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Showing posts from December, 2017

One Year at Tonbo Imaging

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Tonbo Imaging is the best company to have started my career with, for I've had the opportunity to do something I got interested in at the very start of college; developing software for tangible systems. It has been 6 months of internship and 6 months of full time employment, and I'm certain I've learnt more than I ever could have during my four years at college. I've been very fortunate to have a very knowledgeable mentor, and a manager who gives us a lot of space to think and ideate, and spend time on research. In the past year, I've worked on developing an ecosystem of small-sized thermal cameras running a custom Android OS that perform video analytics, are controlled remotely and support global live streaming. It's taken a year to go from an idea to a proof of concept product - we're in no way scalable yet, and are continuously going through architectural changes while ideating and understanding the potential of this system. Most of my work has been R&

Entangled Brains

I'm sitting on a rooftop humming to half remembered lyrics of a song I heard the other day. I'm actively trying not to remember the long list of to-dos I've made for myself to finish before this year ends. I look at the passersby walking down the road and I see a couple wearing winter clothes. The first thing winter reminds me of is penguins. I ask myself what the name of the penguin from the animated movie Happy Feet was. I remember Lovelace, but he wasn't the main penguin. I'm then reminded of the fact that Marian Aunty, a grandmotherly figure from our time in Switzerland showed us giraffes in the Basel Zoo. I don't quite remember why they have black tongues, and so I start thinking of the survival advantages black tongues may provide. The thought doesn't stick too long as I see a bird fly into the tree that's as tall as the rooftop I'm on. Zap. Humans never evolved to see in the dark, but they made artificial sources of light. Do bats get e

The Crane Mystery

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There's this question that's been bugging me for over a month. It's a fairly simple question about a fairly common object in a city landscape, and yet it's an absolute mystery to me as to why I cannot come up with a believable solution. I've brought it up in ever-day conversation with friends and colleagues, hoping their answers might lead me to a justifiable answer. I've avoided Googling the answer for over a month, because some things in life just shouldn't be so easy. It's a fairly pleasant feeling to keep your mind pondering over such a simple question, and so the urge to pen this post. How are cranes transported and constructed? Take a minute, and visualise the size of these things. A crane is practically just two very long lines; one vertical steel pillar holding a similar horizontal one at the top. Moving them from place to place is difficult, and funnily enough, I've never seen a half-constructed crane. Here's a list of answe