The BlogPost's Guide to the Galaxy

The remake was a rubbish movie.

The Imitation Game, however, was fantastic.

This was an excellent movie.

Well-shot scenes, well-acted by Cumberbatch and other actors I haven’t heard of (and Keira, whom I can’t take seriously cos she’s Elizabeth Swann), and excellent cinematography. 

The movie moved at the right pace, had appropriate tension, was well-structured, and as far as I can tell, was fairly historically accurate. 

The story was sad, but that was expected, because Turing had a sad story. It is incredibly sad what Britain did to him, and thankfully we have improved since then, but society still has a long way to go. 

I guess it meant it a bit more for me (and those I went with - Karl, Ford, Beth, Madz, Peacock, Liz, Wiz, and Sam) because we are CS students and know Turing and his immense influence upon our field (or perhaps even his creation of our field? Or is that too far?)

Watch it. Learn Turing’s life. Learn his sad story, learn his influence (Ensure you have the history correct).

Sportsball

Apparently there was some sort of sports game on saturday. 

Several men ran around with a ball. 

Then some other men got the ball. This merited a round of applause and cheering. 

Then they ran around with it. 

Someone may have even thrown or kicked it at one stage.

People got excited at this. 

I didn’t.

All I can say about watching sport is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFOImv3aTyo (John Clarke) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjC38Z4T6zc (The IT Crowd)

I lived in Maroubra whilst the Bunnies were in the Grand Final, and my goodness, the support and colours around the suburb were ridiculous, far too much. 

Too much for Australia. 

Not for America.

Maroubra, sorry, but you got nothing, nothing, on the Americans. 

The Vancouver Seaha … Sorry, Seattle Seahawks (same region, easily confused) aren’t even in the grand final yet, and I don’t think people in Vancou … Seattle (seriously, they’re really similar, it’s a regional thing) know of any other colours than green and a bluey-green. 

Get over it, Seattle, it’s a sportsball team.

More Skiing

Yes, again. You may well be getting bored of it right now, so I’m not going to post any more pictures. 

However …. 

So I skied my way up to a blue run, which was pretty cool cos it’s my third time skiing. 

Then ...

I attempted snowboarding. 

I was told at the start of my internship that snowboarding is really hard to pick up, but fun. 

Then there’s the example of Wiz (I’ll leave the story for another post, Wiz-permitting)

Omair told me the theory of snowboarding, Chris gave me some pointers (0x3baf48d2) after I had already gone down the slope. Thanks Chris. I’m never going skydiving with you. 

And then I picked it up in about 15 minutes.

Ok, that’s fairly oh-look-at-me-I’m-so-awesome. 

But still. 

I’m pretty proud of that.

And snowboarding is a new way of life. It’s fantastic. 

So much easier to walk in the shoes, so much easier to turn, and so much easier to stop. Snowboarding is wonderful.

People got my nationality right!!!

Many Americans (and Australians) thought initially that I was from Middle Earth New Zealand. 

I still don’t get why this happens - whilst I do look like a Dúnedain Ranger, the Kiwi interns (shout out to Harley, Shay, Matt, Jenna, Chris, Frank, Anna) say that I have a distinct Australian accent.

But then I was on the ski lift with randoms, and they asked after my nationality. I said, “Guess."

And they said …. “Australian, right?"

YES!!!

Why?

Cos I actually pronounce words correctly, right? (I don’t)

Cos I sound AUSSIE, like Crocodile Dundee, like Hugh Jackman, Russel Crowe, and every other Aussie out there. 

And I don’t sound Kiwi. 

Honestly, it’s as bad as saying that Australia and New Zealand are “the same region”.

Though someone at the trampoline place thought I was British. This actually makes more sense, because I do occasionally lapse into a British accent accidentally (my family can testify, but do not believe the ‘accidental’ part).

This in no way links in to the next story, which involves planes. 

