Festival of Navratri

Navratri, as I tenuously understand it, is a Hindu festival celebrating the Goddess Amba (Durga)'s victory over the demon king, Mahishasura. The festival lasts for nine days, symbolising the nine days of their battle, and on every night people gather to sing, dance, and be merry. Apparently it's comparable to Christmas, in duration and significance and in that its origins are religious but it is now more a cultural than a religious festival.

Navratri begins in October, but whereas in India the whole festival would be a holiday, here in Australia it can only really be celebrated on weekends, so the first celebration of this festival in Sydney took place this last Friday and Saturday. Rinku invited me to come along, and, always keen to try new things and needing to unwind after a stressful week of milestone-delivery and Sarah (just teasing; having Sarah here made the milestone week much more enjoyable, but taking time off early on certainly made the end of last week more hectic!), I agreed to come on the main night, Saturday.

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I arrived at the venue, a leisure centre in Liverpool (which has a large Indian community), early, which means on time but not fashionably late. I hadn't been sure what to wear - not knowing whether the event would be traditional, formal, or contemporary. I decided upon simple but colourful, and as the mostly young adult crowd arrived I realised I fit in about as well as I could hope without wearing the traditional Gujarati dress: the men wore long brightly coloured and patterned cotton tunics, cut to fit closely but reaching down past the knees (and slit partway up the sides for freedom of movement), often with complementing trousers if not jeans; and the women wore elaborate and varied traditional dresses. Rinku was beautiful in embroidered lace of dark, russet colours, and her husband Mayoud cut a fine figure in an understated, subtly embroidered pale gold tunic.
I only saw a handful of other foreigners there (in Sydney, you get used to being a foreigner in your own country!) in a sea of Indians. Unless someone was speaking specifically to me or another English-only-speaker, the language of choice was (presumably) Gujarati. Everyone was exceedingly friendly and more than happy to talk about the celebration, or to explain what sort of food I'd just ordered from the stalls!

Everyone took their shoes off before entering the great big dance hall, a sports hall with stadium style seating from which Rinku suggested I sit to watch the first dance. So after we ate and the sound of music began drifting to us outside, we went in.
At one end of the hall, opposite the stadium seating and on a stage, were half a dozen musicians and singers and seats for special guests. In the centre of the dance floor was a large painting of Amba on a sort of shrine, around which the dances would take place. I took my place in the seats, which was where mostly the older people and parents with young children were. Slowly, in trickles that turned into streams, people came in to the hall and started to dance.
Rinku had told me that they would start slowly and deliberately, dancing in concentric rings around the central shrine, and pick up speed as more and more people joined the dance, until it became a chaotic dervish. I had suggested, naively, that I might join them after the orderly dance had broken up, when a newcomer wouldn't disrupt the dance's earlier precision. Mayoud relayed this to Rinku with quiet but somewhat disconcerting amusement, though Rinku sounded like she thought that was a good idea.

And they did start off slowly and gracefully, with hundreds of people and the sea of dancers swelling with every passing minute. It was amazing to watch from the grandstand. It was incorrect to imagine that there was one choreographed dance that everyone would perform in neat lines, but it was far from chaotic. Rather than concentric rings, streams of people swirled in eddies around the shrine, currents forming and breaking as they spiralled in and out. You would pick out an identifiable current of people dancing together in step, only to watch it seamlessly merge with another, or witness a new stream break away. Each stream would seem independent, and yet somehow the sea as a whole surged together, understanding collectively how the music ebbed and flowed. People knew when to clap, when to sing, when to pump their arms up into the air, and when to swirl backwards in the opposite direction before rolling on again, all in a riotous sea of brightly flashing colour.
It was very apparent that even as the pace quickened and eddies formed and broke with increasing rapidity, that there was no way I could join in now; as chaotic as it became, everyone still moved together. So I contentedly sat and watched. The first dance would have lasted for the better part of an hour, the musicians playing and singing the entire time.

When it stopped, groups of friends sat down in circles across the dance floor, or went outside for the cooling breeze and refreshments. The other guests I'd been sitting with, also Rinku's acquaintances, took their leave and bid us goodbye. I wondered if it was over, but it had only just begun. The singers and dancers soon had their breath back and were ready to go it again.
This time I let myself be convinced to join in, with equal parts enthusiasm and reluctance! The time to join in was definitely at the beginning, when things moved slowly, but I wanted to practice the steps outside the main swirling circle first, so that I wouldn't crash into everyone. Rinku and Mayoud would have none of that, however. The only way to learn, they insisted, was to jump right in. I have to admit, I wasn't getting very far trying to mimic the steps from the sidelines, but I still wish I didn't bump into quite so many people and I still wish that Rinku didn't push me right into the middle of it all! Surely the outer currents would have been easier to stay abreast in, but once you're drawn into the swirling whirlpool, you can't do anything but be swept spiralling inwards.

This dance was the Garba, and thankfully the first stream of dancers I joined were performing a simple series of steps that carried them consistently onwards - so while I was struggling to match the steps, at least I only had to keep moving forwards to avoid disrupting the flow. And the steps were fairly simple, though I certainly couldn't match the flair and grace with which everyone else performed them. The steps were all alternating chasses - one-and-two, three-and-four - some spinning, some taking a half turn and going backwards, but at least always moving in the same direction around the floor. After a while I was congratulating myself on getting the hang of it, when the stream I was in broke up and dispersed and I found myself standing alone like a rock around which the currents swirled, and against which occasionally crashed! I made my way with as much aplomb as I could manage - which is to say, not very much at all - to the edge of the dance hall, where I sought refuge with a couple of other guests. Their Indian host had been teaching them as I wished Rinku and Mayoud had done for me :p - in the safe shallows around the edge of the floor - and they were about to join in a more complicated dance. I'd been watching those steps and I thought, what the heck, I can do that, so I joined them. And again, I thought I was doing alright, and other people were joining our flow, and I was having a lot of fun, until finally the pace increased so much that we were broken up again and again I was washed gratefully ashore!

