Nick in Vienna 1

I'm in Vienna!
I'm writing this from an internet cafe down a few streets from the hotel, because internet access is disappointing. Posts will be sporadic at best. There's no free internet access in the hotel, there's no ethernet at all, but there's dialup if you feel like having your room charge bankrupt you, and there's wireless access in the lobby if you have a wireless laptop and a credit card to pay.
Anyway, I'm sitting here in an internet cafe, fighting the European keyboard. I'm all for rich European cultural diversity, but damn they have a lot of weird characters, and old familiars are shunted off to odd places. The @ symbol is a subscript of Q, and I had to ask the guy at the desk how to press it. It took some embarrassing amount of conversation in broken English to explain that all I wanted to do was press the darn key :D
Let me go back to the beginning.
Sarah saw me off at the airport Friday morning, and my check in and flight to Brisbane was pleasantly uneventful. I was even able to check my suitcase all the way to Vienna from Rockhampton. Just goes to show that if it seems to good to be true, it probably is. I dressed in comfort for the flight - tshirt and shorts.
And surprisingly, the entire journey was quite comfortable. Fortune favoured a couple of acts of simple generosity. On the Brisbane-Singapore flight, I offered to change my aisle seat for a middle seat a few rows back so that a mother and daughter could sit together. Shortly into the flight, the two irratable old women next to me demanded better seats from the stewardess, which they got after enough insistent pressing. That left four seats between me and the nice New Guinean lady to the other side of me. Score one! Next, on the British Airways flight from Singapore to London, I pulled the same stunt, allowing a young star-cross'd couple to sit together. The stewardess took a liking to me for the rest of the trip, and I stepped off the plane in London with a free bottle of wine :D
But that was where my good luck began to run out. First of all, I hadn't counted on having to step out of airconditioning until I had my baggage back, so it was a small shock to have to step out into the literally freezing air over the tarmac in London, and it was with slowly rising dread that I watched the baggage carousel in Vienna slow and grind to a halt without my suitcase appearing. I got my baggage several hours later, that evening, after I had braved -2 winds first in shorts and tshirt (pick the tourist...) and later in borrowed trackpants and pullover.
And so it was that I arrived, slightly cold and slightly tired, but otherwise well in Vienna. I shall continue the tale later, for Xin is waiting for me to finish so we can have dinner.
Hope all is well in Rockhampton!
Nick.

Go Noob

Melanie and I tried playing Go again on Monday night. It's fun learning a new game - especially since both of us are noobs. It's fun trying to guess what might work and what won't.
Sure, there are lots of Go resources on the web, and one day I'll probably read them, but for now I think it's more satisfying trying to discover ideas on my own. Last game we only just began to come up with some ways of thinking about Go.
Melanie is good at multitasking. For example, picking moves that furthered multiple aims at once - killing two birds with one stone. She would place a stone that would both strengthen a structure under threat and block my expansion. She was also good at abandoning her structures when appropriate and moving her efforts elsewhere, whereas I would stubbornly pursue one objective at a time.
Melanie often surprised me by reacting agressively to threats to her stones, when I had just assumed that she would react defensively (which is what I would have done). Rather than strengthening one of her structures, she would leave it endangered and threaten my stones instead, forcing me to respond to her counter attack. Of course, what she was doing was just as certain to save her structure as trying to escape, because if I continued to pursue her structure, she would simply capture the very stones I was using to capture hers!
For myself, I realised that often you don't need to complete a structure for it to be useful. All you need is the capability to complete it regardless of what your opponent does. You gain some moves by not having to explicitly fill in the empty spaces. The caveat is that your opponent has a way of forcing you to make those moves at a time of her choosing, which she can then plan.
In the end, we discovered some "invincible structures" that can never be captured. These are single structures that enclose two or more empty spaces. The empty spaces provide liberties that can never be taken away from the invincible structure, ensuring its survival even in the face of complete encirclement. The smallest invincible structures we found were two 11-stone structures (and multiple isomorphs of those two).

It's fun being a noob. I think we forget that too often :)

Movies and Music

I've been making a point of watching some movies lately. Still not many, but more than usual for me :)

I picked out Dear Frankie because it sounded quaint, and Young Adam because it starred Ewan McGregor. Coincidentally both movies were set around Glasgow, and both movies also starred Emily Mortimer, an actress I hadn't heard of before but who I thought was captivatingly good. I really liked both movies.

I finally saw War of the Worlds with Sarah. For a big-budget Hollywood movie it showed remarkable restraint from heroics (except for the grenade scene, but even that was good) and I thought it was very well done. I hated the sickeningly sentimental reappearance of the presumed-dead son, Robbie, at the very end, but I just pretend that scene didn't happen :D

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a brilliant movie. I love it. I think Jim Carrey does great dramatic work, like this and The Majestic. But ESotSM, in particular, was excellent - great idea, great storytelling, great acting, and great music. As an aside, the main character, Joel, actually reminded me a lot of Damien.

Also loved Secretary. It's such an incongruously charming love story amongst the BDSM trappings. On the strength of the final song, Chariots Rising by Lizzie West, I've ordered the soundtrack. Apparently it's no longer actively released, and only a few copies are available second-hand from Amazon or eBay. There's nothing at all in Australia... but I found a record company specialising in rare imports and second-hand music, based in Sydney. They're bringing it in for me, from somewhere.
I'm a sucker for this sort of thing. I hate the idea that any music (well, any music that I like) could be lost, forgotten in someone's attic or broken and irrepairable. There's so much good stuff out there, I wish I could keep it safely archived for all eternity.

Gave in and bought House of Flying Daggers for the same reason :p

Going to Vienna

My paper for Vienna was accepted, I made the suggested revisions (well, most of them), and sorted out travel arrangements. That's the boring stuff. I'm far more excited to be going to a foreign, non-English-speaking country! I leave on the 25th... it's only a week and a bit away!

The only other country I've ever been to is New Zealand, which doesn't really count as an exotic culture. I'm very much looking forward to exploring this old European city, complete with palace! Amazingly, I get almost an entire weekend to myself before the conference starts. People keep saying it's a shame I can't stay longer (hmm... maybe they're just happy to see me go :p ) but seriously I'm not complaining. I get more time than I expected!

The only thing that concerns me a tinsy bit is my lack of winter clothing, but since I'm staying at the same hotel as the conference I'm not terribly worried. I just need enough warm clothing for my forays out into the city!

2006 is Mozart Year, his 250th anniversary, but it seems the city is getting into it early. Our first conference venue was abandoned because they double booked us with nightly Mozart concerts. Or perhaps he simply never goes out of style in Vienna. I also believe that there are performances every night at the opera house. It seems certain that there will be no lack of cultural events and attractions!
This should also be a great opportunity to pick up some christmas presents...