My 2013 in books, games, film, tv and music

What I read (saw, played, etc) in 2013.  Most of these weren't released in 2013, though.


My top picks, the ones that stood out:

• The game "The Walking Dead" (season 1)
  
  Though I still don't think interactive storytelling has truly lived up to its potential, The Walking Dead does a pretty damn good job.  It's a pretty powerful experience.  Even if you don't like computer games, it's worth taking a look at.

• The movie "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre"
  
  Deservedly a classic.  Quite enjoyable, never too predictable, and has a good ending.  I really liked how it felt quite naturalistic, with the plot arising organically from the situation.

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Also worth a mention

• Books
• I didn't get to read that many books this year, but out of those I did, the best ones were:
• Cider With Rosie, by Laurie Lee. Nice memoir of childhood in Cotswold village in 1920s. The writing is mostly pretty good.
• The Main Dish (Kindle Single), Michael Ruhlman. Interesting look at how, to the author's surprise, he ended up becoming a food and cookbook author. Well written and pretty funny.
• Games
• Tales of Monkey Island. Pretty good for a point-and-click adventure game.
• Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (on iOS)
• Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney (on iOS)
• Films
• Kumare. Pretty interesting and thought provoking.
• Indie Game: The Movie. Doco about the journey of some indie-game developers as they're making their games.
• Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Interesting doco about Jiro Ono, a master sushi maker, and his philosophy on work and striving for perfection.
• Unforgiven.  Quite good.  Been wanting to see this movie for so long - glad I finally got around to it.
• Once Upon a Time in the West. Style wins over substance, but a pretty good triumph. Visuals and music were excellent. Intriguing all the way through.
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.   Good, though I liked "Once Upon a Time in the West" (also by Sergio Leone) a little more.
• Music
• I didn't listen to much new music this year.  For whatever reason, I just haven't been into music as much lately.  Part of it's that most of the time I'm listening to music I'm doing PhD writing, and I find vocals a bit too distracting, so I only listen to instrumental stuff (mostly electronic stuff) and I don't really know of a good way of finding out about new releases of the sort I like.
• Tomorrow's Harvest, by Boards of Canada.  It's a good album but I don't like the bleaker aesthetic on it as much as that on their earlier albums.
• TV shows
• Derek, season 1.  Ricky Gervais comedy/drama.

Decent

• Books
• The Call of the Wild, by Jack London (free ebook edition here).
• Chairs in the Rafters (Kindle Single), by Julia Glass
• Trapped (Kindle Single), Richard Greener. About the author getting heart transplant, and shocking complications he experienced from it. Some interesting details in it.
• A PhD Is Not Enough!: A Guide to Survival in Science, by Peter J. Feibelman. Not bad, though a lot of the info it is fairly obvious. USA- & science- centric. Not always clear how it'd apply to engineering/comp sci. Could be more in-depth.
• Games
• Gone Home.  An admirable experiment interactive storytelling, but ultimately I don't think it works that well.  Worth a look if you're interested in how interactive storytelling can be done.
• Katawa Shoujo.  A straight-up "visual novel", so pretty much just a matter of reading through it rather than being a game.  Wasn't bad, but targeted more at teens than someone like me (I was curious about these visual novels and this was one people recommended).
• "Fester Mudd" episode 1 (on iOS).
• "The Silent Age" episode 1.
• The Majesty of Colors.  A quick play.  Ok, but nothing special.
• Proteus.  Ok, but I found it a little dull
• Sourcery!  I was interested to see what those "game books" are like.  Good presentation and I think good for what it is, but not really my kind of thing.  Even though it is textual, it doesn't feel like a story to me.
• MIMPI.  Puzzle platformer where you play as a dog.  Some frustrating puzzles and controls can be frustrating, but otherwise pretty decent.
• Films
• Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.   Fun.  I'm getting a bit too old to fully relate to the characters' situation though.
• Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. The sequel. Not bad, but not as fun as the first film.
• American Pie: Reunion
• Amon Tobin ISAM version 1 Live DVD. Some of the 3D effects are awesome and goose-bump inducing. And that's just watching it on a flat screen... I can't imagine what it would've been like to see in the flesh.
• TV shows
• Broadchurch, season 1
• The Shield, seasons 1 & 2.  Pretty decent -- and compared to most tv shows, pretty good -- but it too often relies on improbable escapes from tricky situations.  We decided not to watch the rest of the seasons.  Our search for another show that can stand up to The Wire continues...