The third dance was the Dandiya. This was performed with two short thin sticks, about half a metre long, metal and wood, one for each hand, called dandiya. Dandiya symbolise the swords that Amba fought with, and dancers spin them and clack them together in time with the music and the steps. This dance was much more flexible and individualistic than the Garba, danced in smaller, independant groups and as such was simpler for a novice to join in without disrupting the dance as a whole. It had an interesting quirk of its own though - the music was common time, 4/4, but there were five steps in sequence to each cycle, each step one beat, so that the start of each cycle was offset by one beat from the last. That took some getting used to. The version we danced, we danced in two facing lines, each person facing their partner (or symbolically, opponent) and rotating the lines after each cycle like one of our folk dances. You would clack dandiya once, twice, back off, and finally clack once more before spinning on to the next person to do it again. It actually reminded me a lot of kendo exercises!

The last dance - I don't know if it had a name - was casual and impromptu and easy to join in, it didn't really matter what you did. There were elements reminiscent of conga lines, and cossack dancing, and jigs, and, I think, just whatever people could think up at the time. A good way to wind down the night, after close to 5 hours of dancing!
I thoroughly enjoyed the night, it was a fantastic experience. It's the sort of festival I know Melanie would love - delicious food and a good deal of melanie-dancing (and I think she would like being able to whack Brett with dandiya!).
And to think, they're all going to do it again every few weekends, until Amba finally defeats Mahishasura!

The War Of The Worlds

Sarah found out that Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War Of The Worlds was touring as a live performance, so for our (early) birthdays I booked tickets and accommodation in the city, and Sarah came down to visit last weekend until Wednesday.

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I hadn't heard the musical version before, but apparently it's a cult favourite. A few people from work went as well, and in the anticipation leading up to the event I know the original recording was played more than a few times. Every so often, one fellow would announce, "Yep. It's that time again!" and on would go the headphones and off he'd go to Horsell Common. But for some reason - not wanting to spoil the experience perhaps - I didn't listen to it before the performance.

I went in quite naive. I knew almost nothing about it. I knew that it was originally a concept album, and not a stage production, but I had assumed that it had been adapted as a stage musical along the lines of Andrew Lloyd Webber's work. That wasn't the case; it was almost entirely true to the original recording, and the performance was more along the lines of an augmented concert than a stage musical. It had a huge screen onto which a montage of CGI and actors (live on stage and pre-recorded) was projected, and it had a huge model Fighting Machine that descended onto the stage to flash and bang when appropriate, but the centrepiece of the production was definitely the string orchestra, the band, and the singers.

For the first half I was focussed too much on the visual presentation and, whilst I wish it had been better, I realised that you were much better off closing your eyes and largely ignoring what was happening on stage, and just listening to the music. The CGI was terrible, and both of the singers in the first half were less than inspiring. Justin Hayward in particular performed very much like the aging rocker he is, tapping his foot and nodding his head and singing rock songs - as opposed to actually playing a role in a narrative.
The performances in the second half somewhat redeemed the show as a stage production, however. I've never bothered one way or the other to listen to Shannon Knoll before, but he performed well as the Parson Nathaniel, and Michael Falzon was excellent as the Artilleryman (best part of the show, I reckon).

Overall I think it was a good performance, and it was very enjoyable. More enjoyable, I think, for the thousands of people filling the auditorium who were listening with nostalgic ears (and there were thousands, packing the two-thirds of a gigantic olympic arena that had been converted into a concert venue), but it was definitely worthy of that nostalgia in its own right. I'll pick up the original recording. Thanks for the suggestion, Sarah!

APEC Protest

I was quite excited about APEC being held in Sydney. Not because I buy into that "Stop Whinging, You Should Be Grateful To Have 21 World Leaders In Your City" rhetoric (those leaders were effectively walled off in another city anyway, so why did it have to be in the middle of Sydney?!) - but because it was the first time I had the opportunity to go to a mass protest.

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I went in on Friday, the public holiday, but there was little happening. There was a Falun Gong group meditating in Belmore Park, protesting against the Chinese government.
Things were a bit more interesting in Hyde Park, where a few small groups were giving speeches. There might have been a hundred or so civilians - a number very nearly matched by the police standing by. The police weren't causing any obstruction, they were just very obviously present - arrayed in precise formations across paths so you had to walk between them; marching in step through the park; riding in packs on bicycles; and even several standing by ready to mount up on dirt-bikes.
Across the road from Hyde Park were a group of U.S. visitors or ex-pats (to judge by their accents) holding up a huge "We <3 America! Welcome George Bush!" banner and wearing all-American tshirts stretched across all-American beer-guts. Needless to say, this group wasn't particularly popular, but you have to give them credit for coming out!

