I have written this simple shell script that moves your files to some temporary folders, instead of deleting them straightaway. These folders are located within /tmp. Thus, they're automatically cleared upon system restart. You can now safely recycle any files, without worrying that these trashed files may fill up your hard disk.

To install the recycle utility, open your terminal and enter the following commands:

wget http://cs.williams.edu/~yh1/recycle
chmod +x recycle
sudo mv recycle /usr/bin/

Use it as if you're using the rm utility. For instance, you want to delete all the folders that start with "log", and all the python files. You can do the following:

recycle log* *.py

Upon successful return, the system notifies you that the files have been recycled to a certain temporary directory. An example looks like this:

Files recyled to: /tmp/recycled-Thu-Jul-22-13.47.16-PDT-2010/

You can easily recover files from these temporary folders based on the date and time of recycle.

If you're unsure, type recycle at the command prompt and a help message will be displayed. Email me if you have doubts or suggestions for improvement. Contact me at http://cs.williams.edu/~yh1/.

One last note: If you should be too used to the your beloved old pal rm, then in your ~/.bashrc make an alias rm that actually calls recycle.

One big drawback is that Nolan is being too ambitious in this project. His intentions, to me, are clear. He attempts to make a clever movie with potentially deep philosophical meanings, strung together with action/love sequences. In trying to squeeze so many things within the mere two-and-half hour film, his plan backfires. The film, instead, comprises action/love sequences dotted with such philosophies. In one moment, you would have the characters explaining the Freudian theories in nebulous terms. In the next moment, they start embracing themselves for the enemy gunfire and heart-throbbing car chase. Before you realize it, the scene is saturated with guilt and love (man-woman, father-son). This is followed by a character's confusion with dream, reality, and the subconscious world that seem to bridge the both. All the narrative elements are distinct, just like a bowl of salad. That, I guess, is a rather disappointingly easy formula that manages to cater to everyone's taste. You like the vegetables; you eat it. You don't like the tomatoes; you skip it. You like everything; you gorge down everything. Finally, you walk out of the theater, full and contented, yet uncertain what you have consumed for the past two-and-half hours. Maybe you start questioning whether you have woken up from a dream.

In his ambition, Nolan fills the scenes with heavy-handed discussions on the philosophical motivations. I would be more comfortable with a subtler approach. To be fair, there is a fine tension between how much depth the film should dive into, and how quickly the plot should unroll. This is a delicate balance, especially in an ambitious project like this. In return for deeper discussions of the philosophical motivations, the filmmaker risks sacrificing the popular appeals for fast-paced chase sequences or eye-popping special effects. They cannot afford to lose the audience. In this case, Nolan stops short when the plot opens up for deeper explorations, for instance, as the characters start to embrace their imaginary yet subconscious reality. He sprinkles just enough of the Freudian Iceberg or Plato's Cave for the plot to proceed. And sadly, because he devotes so little time into the philosophical substances, he tends to make the answers come too easy. This prematurely pulls you out of the suspense. It sets you into a comfort zone too soon. You're safe to explain, for instance, the rationale behind Cobb's actions around the mid-point of the narrative. Ellen Page's character, in particular, murders the nail-biting tension that permeates throughout the beginning of the movie. In her bold and daring exploration of Cobb's world, she finds the Pandora's Box and opens it. The beans are spilled. From then onwards, an otherwise multi-dimensional narrative space collapses into something that which is solely driven by actions. Of course there are subsequently some feeble attempts to add twists into the philosophical and psychological sides of the story. By then, however, you are no longer sitting on the edge of your seat yearning to understand the characters. The most exciting part of the roller coast ride is over. You are waiting for the car to return to the base station.

