December 1, 2006
this is the deck of my house yesterday. We had been under the siege by snowy and icy driveways for three days. To get out the house for airport, I had to drag our suitcases through the whole block covered with snow and ice to catch a cab, since no vehicles could drive in (wait, I am not talking about Buffalo, right?)
This is where I am today-Sunny and warm La Jolla! Sunlight stays in my room at Estancia all day long. Enjoying Rancheros cuisine (not sure what’s the difference from California cuisine, but what’s in food is not important anymore) at the Spanish Corridor, wondering in the spa garden of Eucalyptus, lavender and citrus trees, I wonder how I could leave southern California for Seattle. Or is it only a temporary feeling in the winter.
July 18, 2006
I haven’t got a chance to blog about my 10-day Erotrip, partly for being busy; but mostly I don’t think I can write better than tour guide books, and my tour can’t compete to what’s in those veteran travelers’ blogs. If merely for the memory of the trip, 300 or some pictures can help me recollect every moment in detail (magic of Europe. Now this is something might worth another touch of blogging when I read today’s Seattle Times about the celebration of Rembrandt’s 400th anniversary over the weekend. When we were in Amsterdam, We stayed at Plantage, about 20 minutes walk to Rembrandt’s house. Several things are very interesting about the house: people slept in small boxes at that time, with heavy curtains down in the front; Rembrandt, at the heyday of his fame, had a wide collection of rare treasure and art from all over the world; and half of the paintings exhibited in the house were later found to drawn or partly drawn by his apprentices.
Compared with Vincent Van Gogh, another very famous and very beloved Dutch painter, Rembrandt led much comfortable life-that’s for sure. In their 20s, Van Gogh volunteered to preach in a poor coal mining field in Belgium, while Rembrandt opened his own workshop in Amsterdam. Living on the support Theo, his brother for most of his life, Van Gogh shot himself to death “for the good of us all”. Rembrandt, on the other hand, lived well on the tuition paid by his apprentice and commission for portraits, a lot of which were accomplished here and there by his apprentices (Rembrandt is a great juggler among several paintings at the same time). In recent years, art historians have been busy in authenticating works then thought to be painted by Rembrandt-a good entrepreneur can even create jobs for fellows 400 years after him! Rembrandt made a lot of money, and he spent a lot and he got bankruptcy too. Nonetheless, his way of making a better living does not shed off a bit of his artistic heritage. Van Gogh lived in his art and his paintings feel like the explosion of his inner passion; Rembrandt seemed to be able to split between art and business(which is very difficult), and he managed to sublimate beyond his mundane living.
At the end of his life, Van Gogh sighed “there is no end to sadness”; I bet Rembrandt felt the same grief after the death of two wives and his only son. Though managing to keep a comfortable and somewhat succesful life, he can’t escape the sadness, which I think is the muse for all and every artist.
June 12, 2006
I was in Philadelphia yesterday for Hyperlinked-Society conference organized by Annenberg Policy Center at UPenn. It’s a very interesting gathering, with a lot of big names in media, academia and industry. The meeting is not literarily about “hyperlinks”, though there is one panel showing fancy network graphs, most of which I’ve seen in several other conferences. With six panels from 8am to 5pm, the conference was overwhelmingly packed with broad range of web2.0 topics. There is vivid account from Jay Rosen of making oneself known and ones’ voice heard without getting through press; there is a dramatic encounter of Wikipedia and NYT (via David Weinberger who is also in the conference), defining the structure of professional and amateur media on line. There is interesting discussion on how to help internet users find information they need (I never thought this would be such a big issue). Alex presented our research on blog mapping (which makes me feel very proud). There is a shocking statement-“diversity means lower quality” from Microsoft’s Mark Smith that silence the congregation two second followed by some heated arguments (I thought he had some point though it sounds not very politically correct)
There are a lot of big ideas floating on the air, a strong contrast to the AAAI Symposia I attended three months ago, which was full of the most trivial technical details. I think there is a lot of bridging work to do for this these two worlds-the idea and the technology. Regardless of the sharp difference, each conference can hardly go without attacking (or praising, in some rare occasion) Google.
On Thursday night, I met lovely Yunan, who took me to a Korean restaurant for her second dinner within an hour.
Took wrong train on the way to airport, and found myself standing at a bridge in a town called Fernwood-lots of huge stone houses but no white or yellow face. I felt so lost and for a second could not remember how I was left alone in this strange place, totally un-linked.
June 6, 2006
Came back from a vacation at Europe-
very crowded Italy,
very cold Amsterdam.
Share some pictures here first: http://flickr.com/photos/21475076@N00/sets/72157594156036983/
April 1, 2006
Ok, that made me feel better. When I flew from sunny Seattle landing on San Jose International airport, it’s raining. I was at Stanford for a symposium on Computer Approaches to analyzing Weblogs, part of AAAI Spring symposia. I hope I would have time later to write more on what I learn from this conference. Before that, let me borrow the notes from the organizer and Matt.
Other exciting things: driving a BT Cruiser to San Francisco all by myself. having dinner at Google’s “Socialist” catering room, and meeting two high-school friends, whom I haven’t been in touch for 15 years (God, time flies!), at Yahoo’s new office at Santa Clara. Again, hope I will have time to come back to blog about the trip.