I wandered down towards Circular Quay, which is where all the hotels being used by foreign dignataries were linked together by a network of concrete-and-steel security fences - a wall separating us from them. It was the fence that was the clearest symbol of how ridiculous it all was; a stark visual reminder of how disconnected these world leaders were from us.
I watched the comings and goings outside George Bush's hotel for a while. Unsurprisingly there was a huge police presence here as well. There was a gate in the security fence on either side of the intersection, half a dozen police permanently standing by each gate. Whenever someone bearing their APEC security pass needed to get in and out, the gatekeeper unlocked and unchained the gate, opened it just enough for the person to squeeze through, and chained it up again immediately! A pedestrian asked how they could get to the the other side of the security corridor, and a policeman behind the gate pointed the way up along a stretch of fence between the footpath and the road, explaining they could get around the fence if they walked far enough. Someone else deadpanned "Can't go that way mate, there's this fence... dunno if you've noticed..!" and he was right; later on I tried walking that way and a block up the footpath came to an abrupt dead-end where the fence cut across it, securing the driveway into a hotel. The whole affair was a mess.

The next day, Saturday, I went to the main demonstration. Protestors gathered outside Town Hall, filling the public space around it and the entire block of George St in front. There were a wide variety of groups protesting a wide variety of issues - Aboriginal rights, global warming, the Iraq War, and WorkChoices chief amongst them. It was great to see a strong Greens presence there as well. There were a number of speakers here, but the stand out speaker was from Iraq Veterans Against the War, a charismatic man whose talk was by turns depressing and moving.
We marched - rather leisurely, it must be said, almost ambled - from Town Hall to Hyde Park. The roads along the route were blocked off by buses converted into police holding cells, and helicopters were overhead. When we reached Hyde Park, which is massive, we found it entirely surrounded. The entire block was ringed by police in riot-gear standing side-by-side stonily facing inwards - some with batons out and tapping gauntleted palms - more buses and police blocking off streets on the other side of the road, and heavy patrols marching along the wide empty thoroughfares like some no-man's-land in between. Afterwards, when we began to disperse from the rally at the end, we found that the police were only allowing passage in or out of the park from one entrance, the way we came in. If ever there was a cause to spark a real riot, I thought that was it. Hyde Park is wide open; the streets around it were nowhere near the restricted zone; and yet the police were senselessly unyielding. There was no need.
And yet the rally at Hyde Park itself was heartening. Admittedly, some of the self-congratulation at "standing up to the police intimidation to turn out today!" and "peacefully defying their expectations of violence!" got a bit embarrassing. I may have dwelt much on the police presence above, but really there was never any chance of violence and the rally organisers greatly exaggerated the hardships. It was as though everyone - including the police - wanted it to be a bigger deal than it was, whilst at the same time decrying violence. Someone in the crowd said it best with their sign: "I Don't Believe In Anything; I'm Just Here For The Violence!" :)

I picked up a number of pamphlets and the like from the groups there: some of it good; some of it not so good; and some of it somewhat disgusting (and regrettable that I gave the publishers any money). One worthwhile group was Socialist Alternative. They're interesting; an Australia-wide revolutionary socialist group comprised largely of students and ex-students. They were sufficiently persuasive that I, curious about far-left politics, decided to go along to a small conference they were having the next day, and to their weekly meeting last night. I'm not about to join the revolution just yet :) but it does make for lively discussion. I'm certain that Luke would be down with this group. I'll write more when I have a chance.

But for now it's back to regular work - APEC has come and gone.

Ferris Bueller and Alan Ruck

I just went to a screening of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, hosted by Alan Ruck (who played Cameron Frye, Ferris's best friend). To my shame, there are lots of classic movies like this that I've never seen, so when Chris (who is as great a film buff as Tanya - perhaps even more for 80's films!) told me about this special screening I was eager to remedy this transgression. Sometimes you just need a good excuse, and this was a great excuse.
It was shown in a beautiful old theatre, with Alan Ruck on the stage afterwards to answer questions from the audience gathered around the front rows. There were the usual predictable, and predictably boring, questions of "What's it like to work with so-and-so?" (which I've always thought kind of rude, like asking "Hey, tell me about this person who's more interesting than you!"), but he also got to give a lot of really interesting and funny anecdotes about making the movie (and others he's been in). His recreation of Cameron's Mr. Peterson voice was uncanny!

As for the film itself, it was brilliant. Seeing it for the first time, over 20 years after it was made, it still felt like it fit perfectly. Definitely a timeless movie. And I think Alan Ruck was right when he commented that Ferris Bueller is who everyone wants to be, but Cameron Frye is who everyone is. It was very cool having the actor who played the film's most relatable character there :)

My First Promotion

Well, today I passed my 6-month probation period at Team Bondi and was promoted from nub programmer to programmer :)
It's been a lot of hard, but satisfying, work so far, and it's great to have that formally recognised. I know Team Bondi took a chance on hiring me with no industry experience; I'm pleased (and relieved!) that I haven't disappointed. This promotion feels right, too, because over the time I've had this job I feel that I've steadily taken on more responsibility and been able to contribute more to the game.
I actually feel quite priviliged to have the opportunity to work on the projects that I am; it's very exciting and exactly the sort of programming I wanted to do. I think I owe a lot of this opportunity to luck - being in the right place at the right time. But luck or no, I intend to make the most of it.

Lately I've been considering the possibility of buying an apartment somewhere in the city - I'd really like to live closer to the city and work, and to have a space of my own, but after the last couple of years renting in Rockhampton I'm very reluctant to see my earnings disappear into some landlord's purse again.
Perhaps now that my job is more secure I'll start to look at this option more seriously. We'll see!

