decieving our brains into thinking we were having fun by moving our study sessions to happy places -- like cute coffeehouses and fancy thai restaurants. Which would then involve tangent discussions about how we wanted to kill some of the authors for being so egotistical and unnecessarily long-winded, or how we wished we could throw rocks at the boys in our class sometimes for being so obnoxious and pretentious...but I digress.

For someone who dreads talking out loud in lecture, the thought of this class was terrifying at first. At the same time, I'm really glad that I took it (the fact that the class was a requirement is besides the point...). Lectures always continued to be stressful, but it became easier to think in real-time and articulate out loud in front of 30 other classmates as time went on. It's also amazing to look back at the stack of 30 - 40 papers that we have under our belt, and see the friendships that have resulted from attending, like, four study groups per week. This calls for a couple more tallies on the Pro side: (1) we're not scared of reading 27-page OS papers anymore, (2) we know we're all capable of talking out loud in class, (3) we've compiled a pretty entertaining set of quotes/insults that have been hurled between various study group members, and most importantly, (4) I am never reading another OS paper again. Ever.