The Shape of Things to Come

As a software engineer working on graphics I’ve drifted a pretty long way from my original specialty, aerospace controls. I’m glad I got my PhD in controls though, because it taught me a unique way to approach problem solving, one which I tend to apply well beyond the traditional realm of controls. Controls is a very math-heavy discipline, focused on proofs and guarantees of safety because in many situations lives depend on the reliability of the system: autopilots come to mind, but there are countless examples in many fields. At its core is uncertainty and the management thereof. The first thing we’re taught when modeling systems is that our models are inevitably wrong, and not by a little: nothing is linear, nothing is rigid, nothing is independent of the world around it. These assumptions make our math tractable, but they are not realistic. And yet, all is not lost: we take our terrible models and our unreliable sensors and we bound their uncertainty. No matter how poor the input is...

My boss and I had a career conversation where he asked about what motivates me. I realized it’s not really money, as I’m already so far beyond the financial position I grew up in. I eventually had to admit, to myself mostly, that I’m actually motivated by fame, or more generally by being respected in my field. The funny thing is that I am almost certainly well past my high-water mark as far as fame is concerned.  I achieved my modest internet stardom through an unexpected avenue: 3D printing design. I discovered 3D printing through my first job which sent me to a UAV conference (back before everyone called them drones) and I saw a printed radio controlled samara (one wing helicopter) that some college students had designed. They crashed and broke it, then went over to the Stratasys booth with a thumb drive and had them print a replacement. They were back flying the next day. My coworker mentioned that a new company called Makerbot was selling a kit to build your own 3D printer for...

4 minute read. Updated July 8, 2024. Model: Boom Box Corset Damaged Helmet Flight Helmet Chess Game Velvet (sheen) Sofa Sheen Cloth Toy Car Water Bottle Lighting: Default Aircraft Workshop Music Hall Pillars Spruit Sunrise Whipple Creek Tone Mapping: PBR Neutral Linear/Clamped ACES AgX Reinhard Cineon UPDATE: Second time's the charm! After my polite rejection from SIGGRAPH a few years ago (the original post on that is below), someone recommended that I submit a talk on the work I just finished with the Khronos standards group on color and tone mapping for 3D product rendering. This time it was accepted, so I'll be presenting in Denver for SIGGRAPH 2024. My talk is in a session called "Love Me Some Color", which is appropriate since I've spent the last year+ going very deep on color theory. You can find my talk's abstract here - apparently the abstract of a 20-minute SIGGRAPH talk i...

When we bought our house, I had decided already that the huge, twin-trunk pine tree overhanging our sidewalk desperately needed a treehouse. This was a little premature as my wife was only pregnant with our first at the time, but it means I did spend some years idly contemplating designs. When my daughter was two or three and showing interest in climbing, I started sourcing materials, including some driftwood my dad and I harvested from the beaches I grew up near. But still the project languished, unstarted. What broke it loose was losing my job and falling into depression, idling my days away while my dad was dying of cancer (see my previous post ). I realized that I needed a project to keep my sanity, something I could pour my heart and soul into and remind myself that I could still accomplish things.  My dad built me a treehouse many years ago; it was in a many-armed willow tree where my mom had originally built a platform for my much older brother. My dad was a carpenter, as w...

I gave my father's eulogy a year and a half ago. It was the midst of a very dark year. He was very fit and healthy, recently cured of Hepatitis C that he'd gotten from a blood transfusion when he was 20. But he suddenly got crippling back pain that was quickly diagnosed as cancer. He had always joked about getting Do Not Resuscitate tattooed on his chest (he was an ambulance driver for our local volunteer EMS), but he allowed us to convince him to do the chemo and try to beat it, mostly because he hoped to get more time with his grandkids. As it turned out, it gave him only about four months, and it's hard to say if it could have been any worse without the treatment.  Those four months turned out to be the same four months I was interviewing at Google. I was the first employee of a small startup where I'd been working for almost two years, when the founder suddenly laid me off. That turned out to be the same week we got my dad's diagnosis. I started doing a lot of i...

I feel oddly at peace in this pandemic. Really, this comes down largely to luck and privilege: my wife and kids keep me from feeling lonely, my wife and I have jobs we can do remotely, my son's daycare is tiny and so has remained open through most of the shutdowns. I live in a beautiful city in a house I love with people I love. But, if this pandemic had struck a year and a half earlier, it would have been considerably more awful, for me at least.  This reminds me of how serious the situation is for so many, and that no matter how much I like to think my good fortune is largely of my own making, the reality is a lot is also dumb luck. If this pandemic had struck when my wife and I had both suddenly lost our jobs, times would have looked much more dire, and that wasn't so long ago.  Still, aside from luck, I find this pandemic oddly comforting and I think I finally understand why. It feels like home, like my childhood. I grew up in a log cabin on a tiny island; I had never hear...

Who am I? If you want to know, just Google me. An interesting side-effect of having an uncommon first name and an uncommon last name from different language roots means that I can say with confidence that my name, without even bothering with a middle initial, is internet unique. So any reference you find to Emmett Lalish is in fact referring to me, which may have something to do with why I never really attempted anonymity.  What is this blog about? Primarily myself and my hobbies, which have a tendency to blur into my career. In searching for a common theme, I found shape to permeate my various endeavors. I love sculpture, and though I didn't take to pottery like my father, I found a medium in 3D printing. It allowed me to combine mathematics and art with a precision I couldn't achieve in traditional media. But even long before that, I made modular origami, chainmail armor, and forged knives: all fundamentally sculptural.  My original career, aerospace engineering, drew me bec...