Taronga Zoo

Last weekend - a week ago, I've been busy! - Michelle came to visit, and on Sunday we went to Taronga Zoo. It was a bitterly cold day that greeted us on the ferry trip over and didn't thaw at all the entire time we were there, but it was great fun.

Have a look at some of the photos I took! I've only just had the time - and the computer, thanks Sarah :) - to get these off my camera and onto the web.

Reading Material

So anyway, I got a little sidetracked in my previous post. I meant to thank Melanie again for organising my New Scientist subscription :)
I've also been reading some other books lately - something that I haven't done much of in recent years (besides conference proceedings!). In a way I enjoy being almost completely disconnected from the net during my (admittedly rather scant) personal time, because I have missed sitting back or snuggling up with a good book.

The most interesting book I've been reading is Kinsey, A Biography, by Jonathan Garthorne-Hardy. I haven't finished it yet - it's rather thorough - but it's the book that the recent film was based on, so I sort of know how the story ends anyway. But it's the detail that is fascinating, which you just don't get no matter how much you read online. I admire Kinsey greatly, because he was arguably a genius in two fields that most interest me - evolution and sex.

I also picked up The Constant Gardener, the film of which I loved (and first read about in New Scientist, incidentally - an example of that magazine's aforementioned socio-political coverage);
and The Harsh Cry of the Heron - a sort of guilty pleasure, it's the concluding sequel to a fantasy series (Tales of the Otori) whose appeal is the same lightweight fantasy that makes Harry Potter appealing to such a wide audience.

Finally, I've just finished reading Priceless, an autobiography by Charlie Daniels that I picked up randomly because it looked interesting. Charlie Daniels was a successful madam in the UK's sex industry, and her life story is indeed captivating - in a train-wreck kind of way - but unfortunately I thought the writing was somewhat forgettable.

One cool thing about Sydney is the number of independent bookstores that I like browsing, even if I don't buy anything. There's a bookstore on Oxford St (the epicentre of the gay and lesbian community) - no, not that kind of bookstore :p, though unsurprisingly with a decidedly mature and alternative bent - a few independent and second-hand bookstores along the main street of the very trendy and hip Newtown area (along with a T2 store :) ), and one small-but-packed-to-the-ceiling bookstore in the CBD, that I've visited so far. It all makes Dymocks and Angus & Robertson and the like look rather ordinary!

New Scientist and Science

My first issue of New Scientist was finally delivered today! I'm very much looking forward to getting up-to-date on the world of science again. And not just science research, either - one of the things I like about New Scientist is that it often covers current social and political issues that pertain to science, and I usually agree with the position that the magazine takes. I like to think that it's bipartisan, above the conservative/progressive political divide - but doesn't everyone like to think they're unbiased? :p
The thing that I find interesting about this viewpoint is that we usually think of science as progressive, but the process of scientific peer review, a cornerstone of science, is necessarily conservative.
I was having a discussion with someone the other day, who was telling me about a maverick scientist who had "scientifically proven" that the human mind could reorganise cell structure etc. Hijacking "science" like this bothers me. Regardless of the actual truth of those claims (which I couldn't argue specifically since I didn't know anything about them), no lone man - or team or organisation - can scientifically "prove" anything - same goes for all pseudo-scientific claims. The best one can do is present evidence and have it accepted by the scientific establishment. (Which of course doesn't make it true, but is the closest thing to "proving" it.)
So, it's a bit strange, but I, who usually have very little faith in conservatism, strongly agree with the role of the scientific establishment in scientific progress.

Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist and can't speak for anyone else. But why let a trifling detail like that get in the way of a good rant?

Work and Easter

We had a "Formal Friday" today. Other workplaces have a "Casual Friday", but since we wear jeans and t-shirts every day, we did the opposite and all dressed up today. It's the first time I've worn a tie since High School, I think... I had to look up how to tie a tie last night :)

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We went to yum-cha for lunch - I guess when you look respectable for a change you need to take advantage of it. Melanie's told me all about yum-cha, but it was the first time I'd tried it. I liked the pot-sticker dumplings best! After work a bunch of us went for drinks at a cool little pub converted from an old terrace house - happy hour cocktails :) It was fun, but I'm such a lightweight when it comes to drinking!

Work is still cool, and will only get better over the next few weeks. I got to squish a few bugs earlier this week, so I had the satisfaction of finally contributing something, albeit something very small! And starting next week, I finally have a role on the team, working on A.I. navigation. It's probably the role in the team that's closest to my expertise, but still not really related very much :p So I have a heap to learn, and it'll be slow going to begin with, but it's the sort of area I find really fascinating and want to get into. I'm very excited!

