Emily Lam

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Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Time Lapse Video

I haven't abandon this blog. I promise. Just unfortunately haven't been updating as frequently! (Besides I would let you know if I did ever decide to stop blogging.) But today I do have something to blog. I made a time lapse video. (The convenience of me finishing this video yesterday and blogging about it today keeps me from hitting a monthly low of two posts.)

Well here it is:


Youtube description:

"Time lapse video of BU's new student center. I lived across the street from it as they were building it so I thought, "Hey, why not?!" So basically everyday as I walked to and from my dorm I took a quick photo with my iPhone camera.

I know the video is a little jumpy. That's because I didn't use a tripod and basically just guestimated where to take each photo with the tree as a reference point. But not bad for my first time lapse video, right?"

Now onto maybe an animated video: stop action or hand drawn. (Haha, I'm thinking about how the world I am gonna create a stop action video with zero skill in creating clay models. Maybe I will try hand drawn animation first since I slightly have more drawing skills than modeling skills.)

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Badminton and Spiderman

I've been playing badminton all week with my family. It's nice! It's the sport I am best at. LoL, but I guess everyone is good at badminton. It doesn't require much skills, besides hand-eye coordination and luck, unless you are intentionally trying to scorn the other person and spiking it downwards every chance you get. In that case, you are no fun to play with. But I'm having a good time, sweating it out, playing in the shade. It's nice, very nice. It's what summer is all about.

On another note, I saw The Amazing Spiderman yesterday. I liked it. It's the best comic book superhero movie I've seen this year. Yup, Avengers, I'm talking to you. I liked Spidey better. (I didn't really like The Avengers.) But we will see how well The Amazing Spiderman stacks up againstThe Dark Knight Rises, when it comes out later this month. I absolutely loved The Dark Knight and I'm expecting The Dark Knight Rises to be just as great. Those are my two favorite comic book superheroes: Spiderman and Batman.

Minor Spoiler Alert.

But they're different movies. The characters are different, so maybe there's room for the both of them in the cinemas. For one, the villains in Christopher Nolan's Batman are evil, downright evil. Can a being be that evil? While the villains in Spiderman are more like anti-villians. They are beings who are confused between what is good and what is bad. Dr.Connor/Lizard genuinely believed he was helping the world. He also had a sort of Jekyll/Hyde complex, which I won't go into. I also can relate more to Peter Parker than I can to Bruce Wayne. I do really like what Nolan did with Bruce Wayne's character though. But when it comes down to it, an angst filled, nerdy Peter Parker is more down my alley than a confused and lost billionaire Bruce Wayne.

And that 's what I really liked about The Amazing Spiderman: how nerdy the new Peter Parker was. I haven't read the comics, so I don't know how nerdy Parker is supposed to be, but I liked the very nerdy Parker. When I saw that he had a magnify glass on top of a PCB, I was like this nerd is legit. We have those magnify glasses in our lab, because sometimes, really, the text on the random components we amass is just too damn small to distinguish, and somethings are nigh impossible to solder without a magnify glass. The web slingers gadgets were also different from the previous Spiderman, who didn't need a gadget to sling web. The slingers, once again, show how nerdy Peter Parker was to be able to invent them. The previous Spiderman was also a nerd but he didn't display any of it asides from attending Columbia, if I remember correctly. I also thought the portrayal of Peter Parker by Andrew Garfield was much better than Toby Maguire. I also like Gwen Stacy better than Mary Jane Watson. Gwen has way more going for her than just looks, which was basically what MJ had. And Emma Stone nailed her part as Gwen Stacy.

So The Amazing Spiderman beats it's predecessor is the conclusion.

Post Script: I updated the header over at Stay Curious Emily. I must admit it took me a lot longer to draw than it should've and it's nothing great. But hey, it's something, and I like it.

Sunday, July 08, 2012

I'm Starting to Forget

I've reached a point in my life, where I've become more knowledgeable than some of my high school teachers, that I'm starting to forget what it's like to be unlearned. This is kind of a problem since I still have so so much to learn. I live such a privileged life: I surf the web, maintain a blog, go to museums, attend special lectures at MIT, participate in bike rides, roll my eyes at how superficial and commercial society is, sit in central air all day, hibernate from my friends, and other privileged activities. My college peers are all educated. They value education whether for the right reason or not. Not all educated people are the same though, you see. Some have a thirst for knowledge, while others are educated because it's part of a process to becoming "successful." I'm of the former. I google and wikipedia anything I don't know. And then there are some who behave as they are educated but are not, but I'm not going to get into that, gasp, that actually could be me! However, a lot of educated and successful people are unbeknownst to the life of the uneducated, the unprivileged. I come from a prideful, historic, and poor city. From that I was lucky enough to befriend people who couldn't attend their college of choice for one reason or another, people who joined the military, people who were immigrants, people who's parents neglected them, people who've had kids during their teenage years, people not like me. It's so easy to blame peoples' lack of education on themselves without taking their environment into account. It takes a very strong person to rise from a family where every member is in a gang. And I must remember that. Remember that being educated is a privilege.

Friday, I was reminded what it was like to not know why the sky was blue and to live a simple life. I met a man on the train. Normally, I don't converse on the train – I rather stare out the window and observe the scenery and day dream. But this man insisted on talking to me. And I politely participated. Of course, I didn't say much. But he told me of his life. He told me how he was a construction worker. How people in the United States judged him based on the fact that he only had one arm. He showed me his photo album of before and after photos he'd taken from the jobs he had worked. He told me nobody believed him that he could pave sidewalks and build basements on his own with one arm. He was a hard-working man, I could tell. He lamented how people in America were lazy. How in Massachusetts, we charge an extra 3 dollars for a train ride, if you bought the ticket on the train, while at the same time not providing an option to buy your ticket before boarding the train, since nobody was working the desk. He said if he was working that desk job, he'd wake up early in the morning to make sure people had the opportunity to purchase a ticket before boarding. He rightfully complained how this particular desk didn't take credit or debit cards. He told me how he was pursuing his GED at night. And how he was hopeful to drive one day. How he didn't work on Saturdays because he attended church instead. I've come to realize that being religious isn't a bad thing. It helps ground and explain a lot of the unexplainable. He told me how he had been in this country for 6 years and that his baby daughter was five months. How he worked hard to send money to his home country, Honduras, to support his mother and other two daughters. How he was part of the army in Honduras. He told me how he liked to walk, walking from city to city. He even told me about his pants size, how they were getting smaller since he started walking a lot. He told me how he was a vegetarian. How his girlfriend didn't know how to cook, and that he had to cook meat for her. How he liked it better when it actually snowed in the Winter, that way he could make money by shoveling.

All and all, he was an interesting guy. He was a hard worker, like my mom, like my dad. I don't want to be one of those privileged folks who doesn't understand what it's like to work. Sometimes, I give off that impression. I've never worked a labor intensive job, ever. And while, I don't ever want to, the least I could do is understand and remember that it is not always a choice and that it exist: there are people who are uneducated, and working labor intensive jobs who may or may not be happy. But as a privileged and educated person, I should respect them for being better than I am and never look down on them.

(I was going to use the word "cultured" in this post, but realized it was a very vague term. Maybe, I will discuss being "cultured" in my next post.)