So, When Is Your NLP Due?

I have been asked this question many times throughout the quarter, and the answer is usually, "um... two weeks ago?"

It's been an unconventionally rough quarter :(

APRIL TENTH

30 Rock and The Office come back. Thursdays will be glorious again!

Everytime I....

... make a table in LaTex, I lose a day off of my life.

\[
\begin{small}\setlength{\tabcolsep}{3.5pt}\begin{tabular}{l | c c c c c c c c c c c c c c }
&cc1 & cc2 & cc3 & cc4 & cc5 & cc6 & cc7 & cc8 & cc9 & cc10 & cc11 & cc12 & cc13 & cc14\\
\hline\hline \\
lw R3, 100(R5) &IF&ID&EX&M1&M2&WB&&&&& &&&\\
add R6, R3, R2 &&IF&ID&$\circ$&$\circ$&EX&M1&M2&WB&&&&&\\
sub R9, R3, R8 &&&IF&$\circ$&$\circ$&ID&EX&M1&M2&WB&&&&\\
lw R1, 2000(R9) &&&&$\circ$&$\circ$&IF&ID&EX&M1&M2&WB&&&\\
add R5, R4, R3 &&&&&&&IF&ID&EX&M1&M2&WB&&\\
addi R7, R1, \#8 &&&&&&&&IF&ID&$\circ$&EX&M1&M2&WB\\
\hline
\end{tabular}\end{small}
\]
\\


The Wisdom of the Customer

For a couple of months now, Lawrence, Jie, and I have been brainstorming with a professor from the UCSD Medical School about some potential assistive listening devices that Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing people may benefit from. This is a really cool prospect because it's not only a compelling application for the computer audition research that I am interested in, but also an opportunity to help develop technology for a community that has seen few technological breakthroughs.

Before beginning any implementation, we wanted to first share and discuss our ideas with our customer, the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing community. The most important question: Will these devices even be useful? And similarly: In what scenarios would these devices be used in? How should the device look and how should it be worn? What other features would be useful?

We were lucky to work with a team from the medical school that was actively involved with the local Deaf Community Services (DCS) group. They helped us with everything from advertising to coordinating participant schedules while we prepared speeches and rehearsed with ASL interpreters. It took a substantially nontrivial amount of time, something that always takes me, the engineer/non-people-person, by surprise. But we finally had three focus groups take place right before winter break with two deaf groups and one hard-of-hearing group.

Meeting the participants and then facilitating discussion was really a tremendous experience. People were thoughtful and articulate and honest and, surprisingly supportive. Most of them were very excited about our ideas and encouraged us to "hurry and go make these things!" They not only gave us feedback for our devices, but also a glimpse of what their every-day life looks/feels like (In hindsight, this turned out to be infinitely more useful than had they simply answered our questions).

I learned so much from these discussions. People told stories of how they (along with family members and close friends) have learned to adapt their lives around their hearing loss, but not without continued daily frustrations -- people like doctors or restaurant workers or cashiers often ignore the fact that they are deaf or hard of hearing. Abnormal sounds such as a faucet left running for hours or a flight delay announcement at the airport are difficult, if not impossible, to detect, and often lead to extraordinary amounts of inconveniences and hassle. Most expressed English as their second language, ASL their first, how the two languages differ in structure, and consequently, how that impacts their proficiency for spoken and written English. They also advised us on potential legal matters, as well as where previous assistive listening devices had failed.

The more honest version of the story, however, would not overlook the fact that conducting each of these focus groups actually felt like running a marathon; they were ridiculously draining. I would stand there for two hours at a time before people who have and continue to overcome short and long term challenges that I will never know, and feel deeply humbled and intrigued by everything that was said. At the same time, I was overwhelmed by this continual outpour of emotion and information from the 8 or 9 participants who were all eager to sign their thoughts and opinions and stories. Some would veer off subject or misunderstand device functions. Others would sign out of turn, making it difficult for the single participant-side interpreter. Each exchange of dialogue also experienced some lag time as interpreters had to catch up with the spoken speech/signing, so I'd try to choose my words carefully as to minimize the number of sentences that needed to be signed.