Okay

• Books
• Blue Highways: A Journey into America, by William Least Heat-Moon. Travels in small-town America.
• A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens. Not bad, but didn't think it was that great.
• iPoe 1. A fairly successful attempt to add multimedia elements to some of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories.
• iPoe 2. Didn't think it was as good as first one. Perhaps also it started to feel more gimmicky.
• Some books on Ancient Rome:
  • Roman Warfare, Adrian Goldsworthy
  • Tiberius Caesar (2nd ed), David Shotter
  • Caligula, by Sam Wilkinson. Dry.

Bit Meh

• Books
• The Last Website.  Nice presentation but the story didn't do much for me.  Far too obtuse.
• Games
• The Novelist.  An experiment in interactive storytelling that doesn't work.  I mostly agree with these reviews.
• Galatea.  A textual 'interactive fiction' game.  Didn't find it interesting.
• De Baron.  Also interactive fiction.  Didn't do much for me.
• The Graveyard.  Nothing to really engage with in it, so its hard to get emotional impact from it.
• Films
• Rashomon.  Interesting idea, but it wasn't well capitalised on.  Dull, and doesn't convey anything interesting through the use of the multiple perspectives.  I've only seen one other Kurosawa film so far, The Seven Samurai, but I thought that was much better.

Lots Meh

• Books
• Juniper's Knot.  Lame. Adolescent-quality writing and content, and the way animation/interactivity was used actually detracted from things.
• Games
• Thirty Flights of Loving.  I don't get the positive reviews of it.  Didn't do anything for me.

The perfect martini

At a friend's James Bond-themed party I discovered how much I like martinis.  There's something that really works about that combination of gin, vermouth and olives, making a flavour truly "greater than the sum of its parts".  Afterwards, I set out to try the different variations on martinis to see which ones I liked and which I didn't.  This is what I learned.

Lets look at the three ingredients.

Gin

While gin's the classic base for a martini, some people like to use vodka.  To my taste that's losing out on a lot of flavour - you're basically making a different kind of drink.

It's important to use a reasonably good gin for a martini because it's the main ingredient.  While a cheaper gin can be fine in a Gin & Tonic, because the tonic water has a stronger flavour, it can ruin a martini.  I tried using Vickers gin once and the result wasn't that nice.

Vermouth

Some people have their martinis with none or almost no vermouth - that is, 

they're basically having straight gin.  All I can say is prefer the 

combination of gin and vermouth to just straight gin.

There's three common types of Vermouth

• Sweet (aka 'Rosso', 'Rosato', 'Italian')
• Semi-sweet (aka 'Bianco', 'Blanc', 'White')
• Dry (aka 'French')

 

There's lots of different brands of Vermouth.  Cinzano and Martini & Rossi (labelled just as "Martini") seem to be the most common here in Australia.  The Martini & Rossi sweet vermouth (their 'Rosato') is a noticeably sweeter than the Cinzano sweet vermouth (their 'Rosso').

Most recipes seem to refer to only the sweet and dry vermouths.  The Bianco vermouth is often called a sweet vermouth, but it's less sweet than the Rosso/Rosato.

The different types of vermouth don't just differ in terms of how sweet they are - they each actually have a fairly different flavours.

The Rosso and Bianco vermouths have stronger, more fragrant flavours.  In comparison, I find the flavour of dry vermouth a bit flat.  For me, the Bianco has the nicest flavour.

The classic martini uses dry vermouth, but I actually prefer it with bianco vermouth.  I like its flavour more, and the slight sweetness it adds.

The other thing about vermouth is that it's only around 15% alcohol, so it should be kept in the fridge not on the shelf.  Apparently an opened bottle will maintain its flavour for a month or two in the fridge.

