harves' online home

Adelaide's (Almost) Talking

2011-02-11T15:52:00.003-08:00

For the last few months we've been trying to teach Adelaide to sign using her hands. We've tried words like "Daddy" (make a sign like a rooster on your forehead), "Mummy" (same thing but on your chin), and "Poh Poh" (Grandma in Cantonese, and looks like the rooster is running away). But the easiest word to learn has been "Nai Nai" (which is Milk in Cantonese, and looks like you're milking a cow).

Adelaide is now regularly signing "Nai Nai" with her hands whenever she wants to feed. There's no prompting from us, she just starts signing. We look at her and ask "Do you want Nai Nai?" and she smiles and signs again. Often with both hands, which isn't technically correct, but we give it to her. :)

But in the last few days she's started saying "Nai Nai" aloud herself in combination with the hand signs. Is this her first word? We're not 100% sure, but we'll probably know by the end of the month. She signs for "Nai Nai" so often it's become a bit of a joke at times. If "Nai Nai" is her first word, she's got plenty of opportunity to say it.

And this leads into the funny thing that happened yesterday. Adelaide was rolling around in bed (supposed quiet time while we try to get her to sleep), heaved a sigh and said something like "mamamia". She then made the sign for "Nai Nai", prompting Emily and I to sing...

Mama-mia
Here we go again
Nai nai
How can I resist ya?

Sorry, just had to share that. :)

Body Pains

2010-12-24T10:36:00.004-08:00

Last night, I rolled over in bed and left shoulder had a brief 'pop' with a matching burst of pain. Joint weakness and pains aren't unusual for me, but the left shoulder is kind of new. My comment was something like "Argh, my left shoulder just started hurting." to which Emily replied something like "If I had a dime for every time you said 'Argh, my [x] just started hurting"...

This got us thinking. I do say things like that a lot, just because of random joint problems I have. The following is a list of a few common phrases in our house. They apply to pretty much any joint (hip, knee, elbow, shoulder, fingers, wrists) because I've had problems with all of them at some times. I've even woken up to find my fingertips 'popped out' because I'd slept on them. Twice.

Hmm, I think I just did something to my [x]. It doesn't feel right.
Hmm, my [x] just started hurting. I think that's new.
My [x] is playing up again. Can you do [y] for me?
My [x] feels odd. I'll try not to use it for a bit.
Heh. I stood up, and something went wrong. I should sit back down.

I used to fear that I won't be able to play with my kids the way I want to. Tow Adelaide around in the snow, carry her on my back, etc. Luckily, my body seems 'resilient'. No matter how often I get these pains, they'll go away with time and stretches.

On any given day I can never be sure of what my body will be able to do. But I can be sure that some day my joints and the planets will be aligned in their proper positions. If only for a little while.

Scanning With A Camera

2010-12-01T21:24:00.009-08:00

We recently came across a bunch of old blueprints for the current house. They are too big to be scanned, but I wanted to be able to look at them on the computer. Taking a photo didn't help very much as the images were grey, uneven, and unclear:

The most obvious solution is to play with "levels" or "curves" and make the lines dark and the paper white. This works well when using a flatbed scanner, but I'm using a digital camera in uneven lighting. The paper corners were darker than the centre lines. I could not find a way to adjust the image contrast that wouldn't lose detail or create dark splotches:

It was then I discovered a neat ability of Gimp, and this is presumably available in Photoshop as well. You can follow these steps to brighten different parts of an image differently, and in proportion to how dark it is. Here's the procedure:

Create a duplicate "layer" of your image. We're going to use this layer as a "light map", showing which parts of the image are bright and which are dark.
Blur this duplicate layer. The amount you blur is up to you, but you basically want to remove all the sharp lines and details. You want the layer just to show where the bright regions of your image are, and where the dark regions are, without details.
Set the blurred layer to "Divide" mode. Technically, this is taking the colour of your "original" image and dividing it by your "blurred" light map. Practically, this is taking every pixel of your "original" image and brightening it by looking at the average pixel colour in that area of the image. We have successfully brightened each pixel in proportion to how dark that area was.
Finally adjust "levels", "curves", "contrast", "brightness", whatever you want to call it. The normal kinds of adjustments you would do to a scanned document which doesn't have enough contrast.

As you can see, the resulting image is much clearer. It isn't perfect and I'm sure some adjustment of these instructions would fix that. But it's a lot better than what we started with, and is more than sufficient for my purposes.

The next step is to try using similar steps for regular photos where one part is way too dark and another part is way too light. Will see what I come up with. :)

UPDATE: I found this photo of me presenting a workshop on Hornby island. I applied a slight variation of the above technique (I had to desaturate and then adjust the levels in the blurred image to avoid division by zero). The end result brightens everything in the image except the projector screen. This way I don't lose that incredibly important screen text, but can still see that I'm wearing a yellow shirt with green shorts...

What was I thinking?!?

Bedtime Routine

2010-07-22T00:16:00.002-07:00

We've been getting into a rhythm with Adelaide at bedtime. The times can vary by up to an hour, but the basic routine is:

8:00pm - change from her regular clothes into a sleeper
8:00pm to 8:30pm - she's very chatty and enjoys some attention
8:30pm to 9:00pm - a bit of feeding to help her get to sleep
9:00pm to 10:00pm - she naps while Emily and I play the Wii
10:00pm - she wakes up, has another feed, then everyone sleeps until about 1am

Of course this never goes as smoothly as we would want. Tonight, it's past midnight and she's strapped to me because she couldn't seem to fall asleep in her own bed. Emily is exhausted because Adelaide is waking every two hours to feed, so I'm going to write this blog and do some coding.

But whatever happens, Adelaide does know when the bedtime routine is meant to start. A few days ago it was 8:15pm and I was changing Adelaide's diaper. She was happy and still in her regular clothes, so rather than change her into a sleeper I decided to dress her back up. After the first button she was in tears! She got this horrified look on her face and just bawled!

Similar thing again today. Emily and I took her out to see 10pm fireworks, and all is going fine until about 8:45pm. Suddenly Adelaide realises that the sun is going down and she's not in her sleeper. A happy and content baby suddenly turns to tears and sad, sad cries.

I've been told that parents can distinguish between their child's cries. In this case, we definitely can. This crying is not a "I have tummy problems!" scream or a "I'm bored!" protest. It is more like the cry when you realise you left your toddler's favourite teddy bear at the last petrol station. Or when your child is lost in a department store and can't find anyone they know. It's a "They forgot me!" kind of cry. Absolutely adorable, but it also gets you moving quickly. :)

Anyway, I'll get some coding done while Adelaide is still sleeping. I expect her to wake up within the hour for her next feed. Seems like she's not teething as we thought - it's just another growth spurt.

Our Camping Challenge

2010-07-08T22:00:00.012-07:00

We recently took Adelaide on her first camping trip. We mention to this to people afterwards and we get told "That was brave!". I was always told that bravery is "doing something stupid but surviving". :P Maybe if we'd known in advance we wouldn't have tried! :)

The ideal room temp for baby to sleep in is 21c, but the overnight tent temp was 11c (Emily will tell you all about my tent, which is an Australian design and has a lot of mesh walls). A lot of co-sleeping (bed-sharing) was necessary to try and keep everyone warm enough overnight.

We had hesitated to do co-sleeping because Adelaide was so tiny, and I have a tendency to roll with my elbows outwards. In the tent we had no choice, and honestly it worked out far better than I'd hoped. We both got a much better handle on Adelaide's sleeping habits, and I think we all feel a lot more connected as a family. Sharing every waking and sleeping moment does help to feel that connection.

To keep ourselves sane over the course of the trip, we alternated between camping and motels. At one point we ended up at Sunpeaks Resort, a ski-resort which turns into a hiking destination in the summer. Emily just told me that Sunpeaks saved the trip. Without that break, we probably would have given up and headed home. A proper bed, with TV and a microwave, is a very nice break from cold nights and mosquitoes.

And oh yes, there were a lot of mosquitoes no matter where we camped or walked. Emily breaks out in swollen itchy patches after a mosquito bite, but I just bleed from the holes. We couldn't dare to put mosquito repellent on Adelaide, and by proxy we couldn't put any on Emily. So Emily spent a lot of her time inside the tent or car, while I spent a lot of time setting up the tent or lighting a campfire. Not complaining, but it's these little role restrictions that make camping with an infant a little bit harder.

Halfway through the trip we met up with Stella and Timothy at a motel in Clearwater. We spent a few days in Wells Gray Park (awesome waterfalls!), and then made our first attempt to camp as a unified family. Stella had brought a tent and a big outdoor mesh. The mesh was big enough to cover a picnic table with extra chairs, which meant that Emily and Adelaide could spend a lot more time outside. Unfortunately Stella's tent leaked during our first camping night and she and Tim had to head home too soon.

Once Stella and Timothy left, the three of us headed to Kamloops and spent a few nights camping there. The temperature rocketed up to 36c in the daytime, and so we spent parts of our days in malls, the cinema (we were almost the only ones seeing Toy Story 3 in 2D!), or hiking up and down mountains. We will have to return to Kamloops another time. The entire area reminds me of Muswellbrook, except they have sub-alpine meadows nearby... :)

Was it worth it? Well, it was always going to be a challenge. We managed to take Adelaide camping, hiking, to waterfalls, to the movies, to the zoo, with family, in the cold, and in the heat. It was not a comfortable trip, but we got it all done. And that's what made it worth it. :)

Adelaide's Birth

2010-05-04T22:49:00.005-07:00

Emily's just written up her blog about the birth, so I figured I'd write up my experience. I'll only note down the things she didn't mention much. I remember a few more things as I wasn't the one in all the pain.

First, my embarrassment. I don't have a driver's license in Canada, and I had just organised all my paperwork to let me do the multiple-choice Knowledge Test. So after we got Emily into hospital, where did I go? Off to do my knowledge test, coming back some time after she was hooked up to all the baby monitoring stuff. That's when my memories start.
We had to kill time in the hospital somehow. Labour is a long process. We had brought a laptop and started marathoning the modern series of Doctor Who (starting from Season 2). Who knew that we'd look back at those episodes and think "damn, Season 5 is so much better"? Kill Doctor Who and we're back to just talking rubbish to burn up the hours.
At one point, Emily had setup a tiny portable stereo system to listen to Glee music while having her cucumber-salad lunch. That was early on in the day. It's weird thinking that the same day contained "Emily being excited about cucumber-salad" and "Emily screaming and crying and pushing a baby out". A baby's birth will be a strange day.
Originally, Emily's mum (Stella) was at the hospital with us. Having her there really helped in the early hours when I wasn't around as much, but with labour approaching we knew things would be getting emotional and stressful soon. We sent Stella home somewhere around lunchtime, though she would drop in every few hours after that with very welcome food relief. :)
The hospital staff wanted the baby out, and rightfully so. Adelaide had pooped inside and there was a risk of her inhaling some of that. However, Emily was dilating quite quickly on her own. We didn't want to use induction if we could avoid it, so we delayed. In the end, Emily's dilation slowed down and she had to be induced. She was not happy about the IV, but I think she was happy to get labour moving again.
Labour is enormously painful. And induced labour comes up on the mother very fast. Once you're induced, know that this is going to hurt, and it's going to hurt fast. I'm not sure that I fully understood this, but I did at the end when the hospital staff said "you know, the vast vast majority of women get an epidural when they're induced, you're just incredible".
As a father and husband, there were a few things that ran through my head during the birth:
- I will never leave her. There is nothing quite like watching a woman go through labour to make your insides shrivel up and make you think "seriously? this woman loves me?".
- Baby's head is showing? Umbilical cord needs cutting? Whoop-dee-doo. Excuse me while I tend to my wife here, ok? And no, I don't want to grab my camera. She's in pain, and I'm not a tourist.
- I wanted to cry at many points through the birth, just watching and hearing how much pain she is in. Absolutely everything is secondary to her pain. If she needs to break a bone to distract herself from the pain, so be it. Bone injures will heal. Birthing pain trumps all concerns today. Yes, seriously, it is that bad.
- I know her better than the staff and can better translate how she's feeling, what she wants, etc. Perhaps that is the most useful thing the husband can do - translating her needs to the hospital staff, and their directions back to her. For example: "Yes, I know a heat-pack makes the most sense for labour pains. But screw that - my wife needs a soothing ice-pack down her back to make her feel better. I don't care if you need to use frozen popsicles, we need something very cold down her back right now." That is your job as husband.
Adelaide came out in full Hollywood style. Bright pink, breathing, seemingly happy to be out. She had a bit of poop on her but otherwise was all good. Emily was completely wiped out, but happy it was all over.
Adelaide has been breastfeeding just fine, almost since the very first attempt. She has strong neck muscles, breathes just fine, and has a relatively gentle cry. We could not be happier. In fact, Adelaide and Emily were doing so well they sent us home within 16 hours of the birth.

The whole thing went very very fast. I still can't believe we now have a baby, but I am extremely eager to play with her and watch her grow up. When she opens her eyes and just stares at you, it's beautiful.

Note to Timothy: I know you can't read this, and I know you can't respond, but I want to write this down. You are an uncle now, mate. Maybe you know this because you seemed to know there was a baby in Emily's tummy. We will be bringing the whole family to you soon. I am really looking forward to it. Love you mate. We'll see you soon.

Bullshttng

2010-04-05T08:10:00.003-07:00

Emily and I have been discussing parenting styles recently. The standard stuff like discipline, how to encourage, etc. We won't need any of this for a year or so, but it's best to plan a bit beforehand. And that brings me to the value of bullshitting.

I don't know if anyone has heard of the card game called "Cheat", but I think it's a good and safe intro to the concept of bullshitting. The rules are:

Split the deck evenly between all players, and keep your cards hidden.
On your turn, choose some of your cards and place them face down on the table. Describe what those cards are, like "4 aces" or "3 kings".
You do not have to tell the truth. There are some rules for how you can describe those cards.... but truth is not one of the rules.
If someone calls out "Cheat" when you're lying, then you have to pick up all the cards that were put down so far.
If someone call out "Cheat" and you're NOT lying, then they have to pick up all the cards that were put down so far.
The first person to get rid of all their cards wins the game.

I feel this game teaches us:

not to believe the first thing you hear (a good strategy is to lie unnecessarily on your first turn and tell the truth on your second turn, as it can really confuse people)
it is always safer to tell the truth, as there's a high probability of the truth coming out
you cannot make unbelievable claims and expect people to accept it easily
test the truth of what someone says by looking at what you know for sure (if someone claims to put down 2 aces, but you have 3 aces in your hand, you know they are bullshitting)
pay attention to what is going on and where the cards are, because that information can help identify any lies
you must tell the truth at the end (everyone will call "Cheat" on your winning turn, so you better be telling the truth)

Not all of the above are positive lessons, I know. But some are very useful in a world where you can't trust information. How do you know that your friend is not stranded in Spain without a credit card and needs you to wire money immediately? Because if they needed money that badly, they could have made a collect call. How do you know that combining your chequing and mortgage will save you money? Run the numbers yourself. How do you know that Microsoft won't donate $1 to AIDS research for every time you forward an email? Because you have never heard of a service that lets you track emails like that. How much should you trust a person online? Only as far as you can independently verify what they say.

But can/should you incorporate bullshitting as a parenting skill? Before I even knew how to play a game like "Cheat", I was exposed to the concept of bullshitting. My Dad loved to do it, with statements like "I can remember being born" being one of his favourites. If you left your McDonalds fries unwatched, someone would steal them and try to convince you that you ate them all. It was up to you to spot who had two sets of fries in front of them.

The main difference between "bullshitting" and outright "lying" was that you can always identify the bullshit by looking at your surroundings. And you would be congratulated for successfully separating the bullshit from the truth.

I honestly think this has helped me. I accept what people say, but do not rely too heavily on it. I try to pick out information that sounds odd or incorrect or misphrased, and take the time to verify those facts. I always try to correlate what I hear with what I see and what I can deduce. It has been a valuable lesson to me.

So when our child asks "Has the sky always been blue?", I may just answer "Well they have to repaint it every year, and this year they chose blue. Last year it was green." And I will be very happy when they call "bullshit" on me, because all our photos have nice blue skies.

Means-Tested Disability Benefits

2010-03-27T20:15:00.015-07:00

From what I understand of the Albertan welfare system, many disability benefits are cut once you start earning money from other sources. I can't speak for the rest of Canada or even my home Australia as I have never been involved there. However, I'm not sure if this should be considered a "fair go" for disabled citizens.

As I understand it, the idea of "social security" is that we guarantee all citizens a minimum level of living. The premise is that all individuals deserve a decent life, though circumstances may make it difficult or impossible for them to achieve it on their own. In some cases these circumstances are transient (eg. unemployment, pregnancy, illness) while other times they are permanent (eg. disability). In either case, society feels that we should offset the individual's circumstance by providing them with some kind of benefits.

Now it makes sense that an individual's "unemployment benefits" would be cut if they become employed. The individual's circumstances have changed, and the benefits are no longer appropriate.

But what should happen when a person overcomes their circumstances. That is, when their circumstances do not change, but the person pushes themselves to improve their own life? For example, should a new mother have her maternity benefits cut because she pushed herself to grow vegetables? Should we cut her maternity benefits as they are not necessary to feed her child? Or should we maintain her benefits, and applaud the improved life she can now offer her child?

Should benefits be means-tested? Or should they be based purely on how circumstances have impacted that individual?

The following describes how the Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH) benefit is cut when a disabled person overcomes their circumstances to enter the workforce at a low-paying job:

Currently, an individual’s employment income is only partially exempt from AISH adjustment. For example, single adults can keep the first $200 they earn each month, plus 25% of any amount over $200. This means an individual who works 20 hours/week for $10.00/hour would only be able to retain $366.67 of the $866.67 he/she would earn [per month]. When the cost (transportation, clothing, and/or childcare for example) and energy involved in joining the work force are considered, the motivation for seeking and obtaining employment is negligible.

-- Alberta Committee of Citizens with Disabilities Response to Low-Income Programs Review

Imagine a severely handicapped man who cleans tables at McDonalds. He has overcome his disability to find work in a fast-food restaurant. While this is simplistic work for most of us, it has presumably taken great effort on his part to achieve this. He will earn only a basic wage despite it taking all of his energy.

His disability has not changed, and society would pay him full benefits if he stayed at home. So should we applaud his effort to overcome his disability, or should we cut his benefits?

P.S. The AISH cut-off rates have increased significantly. In the above example, the individual would now keep around $633.37. However, once an individual goes over $1500/month in earnings, their benefits will be cut dollar for dollar. A person on AISH benefits would see no improvement in their life if they moved from a $1500/month job to a $2000/month job, because their AISH benefits would be cut exactly $500.

P.P.S. This blogpost is really more about how we think of social security and whether it is fair, not demanding changes to AISH.

House Selections

2010-03-26T22:33:00.004-07:00

We just finished our first round of interior house selections, so I thought I'd post a short description of what we picked. All of this is subject to the total price quote we get soon. :)

Colours

Most of the house uses a good quality "soft brown wood" laminate floor. This includes the kitchen, stairs, bedrooms, etc. See image or link.
The kitchen cupboards are slightly darker and slightly redder than the floor. We want to keep the kitchen warm-feeling. See image to the right.
The kitchen counter is laminate with a sandstone appearance. The edges will be squared and pointy. This is because we have a sink in a corner, and you cannot get a seamless laminate countertop with a rolled or bevelled edge. See image or link.
Wet areas of the house use a slightly textured beige tile. This includes the entry area, the laundry/pantry/mudroom, and all bathrooms. We still need to finalise some bathroom selections.

Faucets and Sinks

All kitchen faucets (three in total) are Kohler brand with pull-out head and a top-mounted lever handle. You can switch between a hose-like and a shower-like stream by using a simple mechanical switch located on the faucet head. See link.
Most bathrooms have simple, practical, self-rimming sinks. I don't remember the brand. The master ensuite has the same brand and series of sink, but are more stylish with higher rims and a smaller area.
Most bathroom sink faucets are Kohler brand and look like a scaled down version of the kitchen faucets. They are angled so the water should shoot towards the centre of the sink, something Emily was keen to have. See link.
Most bathroom shower/tubs use Kohler faucets from the same series. The exact configuration depends on whether it is a shower or a shower/tub combination. See link.
The master ensuite faucets are all Moen, but are not terribly different to the Kohler ones. The Moen faucets shoot more directly down which is better for the smaller ensuite sinks. See link.
The master ensuite does not have a shower, but it will still have a hand-held shower head on the bath. We're trying to keep the ensuite nice and open-feeling. See link.
The kids bathroom doubles as an upstairs laundry, with both a regular sink and a laundry sink on the one countertop. Normally the bathroom counter is 33 inches high and fairly shallow, and all other counters are 36 inches high and deeper. As a result, we'll have a neat little "step" where we transition from the bathroom half of the counter to the laundry half of the counter.

Baths and Toilets

We have four bath/showers in the house, but almost every one is unique. The master ensuite has an acrylic 6 foot bath. The downstairs bathroom has a 5 foot fibreglass shower unit. The kid's bathroom is a 5 foot fibreglass shower/bath unit, and Timothy's is the same design but 5.5 foot long.
We are unsure whether fibreglass or acrylic is the better way to go. We're also chasing up alternative brands and things. All we know for sure is that Timothy, the kids, and Grandma will have single-piece moulded units.
We found a Caroma Caravelle dual-flush toilet. I always thought that Caroma was French for "flush" or something, because I grew up seeing "Caroma" on all the toilet buttons. I don't think I saw anything else until I traveled overseas. :)

Handles and Railings

Most door handles will be levers. They will mostly be a brushed nickel or similar finish. Kitchen cabinets will have a nice-looking brushed silver straight handle. The bathrooms will have matching knobs.
The stairs and upstairs areas will have simple metal poles (what are those called again), nice-looking wooden pillars at all the corners, and a simple wood railing. The pillars and railing will be painted, but we might need to reassess once all the pricing comes in. A lot of the rest of the house uses stained wood.
Interior doors will look a little like the kitchen cabinets with a classic grooved appearance.

Lessons Learned

Faucets cost a lot. Much more than you expect.
Plumbing in Edmonton cannot go along an exterior wall. Makes sense to stop them from bursting.
If you visit a hotel it seems they all have those single-handle controls for the showers. You just turn the handle until it changes from cold water to hot water, and they don't let you control the pressure. It turns out that is because they use a special "anti-scald" valve that prevents sudden temperature changes caused by changes in pipe pressures. The salesperson hinted that they are close to being a legal requirement nowadays.
Democratic selection of house colours does work. Just make sure you have 3 people voting. :)

Not Missing Meat

2010-01-28T19:49:00.002-08:00

One of my co-workers is a strict vegetarian, which means I've ended up with the occasional shared vegetarian meal. A lot of the time his food actually tastes better than mine. Just recently I realised that: I don't actually enjoy the taste of meat very much

I mean, I love some Chicken Teriyaki or Curry Beef, but you could switch it with Tofu Teriyaki or Curry Vegetables and I would not notice. The meat adds nothing for me. Sauces and flavours are much more important.

Now during our recent vacation, Emily found us a free all-day buffet deal. The meat offerings at buffets always feel like a brick in your stomach, so I trialled a new diet:

Vegetables, fruit, dairy, eggs, etc
Seafood, excluding crab, lobster, oyster, etc
Coffee and chocolate :)

This has been going quite well and I think I'll stick with this diet for a few weeks at least. The only exception is when Emily can't finish something, because I don't want to waste food. I'm not against eating meat, but it's just wasted if I order any for my meal.

Oh, and the exception to the exception is melons. I hate melons and won't eat them. :)

Las Vegas Trip

2010-01-28T18:59:00.003-08:00

Emily and I just finished a quick trip down to Vegas. This is our last vacation before the baby arrives, so we went to see a bunch of shows that you probably don't want to take an infant to. Here's what we saw:

The Lion King by Disney - Quite good, but the story is (naturally) the same as the movie so there's no surprises. The costumes are amazing, but some are mere skeletons which makes them a little freaky. Overall pretty good, but I wouldn't see it again.
O by Cirque du Soleil - A water-based Cirque du Soleil show. We got front-row balcony seats so could look straight down in to the pool most of the time. Some of the show was very cool, but a lot was just synchronised swimming. Fewer circus acts than I expected, and our angle meant I spent a lot of time watching the "hidden" scuba divers at the bottom of the pool.
Penn and Teller - A last-minute decision, and a very good one. Half the show is talking and comedy, but it's a lot more entertaining than the classic "magic" show. No magic capes or levitating girls, just very smooth magic tricks and a lot of humour. Well worth it.
Zumanity by Cirque du Soleil - By far the most risque show that we saw (or will admit to!). This is an adults-only "sensual" Cirque in a small theatre. If the F-word, a cross-dressing presenter, partial nudity and the (brief) mention of various fetishes is too much for you, do NOT go to this show. But if you are awed by Cirque-level physique and skill, then this is very worth seeing. I think I saw more skill in Zumanity than I did in the more expensive O!
Just to be clear, the vast majority of the audience were couples. And the grand climax was a slow dance and kiss by a 48-year-married couple, to absolutely massive applause. That should give some idea of how broad the show is.

Anyway, it was a good 5 nights in Vegas. No gambling, no drinking, just a lot of walking around taking it all in. :)

Family Life

2010-01-10T20:30:00.002-08:00

Emily's family (brother, mother, and grandmother) will head back to Edmonton tomorrow. I'm not sure Emily and I will know how to live on our own after they've left! I consider it a very good test of how our family will operate once we move to Edmonton.

For the record, our apartment has 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, and is a little over 500 square feet or 47 square metres. So the five of us have been living together for almost a month in very close quarters. Our "regular" routine has been quite thoroughly destroyed. But overall, life together has been quite good.

Probably the biggest challenge has been sharing a living space with Timothy for a month. For example, he picks up on emotions from the TV so anything remotely exciting or scary can make him agitated. For the last month we've only used the lounge area sleeping or really safe media like Wii games and Chinese opera.

But we've had no major personality clashes, and no-one has been really upset or emotional after spending a month together. That's really quite surprising, all things considered. I actually think this is going to work. :)

Project Edmonton Committed

2010-01-05T23:32:00.005-08:00

Well, we're (virtually) committed now. We're placing a hold on a lot in Griesbach, and then organising our down payment. You could try and look us up in Google Maps but you won't even find our street because it hasn't been built yet. :)

We've been working on the design a fair bit, and the builder says it looks pretty good. It has been tricky to balance our needs while taking advantage of the lot shape, but we think we've succeeded. Our new home will look something like this video.

Project Edmonton Continues

2009-12-24T20:30:00.002-08:00

We've seriously narrowed our housing options down, and are now just creating different designs. We even have fly-through videos of our latest designs, all made with MyVirtualHouse.

We're focusing our efforts on a pie-shaped lot that has a lot of south-eastern exposure. We like it because the house won't be crammed in amongst other enormous houses.

We've also talked with friends and family, and used their feedback to guide us with even more designs. We're also speaking with a builder, and we took some of his ideas to produce the following:

If you can't see videos above, watch them here and here on YouTube. And if you have any opinions, feel free to leave them on Facebook or here. :)

Woodwick Candles for Timothy

2009-12-22T17:00:00.003-08:00

So Timothy loves candles. Like really loves candles. Light a candle and he's happy. The same for campfires, and basically anything that burns. (It seems to run in the family, based on my experience with Emily...). So for Christmas, I bought him a few novel Woodwick Candles off eBay.

Woodwick Candles use a thin piece of wood instead of string as the wick. This results in a unique crackling sound while burning. The marketing claims it sounds like a "real fire". To be honest it sounds like a roaring bonfire.... heard through a mobile phone. Or perhaps a big pile of dry kindling going up. It's loud enough to be heard across a quiet room, but it's missing the deep sound of a real fire.

In any case, I was very happy with it and so was Tim. I'm writing this because he just came in to the room holding the one Woodwick and saying "tick-tock". That is Tim-speak for "candle" - it takes too much effort for him to pronounce "candle" properly. We're encouraging him to vocalise, and so if he asks for something we try to give it to him. And we have more than one Woodwick Candle, but if he knew he'd ask us to light all of them together... then blow them out and ask us to light them again. :)

On the topic of pronunciation... he has no problem with other words like dinosaur, ball, bubble, computer, ketchup, mein mein, and fan fan. "Candle" just seems to be one of the few words that he struggles with.

Thesis Paradox

2009-11-21T19:57:00.003-08:00

I think it's pretty well known that humans are creatures of habit. We always want to return to the familiar, the things that we know, the life we understand. It's one reason why men marry wives who are like their mothers, and why some prisoners want to return to prison. And I think this is why it's so hard to finish a PhD thesis.

You see, a PhD student has been doing their thesis for years, and you start to develop a habit. "Doing the thesis" is a solid, predictable part of your life. Your lovers can come and go, you can move country or change jobs, but the thesis remains a constant presence in your life.

So when it comes time to "finish" the thesis, you start to worry. What is life going to be like when my thesis is done? Will that piece of paper fill the void it leaves in my life? When I finish, what will I have then? What will I do?

Of course, the obvious answer is "you will have the rest of your life". Once you're finished with your thesis, you'll be able to "anything that has nothing to do with your thesis". We should celebrate! But, when you think about it, this isn't a good answer at all. It leaves the PhD student with two options:

Quit doing your thesis, right now. Why bother finishing when that final piece of paper adds nothing to your life? You can quit the thesis right now, and go do something you enjoy.
Continue doing your thesis for eternity. It's a constant, it's been in your life for years, it's the evil that you know. It's comforting in a sick, twisted, masochistic way.

There is nothing in human nature that encourages a PhD student to finish their thesis. There's no impact on your life once you finish the thesis, with the exception of having that 'one daily constant' removed from your life. It's ridiculous.

In other news, I found a bug in my thesis code. Re-running all my experiments now. :P

Less Goods, More Services

2009-11-08T00:34:00.002-08:00

I've been thinking about how we, as a society, consume and dispose of too much stuff. There's a reasonably good online video (sorry, don't have the link handy) that points out how we're taught to be "good little consumers". The rationale is that the economy will likely grind to a halt if people stop spending. We hear this mantra regularly - "we have to spend our way out of a recession", "buy locally made goods to keep the local economy strong", etc.

But then I started thinking. Why do we have to spend money on goods? Why not just spend it on services? Employment is a means of wealth redistribution, and so I know that it is far better for society and the economy to have maximum employment. But why does this "employment" have to mean more mining, more oil consumption, more pollution, etc?

I really want to reduce the amount of goods that I buy/use/dispose of, but still want to (a) reward myself for hard work and (b) keep money flowing through the economy. So instead of rewarding myself with more food, I could pay $10 for a quick shoulder massage. Instead of buying a new pair of shoes, I could pay someone to fix my old ones. If there are goods that can't be substituted by services, then I still have to buy them. But instead of rewarding myself with the latest electronics, I could get my bicycle tuned and go for a ride.

Just a thought I'm having.

More Psychoanalysis

2009-10-29T17:59:00.010-07:00

I have to admit, I like taking the occasional personality test, finding out more about myself, etc. Emily and I just went to a comedy/marriage seminar called "Laugh Your Way To A Better Marriage" and they highly recommended this "Flag Page" test. The idea of this test is not to pin down your skills or abilities, but rather what parts of your personality are important to you. Or alternatively, what kinds of criticisms would hurt you.

For example, the ability to entertain is not important to me. I wouldn't care if someone said "Your blogs are really boring to read". But if someone said "You need to think much more deeply about what you write"... well that would hurt a lot. The theory is that if a couple knows what kind of criticisms would hurt their partner, they can avoid them. They can instead try to encourage and support that side of their partner.

So my most treasured aspects of my personality are:

Sincere at Heart
Creative
Competent
Deep Thinker
Patient

Now I fully agree with this list. And no, it's not because I think it makes me sound awesome. I just think this is an accurate description of what I like or strive for most. And when you look closer you realise it's not all that fantastic.

For example, I really enjoy being able to do things well... but that also means I get frustrated and give up if I feel completely unskilled at something. If I'm learning to roller-blade and keep falling over, I won't just pick myself back up. I'll need a lot of support and encouragement to get over my own "incompetence".

Also, I treasure these attributes of my personality more than any others. I treasure these more than, say, being empathic to others, or keeping people happy, or being a good leader, or even listening to people. I care more about being creative and skilled than I do about the opinions of others! But hey, at least I do it all because I want to help (ie. sincere at heart)! :)

Anyway, this list also suggests I'd feel pretty hurt by comments like these below. And yes, I've received comments like these, and I have to admit that they do hurt a lot (or I flat out ignore the person from then onwards):

"You're not compassionate" (yeah, I hear this sometimes)
"You produce nothing really new" (can get this at work)
"You have pretty average ability" (my greatest fear in life)
"You need to think deeper" (common religious defense)
"You're not waiting for me" (just tell me to wait?)

All in all, it's a pretty interesting test. I've even made the full results available if you want to browse through and see if you want to do the same test. It does cost $12.50, so it's not one of these free/cheap tests.

PS. This test says nothing about the kinds of people I like to hang around with. As they say, opposites often attract. There are aspects of Emily's personality which I utterly treasure... in her. :) But they are virtually non-existent in me, and I honestly feel better that way. This test really just shows what makes me feel good about myself. Now go and hassle Emily to post her results. ;)

Stroller Shopping

2009-10-22T19:01:00.002-07:00

We're looking at a range of transportation options for our baby. We're going through the various strollers, frontpacks, backpacks, carseats, etc. So far we've concluded:

We will be taking public transport most of the time, or at least while we remain in Vancouver. A carseat would be a luxury that we might use if we catch a taxi. Not really a necessity.
We would like a stroller that can fold up to something fairly compact and light. Everywhere we go, travelling or at home, we're short on space. Even when in use, a compact stroller is probably better for us. We not forced to fold up a stroller on Vancouver buses, but you don't want it to take up heaps of space either.
We'd like a stroller where the baby can lie completely flat. This is necessary for newborns. Even if we don't put a newborn in the stroller, it can be an advantage for older children who want to nap.
We'd like a stroller where the baby can face whoever is pushing it. Some studies show that having your baby facing towards you is better for their development. I don't think that either Emily or I will be staying home indefinitely so, even if the studies are wrong, it would be nice to have as much interaction as possible.
We'd like it to be cheap. Our plan right now is to find a nice stroller by shopping in stores or online, then look for good deals on Craigslist or eBay. That means looking for stroller models which are a few years older.
We're also considering non-stroller options like the little baby carriers or slings you wear on the front. Apparently the slings are better for really small babies, and the midwife looked at the two of us and said "you two are probably not going to have a really big baby". :) We looked at the baby backpack things from MEC, but I don't think we're active enough to use that.

If anyone has opinions on stroller choices, feel free to comment. :) Emily has probably done the most research so far - I'm just getting started. A few of my favourites so far (most are way too expensive to buy new, but second-hand...):

Project Edmonton

2009-10-18T20:48:00.004-07:00

House 4B

Emily and I are considering our future living options. We almost certainly will settle in Edmonton, Alberta, and we will probably be living in a house with Emily's mother, brother, and grandmother. That's where things get complicated...

First off, we all need to be living either within the same building, or extremely close to each other.

The responsibility of overseeing Timothy's care will eventually be ours, and we can only do that if we are very close by. We don't want to place Timothy in an institution or a group home, as he is sufficiently high-functioning that he learns from the people he is with. In close contact with a real home environment, he can learn social skills. In a group home environment, he can learn to bite or scream.
Emily's is a tight-knit family. While the extended family is huge, the immediate family is very small. We have always worked under the assumption that they would be living nearby, if not in the same residence. Yes, that means there will be 4 generations living under one roof.

However, we need to balance this with the need for independence:

Emily and I would like to be able live and raise our family without necessarily involving other family.
Emily's mother and grandmother can hopefully chase their own interests, without needing to worry about children and grandchildren all the time.
Timothy must be living in an independent suite, else he will not qualify for funding. While we want to oversee his care, and spend time with him, the minute-by-minute caring is beyond our abilities.

That leaves us with a rather difficult housing situation. We need a house with:

Separate space for me, Emily, and children.
Separate space for Timothy.
Separate space for Stella and Grandma Mak.
Ground-floor access for Grandma.
Three covered car parking spaces.
Adequate (but not excessive) interior space.
Support our family as the residents change over the next 40 years.
Possible to lease out parts at times when there are fewer residents.
Built on a fairly ordinary residential site, so limited in size.
Preferably under $600k, so not too extravagant

Our current idea is a bi-level or two-story house. The bottom floor consists of two independent suites with both internal and external access. The suites can be reconfigured in a couple of ways to create larger or smaller suites. It should also be possible to access Timothy's suite from the other in case of emergency or any issues. The livable floorspace should be under 1500sqft per floor, as anything larger starts to turn into a monster.

Being the geeks that we are, we've started using "The Sims 2" to consider house designs. :) By correlating Sims objects to real-world ones, I estimate that each square is about 3 feet by 3 feet in size, so we can even get a rough estimate of square footage.

The ground floor is obviously the most complex and where we've put most of our effort. We've just finished and uploaded our best design so far in a Picasa Web Album. Take a look, and see if you can maybe design anything better. This design is about 2500-2700sqft. :)

Perceiving Depth And Other Things

2009-07-26T20:38:00.005-07:00

I perceive the world by using my own "mental model". Everyone does this, it's nothing special, but each model is different. For example, I know that my default mental model supports object relationships (eg. the chair is on the floor), body language (eg. the person is standing defensively), implications of decisions, etc. Most of the things I need to be able to function in my daily life.

However, this mental model does not actually include physical "space" or "depth". That information is discarded. I know that the chair is behind the desk, but that is all. I would have to look at the room again to tell you how big of a gap there is between the chair and the desk.

I've noticed this in the past, but noticed it much more on our recent trip. Emily was driving and so I had ample time to experiment with a few different mental models. For example, my normal mental model allows me to estimate the time until we pass an oncoming car. I can tell that a forest is densely packed with trees or not. I can tell when we are driving too quickly around a corner because I push too hard against the seat.

But with a bit of focus, I can switch to a mental model purely in terms of space. When using that model, I can tell you the number of car lengths between us and the surrounding cars. I can estimate the ratio between tree thickness and tree spacing - much greater physical detail than I normally work with. And I will think more about the tire grip on each corner, rather than the force I feel in my chair. It's a more accurate mental model of the physical world.

I feel this is something I should experiment with in the future. At the very least, it enhances certain physical experiences (eg. I can really feel the speed and turns of a rollercoaster, instead of just noting the time it takes to complete a loop or roll).

It may even help with my memory. I tend to find that "irrelevant" details are excluded from my default mental model, and so they are never included in my memory. I can notice that someone is upset or hurt, or needs help with something... but their name seems to be irrelevant. With a bit of effort, I might be able to change my mental model to accommodate this "irrelevant" information.

Of course, no single mental model will work in all situations. The "space" mental model does not help me determine a person's mood. I can tell you the length of their forearm in comparison to their thigh, and that their arms are currently across their chest with no space in between. However, the "space" mental model does not tell me that this is a defensive posture and that the person may be upset with something...

Wedding Countdown

2009-07-11T06:37:00.004-07:00

Emily and I are now in Edmonton to do final preparations. I have to admit, the reality of "our wedding" has just hit me, and I'm getting so excited I'm feeling sick. My stomach has felt unsettled since Thursday night when we were packing all the stuff we'll need from Vancouver. Right now, my only hope is that I can stay grounded enough to help Emily this week, and to not scream "woot!" right after the vows. :)

Sometimes I imagine what it will be like to see Emily, in her dress, coming down the aisle. But I don't think I can possible describe how I feel. The best description is probably just "YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES!!!!!!". I think I'll want to freeze everything right in that instance and just enjoy it forever. :D

P.S. Listen really closely to the song when she walks down the aisle. It's a secret for now, so if you know it, don't tell anyone. :P If she's not running down the aisle, the song should repeat twice so you'll have time to listen to it. We think it's absolutely perfect.

Mah Jongg

2009-06-17T08:25:00.001-07:00

When I was growing up, my friend and I used to play with a mah-jongg set. From what I remember, Dad had bought it while travelling. We never knew how to play real Mahjongg, but we could play always Mahjongg Solitaire.

Fast forward to now. My parents went on a trip to China and bought me a small, traditional Mahjongg set. I'd never opened it, but when Emily's Poh-poh (grandmother) visited, we pulled it out and learned how to play.

Despite all the strange concepts like "breaking the wall" and "poong", Mahjongg is not that different from a regular game of cards. Here's a quick mapping from Mahjongg to cards:

The deck of 144 tiles can be split into three groups...

There are 3 suits ("stones", "bamboo", and "characters"). Each suit runs from 1 through 9. There are 4 complete copies of each suit, giving a total of 108 regular tiles.
There are 7 specials ("north", "south", "east", "west", "red", "green" and "white"). Again there are 4 copies of each special tile, giving a total of 28 special tiles.
Finally, there are 8 useless tiles (these have varying depictions of flowers, a cat, a man, etc). These serve almost no purpose whatsoever, but do have some impact on your final score. If you're scoring...

Shuffling and cutting the deck...

Take all the tiles and flip them over so their faces are down. Swirl them around on the table. Make as much noise as you can. No idea why, but it's fun. :)
Without flipping the tiles over, start building 4 "walls". Each wall should be 2 tiles high and 18 tiles wide.
Someone rolls a dice. The number on the dice determines where the wall will be "broken". This is just the same as cutting a deck of cards.
Deal out tiles to each player. Each player takes a group of 4 tiles out of the breach in the wall. This is repeated 3 times, so everyone has 12 tiles. Then the person who rolled the dice takes 2 more tiles, and everyone else takes 1.

Basic play...

The person who has 14 tiles starts the game. They throw one of their tiles into the middle, face up. Play than proceeds to the next player on their right.
Each player's turn is basically making a choice. They can take a fresh tile from the breach in the wall (just like taking another card from the deck), or they pick up the scrap tile that was just thrown out (called chowing, or eating).
The goal is to organise your hand into 4 groups of three, and 1 pair. A "group of three" is either a straight of matching suit, or any three identical tiles. A pair is just a pair of identical tiles.
If you fail to achieve the goal in your turn, you must throw out a tile into the middle and play proceeds to the next player on your right.

Then it gets weird...

Immediately after a player throws a tile into the middle, there is a brief game of 'snap' or 'poong'.
Any player who can use that tile to form a group of three identical tiles can cry "poong!" and grab the tile. They then form their group of three, and lie them down face-up on the table to prove they weren't lying. Assuming they haven't completed their hand yet, they must then throw out a tile in the middle and play proceeds to the next player on their right.
In some obscure cases, there can be two people calling "poong!" at the same time. If one of those players can use the tile to complete their hand, then they get that tile. If both players can use the tile to complete their hand (yes, it can happen), then it is given to the one who's turn it would have been soonest.

Strategy...

It is fairly easy to get most of the way to the goal. Simple chowing or taking from the wall will do this. The trick is to structure your hand to maximise the chance of 'poong' at the end of the game. Most games are won with a final poong...
Pairs are important. You can't poong to form a straight, only triples! If you have a few pairs in your hand, you just have to wait for any of those tiles to appear and you can call poong...
Be prepared to throw out things you were working on. If you have "1 bamboo" and "2 bamboo", and most of the "3 bamboo" tiles are already discarded in the middle, you need to strongly consider getting rid of those tiles. The odds of you finding the last remaining "3 bamboo" tile is pretty small...

Anyway, that's it. :) I'll probably get abused by Mah Jongg experts, but this should explain most of it. Whenever we have visitors, I think we'll have to pull this out. :)

Self-Isolating

2009-06-14T09:01:00.003-07:00

Something I've noticed over the years, and again more recently, is that my interests and my way of thinking are a bit odd. In social situations, I can rarely find common ground with other people. For example:

Someone might want to discuss whether the city should install traffic lights at a certain intersection. I'm only interested in the meta-question: what is the best rule-set for determining where traffic lights should go, and what pattern they should use? Does anyone else really want to spend 15 minutes discussing traffic flows?
Given my Australian background, people expect me to have an interest in rugby, cricket, and drinking beer. I'm expected to know the rules for AFL. I don't. I have an interest in flying stunt kites and drinking Jones soda.
I find it relaxing to develop software. When I get stressed, I turn on the computer and start coding. Even many of my workmates find this odd, and it probably is.
I attend a Christian church, and a Christian "small group", yet I am adamantly not Christian. I struggle to find anyone else who understands this.
I get frustrated by TV and books that leave the audience in suspense. I'll read the synopsis from Wikipedia, understand the point the writer was trying to make, and then stop.
On most Saturday nights I go for a social swim, but there are very few people in my age group or who are at the same point in life. Why am I there? I don't even know.

Maybe I've got it all wrong... but a lot of what I do and think seems to set me apart from the people around me, or at least is different from their expectations. I don't try to be odd (yes, I've known others who try to be eccentric, try to be different). I know that I want to be part of a group, but I struggle to find somewhere that would welcome me and where I really fit.

Anyway, this is just a question I'm asking myself. What should I be doing differently? What should I change so that I'm not self-isolating? Should I change at all?

Thesis Progress

2009-06-08T23:03:00.003-07:00

We've been very busy here in Vancouver. Wedding preparations, moving stuff, building stuff, meeting people, inspecting houses (more on that later). Work has also been very busy with some pretty neat developments, though still light on customers. In general, I've been a pretty happy camel.

But today I was reminded about my thesis work, and it felt like the last straw. My mood went from "decent" straight to "crap". The thesis is a rather large chunk of work, and I'm really not looking forward to doing any of it. Still, I got home and got into it.

I've prepared a long email for one of my reviewers, asking questions and checking some details. I will need to edit it tomorrow before sending; I don't want my mood seeping through into the email. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day so I can edit it with a clear head. I'm hoping to get a quick response, and avoid doing a whole heap of work in the process. :)

In other news, I've been playing Mah Jongg while Stella and Grandma Mak are visiting. I'm picking up some random Chinese words, like "miao miao" (cat) and "shee-la" (you lose!). I'm also winning more often than I should be. ;) Mah Jongg is all about guess-timating probabilities, and I'm using that to my advantage. One day I'll sit down and work out whether the 5-valued tiles are really the best ones to have...

Anyway, off to bed. We've got a lot of Australian wedding invites to send out in the next few days. We'll see whether they get done tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after... Or whether the thesis "poongs" my time away...

Thesis Results Are In

2009-05-21T08:05:00.004-07:00

... and I am required to resubmit the thesis in revised form for examination after a suitable period of study and/or research.

I can't say that I'm particularly surprised, but it is also a pain. Technically, all the original work was fine. However, there are insufficient comparisons to existing algorithms. Specifically, the reviewers want to see CPU time results, and want comparisons to backtracking algorithms that use variable reordering. My thesis only includes algorithms and comparisons that were state-of-the-art when I wrote it...

On the plus side, I'm not getting the worst possible assessment. Here is the list of possible assessments I could have received (I got the 3rd assessment from one reviewer, and the 5th one from the other):

Acceptable, no changes.
Minor revisions, checked by head of postgrad studies.
Major revisions, checked by head of postgrad studies.
Major revisions, checked by examiners.
Major revisions, re-review by examiners.
Oral examination to check you know your stuff.
Accepted, for Masters.
Revise and resubmit, for Masters.
Fail.

Now I just need to decide on a time for me to restart thesis work. As I have to reimplement a bunch of algorithms, I think I might port all development over to Java and run them on Emily's beast of a computer. :)

Update: Trying to list out the positives... They didn't criticise the rather "unique" approach of my literature review. (I'd been having nightmares that they'd toss the thesis out for that chapter.) They appreciated the original research component. They liked the intuitive explanations. The hypertree decomposition work wasn't integrated into the thesis, but only small changes are required. All I need to do is write up a few more algorithms and run a new round of experiments. My algorithm doesn't even have to be better than the other algorithms. I just have to compare it. All in all, things could have been a lot worse.

Mission

2009-05-18T22:55:00.007-07:00

It's been a while since I've blogged. I keep waiting for something important to break this silence. I've now found it.

I was raised to believe that we should give what we can, what is in our capacity. The people I most want to imitate are those who give out more than they keep for themselves. There are people like this throughout my family (immediate and extended), Emily's family, and some I know abroad. Jane and Daniel Toole have been especial inspirations for me. They've been living in Ethiopia for a while now, with their own children, doing what they can to help the kids there. I barely dare to read their emails as I must contrast my life with theirs.

There are common religious teachings like "I have been filled up so that I can be emptied again". Or this all-time favourite of mine from Anthony de Mello:

A man walking through the forest saw a fox that had lost its legs and wondered how it lived. Then he saw a tiger come with game in its mouth. The tiger had his fill and left the rest for the fox.

The next day too God sent, the tiger to feed the fox. The man began to wonder at God’s greatness and thought. “I too shall lie in a corner trusting the Lord to give me all I need.

He did this for a month, and was almost at death’s door when he heard a Voice that said, “O you who are on the path of error, open your eyes to the Truth! Imitate the tiger not the fox.”

To be clear, I don't believe in "responsibilities" or "directions" passed to us by God. Not at all. But I still believe that I should give what is in my capacity. Have I done this? Hell no. I do give... but there is still a large gap between "what I give" and "what I can easily give". I am not the fox, but I feel I am just a shadow of the tiger.

I have wrestled with the question: should I go abroad myself, or should I try to fund others? I try to have money spare for good causes. If I go abroad myself, to volunteer in places which need help, I would not have that money spare. And what am I able to do anyway? I have occasional wrist and back pain. I burn easily. I've used computers all my life. What use could I be?

We will find out. Before I reach 31 years old, Emily and I are planning to go on a few missions trips. Preferably something not associated with the church. We will try something short first - a 2-4 week post offering assistance wherever. After that, we will try something longer - a 3-6 month post trying to do something more.

Whatever we do, it must be completed before we start having children of our own. I know Jane and Daniel had the strength to raise their children abroad, but I know I do not have that strength. And I expect we will start managing Timothy's care in a few years, and our first priority is to him.

This is an important decision for me. Not something I take lightly. But something I feel I need to do.

Mario Kart Has Windmills

2009-04-11T20:31:00.004-07:00

We're in Edmonton at the moment, making various pre-wedding preparations. It's also a chance to spend time with Timothy (he's my best man, by the way :).

We recently purchased a copy of Mario Kart for the Wii and brought it with us. He's enjoyed driving games in the past and we wanted to see if he would enjoy this one. Turns out that he can drive reasonably well until one specific point in the track. The point with a windmill...

Timothy has a fascination with things that spin, and immediately spotted this windmill off the side of the Moo Moo Meadows track. He refuses to drive past, and keeps turning his kart around to look at it. The plus side to this? It reinforces how the controls work as he cannot find the windmill without correct steering. :)

We also brought Excite Truck, another driving game. It's a lot faster than Mario Kart, and Timothy has a lot more accidents (eg. crashing into trees, falling off cliffs, etc). He's been laughing as he plays this one simply because of the animations as his truck crashes into things, flies through the air, or sinks beneath the water. We'll try with both of these games tomorrow. :)

Winter Is Over

2009-04-05T18:33:00.003-07:00

Vancouver's winter is finally over, and I finally feel like blogging again.

First off, Emily has been doing some awesome work on the wedding front. Most of the Canadian invites have been made, and we now need to start on the Australia invites. We've also started a new blog to document the wedding details. The address is emphinity.blogspot.com, and it should have a bit more content by the time the invites arrive in mailboxes. We may end up reusing that blog for "family" stuff too, especially once we have kids and such. No, there's no children on the way yet, but there certainly will be eventually. :)

Emily's Grandma (Mak side of the family) has been visiting Vancouver for almost 3 weeks now. She's here to see the cherry blossoms and enjoy our weather. As I type this blog, she's frying up dinner in the kitchen - probably onions because my eyes are watering.

The three of us have been living at my apartment and it's been surprisingly good fun. Emily and I have learned how to play Mah Jongg (just the basics, not the complicated scoring mechanism), and we play it every few nights.

We've also rearranged my apartment in preparation for when Emily eventually moves in. The living area is now almost entirely open space, with just some vertical glass shelving on the walls, and a sofa/futon in one corner. We've hosted a couple of "small group" sessions here. That was the first really large gathering at my apartment since... well... ever. I'm not sure how to feel about that... :)

Anyway, sounds like dinner is almost ready. I need to wake Emily and see what I can help with.

Wordle Picture

2009-02-16T16:18:00.004-08:00

This is the result of applying Wordle to my blog. I imagine that the topics will change overtime. I need to post some more stuff about snowboarding, for example. :)

Update: The results of applying to Emily's blog, and to Timothy's blog. See if you can pick which belongs to who.

Small Church Groups

2009-02-04T22:05:00.003-08:00

Tenth Alliance Church has become a very good spiritual 'anchor' for us. Emily and I attend the second service almost every Sunday morning. At lunch, we will often critically analyse the sermon, checking for internal consistency and trying to better grasp it's meaning. As a deist I naturally emphasis logic and rational thinking, so I really enjoy these discussions. I feel that they can only strengthen Emily in her faith.

We have also joined a 'small group' as part of the church. A 'small group' is a collection of similarly-minded (ie. Christian) people who get together, once a week, to discuss issues of faith. Some small groups focus on 'worship', but thankfully our group's focus is on improved understanding of Christian faith and teachings.

We met for the first time last night. There were about 10 people in total, and we spent 2 hours discussing some surprisingly deep questions about faith. I heard a lot of very good arguments and some surprising points-of-view from everyone.

That said, Emily and I had to be careful to not dominate the discussion! We've spent a lot of time discussing 'faith', so our (sometimes opposing!) answers came to us very easily. There were some topics that I had to tiptoe around, such as whether non-Christians would go to heaven. Emily, of course, did not need to tiptoe and dove straight in. :)

At the end of the 2 hours, I spoke to the group and revealed that I was not in fact a Christian. I am primarily there to (a) stay in touch with Emily's faith and (b) to support Emily's journey by critically analysing and helping her reach conclusions. I similarly hoped to simply assist the group in their discussions. Indeed, an open and communicative group may help me reach some new conclusions of my own. I asked the group if they would be willing to accept my participation, and thankfully they all said yes.

We'll be committing to the group for Tuesday nights for the next 3 months. Small groups can be difficult sometimes, because they are much more intimate than a regular church setting. That said, I was very impressed with the people I met last night, and have a feeling this will be very good for Emily, and possibly for me. :)

P.S. I am very stuck in my deism. For those hoping that this experience will encourage me to become Christian, I am sorry but I will disappoint. ;)

Magic Kingdom

2009-01-26T19:32:00.021-08:00

For Emily and I, the Magic Kingdom was just a (slightly poorer) clone of DisneyLand in California. But for Timothy, the Magic Kingdom was probably the highlight of the trip. There were far more 'safe' rides in this park than any other. There was also a large number of parades, shows, fireworks, and such. I'll try to describe some of the highlights:

Cars

We have been training Timothy to drive on the Wii. We even have a few steering wheel adapters for the Wii remote to make it more accessible. The local 'speedway' was an obvious ride choice.

The 'speedway' is very simple. Each car is an underpowered go-kart with oversized spring bumpers, and is constrained by a single metal rail underneath. The rail prevents you from leaving your assigned lane, but you can still steer left/right by about half-a-metre. Collisions with the car in front are discouraged, but I managed to give Emily a small 'tap' from behind almost every time. :)

If you weren't careful you would start bouncing left-right-left-right off the rail under the car. It was actually quite a challenge to drive without ever touching that rail. Timothy was actually very good at driving and his passengers always enjoyed a smooth ride. The same cannot be said for some other drivers in our group. :)

I've uploaded a number of photos of Timothy driving, along with all the other rides, so take a look. :)

Dum-Dum-Jiun

As a general rule, anything that spun around ("dum-dum-jiun" in Cantonese) was going to be an easy choice for Tim. We only had "Red Fish Blue Fish" at Universal Studios, but were spoiled for choice at Magic Kingdom with both the Dumbo ride and Aladdin's Flying Carpet. They are the same basic concept; you sit side-by-side and use joysticks to tilt, raise, or lower your carriage while the machine spins around. In the case of Aladdin's Flying Carpets, large camel statues would occasionally spit water at you. On a hot day it was just perfect.

Just a few metres away was the classic horse carousel, ensuring that Timothy never had to go too far to find another ride. At times he became known on-sight to the staff, simply because he was on these rides so often. A number of times we would ride as a whole group, but more often we would let Timothy ride on his own or with a partner. He even became quite good at mounting the horse, a rather difficult task even for me.

Now, the Orbiter ride is a special kind of dum-dum-jiun. It is placed 3 stories up in the air, spins a lot faster, and I believe goes much higher than similar rides. It's more than enough to trigger a fear of heights, if you have such a thing... Watching from the ground, Emily and I couldn't work out whether Timothy was happy or scared. Perhaps it was both. Whatever his initial impressions, Emily and Tim were more than happy to ride it again and again. :)

Tea Cups

What can I say? "You shall have no other ride before this one"? In general, our pattern was "go to ride A, go to tea cups, go to ride B, go to tea cups, ...". I've never seen Timothy so happy as he was on this one ride. And he rode it so many times...

If Emily and I ever needed to run off to a larger ride, we would leave Timothy and Stella at the tea cups because we knew he would not tire of it. During one of these times, a dog turned up while Timothy had been waiting for his turn. Now, Timothy has a mortal fear of dogs; as a rule, he will tense at the sight of a dog, and will run if it comes anywhere near him. Tea Cups is apparently an exception to this rule. Seemingly nothing will discourage Tim from this ride. And there was nothing he enjoyed more. Check out the video on the right for proof. :D

Parades

I think we managed to see every parade there was. My favourite parade, though we didn't get very close to it, would have to be the Block Party. While most of the parades are simply floats driving past, this one has a "party on wheels" atmosphere. The floats stop at regular intervals, do a show and dance, some audience interaction, and then continue on. If you really want to enjoy a parade, make sure you see this one. Mind you, if you like Eeyore like I do, you want to see the others too.

I've put a sample of parade photos up online. I even have a special album for the Karabar High School Marching Band (yes, from Queanbeyan Australia, no they weren't lost). If you'd like a link, send me an email. :)

Fireworks

We spent much of December 30th camped in the castle courtyard watching parades, but also to watch the nightly fireworks. As a bonus (planned by mastermind Emily well in advance) we also got to see the the rehearsal for the incredible New Years Eve fireworks show. As the technicians run the fireworks every night, they now have their shows down to a science. The worst bit for me was just trying to take a photo that would do it justice! I've put the good photos up as an album.

DisneyCloned

Unfortunately, the majority of Magic Kingdom is simply a clone of DisneyLand in California. Emily and I had already ridden most of the rides and, to be honest, the DisneyLand versions are better despite their age.

For example, Space Mountain at DisneyLand is an awesome, pitch black, indoor roller-coaster. At the Magic Kingdom, the whole room was faintly lit and the ride itself has been reduced to a painful mouse-trap design. At DisneyLand we rode Space Mountain at least three times, and I got a rush every time. At Magic Kingdom we rode it once, I was bored, and wanted to get back to tea cups. Other rides suffered similarly. While Magic Kingdom is great of itself, it is merely a reflection of DisneyLand.

Animal Kingdom

2009-01-25T00:04:00.012-08:00

Animal Kingdom was a huge surprise for us. So many people tell us "you could spend half-a-day maximum", and I'm quite sure some people could do it all in half-a-day. We spent the whole day and loved it.

Real Live Animals

Animal Kingdom is the largest Disney theme park, but only because it contains a large African-themed wildlife zone. Our first ride of the day was on an open 'safari' truck to see the animals. I happen to love seeing animals of all types, so this was a real treat for me. At one point a rhinoceraus was actually walking in front of our truck, halting the ride until it moved on. At other times we could clearly see elephants, giraffes, and all manner of horned beasts. As we arrived at the park relatively early in the morning, we were able to take the safari trip twice!

Much of Animal Kingdom is devoted to walking trails and animal exhibits. There are a number of aviaries, habitats for tigers and gorillas, climbing areas for monkeys, etc. There was a whole area devoted to bats, though I was the only one of our group who actually went to see them. A number of people commented on how disgusting the bats were, but I found them quite cute.

I've posted the best of the animal photos as an album on Picasa.

Mythical Creatures

Not everything in Animal Kingdom is related to real animals though. For example, Disney has created a very cool yeti-themed roller coaster. Expedition Everest is basically a train ride up and through the mountains, sabotaged by yetis. There is a lot of very fast backwards and forwards action and was a huge amount of fun. It actually ranks as one of the better roller coasters in the world, despite never going upside down!

I have also read rumours saying that more mythical-themed rides had been planned, but thanks to budget overruns they were cancelled. The Imagineers who had worked on those rides were laid off... and were then hired by Universal to build Dueling Dragons. :D

All Done

After our experience at Universal Studios we were very careful in selecting rides for Timothy. We were a bit surprised when he chose Primal Whirl - a miniature rollercoaster ride that spins as it goes - but he seemed very confident. On the first corner our car began spinning, Timothy was thrown against me, and he was quite happy. On the second corner I was thrown against him... and he wasn't too happy with that. I had to wrap my arm around him to try and avoid further impacts.

Once we reached the top of the first hill Timothy was already saying "all done"; a code phrase that means he is finished and wants to do something else. Of course, the ride wasn't "all done" with us yet. We bolstered him by clapping and whooping after every spin or drop, attempting to convince him this was 'fun'. I honestly think he enjoyed it, but when the ride ended he repeated again "all done, all done" and quickly got out. It was incredibly cute, but more importantly we had now identified an upper-bound on the rides Timothy would enjoy. :)

Universal Studios

2009-01-24T15:13:00.012-08:00

Last year we flew to Australia for a nice relaxed summer Christmas with my famiy. This year we went to Universal Studios and Disney World with Emily's family. This was a fantastic treat for everyone involved. :)

Now, the Christmas/NYE holidays is the busiest period of the year for the Orlando theme parks. To avoid the crowds, we spent December 26 - 28 at Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure (two parks run by the same company). It was such a huge trip I will have to talk about Disney World in a later post:

First Times

Timothy likes to play Elebits at home on the Wii. We figured that he would enjoy the "Men In Black Alien Attack" ride. He seemed to have mixed feelings about the ride, probably because there was so much happening. Anyway, our first ride through resulted in this awesome photo. Notice who still has her wits about her and is shooting the monster in front of us... :) We now have this as a print and I need to get it properly framed.

We also rode The Simpsons ride, the Jurassic Park ride, a Jaws-themed river cruise, and plenty of others. Few of them were worth repeating, and unfortunately they started scaring Timothy. By the third day Timothy would refuse to get on a ride that he couldn't first see for himself.

We established some new rules: we would take Timothy on rides that (a) he could see for himself and (b) he would point at and say 'yes'. Using these rules meant we rode much 'safer' rides like the merry-go-round and the "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish" ride in Seuss Land. We still did manage to get him on a small kids roller coaster twice, but at least he would trust us, and he knew that he had control over what rides he went on. This strategy would work wonderfully in Disney World, though with some amusing results.

Dueling Dragons

We had to spend some time on rides that Emily and I would enjoy, and that led us to Dueling Dragons. I have never been on a roller-coaster that I loved so much, both for the feeling of safety and the sheer exhilaration of the ride. You are always pushed backwards or downwards into your seat thanks to the sheer number of loops and corkscrews. It is so smooth that your head never touches the side of the headrest, and you almost never need the seat restraints.

It is named 'Dueling Dragons' because it is actually two interlocking rollercoasters representing a Fire Dragon and an Ice Dragon. The 'dragons' launch together and are timed so that there are several near-misses, including a simultaneous inverted loop which brings your feet within a metre of the other people. Watching vides of the ride, I think you'll agree that Dueling Dragons is far superior to the The Incredible Hulk coaster at the same theme park.

In total, we rode Dueling Dragons six times (three times on each dragon). Most of that occured in just one night (I insisted we come back after one of our Disney World days :). We arrived just when most people were leaving the park and so we could ride multiple times very quickly. The first four times we rode somewhere in the middle of the dragon and I would whoop the whole time. Emily suggested that, for the last two rides, we sit the front of each dragon. On those times I didn't make a single sound; my mouth just opened and that was all I could manage. Definitely worth it. :)

Blue Man Group

Timothy loves music, and Emily was keen to take us all to see the Blue Man Group show at their permanent home next to Universal Studios. The entrance to the theatre looked too much like a ride, and so it took us a good 20-30 minutes to 'coax' Timothy inside and take his seat. I don't know what to say about the show except it was amazing. There was unfortunately a lot less music than we expected, but there was plenty of colourful showmanship, audience participation, and glowing reams of toilet paper.

I am not joking about the toilet paper either. Near the end of the show they started alternating between black lights and strobe lights, and then covered the audience in huge reams of a soft paper. The audience had to just keep pulling the paper over their heads until it reached the front of the stage. For a few seconds, Timothy was scared of these piles of 'stuff' coming over him, but he very quickly got the idea and absolutely loved it. I've included some photos here that I've pulled from other sites.

That's all I can say about Universal Studios. At least, all I can say in one blog. I'll have to do a couple of posts about Disney World next. :)

Working With Timothy

2009-01-24T13:25:00.002-08:00

Imagine you're walking through a swinging door and a stranger is following behind you. You would probably pause for a second and hold the door until the stranger can reach it. If that person has a stroller, you might even hold it until they pass through. If they are in a wheelchair, you would almost certainly hold the door. And you would expect a nod and a maybe a "thank you".

In most such situations, we know how to offer assistance, we know how to react, and we know what to expect in response. But if you were walking with someone like Timothy it's sometimes unclear what to do. Should you hold it until he walks through? Hold it open long enough for him to reach it? What do you do if he grabs your arm when walking through? If he stops halfway through the door, is it because he is waiting for you to move? Or because he just walks slowly?

One of the biggest impediments for new people (like myself) when interacting with a mentally disabled person is "the unknown". We just don't know the rules of interaction. We can't tell when they are bored or interested. We don't know if they are running in the mall because they are scared, or because they like Christmas lights, or because they desperately need the toilet. We don't know whether we should stop him/her from running, or just keep up until they stop. We don't know if talking will help or confuse them. Without any past experience to aid us, our mind conjures up unfounded ideas like "possibly violent". The truth is, a young child will do more in a few minutes than someone like Timothy would ever do in his life.

Timothy's long-term care hinges on his ability to function in a social setting. Fears of "the unknown" stop people from interacting with him, and this in turn reduces his chance of learning socially acceptable behaviours.

The following is a list of things I've noted from my time with Timothy. I think it is better to tell people of this list, and hope more people become willing interact with him:

Timothy does have problem solving skills. He just needs more time.

If he has an object in each hand and needs to operate something (eg. light switch), he can slowly juggle until both objects are in one hand.
If the door has a separate deadlock, he will try flipping the lock until he can open the door. He might even manage a spring-loaded deadlock, but we've never tried.
He might look around for assistance, but if none is offered he will keep trying.

Timothy can understand what you want, as long as it is made clear.

If you hold out a bag and say "Timothy, I need you to carry this for me." he will likely take the bag and hold it for you.
If he sits in the middle of a bench and you say "Tim, I'd like to sit down. Please move all the way to the end." he will likely move over.
Your body language doesn't need to be exaggerated, but should match what you are saying. If you say "Timothy, please sit on that bench over there." without gesturing at the bench or looking at Timothy, he probably won't understand what you want.

Timothy does enjoy human contact just like the rest of us.

I once saw an Aunt walk up behind Timothy, cover his eyes from behind, and say something. Timothy immediately had a big smile on his face and turned around to see who it was.
If you touch Timothy's nose or tap him on the forehead, he will likely not be very happy. Then again, would you? :)
Timothy will give and receive kisses on the cheek from people he knows and likes. At DisneyWorld he was very happy to give Stella and Emily kisses. He had a shy and awkward smile when it was my turn for a kiss though. :)
Timothy likes to play games with others. He will imitate you if you take the time to show him. At DisneyWorld we went swimming and he quickly wanted to get out of the pool. However, if we started diving to collect rocks from the bottom of the pool, he would join in and have a great time.

Timothy likes certain music, certain textures, and anything that spins or lights up.

Timothy likes a broad range of musical styles. "Silent Night" is a favourite, but didgeridoo music is popular too. He can become very agitated by music videos so we try to avoid those.
Timothy might reach out to touch interesting textures, particularly on clothes. Funnily, he might even say "mine" as he is touching the print on your shirt. This is because everyone responds with "Timothy! That is mine! Don't touch!". :)
Timothy will often look for fans in the area. I believe he knows the word "fan" in two languages! They capture his attention, even if they're not spinning. He also likes flashing Christmas lights.

Most importantly, Timothy needs to spend time with other people. The more experience he has of social situations, the better his life will be. Simply having people approach him, talk with him, and interact with him is incredibly valuable.

And this list I've created and can never include the things we don't know. New experiences can always lead to great things for Timothy. For example, when we went camping we found that Timothy really enjoyed walking up on rocks. Perhaps it is the simple challenge of it? When we went to DisneyWorld I brought my old digital camera for him to use. He has started pointing the camera at things he likes, but I'm not sure whether he understands that he can keep the photos he takes.

I want to take him to play billiards or bowling sometime. I don't think he's ever seen it before. He won't play very well. Should that matter at all? Timothy derives pleasure from simply doing things, especially when there are other people doing it too. That is something very special, and worth experiencing.

First Time Snow Boarding

2009-01-18T08:49:00.004-08:00

Emily and I just came back from our first day of snow boarding. Every single muscle in my body is aching, but I got away with no bruises. Emily has the inverse situation - no muscle aches but got bruises on her knees and butt.

We booked ourselves in for snowboarding lessons at the start of the day. Without those lessons, we would have come back very unhappy and with many more injuries. It is ridiculously easy to stack it (Aussie slang, see below) when riding a snowboard, but the lessons ensure you get down the slopes safely.

Mind you, there were plenty of falls in the lessons and later on during the day. They were just significantly less painful than they could have been. :) During the lessons I discovered that, when falling on to your butt, you should immediately roll on to your back like you are a ball. This reduces butt-impact significantly, and is far better than sticking your hands out behind you. I managed to come away from the day with my wrists and knees intact - quite an achievement considering the horror stories I'd been hearing. :P

The weather on Grouse Mountain was absolutely beautiful and surreal. We've had permanent fog in the downtown area for 4 days, so it's been cold and sunless for a while. Grouse Mountain was sunny and 17c! Some people were skiing or boarding in just pants and shirt. I was rubbing snow on my face and hands to cool down. The odd weather is called a "temperature inversion", and the fog in downtown will remain until it goes away.

The views from the slope are something very special. Many times I'd be partway down the slope, stop my board and just sit down to look at it. Visibility was unlimited and I think we could see at least 2 states south into the USA. At the base of the mountain was "cloud city" - enormous stretches of fog with just a few highrises and hills poking out of it. At nighttime we were still on slopes and you could see large patches of lights from the city glowing through the fog. I wish I had a camera with me, but I doubt a photo could do it justice. It was like sitting on the edge of the earth and looking down into the stars and space. Absolutely incredible.

Getting to Grouse Mountain is pretty easy; 30 minutes on the local bus network, and 30 minutes to wait for the tram ride to the mountain top. We have season passes for the tram ride, and get discounts for bringing guests. We'll be looking to buy our own snowboards and get up to the slopes again soon. :)

P.S. To "stack" is Aussie slang for crashing and/or falling off something accidentally or falling down. Usually when operating a vehicle. You can even see the old stackhat helmets at the PowerHouse Museum website.

Vancouver is Dark City

2009-01-07T07:37:00.004-08:00

I've just gotten out of bed, had a shower, its 7.30am, and it's dark. Really dark. It's like "there will be no dawn for men" dark.

In the winter, Vancouver is a combination of snow, rain, thick horizon-spanning clouds, late sunrise and early sunset. To make it worse, we just came back from DisneyWorld in Florida where it was 20+ and sunny every day. I'm half-tempted to print some vacation photos and post them over my windows... ;)

Moving Forwards Together

2008-11-30T09:19:00.009-08:00

Right now, I'm sitting in my pyjamas and wearing my 'engagement ring'. If you want to be correct it's a 'wedding band', but I like it, I'm wearing it now, and I really like that I'm wearing it now. I'm in a loving relationship and I want to be able to show that off. :)

For those who are interested, Emily's latest blog entry has more details about the rings and the actual proposal. :) I'm eating the leftover fruits and chocolates for breakfast. I need to get her over to my apartment again to eat some more. :)

I did want to add something to Emily's blog. It's a cute little story from the night, and I think it describes how we are going to move forwards together...

On the night of the proposal we went to a very nice restaurant, had dinner and ordered a glass of white wine. Everything was ordered to share, including the single glass of wine. I think this confused our waiters, but that's just the way that we like to do things. :)

But you know what? After trying the wine, neither of us really wanted to drink the stuff. We would both shudder after taking a sip, and would quickly drink or eat something else to cover up. Emily summed it up as "we are only drinking wine because that's what big people do".

We would have preferred a hot chocolate with caramel drizzle, or an ice-cream float, or a fruity lemonade. And in future, that's what we'll be ordering. Even if we have to order from the kid's menu. :D It's the same as how our favourite store is Toys'R'Us, not The Bay or Sears. We know what we like, and it's often not the same as what "big people" like. :)

As of today, I am looking forward to a life of hot chocolates, fruity lemonades, DDR gaming, and playing Mario Kart DS between rounds at all-you-can-eat sushi restaurants. I am looking forward to having kids and sharing with them the kinds of things we enjoy. I can't imagine a better life than that. But most of all, I am looking forward to sharing it all with Emily.

=:)

P.S. In Australia, the closest approximation to The Bay would be David Jones, and to Sears would by Myers. And an ice-cream float is known as a "spider", as if we don't have enough already. What's the bet that there was a spider nearby when an Aussie first dropped ice-cream into soft drink?

On Deism

2008-11-11T14:49:00.004-08:00

I was raised as a Christian (Anglican), but I now call myself a deist. I know of some people who are concerned by this, so I figured I would try to describe what it means to be a deist. First, what is deism?

'Deism' is a belief in God based on reason (natural revelation), and specifically not on recorded scripture or events (special revelation).
A 'deist' believes in God, and believes that reason on its own can provide sufficient access to religious truths.

Deism differs from other religions primarily by its rejection of scripture. For example, a 'deist church' would be a contradiction because it would have no scripture to espouse! With no organisation and no directives, deists will generally not evangelise their beliefs. Indeed, a newly-found deist may have never known other deists; they simply apply their own reasoning and reached the same core conclusions as those before them.

Despite the ad-hoc nature of deism, almost all deists would agree with the following statements:

God instigated reality
God does not interfere with reality
We should give thanks to God
We should not not ask anything of God

Of course, the ad-hoc nature of deism ensures that each deist will have beliefs different from their peers. For example, one belief of mine not supported by all other deists is:

I should assist others in the enjoyment of their lives, just as I try to enjoy my own.

The reasoning here is simple: Life has obviously been provided to all of us, and is rooted in the same cause (ie. God). If I am to treasure my own life and give thanks to God, then I should presumably also treasure the lives of others. Therefore I should do what I can to improve the lives of all, not just my own.

Like the majority (but not all!) deists, I also believe that questions about the afterlife are not important. I feel that many religions rely on the "afterlife" as a place of reward or punishment, and use this as a guide to moral behaviour. I choose to ignore the question of the afterlife, and trust that moral behaviour can be derived from reasoning about this life. In that way, my beliefs are more aligned with those of the deist writer Thomas Paine:

I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. I content myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the power that gave me existence is able to continue it, in any form and manner he pleases, either with or without this body; and it appears more probable to me that I shall continue to exist hereafter than that I should have had existence, as I now have, before that existence began.

Perhaps what I find most amusing about deism and Christianity is how similar the morality and behaviour they suggest. Both suggest we be thankful to God, and treat our fellows with care. However, deist beliefs seem to be less likely to raise conflict with others... I am aware that some people are concerned by my non-Christian beliefs, but as a deist I am not concerned by their Christian beliefs. It is not clear to me how to allay their concerns, but I hope that this post has helped.

Settling Down Again

2008-11-11T14:29:00.002-08:00

It's been a few weeks since the last visitor left. I think. I haven't had time to look at the calendar in a while, and the weeks just blur past. :| The main thing is that life is settling down into some kind of routine.

Pressure at work has been increasing, but still within sane limits. Others at the office are feeling greater pressure than me, and that sucks. If you're reading this from the office, just know that I'm trying to be less of a pain-in-the-arse. ;)

If you read Emily's blog, you'll already know that she and I have been getting out a lot more. We've been to Video Games Live, a UBC student symphony, and to see Missy Higgins live. We've also got a Disneyworld trip planned for the end of the year.

Now that winter's hit, we're having to spend more time indoors. We just picked up a copy of Settlers of Catan, a rather cool board game similar in principle to Monopoly. You build 'settlements' and slowly gain 'resources' from them. Those resources can be used to build more settlements, or do a variety of other things. It's very fun, though Emily and I are forced to create our own 2-player variant for now.

Emily and I have been attending hot yoga, and there's been some effects already. The good side is that my headache is gone and I feel I have more 'core' strength. I've now got lots of aches in other joints, and pain in my left hip if I stretch it more than 20 degrees outwards. I think a lot of the 'negative' effects are just the revelation of underlying problems, so I'll keep up with the yoga for now.

I'll try to post more often in the future. I have a few things to write about yet. :)

Visitors

2008-09-22T22:30:00.002-07:00

This month is the month of visitors. Emily's immediate family is coming to visit for 4 weeks. I'm looking forward to taking Tim kite flying if the weather holds up. Emily's marble run is also likely to get a work out (I will link to her marble run once she blogs about it :P ).

I've also got an important visitor coming from Australia. A friend of mine from a few years ago finished a big step in her training (she's a real medical doctor, not one of these fake computer science doctor's...). She's coming to visit for a week in the middle of October and I'm insisting on hosting her in my apartment. No hotels for visitors! Not now that my place is big enough. :)

Anyway, this means I have to get rid of my cold quick smart. Yes, I forgot to mention that I've been sick for about 3 weeks. It wasn't really noticeable to start with - just a headache that lasted for weeks on end. Only in the last few days did it flare up into a proper head cold. At least that means it's near the end. Or I am. One or the other. ;)

Chinese Yo-yos

2008-09-14T19:15:00.004-07:00

Emily spent a few hours today trying to teach me how to use a Chinese Yo-yo. She has a lot of experience, but I think we can agree that I'm not the best student. :)

Still, she persevered and managed to teach me the correct way to make it spin, and got me to the point of 'throwing' the yo-yo into the air for her to catch. We succeeded a couple of times, though mainly due to her skill at catching than my skill at throwing...

I'm hoping that she'll continue to teach me. At the very least, this should be good exercise for my arms and backs. At the worst, it is something else to do when the wind dies and the kites won't fly.

One day, we might be able to throw a pair of yo-yos to each other, without the danger of ripping skin from toes... :D

P n' E at the PNE

2008-09-01T23:28:00.012-07:00

Emily and I went to "The Fair at the PNE" on this long weekend. It's basically a smaller version of the Sydney Easter Show. Much to Emily's dismay we didn't actually go on any rides - far too expensive to justify it. We might try and go this coming weekend, when the prices drop. However, we did have a lot of other fun...

For $8 each we got these temporary airbrush tattoos. 3 days later and they're still looking good. I'm tempted to look into body spraypaints (if they exist) to have some more fun ourselves later. Of course, with winter coming, it's not like we'll have any exposed skin for 6 months anyway. :)

We also got to watch the "Toontastic" parade. It was surprisingly cool just to see all the old non-Disney comics cruising past. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough pressure to get rid of all the wrinkles in the inflatables, making them look very aged. We had to wonder: was this intentional?

Near the end of the day, we went to see the Iams Superdogs show. The Iams Superdogs are a collection of highly-trained dogs, sponsored by the Iams petfood company, that go around doing shows. I was pleasantly surprised to see the dogs really enjoying themselves. See the videos below of "Hairy Potter" getting a homerun, and another extremely well-trained dog that I forget the name of.

To end our day we went to see the Wheels of Steel motorbike stuntshow. It started at 9.30pm, and was 10 minutes of quad-bike races, 10 minutes of street-bike tricks, and then 10-minutes of dirt-bike jumps. Aside from the jumps and tricks, the best part was the pyrotechnics - it was cold out there, and every burst of flame gave us just a little bit of extra warmth! See the videos below of two of the dirt-bike tricks; Starfish Barhop and Double Grab In The Air.

Recent Keyword Activity

2008-08-26T16:24:00.002-07:00

I continue to be fascinated by how people find this blog. It's a personal blog for personal stuff, but for the last year I've allowed search engines to index it and direct random people here. Here's a sample of search queries that apparently bring people here:

illustation of pupil size
mismatched pupil size
sesame street ao
thrown off a seadoo
canadian tire rifles prices

Some make sense. For example, this blog is ranked 9th for "thrown off a seadoo". And I'm fully expecting my eyeballs to end up in a medical textbook. But rifle prices at Canadian Tire? Weird people.

Camping in Jasper

2008-08-25T21:53:00.004-07:00

This summer has seen a number of road and camping trips. Emily and I have camped in the south of the Okanagon, and taken a day trip up to Harrison Lake. There was a trip to Seattle earlier this year, and we've just come back from Edmonton. This most recent trip was particularly special as Emily got to visit her family for the first time in 4 months, and I finally got to visit Jasper...

A few of the funnier highlights from our trip...

Emily getting a complete pat-down search from Vancouver airport security.
Stella preparing an enormous list of activities (of which we only did three).
Timothy had a lot of fun climbing over rocks on our walk to the glacier. :)
Campfire! Again! Though there was no campfire in the morning, much to the "kids" disappointment.
Constructing an enormous screen house (as big as a van!) to have our dinner in.
Eating only a fraction of the food that we brought, and yet still being stuffed.

However, these "highlights" remain secondary to the main point of our trip: to see Emily, her mum and brother spend time together. And, of course, to check out the fantastic scenery in Jasper. I've uploaded selected photos as usual, so have a look. :)

Tendonosis

2008-08-22T15:34:00.002-07:00

So I went to see a foot doctor about the pain I've been getting in my left heel. He struggled to diagnose the problem because I simply did not fit into any textbook definitions. It seems I have multiple competing issues, and that makes it harder to determine what the true problem is. He even considered Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (nasty stuff) which is a very small possibility if you are hypermobile. Luckily I have no other symptoms, and am quite sure I am EDS-free.

In the end, he believes I have tendonosis; small tears in the tendon connecting to my left ankle. The probable causes are:

Calf muscles are way too tight
The tendon was abused by a pair of shoes I bought 6 months ago
General misalignment of foot joints

He's going to schedule the creation of some orthotics for me to try and sort things out. I also need to look at getting shoes with higher heels as that will reduce the angle between my foot and my leg and so reduce the strain on my tendon. At a later stage I will have to look at stretching my calf muscles, but nothing can be done about that now. Stretching them in the short-term will just make matters worse.

Calming Down

2008-08-17T08:42:00.002-07:00

The last month or two have seen increasing stress levels for me. I've been getting teeth pain again because I spend so much time grinding them (literally). However, that seems to be coming to an end now. I finally woke up this morning and felt refreshed and relaxed. We'll see how long it lasts, but I'm trying to making changes that will reduce my stress in the long run.

For example, I know most of the stress comes from work. A common problem is that many developers are working independently - they fail to get buy-in and reviews from the other developers, and so their hard work ends up unused and wasted. This is frustrating and sad, but it's also stressful for me as I'm meant to maintain and encourage the development of a reusable codebase. I'm thinking to offer "a free lunch to anyone who writes more than 300 lines of code, and that code is used happily by 2 other developers".

I'm hoping it will change the way people write their code. They'll still perform their tasks as required, but with just a little more effort they'll score themselves a free lunch as well. Some have already started down this path by asking others for reviews, but we need to get from "asking to reviews" to "producing reusable code".

Sea-Doops: The Relationship Ultimate Test

2008-08-06T22:20:00.005-07:00

Emily and I went to Harrison Lake for our August public holiday (British Columbia Day). Most of the afternoon was spent lazing around the beach and checking out a local waterfall. We decided to end the day with a 1 hour Sea-Doo rental, riding together. The "driver" sits in front, while the "passenger" sits behind and holds onto a little strap attached to the seat for dear life.

The first 45 minutes went great. Emily was the first in control, and immediately pushed the Sea-Doo to top-speed, skipping across the lake as fast as possible. I got my turn after about 10 minutes and did much the same, though I kept braking suddenly making Emily crash into my back a number of times. Towards the end of our rental I was trying out other moves, like spinning in circles or weaving left-then-right. And that's where things came a little loose. Literally.

As she tells it:

To stay on the sea-doo, I had to lean left or right depending on which way we were turning. If I leaned the wrong way by accident, I would actually get extra swing from centripetal force and wouldn't be able to stay on properly. This got kinda tricky when P went crazy doing his little circles. He would spin one way and then, without warning, start turning in the other direction. In one of his longer circles, I was leaning in the right direction (possibly too much) and he turned in the other direction. The fact that I was leaning one way and then all of a sudden flung in the same direction I was leaning, I went *whoop* and felt myself flying. I saw the sky and thought "CRAP! HOLD BREATH NOW!" and plunge! I went straight into the icy cold water. I open my eyes and thought "light! swim that way!" Head popped out of the water, could breathe and not sink thanks to my little PFD (Personal Floating Device). I always thought they were tacky.. but boy I was glad I had mines on tight!

In the signed agreements it says "don't turn your seadoo on until all the riders are aboard." So P is sitting there waiting patiently for me to swim over to him. I attempt to swim... against the waves and make absolutely *no* progress. I give up and just float as he slowly putt putt putts the sea-doo closer to me. I try climbing on but can't without losing my flip flops so I take them off carefully and hand them to P. (I don't know why I was so scared of losing them..) Anyways, I finally clamber back on board and we slowly drive back to the dock.

So I went on this day trip thinking I wouldn't get too wet so I didn't have to worry about bringing another set of clothes... BAD idea when it's around water. After that splash, I was wet from head to toe. Everything down to the "unmentionables". Luckily, P had a (clean) set of unmentionables! Well, the bottom bit.... So I had no other choice but to suck it up and try it out.

As he tells it:

I was weaving left-then-right, and hitting the throttle at the same time. After a particular hard turn, I sensed something was wrong behind me, like the jetski was a little lighter. I glanced down to my right, and just see a thong, a leg, and a head disappearing into the water. Oops.

Emily came back to the surface thanks to her life-jacket. I killed the engine as we'd been instructed and waited for her to swim over. Unfortunately, Harrison Lake is glacier-fed so it's quite cold. She'd also just been thrown off a Sea-Doo at high speed, and was swimming against the current, so didn't seem that eager to swim the entire distance back. I powered the engine back up and slowly putted over so that (a shivering) Emily could clamber back on board.

After a few checks for injuries and shock, we started making our way back to shore. We maintained a cruising speed on our home journey; nothing excessive, and definitely no turns. The wind managed to dry Emily off a bit, which was fortunate. About halfway back she realised she'd been wearing sunglasses and they were now "lost at sea". All things considered, we're lucky there wasn't more lost! She was certainly worried about her thongs. :)

That night, we had Red Robin for dinner. My shout. We've already established that Emily likes Freckled Lemonades from there. I think there's still a bit of making up to do. :)

Positive thing from all this: Emily can now work away her raccoon tan without those sunglasses!

Okanagon Camping

2008-07-31T19:08:00.002-07:00

Emily and I went for a camping trip in the Okanagon, BC this weekend. We've uploaded a bunch of photos on Picasa already, so take a look. We also took some short videos of our tent decorations, the cute wildlife, and kite flying at Lightning Lake (not as dangerous as that sounds).

It honestly surprised me how similar the Okanagon is to home. The Okanagon is very dry, with rolling hills of brown-ish grass, spotted with wineries, horse studs, etc. The only difference is that the landscape is around 5 times taller, they have some beautiful big inland lakes, and some of the mountains are so high they have sub-alpine meadows on their side. Have a look through our photos to see them.

And a HUGE thanks to Tom from work who lent us his car. It's going to get a very good clean before he gets back from his overseas trip. :)

Back Again

2008-07-31T17:42:00.001-07:00

I forgot to mention - at the start of this month I managed to injure my back again. I was just helping a friend move a second-hand fridge - no problems until we reached a particular steep set of stairs. It initially felt like a monstrous, horrible cramp all over my left torso, then turned into sharp pain around my lower left back. That completely faded in about 3 days of rest, anti-inflammatories, ice, and light exercises.

I think this was just a good reminder to do my exercises... :\

Lost Futon, Gained Beanbag

2008-07-13T17:45:00.000-07:00

To reduce the amount of stuff Emily and her family would need to buy, we moved my futon to her new apartment. I then filled the empty space in my apartment with severely contrasting Sumo beanbags.

I deliberately chose the colours to contrast, and to take attention away from the plain grey-glass work furniture I have. They're very comfortable, particularly as a crash mat. Each bag can fit one couple together, or can be carefully arranged to give one person a rather comfy seat (as shown). Either form is perfect for watching movies. :)

LiveCD For The Win

2008-07-13T17:36:00.000-07:00

My laptop harddrive has been away for repairs, probably caused by chronic overheating in the laptop. This is now the 3rd time my laptop has successfully baked a drive. My laptop DVD drive also died many moons ago for unknown reasons. Just to make this clear, my computer currently has no internal harddrive, and no internal DVD drive. However, it does have an external DVD drive, and I do possess a Ubuntu Linux installation DVD.

Until the drive comes back (tomorrow?), I've been forced to run Ubuntu in 'live' or 'demo' mode, permanently mounted in the external DVD drive. This has resulted in my system being... less than stable. Every reboot requires a reinstall of various applications (Skype, Flash) and settings (chat clients, website passwords, etc). It's somewhat painful, but also somehow reassuring to know this can be done.

Litte Bird House

2008-07-05T17:37:00.004-07:00

I like it when wildlife comes by to visit. My sister used to have possums visit her, and we regularly had lizards visiting us in Wollongong. Now that I'm in my new apartment, I've started feeding the local birds by filling a stone "bird bath" on my back patio with seeds. More recently, I bought a little house-shaped feeder for the front patio, and hung it on the end of the hammock. So far, they seem to like it, as you can see.

I'm going to slowly get them used to the idea of me lying on the hammock while they eat. It would be nice to just watch them fly in, eat a bit, make a mess of the seeds, eat their mess, and fly off again. That would be a good afternoon.

The Seattle Tattle

2008-07-05T17:33:00.002-07:00

About 10 days ago I went for a trip down to Seattle with Emily, her cousin, and her cousin's boyfriend. Quick summary:

I got fingerprinted, photographed, and charged $US6 for the privilege. Australian's are still presumed to be criminals in the US apparently.
We got quite lost by following an under-programmed GPS system. It contained decent maps for Vancouver, but didn't contain any maps for Seattle. It successfully delivered us to an intersection in the middle of nowhere, notable only for a nearby Subway store. Perhaps it was hungry? :)
We had a very nice lunch at a seafood restaurant called McCormick & Schmick's. Everyone seemed very happy with their food, and the prices were very good. Highly recommended.
We came across a combined sci-fi and music museum and (subject to some mild protestations) did a little tour of it during our trip. Very cool.
We visited Pike Place Market. More importantly, we visited the first ever Starbucks store, and a picked up a nice big mug as a souvenir. It will live at Emily's place so that I don't break any of her mugs by accident (her mugs are all special gifts she has received over the years...).
We visited the duty-free outlet shopping on the highway between Vancouver and Seattle. Scored myself a lot of random stuff (unisex perfume/cologne, a couple of shirts, some metal mixing/steaming bowls, a $15 pair of shoes, etc). I think we shopped for almost 5 hours...
We visited a Red Robin restaurant on the way home... and left behind 2 watches and a mobile phone. We didn't realise they were missing until we needed to use the phone back in Canada. Oops! Luckily, the Red Robin staff were very helpful and posted them back up for us. Ended up costing under $12 for the postage, plus $35 for deactivating/activating a replacement SIM card.

I think I'm looking forward to making another trip down into the US, though much more likely to go camping next time.

P.S. With a few exceptions, I don't post other people's names on here. So technically this post isn't a tattle, except perhaps it can be called 'aimless chatter'. :)

Hammock

2008-06-14T12:45:00.004-07:00

When I moved in to my new apartment I inherited a hammock from the friends who previously lived here. With Vancouver's weather you can't leave it set up, but as we head towards summer I decided to assemble it and give it a go.

The only bits I needed to buy were some S-hooks from the local hardware store (first time I'd been in there, pleasantly surprised, nice german shepherd lying on the floor, etc). Setting the hammock up was pretty straightforward and is very very comfortable. It'll fit two people width-wise, and easily fits me length-wise. You can also sit sideways on it, treating it like a bench or swing. Just don't swing too much... :)

Kites And Things

2008-06-14T08:45:00.002-07:00

What's been happening recently? A lot of little things...

My laptop harddrive has died. As of yesterday, I could not successfully boot into Linux. As of today, I just get prompted with with grub> _, indicating that even the bootloader is now dead. Luckily it seems that my drive is still under warranty, and I have recovered virtually all files.
The weather has been pretty miserable, so I haven't been getting out to fly kites. My Prism Snapshot 1.4 is still on order, though I might be tempted to move up to the 1.9 if it takes too long.
Emily will be home on Wednesday. I need to clean my apartment before her family all arrive. :) That means a proper vacuum, mopping, laundry, dish washing, and organising the place. We might also be taking a trip to Seattle one day, just for fun.
Last Tuesday I went to help a friend paint her place. I'd never done that before, and it was surprisingly easy. Looking around, I can see a few spots on my walls that could do with repainting. I'll just keep covering them with framed posters.

Mismatched Pupil Size

2008-06-10T08:23:00.003-07:00

Coming up in the elevator last night, I noticed something odd about myself. In dim light, my pupils have mismatched sizes. I've no idea why this is, and there's no other symptoms (no headache, no blurred vision, etc). I'll continue to monitor it and see what happens.

Eggs Benedict

2008-06-06T19:15:00.003-07:00

OK, my second attempt at poached eggs. This time I'm going for the win with full-blown eggs benedict...

Funnily enough, it actually turned out OK. For next time, I have to work out how to thicken the sauce as corn flour didn't have the desired result.

It's fun to cook knowing it will eventually be for someone else. :)

Mushroom Cloud

2008-06-05T21:01:00.001-07:00

Somehow I don't think a poached egg is meant to look like this. Will get some more practice before Emily gets home. :)

Angels In The Dust

2008-06-01T19:11:00.004-07:00

Get it. Watch it. Seriously. :|

Camping On The Patio

2008-05-28T18:35:00.007-07:00

My tent from Australia was part of my recent shipment. Today I attempted to set it up on the patio. A few interesting notes...

Do not store your tent out on the balcony if you're living near the ocean. The zipper will rust to crap, and you will spend an hour with WD-40, screwdrivers, pins, and eventually a Stanley knife. In the end you'll probably rip the zipper in two, like I just did. You may also need to repair the bag, preferably with Duct tape.

The photo here doesn't do it justice, but this tent has a lot of space inside. Theoretically it has enough space to sleep 3 people. It has front and back doors, and lots of ventilation. It also has a padlock on the back door... and I'll be buggered if I know where the key for that went to... :(

Read the instructions. I had a puzzled look on my face for 10 minutes before realising how this front section was meant to be assembled. The end result is pretty good though. I'm very much looking forward to some camping this summer. :) Anyone else interested?

Sandal Burn

2008-05-25T00:51:00.002-07:00

It was bright, sunny and windy today, so I went kite flying again. I put sun-screen on for most of my exposed body parts, but forgot about my legs and, in particular, the top of my feet left uncovered by my sandals. This is going to be painful for a few days...

On the positive side, I ran into a new couple who had just bought a Nexus kite. Very friendly, and we got along well. They were struggling a bit having never flown a stunt kite before. I gave them some instruction, and soon they were flying my Quantum kite with no problems.

Unfortunately, the Nexus kites are ultra-sensitive and tend to need more wind, making them very difficult to control and prone to dropping from the sky. I honestly don't know why they are recommended for beginners. They are much cheaper, but so incredibly frustrating. I'm planning to buy a Prism Snapshot 1.4 (a small dual-line power-kite) to play with myself, and for others to practice with.

300 Posts Later

2008-05-17T21:03:00.005-07:00

This is blogpost number 300 and, coincidentally, my 28th birthday. It's also the first warm long weekend this year and, for those who are interested, 789 days since I left Australia for Canada. So how have things changed since blogpost number 200? Things have definitely improved...

I've just been treated to brunch and a birthday cake by my friends at work, plus long distance phone calls from family, friends, and Emily
I've moved to a great new apartment in the West End
I've got most of my stuff shipped from Australia
I've started making non-work friends (yay!)
I've taken up kite flying again, and having great fun with it
I've submitted my thesis, and am in the process of nominating reviewers
I've stopped working so hard
I've started going out more
I've started exploring more of Stanley Park (did you know that Lovers Trail is one of the rockiest in the park?)
Best of all, Emily is coming to Vancouver very, very, soon

Yeah, life is definitely moving forward. I'm the happiest I've been since I got here, and some of the guys have noticed.

Bizarrely, one thing hasn't changed since blogpost 200 - I'm sunburnt again. We had a nice change of weather, I went down to the beach, and suddenly I'm (lightly!) burnt all over. That's what winter does to you.

P.S. I'll post a photo of the birthday cake later. Right now, I'm completely buggered from walking, cycling, frisbee, badminton, and just generally doing stuff.

P.P.S. Technically, my birthday was yesterday according to Australian time. It's not like "a year" is an accurate measure of time anyway. :P

Finally Moved In

2008-05-13T20:12:00.008-07:00

Well, I finally have all of my stuff. After 2 and a bit years in Canada, my boxes from Australia have arrived. Thanks to Tom at work, we collected the boxes from the warehouse this morning, and I got to have fun opening them this afternoon. Some were very heavy and quite a challenge to unpack. (How do you get a heavy crate out of a big cardboard box? Cut the bottom of the box and let it fall out!)

So far, I've found a lot of books. Lots and lots of books. And DVDs. And CDs. Who knew I had a licensed copy of UT2003? And cookbooks? I need to get a second bookshelf, and soon.

I've found a lot of random memorabilia. There's the corkboard I've had since highschool, the pencil case I've had since primary school, lots of coloured tealight cangles, my pizza stone, a jar of vegemite (use by 2007...), a little lantern, a set of Chinese hand exercise balls, a miniature laptop desk ornament, a set of photo frames, my cap from the Logic Summer School, the book I was reading when I left Australia (!), all my old tools, lots of kitchen stuff, a LotR boxed DVD set and framed poster, and my undergraduate degrees... I need to hang up a lot of this stuff.

And there's lots of stuff I'd been missing. My Pound Puppies that I've had since I was really little (complete with a bandaid from their immunisation shots...), my body pillow to help my posture, a quilt cover set I'd worried was given away, and a big soft blanket for the Canadian winters. Plus there's my tent and sleeping bag, just in time for summer. :)

There's also a heap of shirts and other clothing. It all smells a little musty (hey, it's been two years) and will need a wash. I'm looking forward to using the bathrobe and wearing some of my old shirts again. There's also lots of other little souvenirs that I've picked up over my life, including random notes and cards and stuff.

I haven't finished unpacking everything yet. Still, I now have everything of mine from Australia (except for the stuff at Mum and Dad's house...). I have officially "moved" to Canada.

Broken String

2008-05-11T12:12:00.002-07:00

There was a strong wind this morning, so I rode down to Sunset Beach to fly my kite. Noone else was flying kites, and this should've been a warning sign.

The wind peaked at around 40 kph, plus some slightly stronger gusts. My kite was howling, and the lines would squeal at times from the tension and wind. Still, I was having a great time, and number of kids and parents had stopped to watch. Unfortunately, my kite is rated to precisely 40 kph; while in a tight turn in the middle of the wind window, the right string snapped just near my hand. The kite then spun like a top on the left string until it hit the ground. Bugger.

So... anyone know how to fix Spectra kite lines?

Timothy

2008-05-10T22:46:00.007-07:00

Timothy is Emily's brother, and I've always found him to be great fun to hang out with. More importantly, it makes you feel so good inside any time he achieves something new. I've rarely blogged about him before; I just never knew what to say. I think I know what to say now, but first I want to share some of the stories from times spent with him:

I bought a Wii when they were first released. I took it to Edmonton on a few trips, but then realised that Timothy might be able to make use of it than I had been. Emily bought the WiiPlay pack, and she found the perfect game for him - cow racing. You hold the remote sideways and tilt it left or right to steer, knocking over random objects as you go. He loved playing it, even though he never finished the race on time. :)

Emily's mum bought a side-by-side sit-down tandem bicycle a few years ago. It's quite well engineered, with a park brake, dual handle bars, independent gears, etc, though not the most stylish vehicle on the road. ;) Emily and I took Timothy for a ride up and down the local streets - Tim and I rode, while Emily walked alongside keeping an eye out for traffic and dogs. To begin with I would do all the steering, but at the halfway point I just took my hands off the handlebars and left it up to Tim. Within a few minutes, he was able to both pedal the bicycle and simultaneously steer us away from parked cars in the street. Even better, if I pointed left or right at an intersection, he would make the turn by himself! I was very impressed, and could even take a break from pedalling myself... ;)

Emily picked up a second-hand copy of Elebits for the Wii. Now, as far as Wii games go, Elebits is pretty sophisticated - the left hand is used to move the player around the level, and the right hand is used to control the camera and shoot targets. Emily realised early on that Tim couldn't handle both aspects at the same time, so she would move the player around the level, and Timothy would be left in control of the camera and shooting. Funnily enough, Timothy loves things that spin, so when he found a ceiling fan within the game he would keep directing the camera so that he could watch it! No matter where you moved in the level, he would consistently pivot the camera to watch the fan. It was cute, but more importantly demonstrated his increasing ability to control his movements within the game. When I visited Edmonton last, Timothy was controlling both aspects - player movement, and camera control. He even started hunting down Elebits, the way you're supposed to! :) I can only hope things continue to improve.

Timothy loves music, and is always asking for the music to be turned on when at home or in the car. It seemed appropriate to get a second-generation iPod Shuffle for him - they are nearly indestructible, have very few buttons, have a strong built-in clip, and can be volume limited in software. We set him up with his new iPod, pre-loaded with some of his favourite music, and we took him for a trip to his cousin's house (where, coincidentally, he got to play Guitar Hero with Emily's help). Nothing remarkable happened on the trip, though he did seem to enjoy his time with his cousins. However, when we got home, he ran straight to his mum and was singing the words of the music on his iPod. I had never heard Tim sing before, and that was one of those "so good" moments I mentioned. I can only call the iPod a success. :)

Timothy is a special kid. He'll always need someone there to help. I'll never be able to just sit down and make small-talk with him. But you know what? That's okay. I know that I still want to hang out with him. Timothy is special in so many other ways.

And I never liked small-talk anyway. :)

P.S. For those who are interested, Timothy actually has a blog and Facebook account that document his life and friends.

Back In The Saddle

2008-05-10T22:41:00.003-07:00

Summer is approaching, so I'm back riding my bike, and I'm back in the kitchen. I know that, at my age, being able to cook my own food is expected. Still, I'm always happy when my plum chicken actually tastles like chicken. :)

Seriously, I am getting better. The chicken isn't rubbery anymore.

The Missing Homeware Store

2008-05-10T17:54:00.003-07:00

I have a favourite little homeware store called Benix. I highly recommend this store to anyone recently moving to Canada and who wants some decently-priced homewares. I would have recommended it earlier, but I could not remember the name or the location! For the record, it's at Metrotown, middle floor, next to Poster World, at the midpoint between Chapters and Superstore.

For example, I picked up this set of wood-handled barbeque tools for $10, and a rather nice set of oil and vinegar dispensers for $6 (mobile phone included for scale). In the past I've bought a tall, free-standing wooden photo stand (holds 5 8x10" photos) for $25, and many other smaller items. Some of their stuff isn't cheap, but if you stick to the sale/bargain items you cannot go wrong.

The Gobbledok

2008-05-09T17:50:00.005-07:00

2day FM in Australia is running an ad-hoc competition to come up with a new flavour for Smith's crisps. Right now, the front-runner seems to be "spaghetti bolognaise", with perhaps a side of "Parmesan cheese" flavour.

They also mentioned the Gobbledok, and a quick flip through Youtube dug up these classic old ads:

Make sure you watch through to the last one. :)

Boxes Are In The Country

2008-05-07T22:29:00.005-07:00

My boxes have arrived in Canada. I know because on Friday I stood at the office window and photographed the boat they were on.

Unfortunately, my boxes have now been moved from the docks in downtown Vancouver to a warehouse in (relatively) remote Surrey. I have also been given an invoice for the following:

Advance Commercial Information: $25.00
Dewey-Decimal Classification: $28.49
Security surcharge: $15.00
Handling charge: $115.00
Dock fee: $35.00

I'm also relying on a friend from work to help me pick them up, else I'd be facing more charges.

P.S. The above photo is in the Golden Ratio proportions (ie. 1 pixel high for every (-1+sqrt(5))/2 pixel wide, or approximately 1:0.618). This is the ratio used in a lot of classical buildings, and is meant to be the most appealing of all ratios. I'm only commenting on it because I noone would notice/care otherwise. :)

Samarabalouf

2008-05-04T09:54:00.004-07:00

I went out last night with a friend to see Samarabalouf. It took almost the entire show, but I think I'm starting to understand jazz.

Samarabalouf is a (gypsy) jazz trio from France. To the uneducated like me, I would describe three-quarters of their songs as "super-fast, DIililililililiiDI" guitar music. You can see a sample video on YouTube. It's the kind of music I've struggled to find any use for in the past - it's too fast to get any kind of "emotional" involvement, and so often comes across as random noise. I can appreciate the technical skill of the players, but is that really what the music is about? Luckily for me they also played 2 slow songs last night, and they really opened my eyes (ears?).

The first came around the 30 minute mark. It was introduced as "a song I composed... in my kitchen... while grating carrots". The music itself starts with the band lead doing some tricks on his guitar, producing a musical version of a carrot grating (surprise, surpise :). The music then transformed into something very sexy and sensual, an amazing sound, before blending back into the carrot grating. I could not believe my ears - this song was brilliant.

Funnily enough, it reminded me of a Bruce Dawe poem that I liked called Homo Suburbiensis; both attempt to to show that, even in the most ordinary of circumstances, we are alive and there is much to celebrate.

The second came around the 90 minute mark, and I wish it had been earlier. It was introduced as "a song for the little girls...", and they named one in particular. The trio dropped their playful attitude and it became an incredibly sad piece of music. Underlying it though was a small note of triumph... again something to be celebrated.

At this point I had a realisation - all of these songs, even the fast ones, were celebrating something about life. I could understand the slow songs because they gave me time to think. The fast jazzy songs celebrate intense feelings, emotions and experiences. Songs that get faster and faster are screaming "there are no limits to this - we can always get more intense". This was a mind-opener for me.

My normal way of celebrating something has been to sit still, be quiet, and practically 'meditate' on what's at hand. For example, I like to sit and cuddle quietly, listen to birdsong, watch the waves rolling in at the beach, or sit through a thunder storm. I focus my mind and get sheer simple pleasure from what I'm thinking about, in all its fine detail. Fast gypsy jazz music doesn't give you time to think and appreciate fine detail like that. It's a celebration of all kinds of pure, intense experiences in life. Approaching the music that way, by the end of the show, I found myself wanting to scream "yee-hah!" with Samarabalouf too.

Except it sounded way too Texan. :)

More Apartment Photos

2008-04-28T22:03:00.004-07:00

I just placed a collection of panoramic photos of my apartment on Picasa. I'm keeping my apartment fairly empty at the moment, though as of yesterday it is serving as storage for Emily's moving stuff. :)

Anyway, I'm off to bed. I was sneezing a lot so took a (sleep-inducing) antihistamine. I'm hoping it's allergies that I have and not a cold...

Spring Arrives

2008-04-26T22:09:00.006-07:00

We finally got a reasonably warm (14c), dry, sunny Saturday in Vancouver. It was a perfect morning to get out on the bike, ride around the Stanley Park seawall, and finish up with a hotdog at English Bay. :)

Even better, there was a persistent north-west wind in the afternoon; enough for me to grab my kite, ride over to Vanier park, and fly for a good 2 hours. I caught up with a few old friends from last year (including a family that I "introduced" to stunt kites), and made a new friend (helloooo out there!) and had a great long lunch and chat.

But best of all, Emily arrived around 6.30pm with a van-load of her belongings. On Monday she and her family will fly to China for a month-and-a-half family holiday, but when they return she will be living here in Vancouver.

I haven't had this good a day in a long time. =:)

P.S. Emily has been instructed to keep her apartment as clean as mine is. Uh, mine is merely "empty", rarely "clean". :)

Search Engine Needs Tweaking

2008-04-21T17:01:00.002-07:00

I peeked at my visitor logs recently and found that someone came to my blog via Google. It seems that, for some reason, one of my blog pages is rated number 1 when you Google for "irradict weather".

Elmer Fudd, Elmer Fudd...

Tax Filing

2008-04-20T16:51:00.003-07:00

What a pain. My taxes are fairly straightforward - I have one job, a couple of bank accounts, and some charitable donations. Still, I almost fell asleep while filling out the forms. Stella (Emily's mum) did my taxes for me last year, and I'm very grateful for that. I would have used a free program called Studio Tax this year and submitted my taxes online, but I apparently am a special case. I am a "deemed resident" and so cannot submit online.

As a deemed resident I also don't pay provincial income taxes (yes, Canada still has separate federal and provincial income taxes). I pay extra federal taxes instead, and unfortunately that means I pay $830 more than a regular Canadian resident. I have a tax bill this year instead of a refund. I also have lots of incentive to change my resident status this year...

West Edmonton MasterCards

2008-04-20T08:42:00.005-07:00

I was having some issues with my old camera, and was having a consistent urge to get a new one. My parents also had some Aeroplan miles to use up, and they could only really be used in Canada. So, using their Aeroplan miles we ordered some "West Edmonton Mall" gift cards and then went shopping at the world's biggest mall, West Ed...

Sears department store. We found the camera (a Canon S5 IS) on display for $349, but they had none in stock.
Little camera store near Sears. They had them in stock, but for $399.
Another little camera store near Sears. No stock.
London Drugs. In stock for $399, and they would have price-matched Sears... but the nearest Sears doesn't have stock...
Zellers. No stock.
The Source By Circuit City. No stock.
The other Source By Circuit City. No stock.

Apparently this is a very popular camera! We knew that other Sears stores in Edmonton had the camera in stock, so we came up with a great plan: use our West Ed gift cards to buy Sears gift cards and then go shopping elsewhere. We were all set to do this but...

Oh, you have West Edmonton gift cards? I'm sorry, we can't accept it at Sears. Yes they are MasterCards, but if we try to use them our computer systems will crash for an hour.

What the hell? At this point I wanted to swipe our gift cards through a Sears cash register just for the fun of it. Instead, we toddled off to West Ed Customer Service to ask about our cards and whether we could exchange for cash...

I'm sorry, we can't exchange them. However, they really are MasterCards, not ordinary gift cards. You can buy things anywhere in Canada, not just at West Ed...

It would've been nice to know this beforehand. Still, this was the point where our luck finally turned. We went straight to a FutureShop who had it in stock. Better, they could price-match with a different Sears store. Even better, it was a camera that had been recently returned, unused, and so we got an additional 10% off!

Canon S5 IS from FutureShop: $324.14. Being able to use your West Ed MasterCards anywhere but West Ed: priceless.

Graduation Dinner

2008-04-19T11:08:00.005-07:00

Last weekend I flew to Edmonton to attend Emily's computer science graduation dinner. Considering my thesis is about to be submitted I decided to treat it as my own graduation dinner too. :)

We took a bunch of photos of our preparation, including photos of me helping to do Emily's hair. I have to admit, doing Emily's hair was a lot of fun. She and I might be able to mess more with her hair once she gets to Vancouver. :).

There's a few more lower-resolution photos on Facebook, plus hundreds posted by others who attended (a Facebook account is required to see all the photos of me and Emily). The dinner was decent, but the trip to the bar/club and to Boston Pizza (a relatively high class pizza and pasta place) was the real highlight. We were congratulated so many times by strangers who thought we'd just gotten married! Little wonder why. :)

True to Yourself

2008-04-19T10:22:00.002-07:00

One thing I've learned over the years is that you have to be true to yourself, to your own nature, to your own concept of right and wrong. If you only live to match the desires and expectations of other people then you have lost part of yourself. Develop your own moral code - something that you can believe in and that is independent of your peers - and use it to weigh the expectations of other people.

Developing a moral code that is independent of your peers takes a fair bit of deep thinking. A useful exercise I use is the following:

A person has been locked into a room and, by sheer happenstance, you have been the power to make them happy or unhappy. No one except you will never know what happens in the room or that you were given such power over another person. You are the only person who will know about the choice you make. What choice should you make?

This exercise is specifically designed to remove any concept of "peer pressure". It focuses on your own nature and moral code, asking what you think you should do, independent of society.

Developing a moral code this way has helped me cope with the expectations and desires of other people - I am now more comfortable saying "no" to people, but am simultaneously more interested in saying "yes".

Finally, the following poem was a kind of inspiration for this thinking and is worth a read:

The Guy in the Glass by Dale Wimbrow, (c) 1934

When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.

For it isn't your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.

He's the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he's with you clear up to the end,
And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.

You may be like Jack Horner and "chisel" a plum,
And think you're a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
If you can't look him straight in the eye.

You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you've cheated the guy in the glass.

P.S. "pelf" means "Money; riches; gain; generally conveying the idea of something ill-gotten."

Wert Keyboartd

2008-04-19T10:19:00.004-07:00

I accidentally knocked a glass of water on to my keyboard yesterday afternoon. The keyboard survived, for a while....

Peter: have a prtoblem wirth my keyboard brtw
Peter: splirt watrert on irt eartliert
Peter: now rt and rt prtoduce borth rt and rt rtogerthert
Peter: grteatr fun
Emily: hahahhaa
Emily: rt rt :)
Emily: :D
Emily: what are you going to do?
Emily: wait don't answer :)
Peter: no idea
Peter: weirtd rthatr irt justr srtartrting being a prtoblem now
Peter: i was coding fort trhe lastr few hourts, no prtoblem
Emily: no kidding :)

Luckily, a night spent drying has fixed it. I have two spare keyboards, but I've taken them both at work so that people with laptops can use them. I don't know what I'd do if I had no keyboard for the weekend. Probably go to work to recover one of my spares. ;)

P.S. I pulled my keyboard apart a little. It's kinda scary just how much head hair gets caught in keyboards...

Elebits

2008-03-25T18:19:00.003-07:00

Emily picked up a second-hand copy of Elebits for $20 recently. I got to play it a little when I visited Edmonton this Easter. I have to say, it is probably the most fun game I've ever played on the Wii.

The aim of the game is to capture cute, tennis-ball-sized "elebits" that you find roaming your house. You are armed with a "capture gun" that doubles as a long-range object manipulator. Using your gun, you can open fridges, lift couches, turn on TVs etc from a good 10 metres away. The end result, of course, is absolute madness as you throw potplants, books, and kitchen appliances around the room, desperately hunting down "elebits" within a limited timespan.

Perhaps the best part of this game is its accessibility. Emily's mother and brother (Stella and Timothy) both joined in and were having great fun. Timothy sometimes struggles with Wii games because of the Wiimote is very sensitive to small movements, but he was getting very good at pointing and controlling the camera to focus on objects that interest him. Stella was also showing off her Elebit-shooting skills, though she was much more gentle with the environment than Emily. ;)

Anyway, this looks like a fantastic party game, and something to train people in the use of the Wiimote.

Writing the Conclusion

2008-03-16T16:20:00.003-07:00

So I'm writing the conclusion for my thesis, and finding it surprisingly difficult to write. I'm taking the simplest approach possible: read my table of contents, and write a sentence or two about each subsection. Unfortunately, this approach forces me to face two facts::

how much work went into making my thesis
how terribly incomplete my thesis still is

I just have to stop thinking about what more should/could have been done.

Philosophy of Science

2008-03-15T00:50:00.003-07:00

How do you know the world is not an illusion? How do you know that everyone else in the world is actually self-aware? How do you know the fridge light turns out when you close the door? These are the kinds of questions that bug me some days.

Science has definitely washed its hands of theology/philosophy. For example, the scientific method cannot help us answer "is anyone else real like I am?". You cannot establish a common ground for discussion (also known as intersubjectivitiy) for such a question! How can you sit down and discuss with a person whether or not they are a figment of your imagination?

However, according to the Wikipedia entry on Philosophy of science:

... specialists in the philosophy of science stress the requirement that observations made for the purposes of science be restricted to intersubjective objects ...

If we were to assume that noone else is real, then wouldn't intersubjectivity become impossible? There can be no intersubjectivity without at least two subjects! Does that mean that science itself is based on the assumption that other people are as real as ourselves? Does the success of the scientific method itself provide scientific evidence that other people are real?

I can't answer that question tonight, but I think the answer is "yes", in which case a scientist can claim something about the nature of other people. Not bad really.

Anyway, g'night to whoever is out there! I say that on the assumption you are real and equal, in which case I should treat you as I do myself. :)

Boxes on a Big Boat

2008-03-10T20:24:00.003-07:00

I just received word that my boxes have started shipping. I've been told the name of the ship, and managed to dig up this photo (yes, there are people who photograph and document all the boats they see). Anyway, it seems to have left Sydney in the last few days, dropped in to Melbourne, and is now headed to Djakarta, Jakarta. I have no idea where it's going after that, but probably China, and then North America. It won't arrive in Vancouver until late April so it must be pretty busy.

Disturbing Sleep

2008-03-08T09:12:00.002-08:00

Saturday morning I woke up with 3 subluxed (ie. almost dislocated) finger-tips which took an hour or so to sort out. I've been having ongoing problems with my teeth because I tend to grind them while I sleep, and a few nights ago I had a very long and disturbing dream.

I'm hoping that whatever is bothering my subconscious will go away soon.

Catch 23 Banking

2008-03-07T20:29:00.003-08:00

Many people were suggesting that I fight the bank, and the situation was annoying me enough. Here's a copy of the first email I sent. Let's see how it goes:

To whom it may concern,

I was recently notified that my savings account with [bankname] would be changed from a fee-free account to a fee-paying account. I am now living in Canada, and so tried to close this account yesterday by calling [bankname]. However, I was advised that it is impossible to close the account without being physically present at a branch. It is clearly not possible for me to get to any [bankname] branch any time soon, but I would still like to have the account closed as soon as possible so as to avoid additional fees.

Please be aware that, within that one phone call, I was able to authenticate my identity, have my phone banking password reset, have my internet banking re-enabled, and have my account changed to a different "product". [bankname] seems perfectly happy to grant access to my money over the phone after passing simple challenge-response security questions. However, [bankname] claims to be unable to stop charging me fees for an account that I do not want, unless I make myself physically present. This seems an inappropriate way to treat a customer and certainly doesn't improve my view of [bankname]'s operations.

So, with all due respect, I insist that my account be closed and my money transferred to a different institution. I can provide the account details when requested.

Sincerely,
Peter Harvey.

Catch 22 Banking

2008-03-05T18:56:00.003-08:00

One of my Australian bank accounts was recently changed from "student" to "normal", which means I am now charged monthly fees. Considering I haven't used the account in 2 years, I felt it was time to close it. However:

You can only close the account from overseas if you have faxing authority.
You cannot setup faxing authority unless you are in the branch.
Someone can close the account for you if they have power of attorney.
You cannot setup power of attorney unless you are both in the branch.
You cannot transfer all money out of the account, because then you would just incur account keeping fees and additional penalties.

Note that none of this is to protect my money, as they were perfectly willing to enable internet and phone banking to let me transfer cash out. Their rules only prevent me from leaving the bank.

I will close my account, with prejudice, next time I am in Australia.

UPDATE: I just closed a Canadian bank account over the phone. The only questions they asked, after verifying I was who I claimed to be, were "who are you now banking with?" and "what account would you like your money sent to?". Very pleasant.

Voting in Canada

2008-03-01T11:31:00.002-08:00

I was discussing the Canadian voting system recently, and I am absolutely shocked. They have no preferential voting scheme! Do you know what that means?

In Canada, if you vote for a minor party, and that party does not win, then your vote will be tossed in the garbage. I'm not joking. There is no incentive for voting for the party that most accurately represent your views. Worse, if there are two parties with similar policies, then they will probably split their constituents evenly between them and neither will win. For example, if 60% of voters are left-wing, and there are two left-wing parties and one right-wing party, then the right-wing party would win (the two left-wing parties would get 30% each, and the right-wing party would get 40%). How stupid is that?
In Australia, if you vote for a minor party, and that party does not win, then your vote will be attributed towards some larger party selected in advance by the minor party. This lets me vote for a minor party but, on the chance they lose the election, my vote will be attributed to the next closest party in terms of policies. For example, I can vote for the minority Greens party, with the assurance that my vote will be attributed to whichever party has created policies that are closest to the Greens.

Voting in Canada is also completely optional. People are not encouraged to consider each party on its merits - they only bother to vote if the policies of one party will somehow affect their personal lives. The voting system implicitly discourages a government that is "for the benefit of all", because a large number of people with "moderate socialist" views would not bother to vote.

To be honest, I'm not very interested in voting in Canada. I'm more interested in changing the voting system so that my vote would count. :(

Illustration Got Published

2008-02-28T12:08:00.003-08:00

A paper of mine, which forms the guts of my thesis, was recently published in Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence, volume 4766. They just sent me a copy of it, and I got quite a surprise: the cover illustration they used is actually the one from my paper and thesis. It's an illustration of a distributed CSP that I created for demonstrating my algorithm. Don't quite know what to say. At least they really liked the diagram? :)

Moving Stories

2008-02-25T21:56:00.002-08:00

Random stories from my recent move up the building:

The first time we inspected the new apartment, it had a slightly smokey smell. The carpet had just been shampoo-cleaned, but whoever had done it had left a cigarette butt in the toilet. The windows were open letting dust and stuff in. To top it off, they stole the light-bulbs from the bathroom. Go figure.
I've never owned a vacuum cleaner in Canada - I had always borrowed one from some friends in the building. I managed to buy a good one from Sears in the last week, and have had great fun since then sucking up dirt and dust. There was surprisingly little dust in my old apartment, considering I've only vacuumed twice since I got to Canada. And there was no sign of Mum's earring that she lost here. Oh well. :|
We cleaned my old oven using some truly nasty spray-on stuff. You're supposed to wear goggles and rubber gloves, but we're lazy and skipped that bit. I just held my breath for most of the experience.
We briefly met two neighbours on my old floor that I'd never even seen before. We also received a complaint from a neighbour for playing a movie too loud on the day before I moved. Oops. They were a pretty noisy couple anyway. :)
The elevator was trying to kill us the whole time. We had to load it up with large amounts of stuff each time (bag run!), but if we took a few too many seconds it would start shrieking and the door would slowly close in dramatic style. It was kind of like the garbage compactor in Star Wars. At one point, Emily and I were on opposite sides of the elevator door when we realised we each had the wrong set of keys. It was a very Hollywood moment, passing the keys to each other moments before the elevator door closed on us. :)
I still have a chocolate rabbit from my early years at University. It was something my sister gave to me, and I made some kind of promise not to eat it until I finished University. Well, my thesis is still ticking away. It survived the move, however I left it on the kitchen table today when I went to work. Guess what - my apartment now gets sun! One of its ears melted and half-collapsed, and I fear I have deformed its head when picking it up this afternoon.
I would like to give a big thank you to Emily who organised the kitchen very nicely for me. In a related note, there is nothing on the top shelves of my kitchen cabinets. ;)

Seriously, Emily has a huge help with this move. From keeping me motivated, to packing the contents of my desk, to helping me slide my bed across tiles by use a magic carpet. She was always there, and was fantastic. Thank you.

Anyway, here's looking forward to a lot of years in this apartment. I don't want to move again for a while. It's a nice place, and I hate moving. :)

PS. There are three (3) alternative meanings to the title of this post. Can you find them all? ;)

Photos From New Apartment

2008-02-25T21:42:00.005-08:00

So I've moved up in the world - same building, but higher up. That also means (significantly) increased living space, and some of the best views I've ever seen here. I've uploaded high-res photos to an album on Picasaweb, but smaller versions are here:

Bag Snatched From Apartment

2008-02-24T16:55:00.002-08:00

Forget Poseidon - Hermes seems to have it in for me. Someone has stolen something while I was in the apartment. :(

I have just moved into a new apartment (more on that later) with a huge amount of help from Emily. We were tired from all the moving and cleaning so decided to have a 30-minute afternoon nap. When we woke up we noticed:

One of my boots had been moved from 'near the door' to 'blocking the passageway to the door'.
The front door was unlocked, presumably left that way by us when we came into the apartment.
Emily's red MEC shoulder bag was missing, including her Nintendo DS, all her games, and a whackload of Pocky.

It looks like, between 2.15pm and 2.45pm, someone opened the (unlocked) front door, saw Emily's shoulder bag on the floor just past my boots, grabbed it and ran. They didn't bother to come into the apartment, else they would have stolen my camera or wallet.

I'll notify the landlady, but I'm not planning to notify the police any time soon. It's frustrating that Emily's DS was stolen, but the odds of the police finding a "red DS with no distinguishing marks" or "some packets of Pocky" are extremely slim.

Final Move from Australia

2008-02-13T19:54:00.002-08:00

With the help of friends in Australia, there are now 5 boxes of my stuff in transit to Canada. I don't know when they'll get here, what shape they'll be in, or whether Canadian Customs will charge me duty for importing. As it says in this email:

Your boxes were collected today by TNT, each box labeled with your address in Canada. Their eventual destination is now in hands of the gods.
Janos.

Lets see if Poseidon likes me or not. :D

New Years Resolution

2008-01-26T11:48:00.000-08:00

I just realised that, without thinking of it, I had established some New Years resolutions for myself. I had been traveling so much I'd hardly realised we'd entered the new year! So here they are:

Fix the hunch in my back. I've always had a curve to my upper spine, and let my shoulders slope downwards. Now, on my daily walk to/from work I make sure to hold my shoulders back and up. With some effort I'll rebuild the muscles there. It's already feeling much more comfortable than it used to.
Lose some weight. I don't want to hit summer with a belly or flabby butt. Yes, I'm male, but these things still concern me.
Cook more food. This doesn't run counter to the previous point. I want to cook more of my meals, and start baking more things. Anzac Biscuits are the next on my list.
Be nicer to people. There's a lot more I could do for the people who are really close to me, and some of them I can actually help. I have to do what I can.
Start saving for retirement. I have to remember there's no compulsory superannuation here, and I haven't really started saving for retirement yet. I need to pour some money into RRSP (the Canadian's superannuation-like tax-shelter for retirement money). One great thing is I can pour money in there, make a big tax savings, and then potentially use that money for an eventual house purchase! No such plans yet, but I like the flexibility.

There's even more resolutions I've made this year, but I can hardly list them all. I'm just surprised I didn't notice beforehand that I was making all these promises to myself.

First Snowfall (For Vancouver)

2007-12-07T20:54:00.000-08:00

Emily came to visit last weekend (she scored herself a job interview here in Vancouver). The day she arrived, it was nice, clear weather. We hadn't had any really cold weather yet this winter. Then, out of nowhere, it snowed for 2 days straight.

Immediately after she left, Vancouver received a tropical weather system from Hawaii (yes, really) that lifted temperatures about 15c. We have to assume the weather was just trying to make her feel at home. Weird. :)

Semi-Final Plans

2007-12-07T20:21:00.000-08:00

I'm hoping as many people as possible read this. Emily and I have finalised our travel plans for visiting Australia. I know people are going to be busy around this time of year, and we're not staying too long, but if anyone is around and wants to meet up, let me know! :) Our travel plans are:

20th December	Arrive in Sydney (morning flight)
20th to 27th or 28th	Muswellbrook (parent's house)
27th or 28th to 31st	Wollongong (Farzad's place)
New Years Eve	Sydney Harbour (stay awake all night)
1st to 3rd	Katoomba (youth hostel)
3rd to 9th	Urunga (camping with parents)
9th to 13th	Sydney (youth hostel)
13th January	Leave from Sydney (mid-afternoon flight)

I might be able to use my old mobile SIM, so will be available on 0407 133 683. If that doesn't work, then I'll be available on my Canadian number +1 778 858 5480.

Canada Post Anti-Jinx

2007-11-19T20:55:00.000-08:00

In the past month we've seen some long delays in arrival of parcels. My thesis has gone completely MIA. A parcel from Australia is somewhere in transit. Various products ordered online have been taking there time...

After much grumbling, we found an article online telling of month-long delays on Canadian imports! Oh no! Now, while the article made sense, Dad (gleefully) pointed out the article was from 2004 and so hardly relevant to the current situation. :P

Regardless, our grumbling seems to have paid off, as in the last 12 hours:

a package from DealExtreme arrived at Emily's;
a set of books from Amazon.ca arrived at Emily's;
a parcel arrived at my place (have to pick it up tomorrow afternoon);
another set of books from Amazon.ca starting shipping.

I need to grumble to the aether more often.

Brave or Stupid?

2007-11-19T20:19:00.000-08:00

A brave or stupid person will take actions that are likely to end badly for them. You can only tell between "bravery" and "stupidity" by asking: were they aware of the risks to themselves?

I think this guy falls in the "brave" camp.

Police are investigating the discovery of an explosive device in Benalla, in central Victoria, yesterday. They say a council worker spotted the device on the spare wheel of his car when he left work. Worried it could harm others if it exploded, the man then drove his car to a more isolated area. Police bomb technicians were sent to the scene from Melbourne and confirmed it was an explosive device with potential to harm the driver of the vehicle.

Though perhaps a little stupid for not calling the police first...

Sesame Street is AO

2007-11-18T10:54:00.000-08:00

From the New York Times:

The earliest episodes of “Sesame Street” are available on digital video! Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

Interesting.

E8

2007-11-17T17:12:00.000-08:00

What is E8? E8 is an algebraic construct recently used by someone to produce a Grand Unified Theory of Everything. You can look it up if you want. Search for "surfer dude has a gut" to read all about it. It's a pity that it's wrong, but these things have to be tried.

For curiosities sake, I looked up what E8 really is, and wanted to share this tidbit of information:

This lattice, sometimes called the "8-dimensional diamond lattice", has a number of remarkable properties. It gives most efficient sphere-packing in 8 dimensions, and is also the unique even, unimodular lattice in 8 dimensions.

I'll assume that your eyes didn't glaze over too much, and you noticed the same thing I did. E8 gives most efficient sphere-packing in 8 dimensions. I have to admit, efficient sphere-packing in 8 dimensions is kind of impressive, but it is also incredibly useless. Such is the world of mathematics.

Climbing the Walls

2007-11-15T22:49:00.000-08:00

Yeah, things have been stressful here. So, when I visited Emily this last weekend, we did the only thing appropriate: wall climbing.

It was awesome. Emily and I got to practice our teamwork (initially learned in Splinter Cell), as one had to hold the rope and operate a ratcheting mechanism while the other one climbed. I was lucky she was there - by the end of the day my arms were so tired I just fell off the wall twice.

All the climbs were about 4m straight up, though the variation in knobs and handholds made some walls much more difficult to climb than others. On some you had to practically leap from your current position and hope you caught the next handhold before falling. It was kind of cool really.

Only one problem: my arms didn't function properly for 2 days afterwards. :) I was unable to squeeze or grip anything. I couldn't even squeeze a water spray bottle, my fingers and arms were that tired.

Still great fun though. :D