I still find it unbelievable that The University of Queensland, one of Australia’s largest universities and a member of the Group of 8, does not appear on Google’s list of universities. Apparently, the way a university gets onto the list is for large numbers of its students and faculty to ask Google to add the university to the list using a web form. After completing the form, it asks you to tell other people from your university to complete the form. Does the absence of UQ from Google’s list reflect an underlying apathy of UQ students and staff towards their university? Surely not. I have blogged on this topic before, but nothing seems to have changed in the meantime. I am hereby starting the campaign to get UQ on Google’s list. UQ students, staff and alumni, do your bit!
Category: Random observations
If it doesn’t fit elsewhere, it goes here.
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Cairns
We had intended to go to Cairns sometime just before Christmas, but Karen had to present a paper in Cairns on Tuesday so we decided to take our leave a bit early. We headed up to Port Douglas last Friday night straight after work and stayed there for three nights before returning to Cairns for another two nights.
While we were at Port Douglas we took a boat ride out to Low Isles. Absolutely beautiful. Saw heaps of green turtles while we were there. The tour operators, Quicksilver, were first class, and genuinely friendly. They had to deal with a whole bunch of people throwing up on the way out and on the way back. The seas were very choppy and we were in a largish sailing boat. The crew suggested that anyone who tends to get sea sick should take some preventative tablets (which they made freely available). I guess it didn’t work for some people. I don’t imagine that sea-sickness turned many people off their lunch, which was included, because it was mouthwateringly brilliant: prawns, chicken and a variety of salads.
On Sunday we saw the Daintree, Daintree River and Cape Tribulation with Billy Tea Bush Safaris. Again, it was wonderful. We spent a good part of the day cruising around in a big Landcruiser with ten others plus the driver. We saw some smallish saltwater crocodiles on our Daintree River cruise. The smallest was about 20cm long! Our boat driver, Bill Smith, was a real funny bloke, and he had eyes like a hawk. Unfortunately we didn’t spot any cassowaries in the Daintree Rainforest. I went for a swim in Emmagen Creek with some of the other people on our tour. Cape Tribulation was a very idyllic looking place, with its secluded beach and gentle waves.
Monday was spent walking around the town of Port Douglas. We walked up to the lookout for a nice view of the beach. Wouldn’t mind buying one of the houses up there on that hill! On Monday afternoon we caught the bus back to Cairns.
On Tuesday I walked Karen to the Cairns City Council building where she had to give a presentation to various government types. Then I headed off to Kuranda on the Skyrail cableway. The Skyrail was impressive in that it was a fairly long ride with two changeovers in the middle. At each changeover, you can do a five minute bushwalk through the Barron River Gorge rainforest. I had a cable car all to myself for the entire journey. Kuranda itself was pleasant, but extremely touristy. I checked out the markets and went for a couple of bushwalks through the rainforest. The train ride back to Cairns on the Kuranda Scenic Rail afforded some nice views of Barron River Gorge. Karen and I had dinner on the Esplanade.
We spent Wednesday wandering around Cairns. We checked out the main shopping centre. We got back home at around 8pm on Wednesday night. A nice holiday, and Karen’s presentation was very successful.
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Call me slow…
… but I just noticed that Google Scholar has added citation exporting (which, for some reason, it calls importing; guess it depends which way you look at it) to a number of bibliography formats including Bibtex. To enable this feature, go to Google Scholar, then click the Scholar Preferences link next to the search bar. Scroll down to the bottom of the preferences page and you should see the relevant setting that you need to change.
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From Zero to 1.65 billion in less than two years
Speaking of Google acquisitions, YouTube has been snapped up by the Web search giant for the not insignificant sum of US$1.65 billion. YouTube was founded in February 2005. Not a bad pay-off for twenty months’ work! Okay, so a lot of the work was probably done before the company was founded, but still…
Anyway, this acquisition comes less than two weeks after Mark Cuban suggested that you’d have to be a moron to buy YouTube because of the litany of lawsuits that are, apparently, just waiting to happen. Material is often posted to YouTube by users who are not the copyright owners.
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Gondola Cruise
Last night Karen and I took a gondola cruise up the Nerang River and through some Gold Coast canals. This was part of a wedding gift given to us by my friends. The cruise included dinner, and it lasted about 1.5 hours. It was magical. Instead of giving a detailed account of where the gondola went, what we saw and what we ate, I’m just going to recommend that you go and do it some time, if you haven’t already. Thanks once again to everyone who contributed to this gift; we really loved it!
