On Monday and Tuesday this week I attended the 2004 DSTC Symposium. In fact I gave a presentation entitled "Context-Sensitive Resource Discovery for Mobile Computing Environments". It outlined the work that I’ve been doing recently. I’ve also submitted a paper with a similar title to the Mobile Computing and Communications Review.
A couple of weekends ago, I went and saw Fahrenheit 9/11. I didn’t think that much of it, to be completely honest. I felt strangely dissatisfied when I walked out of the cinema. Over and above the general point that the film made (that George W is an idiot), I thought the documentary hung together very loosely. First it pointed out that Bush was never democratically elected. Fair enough. Then it highlights his links with the bin Laden family. Okay. Then it goes off on another tangent questioning the invasion of Iraq and the seemingly pointless loss of lives. Granted, these things are all related to President Bush, but they didn’t tie together in the film very well at all. I’m quite surprised that top film critics like Pomeranz, Stratton and Ebert found the documentary to be an impressive piece of film-making.
It seems I haven’t documented the Sydney trip yet. Here’s a short overview, we stayed at a cheap motel in Surry Hills. We visited the Maritime Museum with Nigel’s friend Max, and ate dinner at Max’s place too. I spent Saturday with MM. We saw The Chronicles of Riddick (quality entertainment, not) at Bondi Junction. After that we headed out to Bondi Beach. Stayed there for dinner. On the Sunday, Nigel and I spent the morning and part of the afternoon at Taronga Zoo. The baby chimps were cute. In the evening we took the train to Hurstville to visit our cousins, aunt and uncle. On Monday we went to the botanical gardens and the War Memorial. Then we flew back to Brisbane. I’ll have photos up soon. Anyway, it was a nice weekend.
Nigel has since commenced his employment with THQ. He’s really enjoying it. It makes a big difference to your state of mind when you’re doing exactly what you want to be doing.
K is going to England for a conference. Actually, she and JI are running a workshop at UbiComp. She leaves in just over a week, and stops off in Singapore for another conference on the way back. Fun. She also received notice today that the school has accepted her thesis and recommended she be awarded a Ph.D. Cool! Now she just has to get a few copies bound, but I suspect she might make some changes to her thesis first…
Bed time.
