Producerism

Long time between drinks! I've had a bunch of things keep me busy in the meantime, and a general lack of doing stuff bloggable, but figured it was worth keeping this from stagnating by posting an update to cover a few topics that had come up recently.

Firstly, as hinted by the picture, I finally got around to reading Atlas Shrugged. I've been meaning to catch up on more classic, controversial stories, and after repeatedly coming up in the recent US elections, I figured it was worth a shot. The only thing I'd heard about it was the quote about it and Lord of the Rings - so I expected rampant free markets but not much else.

While it certainly takes it to the extreme (Ayn Rand seems like she'd have been an interesting person to talk to, if not insufferable), I think there's a few things to take from it in a more recent climate. The characters are a bit too...rational, I guess, for it to even approximate reality - not that that's a bad thing, just that I don't see that the real world has enough grounding in rationality for a bunch of the ideas to actually work - especially as technology results in the scope/complexity of businesses increasing, so the size increases and the influence one person can have over direction decreases.

Image from Wikipedia

At the same time as reading it however, I was also doing a Coursera course on Economics for Scientists - I'd always been slightly interested in at least the scientific modelling behind it, and given that I'm now in Switzerland, it seemed like a good reason to learn more. The thing that struck me as interesting, given Atlas Shrugged and news stories, was that, for pretty much every time a Producer produced a surplus, there was also a related Consumer surplus. This assumes a few things: e.g. that consumers are rational(ish) and won't spend more than the gained value from buying something, that producers sell at one price (no discrimination), that producers are trying to maximise their profit, ... but in general, the more a producer gains from selling something, it's likely correlated to how much consumers (as a whole) also gain.

This is also one of the premises in Rand's book, but given all the recent dissent towards wealthy producers (see: Occupy movements, anger towards Australian mining magnates, and general dislike for retailers making money) it's interesting to see that the general public consensus is the opposite: that earning more means you must be cheating people somewhere. Sure, there are some places were this is true (e.g. Libor rate fixing) but, at least for people making profits from selling actual goods (Steve Jobs, Gina Rinehart, James Packer, ...), it seems much easier/more popular to demonize based on not sharing the wealth, without acknowledging the corollary, that as a side effect of getting to that wealth, the population as a whole has gained considerably too (people now have extra iron, and iPhones, ...).

Maybe you can claim that they actually lied/cheated/stole their way there, but I feel that's a difficult position to rationally take - it seems instead that it's too easy to round the Consumer's surplus (split between many, so individually quite small) down to zero, and concentrate just on the Producer's (split between few, so much larger). I just hope that rather than trying to bring down profit-makers, we can instead use the surplus we get from them, and encourage competition from others that just increases everyone's standards as a whole.

A question to leave those who've read this far, and I look forward to thoughts in the comments:

Assume my tax bracket is 30%. Is it better to (a) donate $300 to charity, or (b) spend $300 on my own productivity that will make me $1000 more profitable per year?

That's enough thinking for one day, enjoy a tilt-shift view of Zurich :)

Meanwhile, to lighten things a bit and recap on other things I've read since my last Kindle update:

• 1Q84: an entertaining read if you want to read to have your mind pulled in unusual directions.
• Ready Player One: definite read if you enjoy 70s/80s gaming memorabilia, but otherwise, maybe wait for the movie, which should be good. Halting State felt similar(ish), more serious though nothing special.
• There But For The: Weird. Nothing really happened, but it never felt like it should, so kind of relaxing. But nice to finally feel like I'm reading art, rather than consumables.
• The Contotionists Hand: Recommended as Palahniuk-esque, not as good but lived up to the genre, so not bad if you've run out of Chuck to read.
• The Fear Index / Fifth Avenue: Both wall-street-style finance/thriller/action, I'd class as airport novels but not as consumable as, say, Dan Brown. Maybe for people who fantasize about running a hedge fund.

Journalism

(Note: not about travel this week! I've mostly just been in Zurich...)

Sepblog, flickr

In the news a while ago, a number of issues had come up which led to people blaming media coverage for inciting violence / propogating stereotypes. This led me to wonder to what extent the media actually had control over this sort of stuff, and how much as a business they just reflected the views of their news-article consumers as a whole. While I haven't made it any further on this issue (the average public opinion seems to be 'blame the media!' which isn't very helpful...), I did recently read a short piece in the TED books range** called "Media Makeover" by Alisa Miller (CEO of Public Radio International) which had a few interesting takes on things which seemed worth adding for anyone interested.

