How dare you can call the US the land of liberty.

Why US people can't grow the plants on their terrace?

--Have you play "Plants vs Zombies"? You and Mr.Dave (your nice neighborhood) might be charged more than you can earn for all of your life for California's decorative plants tax.

source of picture:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_States

Mr.Federal are trying to attack this house for plants tax.

Why US people need to pay tax for pet adoption?
--cat? dog? what if I want to adopt cute guy in my house? Ops.

Anyone's interesting in Cat Maid? (from: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=365056)

Why US people pay extremely expensive cost for call?
--The price in Thailand (and Hong Kong, I swear) is never go above 20cent per minute for national wireless phone call, but US's can do! Also receiver needs to pay for pick up call...and when it go to message box, automatically charged. So friendly phone providers.

Why US people pay for public parking?
--which I have never ever seen in Thailand. Police never arrests me unless I park in prohibited area.

"NASA space shuttle is reported to pay $1.25M for parking tax" (source of picture: NASA)

Americans are teaching their people to be smart at calculation.
--3 times a day, right after the meal, Calculate the 15% mininum tip that you need to pay. Why don't you just include it in the price of meal???





Believe me, in the future, you might need to pay tax for pregnant, give birth, send child to school, graduate, date, engage, marry, fired, hired, die, breathe, or even have 'individually entertainment on your bed'.

Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com

Speak frankly, I don't have any intention to criticize any certain people or organization specifically. I'm just too depressed from the Federal income tax refund thing that I'm working on.



Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_States

People lives with dream.

Dreaming about something that already passed is not that bad, like the funny days in Hong Kong, but wish for everything like a friendship, or other types of relationship, to remain as it has been might be the most stupid impossible things. Yeah, as my friend's quote during my time in Hong Kong, "It is just a sweet dream that when you wake up, more sweety it is, more suffering you get".

Thailand always celebrate every single ceremonies happened in this world

Friends from another countries always ask me when I'm talking about Valentine's day, whether I, as a Thai people, have celebrated the Saint Valentine commemoration? Since we are not Christian (majority). Anyway, I should strongly confirm that Thailand always celebrate every single ceremonies happened in this world.

Thai people is not that easy-going people, we are super drama king/queen. We could seriously fight for someone (go google for the name "Taksin" for more information) even make a civil war! I could notice something like the relationship issue, which seem to be much more free in western world but super strict in Thailand, and over 80% of Thai song lyric are about love. As the contrary, thing seems to be less serious in Thailand, when we have a civil war (sort of) a year ago, people from one side wear red shirts and another side wear yellow shirts, later we have blue shirts and multi-color shirts group. And, to be proud of, Thailand has relatively low rate of devote.

Red shirts group and Mr.Taksin

Seem like from the movie? No, it is real in THAILAND. When we have a civil war and people give a rose as a present to the soldiers.

However, Thailand is called as "Land of Smile" for long long time. Long long times ago, I could say, Thai people is very easy-going and we won't deal with serious issue as much as what we are now. That is one of the reason that Thailand is very welcome for the foreigners as well as their cultures. We have good relationship with China for hundreds years, even I have Chinese blood in myself. We solidly immerse the western culture into our culture around a hundred year ago related to the first globalization period (western colonization) and Japanese around 50 years ago around the second world war, later on the United State (as the winner for WW2, laugh).

That's way it is very normal to see white guys working in Thailand, or Japanese elders in black is hurry to go to work. I read Japanese comics (manga), watch drama Korean series (yeah! more Drama), and I could speak English pretty well. 

Besides, even we already have the holidays for Father (national, king's birthday's) day, mother day, children day, teacher's day, Labor's day, New Year day (1st of January), Thai's new year holidays (13rd-15th of April), another five days from Buddhism religion, cultivation's day, King Rama1's commemoration day, King Rama5's commemoration day, Suntorn Pu's birthday (ancient writer), etcetera.

The days listed above are the official holiday, mean that the days that the government offices are closed.

