During the second short-lived homeschooling period that hit Vietnam in Spring 2021, I got the privilege to work on a "short to moderate", 350-word film review, for whose topic I chose "Se7en", a 1995 modern classic featuring Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, as well as the star of our favorite villain, Kevin Spacey. While the only minus, my teacher graded, was the length, as much as it violates, I feel the desire to post this primarily to include some extra commentary. Also, the film was objective, and subjectively, good. But it is mainly the former. Whatever is said, this sets a strong foundation for what we later discuss.

So far, no film has set the bar higher for future detective films than the 1995 detective thriller “Seven”. Directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker and starring Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey, Seven (stylized as SE7EN), after 26 years, has yet to find enough worthy opponents; if anything, its somber yet realistic, neo-noir aesthetic and the indisputably arresting approach to forensics, as a running gag, have only “rendered others detective films obsolete”. The film was a hit, grossing over $327 million worldwide, nominated for Best Editing, and thanks to which the performances of both protagonists went down in history and led them to countless Academy Awards.

Seven first introduces the viewers to a gloomy New York-like city, an unnamed smoggy dystopia where every nook and corner spells bleakness and desolation: from widespread corruption, institutionalized crimes, and calloused negligence, to constant air, noise pollution and a detestable atmosphere. The first scenes opened, and there came the soon-retiring detective lieutenant William Somerset (Freeman) meeting up with his unlikely partner, the short-fused detective David Mills (Pitt), who would be in their joint adventure to unmask the man behind the infamous, well-planned, and unique series of absurdities: first, an obese man forced to eat until his stomach literally burst, then a corrupted lawyer with his flesh put on scales, then five more, all of which related to Christianity’s capital vices. During his time with Mills, Somerset also partook of a private conversation with Mills’ wife Stacy when she revealed her concern over having a baby in such a downtrodden living condition, which stays pivotal to the film’s subversive conclusion.

The true absurdities and misadventures that befell our two detectives, and sold this film, only further amplified the overarching theme of inhumane conditions. Ceaseless, repetitive rain outside coupled with drafty interiors and utterly dark hallways; unmuted background noises, inaudible chatters, and deafening police sirens interfering with movie dialogues; crawling action sequences disrupted by apathetic bystanders: the attention to details combined with down-to-earth cinematic shooting angles that have aged like own wine, and a gripping soundtrack and a high-saturation style of color correction (resulting in flying colors), such deliberate artistic choices in worldbuilding created a sense of disorientation necessary for the audience’s total immersion, but overall atypical of movie-making. 

Yet, beneath the overwhelming chaos and thrillers that pervaded the film’s setting, our experience through the lens of the city’s struggling protectors ferried a message of necessary sympathy and the general will to fight for one’s fate. No man’s life hinges on others’, yet without human connections and selfless acts, as in sympathy, society crumbles as shown in this film. The former addresses the inevitability of committing sins, as human natures as they are, and thus sympathy should be practiced, that some misdeeds, especially as part of personalities, could be overlooked in favor of more promising aspects of a person. Respectively, the former is the rigidity of reality, as proven by other realist works, in that established ideas (stigmas, dogmas, religions among others) and living conditions are among aspects of society that could hardly transform. Yet in the face of impossibility, or even death, so long as living is an option, one must neither regret nor settle nor succumb, in that the movie proves how the smallest inspirations may cost everything to achieve. 

All this must be accredited to not only Fincher’s directing and Walker’s writing but also Freeman and Pitt’s phenomenal acting, and adding to that is Kevin Spacey’s last-moment delivery as the antagonist, the best-portrayed villain in cinema history, and a cherry on top to the already-renowned masterpiece. A year after the film’s release, all three actors won the 1996 MTV Movie Award.

For those intrigued by the film’s artistic directions or by its insight into human psychology or by its reference to ancient Christian works, never miss out on Se7en. While its theme might not suit the faint-hearted, Seven’s core message has resonated with a large audience and may do so for decades to come. And with upcoming detective movies in the horizon, most expectant of being Matt Reeves’s “Se7en”-inspired “The Batman”, only time will tell when the table will turn for this classic masterpiece.