The most interesting part I found concerning my question above is quite a simple idea: How much is written about stuff that readers want to read? If the correlation was low, then that's strong evidence that the media dictate what they write, and that consumers have no choice but to read it or abandon 'the news'. The higher it is however, the more I feel it gets to the public setting the news agendas, and media outlets, as a business, being forced to write about it. [an aside: of course, they could take a 'moral highground' and only publish what they deem as high-quality newsworthy articles, but putting news corporations in charge of the public agenda seems very...undemocratic, plus bad business].

Dianaschnuth, flickr

So how can we measure that? Miller's article mentions the Pew Research Center, and in particular, the News Interest Index (what we read) and the News Coverage Index (what is written). While it's not an exact science, the main issues seem to correspond quite well, so at least the media is writing what people want to read - which to me, suggests that, in a world with more media sources (traditional + blogging, social media), as this is still the case then at least a lot of what is written about is because people actually think like that. As a corollary, if you want to change what is written about, you should change public opinion; it's much harder, but shouldn't be seen as the job of the media.

Note that this is in part what is happening - people are reaching around traditional media to incite their own movements, which are later picked up by the original journalists as enough of the public gain interest.

That said, a separate issue that has come up, also mentioned in Miller's piece, is the overall quality decreases when writing demand-based articles. There's enough content there for an entirely separate blog post, but in short: 24hr news cycles (the 'hamster wheel' effect) leads to things like filter bubbles and link-baiting, which is bad for everyone [see newstrust and mediamakeover for movements against this].

This post doesn't really have a message, but I guess under the label of 'fix the public opinion, not the media', I should advocate sticking to reading well-written pieces about things you don't agree with. Don't assume that journalists who write about the causes that interest you are good journalists, and likewise don't assume that those who don't (or worse, do but disagree with your conclusion) aren't. Often for divisive topics, there doesn't have to be a correlation between well researched opinions, and the conclusions reached.

That's it from me for now, but I'm still keen to hear more opinions on this. Which sets the agenda, public opinion or media? Which should it be? How can we improve it, if anything is required?

**One footnote - you may have remembered at the start of this that I mentioned reading a TED book. Sadly, I find that entire range falling into this same trap, and I now see most of their offerings as today's form of 'self-help' books, which make you feel like you're a better person without actually achieving anything. Despite topics covering the downfalls of filter bubbles and link bait, they also release quite partisan articles with self-help-y titles like "The science of optimism" or "How did you end up here?". Not to say there's anything wrong with the research, but the presentation ironically falls into many of the traps it talks about. It's no wonder that, for the TED books app, the #1 "customers also bought" app is Al Gore's climate change app.

RtW Cities: Stuttgart (+Ludwigsburg)

Merry Christmas (/ Fröhliche Weihnachten) and Happy New Year to you all! I thought I'd sneak one last cities blog post in to 2012, rounding out my year with a trip to Stuttgart (and neighbouring Ludwigsburg) to enjoy some authentic German Xmas markets!

Since moving to Zurich, the only German city I've actually stopped in has been Dogern to go furniture shopping, so Christmas seemed a good time of year to actually make a trip out of it, Katie and I were both free for a weekend and heard good things about their markets so headed down for a long weekend - it's only a 3hr direct train ride!

The Xmas market influence was clear immediately, as the walk from the main station to our hotel went along Königstraße, the main shopping street which was lined with market stalls, reindeer and tannenbaum aplenty. We explored a bit further out around the gardens to the east, then headed back into the fray, as the crowd was getting big! After a quick dinner and a mug of warm Apfelglühwein, we also picked up some decorations / candles for our home for Xmas.

The following day was another trip, this time a short train ride to be shown around Ludwigsburg by friends, a small Baroque town with a mighty palace (from Duke Ludwig, surprise) which once housed the Kings of Württemberg. Certainly an impressive place to see, it kind of makes me wish there were still crazy egotistic rich people who built fancy castles close to populated areas... and having satisfied my Baroque architecture fondness for the trip, we also experienced the Ludwigsburg's markets, packed much more tightly into the main square, between the rather imposing dual facing churches (protestant and catholic).