Olives

I skewer three olives on a toothpick and drop that in the glass.  Lemon peel can also be used [2], or even cocktail onions (in which case, the drink is called a Gibson), but I don't think their flavour suits it as well.

[2] to make a lemon-peel twist use a fruit peeler to peel the rind off a lemon.  Start at one end of the lemon and work you way around its circumference in a spiral - just like you would when peeling an apple.  You can get enough peel for several drinks from the one lemon.

Temperature

Martini's taste better very cold, so you want keep all the ingredients cold.  They don't taste that nice if they're only slightly cool.  Keeping in mind that the drink will warm up in your hand and that it'll take a bit of time till you've finished drinking it, you want to get the initial ingredients as cold as possible

• keep the vermouth in the fridge
• keep the gin in the freezer
• keep the martini glass in the freezer

My perfect martini recipe

A ratio of 5:1 of gin to vermouth.

• 2.5 oz/shots good quality gin
• 0.5 oz/shots bianco vermouth
• 3 stuffed olives, skewered on a toothpick.

Add the gin and vermouth and lots of ice (enough to at least cover the liquid) into a cocktail shaker.  Shake vigorously for about thirty seconds. (You can also just stir it for about the same amount of time.  I'm not sure if shaking vs stirring makes much of a difference to the flavour).  One thing this does is adds some water into cocktail.  Pop the olives into a martini glass and then strain the cocktail shaker mix into it.

Variations

• The best variations I've come across
• Cranberry martini (tastes good and has quite a nice colour)
• 2 oz gin : 0.5 oz vermouth : 2 oz cranberry juice
• Fresh, frozen or dried cranberries for garnish
• Others
• Add a little extra olive brine to make a 'Dirty Martini'
• There's all sorts of variations on the ratio of gin to vermouth. E.g. a 50-50 martini uses equal quantities of gin and vermouth (you could use 1.5 oz/shots of each).
• Cranberry Lime Martini (this one was a bit sharp for my tastes, but a friend really liked it)
• 2 gin : 2 freshly squeezed lime juice : 2 parts cranberry juice
• Lime wedge for garnish
• Breakfast Martini (thought this one wasn't bad, but didn't think it was that great).
• 2 gin : 0.75 cointreau : 0.75 lemon juice. plus 5ml orange marmalade
• orange twist to garnish
• There's two variants that add orange juice: the Bronx and the Minnehaha.  The difference between them is that they basically switch the vermouth and orange juice ratios.  Personally neither of these did that much for me
• Bronx
• 1.5 oz gin : 0.25 oz dry vermouth : 0.25 oz sweet vermouth : 1 oz orange juice
• Orange slice for garnish
• Minnehaha
• 1.05 oz gin : 0.75 oz dry vermouth : 0.75 oz sweet vermouth : 0.25 oz orange juice
• Marguerite
• 2 gin : 0.75 dry vermouth. plus a dash orange bitters
• Lemon twist to garnish
• Haven't gotten around to trying these variants yet
• Broadway Martini
• 3 Gin : 0.5 Creme De Menthe (ideally the clear 'white' type)
• mint leaves for garnish (optional)
• Emerson
• 2 gin : 1 sweet vermouth : 0.5 lemon juice : 0.5 maraschino liqueur
• Dirty Blues Martini
• 4 oz gin
• 6 green olives stuffed with blue cheese
• 1/4 teaspoon olive juice (adjust to personal taste)

---

Here's some other ways you can use vermouth

• bianco goes quite well with equal portions of orange juice.
• rosso goes well in equal portions with cranberry juice, and well with cola (though seems to be better if you add a larger proportion of cola).
• dry goes not bad with pineapple juice.
• and you can use them for cooking.

Books I read in 2012

The best:

Wool - Omnibus edition, by Hugh Howey
Great bit of storytelling


.


Ones that were decent:

We Are All Weird, by Seth Godin
A touch wishy-washy but an interesting, brief look at broad cultural currents.

Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge
Fairly good, but mainly as a plausible near-future (c 2025) world of pervasive augmented reality & wearable computers.