There are some big ideas that I came away with in the end. First, the discussions gave me a much better understanding of the diversity in experiences/needs that come with different degrees of hearing loss, and consequently, the realization that no assistive device will be able to meet the needs of everyone. At the same time, a better understanding of this diversity is important as it may contribute to more cleverly designed devices that may be multi-functional and thus useful for more people -- perhaps even those not specifically deaf or hard of hearing.

As expected, some were wary of the role that new technologies would play. They voiced their concerns regarding the unpredictability of systems and the lack of support when needed, and how inappropriate it would be, for example, to even think for a second that these technologies could take the place of human interpreters at this point, especially in emergency situations. We just want more options, they say. The goal is to create more alternatives, not a revolution.

Finally, many people expressed their disappointment, not simply at the lack of technological advances in the area of assistive devices, but mainly, the lack of care and voice put into the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing community. A hearing person could buy a cellphone for $100. A deaf or hard-of-hearing person must spend over $1000 for extended features on the same phone, to accommodate their disability. Excited movie-goers pile into the theatre expecting closed captioning (as advertised), only to be told that there were technical difficulties that day and no closed captioning would be provided.

For most of us, the last two decades have brought pivotal advancements in science and technology, and as a result, we've seen these technologies play increasingly larger roles in our daily lives. But we sometimes fail to see that as universal as these technologies seem to be, they are still marketed toward a specific demographic. Minorities have different needs and are quickly forgotten.

At the time, I was also in the middle of reading Jeffrey Sach's "The End of Poverty" -- a very good book. A related idea that Sachs emphasizes throughout the book is how rich and poor countries are in need of vastly different technologies (not just in the digital sense, but also in medicine, agriculture, etc.) These technologies are not simply a subset of rich country technologies (as many people might think), but whole new creatures of its own. We, as a people, can be known for developing the most advanced cloning procedures or the most sophisticated computing technologies. But if there are still minorities (those who are poor, those with disabilities, heck, at one point, even those who are not male) who still feel like they are living in the stone age...then...is there something wrong? There are arguments for all kinds of answers to this question, but it will still never feel/be right.

In the end, I have no idea if we'll be able to achieve any of the fancy stuff we proposed at the focus groups, or even if they'll be any good. I feel torn as both the marketer and the engineer; I feel, in some ways, deeply accountable for my words now that I have personally interacted with all of these dear people, but at the same time knowing very well the limits of current machine learning/audio processing methods, as well as my own capabilities as a researcher. Perhaps I am taking this all too seriously, but who knows. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Jorge Can Read My Mind

Uncanny.

...Or are we just that easy to predict?

HOLY CRAP

This movie was so well done. I don't even know if I liked it, but it was still extremely well done. Good, or bad, I left the theater feeling like I had just stepped off of a wildly themed rollercoaster ride. Even after an hour, I was still fighting feelings of nausea and an abnormally high heart rate.

The first person camera/documentary style of shooting turned what could have been another Godzilla/Independence Day/The Day After Tomorrow into something completely novel. It was neither horror nor sci-fi nor drama. It was not an epic film or a movie with a moral. Instead, it was personal, first-hand, and most importantly, uninformed. Nobody really knows what's going on.

When tragedy hits away from home, the first instinct of the curious bystander is to figure out what is going on and why. But here, the moviegoer does not take on the conventional role of bystander. Instead, the moviegoer becomes the victim, and the victim does not have the luxury of turning on the evening news. This thriller is so unique because it doesn't feed off of the climactic satisfaction that most people get when they learn the full details of a gruesome plot. There is no plot here -- only events and consequences.

Of course, what drew me to the movie in the first place was my fascination for big, green, sea monsters. And I definitely got what I asked for. The only thing more frightening than this lanky, gargantuan monster was the fact that you rarely got a good look at the thing throughout the entire movie! In fact, I'd be hard-pressed for a description except that it made Godzilla look adorable. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 = haha, cheesy big, green, monster, and 10 = i'm gonna crap my pants, this one would be a pretty solid 9.

