Larger Luggage

Moving countries, you want to take as much as you can really. This isn't saying that I'll be taking a lot of clothes (not likely I need all those shorts really), but that I will have a lot of miscellaneous crap. Books (yes books), second laptop, shoes, cables, etc. So the flight I'm booked on allows me 64kg of luggage plus my carryon stuff. It seemed best then to get some larger luggage; something that I could use when travelling to conferences or when I get kicked out of Canada.

So I'm posting just to let you know that BlackWolf 80+20L duffle bags are really quite good. Expandable from 80 to 100 litres, solid-looking wheels, and opens from the middle or the top, your choice. I've been very scientific and photographed it first as "collapsed for storage in a closet", and then "packed to go to Canada with four pillows". One of the more convenient things is a very large 'pocket' accessible from the outside which just expands into the inside. Great for dirty laundry.

Room With View (Of Cement Building)

Looking for a place to live in Vancouver on Craigslist. Have to admit that there's nothing wrong with being honest, though lines like these seem to overdo it a little?

... I imagine it would still suck a tad to live in a room with curtains as doors ...
... I don't want to catch a glimpse of any surprise nakedness should a freak gust of air somehow move the curtains at the wrong time. I value my eyesight ...

Paper Acceptance

I just managed to get two papers accepted for publication at Canadian AI 2006. I now have until March 13th (or 14th for us Australians :) to turn them into camera-ready versions. Thankfully the reviewers were quite happy with the papers and so require little modification. I'm happy (or will be when the shock wears off) that both were accepted, considering that only 22% of papers were accepted by the organisers.

• Relaxation of Soft Constraints via a Unified Semiring
• Simple Support-Based Distributed Search

Squish the Grasshopper

I recently tried talking to someone who had no clue what they were talking about and refused to learn/listen. He comes into the epiphany channel under 3 different pseudonyms and tries to get us to use alternative operating system concepts... that don't work. I pushed him to explain what problems he was trying to solve, and got these:

If people only did things to solve problems, we wouldn't have any technology, because we wouldn't have any of the problems in the first place.
Only because of advancements the problems came along to be solved.
My ideas don't have to solve any problems. It's an alternative way of doing things; one that can solve new problems.

The final straw came with:

What are you calling ideas in this case?

I gave him plentiful advice on how to approach people correctly to present his solutions, and respecting the opinions of others, but he refused. I think that's the first time I've asked for someone to be kicked and banned from the channel, and I have no regrets.

Medical Insurance

I was tossing around, thinking "should I post my recent interests in music?" but then remembered that I'm meant to be documenting all the good and bad involved in going to Canada and other things I'm doing. Kind of as a log and guide to anyone else wanting to try the same.

So recently I've been wrestling with health insurance, and working out whether I really need travel insurance instead. Turns out that I should get travel insurance for about a month to cover health and belongings, and then switch to regular private health insurance to enhance the government programmes.

Note the plural in 'programmes'! Canadians see themselves as independent provinces loosely grouped together, so each province has their own Medicare-like system available to provincial residents. Different healthcare costs depending what province you're in. There's some kind of "out-of-province" scheme I still haven't sorted out. They have a relatively weak PBS-like system, so private insurance is still a good idea anyway, though general medical (GPs, emergencies, etc) are free. One good thing is it applies to residents not just citizens. :)