The Kat Kim Show Episode 4

Summer and Fall have been super busy, so I have been a little behind on the Kat Kim show. I have been planning this episode for far too long and over Thanksgiving I finally filmed it while I was visiting my mom. Hope you enjoy. Feel free to leave me comments or suggestions!

Sloth Art

It's that time again! You guessed it, it's time for my (almost) annual sloth post (apparently I missed 2008). Anyway... Hurray!

Today we'll look at a more uncommon expression of sloth affection: sloth art. We'll start with a more realistic oil painting by Michelle McCune entitled Ascending. The painting is inspired by the artist's trip to Costa Rica and is beautifully detailed. I can almost see the algae growing on it's fur!

Surprisingly, realistic art of sloths is pretty limited. It gets abstract very quickly. Here is a cute painting entitled "99 cents never felt so good (the perfect unity)" by Alexis Trice, who does custom pet portraits. I was slightly confused by this one for many reasons (why the cheetos? why the title, exactly?), but mostly I wanted to know if someone actually has a sloth as a pet. Can I have one too?!

Of course, we have to include some sloth pop art. This sloth print is by My Favorite Mirror. It's a bit formulaic as there is a whole theme of animals in crowns, but it's still cute.

This next one is called "Enticing Invitation" by APAK Studio and is part of their Electric Garden gallery. I like APAK's art style in general (they sell their prints on Etsy) and I absolutely LOVE this painting (the print is hanging on my wall). The imagery so clearly says: "Come down and play, we have caaaaake!" while the sloth carefully considers.

As for sloth drawings, we have this sloth illustration by Rich Barrett that was originally for a children's book (but never got published). Not sure if sloths actually hang out on a branch like this, right-side-up rather than up-side-down, but it captures the true nature of the sloth; they are all about chilling out.

Lastly, we have a more cartoony version of a three-toed-sloth by Hayes Roberts. I really like his style of drawing and he has a lot of cute drawings up on his website.

So, there is a limited selection of sloth art out there, but I'm sure sloths in various forms of art will be the next big thing. Because, honestly, how can you not love a sloth? The smiling face, the slow gentle nature, and the fact that they only have claws for feet! So next time you're drawing, painting, sculpting, etc., consider adding a sloth to your artwork, you won't regret it! :D

New Camera, New Episode

I got a new video camera! It's the Flip HD Mino, so that I could get a little higher quality video for the episodes of The Kat Kim Show. The latest episode is below. I spent a lot more time recording and editing it than the previous ones. I think it turned out alright.



I also made the first video of what I'm calling "Tangents," where I talk about something other than my research (a tangent, if you will). This one is on how to make one of my favorite Korean dishes, 떡볶이 (Dokbokki), a spicy rice cake dish.



I'm going on my summer trip to Korea soon, so I'm not sure how many episodes I'll be able to make while I'm there, but we'll see!

Spring 2010 Update

I survived my second semester of graduate school! And, I still want to go back next year! I think this is a good sign that something is going right. It has been a busy semester, so here is an update of all the stuff that I have done.

PECI 2010

I was on the committee that put on the first Power and Energy Conference at Illinois (PECI) in February 2010! It was a relatively small conference, especially since it was the first time putting on the conference, but it turned out well and we are starting to plan for next year's event as well. This is also where I got my first publication on photovoltaic module configurations. Not a “big time” conference, but, hey, a publication is still a publication.

(photo by Stanton Cady)

Illinois Half-Marathon

Encouraged by some of my marathon-runner lab mates I decided to sign up for the Illinois half-marathon. I trained pretty consistently, and was able to run the whole 13.1 miles without walking at a 9:34 min/mile pace. My final time was 2:05:18, which was a lot better than I initially expected. I also made a shirt on Cafe Press. PV researchers represent! I even got a snazzy metal for finishing the half-marathon. I'm hoping to do it next year too!

UOCD at Illinois v1.0

This year was the first time that User Oriented Collaborative Design (UOCD), originally an Olin course, was offered at University of Illinois. Since I was the only person at Illinois that had ever taken UOCD, I offered to be the teaching assistant for this first iteration of the course, which was co-taught with Olin. Due to the courses newness and poor scheduled time, we only had one team of four students; but let me make sure to mention that these were four awesome students that rocked UOCD. It was a bit bumpy at first, but all four students stuck with it and really "got it" by the end. I learned a whole lot more about UOCD too, particularly that when I took the class our team made a lot more mistakes than I realized. So, it was a good learning experience for everyone. I even made the class a cake for their final presentation. The colored rectangles are supposed to be index cards since we used so many of them throughout the semester. Let's just say I'm still working on my cake decorating skills...

EAPSI in Korea

Last semester I applied to the East Asian Pacific Summer Institutes (EAPSI) program. This program is awesome (but you do have to be a US citizen in a US graduate program). You find someone to host you in one of the listed East Asian/Pacific countries, submit a research proposal, and if you get the award, they pay for your flight there, give you some money, and a living stipend. It is a sweet deal if you ask me. So, I'll be in Korea for two months over the summer doing research on power electronics and PVs at Seoul National University! I can't wait.

Until I leave for Korea in mid-June, I'll be hanging out at the lab, doing research, trying to brush up on my Korean, and probably playing a little L4D2. Looking forward to a great summer!

The Kat Kim Show, now with more Episodes! (approximately 2)

After another exciting Saturday night spent in my apartment with a small stuffed alien as company doing multiple takes in front of my computer, I present Episode 2 of The Kat Kim Show:

This one took longer to make, but I did a lot more editing in iMovie and ended up doing significantly more takes than for episode 1. I have to say that it's really fun coming up with ideas for new episodes. Wish I had more time to work on this. Maybe once the semester is over. :) Thanks to all the people that have given me encouragement and suggestions!

The Product of a Boring Weekend

As I usually do for week-long, mid-semester breaks from school, I decided to go... nowhere. I stayed and caught up on work and sleep. I even had some time to reflect on life, grad school, etc. I was kind of bored in my apartment on the weekend and was thinking how I would explain my research to someone who has some technical background, but was not familiar with my field. And, more importantly, how to explain it in an interesting way. So, I decided to make a video of me explaining some basics of photovoltaics that could eventually build up to my research. Thus, began "The Kat Kim Show."

So far, I've only made the first episode and I was not sure if this would be a one-time thing or not. But, people have said generally positive things about it, so I'm currently working on episode 2! And, adding in a little bit of editing, so I don't have to do the whole thing in one take. Anyway, hope you enjoy it and maybe, eventually, people will actually be interested in and understand my thesis research! :-D

Halloween Costume 2009

Since I did not have enough time to blog during the semester, I wanted to make sure my Halloween costume did not go undocumented this year. Technically, I reused my costume from last year, but it only debuted to people in my small company, where only three of us dressed up and everyone else thought we were weird. Originally I was a etched silicon wafer, but not many people actually got it. This year I decided to go with solar panel and had my friend who was visiting for the weekend dress up as the sun. Most people guessed that I was a solar panel, but I still got guesses of sewer grate and man-hole cover.

I made the costume out of a collapsible car windshield shade that I used to use in my car. I cut out material so I could put it over my head and cut off excess material. Then, I drew on the individual die with permanent marker (trying to optimize spacing for maximum wafer utilization). It's a simple costume, but it's made of reused materials and collapses for easy storage! In time, I am pretty sure that my Halloween costumes will become so abstract, no one will get them at all. :P