I think the most impressive thing about Stuttgart for me was it felt slightly closer to what I'm used to in an Australian city - there was a big mall street, plenty of small stores (including a club that was still belting music onto the streets at 10am Sunday!), coffee places, and a food/restaurant street (Calwerstraße). Despite this, it though also maintained the European feel, with impressive large stone buildings, clock towers, random churches, and generally, places of historic interest from many centuries ago. So, a really nice mix, and I look forwards to trying out Berlin/Munich maybe next year (sadly, no Ampelmännchen in Stuttgart!).

As usual nowadays, more photos are also available in this album.

RtW Cities: Copenhagen (+ Lund)

Grüezi Mitenand! (Swiss German for roughly: Hello everyone!)
It has been a rather busy past month, visiting no fewer than five countries in two weeks - Switzerland (naturally), Australia to be best man (congratulations, Bodie & Courtney!), Germany (picking up furniture), and both Denmark and Sweden in a recent visit covered in today's post.

First up was Lund - a town of about 100k focused around Lund Univerisity, which is where a friend from Sydney (and our host for the trip) is currently studying. The abundance of cobblestone streets and cute small alley-ways was rather nice, and the sudden transition to hearing Swedish and using Krona was someone lessened by the fact that, being a university town with lots of imports, pretty much everyone spoke English. I appreciated that they also made good coffee at cafes, something I'd been missing in Zurich.

On the first night I also made it to Helsingborg (Sweden's closest place to Denmark, apparently) to watch Tommy Emmanuel play. It was rather amusing being so far from home sitting with four other Aussies and watching an Australian, but having grown up trying to emulate him on guitar, I couldn't miss this - and wasn't disappointed! To the right you can see him using his guitar as a drum, something I didn't expect (nor his solo voice parts).

I can't talk about the concert without mentioning the trip home - just before leaving, two guys ran onto the train and barely made it in, one of them carrying a Carlsberg who then pointed at me and cheered. Coming from Australia, guys with beer on late trains had be a bit worried, especially when he randomly started talking to me across the carriage, but it turns out he was just a extroverted ('tipsy', maybe) friendly Icelander on his way to a party, and our group ended up chatting about IT, train-track laying (he said he'd layed the track we were travelling on) and life in this part of Sweden - Skåne.

The rest of the time in Lund was spent touring around the Xmas festivities, which were out in force in the main squares. Additionally I managed to try some local Swedish food and explore the impressive cathedral pictured on the left - Lunds Domkyrka, a nice example of Roman architecture including an underground crypt-like section, and cool calendar which appeared to be useful for calculating what day of the week any date was on. One small part of the time in Lund was spent buying a better winter layer - useful, as what I heard was the first snow of the season fell on us later that night, covering the town in white for the following day.

The very last day of the trip was flying back to Zurich, the best way from Lund being to fly out of Copenhagen so after a train trip in the morning (another border crossing, another not needing to take out my passport) the rest of the morning was walking around the city center - unfortunately not for hugely long, due to the snow which had continued, and now become quite heavy. Still, there was quite a good view from the Rundetaarn (round tower, with an observatory up the top), loads of churches and clocktowers covered in white, and a look at a more commercial tourist street, closer to what I've come to expect in Australian cities.
Overall, definitely a city that, if I chance longer than half a day to visit I will return - it'd be nice to explore more and see things like the little mermaid and the palaces. That said, next up: Stuttgart booked for Xmas!

Also, for more photos from the trip, see this album.

Swiss traditions: Rösti

Today was my first official day of living in a city with natural snow, though that was covered in my other Zurich blog so won't be repeated here (read that one first!). Instead, I thought I might cover a few things which seem particularly Swiss - starting with Rösti. This side dish (or, if you're adventurous, main course) is pretty much just grated semi-boiled potatos, fried in a pan (I used this) but can then have random stuff like cheese or bacon added. As not much is open on Sunday night (also a swiss tradition, albeit less tasty), I decided to practice my skills with a sausage and rösti combo, to the surprise of the bratwurst.

Overall, I'd say success for a first shot, but could be (and will be!) experimented with in the future. Speaking of Swiss traditions, a few more worth random ones of interest. Firstly, the house numbering ("Hausnummernschild"), where pretty much all the signs look exactly the same - white text on square blue background.

While it takes a small degree of personalisation away from the people who own the houses, it sure is really easy to tell the numbers of everything on the street, even from far away, something that can be tricky in Australia and result in starting at stranger's letterboxes to find your destination.