End of part 1.

Issues aside, I've taken great delight in drawing with the aid of Photoshop and a barebone Huion drawing tablet.

To be accurate, it’s one for literature, and I only want to share this because my guts tell me not to squander it. The three (or four) agonizing days I have spent on this in place of other interests have certainly taken a toll on my already frailing body, with a constant and unforgiving need to either nod off or sneeze, the latter was accompanied by a runny nose. (I could have taken on some badminton, but at home I rarely have company). Those issues aside, I’ve taken great delight in drawing with the aid of Photoshop and a barebone Huion drawing tablet.

Imagine being asked to portray and drive home what it must have felt like to be the liveliest person of one’s century, all while being up to the you-only-live-once manner toward life (and super horny, and Frenchy). Already impressed by the live-to-your-fullest ideology I decided that a calendar, a peek into one’s daily life, would work as an ideal analogy.

There’s a stark contrast (in brightness and transformation) between nature and one. Whereas one is self-perpetuating in the forms of the established four seasons - here, only Spring is brought up to represent one’s youth - the latter is merely so for only a lifetime - analogous to the ever-changing day cycle.

In this case, the calendar serves to aid the juxtaposition posed by the day cycle. Standing by his word, man seeks to go YOLO in his heydays as the fiddling teenager, the focused young adult, and the tangled middle-ager.

After his busy phases in life, however, he returns to seclusion and rests well, denoted by his last, clean-as-slate Janvier (January) record.

By default, Photoshop’s Timeline panel, which enables animating, is quite underwhelming, a tad less intuitive than the likes of Macromedia Flash. You either do with frame animation - and by frame, I mean layer, which means that for any amount of distinct frames in a video an equal number of distinct layers is needed - or video timeline, whose support for many edits and transformations is non-existent.

The main lifesaver I must highlight was the overpowered feature that is Smart Object. Thankfully there was still Smart Object, and the trick here is to go outside-in. Turn the most basic shape of the object into a Smart Object, animate on that whole, then edit the content of the Smart Object itself by either adding details or more nuanced animations, then repeat this step on smaller details. Every change is to be applied, and it just works. Thanks to this the whole project became manageable and if not decluttered for the first time.

(Of course, except for those times when it duplicates object files.)

Messing around with Photoshop was fun, and if anything, this was the first time I took animation seriously. A GIF, of course, is unparamount to the likes of full-length animation, but I have a good feeling that this is a step in the right direction, even if it yet has much to do with my upcoming projects. For the time being, not resting on laurels just yet, I may seek to improve on my drawing skills.

Cheers. :-)

It's been quite a hiatus since i last posted anything worth noting.

Photo: stock image of the shaft of a Tesla’s rocket with my note discussing the idea of a futuristic rocket-like vehicle.

It’s been quite a hiatus since i last posted anything worth noting, here’s why.

Lately I’ve been coming up with crazy ideas in both the novel and scientific project. There’s also a manga review in production. Yet none of which have come into fruition. It all started in September when I first got used to the concept of paying for Steam games, and ever since there’s been this need of constantly being fed hours of non-fulfilling games, particularly L4D2 - the trailblazer - and Fallout New Vegas, among others. Indeed, it comes at a heavy price, partly in the forms of my underperformance across all subjects and not to mention, of my lack of self-satisfaction in every aspect of life. The tendency now goes that I’m always underwhelmed: late for class, late for homework, late for deadlines, comprised of both work and personal ones. The climax, I daresay, speaks volumes in my Chemistry exam where I scored barely above average. Quite a shame.

Partly I blame it to my somewhat mild depression - as a result of my previous failures in reaching certain life goals.

Time to curb my addiction. In every way it is now the time of great urgence given that upcoming is my High School test and, if possible, my application for an abroad study.

There are few ways to compensate this other than some serious nighters, albeit due to procrastination my entire life has BEEN a nighter-pocalypse. Therefore, I devise that a schedule, and some form of adherence, be necessary. Better yet, I believe that working in groups, particularly among productive people, should arouse my innate desire to strive for more, overcoming this languid feeling of restless self-entertainment when I’m momentarily devoid of any specific goals (in fact, I do admit that however the reminder list is laid, I find it rare that it attracts me more than the nagging sensation of “just 15 minutes of fallout and I will still be fine”).

