i’ve done it, i’ve broken my red line and eaten indoors with a bunch (30ish) of other unmasked people. they are all vaxxed to enter malta but still yeesh

all it took was feeling grumpy about spending a large amount of money, being surrounded by 30 other people I have spent some time getting to know over the last two days (including some wizened professors) who are willing to do so…

?? well I guess I will get tested again (for the first time!) at some point to enter the US.

but my presentation went well apparently?! and I got the sensor demo working (with lots of help / borrowed equipment)

it was nice to hang out with roboticists again briefly and just think about how cool robots are. it definitely has that feel of “these are my people” that I get a lot less of from pure CS unrelated to robotics. and, the professors here do seem like nice people

maybe i just need to actually talk to some CS-based AI for social good professors outside of my program — I guess that I must first publish a paper to do that

but also, I am running out of my self-allotted time to do so. i am in year 5 ! (jeez I have so much work to do in the next two months — it’s always like this — i should take more time to finish my 10 year backlog of side projects, as that will make me happy, but graduating on time-ish would also make me happy…)

still this is a weird feeling to remember how fun / excited i used to be about research and robots and learning about academia for the first time. i guess that actually this is my first in-person conference where i am presenting my own work, and it’s a really intimate setting (30 ish people, 3 professors who are just having a good time)

malta is surprisingly less foreign, the appearance is really cool, the signs are somehow 90% in english, it’s interesting. maybe it will feel stranger when i get outside of the conference / hanging out with conference people

the airbnb situation is okay, i realized i really like having a private bathroom even if i share the room with a family (which i was a bit concerned about in terms of COVID, but ?? the host keeps saying i can take my mask off inside lol). sadly i have not really had a chance to talk to them as i have been just barely waking up in time for conference until now

the jet lag honestly has not been so bad. mostly the first night i stayed up quite late to finish demo / slides, and then the second night i crashed and then woke up to perform daily ablutions and then was up for a while, and then got bit by mosquitoes and woke up repeatedly lol

but tonight i finally slept well!

sad to think this is the last day. maybe i will take some time in the next ten minutes to try to remember people’s names and topics and schools, i have been so out of it

and google fi was a disaster, but finally i contacted phone support and hopefully it is fixed?

the presentations have been interesting. there are some small details (like small font on axes titles, colors that don’t work well on projector vs screen), it’s nice to have gotten stuff out of way with roommates

still it’s clear that mine is a one-off paper (and that no further work has been done since final submission), perhaps just improving on the possibilities for gelsight designs, which are maybe helpful for robotic manipulation, while other people have much more a sense of how their work fits into a bigger overall picture.

it also forced me to think about my current research vis-a-vis the larger picture. i am getting pigeonholed into HT vs the broader CS community which i dislike. i think the solution is to dig into fairness, but in an applied way (not theoretical), as it’s what i spend a lot of time thinking about.

but i must do the work. in some search really excited to settle in saturday and spend ten days just grinding on research (…with side work on bank stuff = visualization work, and research work = rl agents). i feel like i made a recent restart (was stuck on database design for no reason?!) and am eager to get started

y’know i think i’ve been meaning to blog about halloween makeup for like 5 years now

so perfect is the enemy of good and all that

here are some pics

bleeding wounds

youtube recipe

fresh claw/scratch wounds are four-ingredient, 5 minute easy. (liquid) lipstick, lip gloss, and black+red eye shadow (plus two brushes – small ones. Very important!! otherwise it will just look like a kid drew with a fat crayon on you)

1. dab brush in red eyshadow, brush a fat ish line (`1.5 cm at thickest). this is the area where the skin is kinda infected / inflamed. Then in center (same size brush) black eyeshadow. Blend the two together.
2. liquid lipstick – draw a line down the center (~1 cm max). this is the bleeding / open wound part
3. with flat-edged brush and black eyeshadow, add depth to the edges of the aforementioned line. this is some dried blood on the edges
4. dab lip gloss in the center of the lipstick line (~0.5cm max). this is the fresh blood. do a dip sideways if you want the fresh blood to be spilling a bit from the wound

or in visual format (which is very important!) see:

IRL wound makeup

I got two smallish brushes ($2 each). I had lip stick but it was cheap and not dark / vivid enough / not liquid lipstick and didn’t look good when I applied it with the brush. so I used red nail polish. I also added some concealer along the edges to kinda mimic the inflamation. BUT — I have NO idea how these wounds like IRL, and didn’t go looking for source material.