The Easter weekend was good. I met up with Rinku and her husband, and we went to an Indian-Chinese restaurant. I haven't ever tried food like this before, but it was really good. The dish I had was like honey battered chicken - think honey chicken at Suzies - in an Indian curry. I'm not sure it was as good as either Indian or Chinese on its own, but it was a great fusion of flavours and well worth trying.
My sister Michelle came to visit for a few days. We wandered around Darling Harbour, which was filled with Easter performances. There were a bunch of street performers, and we saw a public show of the Flying Fruit Fly Circus - that was fun, I love watching circus.
But quite possibly the most amazing discovery was... a Lindt chocolate cafe! Now, if it was actually a cafe made from Lindt chocolate it would be even more amazing still, but as it is - a cafe serving just Lindt products - it runs a close second in salivating wonderment. There were lots of Lindt Lindor balls I'd never seen before - like coffee and intense dark chocolate (*sigh*), as well as very expensive individual gourmet Lindt chocolates, and, get this, cakes and slices made from Lindt chocolate. It was the most wicked and yet heavenly place I've ever seen. It's actually probably a good thing it's so expensive, so I can't go there every day :D

I'm not sure what I'll do this weekend yet. I can't believe it's the weekend again already, this week has gone so fast. I'm thinking sleeping in will be a good start, though :D

Nick in Sydney

First blog update in Sydney! I'm at Team Bondi's office after hours, but there are still plenty of people around working. I don't have internet access - or a working computer - at home, so I have to either use this computer or find an internet cafe. There aren't any internet cafes close to home, so either way I have to be here in town somewhere.
Also, I've been putting it off the last few days because there always seemed to be something else to do - like sleep - but the longer I put it off, the harder it became to decide where to start! So here's what I've been up to...

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I stayed in Rocky as long as I could to look after Sarah, but in the last week of March, after I was sure she'd be alright, I had to return to Bundaberg to prepare for the move to Sydney.
I packed almost everything I owned - bar furniture - in my little Lanos. Hatchbacks are just awesome, you can fit so much into them! I had to leave behind some bulky, non-essential stuff (like kendo gear and deep fryer *cry*), but I managed a lot.
I took the inland route to Sydney, following the New England Highway through Toowoomba, Armidale, and Tamworth. The drive, through ever changing scenery, was beautiful; for much of the trip I was the only car in sight. I stopped to visit a dragonfruit farm near Nanango and a motorcycle museum in Tamworth. They were both very cool too.
The drive into Sydney wasn't so pleasant. I arrived Saturday evening, and navigated congested roads with almost no rear view (the back was packed to the ceiling :) ). Everytime I had to change lanes, I prayed I wasn't going to run into anyone! I lost my way when I had to detour around a crash. Eventually I made it to Dad's place, though, and simply fell into bed.
The next day, Sunday, I unpacked, and went in to town to help Dad with a shopfitting job he was finishing up. The mindless work was actually a welcome relief and I made sure to savour it!
On Monday morning I missed the bus twice into work (don't ask how I managed that, I can't rightly explain), and drove to Bankstown - the closest station - instead. Despite the bus mishap, the public transport system is very easy to use - it just takes a long time. I waste about 2-3 hours commuting each day - bus + train + walk. That's another reason I haven't felt like staying in town to blog! Mind you, I get to walk through Chinatown, so it's not all bad! I am this moment savouring the thought of what I'll pick up to eat when I leave here shortly :)

Work itself has been a mixed bag. The downside is that I've arrived just as everyone is scrambling to reach a milestone, and the usual introduction that I would go through has been put on the backburner until people have time to teach me stuff. It's been frustrating because I need to learn so much but I don't want to monopolise anyone's time. I've been stumbling along picking up a few things as I can, though.
However, it is going to be an amazingly cool job. The office is wide open and relaxed, taking up the entire top floor of our building with a minimum of internal walls. People kick balls and ride electric skateboards around; there are games consoles and pool/airhockey/ping-pong tables in the lunch area; and the dress code is so casual I was practically overdressed in jeans and an untucked shirt on my first day. Shorts/tshirts/thongs are in fashion. It's basically just like what the Honours Room would have been like if we'd had a gazillion times more funding :p
Over and above the work environment, though, the project itself is literally awesome (as in "admiration tinged with fear" awesome). L.A. Noire is a gigantic undertaking that I'm struggling to come to grips with, and I could almost despair at how much there is to learn and how much work there is to do. But by the same token, it's so ambitious that you can't help but be bouyed up with excitement. It's the sort of game I wish I'd come up with, it addresses so much of what I've thought has been missing in games lately. If we (it sounds strange writing "we") manage to accomplish only most of what I've read about, it will be a fantastic game. I don't think I'm allowed to give you any more detail, though, so you'll just have to take my word for now :)

It's time for me to leave if I want to catch the last bus! I really look forward to catching up with you all when I can - and don't forget to blog :) Talk to ya later!

Job Accepted!

Well, I'm going to write games for a living!
Over the last week or two, I've been pursuing four really promising job opportunities in Sydney and Brisbane. It was a cruelly difficult decision to make, but I've decided that Team Bondi is the best job for me to take.

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The first job that came up was with the secretive Silverbrook Research. The recruiter that contacted me assured me it was a great company for me. I was skeptical, given that all of their patents (the only public record of their activities) appear to be for inkjet printing technology, but I was prepared to give them a chance. I did a C++ test for them and was invited in for an interview. I found out they are involved in some really interesting stuff, and it may have been a good job, but the interview didn't go well. With three other promising leads, though, I wasn't overly concerned.

I applied directly to Google - they don't use recruiters - because Google are currently expanding their Sydney operations and advertising graduate positions. Recruitment seems to be managed locally in Sydney, but my technical interviews were handled by employees in the U.S. Unfortunately, I guess a huge number of people appy to Google and the recruitment process is very long and drawn out. Google would be a fantastic place to work and I progressed through two rounds of technical interviews, but it would still be a couple of months before they made a job offer and I couldn't justify passing over other offers just to wait on Google, so I withdrew my application today.

