Kevin Chiu

In Firefox, hold down shift and double click on any element in any web page. It disappears.

I was composing a mail in Gmail just a few minutes ago until I accidentally double clicked it out of existence.

1. Maintain a sleep schedule
2. Catch up with friends
3. Learn Django
4. Improve Ruby skills
5. _______?

Figure 1. Apple vs. The Matrix: one of the hardest choices I had to make

This website was astonishingly good at deciphering my personality traits from simple A/B picture preference testing. It did make a few mistakes, but I agreed with the majority of its guesses. It seems the program learns by guessing your traits based on the clicks of previous users. Whenever a trait guess is offered, there is an option to agree or disagree with the trait; so, the program can update its data set.

Here’s the output, including wrong guesses:

You’re a guy.
You prefer boxers.
Your desk is a mess.
You avoid junk food.
You would say your household income is at the upper class level.
You attended college.
You’re fifty or older.
You are not very interested in matters of technology.
You are fairly wealthy.
You’re a night person
You often employ logic in your decision-making.
You’re someone who has a few close friends.
You’re the kind of person who thinks first and acts later.
You are right-handed.
I bet you find it easy to empathize with other people.
You study/work better without music playing in the background.

…where the food cooks itself. Insert ingredients here at time X, turn the universal crank another revolution. Repeat N times for each serving. Optimized for pipelining multiple servings…

I’ll call it… Cooking with RISC.

The older I get, the easier I fall for illusions — or so it seems.

Example 1: It’s a Small World

When I was in pre-school, I did not fear the small dancing dolls at the Disney World theme park ride.

When I was in lower school, the robotic dolls made me sick.

Example 2: Inverted Face

When I visited a Ripley’s Believe it or Not odditorium in lower school, I saw the negative impression illusions as just that, depressions in a plaster slab.

When I visted a Ripley’s Believe it or Not odditorium in middle school, I felt like the concave heads were following my every move.