What the hell is going on people?
-----------------------------------------

SINGAPORE - A mass rally is being planned on August 17, nomination day for
Singapore’s presidential election, to protest against the government’s
refusal to allow potential candidate Andrew Kuan to run for the post of
president.

The organisers plan to hold the protest at the People’s Association
headquarters at around 11 am, when the incumbent, Mr SR Nathan, arrives to
file his nomination for re-election.

On Saturday, the island’s Presidential Elections Committee granted Mr
Nathan a “Certificate of Eligibility” to contest the election and rejected
the bids by three other applicants.

This means that come Nomination Day on August 17, the 81 year-old former
internal security chief will be returned unopposed for a second six-year
term.

In a statement, the committee said that Mr Nathan has “all the credentials
for the office of the President and is well regarded and respected for his
public service”.

It also announced its reasons for rejecting the other three applications.

It said two of them, Mr Ooi Boon Ewe, a former tutor, and Mr Ramachandran
Govindasamy Naidu, a retired senior store keeper, were rejected due to
their lack of qualifications.

“The career history of these two men obviously showed that they did not
hold any similar or comparable position of seniority and responsibility in
any other organisation or department of equivalent size or complexity in
the public or private sector, which is necessary for the office of the
Presidency,” said the statement.

As for Mr Andrew Kuan, the former Group Chief Financial Officer of JTC,
the committee argued that “the seniority and responsibility of that
position was not comparable to those needed for the office either”.

Singaporeans by and large were shocked at the announcement and newspaper
offices were flooded with calls from irate readers calling on the
government to explain the rationale for rejecting Mr Kuan’s application.

Meanwhile, online newsgroups and blogs saw tons of angry postings calling
for the government to allow Mr Kuan to stand for the election.

A posting on the soc.culture.singapore newsgroup said: “it’s pretty
obvious the MW (”men in white“, here referring to the ruling PAP government)
is NOT READY for the TEST”.

As the public outcry triggered by a huge scandal at the government-backed
NKF (National Kidney Foundation) is still fresh on many people’s minds,
the reader said the government was afraid that Mr Nathan could be defeated
at the polls.

Speaking to reporters, the organisers of the protest rally said they hoped
Singaporeans would turn out in force to pressure the government to review
their decision to reject Mr Kuan’s bid.

“The PAP government obviously owes the people of Singapore an
explanation,” said the spokesman, who refused to be named.

Mr Nathan’s office could not be reached for comment.

Comment by Asia Press Service

This is a brief writeup about Siggraph 2005. (I'm doing a rather technical writeup this time)

Papers

Papers this year were pretty impressive. Other than the face paper which I was involved in, there were a whole bunch of fluid papers that were worth reading. I would recommend the Vortex Methods paper which is already in production use at ILM for Star Wars : Episode III . I thought the Real-Time Framework for Single Scattering paper was a really good piece of work. Basically, you could get high quality fog (where light causes halos at different distances) at reasonable real-time frame rates. The Local Precomputed Radiance Transfer for Deformable Objects paper also caught my eye. I think the demo is already present in the latest DirectX 9 SDK. It shows the animation of the bat with transluscent flapping wings. I also like the Shadow Fields paper a lot. Even though memory requirements are somewhat prohibitive, I feel it has potential for extensions or adaptations to other techniques in the future.

Vortex Particle Method

Sketches

I didn't attend that many Siggraph sketches. I sat in on the Real-Time ray-tracing sketch. The results were really impressive but I somehow feel that the OpenRT system running on 20 CPUs or a dedicated RPU unit will be obsolete once Nvidia/ATI come out with a new shader model that supports recursion in it. Recursion seems to be one of the main limiting factors against implementing real-time ray-tracing on the GPU. Also, the global illumination demo using OpenRT wasn't that impressive IMHO.
I also sat in for the GPU tricks sketch. Both Nvidia and ATI gave the audiences some ideas for neat tricks and techniques on today's Shader Model 3.0 capable GPUs. I had read most of the slides before hand though so it wasn't totally new information to me.