The most involved application process I've gone through has been for Team Bondi. A recruiter presented me to 5 different games development houses in Australia, but we quickly narrowed it down to Team Bondi as the most promising place. I did a screening test, a C++ test, and a design test for them, and had two interviews with 5 different people while I was in Sydney. Team Bondi was very thorough. The recruiter kept me well informed throughout the whole process, and by the end it was no surprise when they made me a job offer yesterday.

In stark contrast, Jeppesen made me a job offer within 24 hours of talking to them for the first time. The recruitment process, the interview, and the person I spoke to, were all straight-up to the point of brusqueness, but it was refreshing in its own way and when they made their job offer today I was confident that it would be a good match.

This left me in a quandary. In the space of 24 hours I had two job offers, each of which would be fantastic, but too different from one another to directly compare them. Team Bondi was something of a dream job - doesn't every geek want to program games at some point? - but the work had definite attractions: a hugely ambitious game, great offices, interesting technologies. Jeppesen was more in line with where my PhD was leading and promised a more obvious career path, along with a highly intelligent team (over a dozen PhDs just in the software development team!) and challenging problems. Both jobs appealed to me a lot!

I think I could honestly have flipped a coin to choose between them, but in the end I chose Team Bondi, despite significant drawbacks, because it's the perfect entry job into the games industry, and if I didn't try it I'd always be wondering if I should have. And if it doesn't work out, then I can cut my losses it'll still be valuable experience that I can take with me. But, naturally, I'm hoping it won't come to that :)

Jobs - games and Google

The other area that I want to try working in is games, specifically games A.I., just because... well, how awesome would that be?

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Things are looking pretty promising with Team Bondi in Sydney. I've taken a couple of tests and I'm meeting them in person on Friday afternoon as soon as I arrive in Sydney. I should have a pretty good idea of whether they'll offer me a job after that interview, which would be a great start to my sojourn in Sydney!
It's very exciting, because you probably couldn't find a better start in the games industry. Team Bondi are a new company, they're meant to be very relaxed. This is their first game, but the founder, Brendan McNamara directed The Getaway for Sony and, together with some staff he took with him, Team Bondi obviously has the pedigree to attract serious funding. This first game sounds very ambitious, and it's being published by Rockstar, makers of Grand Theft Auto.

The attractive thing about games - and defence - is the simulation aspect. It's amazingly cool to craft a world and figure out what sort of interactions can arise from it. And the most interesting interactions, to me, are between autonomous agents in the world - hence my interest in game A.I.!

I've also just had my first phone interview with Google, this morning. I'm afraid I can't have made a fantastic impression on the algorithmic problem-solving questions, because I muddled through it. It's definitely not my strongest point, but with a bit of luck I'll get another interview covering another aspect.
I know Google is after people with more of a Computer Science background than I have, so I won't be terribly upset if this comes to naught. It'd be a cool job in a funky environment though, and I'd most definitely consider it!

Jobs - computational intelligence

If I wanted to combine software development with the topic of my PhD, the perfect job would be at SolveIT Solutions in Adelaide.

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The company was founded by a leading researcher in my field, as a way of putting the theoretical research into practice in business. He's dubbed it "adaptive business intelligence", and become very successful.
SolveIT basically a consulting company. The idea is that they identify areas in which a business can optimise their processes, and then apply cutting-edge optimisation algorithms (such as mine ;) ) from the literature to either cut expenses or boost profits by millions. Besides just getting to use cool algorithms, the attractive thing about SolveIT is the possibility of working on a diverse range of problems as they get contracts from many different industries. Oh, and the huge amount of money to be made in this area :)
I wrote to SolveIT asking for a job, but unfortunately they didn't have any openings. Still, they have my resume now, and I can seriously imagine working for them in the future.

I've also applied for a job at Jeppesen, in Brisbane. That job is also about optimisation, in their case train and transport systems. Basically it would be a similar job, just a different application. I've talked to their recruiter, but haven't heard much back yet. I'm unsure if that's bad or not :) It is a position that they're actively recruiting for though, and I'd have to be one of the most suitable candidates they're going to get for it, so... we'll see.

Jobs

At the end of last year, with pressure to sign another lease, I decided that if I could get work at CQU then I'd probably stay. So before Christmas I spoke to Merv, and agreed to what seemed like a sure project as soon as Uni started back in the new year. To cut a long story short - which I've ranted about enough already :) - after many delays I had to give up on that.

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Many people have suggested other work in Rockhampton, with the best of intentions - thanks! It must seem that I'm being very picky about work. Unfortunately, it's more a case of me knowing what I don't want rather than knowing what I do want!

I don't want to be a straight academic right now, although it's something I might consider coming back to. For now, I want to get out and do something different. I'm also terrified of the whole grant application process! At this stage I just want to solve existing problems and not worry about creating new ones! :p

I also don't want to take a job that isn't going to further my career. I was prepared to do this Digital Assets project for Merv - despite the fact that I'm personally not that interested in what seems to be a relatively simple application of databases and Java - so that I could continue my research on the side (and hang out with friends that are settled here for the immediate future).
But other, similar, jobs around Rockhampton don't have the close social and research connection to the Uni, so I'm not as interested in them.

I am keen to stay with C++ rather than branching out into Java or .NET or similar, because C++ is still the language of choice for big, computationally intensive projects like simulations, optimisation, data mining, etc, in sectors such as defence, games, business intelligence, and finance. Those are the sorts of problems that really interest me.