But basically, we also celebrate:

Chinese New Year: I love this day, when we have some sacrifice for our ancestors and god. We meet whole of family (30ish of people) and have some gamble for forecast the luck for incoming year.

Valentine's Day: teenagers always looking forward to this day! When boyfriend and girlfriend go out and exchange the gift, or a guy give a red rose to a girl to present his love. I usually make chocolate (last year, brownie, this year is sweet chocolate) and give it to my close friends and ex. Thanks for my friends from the same major who also brought rose and gave it to "single" lady in our major so I've got two roses this year.

I was born in November, no wondering nine month before November is Valentine's Day. (laugh)

White Day: I think it is Japanese culture (ホワイトデー, Howaito dē) when a boy or girl who receive gifts in Valentine's Day should give his/her back with the gift which is three times more expensive than that, or sometimes it is a month for a person to consider what they should respond for the relationship request. It is rarely to be found in Thailand, but I could see it sometimes.

XMAS: we won't celebrate Ester's day (even I've receive a huge Ester egg made from chocolate once year), but we seriously celebrate Christmas, in term of having a decoration around the department store or the office and house. We won't eat turkey, but some new generation parents give a cute gift for their children.

Do you know Lunar's day? It is in Chinese culture that is the day we celebrate the princess of the moon (and her rabbit). In China, there might be lantern's festival, every place is decorated with lanterns, but in Thailand, we just have a mooncake.

We also celebrate Loi-kratong day around November, this is Thai culture that we do the sacrifice to the godness of river by making the kratong and float it in the river and fire lantern to the sky.

Lantern's festival in Chieng Mai, Thailand

And we give importance for each person's birthday as well. I always buy cake for my family's members' birthday and my dad tell me to call my uncles or grandparents for their birthday. I prefer to make a gift by my own but sometimes it is just a handmade card. 

So now you know why it seem like to be that I celebrate every single ceremonies in this little world.

Ps. Hey! California guys, I'm waiting for my gift for White day!. :D

[HTE diary class5] A scientist is just the another farmer.

Thailand is the agricultural country, most of our business based on harvesting products, rice, fruits, sugar. Long long time ago Thailand is called golden land, that's because most popular occupation of Thai people is rice farmer, and when the infinite-wide land is covered with golden mature rice.

Rice Terrace in Chieng Mai, Thailand (http://noynancy.wordpress.com/)

But consider the margin of rice business market, it is not comparable with another business like vehicle components export. That is because of the price of rice is very low.

Let me tell you one bed-time story, in the countryside, a farmer cultivates his rice on the soil land, take care of it for three months, then every villagers would come together to help harvesting. A fat guy from metropolitan buys ten cart of rice with a piece of gold.

After shipping to the capital city, a fat guy sells a cart of rice to customers with ten piece of gold. This is the way "middleman" become rich buy selling the products, rice, from a farmer.

I don't say that a farmer is stupid or that middleman is cleaver, this is how the world is, and it has been since long long times ago. Even now our government try their best to get rid of this "middleman" and try to shortening the value chain so all the money that consumer pays wound end up at the farmer who works hard to cultivate rice. 

So, as the title is, how dare I call the scientists as the another version of farmer.

I declare myself as Engineering-oriented people, and when I took High-Tech class, I'm listening to the lecturers as engineer (and scientist); the lecturers are business men who are success to commercialize the high technology-based product. I like this course, since they are giving their idea on how they set up the business, find the investment, do the marketing and another brilliant business strategies which I have never ever heard of. 

And I heard how those business men is thinking about engineers/scientists who responsible to these technologies......

The curious is not something like "how the business man deals with his hired engineer" but it is "how they think" so it is not the thing that could be consider as right or wrong, kind ethic issue. 

My feeling is weird now.



The annual financial report from many huge companies report the budget in each year, only around 1% of the total outcome is for Research and Development section, and I'm quite sure that the engineers who work there earn a lot less than that.


As you know from my previous blog how long scientist or engineer need to wait until his/her research could be commercialize, and it is not three months wait like a farmer, but sometime more than three years, or more than that.


