Joy of Life: Volume 1 Chapter 1

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Volume One: The City by the Sea
-- written by Maoni

Chapter 1: Story Gathering^[1]

Port Danzhou was located at the east end of the Qing Empire. Although a city by the sea, due to the fact that the several ports further south had already been developed and the sea route to the western world had also been opened, the empire’s trade center had moved to the south, and the port city gradually showed more and more decline. The once bustling harbor had quieted down over the last few years.

Seagulls flew about the city freely and no longer had to worry about harassment from those loathsome sailors.

The original residents of the city, however, didn’t feel too big of a change in their everyday lives. It was true that their income had declined, but the emperor, His Majesty, had exempted the city from taxes several years ago. Therefore, life wasn’t bad. Besides, this seaport city was so beautiful. Now that it had become quiet once again, it naturally became even more livable. That was why occasionally some influential people would choose to build their manors here.

Because it was too far from the Capital City, very few officials stayed. The only one that somewhat qualified had to be the Old Madam living in the west part of the town.

It was said that the Old Madam was the mother of the Count of Southernland in the Capital City, and chose to live out her life in retirement in the city by the sea. The residents of Port Danzhou all knew that the Count of Southernland was in great favor with His Majesty. That was the reason why he wasn’t assigned a position outside of the Capital City like usual, and instead, stayed in the Capital City and got a job in the Ministry of Finance. That was why everyone showed plenty of manners and respect to the residents of the manor.

But kids are ignorant of such things.

It was a fine and warm day. Adults mostly found themselves sitting inside a wine-house, enjoying the salty humidity blown in by the sea winds, together with the preserved plums and wine in their cups.

In the western part of the town, just outside the backdoor of Count of Southernland’s manor, a group of teenagers surrounded the stone steps. Shoulder to shoulder, they filled the entire opening. What could they be doing there?

If one got closer, he would find a very interesting scene. It turned out that all these lads were listening to a four or five-year old kid speaking. The little boy had a pretty face. His well trimmed eyebrows and his crystal-clear eyes looked as though they came out of a beautiful painting. Although his young voice was that of a little kid, the tone of his words clearly showed the arrogance of a senior. With a sigh, he gestured with his little arms.

“Truman walked up to the wall, and saw a staircase, so he walked up the staircase step after step. Then he found the door. Pushing the door open, he walked out…”

“What happened then?”

“Then? Then…he naturally went back to the real world.” The little boy pouted, as though he was quite weary of such a retarded question coming out of someone much older than him.

“It can’t be! Shouldn’t he go seek out that Hanny…something…?”

“Harris,” another teen picked it up.

“Right! Shouldn’t Truman find that Harris guy and kick his butt to vent his anger? He was locked in for so many years.”

“Nope.” The little boy shrugged.

“That was no fun! Young Master Fan Xian, today’s story is certainly not as good as the ones in the last few days.”

“Which ones did you like?”

“A Dreamy Journey to the Far, Far Away^[1]!”

“The Story of a Charming Wanderer^[2]!"

“Bah!” the little boy named Fan Xian stuck his middle finger out at the older kids around him. “Fighting, killing everywhere is bad for your health! Digging everywhere for treasure is bad for the environment!”

A loud, angry voice arose from inside the manor all of the sudden, “Young Master, where did you go again?”

The older kids surrounding him also stuck their middle fingers out in imitation and shouted in unison, “Bah!” Because of the large number of people involved, it was a much grander effect. Grinning triumphantly, they quickly scattered and disappeared into the nearby alleys.

The little boy stood up from the stone steps and swiftly whisked the dust off the underside of his pants. Then he turned and dashed into the courtyard. Before he closed the door, he shot a quick glance toward the young, blind shopkeeper in the small grocery store across the street with his shrewd eyes, while a complex emotion, something completely inappropriate for his age, flashed across his face, before he tenderly shut the door tight.

This was the fourth year after Fan Shen first came to this world. Throughout these years, he finally realized it was not a dream. He had indeed arrived at an unknown world. This world appeared to be identical to the world in his memory, but seemed to also have many differences.

By eavesdropping on conversations among servants in the Count’s Manor, he eventually figured out his status: he was the baseborn son of the Count of Southernland. Just like any TV series about powerful and rich families, the status of a baseborn son made him an easy target for all kinds of evil schemes from people such as First-Aunt^[3], Second-Aunt^[4], and others. He happened to be the only son of his “supposed” father. For the sake of extending the Count’s bloodline, he was sent to the city Port Danzhou far away from the Capital City.