Ideally, I want to combine software development with research of some sort. The Digital Assets project would have let me do that, albeit in two disjoint parts. The examples I gave just above would (eventually) let me do that in one package. I've applied for a few jobs in those areas. We'll see whether I manage to get something that's exactly what I want, or whether I'll have to take whatever I can get for the experience...

Moving - out of the frying pan and into the fire

Well, I've moved all my stuff back to the family house in Bundaberg now. Where to from there I don't know yet, but I ran out of options in Rockhampton. It kind of sucks having accumulated so much furniture and assorted belongings and having to find somewhere to put it!

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Without any guarantee of work at the Uni (that's another rant in itself! :) ) I had to cut my losses and pack up. The time I clung on here in Rockhampton wasn't wasted though, because I've used it to finish my thesis. That would have been much harder from Bundaberg. It also meant I got to hang around people I like for a bit longer :)
Lots of people (well, ok, three - Sarah, Melanie, and Russel :p ) offered to let me stay with them while I sorted things out. Thanks guys! But I had so much stuff I had to put it somewhere more permanent anyway.

So now... I'm out of the frying pan, but maybe only to land right back in the fire. There's a real possibility that I'll move to Sydney for a job, and man, if I thought the rental market was tough in Rockhampton, I'm not looking forward to renting in Sydney! A recent study placed Sydney as one of the highest rent-to-income-ratio cities in the English-speaking world (Counterpoint on Radio National has been making a compelling argument that it's down to land-rationing).

Interesting times await!

The End (of the thesis) Is Nigh

Yep, fingers crossed, the latest draft of my thesis will get Russel's approval, and I'll print it out and submit! So far Russel's given his stamp of approval to all the main chapters and the conclusion; I've just revised the introduction and now I'll put it all together for him.
All up, it's 10 chapters, 325 pages, and 70,000 words. Admittedly that's double-spaced and single-sided, which I don't like but I understand why it's important for examination, but hey, 325 pages sounds good.
Overall I'm happy with how I've presented what I've done. If I could do it over, I would certainly ditch a lot of the research I spent time on and do a more thorough job of the stuff that worked out well. But such is the path of research, I suppose. In the end I reckon I came up with some good stuff, and I dare to hope that someone might actually read it and make use of it :)
It's certainly going to be a relief to have this thesis out of my hands... for a few months at least!

Interesting Times

There is a curse: May you live in interesting times.

It's strange, but at the time when I have the most to blog about, I've been most silent. Partly I've just been too busy, and partly I just haven't wanted to jinx anything!

I'll follow this post up with some posts dedicated to what's been going on: finishing my thesis; moving house; and getting a job!

McNaught's Comet

Brett thoughtfully let us know about McNaught's Comet, the brightest comet in 40 years! On Monday evening Sarah and I went up Mt. Archer to watch it. Unfortunately the cloud cover and haze was terrible, making it impossible to see the sun set let alone a comet! I returned on Wednesday evening but it was just as bad. This was pretty depressing, since the comet's peak brightness was on Monday and it's supposed to fade over the week, so I was afraid we'd miss it altogether.
Nevertheless we gave it another chance last night, Thursday, and we were finally rewarded! I wish we'd brought binoculars or a telescope, but thanks to the tripod Sarah gave me for Christmas, I was able to take some pretty decent shots with my wannabe camera ;)
(click for higher res!)


No comet here, just a nice view of the city under a gentle sunset before the comet became visible.


Pretty good shot of the comet over the city. Bonus aeroplane to the left ;) There's a bit of camera movement blurring the lights; I mustn't have tightened the tripod enough.


Just the comet.


Just the comet again.

I might go up again tonight to check it out again... I reckon it's pretty exciting :)

Chocolate Coated Coffee Beans

At the end of last year, on a beautiful day for a ride to Roslyn Bay, over a coffee by the water's edge, I was introduced to a most marvellous confection: a single chocolate coated coffee bean, a tiny capsule of heaven on my saucer. My travelling companion, Aiden, told me of a magical coffee store far to the south where he had seen them previously. But could I get them in Rockhampton?

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I spent the rest of the year (ok, so that wasn't very long) searching in vain for a source of these wonders. Darrel Lea apparently occasionally stock them, but not any more. Same for Capricorn Roast. In desperation, I widened my search to Bundaberg (and my family thought I was there to visit them, shh, don't tell them!) but still my efforts bore no fruit.
Long long ago, in a better time, there was a gourmet food store in Rockhampton. But it closed, and with its passing the land was plunged into a period of darkness. Still, some spoke in hushed whispers of another store, one that yet survived. No phonebook told of this fabled store, and for a long time I didn't believe the rumours, but with the success of my quest hanging precariously in the balance I was prepared to turn to any small glimmer of hope. So, with Sarah faithfully at my side, I set out once more.
Far away we went, following the vague second-hand directions of Sarah's mum who spoke a traveller who claimed to have stumbled upon this store by chance in her wanderings, but who had not ventured inside. Over the mighty Fitzroy river, down Denham, and across to the far side of the Bruce Highway - surely we had gone too far then? - and still there was no sign of any gourmet food store. At the foot of the mountainous Range we were forced to turn back, resigned to the bitter taste of failure. But as we wearily turned around, Sarah, with her keen eyesight, cried "Stop! Stop!" - she had found it!
I was to be forgiven for missing it as we passed it the first time; the store had the confounding name of "Tables & Tots", and only in small unassuming print did it say "Gourmet Goodies". Excitedly, we went inside. The store was a confused jumble of furniture, tableware, and bric-a-brac piled on every available surface. But along one wall were exotic foodstuffs, and at the back of the store I found at last what I had been searching for: chocolate coated coffee beans... in no less than three mouth-watering flavours!
I immediately bought a small packet of espresso flavoured beans, which I prefer to the cafe latte flavoured beans I have just returned to buy after consuming the first lot. I have learnt that approximately 5 beans equals one shot of espresso - bear in mind that not all the caffeine from grounds makes it into the espresso. It's very hard to stop at just 5 beans, but so far I've been strong.
Thus ends the tale of my quest for the chocolate coated coffee beans!