It is worth noting that a part of the film, at least in my opinion, is an apt tribute to Stanley Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both films are very similar in their portrayals of the dreamy sequences. Kubrick's cinematographic grace---his long, wide shots, his floating camera moves---is matched with Nolan's succinct punctuations in the free-fall sequences. It is especially remarkable that in the world crazy about fast cuts Nolan is able to take a brief respite from all the actions. They are punctuated with slow, surreal yet breath-stopping moments of silence, where (spoilers) characters free-fall back to another dream or the van takes its hour-long leap into the water. It is in such moments that you feel the throbbing heart in your chest and the residual fear from the previous gunfight.

(Thank you, mocha, for keeping me still awake even at 1 am Pacific Time.)

Photographed using my Samsung phone.

Photographs by Danny Y. Huang

For a typical Western audience who has little knowledge of classical Indian music, Zakir Hussain is probably just another musician. There were letter-sized black-and-white advertisements about the concert, pasted on walls, lampposts and shops across Amherst, along with so many other cultural events, but who is Zakir Hussain? Such a typical Western audience would quickly change his mind when he arrived at the entrance of the concert hall. The place was filled with Indian people: parents with their kids, giggling and chatting with other families; women gliding across in their colorful saris; smart young men socializing with one another, talking about how excited they were. There were also a sizable number of white audience, mostly old folks who dressed up in smart suits and elegant evening gowns, as they would in a typical European concert. One would quickly realize that Zakir Hussain is not simply a Master of Percussion. He represents a phenomenon, a cultural icon that can easily be parallelled with Mozart to the Europeans, or Lee Hom Wang to the Chinese.

When filing into the concert hall, each member of the audience was given a program sheet, which, ironically, did not include a real program. Only the performers' names were listed. It did not mention the pieces. This was not totally surprising, given the improvisatory nature of traditional Indian music. A performer may choose to play a piece based on a certain rag and tal, or combinations.

Such improvisations drew interesting responses from the audience, especially those who were unfamiliar with this aspect of Indian music. First of all, one can most easily observe the patterns of clapping. In a typical European concert, an audience is given the full program. It lists the pieces and the forms of the pieces, whether it is a one-movement sonata on the piano, or a multi-movement concerto. There are clear signs that indicate when one should clap. One can count the number of movements and applaud at the end. Or one can feel the cadence at the end of a piece.

All these rules do not exist in Zakir Hussain's concert. The night opened with a long solo introduction on the sarangi. The stage was dark save for the spot light on the sarangi player. Then out of nowhere the tabla kicked in. Zakir Hussain appeared, shaking his head, his eyes half closed, playing a simple pattern on his tabla. The audience tapped their feet along with the beat. It was steady and predictable. Just as the audience thought they could, too, playback the beats, Zakir Hussain picked up his tempo, adding more beats in between his original tal. He also varied the pattern. What should have been a strong beat was absent. There was a sense of anticipation, followed by a sense of loss when he became so fast that the drumbeat felt like a machine gun firing. But it was not just casual, quick drumming. Each firing of beats differed from one another in subtle ways: probably in volume, probably in the way his fingers hit the drum. No one could see. No one could hear. But one felt the difference. One felt the energy because of these small differences. This energy was contagious. It spread to the audience, who were no longer tapping, but who now broke into a thunderous applause. People cheered. People clapped. Zakir Hussain kept performing, though dropping from the climax, returning to a more regular pattern and letting the sarangi take over the main melody. There were a few audience who were reluctant to clap at first, but it was difficult not to. At this moment, the typical uptightness for concert etiquette evaporated. The atmosphere instantly became more animated and relaxing. It was easy for the audience to start connecting to the music and the performers.