Whatever, I’ll just try. By the way, happy new year 2021. Made a resolution on Facebook already but I’ve been too lazy to translate it.

Cheers! :-)

It never rains dirt in Nishito, and when it does, either the weathermen cloudseeded, or that the clouds were in god’s wrath.

It never rains dirt in Nishito, and when it does, either the weathermen cloudseeded, or that the clouds were in god’s wrath.

But not years ago. That afternoon, Nishito fell, and so did the rest of Petro. The entire skybox of Nishito’s urban along with its tight corners, claustrophobic dead ends soon submerged under the obscured silver linings, a sense of chill down to my spine, and as the first droplets began their diving, tasting bitter as would dirt, soil and gravel, so commenced the rainfall that would cast shades onto the unreachable rooftops. Funny thing is, the context went that Mr. Shoto guaranteed maximum renewable energy payoffs by converting its environmentally uncertified nuclear plants into advanced core-thermal energy shields (since heat power was possible thanks to efforts in drilling down to the Earth’s outer core now that heat resistance was “impeccable”). To his dismay, the war brought about dust and fallouts the world round, which ultimate hit the city hard. Another wave of degradation soon entailed as the concentration of sulfur dioxide skyrocketed. Acid rain.

From the slum of Hongkong it was almost impossible to get in touch even with the backend of technology. A few kilometers from our town lay the popular premium-leveled chains: XipStores, HelloPhones.cn, Mobula Express, … but prices were high due to going sanctions (and shortage of natural resources, rumors went) so we opted for online black markets instead, which was the sole purpose of sites like TickTock.com (phones, laptops and consumer goods), Jian.cn (everything in existence), and QShop (electronic components) or better yet, the dark web, which can be accessed through web browsers like Tor2 or GoCua.vn.cn.

My real breakthrough ever came when I was ten.

The real toys of year 2050 were not only quantum computers, a common, undermined misconception. My budget laptop could download triple-A video game titles was possible, and clearly (the only one in my family, since everyone preferred the more affordable smartphones) didn’t lack many novelties like face recognition or spatial simulation and calibration, which supported holograms, augmented keyboards (albeit not on a par with physical keyboard), as many dubbed it the PCAR. But it couldn’t help with realistic large-scale environmental simulation, which was necessary for not the age-old PCAR but XR, or simulated reality experiences. To that end, the only interesting piece of affordable toy was something called “Zeitgeist XR 2” a last century “xirtual” reality headset: best of all, one could build one from makeshift cardboards and magnets; and most importantly, a mandatory single-board computer (a raw, open mini-computer that is used to run softwares without a screen or display), so usually the KudoReef 2040 model, which was the most “expensive” component of the bunch (as in 20$, for kids of course).

Since my lunch savings and other residuals were meek in comparison, ten-year-old me may as well call quit or find other ways to go full Trojan, and that was when I discovered the JEC, Japanese Eloquence Contest, a once-a-lifetime national competition encouraging the use of Japanese as a tertiary language under the new sanction. Concretely, competitions like so were plentiful though less organized and low in cash (a single school wouldn’t gather enough funding).

Thankfully, my offspring was blessed with foreign pirated movie sites, free live-streamed web shows, and I assured not to miss on a single work of art. I watched all from Studio Gibbli, GAINAX, Trigger, Toei Animations, … Juji Ito’s Uzumaki, 2009 Fullmetal Alchemist, FLCL (the entire triology), Gurren Larange, Rebuild of Evangelion, The Sword Art Online saga, Keep your hands off Eizouken, Tatami Galaxy, Devilman Crybaby, … Western cartoons were also no stranger to me: Teen Titans, Power Buff Girls, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, Rick and Morty, … For a kid from year 2040, the early years of our millenium wouldn’t matter, and it would seem I was the only child grown from the past. A blessing in disguise, these gifts were material to my command of Japanese and English, and from there I set out to dominate these contests, one by one.

At a moment’s notice, drones were visiting that one house in the slum of Hongkong.