After so many years, he gradually grew accustomed to his new identity. Trapping an adult’s soul in the body of a child was certainly a very different experience both biologically and spiritually. If he were any other normal person, he probably would have gone mad – however, conveniently, Fan Shen happened to be a patient with non-functional muscles and lived in a sick bed for many years. His difficulty in mobility during this life was nothing compared to the miserable state in his prior life. As a result he found himself without much discomfort living inside the body of an infant.

The most discomfort was actually his name nowadays. When he had been about one-year old, His Excellency, the Count in the Capital City, sent a letter and bestowed a name upon him: Fan Xian^[5], with a middle name Anzhi.

This was not a good name because it sounded just like the cuss word in his original hometown – “Fan Xian”, which meant having nothing better to do.

Since his outside form was just an infant, it was impossible for him to voice his objection.

In his prior life when he had been treated in the hospital, especially in the early days, he could at least still turn his head around. So he frequently begged that lovely little nurse to buy pirated DVDs and books for him.

After living in the Count’s Manor for an extended period, he could tell that the Old Madam only appeared to be cold in manner, but inside, she doted on him very much. The slave girls and servants also didn’t regard him with any special treatment because of his status as a baseborn son. Though, the pain of not being able to communicate with others bothered him very much.

Could he have discussed with the slave girls that he was actually from another world? Could he have told the home teacher that he actually already knew all the characters in the books?

Therefore, he often snuck out of the Count’s Manor from the side door and played with those children of the poor on the streets. His favorite activity was to tell stories to them, stories from movies and novels in his own world.

It was as though he wanted to keep reminding himself about something, that he did not belong to this world. The world he truly belonged to had movies, the Internet, and YY novels^[6].

He didn’t know why he told the story of the movie: The Truman Show. The plot of the movie was plain to start with; besides, there was no Jim Carrey to make people laugh. He should have clearly known that these teenagers of Port Danzhou would have no way of liking it.

But he told it anyway, because he always felt that absurdity deep inside his heart. He was on a dying course. What made him reincarnate inside this body? He couldn’t help but to remember that movie…. Maybe, all these people, the streets in front of him, even the seagulls flying in the sky, are just props intentionally arranged by someone, just like in Truman’s world.

Truman eventually discovered the falsity of the world he lived in, so he resolutely took the ship and found the exit.

But Fan Shen, no, he should be called Fan Xian now … knew that he was no Truman, and this world truly existed. It was not just a huge soundstage. Therefore his act of telling stories every day, to remind himself that he was from a different world, was something truly absurd by itself.

---

[1] A popular Internet novel.

[2] Another popular Internet novel.

[3] First wife of the Count.

[4] Second wife of the Count.

[5] Here “Fan” is the last name, and “Xian” is the first name. In Chinese, “Xian” means leisure, idle and unoccupied. “Anzhi” means relax and be content and came from the verse, “Once here, then relax and be content,” which originally came from the book “The Analects of Confucius.”

[6] YY stands for Yi Ying, which means being as ridiculous and impudent as your mind will let you. The main character in such YY novels would always have the best fortune in the entire universe and eventually have all the fame, money, and power and become epic heroes, kings or gods in this ridiculous and non-logical world the author created. This novel itself could be classified under this genre.

Now support the author Maoni by clicking this link, and support the translator Lanny by following my blog! :)

Video of the Day:

This has nothing to do with robots or translations. But isn't this kid simply amazing?

AI and Robots: Researchers Hack Facial Recognition Authentication

Yesterday we talked about fingerprints. These days, another form of biometric identifier has gained more attention -- facial recognition. In fact, several laptop manufactures have included facial recognition as authentication caveats to attract more consumers. The selling pitch was that facial recognition is more convenient for the user than entering user name/password pair. The video below is a fun commercial by Lanovo promoting such technology.

Similarly, Toshiba also included such technology with their latest product lines.

However, several Vietnamese researchers have demonstrated at BlackHat DC 2009 how these facial recognition authentications can easily be cracked using photos of the user or multiple phony facial images in kind of "brute-force" attacks. The key lies in how the facial recognition algorithms work. They only treat the user's face as digital images, therefore, by manipulating lighting conditions and view angles of photos, such authentication systems can be easily fooled even though the security level is set to high. The researchers also wrote a paper describing their work. Too bad they didn't make a video of the presentation at the conference. There is, however, an interview with Duc Nguyen, the main researcher.

Here's also a link to an article with more details.

These Windows XP and Vista laptops come with built-in webcams that work with the facial-recognition technology. This form of authentication is considered more convenient than fingerprint scans and more secure than traditional passwords. The software scans the user's face and stores the images and facial characteristics. Then the user can log in by scanning his or her face, which is then matched against the image data.