Microsoft Zune

(This is a follow-up on the previous post on Windows Media Player.)
Zune is Microsoft's new portable music player and software of the same name. It's analogous to iPod and iTunes. Since Windows Media Player 11 was promising but ultimately flawed, I decided to give Zune a try.
Zune is basically identical to WMP (see previous post), just with a different skin. However, it does two things WMP doesn't:

1. Supports AAC natively
2. Imports playlists and ratings from iTunes

These are very very good things. That leaves only two downsides to Zune compared to iTunes:

1. As with WMP, it stubbornly resets my viewing preferences every time I switch panes
2. As with WMP, it lacks a way to duplicate Party Shuffle's automatic song selection

Nevertheless, given that it's so much faster than iTunes and has nifty playlist management - and imported all my playlists from iTunes - I'm going to give it a try for a while.

Edit:
In iTunes, you set a checkbox called "Compilation" to indicate that an album is a compilation. In WMP/Zune, you set a separate field for each track called "Album Artist" to something like "Various Artists" to indicate a compilation. Unfortunately Zune didn't import the "Compilation" meta-data from iTunes, and this was messing up my browsing experience (in both WMP and Zune).
After setting the "Album Artist" to "Various Artists" for all compilation CDs, the browsing experience became far, far, far better, so much so that the default view for each pane works quite well, and it's no longer so annoying that it resets the view each time you change pane.

In summary, the WMP/Zune browsing interface just got a lot better in my opinion; on par or superior to iTunes' 3-pane browser. *thumbs up*

Windows Media Player 11

Thanks to a network problem I've been unable to use iTunes (no library database) so I thought I'd try out Windows Media Player 11 at Carey's suggestion. This is my experience...

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Behind the screens
The first technical difference between iTunes and WMP is the way the library is managed. In iTunes you drag files into the library to add them whenever you acquire new files. This is a pain because you lose all song-related data like play count and stars and playlists if you want te rearrange the files on your HDD - you have to remove them from iTunes and add them again each time. In WMP, you specify folders for WMP to monitor, and all music in those folders is automatically in your library. This actually works pretty well, and somehow it manages to keep track of files even if I move them around while WMP is closed (I know it's actually keeping track of the files and not just removing/adding the file each time, because details like the play count are kept intact and the file itself is not modified to store this information).

The second technical difference is that WMP unfortunately doesn't support the AAC music format. That sucks because I rip most of my music as AAC, since it's an MPEG standard format. I expected that any decent music player would support it, but sadly not WMP. You can use third-party tools to add AAC support to WMP (meta-data support and codecs) but it's not perfect: the progress slider doesn't work for AAC files. (these codecs might fix the problem but it's commercial software) By the way, I don't think you can simplify the comparison to WMP = MP3 + WMA formats, and iTunes = MP3 + AAC formats, since a) iTunes can import WMA files by converting them, and b) AAC is standard and WMA is proprietary.

User interface
Using iTunes as a baseline, there are some positives and negatives to WMP's user interface.
WMP doesn't have iTunes' 3-pane browser that sorts by genre, artist, and album simultaneously. That means you have to flip between different screens to browse by those different categories. That might not be such a nuisance, except that each time you change screen, it resets your location in all the others, so you have to scroll down through your entire library to get back to where you were each time. It also resets the column by which you've sorted that category, which is really annoying. As a plus, though, WMP allows you to navigate the library in many more ways than iTunes (which would be nice, if only it remembered my preferences! grrr...)

Playlist management likewise has its ups and downs. Instead of Party Shuffle, WMP has Now Playing, which works slightly differently. Everything you play automatically goes through Now Playing - generally every song that's currently showing in the pane you double-click in is added to Now Playing, as opposed to iTunes playing either the library or a playlist or Party Shuffle. That's pretty neat, because you can browse to an album, or do a text search, double click a song and all of those will go into Now Playing and be saved there, even if you then browse away or do a different text search. Another neat feature in WMP is the playlist pane, which can be set to show either a playlist or Now Playing, and sits to the right of the main view. That makes it easy to drag music over to queue it up or reorganise the play order, without leaving the main library view. The downside of WMP's playlist management is that I can't find any way to mimic iTunes' Party Shuffle ability to automatically and randomly draw a certain number of songs from a specified playlist. In WMP you have to manually make sure there's always music queued up.

Performance
Ordinarily performance in programs like these, running on modern computers, shouldn't matter. Unfortunately, the Windows port of iTunes 6 was slow, and iTunes 7 is just terrible. Browsing WMP, in comparison, feels like casting off shackles and breathing freely once more.

Overall
I'll still use iTunes, however that's mainly due to where WMP foolishly stumbles rather than to where iTunes shines. WMP's inability to remember my viewing preferences and poor handling of AAC is terrible. Maybe in the next version WMP will come out ahead.