Turning the page on another year
Submitted by Steven on 4 November, 2005 - 3:16am
in
I honestly had no real plans to celebrate things, what with the midterms coming up and scaring me! But taking a break seemed appropriate, so Carolen and I improvised in San Francisco's newest neighborhood, King Street by SBC Park. The place is so very nice and clean! read more→
Sprite's Aquarium
Submitted by Steven on 29 October, 2005 - 2:14pm
in
Sprite's Aquarium had been the name of my personal website for almost a decade now, but I decided to give that a rest. I feel "Resonance" reflects more of my personality. It refers to a concept in chemistry in which carbon atoms share electrons along bonds in the p orbital to increase the stability of the overall molecule. As the carbon atoms strive for harmony amongst its chemical bonds, so too do I strive for such harmony with human bonds.
Whoa, deep. read more→
SARS Coronavirus
Submitted by Steven on 19 October, 2005 - 8:55am
Andrew Khemthong and I gave this review talk on Drosten et al.'s "Identification of a Novel Coronavirus in Patients with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome," published in 2003 shortly after the SARS virus scare. Our goal: to simply communicate the main concepts of the paper to the class without getting bogged down in heavy scientific terms. I oversaw almost all of the creation of the information graphics, making sure that they communicated our ideas in a clear, easy-to-understand manner. read more→
Recombinant DNA Techniques: PCR and Restriction Digests
Submitted by Steven on 18 October, 2005 - 12:31am
My group and I presented results for the recombinant DNA techniques lab in our Cell Laboratory class (MCB 130L). I generated almost all of the graphics in Illustrator and Keynote and directed the overall design of the slides. Careful application of basic presentation techniques (such as "don't put a lot of text on the slide" and "tell us a story") ensured the success and smooth delivery of the presentation. This talk was delivered Fall 2005 semester. read more→
Site fixes for better Internet Explorer compatibility
Submitted by Steven on 13 October, 2005 - 9:29am
in
I ended up fixing the quirkiness with Carolen's suggestions and investigations into PNG issues. It seems Internet Explorer chokes if you don't specify a color under the CSS shorthand property "background":
background: url(IMAGEFILE) <color> <repeat> <position>;
After adding those in, and then tweaking the code a little bit so that the masthead was in a more manageable div area, my front page's backgrounds display quite well in Internet Explorer 6. I'm hoping Internet Explorer 7 will be easier to work with. read more→
Quirky Internet Explorer rendering
Submitted by Steven on 10 October, 2005 - 11:05am
in
I have to test out my website quickly on Internet Explorer for Windows on campus machines (since I use a Mac). This is what my page is supposed to look like:
But under IE, a lot of things go missing:
My head is gone!
I've also noticed some really weird mouse-hover behavior with Internet Explorer 6. I'll have to research this some more. read more→
Poking holes in the server log
Submitted by Steven on 9 October, 2005 - 8:57am
I'm still working and working on molding this site into something that's content-rich, and something that's worth visiting. The front page is sorely lacking — it doesn't even match the rest of the website's themes — but I have a good idea of what to create. To the top, I'll put an introduction to myself and what the website is about. To the left, I'll place a single highlighted feature post, and the most recently-updated posts (whether they be blog or publication or image). To the right, I'll put randomly-selected "selections" from the portfolio, and the portfolio index itself. Still in Photoshop mock-up stage; I'll need to code in the PHP. read more→
Facing Ratio shader node in Maya

I originally presented this in Fall 2004 as part of the UCBUGG Masterclass series. It was previously published on ucbugg.berkeley.edu.
 It’s often important to know what’s behind the scenes. That’s why, with Maya, you should always demand the truth. If you’re in a relationship, for example, it’s always good to know what’s going on in your significant other’s life. That way, there won’t be any unpleasant surprises. And just like relationships, knowing how Maya works under the hood helps. ;)
Maya is a node-based system. When you tell Maya, “I want a sphere,” it’ll create several nodes holding different characteristics that altogether combine to form the sphere you see in the viewport. You can manipulate the attributes of each node; these attributes affect how the sphere looks in the end. read more→
Motion Design in Maya
I originally presented this in Fall 2004 as part of the UCBUGG Masterclass series. It was previously published on ucbugg.berkeley.edu.
Animated logos are fairly simple creations that are used in a variety of places: corporate presentations, broadcast design for television, motion design for DVD’s, and intros for motion pictures. In fact, design firms like Troika and Cinemagic exist to create motion designs. For example, Troika crafted ESPN SportsCenter's latest Revolution theme:
