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Last week I was in Perth for the 24th Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
You can download the paper and presentation I presented from my uni homepage.
Below are photos from around Perth that were taken on the day I arrived and during the evenings.
Overall, Perth is a nice city to visit. Fremantle, in particular, is particularly beautiful. The city feels like a cross between Wanganui and Christchurch, and it was a lot quieter than Sydney.
I have just got back from a very quick holiday in New Zealand. With the trip only lasting six days it didn’t give me time to catch up with as many people as I would have liked to have seen. However, I still did manage to see a little over 30 family and friends, including a number of members of my extended family whom I had not seen in over two years.
The highlight of the trip was two days of Bluebird skiing conditions at Mt Ruapehu. It takes around 4 – 5 hours to get to Mt Ruapehu from Auckland. So to make the most of the day I got up at the insanely early hour of 3.20am on Thursday morning to do the drive to Whakapapa Ski Field. I arrived at the ski field just after 8am, got my ski gear on and hit the mountain.
After a few runs down the Knoll Ridge and Valley T-bars I ventured out into the Far West area of the mountain. Despite having skied at Whakapapa many times over the last seven years I have never encountered a day where the weather has been good enough to go out to the Far West so the first time heading out there made this trip especially worthwhile.
After a few runs down the western slopes in ankle deep powder I decided to traverse back to the main area of the mountain, just as the cloud rolled in and the visibility dropped to only a few metres. Because of the poor visibility I managed to get a little lost on the traverse back and ended up dropping in on one of the chutes above Hut Flat. This run is an extremely steep double black diamond and I am quite proud that I conquered it, even if it was an accident – because I doubt I would have gone down it if I had known fully where I was going.
I stayed overnight in Ohukane on Thursday night and ventured up to Turoa Ski Field on Friday morning. There is a lot more snow on the Turoa side of Ruapehu and for the first time ever I saw snow in the forest on the drive up to the ski area. The top part of the road was very icy and despite having hired a fairly powerful car it still struggled at about 20km/h up the final 3km of the road. Friday was another Bluebird day and the snow conditions at Turoa were even better than Whakapapa the day before. The powder wasn’t as deep but there was much better coverage across the mountain which meant I was dodging around rocks.
Despite both Whakapapa and Turoa being on the same mountain and run by the same company the two fields have quite different characteristics. Personally I prefer Turoa, all the times I have been up the staff have been extremely friendly, and there is much more open terrain to explore without needing to do long traverses.
Before I went to the ski fields one of my friends had disputed that I was any good at skiing – being a computer geek and not playing sports gives me that reputation – so I set up my GPS on my phone to track one of my runs down the mountain… and… I managed to get through 2.3km, 700 vertical metres in six minutes with an average speed of 23km/h and a top speed of 39km/h – a result that I am very happy with.
The remainder of my trip in NZ involved visiting extended family in Wanganui and catching up with many friends from my former university and workplaces. As I write this I am on a plane back to Sydney and I am already missing home. I may be biased as I am a kiwi, but New Zealand is simply the most amazing, friendly, and adventurous place I know. Australia may be my current abode, and the world may be my oyster, but New Zealand will always be my home.
I have just got back from a very fast weekend holiday in Melbourne.
At 7.45am on Friday I caught the daylight XPT Train from Sydney to Melbourne. I really like trains so spending over 11 hours on a train is better and cheaper than flying. Upon arriving in Melbourne I headed to the airport to meet a friend flying in from NZ to join me for the weekend. Once we had checked into our accommodation (Space Hotel) we went for a midnight stroll around the CBD.
On Saturday we got up early and headed out to the MCG and walked around the former Olympic Stadiums. From there we caught a tram to St Kilda and Luna Park before spending the afternoon shopping. In the evening we investigated Southbank and Crown Casino. The casino complex is massive, by far the biggest casino I have been in, and also just as impressive in eating my $5 I put in a pokie machine in rapid time.
Having tired our legs out with so much walking on Saturday, we spent Sunday morning at Melbourne Museum. Their dinosaur exhibition is amazing (see video below). From there we went shopping at Spencer Street Mall – which has a very Dressmart feel to it. After this me and my friend parted ways, they flew back to NZ and I caught the overnight XPT train back to Sydney.
This was my third visit to Melbourne, it is one of my favourite cities, in fact I came very close to moving there a few years ago – but a better opportunity arose in Sydney. The city has so much shopping, trams, and culture. Everywhere you go and look there is something unique and different to see. I simply love it.
About 3.30pm yesterday one of the security scanners at Sydney’s Domestic Terminal lost power resulting in 16 passengers passing through security without being correctly screened. Out of the many thousands of passengers who pass through Sydney Domestic every day this is a very minor problem.
However, the paranoia that has strangled the airline industry since the September 11 attacks saw what was a minor security machine malfunction turn into a farce that affected flights and travellers across Australia. All passengers in the terminal, and on flights that were still boarding at Sydney Domestic were forced to leave the air-side area of the terminal and planes landing at the airport were made to queue for hours on the tarmac until every passenger was re-screened.
In other words the failure to correctly screen 16 passengers resulted in thousands of people being stuffed about by overbearing and unnecessary security regulations which see public freedom curtailed in the name of fighting an invisible and mostly physiological enemy.
This paranoia and curtailing of public freedom has sees us live in a society where you are many times more likely to be killed in a plane accident than a terrorist attack. Yet in the United States $8.1 billion is spent on the TSA to enforce compulsory child molestation air-line security while only $77 million is spent on investigating airline accidents.
It is all a bit ridiculous isn’t it? Which reminds me of this infographic:
My hope is one day we will wake to the realisation that the biggest threat to our safety and freedom is not a few men who live in dusty caves in the middle-east but instead our own governments curtailing our freedoms in a manner akin to that of Orwell’s 1984.
It is very late, and I am very tired, but today was one of the best day trips I have ever had. Six friends, 2.5 hour train journey each way, and a 13 hour day for a heck of a lot of fun at Kiama.
Sea World was the most disappointing out of the theme parks that I visited. I think this is mainly due to my age. I am way too old for Sesame Street shows and most of the wildlife I have seen in wild or other zoos before. The one exception to this is the dolphin show which was something really special.
The rides at Sea World were pretty awesome, especially the Jet Ski Rescue rollercoaster but they seemed a little out of place and would have been more awesome with the other crazy rides at Movie World.
The great thing about going to movie world for a second time – it was completely different to the first time. Different characters running around. Different shows. Different fun. At the end of the day still absolutely awesome.
These photos are from my camera I am still waiting for photos from my friend’s camera.
Earlier this week I was fortunate enough to be able to visit the Gold Coast and Byron Bay for the third time this year. It is not very common for me to go to the same place multiple times in a single year but I had some more friends come from New Zealand on holiday so I may a quick 36 hour return trip from Sydney to join them. There is so much to see and do in the Gold Coast that I could go there at least another 10 times and not get bored.
The final day of our road trip was spent travelling from Port Macquarie to Sydney via a detour to Foster and Newcastle. Pretty much unless you are in your 90s, death and blind don’t visit Port Macquarie there are only two pubs and you can’t go to the beach at night. Foster and the beaches around it on the other hand appeared much more appealing and would be certainly be worthwhile investigating. The drive into Sydney is spectacular as the quality of the road makes NZ roads look like unsealed backstreets.
After our visit to Movie World we headed south to Byron Bay, before staying the night in Grafton. The next morning we continued south to Coffs Harbour before heading inland to the New England Highway, then after travelling about an hour south back across to the Pacific Highway at Port Macquarie.