Snakes on a Train

So we’re driving down the highway, going to our homes.

We stopped in a byway, where they were playing rock’n’roll.

Alright, not really. 

We were on a highway, and there was a train line running alongside it, and we were racing it driving at the speed limit. 

And then I looked at the train, and noticed it was carrying enormous bombs. 

Then I looked closer and saw they were not bombs, but aeroplanes (without wings).

On each carriage of the train was an aeroplane. 

Planes on a train. 

(Let’s make this movie)

Our venerable DJ, Jenna, got some photos of this (feat. Harley’s ear and nose)

Snoqualmie Falls Trail

This was recommended by Fractal Panda, and I think it’s the first Fractal Panda recommendation I’ve actually looked into and gone to (Fractal Panda, don’t take that as a comment on what you post).

It was beautiful:

Classic big waterfall into fast-flowing green mountain river, complete with paddle-boarders.

The maze of Redmond Hill

Redmond Hill apartment complex is a maze. It is ridiculous. Harley, the driver of the wonderful Candy Van (sequel to the All-American Hero, sequel to the Viper), drove around for what felt like half an hour whilst Shay was actually navigating with Maps within the complex. That’s how complex it was. 

I feel like when your apartment complex hits that stage, you need to just become a subdivision …. or a suburb, as we say in NORMAL COUNTRIES.

The Candy Van

So there’s skiing, there’s hiking, there’s sport, there would be Microsoft progress updates, but everything I do is closely watched by the Secret Service, so I shouldn’t say anything not Microsoft-approved. 

To cover up for this severe lack of Microsoft-approved material, here is an approximate timeline, from ~Jan 2012 til about now, of my skin-covered skull and the hair that covered it in various places, and the colours of that hair. 

The Lord of the Blogs

Let's start this on a weird note:

This was my cup at Taco Time. That is a straw. Static is holding the straw to the side. 

This was weird. 

Straws come with a lot of static in America.

Here is a picture of me in my Microsoft Office, using Windows to take a photo of me taking a photo of an Apple with an iPhone. 

If you don't know what any of those words mean, Google them.

Office pranks

We covered a colleague’s office in pictures of my mentor’s face. Here are some samples. Can you find all the faces? (hint: you cannot)

For every face you see, there is an equal and opposite face that you cannot see

We have an injury!!!

America needs public healthcare. Why? So that your first question, when your hand is bleeding profusely, is not “Can I afford this?”, but instead, “How bad is it?"

Harley stands over Chris' deathbed, as Chris lists his life regrets.
Top of the list was that he never participated in that greatest of sports,
Latvian duck-spearing.

Calm down, Chris, that's just the drugs talking

Alright, rant time.

American units

So Americans use imperial .........

.......... not everywhere.

Skis are measured in centimeters. That’s centimeters, not centimetres.

Anything smaller than 1/32 of an inch, they use milli-, micro, etc, meters.

So metric. 

Then inches, feet, yards, miles, etc.

12 inches to a foot.

3 feet to a yard (ish)

About 5580 feet to a mile.

About.

I feel like I should start measuring in furlongs and paying in sovereigns and guineas, just for completeness.

I wouldn’t care if they were even something like a base 7 system, just something with a base. 

But no.

And I won’t even get started on Fahrenheit.

</rant>

American Sports

So I knew about Gridiron, baseball, and ice hockey. 

And of course all the normal sports, but they are normal, so we’ll ignore them.

Gridiron. 

My dad watches some form of football reasonably regularly, and I saw this a lot as a child, and learnt the basic game mechanics. 

Gridiron is confusing to me.

I know cricket too, by the same virtue, and baseball seems weird. 

Ice hockey makes sense, cos it is literally hockey on ice. Nothing else has changed.

But wait, there’s more. 

There’s this thing called Roller Derby. I thought it was cars that had roll cages. 

No. 

A Roller Derby team. A scottish one, at that.

It is a girls’ only sport, which is probably a wise thing, but that’s not to say the girls don’t get violent. From what I understand, it is truly just people beating each other up on roller skates, whilst a couple of girls try to outrun them all. 

Also, Americans love splitting sports up. 

Gridiron is very stop-start. So is Roller Derby. The game is 60 minutes, with two 30 minute halves. So far, so good; that is normal and sensible.

Then the halves are divided up into 2 minute jams …. um, ok.

So you have lots of little games. 

I reckon that if this was an Aussie sport it would be two 30 minute halves and that’s it. Fight to the death for 30 minutes. 

There is also Whirly ball. 

They seriously are not.

I found this hard to believe, but no, it seriously is a thing. 

Lacrosse, bumper cars, and basketball, basically.

Who thought of this? Of all the things to combine, why those?

Though, like I said in that transcript, I can’t talk; I watch things like caber tossing, haggis hurling, the Lifting of the Stones of Manhood, medieval fighting, and other such sports. 

In my defense, these are normal sports (except caber tossing), but if as weird as they are, the concept of throwing a telegraph pole just makes a lot more sense than a velodrome deathmatch with rollerblades. 

I’m now expecting to cop a whole lot of complaint and abuse from sports fans worldwide (well, AU and US) about this.

Skiing

We went skiing at Crystal. I stayed on green runs. Those who know me might be surprised, but these were hardcore green runs (Harley said they bordered on blue) and this is the second time I’ve skied.

It is fantastic though. If I get a full time position here, first thing I’m doing is getting ski gear. 

This is Harley Adams, a.k.a The Bumblebee

Second thing is getting a swanky car, cos I’ll be able to afford it.

What sort of car? 

Think about what sort of car you think I would get.

Think you’re right?

Forget Mercedes.

Forget BMW.

Forget monster trucks.

Even put DeLorean to the side.

I’ve been in a Tesla.

Tesla

Here is a review of the Tesla by The Oatmeal (caution to our younger viewers: strong language) http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla_model_s

Lasath took a Tesla for a test drive and invited me.

Holy cow.

So when I started driving on my L’s in Australia, a lot of friends asked my if I drove manual. 

“No,” I would reply. 

“Why? It’s more fun,” they said.

“I prefer to be driven than to drive,” I say, “And why bother changing gears when my car can do that for me and knows better when to do it?"

(admittedly I ride a bike and know well when to change gears then, but whatever)

Look, to be fair, I see their point. I can understand why manual makes driving more fun for them. Driving is just not fun for me.

But I have now ridden in a Tesla.

Stuff manual.

Forget automatic.

Tesla.

To all those haters who prefer petrol cars to electric, drive a Tesla. 

You know how you accelerate in a petrol car and it isn’t smooth, and it slows and speeds up for the gears to change?

This car has no gears. 

You press the pedal, and there isn’t even a delay (well, a delay comparable to the speed of light, which is negligible here).

You immediately go. 

Very, very fast. 

The engine … no, sorry, motor, is usually silent. Except when you really punch it, in which case it sounds, still fairly quietly, like a plane about to take off. There is no better sound for going fast. 

I will never love another car this much unless Tesla bring out a DeLorean.

Lasath wanted to call it KITT. Fair enough, he watched Knight Rider. 

I would name mine GLaDOS, and from then on driving would take on a whole new level of danger.

The Oatmeal guy wanted to name his Intergalactic Spaceboat of Light and Wonder. 

This is a well deserved name. 

“There’s armor plating, and they added a titanium shield."

Well.

When you can boast that your car has armor plating, and feels like you are about to take off when you accelerate, there is no competition.

 I also understand this car. 

Normally, people talk about transmission, and the this-sort-of-pump and the differential (not an equation, which saddens me), and I vaguely know my way around cars and just guess as to purposes, and occasionally get things right. 

This car makes perfect sense. 

Induction motor? Yep.

Electromag breaking? Got it.

iPad-type doohickey that controls everything like it’s JARVIS? Totally. 

This is also the most configurable car I have ever seen. 

Normally you get wing mirror adjustments, seat adjustments, volume temp and song choice. 

That iPad-thing configures everything.

You can have different profiles for different people who drive it, for all the zillion things you can change about it. 

The only thing missing is more voice commands. 

I might actually name my car JARVIS, just so I can get all Tony Stark on it. 

I agree with The Oatmeal. 

It is a wonderful car. 

It is literally the future. 

We are in the future. 

This is the frunk. Front Trunk. I probably should have called it a
Froot - front boot - but I didn't.

This is the entire car. Notice how small that is. There ain't a stupidly large number of moving
parts, pipes, tubes, etc, getting in the way and breaking all the time.
This is simplicity. This is awesome.

These are the motors.

This is the boot. Or the trunk, as Americans say. There is loads, loads, of room.

Dayumn fine car

This is the fob. There is no key, because you do not need one. You can open car doors
by pressing the relevant door on this thing, including the frank and the boot.
It also opens by proximity, or app.

I think Lasath was sold on this car.

On a side note, I unicycle to work. Some people think this strange. I think of it and perfectly efficient. 

Walking is too slow.

Riding a bike is fast, but has overhead of helmet, gloves, lock, and locking the bike up. 

Unicycling: faster than walking with zero overhead. 

Perfect. 

On a related note, my Portland trip is approaching ……… 

The BlogPost Network

Apparently it’s 2015, or something like that. 

This is how we celebrate New Year’s where I come from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMSkkxK9w10&feature=youtu.be

People are actually dressing like this, it’s weird: 

The more I look at this, the more I think that people actually do dress like this 

Mailbox Peak

This happened last year. Several days ago. 

What a trek.

It was a serious hike, and this coming from an experienced hiker. We cleared the tree line at the top and there was a 45 degree slope (gradient, not temperature) covered in thick snow. This went on for what felt like a mile, and was actually a considerable vertical distance. We literally crawled the last part.

It was a terrible view at the top; there was only this blasted mailbox:

There was indeed a mailbox at the peak of mailbox peak.
And no letters for me.

Buuuuuut it was still a great hike, and I definitely recommend it. Apparently it looks better in summer: 

Here are more photos:

Woods

Omair. Not Liz. Omair.

A bicycle. A bi-icicle. Get it?

NYE

Firstly, we went to a teppanyaki restaurant, Tokyo Steak House. 

This, in a nutshell, was fantastic, although I’m not sure they served nuts.

Basically we sat around a stove while the chef cooked the meal in front of us and engaged us in witty banter. It was very entertaining.

You know how those ninjas in movies can flip and twist a knife in incredible ways that look awesome? This guy did it with a barbecue spatula and fork.

He span an egg on the stove, flicked it up in the air with his spatula, flicked it a couple more times, and then turned his spatula on the side so that it hit the edge and cracked perfectly. What a boss. 

He set a lot of things on fire:

A stack on onion rings on fire. Not onion rings,
but rings of onion

We told them that it was Yujin’s birthday (it wasn’t), and I didn’t think they would do much, but they brought over a couple of drums and played while he danced, and then gave him ice cream. I have no regrets in being responsible for this. 

Happy birthday, Yujin. Your dancing was fabulous.
So was the death stare you gave me

Then we went to a park overlooking the city to watch fireworks. This was incredibly cold. But there was a huge turnout at the park, and the fireworks display, fired from the Needle, was rather good, although if you come from Sydney, it’s low-key at best (to the intern manager who will undoubtedly call me out on this, have you seen the Sydney fireworks? This is a fair call)

The fireworks were, at least, better themselves than the photos I got of them.

Fireworks in the distance

More fireworks in the distance

I played Auld Lang Syne at midnight, as per tradition, on the bagpipes, and then had a few more requests later (but I kept playing anyway).