Also worth mentioning is the windows that I've seen in every building - handle down = closed, and really quiet. Handle to the side = open on a side hinge, handle up = open a small bit from the top, hinged at the bottom, for aerating a room. Nifty!

The keys also have been similar at all the places I've stayed at - no grooves, just a pattern of dimples at different heights. Plus the blinds were all raised and lowered by long rods that can bend into a Z-like shape for easy rotation, and the toilet flush buttons were all identical. Maybe there's something to this, where if you design something for a non-focal piece of the house that is so simple and useful, you get a monopoly over everyone's use in the city, to help reduce costs and make it easy for everyone. See here for a list of more Swiss traditions that I found while looking up sites for this post - most I've run into already :)

Finally, I feel like I can't post about designs seen everywhere around switzerland without the obvious one, so ubiquitous in the timing field that even Apple 'borrowed' the design for their clocks:

Image from http://www.macobserver.com

Passport wake

Before moving to Zurich I decided it best to apply for a new passport - you see, I acquired my previous one a bit after turning 18, so it was possibly going to expire while I was overseas and it seemed easiest to update it while in Australia; which indeed it was, but that also meant invalidating my previous one, so I thought it an appropriate time to go through it and reminisce on the last 7ish years of travel:

Image from here

The most prolific stamp is easily the one you get for entering the US at LAX, that blue circle with the date in the middle. I ended up with 9 of those, a result of LAX being the main entry point of call for both programming contest trips, then work. Also probably from USA is one rogue date stamp (same red font as the others) - which I think they added next to a previous still-valid trip - and one really small green immigration form stub from the days before ESTA. I probably didn't need it, but it was stapled in, which gave it some permanence... Thankfully you don't get one for leaving the US, otherwise it'd be much more packed. Unfortunately not in this passport, but from memory my previous one would have had an entry sticker around the date of the 'Northest blackout of 2003' - by far my quickest trip through customs in the US, due to most east-bound domestic flights (but not mine!) being cancelled, which we only found out a few days later. The other US stamp worth pointing out is the one two pages before 'page 1'. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe these pages are supposed to be empty (and have received no stamps since), yet one official in 2006 seemed to think it'd be a good idea for them to use it right at the start...

image from wikimedia commons

One of the 9 above came from my round-the-world trip (mentioned in this post), the trip which also added two from Spain (entering into Madrid, and leaving from Barcelona), both being simple black/red rectangles with very clear IKEA-ish language-free symbols (EU, enter v. exit). I still remember the entrance one as being one of the oddest customs trips, where it seemed everyone in the entrance hall was late for a transfer so it seemed they whipped us through, almost no questions asked, stamping hurriedly. That trip was also the cause of my one stamp in the passport for Heathrow, having visited the airport a few times but not actually stayed until that trip. I was surprised at how few Europe stamps I had - I guess I got unlucky in that Athens was just before this passport, and Zurich just after, but I'm sure I'll rectify that now that I'm living here :)

The one other major source of stamps was my Antarctica trip mentioned here, starting with entry & exit stamps from Argentina, plus the full-page visitation visa sticker, which to my recollection was the only visa required for the entire passport (hurrah for programs of visa waivers for temporary visits!). On that trip I also  gained the two cutest stamps - those from visiting the Ukraine base in Antarctica; both big circles, one with a whale and the other having three penguins.

Image from here

Rounding out the work trips (and one ACM) are two stamps for Korea - entrance and exit, the former where they hand-corrected the expiry date to the same date they just crossed out - and four from Japan. These comprised of two pairs of entry/exit stamps, the entrance ones being particularly notable for their big QR codes on each which appear to scan as some binary data, hopefully the information on the sticker (...hopefully?).

Finally, last but not least are the three from South Africa - one entry, one visa expiry date (both in small black circles) and one exit (same, but square for some reason). It was during a world cup, so thankfully the process there was extraordinarily simple to close out the 7th continent of stamps (well...technically I didn't have an Australia stamp, and never visited NZ, alas).

So that concludes this summary, around 27 items to trigger memories with. I certainly feel very lucky to have taken the journeys I have - I doubt that I would have thought, back in 2005, that it'd look like that when finally disposed of (or the circumstances at the time), which makes me really keen to do this again in 10 years once the current one runs out, hopefully filled with stamps from all over Europe (if they still stamp when you live here?), I'm sure some from the US, many from Australia, and who knows, maybe even some more from Antarctica or another residence visa? ...