Speak to this issue, I'm not going to blame the entrepreneur, people have their own way to live, but what I want to emphasize here is, how we could make the farmer to sell his food by himself, without the middle man.

Maybe it is hard to do, to let the scientist do the business things, like finding the investor, create the business organization, or do the marketing. It might not be the ultimate goal of the scientist to commercialize his/her products, or he couldn't do it by himself. Having a partner is not that bad, but to make it fair in this capitalized world is the thing that REQUIRED TO RECONSIDER.


I don't want some business man come up with the sentence like "I make this technology. I did this happen" blah blah blah...even it is the fact that the one who did things happen is not himself, but engineers.

Most romantic gift I could imagine of.

The rose that was dipped into the liquid Nitrogen, make it frozen brittle crystal-like rose, and then throw it to the wall, and make it explode like scarlet in  front of me.

Technology of Love

Last last year, I read an article on National Geographic magazine, February issue (maybe), about science of love. And article begins with this photo (not exact):

Sorry, I don't know who you are, and I don't have any intention to ruin the romances of your wedding.

With an IMPRESSIVE caption: The groom is smiling fully of happiness since he is going to have a chance to reproduce his genetics this night.

This might be the main reason that I thought...maybe the Science and Love shouldn't come together. Or maybe the author just write it so straightforward, without any romantic feeling, so I'm going to represent the Science of love in another way. Here it is.


xxxx

Dear my Valentine,

How's your life going on? I haven't have a chance to talk to you that much, but please know that, in every of my breathing, if the device which be able to detect my thought in my breathe exists, all of my breath is only you.

However, the research about capture the people thought directly from our brain (via Electroencepthalogram, EEG) or through our breathe is still immature. So maybe what I could do is just trying to detect your emotion in our call. This speech recognition technology is already exist as the program to capture the mood of the customers using in Call Center, in order to analyst their feeling and mood in their voice. So maybe I could sense your emotion through your voice as well.

I can feel my heartbeat every time I think of you. You might not hear that, but there is the device namely Electrocardiogram (ECG) which can detect our heart beat signal. The frequency of my heartbeat increase significantly very time I think of you.


Many people says that there is a chemical signal from one person to another person, in order to express their feeling of love and passion, this might be the thing that we call Pheromone, or chemistry of love. One of research group in Thailand is going to develop the sensor to detect this chemical, hope it could sense my chemistry to you.


Another way to examine our love scientifically is to make the questionnaire and do some statistic interpretation. But how many question needed to describe our complicated feeling? I guess more than I can think of.


!@##%%^&*()_)(*&Y^TE



This blog is SO RETARDED! I can't writing this kind of blog anymore. If you want to know more information about mood/emotion sensing technology, please use the keyword that I provided above to search on google or elsewhere.

For the conclusion, I totally fail to merge Science and Technolgoy with Love. So let the Love floating around us like that. I don't want to interpret it anymore. (*cry*)



p.s. I'm not making fun of any person in this world, nah!  Happy Valentine's day!

Inception: special effect clips

Even people say now we can make everything (seem to be) come true by Computer Graphic (CG). However, let's watch these clips first and you would see why Inception should won the best special effect movie of the year.

1. Clip of Explosion sequence in Coffee Shop in Paris

Bird Eyes View

2. The Best Sequences: rotating hall pathway and zero-gravity fighting: See how Science, Engineers, and Entertainment merged together! Surprisingly Rotating Sequence is made from ACTUAL setting. omigosh. Let's watch the clip from movie first.

And this is production.

3. This is summary all the scene in inception as overview. 12 min is not that long comparing to how they made it. However, this clip doesn't show much special effect. One of the most memorized scene, safe house in snow mountain, is described here.

4. First I thought that train is special effect....

5. Morocco Sequence: how many actors in this scene.

6. Bending City: I totally have no idea how they gonna make this scene from reality, so only idea is CG.

7. Okey, let's end this blog with Making of the sound effect:

As Noland states in his interview, CG is good, but nothing is comparable to actual filming, we are really appreciate your hard work. Thank you the most powerful movie clip sharing community as youtube, as well as other people who posted these clip publicly. Finally, thanks Noland who created this amazing movie of the year!

