Category: Random observations

If it doesn’t fit elsewhere, it goes here.

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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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Weblog theme change… again

It has come to my attention that my Shades of Grey theme does not render correctly in Internet Explorer. For the time being I’ve switched themes because I don’t have time to play around with style sheets and so forth right now.

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Random observations

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!

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Random observations

Complete Lies: the answer

I can sense that the tension out there on the web is near breaking point: the whole world is just dying to know which of my lies is actually a truth. Well, it’s number 5. I have never smoked tobacco.

Biology was my preferred degree up until the last few days prior to making my final choices at the end of high school

Actually, I almost ended up doing psychology. The switch to computer science was pretty much last-minute.

I made my debut for the Northstar XXXX League U-19 team at the age of 15

This one is almost true. I was 16 when I first played for the under 19 team.

In 2002, I caused a two-car accident while riding a moped around a Greek Island

While I did ride around a Greek Island in 2002, I did not cause any accidents as far as I know. Rhys can vouch for this one.

With respect to US politics, I believe the Democrats are, in general, a worthier party than the Republicans

In general, I do not believe the Democrats would be worthier of my vote if I happened to be an American citizen. While I don’t think that George Bush is much of a President (yes, that’s a gross understatement), the Republicans have done some pretty admirable things in their history, such as abolishing slavery. One can only hope that the GOP can produce a President with Lincoln’s conscience and eloquence again. I wonder what Abe would have thought of “nucular” weapons? It’s not necessarily that I think the Democrats are crap, just that they are not more worthy than the Republicans in general. Why do I even care about all this stuff, given that I’m an Australian? These days it’s impossible to have an interest in global affairs without having an interest in US politics. That’s just the world we live in at the moment.

In 2003, I was arrested for being drunk and disorderly at Gilhooley’s in the city while partying with my cousins

As previously explained, I’ve never been arrested for anything.

So now you know.

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Complete lies: follow up

No, I’m not giving away the answer just yet (I’m not giving away the answer directly, anyway). But it seems certain quarters of the world have formed a rather dim view of my character, and I’ll be sure not to ask them to stand as a reference for me in the future. ;-)

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Complete lies

So Tinni has invited me to participate in a meme in which I need to list five complete and utter lies, and one truth. The first person to guess which is the true thing wins (the meme rules do not stipulate the nature of the prize, but I reckon another blog entry identifying the winner should suffice). So here goes:

    1. Biology was my preferred degree up until the last few days prior to making my final choices at the end of high school
    2. I made my debut for the Northstar XXXX League U-19 team at the age of 15
    3. In 2002, I caused a two-car accident while riding a moped around a Greek Island
    4. With respect to US politics, I believe the Democrats are, in general, a worthier party than the Republicans
    5. I have never smoked tobacco
    6. In 2003, I was arrested for being drunk and disorderly at Gilhooley’s in the city while partying with my cousins

      I tag the following people:

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      Random observations

      Strong AI by 2029

      Earlier this month, Ray Kurzweil presented a paper at the Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference which proclaimed that strong AI will be possible within the next 25 years: 2029, specifically, is the year he’s suggested a machine will first pass the Turing Test. If he’s right, what a time to be alive! Even if he’s wrong by a few decades, centuries or millennia, we’ve still got a lot to look forward to in our lifetimes. Techniques pioneered by AI researchers have been finding their way into mainstream applications for years, and this trend will continue as computing power increases and researchers invent ever-smarter algorithms.

      While I’m not sure strong AI will arrive quite as quickly as Kurzweil thinks it will, I’m firmly in the camp that thinks it will arrive one day. I see no reason to believe that the human brain (or any kind of “brain” for that matter) is endowed with some mystical property that provides its intelligence. Although Kurzweil’s timeframe seems a bit on the optimistic side, it will take only one or two propitious findings in the fields of computer science or neuroscience to catalyse AI research and bring the goal of strong AI much closer.

      Can’t wait!

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      A drive in the countryside

      It was nice to finally get a day where Karen and I could do whatever we felt like; we haven’t had one of those for a several months. We decided to just jump in the car and go for a drive. As it turned out, we headed down the Ipswich Motorway/Warrego Highway and turned onto the Brisbane Valley Highway towards Fernvale and Esk. We drove up past Fernvale and the Wivenhoe Dam, through Esk and turned off towards the Somerset Dam and Kilcoy. The countryside out there is absolutely bone dry, though it did drizzle a bit while we were driving through. We stopped at the Caboonbah Homestead: not much to see there. Cattle were grazing in the mostly dry bed of the Brisbane River. We were hoping to catch another glimpse of the Wivenhoe Dam, so we turned down the Wivenhoe-Somerset Road and headed back towards Fernvale. Remarkably, neither of us had ever been to Mount Glorious, so instead of going all the way back to Fernvale, we got onto the Northbrook Creek Road which took us up into the D’Aguilar Range. We stopped in Mount Glorious for lunch, at a little place called Coffee in the Forest. Coffee in the Forest is owned by Ken and Shirley Olley, who are better known for the production of organic honey, and there are numerous honey-based products for sale in their cafe. I can highly recommend the Ambrosia (honey mead). We bought a bottle of it after eating our meal of spring rolls, garlic rice, salad and sweet and sour sauce (the sweet component, of course, being provided by a honey base). Then we headed back to Brisbane via Samford. We stopped at the Eden Bistro in Bardon, having been recommended by Clinton, for coffee and cake. Very nice. Lovely view, too. Not yet satisfied that our day’s journey was circuitous enough, we explored various parts of Fig Tree Pocket and Chapel Hill, before finally returning home. A great day.

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      Classic look returns

      I had always intended to reinstate the original “Shades of Grey” look for The Thin Line after moving it to WordPress from my DIY blogging solution. Well, yesterday I finally found a bit of time to create a WordPress theme that comes fairly close to the look I originally created. Some people don’t care for it much, but I have this thing for grey. There will still be some bugs here and there, and the sidebar doesn’t look all that crash hot. Hopefully I’ll resolve these issues in the near future.

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      I guessed right

      After Zidane’s assult on Materazzi during the World Cup final, I was thinking to myself "either Materazzi insulted Zidane’s mother or he insinuated that Zidane was a terrorist because of his Algerian/Islamic background". Well it turns out that Materazzi did both of these things, although he denies it. Zidane has always had somewhat of a vindictive streak in him, but I’ve never seen him react to anything quite like that before, and never in such an important game. Slurs against his mother and his ethnicity are the surely the only things that could have provoked him to such violence.