Taken by me, from memory morning over Heathrow

(P.S - apologies for the random photos, I'm not sure what the deal is with putting photos of an invalid passport online so I avoided that).

Round the world cities: Zürich

I'm soon to head off to live in Zürich for a few years, but just beforehand I got the chance to meet up with my team in person, which also meant spending a week in Switzerland! Unfortunately getting there is half the battle; I flew Sydney - Singapore - London - Zurich, about 28hr of flying, and arriving at ridiculous-o'clock which did have the nice side-effect of seeing a sunrise over London (above) and flying directly over Paris on the last leg.

The weather was amazing for the week - only one day of rain, the rest being clear, 25-30C days, so the two days of weekend I had were filled with exploring parts of the city. First up, my hotel was located just past the eastern side of the north tip of Lake Zurich, so I headed over the Qualbruke bridge and got my first sight of the 'old-town', apparently part of the really old settlements where the buildings look appropriately old european. The massive spires of Grossmünster and Fraumünster loomed large, plus the giant Lindt signage and clocktowers everywhere made me definitely feel in Switzerland.

Overall, definitely a nice place to visit, but it remains to be seen whether all the small things make it good to also live in. Walking down Bahnhofstrasse - the main retail walkway and closest equivalent to Pitt St / Rundle Mall that I mentioned here - I was impressed at how many names I saw that I recognised from Australia, were actually in their home country. Watches (IWC, Swatch, Rado, Rolex, ...), Banks (UBS, Credit Suisse, Julius Bär, Zurich Kantonal, ...) and Desserts (Lindt, Nestlé, Mövenpick, ...) suggest that for a city with a population under 400k, it's good at promoting itself to an international audience. That said, it was hard to find food places for which it didn't feel like I should be parking my yacht before entering and ordering some gold-wrapped chocolate. But once you got away from the main center, things turned more into the narrow-street, pretty-architecture 'suburbia' that I like (see below). And of course, the geology of the place - mountains all around, eventually snowfields, rivers and lakes everywhere, ... was quite a novelty to me, to have it so close to a city center.

So Zürich as a city to visit was great - if you're ever nearby and can take a train to the Hauptbahnhof then amble down the Bahnhofstrasse to the lake, that's worth it alone. As for living, I guess I'll just have to find out over time... but definitely I'll take the chance to visit cities nearby (e.g. Paris) and add them to this series :)

Two other things to note - this was my first round-the-world-cities post using photos from my new proper camera (Nikon 5100), rather than my phone, so hopefully the look nicer in the full view! Additionally, for more details of the final permanent move, check out the related Federbaer in Switzerland blog.

New Blog!

A very short announcement today - I've started a new blog today on program design over at oncodedesign.blogspot.com, for those following me due to my programming rather than my random travel/life updates. So if you're a coder, have an interest in the architecture of programs, or want to read what I spend my time thinking about, head on over.

It's built on a few principles I've found while working as a programmer, which have also been put to the test in a new website I completed a few weeks ago: http://shortsayings.appspot.com/
If you ever need a site (or image) with a fancy saying, head over there and it'll create one for you :)
For example, http://shortsayings.appspot.com/7X1LJ87 and http://shortsayings.appspot.com/TTZKAQO

For everyone else, I returned to my home town of Adelaide recently so plan to have a post about the visit up soon, and following that, one about Sydney too before I leave!

Kindling #2 - more reviews

Some of you may remember an earlier post I wrote covering my recent tendency to read a lot - now due to a few trips and further reading time, I've been able to get through a lot more, and so have compiled an updated summary for the purpose of those in the future who, like me, search for reviews of books they like to see if they can find suggestions for more. (If you're one of those, hello, person from the future!)