Despite taking me one strenuous month to jog my memory for the two alphabets, it was a happy ending, and to my account was 100$ (Seeing that I was the tech-winner of the family)

Five minutes in, waves of saturnine rainfall began to cascade, and the mass sought for an immediate ceiling. The green hills and yards, far and few among branches of high concrete blocks, bridges and rooftops, had became desolated once more. I was one of the lucky few who had already occupied a roof, but before I could sense it the rest of my coat was cloaked in splashes of dirts and soils. Intrigued, whereby others hastily tucking their gloves deep in their coats and pockets, I instead lent a finger into the raging cascade, and the chill kept on throttling down my spines for each droplets, until half of me felt submerged in cold waters.

It was dirty water.

Nishito’s forcefield technology was flexible enough to protect you from almost every out-of-region hazard: fallout dust, tsunami, or incoming nuclear missiles, let it be one to hundreds in number; but except for an adhoc rainfall (at least not instantaneously) due to its sheer scale, which explained the slight delay in rendering. And years prior Petro installed a private-owned forcefield around the school district, yet of late it was rarely in action for some reasons. For the first time since its foundation, Petro couldn’t pay for its own service.

The same cold water cascaded five years ago when a boy was waiting by the doorstep, above him the pouch merely coated the boy against the downpour. Then the door opened as usual, with warm light and beacons, but the boy (stifled) hesitated. As he was hearing the boss music, his mother was standing in front of him, her hands???, her eyebrows raised. I couldn’t tell if it was rancor or care, still, I knew for an instant I was in troubled waters, but I couldn’t care less for my own, the numbness and inevitable fever. My father had to intervene, and i was finally let in.

That week, tragedies happened. A third of the rewards in cash plus my entire savings were devoted to the KudoReef, which was delivered on the doorstep by an autonomous drone when my family was away (with the context that I was the sole credit card holder of my family). I panned out half implemented the headset. It was a thin, rectangular cardboard box curved just for the temple, besides are a magnetically embedded touch pad the size of a double folded napkin, and a usb-e gate on the one side for connecting my computer to the KudoReef inside (while codes can be uploaded wirelessly to the Wifi-ready KudoReef, wiring and electrical testing must also be considered). Above, attaching to it was an adjustable head mount, which wrapped neatly (although finicky) around my cranium and was retractable through multiple layers, and which held the joint of the box so that I could turn it up and take it off my eyes safely without ever detaching it from the rest of the headset. Inside the headset lay the FOV separator, a 4K screen display for each eye (which was the minimum spec, given most headsets ran on 32K, if not ditched the AMOLED screen entirely), and behind it all, a wireless KudoReef.

The first version included no haptic gloves, controller or any hand-detection algorithm, but fortunately, a 6DOF positioning system; that standard was fine to a ten-year-old me. After the first boot, all the codes were ready to be uploaded (available on Stack Overflow), thus I put on the headset, and so transcended my reality into a new world.

It was a common misconception back in the early 2010s that a Link-Start would entail a flashy display of abstracts and flowing neuronlike animations, when in reality, hopping could be as instantaneous as pressing the PLAY button and there in the darkness would load all of the resource within five seconds or so.

The four walls that are my room then featured a limitless skybox blotting around which was the city scape of Hongkong, which was how the Zeitgeist signalled its successful connection to the rest of the world and detected my location. A few seconds had passed, and slowly materializing in front of me was not my avatar but a home menu, with stock Zeitgeist interface, hovering buttons in Mandarin, and above it all was a greeting message.

I positioned myself to the back where there was the control panel, and dragged my cursor (a direct beam from my character’s head) to the “Account NEW” button.

“ ACCOUNT NAME: WATARI WATSON LOGIN: jeong124 PASSWORD: ******** ACCOUNT ID: 1086-V6006-O9893-AC1 “ And so the boy-you-know was poised to play Minecraft World.

