I challenge myself to read or listen to 52 books in 2020. I'm listing them here with a short descriptions about them to keep track of what I've read and key ideas learned.

1. The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life As a minimalist at heart …

The list of items contained in our diaper bag for air travel, annotated with how essential each item was based on our experience as follows:

*** Must have

**   Nice to have

*     Not needed

For travel gear that may not fit in your diaper bag, please visit this page.

• Portable changing pad …

We traveled with Boyan, our 13-month son last month to Japan (for those who are wondering, yep, he is the main reason why this blog has been so quiet in the past couple of years. :-)) and spent a unforgettable 10 days there. Before I went there, I searched over the …

What makes Mayor Stubbs special?

Check out the personality (or shall I say, catality) profile for Mayor Stubbs constructed by Juji based on Mayor Stubbs' tweets.

Have you meet Mayor Stubbs? Does this sound like him?

What really makes me smile is the summary of the profile. Mayor Stubbs is …

After a long drive, the last stop of the second day of our trip is National Museum of Boyana Church, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is a very small church, originally built in the lat 10th or early 11th century, with the addition of the central wing in the …

The second day of our trip began with a long drive from Sofia to Rila Monastery, the largest and most famous Eastern Orthodox monastery in Bulgaria.  It is the first UNESCO World Heritage Site in Bulgaria we visited in our trip.

This beautiful monastery is situated in the southwestern Rila …

We were quite amazed by the National Archaeological Museum, especially the Thracian treasures. 

The museum is located in the largest and oldest former Ottoman Mosque in Sofia.

Thracian treasures. Can you believe that they were made before the Roman Empire?

Gold jewery

Gold wreath

Gold mask and ring from Thracian …

(1) Sign of Sofia --- City of Lion.

Speaker: Tom

Dear fellow kitties, I am going to show you how to get a kitty manicure and pedicure.

First of all, let me show you my beautiful finger nails. My mom polishes each and every one of them on a weekly basis. Such weekly pampering is essential for a …

Planning:

Following my usual strategy for travel planning, I first got some rough ideas on the highlights of the country by referring to the "Best of Bulgaria in 12 Days Tour" by Steve Rick. Based on Huahai and my own schedule, I then decided that we could spend at most …

Today I have encountered dirty diaper for the very first time in my life and it is not pretty.  While doing routine cleaning of our guest bathroom, I was shocked to discover a stack of dirty diaper deposited in the trash can in our guest bathroom.  I am still struggling …

I was traveling in Europe last week. While I enjoyed the history, culture and food very much, I was not a big fan of the airports. Like many people, I would like to stay connected most of the time, at least be able to access my emails and the Web …

If you have one or more long hair cats at home, like our Mayori and Tom, you probably share the same dream as us --- a house without cat hair, at least a house without having cat hair everywhere.

Towards this dream, we have tried out various products. Here is a …

While preparing the camera-ready version for our CIKM demo, my colleagues and I found that the screenshot included in our paper appeared to be fairly blurry in the pdf version, even though the original .jpg file looks fine.

I searched online to try to find the solutions. After a few …

For unknown reason, my machines would suddenly disable their screen saver options (e.g. with the "on resume, display log on screen" check box grayed out). Whenever this happens, it would trigger the security alert and I will get a warning from the IT department to fix the issue.

I …

I happen to come across this excellent article from this year's ICML on Machine Learning that Matters. I encourage everyone, especially computer science Ph.D students, to read it.

As an industrial researcher who draws a lot of job satisfaction by making both scientific and practical impact, I completely agree …

As a new home owner, we have been going through a lot of home remodeling and repair projects. I found myself often search online for the same set of forms again and again. This post is to record all the forms that I often use and sometimes difficult to found …

As a busy computer scientist, I don't really get to exercise my inner Martha too much. But I did somehow manage to make my first ever attempt on sewing projects --- baby cloth shoes (as gift for my niece).

Here is the result --- I added the handmade pompom for extra cuteness …

It has been a while since Yunyao got her iPhone 4s, which is known for its "superb" camera --- "8MP camera with all-new optics also shoots 1080p HD video". 8MP on a cell phone sounds really impressive, does it? Maybe she finally can leave her big heavy Pentax for a while …

Updated on 09/10/2013: It's now only 295 USD, with 100 USD discount!

As a cat and modern design lover, I am always looking for cat items pleasant for both the cats and my aesthetic standard. I had my eye on the canine scratcher for a while, but its …