Finished recently:

Blue Monday (Nicci French) - for those left in suspense last time: not a bad read, but the ending kind of let it down, it just fizzled out; the plot development left behind a few interesting characters and developed a bit too predictably. That said, I'm open to trying out a sequel as the psychological parts were better than average - and it turns out, "Tueday's Gone" is indeed going to be released soon;

Berlin Noir (Philip Kerr) - At the recommendation of a friend, I tried this Kerr sampler for his detective Bernie Gunther, three shortened tales about a detective set in Germany and Austria in 1940s. First things first - Mr Kerr really really likes his similies, where were ok at times but their abundance was a bit grating. Secondly, Bernie is a hard man to like - I'd class him as an anti-hero: fond of violence, womanising (I think ending up in bed with every female the author didn't characterise as old or ugly...), insulting, although generally using these to solve his cases. It's hard to tell if this is just Kerr's style or how detective work was at the time, I'm not familiar with the time but there was a very engrossing, atmospheric picture painted of the area, even if unpleasant. Hard to tell if it'd be more enjoyable in full form rather than 3 stories, but I think I'll leave meeting Bernie until I move to Europe and can more appreciate the areas described.

The Hunger Games Trilogy (Suzanne Collins) - Due to the huge amount of press surrounding the movies, and even the books, I decided to consume one of each of these after each of the three sections in Kerr's book. The first was certainly amazing, well worth the hype - a true airport novel, void of depth but full of excitement, action, mind games etc, and sadly, over in one 5hr sitting (and my reading speed is slow). In particular, the books had wonderful coverage if the main character's thought processes, something that the movie unfortunately couldn't capture (understandably). After finishing the first, my Kindle included an interview with the author who claimed the idea came from mixing war news coverage with reality TV - I wouldn't be surprised if the latter was Survivor, due to some overlapping concepts, which just made me like it more :) But then the second and third books came along...I almost gave up when the protagonist was spending most of her time musing over how selfish and incompetent she was. I felt that is it progressed, more and more sentences should have had "Conveniently, " as a prefix, and the overall takeaway message (Give localised help only to those that appear the most immediate needy, even to the detriment of longer, more important plans - as superficial appearance is still important, and you'll get lucky in the end...) is not really something we should be sending the Young-adult target audience. ...but at least they're reading.

Damned (Chuck Palahniuk) - To put my bias out there, I'm an absolute Palahniuk junkie, enough to be able to spell his last name. His situations and characters are just so far out of left field, but the journey you make during the story always seems to make perfect sense, and be amusing in its super-pragmatism. Damned is the story of a 13yo girl who's ended up in Hell, as she learns the environment - avoiding the undesirable landscapes, English Patient reruns, fighting Hilter, and working as call-center operator while recounting her past to try to work out how she got there. As usual, a short summary just doesn't do it justice; if you like non-standard plots, just read it!

11/22/63 (Stephen King) - Since enjoying the Dark Tower series, I've read most of King's recent works; this one covers a time portal that's discovered in a basement in Maine (of course) that drops the traveller in 1958, through which the protagonist tries to subvert the assassination of JFK (among other things). As with other of his stories, the plot is secondary to the life of the world in which they live in - and most of the otherworldly sci-fi of time travel was mostly forgotten after the start, what was left was an enjoyable (though not super-exceptional) recollection of the path that Jake Epping takes to the fateful day.

The Games (Ted Kosmatka) - I'll keep this short, but I read this due to its interesting premise: that genetic engineering grows hugely popular and funded from an olympic contest where engineered monsters battle to the death. Very Michael-Crichton-y, though nothing new for the genre - it's also written by a Valve writer (computer game company), and read exactly like a game script.

Currently reading:

1Q84 (Haruki Murakami) - I read and thoroughly enjoyed Murakami's Norwegian Wood a while ago, and had purchased 1Q84 a while ago so have now finally got around to reading it, and if anything I'm pretty sure I'm liking it even more. The narrative cycles each chapter between Aomame - a peaceful trainer who doubles as an almost accidental assassin who feels reality doesn't quite correspond with what she remembers - and Tengo, a talented writer who's helping rewrite a non-writers's story to give it the publicity it deserves. Murakami's Tokyo seems a serene but extremely complex place, and the two formerly quite separate characters' worlds have started to show signs of joining, so at this rate, the last 60% of the book is looking good.


And that's all in this installment - my kindle now has about 3 books left on my to-read list after 1Q84, though the to-buy list is 20 or so...I'm starting to think I should just stick to a few authors and read everything they write (which I do already for a few) - are there any authors you do this for?

Mother's Day Run

A number of months ago, some friends and I decided to sign up for the 8km Mother's Day classic run in Sydney, as an incentive to get more fit while also for a good cause. Unfortunately for me, later I found I had to return to California for work for the two weeks around the event, but as 8:10am Sunday (the start time for the Sydney event) was 3:10pm Saturday California time, it seemed appropriate to still compete!