Trailer: 

[HTE diary class3]: when my research is walking out of laboratory.

"I wish to be a professor since I was in high school" this is the first sentence in every versions of statement of purpose that I write, and after that, "I want to be a professional in research area" come afterwards. Anyway, I also have another intention that I never ever wrote in my statement, but I would write it here, I want to make my research create mega huge impact to the world.

Seem like making my innovation commercialized is not that bad way to make it hit the entire world. See how the God of Apple integrated all the high end technology together and create iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad and another iP- that might come up soon, or the anti-AIDs drug that is useful for around the world. Once I was young, I discussed this topic with dad (who worked in the hospital for all of his life), but recently I might need to change my vision.

Now let's consider, if I want to create one alloy that I can use as artificial knee-joint. How long I need?

1. 2 years for material development: Maybe it would be this short, but normally it is longer than this. One Ph.D. student takes all of his 5 years life doing a thesis on certain material.

2. 1 years for test the biocompatibility in vivo: (cytotoxicity) you need to test whether the material is proved to add into human organ by plant cells on it, and check whether that cell die or not.

3. 2 years for test the biocompatibility in vitro: the material would be implanted into animal model, for example, rat or pig.

4. 2 years for test in actual human: and test it in human. After this step, our material would be approved by responsible organization and ready to use in medial application--I mean, to be commercialized. (Added by my professor, it might take another 6 years to wait for legally approval from FDA...)


With drug research required around 6 years as well, this incubation time might be shorter in the technology that no need to deal with biological issue. This period is reduced by larger budget or take forever if without money, and yeah, depend on invisible hands.

Let me give you other cheerful examples, Metallic Glass is developed from Caltech since 1950's but the first company commercialized this glorious material namely LiquidMetal is just established on 2000's. On the other hands, LED screen technology by Samsung take 6 months for development and distribution on shelf. Now do you have any idea what is that invisible hand I refer to?




Come back to our time platform. All I just a research period! Not include the time that you need to make it go to the market. Ideally, after finish developing technology, we might want to commercial it as soon as possible, but it might not. Three years ago when I first saw iPod Touch, I and my friend are talking about bigger version of iPod so I can use it as lecture note. Two years after that Steve Jobs presented iPad to worldwide.  I can say that the technology architecture for iPod Touch and iPad is exactly the same, even all the technology is already available about3-5 years ago. Why he need to wait?

The keyword of the day is "customer perception".

Slide from my HTE class

Do you see something here? If Jobs suddenly announced iPad with TV, maybe the market couldn't adjust their life style and except it and finally our product fail. So we need certain time to prepare our market and make our goal product acceptable, how long? who know.



Now I feel so tried, the reason is since it is very long lecture-style blog, or because now I realize how long I need to take before my research could walk out of lab.

Cloud Computing: when your computer is on the cloud

It might be 20'ish years late for computer to first hear the word, "Cloud Computing" since it is first introduced by Telephony,the first VPN Internet provider. So what is it? I can define the simplest definition of Cloud Computing (from Nano-Engineering view, who usually fight with advance technology) as the IT service that user send the input to program that stored on main computer via Internet, then the program processes and reply the user. It might sound unfamiliar to normal people as us, but by this list of Cloud Computing that I provided below, you might realize how much we are computing on the cloud.

1. Gmail/hotmail/web mail services: this is the easiest example of Cloud Computing which you have your own storage in main server somewhere in the world, where people can send the email to this place and you can excess to this storage wherever you have internet connection. Even in the past, you might need some program as outlook to access to inbox, but now you can excess it from just web surfing, and all the function would show there. So now can you think about another example of cloud computing?


2. Facebook/tweeter/blog and another social network: Sweet! If you can think about them. facebook is very general for us now, where we can chat, upload photo, and make a comment on your boyfriend's retarded picture. Think about how much storage Mark have to use for store all of the comments and photos from over thousand millions users around the world. I'm not wonder if one day the server for facebook would be down and all the photos gone without notify. People half the world would cry.