As regards the field of simulated reality there were many layers as to depth and alteration of one’s perceptional capacity and awareness. That was layer -1, which barely scratched the surface of reality manipulation

But it wouldn’t concern my parents whether humanity was in desperate of innovations, an innate thirst supposedly captivating us prisoners. I forced a few generous mistruth out of my mouth, either our school was on a last-ditch excursion or that I’d broken the school computer. Still, reckoning the danger of involving my worthwhile hobby with the school and adult businesses, I convinced Natushita to share our dorm for a shared headset. Not only he concurred, he became an SR map maker, or map tester.

My plan wouldn’t come into fruition for long. Long before my first headset setup I had been thinking of an insurgency plan, in the worst case scenarion when the thirsty, non tech-savvy would misunderstand the headset’s purpose and serve it to the junkyard trader’s, as even as little as ten dollars would still make a difference. So on the last night on our first year campus together, we were scheming to uproot and port our temporal setup in our actual hideout - that is our shared room - from the confined space of my filial home 5 kilometers away (without catching the Monitor’s attention), and while I was accessing my repo, I noticed something peculiar: that is, it couldn’t detect the SLIC (Space laser integrated connection) macro, which was for wireless connection. Before I could anticipate, all the files were unable to be found, and from what seemed like a DDOS attack the hub ground to a halt, then the whole repo crashed. Someone messed with the physical macro, the whole mainframe. I attempted to phone home, but no response. As a last resort we clubbed together a sum enough for my premium return ticket. And when I arrived at Xiho fifteen minutes later, a crew of two man in yellow striped black uniform was pulling out my whole bedroom’s content out. The bits and pieces, scraps, debris, items and stolen utensils, clums of mirrors, metal pipes and nuclear reactors, a desk clinging to the detached ceiling via the all-adhesive bands… which I suspected were floating in disarray, forming an astroid belt of wares and carton boxes. Then it was clear as day: they were retrivals from the service department so my room was held together by a central anti-gravitational force - another means of transporting goods. The man holding the agg (anti-gravity gun) with both hands had difficulties in supporting its sheer weight which pushed and pulled at intervals. The rancour was visible on his face.

I dashed along the snowcovered walkway only to find my entire room being robbed away. With the unimpeded force of muscles from a lad who had jogged to death ten times per day around the shoreline, I let my instinct take over as panic and sheer rancour launched me towards the agg’s gravitational link, my hands flinging in the air as would an enemy waving the white flag,, “WAIT WAIT”, as the men also panicked and graviously scolded at me and they had to diverge the gun’s target in emergency (before my internal organs would explode) thus the whole body of electronics fell apart and their landing made deafening clinging (I jumped on my back). I turned around and scavage for everything intact as little as possible but could only pick the headset which was fried and deformed from the outside, and the rest of the tools and accessories were all disected. The man holding the agg jumped out on me, “What the fuck?” but quickly froze and resorted to putting his hands up as from my bag I pulled out the stun glove, a bulky, robotic glove that could shoot lightning bolts from your palm. “Chill chill, we aren’t moving” he spoke in terror, “We’re the maintenance team and we had orders from this householder, please put down your weapon”,

But I saw it through. “Who’s behind this?”

“No, we do not -“

“Answer the god damn question!”

“We’re not supposed to-“

“Say it or I’ll fucking shoot!”

“Please just calm-“

“I’ll fucking shoot!”, my right hand in the glove was straightening forwards as my left hand held onto it and load the , and the palm of my glove began to lit up in accumulated electricity.

“All right!” his drifty hand made a swiping motion and a panel was thrown before me, showing the avatar of a late-30’s lady (the picture was poorly caliographed which was taken from the chin up) who I recognized as my mother. Before I could react further, the other man in the background stormed towards me in breakneck speed, and a slight sonic boom incidentally shot me off a great league away and into the foyer. Concretely he was an old android, slick gray plating and menacing red eyes in engagement mode, which explained his immense strength and total lack of empathy by attempting to choke me unconscious (“NEUTRALIZING SUSPECT” he pronounced) paving ways for the real man to call the police. Having anticipated the inevitable, despite my legs clanged tight by the android, I signalled to finish charging and shoot point-blank into the android’s head: the force was so awesome its neck evaporated as its head was blown back into its body top down, breaking all its spine and organs, and so he was ascended two leagues away, also knocking down the man from afar. And since the stun glove was charged, both men were being stunned and shocked to near-death for the subsequent ten minutes as their screams barely resonated through the thick snow of Xiho. Technically I didn’t kill them. Ten-year-old me couldn’t, and so I departed with my headset and an abandoned cottage, not looking back, apart from the agg on the ground, but I was forced to leave it behind lest I be in further legal trouble …

On the Fly Path-finding Mechanism, an ML project that will never pan out!