A number of Kindle Singles, all of which were decent:

My Seinfeld Year, by Fred Stoller
Memoir. A couple of interesting insights into how the writing process for Seinfeld worked.

Gutenberg the Geek, by Jeff Jarvis
A look at Gutenberg as an entrepreneur

Cautionary Tales, by Stephen Tobolowsky
Memoir of bad (but funny) mistakes the author made.

The First Light of Evening, by Mark Ernest Pothier
A day in the life of a guy 3 years after divorce and still dealing with it. Pretty nicely done.

Shakedown, by James Ellroy
Pretty sharply written. Somewhat salicious.


A number of books on ancient Rome, all pretty decent. Working on slowly building up my understanding of history.

Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire, by Simon Baker.
Decent, readable basic overview. Focus mainly on politics and major political figures

The World of Rome, by Michael Grant
This one was a bit less readable than the others, but fairly informative.

Rubicon: The Triumph and the Tragedy of the Roman Republic, by Tom Holland

Julius Caesar, by Philip Freeman

Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician, by Anthony Everitt

Antony and Cleopatra, by Adrian Goldsworthy

Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor, by Anthony Everitt


.


Ones I really didn't like. I'd avoid these: 


The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect, by Roger Williams

Accelerando, by Charles Stross


.


And several that I read bits of but didn't around to finishing. Not because I didn't like them, just didn't get time:

Stop Stealing Dreams, Seth Godin

The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 23, by Gardner Dozois
I read about 5 stories from this, and didn't think much of most of them.

Pro Git, by Scott Chacon

Poems of Emily Dickinson, series 1, by Emily Dickinson

The sound of things just out of reach

#music. Songs that evoke a sense of things just out of reach, whether hazy childhood memories or something ethereal. All the songs here share a family resemblance that is best exemplified by Boards of Canada's music.



Memories of times past.


















The bittersweet beauty found in desolate isolation






Ethereal






Subtle Euphoria






Also somewhat similarly evocative

Chinese Steamed Sponge Cake

Chinese Steamed Sponge Cake

This simple cake is mildly sweet, and has a mild, slightly eggy flavour. It also has a somewhat unique texture.

My mum used to make it sometimes when I was growing up, and I've always liked it. I haven't seen it in Chinese restaurants or bakeries, so many people would probably have never seen it before.

I'm afraid I don't know what recipe book this recipe was originally from. I've just got a photocopied page of this recipe.

• eggs, 4


• sugar, 1 cup. brown sugar is probably better for this


• oil, 6 dessertspoons


• milk, 6 dessertspoons


• plain flour, 1 ½ cups


• baking powder, 1 tsp

• Beat the eggs and sugar together until thick.
  
  Add the oil and milk.


• Sift the flour and baking powder.
  
  Stir it into the egg mixture till smooth.


• Pour this mixture into a 9 inch sponge tin
  
  
  • (or you multiple smaller containers, like small ramekins).
  
  Leave the tin uncovered.


• Steam it for 25 minutes
  
  
  • e.g. put the tin into a large saucepan and let it stand on a small rack above the water.

It seems to be a bit tricky to steam the cake long enough that it is cooked inside (and not sticky) yet not too long and have it dry out too much. You might have to experiment a bit with the timing. Also, if you cook it in multiple smaller containers, like small ramekins, it obviously will cook the center of the cakes more quickly.

Other versions of this recipe

Song: "Nuclear Fusion" by Mat Zo

The odd bit of trance music I'd heard in the past hadn't grabbed me that much, but I've been trying out a lot more of it recently and some tracks I really like.. like this one "Nuclear Fusion" by Mat Zo



nice smooth sound, and nicely layered beats and rhythms that really pump along.

---

Rex Mundi Remix:

Songs with energy/intensity that keeps on building

I love it where songs have an energy or intensity that just keeps on building and building and building, like something is going to burst but doesn't. Here's my favourite examples:

Escape Velocity, The Chemical Brothers. Pretty much the whole song is like this.