3. Organization intranet: I don't know whether you can register the courses online via internet or check your bank account online or not. But this is also kinds of cloud computing.

4. Visual machine: this is most conventional definition of Cloud Computing, where the clients can excess to certain program (legally) via the Internet connection. When I did internship at University of Maryland, I could use Origin from my computer via Visual machine, no need to install it (and I can't, I can publish data programed by illegal software). All I need is download visual machine platform and run whatever program I want.

So now, let's move to something that you might not know about them.


5. Google documents: I really like this application! Where you can crate documents or presentation slides on google website and give link to other team workers to access to this document and even real time edit it! You can talk to your teammates via small chat box and see their access log. However, I learnt that, even this application is perfectly useful for my team in Hong Kong (where I went exchange) but it is suck when I use it with my team in Thailand (my homeschool).
Check it out! docs.google.com/


6. Dropbox: I use another web server provider for document storage, but this website is very applicable for people who are looking for! My teacher upload the lecture notes on this website and send the email to her students to download it prior the class. And what I do is download it onto my iPad and open it in the class. Such a wonderful combination! (and save the environment by reducing the usage of papers).
Check it here. www.dropbox.com/


7. Wolfram alpha: How intelligent of your calculator? Basic calculator can do algebra, and scientific calculator can do finite integral. But Wolfram Alpha is more than that, this engine can do the infinite integral, find the derivative of two or more variables, actual it shows every thing that you can ask mathematically from certain expression.

Recently, I have checked the additional function of Wolfram, they added some sweet applications such as, what did happen in past 100 years when I fill "25 Nov 1988" (but not my birthday--how sad), or "Adam" is the seventh most common name in US.
Let have fun. www.wolframalpha.com/



Now you might have better picture how close this technology is. And I might need to change the title, your computer is not on the cloud, but now everything is floating around us, and we are IN the cloud.




PS.Sorry that I forget to add sources for photos, I respect all the creature of these photos and thank you very much for your kind Charity.


PS2. I'm not computer guy, if you know, please correct my understanding.

Inception: Alternative Conclusion

It is six months late since Noland's inception came to the theater and finally went to DVDs. I intended to watch this movie since I first saw the synopsis from the director, Dream Thief. Previously I had chance to watch it during my flight to Hong Kong, however, it is in English and I quitted the movie because I can’t really understand at all.

Later, I watched it in Thai language (feeling sad that I miss the chance to practice my English, but I prefer to understand the story, laugh). As you know, this is one of the best thriller/Sci-fi/Action movies in this year, the concept is comparable to the Matrix and the actors are very professional. Undoubtedly, I go through online discussion about the conclusion of the movie, whether Cobb (Leonardo) wakes up to actual reality or not. Someone says his spintop stops and he wakes up, someone says not. But consider this, I have alternative different conclusion.

The key is “Mr.Seito”.

In the first scene, Cobbs goes to meet Seito at his private apartment and have some conversation about return to youth. Later, the movie goes through the inception mission. Seem not that bad, but one clue that I’ve heard from Mr.Seito that he promises to Cobbs that he want to return to youth time again.

Why he says that?

So, this is my alternative conclusion to this movie. Seito himself is old man since very beginning of the story, and he asked Cobbsto create the dream for him so he can become young again. Throughout the inception mission is just a big tricky dream that Cobb creates to this person. Then when the dream end?



Even at the airport, it is so weird that there is no date on the VISA stamp, and Seito looks around 40’ish, so I don’t think that is the reality. So I think reality started at when Cobb finally meet his father and his family again. I read one spoiled interview from Sir Michael Caine (Cobbs’ father), he claim that only the very last scene (at home) is real.
 ref: http://gizmodo.com/5651826/inception-ending-revealed-by-sir-michael-caine


In my opinion, I also own my theory of dream. I can say I am a big dreamer and dream theorist even I haven’t study about it scientifically. Inception is the way that you can plant any ideas into other people’s mind; to induce someone to believe, to trust, or even love you (haha! And I know someone who can strongly protect himself from my inception as well). You might not need the chemical wire connection in order to tide the dream world together, just simply by sharing the same experience, or even the same input like words/pictures/sounds, that is the simplest way to share the same dream (and idea).