When Code Gets Scary...

Me: ugh, i have to revisit my sight-reading tutor code
Me: it's so scary
Sk: haha
Me: it's like discovering a box of take-out that's been sitting in the back of your fridge for half a year
Me: i'm scared to see what it looks like

Our paper on The Sight-Reading Tutor (our temp name 'till we figure out something cooler (but not as cool as 'Guitar Hero Unplugged' (which is *too* cool))) has been accepted to ICASSP 2008. This means two things: 1) Roadtrip to Vegas in March! and 2) We actually have to get our program to work for the demo... d'oh.

Getting the program to work again wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that I haven't looked at the code in over seven months. Seven months ago, I was rushing to meet a paper deadline, in the middle of implementing a new feature, swapping out old stuff for new, altering code structure, nothing was compiling (let alone documented) and things were in complete disarray... and then after the paper deadline was over, another project came along and I pretty much drop-kicked The Sight-Reading Tutor project into researchland's State of Denial; haven't touched it since.

Extending/fixing up old, undocumented code might be one of the most nightmarish things you can ask of a programmer. But, here it goes... opening XCode... decoding my then-brilliant (now, completely confusing) file-naming scheme... bracing for the worst.... If you never see me again, it means my code has eaten me alive.

Asians Who Like Garrison Keillor

Yesterday, Shiaokai and I went to the San Diego Civic Center for a Garrison Keillor concert (concert? show? whatever you want to call a man who is able to bring in a full house by simply sitting on a stool and telling stories). Shiaokai is a big fan of Praire Home Companion, and I bought him tickets to the show as a Christmas present.

I didn't realize, however, until after we'd arrived at the venue, that we seemed to be quite the outliers as far as demographics go. There were few people under the age of, like, 40, and even fewer people who were not White. I'd happily spot an asian once or twice throughout the entire event, but would silently note that they all had significant others who were caucasian. It was like going to a symphony concert, but even worse. It was like going to my big, white church back in Seattle, but much, much worse.

The communities that I have been a part of since college have all been so diverse or academic-based that I sometimes forget that I am still a minority in this country. I proudly call myself an American, cook American food, wear American clothing, engage in American politics, read American books, and obsess over American tv shows...but throw me into a pool of all white people (especially older, white people), and I start getting a little fidgety.

I've lived in the U.S. all my life, but while growing up in Richland, WA from my elementary thru highschool years, I seemed to continually be bombarded with reminders that 1) I was Chinese, and 2) I would never fit in. Richland is a small town in desert-like Eastern Washington that is over 90% White; I was one of maybe 5 asian people in my entire highschool class of over 300, and the only chinese.

It is much better now, but when I was a kid, I swear, there were people there who had never seen an asian person before. I would watch as my parents were scoffed at, for things like not knowing where the line started at a grocery store or how to follow the menus at a restaurant, and then watch as they tried to apologize in broken english; on the flip side, adults would sometimes assume that I couldn't speak english and talk about me while I was still within earshot. I despised the kids at school who ridiculed me for my straight-from-Taiwan outfits that my parents made me wear; I didn't grasp the concept of buying clothes from 'The Mall' until after hitting highschool. I hated that my piano teacher seemed to care more about proper public ettiquete than music, and how she would desperately 'educate' me on proper manners before she took me to performance classes or concerts or auditions that were mostly populated by old white ladies, like herself, leaving me embarassed at the implication that it was beyond the scope of my parents' knowledge. I could go on.

It might not be a stretch to say that when I was little, I was intimidated by white people. They were confident and beautiful and lived in gorgeous homes and the women wore huge earrings and bright red lipstick and lots of fur. I couldn't measure up because I didn't wear fashionable clothing, because my parents couldn't get through the grocery line without having an awkward exchange with the cashier, because my dad didn't watch football and my mom didn't cook steak, and because we never once bothered to make our dingy apartment space look presentable. My parents were far too occupied with the arduous job of raising a kid while finishing their Ph.Ds, and had little time to care about assimilating to the American culture.