Don't get me wrong here. Facial recognition is a great technology. However, we have to be very careful about how we apply new technologies to real world problems. Using facial recognition to customize/personalize things (such as seat positions in cars) is great. But using it for security authentication might not be that good of an idea just like RFID tags (see my other post for a discussion on that).





Don't let stupid reviewers ruin your joyful life. There's always another conference out there, waiting for you!

Paper Review: A User Interface Using Fingerprint Recognition - Holding Commands and Data Objects on Fingers

This paper by Atsushi Sugiura and Yoshiyuki Koseki from NEC was published at UIST '98.

The main idea of the paper is that by using a fingerprint scanner, the unique fingerprint of each finger can be identified, and commands or objects can then be associated with each finger as though each finger was carrying things with it.

The authors specifically compared their FUI (Fingerprint User Interface) with that of the Pick-and-Drop, a pen-based direct manipulation technique that allowed a user to virtually hold a data object in a pen. The advantages of FUI are that there is no special tools required (the fingers themselves would suffice), and there is no ID management since each finger already has a name. Also because a normal person has 10 fingers, it is possible to hold 10 objects/command, which is only achievable by 10 pens in the Pick-and-Drop system.

When associating fingers with commands, FUI can be great for operations where the user cannot look at the operation panel, for example, operating machines in darkness or manipulate them in a bag/pocket, because the user would not need to visually identify different buttons for different functions. FUI is also good when the user wants to conceal commands from others, such as opening the cash register when being robbed: one finger would simply open it while another finger would open it and also send a signal to the police.

Fingers can also be used as containers to store information. For example, text strings can be stored with multiple fingers, and when scanning the finger on another machine or in another application, the strings can be retrieved and pasted into the new machine/app. To the user, it felt just like that each finger is carrying very specific information.

It is important to note the drawbacks of such an interface. Firstly, scanning and identifying fingerprints can be very slow (about 2 seconds). The paper was written in 1998. At that time, it took 1.7 seconds to identify one fingerprint. More than 10 years later, technology today is not much better. The Dell XPS m1530 laptops have fingerprint scanner built in, which allows the user to associate different commands with different fingers. However, it still takes about 1.5 second for the application to identify the fingerprint. This delay can be very annoying to the end user.


Secondly, many times, the end user would forget or get confused about which finger carries what information/command. Thirdly, FUI would not work well for one hand operations when that hand has to hold the device (such as a mobile phone for a user who is driving). Fourthly, the fingerprint identification algorithm can make mistakes. And when that happens, it is important that the user can invoke undo operations to recover. And for things that cannot be undone (such as the lunch of a nuclear missile), this technology better not be used.

Some of the example applications presented in the paper are: operating a CD player where a finger could be "play" while another finger be "fast forward"; using fingers to store bookmarks for web browsing. An interesting application suggested by the authors is that a phone number can be stored with a finger at home, and then at public phones, the number can be retrieved from the finger to automatically dial that number. While this idea is cool, I personally wouldn't think it's a good idea because that would have to allow the public phone to have access to people's fingerprint data together with access to user's data repository (whether the home computer or an online storage), which exposes the user's private information to possible unauthorized accesses.

The main advantages of fingerprints are: they are unique to each user, and the user normally don't lose them (as opposed to keys). However, they are also unchangeable, so once others get hold such information, they can impersonate the user for the rest of his life.

If you are sleepy but want to stay awake, do push-ups. At least you'll be stronger.

Robot of the Day: Winebot, the Wine Tasting Robot

Researchers at NEC and Mie University, both in Japan, came up with a robot, the Winebot, that is capable of distinguishing good wine from bad wine, tell you the brand, and also suggest side dishes that will go well alongside the wine. It is also capable of identifying different cheeses and hors d'oeuvres.

Wait a second. What are hors d'oeuvres? I've never heard of this word before. So I did a google search, and there is actually a wikipedia entry of it (including a sound file for pronunciation). Basically, it means appetizer.

Cold Hors d'œuvre

When presented with three apples, without actually taking a bite, the robot was able to separate the sweet one from the two sour ones. So how does the robot do it? There is actually an infrared spectrometer at the end of the robot's left arm. When objects are placed up against the sensor, the robot fires off a beam of infrared light and then analyze the reflected light in real time. It takes advantage of the fact that different food would have different reflection ratio of light per wavelength for water, protein, etc., kind of like unique "fingerprints", in order to distinguish them.

