Engineering

Full paper: seam_carving.pdf · Code: YuXiangLo/NTUPDP2026 Joint work with Ya-Chen Wu and Yu-Hsiang Lo, NTU Parallel Programming, Spring 2026. The Starting Point Seam carving is a content-aware image resizing algorithm. Instead of cropping or scaling, it removes the least important pixel paths — seams — from the image, leaving the interesting parts intact. The results look surprisingly good. The algorithm has two heavy stages. First, compute an energy map (gradient magnitude, one pass over the image). Then, run a dynamic program (DP) to find the lowest-energy connected path from top to bottom. Remove the seam. Repeat. ...

The Context Shopback’s backend runs on a set of microservices — each service owns its domain, communicates over the network, and scales independently. This architecture is well-understood and has obvious benefits. It also has a cost: idle containers still occupy allocated resources. When a service is running but not handling traffic, you’re paying for it anyway. The decision to migrate toward a monorepo structure was partly about this. With a TypeScript monorepo, multiple services can share the same process and resource pool. The idle overhead shrinks. The machine bill shrinks with it. ...

The Setup April 2025. Six people, one semester, and a goal: ship a complete 2D platformer in Unity. The game is called Bubblo. You play as a bubble creature exploring a pixel-art Wonderland, rescuing villagers trapped in cages, and fighting off needle-type enemies — bees, jumping spiders, a unicorn that very much wants to pop you. The core mechanic is bubble physics: bouncing and floating through levels, using your softness as both a movement tool and a combat advantage. ...