Moving to Seattle for college was a relief, and in just a couple of months, I felt more at ease there than I ever did in my 10-year home at Richland. A lot of my childhood anxiety was forgotten. But now and then, I would still see some subtle shades of ignorance. For example, during my prospective graduate student visit to University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaigne, I had the following, very odd, exchange with another prospective grad from Texas:

Him: Where are you from, originally?
Me: Oh, well my parents are from Taiwan, but I was born in Oregon.
Him: Oh. [pause]. Well, your english is very good.
Me: Um, thanks, but I was born in the U.S.
Him: Yes, but still, your english is very good.
Me: Well, I've lived here my entire life so...my english should be about as good as your english.
Him: I see. No, but still, I think it's very impressive. You should be proud.
Me: ...

It should probably be evident by now that this post is not about the Garrison Keillor concert. But since it is in the title, I'll say a couple of things about that too. In fact, Garrison Keillor was very good; the old man lumbered onto stage wearing huge red shoes and showed much talent as he sat on a small stool before a crowd of thousands and delivered hilarious stories from Lake Wobegon for the next two hours. People were friendly. The crowd was receptive. Mr. Keillor was quite endearing. And as I waited in a long line for the women's bathroom, I felt only a small twinge of anxiety when I found myself packed into a small room with dozens and dozens of old, white ladies wearing huge earrings and bright red lipstick and lots of fur.

Can I Get a w00t w00t for Hillary?

Following the presidential primaries has been exciting. However, it also constantly reminds me that I would never, ever, cut it as a politician. Or anything even remotely related. Like Hillary, I'd be all "Well, that hurts my feelings...", but like, times a billion.

I don't know how these people sleep at night, being attacked left and right, having their words twisted out of proportion, their good intentions portrayed as bad. Obama says in his book, "My wife will tell you that by nature I'm not somebody who gets real worked up about things", and maybe that's just what it takes. But, me...I get stressed out just watching them on tv. (However, people should also know that I am the person who gets stressed out playing board games.)

I also can't really tell if nationally televised debates are useful to me; the candidates spend so much of their colloquial efforts dodging potentially harmful phrases that barely anything concrete comes through. It's like everything is glossed up/airbrushed, like Photoshop, the Politician Edition or something. What are we looking for? The candidate that you'd be most comfortable inviting over for dinner? The candidate that is the least sarcastic, bitter, or prone to name-calling? The candidate that doesn't have a chip on his/her shoulder? The candidate that exudes the most social grace or scholarship or compassion? When it comes to televised debates, it seems inevitable that personality has more pull than issues.

So, Hillary has won over New Hampshire. However great that is, it is not the point of this post. This is. Taken from hillaryclinton.com, Hillary bullet points her "innovation agenda":

5. Triple the number of NSF fellowships and increase the size of each award by 33 percent. At present, the NSF offers approximately 1,000 fellowships per year, similar to 1960s levels, although the number of college students graduating with science and engineering degrees has grown three fold...

Hillary cares about grad students!

6. Support initiatives to bring more women and minorities into the math, science, and engineering professions. Increasing the educational attainment of women and minorities, particularly in math, science and engineering, is critical to our future as an innovative nation...

Hillary cares about getting women into engineering!!

It's weird seeing these issues mentioned outside of the tech/grad school bubble. I live in such a specialized world that I forget it is ultimately the outside world that we are potentially trying to benefit. Consequently, these issues should be very important to everybody. Call me nerdy, but the mere acknowledgement and formulation of these problems as publicly important issues -- especially the part about getting women into engineering -- makes me giddy. And that is why Hillary deserves a great and heart-felt w00t.

Disclaimer: A 'w00t' does not necessarily imply a 'vote'. According to Facebook, I am still very much undecided :)

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.