FML, Deadmau5. Love the crazy rising intensity in the intro to this. [*edit: changed video to a version that sounds like album version]



Come with us, The Chemical Brothers. Pretty awesome for the first 1:15
mins or so, but falls a bit flat after that.

I'm on Twitter now

I thought I'd have a go at Twitter. I'm jamesrcole.

'Technique' by Amon Tobin

Since June, Amon Tobin has been releasing a new track on his website at the start of each month (for a US $1.99 download). I think the latest one 'Technique' is pretty awesome.

You can hear a sample of it here. Under the picture it says '$1.99', and just below that there's an arrow pointing at a short green line - click that arrow.

(My next favourite one -- which took a while to grow on me -- is 'Shut Down').

Internet at last!

It's taken 39 days, since moving from my old place, to get internet access up and running at my new place. One of the reasons I haven't written to this blog much lately.

How do societes evolve?

How do societies evolve? I’m quite interested in this question, and I want to explain a little about what I mean by it and why I think it's an important topic.

How, is a society built, from its beginnings in ‘primitive bands’ to the complex forms we see today, with their many laws, insitutions, and so forth?

It seems to happen by piecemeal evolution -- you can't jump straight from a hunter-gatherer society to a modern democratic society -- but what are the actual details of this process? (i.e. like other complex systems, it's a matter of laddered skills).

For example, how does a policing system arise? What conditions are required for that to happen? And what developments does it enable?

What sorts of structures are found within our socieities, and what is the ‘division of labour’ between them?

What are the general themes at work societal evolution? One seems to be the ability to put increasing levels of trust in individuals and insitutions, which seems to enable more complex structures to be built within socieities.

What are the general driving forces behind the development? One seems to be improved communication mechanisms, that allow information to be transmitted more accurately, over greater distances in shorter amounts of time. That example is, in turn, an instance of technological evolution, which seems to be a significant driving force, though it is of course only one of the many facets of this issue.

I have limited knowledge of what we currently know about these issues. How much do we know? Under this general umbrella of ‘the evolution of society’, there is a lot of exiting work, but how much of this goes beyond just chronicling the changes, to an analysis specifically focused on the nature of the evolution itself?

What is the value of understanding how societies evolve? I can think of two main areas. I think it's important for understanding the nature of the institutions and other elements within our societies, and I think it's a large source of insight into human psychology.

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about the nature of the instituions and other elements of societies, and I think understanding them from an evolutionary standpoint would be a good way to understand their nature.

For example, the law seems to be commonly thought of as some sort of abstract force. John Searle's book The Construction of Social Reality is an attempt to clear up some of these misunderstandings and understand such institutions in concrete terms.

By understanding such things from an evolutionary standpoint, it's easier to appreciate their actual, concrete realisation, because you can see the processes by which it is built, and thus the way that it is realised. And it helps us hone our intuitions about how elements of socieites can change, and how the ways in which such change is constrained.

You need to understand these sorts of things if you want to think effectively about them -- which is important in many social/political/economic matters.

It's pretty obvious that human psychology plays an important part in the evolution of societies. If we can understand such changes (and similarly, when changes were not able to occur) then we can get some useful insight into our psychology. For example, by looking at the various conditions when people will or will not put trust in institutions.

Labels added to blog, and updated blog template

Blogger recently added the capability to add labels to posts, so I've added labels to this blog's backlog of posts. I also updated the blog template, removing the old sidebar with links to external sites etc, and replacing them with a list of the labels and the updated blogger blog archive widget.

These are the labels I've added

• biographical
• effectivePerceptionAndReasoning
• humourFunInteresting
• ladderedSkills
• miscDevelopmentsAndAdvances
• natureOfPerceptionAndMental
• potentiallyUsefulInfo
• recipe
• simplicity
• thoughts

Five Lies, One Truth (about me)

Ricky passed me this task:


Of these statements about me, only one is true. Can you tell which?

1. I’d describe myself as left-wing
   
   
2. If I could take one show off television, it would be Big Brother
   
   
3. I’d describe myself as right-wing
   
   
4. Some of my relatives are well known people
   
   
5. I don't think much of most science-fiction novels
   
   
6. I dislike pop music
   

My PhD Scholarship Application

Here's my PhD scholarship application, from early 2004.