But also… maybe I should have committed to the halloween, extra look – not aim for realism but for exaggeration! drippy blood everywhere, like in youtube thumbnail

stitches

Stitches: I made these with liquid eyeliner, it was relieving to work with such a fine brush. I didn’t look up a tutorial, just kinda doodled. Note that afterward I looked up stitches for IRL reference material vs just halloween tutorials. So you want to add a dot of black and maybe some red at either end of the thread and maybe a loop in the middle. This is the thread entering the skin, so the skin may be a bit inflamed.

See:

• Healed stitches at: https://skincaregeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/how-long-should-stitches-stay-in-face.jpg
• Types of sutures at: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6d/0b/3c/6d0b3c21027692d4ced8409b6cc37767.jpg
• Realistic stitch sfx at: https://makezine.com/2010/03/02/diy-movie-effects-roundup/

But again… maybe better to aim for exaggeration for halloween? there is something kinda fun about realism though

skeleton

i did nothing for halloween last year, and this year i wasn’t going to any parties, but i did at least feel like doing something. of course i decided halloween morning so the stores were out of face paint which was followed by like 5 hours of disastrously trying to make face paint, but the actual make up itself was really straightforward to draw.

despite the mishaps at least now i have no fear of committing to full face makeup. was fun to just draw on face !

followed tutorial at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=uL6VtPsAVmI “Last Minute Halloween Makeup Tutorial for Men”

later i found out he was just using normal acrylic paint, not face paint T^T though i am super curious how it worked out after it was dry in an hour or so.

but also, would highly recommend just like… having the foresight to buy black and white face paint for like $20 instead of spending 2 hrs shopping, 4 hours mixing, and 2 hrs cleanup trying to make face paint.

IRL DIY facepaint failures

not recommended but idk this is a diary entry anyway, not nicely edited

ok so i could not find white facepaint, what do? clearly i should make my own (wtf was i thinking)

• 

• 

so the issue with the flour was, i just used regular all purpose flour and it’s not nearly fine enough. eventually i realized i should look to youtube to understand the consistency i needed, and found https://youtu.be/FC-TNESAfMI?t=1285 the recipe here is just water, cornstarch and rice flour — these are all finer powders than flour. i added some white tempura paint ($0.8) to make it more opaque, and black tempura paint for the 2nd color of course. this was a lot better than the coconut oil, which was just like… thick clumpy paste…

in the end still everything was terrible, i think adding lotion was needed to the latter mixture to prevent flaking when dry. it would be okay in the street at night, but in daylight…

But anyway. I can add skeleton makeup to cuts as something that I can do fast in the future. I’ll just know what supplies to get online before hand.

Here are the pictures of the WIP.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

painting my ear was the worst

In future I can also look at more skull references https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=skull&iax=images&ia=images

This tutorial just uses pale foundation, with baby powder to set it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbNanDEQb6E

This tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOzQipKgeic) has more of the fun countouring stuff, and actual face paint recommendations: Face Paint Cheaper Alternative (Mehron Paradise Paint) which is about $13 for a cake of white, which is pretty reasonable given THE 8 HOURS I SPENT TRYING TO MAKE MY OWN i hate my spontaneity sometimes

lessons learned

decide on friday so you can amazon face paint to yourself on sunday because all the stores will be out of face paint on halloween,

also if you’re making your own, add lotion to the paint so it doesn’t flake everywhere after it dries

don’t care so much about the white layer, you’ll f*k it up and wipe it clean and just apply another white layer anyway

buying things

I have been reflecting a bit. I’ve been trying to go to stores in person (now that I’m vaxxed) locally vs buying amazon. But it saves so much time to just buy online sometimes (well… unless too much indecision due to massive # options). And there are more likely to be used items for less money and feels better than consuming new things. Plus, I already pay amazon $60-$70 a year to host this website. So does anything matter?!