Just to add a bit more fun, because it is analyzing the chemical composition of the wine or food placed before it, it can also alert its owner to possible health issues, gently warning against fatty or salty products. However, it is not capable of detecting drunkenness, which could have been another great feature.

However, when the Winebot makes mistakes, the consequences could be dramatic. When a reporter’s hand was placed against the robot’s taste sensor, it was identified as prosciutto. A cameraman was mistaken for bacon.

This cute robot is about 2 feet tall, can slightly swivel its head, and when it speaks in a child-like voice, lights flash around its mouth. If you think this makes a great birthday or Christmas present, think again! It cost as much as a new car. With that amount of money, I would have expected the robot to

• cook for me
• wash the dishes
• make beds
• clean the house
• take out the garbage
  
• mow the lawn
• rake the leaves
• shovel the snow
• and the list goes on and on and on ...
  

Take a short break from your busy life so you can appreciate the beautiful things you might be ignoring.

Paper Review: Bridging Physical and Virtual Worlds with Electronic Tags

This paper is written by Roy Want, Kenneth P. Fishkin, Anuj Gujar, and Bevely L. Harrison from Xerox PARC that was published in CHI 1999.

This paper is an extension from previous work that attempts to connect physical objects with virtual representations or computational functionality by using RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags. The problem this paper is trying to solve here is how to leverage strengths and intuitiveness of the physical world to provide users additional ways to interact with applications and information in virtual worlds by following physical objects’ natural affordances. This problem is important because it enriches interfaces that enable the users to interact with information and computational devices naturally. It is important to both interface designers and general users.

The main insight of this paper is that RFID tags should be used instead of bar codes or glyphs, because they allow seamless augmentation with unobtrusive tagging. They are very small (easy to hide), inexpensive, and required no precise alignment and registration. The RFID tags themselves do not need on-board power, last a long time, and can be easily added to physical objects. The authors also pointed out two disadvantages: the administrator will need to associate functionalities to the tags and maintain it; because of the unobtrusiveness, the users might not know what are tagged and with what semantics.

The authors experimented with several prototype applications, such as tagging a French dictionary; so when sensed, it will invoke a language translation program to translate the currently displayed document. Another example is a tagged bookmark that will bind the current page to the tag and use it later to retrieve the page. Other examples include tagged books/documents, business cards, photo cube, and wristwatch. The power of this idea is that a tag can be associated with any semantics such as functionality associated, or context based services.

The evaluations used in this paper are the prototyping applications. Since this paper discusses the general idea of using RFID tags with physical objects, such an evaluation is proficient. For papers that might propose using RFID tags for a very specific problem under specific context (such as using RFID tags for an intelligent walker for eldercare), more extensive evaluation under that context would have been very necessary.

Since we are talking about RFID technology here, I'll extend on this topic some more. The kind of tags discussed in the paper look like the one shown in the image on the right. Another type that is more commonly used with merchandises nowadays look like the picture below that. What makes the technology so attractive is that these tags are passively powered. So the tags themselves do not include batteries. And when we point a RFID reader to the tag, it gets powered by the reader and then send radio signals back. That's why the more powerful the reader (and the antenna length and sensitivity), the longer range we have in sensing. These tags are also super cheap and very durable and can last a long time. These two educational videos below explain what RFID is and how it works.

Currently, the most widely usage of RFID technolgoy is in the manufacturing and retailing industry. The technology enables quick and easy way to identify products. However, they also arouse very severe security and privacy concerns. For example, I have read news articles that thieves equipped with powerful RFID readers could scan semi-trucks at truck stops to identify what kind of goods are transported and were able to successfully identify a truck load of brand new Dell computers, which they stole later. Extending from that, someone could also easily identify what kind of appliances or furniture you have at your home. The following videos demonstrate how hackers could easily start your car or duplicate your passport information when the technology was applied carelessly.

A few years back, one government lab in California (I cannot remember which one now) wanted to require all employees to be implanted with RFID tags for security reasons, because unlike badges, implanted tags cannot be stolen or lost (in fact, this actually makes it less secure because tag IDs can be easily duplicated). This ultimately resulted in a new law being signed into effect by Governor Schwarzenegger making it illegal in California to track employees by implanted RFID chips.

Public detectability and ease for duplicability are the two culprits to be blamed. However, what I want to point out is the RFID technology can still be applied to many areas as long as we go through careful design. And also the usefulness and feasibility really depend on the context. Like for example, with the French Dictionary example shown in the paper, security and privacy are not really the concerns, and RFID tagging can indeed be used creatively and with lots of fun.





Don't wait till the last day to submit your conference paper. The power supply of your computer might die and you might not be able to get to your files in time.