Looking at its content, it does feel quite personal. Largely, I think, because it's so focused on selling myself. Not that I mind it having that focus, as that's what the application required, but it feels a bit funny putting it online.

So why have I? In part because this is the kind of thing I would be interested in seeing if someone else did it. Also because I spent all that time writing it, so it also feels a bit funny keeping it tucked away in a drawer.

I often get asked what my PhD research is about, and it always frustrates me that I can't give a very articulate answer - so this may help a bit for that. Even though two years have passed now, it still provides a pretty accurate description of what I'm doing.

Thanks goes out to the following people. To Bob Colomb for his assistance with the application. To my dad for proofreading the first draft of the application. To Karen Henrickson for helping out on short notice and proofreading the second draft. To Trevor Chorvat for insight into the sorts of things the people evaluating the application would be looking for. And to Zoran Milosevic for giving me the flexibility and support at work that helped make it possible for me to get it done.

Academic Merit and Research Potential

I believe my academic performance demonstrates a strong research potential, in terms of both my overall honours grades and my performance in the most significant research component of the degree, the honours dissertation.

My first semester studying honours was affected by illness, and while I successfully applied for special consideration for the impact of this illness on my study, I believe my performance in the remainder of the course provides a more accurate reflection of my academic merit.

In that first semester, I received grades of six, two fours and a failure, and while the special consideration removed the failure from my academic record it left the other marks standing; this resulted in a grade-point average of 5.33. For the remainder of the course (for five eighths of the honours course load), I achieved the highest possible grades, receiving straight sevens across all subjects. For my academic achievement I was awarded a place on the Dean's List. At graduation I was awarded honours 2A.

My research capabilities are clearly demonstrated by my honours dissertation for which I received a 95% and a grade of seven. My dissertation is now used as (the only) example of dissertation work on the FIT/QUT honours coordinator's web-site, at: http://sky.fit.qut.edu.au/~andersam/honours/.

My academic and research achievements led to employment within the IT faculty at QUT, and I believe this employment further reflects and reinforces my capabilities. As a result of my strong performance in an Artificial Intelligence subject, I was offered a research assistant position where I worked on a data mining project that was undertaken for an external client.

I was also offered employment within the faculty to develop all of the content of an online Java bridging course aimed at programmers already familiar with the C language. At the time, the faculty was switching to Java as their primary programming language for teaching, and this course was required for students that were entering degrees after the first year and as a result had not undertaken the introductory Java subjects.

My academic merit and research potential are also demonstrated by my success in gaining employment after graduation as a research scientist. This work is described in further detail, below.


Match with Research Strengths

A strong alignment between the proposed research and the ITEE School's research strengths in data and knowledge engineering and complex and intelligent systems places the proposed research firmly within the province of the faculty's research strengths.

The topic of the proposed research concerns the nature of information. What, ultimately, is information? In brief, what is its fundamental structure and nature, and what material items and processes does it map to in the real world? The intention is to approach this primarily as a fundamental question, rather than as a means to solve an applied problem. It is difficult to think of questions that are more fundamental, particularly to Information Technology, than the question of ‘what is information?’ and yet this question has so far — it seems widely agreed — eluded an adequate answer.

There is a strong match between the proposed research and the ITEE School's research strength in the area of data and knowledge engineering. The School's Data and Knowledge Engineering research group identifies three main research concentrations and strengths; the proposed research primarily matches their Semantic Issues strength, which covers Ontologies and Knowledge Representation.

The question of 'what is information?' can be considered to be largely an ontological one. This provides a clear and definite link between the Ontologies strength and the proposed research. This link is further strengthened by the way ontologies are conceived in the Information Technology domain. In Information Technology, ontologies are primarily considered from the perspective of 'what is the structure of a particular type of information?'. This question inherently requires, and is reliant upon, some conception of what information is.