I have had, at most, four layers of dreams within dreams; it is about my ex make a confession to me, later I recognized that is just my wish—my dream and I wake up. So I met him again, for four time, until I realize that this dream is very scary and I might not be able to wake up again. Since that day, I never seriously dream anymore (thanks god!). In my opinion, dream is just a fragment of thought that remain in your bedtime, and mostly from your subconscious wish. Be frankly, I often dream of my senior project and my graduate school’s life. That’s hilariously serious.

One of my favorite cover version of "Nelly's Just a dream" by Sam Tsui.

Entrepreneur's Daily Diary [2]

Week2 : 25 Jan 2011


It was surprising for me to looking forward to go to Business School class; High Technology Entrepreneur (HTE). Maybe it is because I was so exciting with the new up-to-date knowledge that I haven't heard in my Engineering class, or the teaching style that encourages us to work together, think together, and communicate instead of just a boring lecture, or the perfect combination of both.

And today, we learnt about how to create the ideas.

There is two different words, "invention" and "innovation". Edison invented lamp and Bill Gates invented Windows architecture. Scientist can invent things but it never been call innovation if it never come to business value.

One of my LA friend, Nima, I think he is such a good inventor. He came up with weird surprising idea every single morning and try all his best to explain what is in his mind. However, among his hundreds ideas, there might be only one which can actually make money (and he really did it!--HTE). It is not bad to come up with millions of ideas, but as the god of Apple says, he appreciates rejection to do millions of idea as much as acceptance to do one idea (I forgot exact words). I think this quote is very suitable for him.



Good entrepreneur does not need to be a good inventor, but required to be good innovator. Inventor is a special person who "have" more ideas than general inventor, but he doesn't own every ideas himself, instead he has very big empty room in his head and expanding hands to cooperate with other inventors and inspired them to work with him (ideal team work).

So this is another aspiration for me. As a researcher (I never called myself business man even I stated in first diary that I want to make money from my research work--I do not intentionally make profit.), I want to make the strong cooperation among people who have technologies together. Thailand is developing country, and national's annual budget for research and development is just around hundreds US dollar. So only one way that we can kick off our research field to compete with world wide, for example the United States, where R&D budget for a single university is even more than Thailand whole country), is to share technologies and personnels we have, without any obstructions.



Note: TED talk is mentioned in this class, I recommend the talks on "Augmented Reality", "Boring Data ", and "Ukele".

Entrepreneur's Daily Diary [1]

Thanks to my dear friend, Aylin, who reminded me that we have to write the summary about what we have learn in our class, High Technology Entrepreneurship (HTE), as the daily diary, more precisely, "weekly diary" since I have HTE class once a week. But I can say, this three hours lecture per week opens up my vision to the actual world a lot more than what I've learnt for three years in my Engineering School.


Week 1: 4 January 2011

I started my last semester with HTE class at Business School. How exciting! This is one and only one business in my university's life. So what is it about?

Entrepreneur: seem like we can conclude that everything good in this world is entrepreneur, but in my opinion, s/he is the one who can make the impact to the society (as big as global scale) with his business.

This is totally hit me, you know, my deep motivation for being a scientist and researcher is to innovate something that rock the world! Like when Edison lightened the world with his lamp...but only being researcher might not enough to move the capitalized world nowadays, so what is the hint for this answer, yeah, Entrepreneur.

HTE is about how to manage the high-en technology to become reality in business world. This is very cool in my view as the introduction tool of my research work to actual things, I don't want my research dies in lab or just a unknown journal. That is the main reason why I registered to this class, even I have no idea how the business's going at all.



Notice: the name "Steve Jobs" is mentioned about ten times in this class. Yes, I used iPad and my friends use either iPhone/iPod/Mac Books (or all of them). He is undoubtedly a god for tech and business world, even I heard that he might die soon from Pancreas Cancer. How sad.