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Movies and CDs
I’ve seen three movies at the cinema recently. The best of them was Thank You for Smoking, which I saw with Karen. This film was funny and sharp. It follows the story of Nick Naylor, the frontman for Big Tobacco’s lobby group. Somehow, Nick has to convince the world that smoking isn’t such a bad thing, and that the tobacco companies are not evil. At the heart of the film are questions to do with freedom of choice and the role of individual responsibility. These issues were explored via Nick’s relationship with his son, Joey, who comes to respect his father for sticking to his values and for his considerable argumentative skills. This one is definitely worth seeing.
I then saw Fearless, supposedly Jet Li’s last Kung Fu film, with my brother. As far as martial arts films go, it was a pretty good one, though it was in a different vein to recent cinematographic masterpieces such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The House of Flying Daggers and Hero. The action was good, but the plot was rather formulaic, and the attempt to promote harmony in Chinese-American and Chinese-Japanese relations could have been a bit more subtle.
Last night, Karen and I saw Friends With Money. This film was completely character driven, with pretty much no plot to speak of. Character driven films can sometimes be really great, but this was not a great film. It is essentially a snapshot in the lives of three married couples, and one of their single friends. One marriage is on the verge of breakdown; one of the wives is depressed and angry, but really shouldn’t be because she creates expensive designer clothes and has a very loving husband, whose only “fault” in the eyes of some of her friends is to appear a little bit on the gay side of straight; and the other couple seem to have the perfect marriage. As for the single woman, she’s a qualified teacher working as a house maid and flitting from one relationship to another. That’s pretty much the plot, the minimality of which would not ordinarily be a problem, except that the movie didn’t develop any of the characters in this film to a great enough depth.
In the way of CDs, I’ve recently acquired an album called Feeding the Wolves by Josh Pyke. I particularly like Middle of the Hill, Private Education and Fill You In. Before that I picked up Sufjan Stevens’ recent album, Illinois (although, the album cover says Illinoise). That album has a number of gems on it.
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Wine Tasting Tour
Karen and I finally found a spare weekend to enjoy the wine tasting tour that was given to us as a wedding present by some of my friends. It was wonderful. We drove around the Mount Tamborine area in a Landcrusier with our guide and another couple, stopping at four wineries and a park where we had a picnic lunch. We tasted pretty much all the wine that was on offer. Since we had to drive back to Brisbane, I ended up spitting most of the wine into the little bucket things that they provide for that purpose.
We knew the first winery, Cedar Creek, very well, as that’s where our wedding reception was held. It was great to go back and visit it, because it brought back some very happy memories of our special day. It was especially nice that some of the staff at Cedar Creek remembered us by name. We ended up buying some Tawny Port. However, we’d also previously bought a couple of bottles of wine (their trademark Rosé and some kind of Semillon I think). No doubt we’ll visit Cedar Creek many more times yet.
The next stop was Mount Nathan winery. Neither of us thought that much of the wines at this place. A lot of the Mount Nathan wines have honey added to them!!! However, we did like the cream-based drinks. They had chocolate cream, butterscotch cream and coffee cream. I think they all had honey in them too. We bought a butterscotch cream and a coffee cream. Then it was time for lunch.
Perhaps the best winery of the lot was Albert River Wines. It was a nice setting: an old colonial style home on a vast acreage, some of which was used to grow grapes. The wines here were good, and we got a lesson in wine tasting. They had a delicious port, which we purchased, and a pretty good Merlot (some people won’t drink Merlot; in general, though, Merlot is probably my pick of red wines). I’d like to visit Albert River Winery on a Sunday so we can enjoy the Vineyard Grill.
Our last stop was Witches Falls Winery, back up Mount Tamborine. Our favourite wine at this place was the Saignée, a sweet Rosé like wine. We picked up a bottle of that as well as some caramelised balsamic vinegar.
It was a terrific day, and we’d like to thank Anna, Ian, Matthew (Boggo), Nathan and Rhys for giving us such a cool gift (we’re going to use up the other half of your gift, the gondola cruise, the weekend after next). Sadly, most of the stuff we bought along the way is not for us!