For these reasons, the group's research knowledge and experience would provide valuable input into the proposed research, and in turn the proposed research could contribute to the group's strengths, such as through its application, in a collaborative context, to applied Ontological research that was being undertaken.
Primary supervision has been arranged with Associate Professor Bob Colomb, whose research focuses primarily within this Semantic Issues component of the Data and Knowledge Engineering research group. Associate Professor Colomb has undertaken research in the area of the proposed research topic and maintains an active interest in it.

Another of the ITEE School's research strengths there is a strong match with is the area of complex and intelligent systems, as embodied by the School's Complex and Intelligent Systems research group. The group's primary aim is to understand the principles that underlie complex systems. In the view of information I hold at this early stage, information arises primarily from the complexities of the perceptual systems of humans (and other information processing agents) — which are complex systems. Thus, the research knowledge and expertise in this group would provide valuable input into the proposed research.

I also believe that the evolutionary perspective, which is taken by many researchers in this group, aligns well with the proposed research; this perspective figures prominently in my intended approach — at this early stage — to understanding what information is and how it can arise. Additionally, I believe that a better understanding of information could provide leverage in understanding the structure and nature of complex systems — as complex systems are often defined and understood through the way they represent and process information.

For these reasons, the group's knowledge and expertise could contribute substantially to the proposed research, which itself could provide leverage for approaching topics within the research group's areas of interest, particularly in analysing and modelling complex and intelligent systems. The match with the Complex and Intelligent Systems research group is realised through the co-supervision which has been arranged with Dr Tom Mandeville. Dr Mandeville is a member of that research group, as well as being a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Economics.

In addition to helping realise the link with the Complex and Intelligent Systems group, Dr Mandeville's involvement would also foster inter-faculty ties between the proposed research in Information Technology, and the Economics faculty, where this research topic is also of interest. Furthermore, Dr Mandeville has done considerable work closely related to the topic of the proposed research.

In summary, there are strong and definite matches between the proposed research and the faculty's research strengths in the areas of data and knowledge engineering and complex and intelligent systems, and these are made operational through arranged supervision with staff members who have research expertise in and relating to the proposed research topic.


Demonstrated research performance

Both my accomplishments while studying and my employment record demonstrate a strong research performance. As mentioned above, I received very high marks for my honours dissertation, and its use by the honours coordinator as an illustration of honours work is a strong recognition of its quality.

While studying, I worked as a research assistant, and after graduating I obtained a position as a research scientist in an IT research center — the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC) — where I am presently working. DSTC partakes in research under the federal government's Cooperative Research Centre program. As a research scientist, I have three and a half years of research experience, including international collaboration and a number of papers published in well respected forums (as detailed below).

I work on a project at DSTC that undertakes electronic contracts research. The project is focusing primarily on the design and development of an electronic contract monitoring (as in, detecting contract violations) and management system, and consists of five researchers. As an illustration of my level of involvement in this research, I have been entrusted with the primary role in researching and designing our Business Contracts Language, which is used to encode the details of a contract in such a way that it can be monitored by our system.

This language is has several novel features, which include novel constructs for detecting patterns of events (required for detecting occurrences that should/should not occur as per the contract) and a unique model for managing the assignment of contractual obligations to roles, and those roles to people (and other entities).

My research has also involved a number of collaborations, involving researchers located in Australia, the UK, and the US. This has included two months spent earlier this year as a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Kent in the UK. This time was spent investigating electronic contract issues in collaboration with Dr Steven Neal and Professor Peter Linington. This collaboration was undertaken as part of a DEST grant, "Monitoring for B2B Contracts".

The research has also produced a number of publications, and I have been an author on six papers, including a journal paper (to appear in Data & Knowledge Engineering, Elsevier), two in IEEE conferences and one in a Springer-Verlag conference (EDOC 2002 and 2003, DEXA 2002), and two in IEEE workshops (ITVE 2001, Policy 2001). The paper I presented at the 2003 DSTC Research Symposium, "Iterating Over Time", was awarded best paper.

In summary, my research performance has been demonstrated in my honours dissertation and research assistant work, and more recently in my full time role as a research scientist.