A perceptron is a simple, shallow neural network that accepts an input, through some activation units, then an output - 3 layers. In a CNN Convolutional Neural Network, they are 1-dimensional FCLs Fully Connected Layers (aka FLCL)

A CNN Convolution is consisted of convolutional and pooling layers (scanning filter-like layers that capture prominent features) and FLCLs. LeNet, introduced by Yann LeCun et al, is among the oldest and simplest CNNs, which gathered a cult following of geeks and researchers. There are now AlexNet, VGG, GoogLeNet, ResNet, InceptionNet, …

These are primarily backends for object classification (labelling an image with an object). In contrast, object detection (involves localization, the bounding-boxing of objects on the screens then classification) is relatively novel, with models namely Fast/Faster/Masked R-CNNs, SSD, YOLOv2/v3/v4, …. Home computers from laptops to mobile phones are il-suited for this task.

CNN Convolutional Neural Network is a subset of DNN Deep Neural Network which is part of ANNs Artificial Neural Network - the major field in ML Machine Learning, a method from the study of AI Artificial Intelligence. This coverage won’t encompass my detailed research all told, rather a highlight of intruging bits and pieces, including some jargons.

As a long time GTA player, it was hard not to revere its driving AI, whenever being chased or hailing a taxi. I pitched this concept months ago, originally out of boredom during quaratine, now as a long term project that will carry this year onward. But since I’ve only entered this field of late, my meagre command had caused many obstacles.

Setup

Python + libraries:

| - tensorflow@1.15.0 (+keras)

| - opencv@3.x.x (+numpy)

Object Detection Architecture

| - output: YOLOv3 (from opencv)

| - backend: mobilenetv2 (from opencv)

| - custom dataset

Arduino + libraries

| - Arduino Uno R3

| - ESP32-CAM (+esp32 library)

| - MPU6050

| - an RC car, borrowed.

| - a Drone, borrowed.

Miscellaneous + tools

| - BB-EI, an image labeller

Episode 0: From Scratch

The first month was spent on filling my knowledge gaps by reading up on Towards Data Science, PyImageSearch, and Coursera.

Most confusion and ignorance, I realized, stems from either me as a skating amateur or the lack of proper beginner-friendly material - as in the way every article expects a certain level of knowledge in hindsight. I recommend any beginner to start from the ground up, that is, mastering the traditional regression models, than perceptrons, … until you acclimatized yourself to high-level models.

Another key respect is the sheer physicality of your machine, that is, your specs. Does your machine possess a separate GPU? How much RAM does it have, over 8 gigs, 16 gigs? How about access to TPUs, cloud ML, API support? Answering these requirements means an easier life, otherwise you’ll have to pesevere in optimizing your training, much less realtime performance.

Intentionally or not, I could only base this on my laptop, Intel Intergrated GPU (as in none), 8 gigs and a tight budget. Hopefully, this may breed innovations.

First attempts

YOLO by all means is the fastest object detection model and also the most famous. The top hit on Google led me to Darknet and Redmon et al’s original implementation in C++ (https://pjreddie.com/darknet/). Thankfully, there’s Darkflow, a port to Python by a fellow Vietnamese thtrieu. After some struggle, I got it to work: the demo, with facecam on. I used YOLO-Tiny, both weights and config, and got marginally results. Truth is, YOLO was fast, but couldn’t be handled by such low-powered machines as was my laptop.

We’ll revisit this story later, but for now, let’s jump to present days.

Vision: Caffe, SSD

The latter part of this article is now subject to updates as part of my on-going research, all of which are to be encapsulated. During this trying period, a great many interests unthought-of interests have been unearthed and not to mention is the forthcoming tight schedule (and extra syllabuses). Stay tuned! :)