It was below zero.

I played the bagpipes reasonably well, and hit most of my doublings.

The couple of pipers who read this will understand what a feat that it

It was an enjoyable night and morning.

That’s it for 2014. The Australian government can no longer do bad things in 2014 …… they’ve got a whole new year to screw people’s lives up now! 

Hey Abbott, remember those Millennium Goal things? The ones you were supposed to have done by 2015 …... i.e. this year? How’s that going?

Apparently not so bad in 2013, according to Micah Challenge (http://www.micahchallenge.org.au/assets/pdf/How_Australia_can_Finish_the_Race.pdf), but since Abbott cut a whole lot of foreign aid recently, I’m not sure how he’s planning to finish off these goals.

Still, we have achieved a fair bit on a lot of goals, so not all is bad.

Jon Without a H

So Jon’s this guy, right? And he made a blog. So I’m going to review his blog - the one post that it has. 

Here is the blog -> http://www.jonwithoutah.wordpress.com

Review of “2014: A Year in (film) review”:

Firstly, the feel is nice. The blog looks nice, with nice effects, a good font at a good size. It does not feel cluttered. Off to a good start here, Jonny boy.

The text is accompanied by pictures that are placed to the side of each corresponding paragraph, in such a way that makes it clear which picture is being talk about when, but without being annoyingly explicit about it. 

Before I get into the style, I must say this: I did notice a lot of typos and grammatical errors, mostly involving ‘I’ being where it shouldn’t. Given the connection between all the errors, I put this down to either an idiosyncrasy of Jon’s as he types, or a hardware/software issue. Jon is not that stupid at grammar to genuinely think that is correct.

His style of writing is easy to read and feels very casual, which I think is what Jon was aiming for. I read it in his voice and it worked very well - it felt just like an easy conversation, hanging out at a- … what do people hang out at? I don’t get out much. 

The content flows well. He has some well-placed and worded segues between the sections, and the sections are clearly defined. 

Each film review is sufficiently comprehensive in that you don’t feel like Jon missed a major part of the movie, but short enough so that you don’t get sick of it. 

It is also very clear that Jon knows what he is talking about when it comes to film. He doesn’t say “It got lazors and ’splosions! Rad film yeaaaah!”. He knows what directors aim to do, he knows what actors try to achieve and whether they do it or not. 

And the films themselves - I agree with Jon on most counts, and where I do disagree, I don’t feel annoyed, thanks to the well-placed caveats and the easy casual writing style.

So … 

Godzilla: yes, it felt like Watanabe was only there to say two lines, which, admittedly, he did well.

The Winter Soldier: meh. It felt like just another Marvel action. I enjoyed it, yeah, but it didn’t feel new. 

Guardians of the Galaxy: see above. I did like seeing some Marvel backstory into the infinity stones (context be praised), but still … 

How To Drain Your Flagon 2: Yes. This was a genuinely good movie. Characters did not feel unnecessary, they had changed sufficiently to meet the age gap, it wasn’t predictable and it flowed well. I did enjoy this. One thing though - why are the Vikings Scottish?

Spiderman 2: ugh. They had good effects and sound for Electro, but a weak plot and an extremely irrational Spiderman. I guess it’s different from your perspective, Jon, but I was not a huge fan. And seriously, a rhino? No. 

Interstellar: yeah, agreed. Beautiful music and effects though.

Days of Future Past: I watched this on the plane to America and was not impressed. It was a time filler, mostly. 

The Hobbit: as a fan of the books, one who has read The Hobbit, LotR, The Silmarillion multiple times, I’d better not comment either way.

Anyways … 

Overall, a well-presented, easy-to-read blog that had content that taught me something and left me wanting the next blog post to come soon. 9.5/10 would read again (and did, for this review)

In other news, we’re going skiing this weekend, so watch this space for news of injuries!