other notes

even when it looks awful compared to youtube, people IRL don’t have that reference and will just be impressed at the boldness of doing full face makeup o__o

2017, when it all started

aw yea that crayon look, for lack of a $2 brush…

try 2 on the next day went a little better…

• 

• 

2017 supplies used:

my notes at the time:

• Just ordinary eyeshadow (for lining the eyes and eyebrows),
• eyebrow shadow (optional),
• eyeliner (for thinner black lines for the wound),
• lip balm (bright red for the blood, which should be cover an area bigger than the black lines) (I wish I had had a thinner red. Also, this leaves stains for a day even after I scrub with makeup remover clothes),
• clear nail polish,
• pale foundation (to give it an eerier feel) — could also be combined with the white eyeshadow for a paler shinier feel
• and latex peel-off nail polish (you put it around your nail bed for easy cleanup after applying nail polish).
• Not pictured: hairspray, just to keep things together (it doesn’t seem to help with shininess?)

sooo relaxed about covid lately, still not eating indoors, but is it so different than outdoors less than 6 feet, which is always the case

it’s hard to not normalize to whatever everyone around you is doing (where everyone is a set of like 10 people)

did a sail to spectacle. it was pretty, but rushed T^T people and their real life schedules, wish had more of a chance to enjoy the view. I’m logically sure people had a good time but emotionally I’m certain everyone was upset lol. Also, had first (only?) powerboat incident of year, on the third docking of the day. Turns out in the dark it’s a lot harder to judge how fast you’re going!! and therefore how soon to make the final turn. I think I made the turn at roughly the same distance, but was coming in hot so it just didn’t respond in time at all. Think nothing bad happened, and my lesson there is that I need to practice docking in the evening. Undocking at spectacle was also a challenge, due to the strong waves pushing against the dock — I struggled to even move the boat forward a cleat, though I was pretty tired.

also something unavoidable with sails with large group inexperienced people — it’s actually much more difficult to communicate clearly! since you have to simultaneously explain to 3 people at once in a way they’ll understand, when something unexpected is happening, that it’s hard to communicate anything at all. I always imagine I’ll just tell everyone except one person to sit their butts down, but that’s a lot easier when you have at least one person you’ve done docking/undocking with before lol. But yea, way easier with just one inexperienced person to slowly and calmly explain what they should do differently to help out in terms that they’ll understand.

But mostly my inexperience docking in the dark.

started a 1000 piece puzzle.

me to 2nd roommate: “you missed out on the puzzling yesterday!”
2nd roommate lifts up felt to look at puzzle: “Seems like I’ll have plenty more chances to puzzle”.

UNEXPECTED HONESTY haha.

• 

• 

what else, made mango lassi. hadn’t made in a while.

• 

• 

and it’s fall now. apple picking? maybe i’ll look some hiking place up, excuse to drive somewhere, look at the view with the leaves.

went to yoga, have only been maybe 4x nearly 10 years ago or something. (PE class). it was great to sit under the trees in the park, watch a bird flitting around above us.

thought we got 3d printer working. not actually (can’t print my yoyo for the persistence vision of yoyo project!), but did manage to print this cleat. I’ll make an board for sailing and practicing knots over the winter (I’m sooo bad at knots)

just contemplative lately. being grateful for all the opportunities i have and trying not to focus on how other things could have been. two cool collaborations right now, one even paid, (the other I should take advantage of a lot more!), learned some theory (at least I know what “that large U” aka union is lmao I remember trying to search that my first semester T^T), have some big nameish things on my resume, have friends who send contract work my way (?! really grateful, having income is great lol), in good physical/mental health overall, lovely roommates (we’re starting on a robot arm project together!)