Companies and their Booths

This was huge. There were tons of graphics companies at the exhibition. A lot of them were hiring. EA had a huge booth, as did Alias, Adobe, Pixar, just to name a few. There was a real-time ray-tracing demo running on the cell processor which was pretty impressive.

Back from LA. More writeups to follow hopefully. On the first day, the hotel messed up my accomodation so I had to crash in my coworker's room. However, because they were so sorry about messing up my room, they put me on the 17th floor(top floor) on the second day with a bar right next to the room. The room was amazing. That's all I have to say.

Big news this week, other than the London Blast.
A quote from the article:

"In that sense, rather than being an illustration of America's might on the global economic stage, last week's revaluation could well end up displaying instead the power now wielded by China. That, in the end, will be its ultimate historic significance."

Times are changing. I hope people are ready for it.

Wow. I can't believe HP did it. Looks like the company's really going downhill from here on.

Hot.

I remember I had this conversation with the group of friends I hang out with. It involved the topic of what one would refer to as the "after one year job crisis". Apparently, quite of few of them went through this phase after just 11 months into their current jobs. They often wondered about what they were going to do with the rest of their lives, given the current jobs that they have. I think it might hit me too next year after my masters, or maybe not... I'd say that most of them have reasonably well-paying and (hopefully) rewarding jobs at various different companies. Still, I guess the concept of work tends to hit you occasionally in the head and you start wondering about what to do with your life.

I know some of them have decided to be work at their current companies in the short term and eventually move on to do a higher degree of sorts, like an MBA. Others might be in there for the longer term. Having only worked for more than a month, I am less than qualified to comment on such issues. I do know, however, that I used to dream about getting a PhD and go into academia, doing hardcore research. That dream has kind of melted away(but maybe not completely). Getting into a good PhD program here is extremely tough, staying on is tougher and the real work starts after the PhD. Having seen my professor and other members of the research group(including myself) slave through Christmas and the New Year's has made me decide against pursuing that dream for now. Getting a position at a top school is extremely difficult, regardless of where you graduated from. Maintaining that and getting tenure in my view is one of the most challenging activities a person can impose on oneself. Ever. Hence, I have utmost respect for tenured folks at my university and other reasonably decent places. Which brings me back to my original point. I don't think I can ever match these guys. There are smart people, and then there are really smart people. I think I've seen a fair number of really smart people and even a lot of them don't make it. (One of the professors from my department just got fired recently for bad research) It's a pretty cruel and harsh environment to be in and I know my limits. Beyond a certain point, pure brilliance + hardwork starts to shine. Hardworking, smart people will succeed in most cases but for the field which I am talking about right now, you need sheer brilliance and hardwork just to survive.

Hence, I've decided to take the slightly easier route that is industry and do stuff which I am good at. It might not be as groundbreaking as academic research, but hey, at least it's something I have been doing decently at. I think that's the key: find a reasonably interesting job that you feel will bring some sort of meaning to your life. I count myself lucky these past years to have been able to do just that. Lots of people I know hate their jobs, some people have no idea what they will be doing with their degrees. Some wondered why the hell they got that degree in the first place. Getting stuck in a job that sucks and brings little meaning to oneself is like getting married to the wrong woman, maybe even worse. It's the symptom that plagues anyone who was and is still undecided with life. For the opportunity to be able to avoid this and being able to work with people who are extremely passionate about what they are doing right now, I am thankful for that.

I am still pretty uncertain about life at the current moment. These past 20+ years of my life have been sort of a rollercoaster ride. For now, I'll probably take it one step at a time, do cool, interesting stuff that I believe in and see what the future brings for me.

These are uncertain but exciting times. Or as Richard Feynman once put it," We lead a charmed life."

I'm going down to LA from the 2nd to 4th of August for Siggraph! This is exciting since I was originally supposed to go with my research group but ended up cancelling it due to my current job. However, I just found out that my company is sending me down anyway which is awesome(since I am in the division which does research implementations). It'll be an all expenses paid trip + hotel accomodation :) Plus, it will be nice to meet up with people from my lab and see the paper I worked on get presented at the conference. Definitely something to look forward to.