Moreover, there was no clear distinction between pieces. The absence of a concrete program meant that the audience did not know the structure of a piece or how many pieces there would be before the intermission, if there would be one. The applause and cheering could thus be seen as a more genuine and spontaneous response to the performance, rather than a mere formality that marks the end of a piece. The opening piece, as mentioned above, was a duet on the sarangi and the tabla. At some point, the sarangi began repeating the same melody. It almost became simply the background accompaniment for the percussion. As the tabla became more dominant, the string gradually faded in dynamics. One easily thought that this may have been a virtuosic moment for Zakir Hussain, but the pattern he played was steady and predictable, which, in retrospect, served like an introduction to the next piece. The spotlight on the sarangi player faded, while another performer appeared on the opposite side of the stage. Before him were several Indian classical drums mounted on a modern Western drum set. As soon as the tabla reached what sounded like a cadence, the drum set player started hitting the beats aggressively, first with his hands and then with the sticks. The tabla stayed silent, almost like a scared husband crouching in a corner while being scolded by his furious wife. The moment the drum set player slackened his tempo, the tabla retorted with greater ferocity. It felt like a fierce yet comical conversation or even an argument, back and forth, enacted between the two instruments, and the audience laughed and applauded. The lack of a program created multiple elements of surprise for the audience. It was hard to imagine, at first, that a sombre sarangi-tabla duet could smoothly transition into this comical argument between two everyday characters.

This lively mood within the audience was also a result of the interactions among the performers. They did not simply play the music. They enacted it. One of the pieces after the intermission featured two violinists and a mridangam player. Sometimes the two violins would play together, while the mridangam provided the rhythm. Sometimes only one violin would play, while the mridangam played a complex pattern and rendered the violin as an accompaniment. While either violinist was not playing, he would smile and look at the drummer, his hands beating his thighs for rhythm: palms down for the tali beats, and palms up for the khali beats. When the drummer reached the end of his phrase, he would shout words of encouragement to the two string players who returned to the main melody. And even as the violinists were playing, they smiled and nodded to each other. To the audience, these occasional exchanges of support within the players were reassuring and heart-warming. They added to the dimensionality of the experience. On top of the visual and musical performances was layered a personal touch. It was easy, as an audience, to be moved and connected to the music.

In addition, the musicians interacted with the audience through concise, lively introductions on classical Indian music. The concert opened with a single sentence, "Breath as the first rhythm." By beatboxing, the performer demonstrated a series of rhythm patterns, slowly at first as if breathing, and then picking up the tempo and changing to nonsensical syllables. He then went on to explain the terms raga and tala in a light-hearted "lecture" that drew much laughter from the audience. He wrapped up by asking the audience to clap along. He played a pattern, and the audience would repeat. He then played a more complex pattern. The audience followed. This was repeated a few times until his pattern became so fast and so complicated, that the audience broke into laughter, impressed by his talents in percussion. Aside from the rhythmic pattern, Zakir Hussain paralleled the sound of the tabla to the sound of nature. He painted an image of a deer running in the forest and escaping from the hunter, while his fingers and his hands hit the drum at various positions at different speeds. As if the audience had not been amazed enough, he then told the audience that he would play a train passing a bridge. He started, slow and soft, as if the train had been approaching. Then came the metallic clanking, as the train roared past the bridge, the sound reverberated across the valley. And the audience realized that what they heard was not really a train. The verisimilitude was achieved with bare fingers and hands hitting on a tabla. The crowd was stunned. There was an awkward silence, before they exploded into cheers. Entertainment values aside, these interactions allowed the audience to be better tuned to Indian classical music, and to better appreciate the performance later in the concert. Furthermore, the audience was able to easily establish closer connections with the performers. One could enjoy the music and feel through the music.

The concert wrapped up with a standing ovation for the performers. Some of the audience were humming the melodies of the last piece which was played by the entire ensemble. The concert was more than two hours long, but it went by fast. Zakir Hussain had taught the audience some aspects of classical Indian music: the rhythm, the melodies; the rags, the tals. He taught the crowd the sound of music, and he demonstrated the soul of the music. Now people were filing toward the exit, smiling and chatting. Calm, relaxed and fulfilled on a cold windy Saturday night.

To save an image, right click on its thumbnail and select "Save Link As" (FireFox) or "Download Link" (Safari). Cropping and color adjustment in Google Picasa.