Working at DSTC has been a rewarding experience that has, I believe, equipped me with a number of valuable skills. At the same time, I have long held an interest in the proposed research topic — I have been spending some of my own time over the last few years investigating it — and this interest has gradually increased to the point where pursing this topic has become a primary goal. I wish to take on this topic because I want to research something that is deep and substantial, because I want to grow from the challenges of doing so, and because I have strong belief in this topic’s significance.

Music I Like: You Know You're Right by Nirvana

For a while I've been wanting to write a bit on music I like, but it's one of those things I never get around to.

So in a more bottom-up spirit, I thought I'd start small, and try and do it one song at a time.

This time it's Nirvana's You Know You're Right (Wikipedia entry).

Posthumus releases can be a bit of a worry -- are they just trying to dredge up any old thing they can? -- but I was quite pleasantly surprised by this song. If you don't know its background, it was recorded in 93 or 94 but wasn't released until almost ten years later.

The song is pretty classic Nirvana, combining power with melody, and 'you know you're right' is a nice lyric.

The verse music is also a little unique for them, having a sound that I can only think of describing as a little funky, having more bass and more of a looping structure to it.

And who else but Kurt Cobain could half-sing, half-scream a couple of drawn out utterances of 'pain' and make such a great-sounding chorus?

Late Nights and Early Mornings

On the final night at my last place, when I was moving recently, I staying up all night doing the final packing and cleaning.

I finished around dawn, and since there weren't any trains then, I decided to walk the kilometer or two to my new place.

I tend to be a night-time person, so I don't get to see that time of day that often, but I really like it. The light is warm and soft, and things feel fresh and peaceful.

I also like late at night. Like early morning, it feels more peaceful and more like like I've got everything to myself. Not that I've got anything against the daytime and having other people around, but it's just that those two times feel a bit special.

Beatrice Street

To follow-up my last post, I managed to find a new place -- at Beatrice Street in Taringa. It's okay for a last-minute find; the place is quite old, and a little run down, but the room is an okay size, and transport is fairly convenient.

Goodbye to Toowong's Explorer Street

You may have wondered why this blog is called Explorer Street.

Two and a half years ago, before I started the blog, I moved into a unit in Toowong, located in a street with that name, and it's where I've been living ever since. I thought the name had a nice ring to it.

I had hoped to stay here until at least the end of my PhD (probably another two years from now), but the unit is being sold and I have to move out. I really don't want to :(   I don't know yet where I'm going to, I'll have to see...

The Music Meme

Better late then never, they say... i mean, it's only been like ten months 'getting round to this' since Ricky passed me the Music Meme...

1. Total volume of music files on my computer?
   Approx 20GB, 3500 songs
   
2. The last CD I bought was...
   In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country, Boards of Canada
   which i think is not bad, but not great.
   
3. (a) The last song I listened to before writing this was...
   Fit But You Know It, The Streets
   (b)Song playing right now:
   none
   
4. Five songs I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me.
   Hard question! Too many, too hard to remember. Some that come to mind are...
   
   
   • Hey Boy, Hey Girl, The Chemical Brothers
     fantastic song, and it reminds me when I used to go out with friends.
     
   • Killing in the Name, Rage Against the Machine
     it was what really got me into music. Have to say though, that these days I find their music a bit tiring to listen to... i spose coz it's so angry.
     And FWIW, it's not my all time fav RATM song - that'd probably be Bulls on Parade.
     
   • Out From Out Where, Amon Tobin
     I'm including this, even though it's an album, becuase I think the whole thing is absolultely brilliant... near perfect. Takes a while to get into it, though.
     
   • Daughter, Pearl Jam
     From the first CD I bought, which I listened to over and over again...
     
   • two other songs that have a prominent emotional association for me, because they remind me of past times with friends, are
     Whiter Shade of Pale
     and
     Buenos Tardes Amigo, Ween
     though I haven't heard either of these songs for years, and there's lots of songs I like just as much or more than these...
   
   

My New Years Eve Pics

In the city with Scott, Carmen, Cameron, Melissa, Baz, and Caroline

www.flickr.com