Created by two Williams students, Cooking with Steven is a Chinese cooking television show for college students. It demonstrates how to make economical, healthy and authentic Chinese dishes that one can easily prepare in a typical dorm kitchen.

Directed and produced by Danny Y. Huang. Starring Steven Cheng, who also developed all the recipes.

Official website: http://www.CookingWithSteven.com

Created as a part of my ARTS 323 Live TV Production class, this short film is a public service announcement for the Williamstown Access Television (WilliNet).

Director and director of photography: Danny Y. Huang
Asst director: Lindsay Aubin
Written by: Lindsay Aubin
Production designer: Aubree Stephens
Starring: Ed Mazurek, Lindsay Aubin, Ryann Tookes and Amy Darling
Narrator: Keenan Williams
Editors: Amy Darling and Ryann Tookes

Beyond the French Quarter is a student production that captures the unconventional accounts of youth volunteers in New Orleans. Follow us beyond the cameras and tourists, as we try to find hope in the areas that still haunt of desolation three years after Hurricane Katrina.

Running Time: 08 minutes 50 seconds

Background of this project

In March 2008, our eight-person production team visited New Orleans. We were all members of Purple Valley Films, an independent student film production company in Williams College, MA. Funded by the College, this project is not only about doing community services and helping with the reconstruction in the region over the Spring Break; it is about telling our peers stories of the City of Jazz three years after Hurricane Katrina. During our one-week stay, we talked to people — college volunteers hammering on roofs, ordinary folks, kids in the neighborhood, the homeless in Tent City — and filmed the interviews. We captured images of the destruction and reconstruction, faces of volunteers and local residents. In the French Quarter there may be parties, neon lights, tourists, fine dining and jazz; beyond that, there is still a lot to be done.

Poster

Credits

Unless indicated otherwise, the following cast/crew are students of Williams College.

Director and editor: Danny Yuxing Huang
Assistant editor: Helen J. Cha
Written by: Steven P. S. Cheng
Narrator: Robert Amster
Music by: Daniel Brett (Public domain music)

Interviews with

• Ian Willson (Co-Founder, Michelle’s Earth Foundation)
• Nate Johnson (Brown University)
• Vicky Ferguson (Elmhurst)
• Jason Zander (Elmhurst)
• Brittany Siegler (Elmhurst)
• Rachel Saetre (Elmhurst)

Interviews conducted by:

• Steven P. S. Cheng
• Thammika Songkaeo
• Fatimah Toure
• Danny Y. Huang
• Ariel Kavoussi

Transcribed by

• Helen J. Cha
• Steven P. S. Cheng
• Ariel Kavoussi
• Kwan Young Paik
• Thammika Songkaeo

Boom operator: Stevie Luther

With special thanks to: Williams College, Williams College Chaplain’s Office, Office of Campus Life, Lehman Council for Community Engagement, Richard Lescarbeau, Liza Johnson, Ian Willson, Volunteers from Elmhurst College (Illinois), Church of the Annunciation (Broadmoor, New Orleans), Duane Nettles (Church of the Annunciation), Paster Keith (St Bernard Parish), Paster Randy Millet (City of Hope Church, St Bernard Parish), Latoya Cantrell (Broadmoor Improvement Association), Malik Rahim, Mrs McGhee, Emily the GPS.

Originally intended to be a sequel to the original Happy Birthday, this short film was not completed because the filmmakers did not like the story after principal photography. Nonetheless, some of the scenes were edited into this trailer-like short film, while maintaining the solitude and serenity that permeates throughout the narrative as the protagonist experiences another birthday.

Running time: 2 minutes 12 seconds

Credits

Written by: Hai Zhou
Director and director of photography: Danny Yuxing Huang
Tai-chi choreographed by: Hai Zhou
Starring: Hai Zhou and Brad Culley
Camera assistant: Zhaoning Wang
Music by: Henry Purcell