You can see above my approximate view for most of the trek - I followed the San Tomas Aquino Creek Trail, which seems to be a pedestrian/cycleway that simple follows the creek, and there were a few cyclists/roller-bladers/runners out at the time. I started where it intersected Old Mountain View-Alviso Rd (here) and simply followed it until it reached Central Expressway - which a distance calculator gave me as  around 4.3km - then turned around and went back.

The first thing I noticed when planning the route was that it went past 'California's Great America', apparently the Bay Area's 'most exciting theme park'  - so while I was missing out on running through the Domain in sydney, this was a pretty good replacement (you can see some roller-coasters on the left).

The other thing I noticed was how little shade there was - pavement running isn't fun at the best of times, but add in a forecast 28°C and no clouds, and I made sure I ran with a full bottle of cold water (accompanying my phone, used to take these pics). Thankfully, my track also probably had more ozone over it than my Sydney counterparts, so despite being warm, it was never prohibitively, burningly so.

Unfortunately, I soon ran into the problem I often have while running - simply put, it's pretty boring when you do it by yourself, which I think is the main thing I missed out on not doing it at home; I didn't have the space to bring an mp3 player along so had to resort to my internal, mental music player (mostly Beatles it seemed), or singing out loud ("I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more..."), some stopping for random photos of the few things along the route which were worth stopping for (see right) or planning out possible plot points in a short story I plan to write. These, plus swapping encouragements while passing other random exercisers on the track was enough to get me to the end, exhausted but invigorated - and as it turns out, ending at almost the same time the rest of my team in Sydney did!

Note that I've already done a pictorial blog post of the area I think of as South-Sanfrancisco-Suburbs (Mountain View, Santa Clara, San Jose, ...) and the run didn't change my opinion of it (lots of space, good weather, but too much driving / badly laid out) so that's it from me, hopefully I can maintain at least some of the fitness gained from this... Also, a very Happy Mother's day to any mother reading this - in particular mine!

P.S - if anyone would like to help the cause of fundraising for breast cancer, contributions to our running team are welcome:
https://register.eventarc.com/sponsor/view/81481

And finally, some evidence that I made it to the Central Expressway end of the trail - I'm not sure what this was for, but it looked nice, and seemed good proof of arrival:

Round-the-World cities: Brisbane

While compiling the page for this blog linking to all my round-the-world cities posts, I realised I was missing one continent - Australia! Just the continent I've lived on for the last 25 years... According to some folks from my Antarctica trip, Australia's often one of the last continents visited by people overseas due to its remoteness, so given some readers may never have visited, it seemed like a situation I should fix. It seemed unfair to write about the two cities I've lived in (Adelaide and Sydney), but thankfully I recently had the chance to visit Brisbane for two days for work, only my second visit to the city after a school sport trip a long time ago, so thought I'd take that opportunity to cover it in the same manner as London and Barcelona before.

My first thought while taking the taxi from the airport to the CBD, was how much like London it felt - a combination of the styling of buildings, how high they were, how randomly they were laid out, the size of the roads, ... This was only increased while walking over the Brisbane River - so Thames-ish with all the bridges, and as you can see in the photo at the top, even a ferris wheel on the side! 

That said, it also had the apparently American trait of running a motorway right next to the water on one side, so I made my way across the bridge to Southbank, a much more Tourist-y area with walkways, restaurants, art gallery, ... not a bad way to kill a few hours on a sunny afternoon.

Next up was the CBD - turns out, it was pretty much a copy of the CBD's I'm used to in Adelaide and Sydney; lots of glassy business buildings, narrow roads, coffee shops, and a central pedestrian mall (Queen St in Brisbane, Rundle in Adelaide and Pitt in Sydney) each with arcades running off sideways and carbon copies of the retail stores. There was also an interestingly coloured church that suddenly appeared in the middle of tall buildings (The Albert St uniting church, picture above) which felt rather disney-ish, plus a more open and older-looking Queen's park (picture on the right) which struck me as really Argentina-y (and just a bit out of place).

I'm sure it's a nice place to live, it did seem pretty similar to other Australian capitals but I didn't get much of a chance to check out the areas further from the center. Given how London-ish it felt, I guess it wasn't much of a surprise that many of the residents I met had lived in Britain at one point in time, and getting around was fairly simple. The one thing I did find nice was public transport - for one, there are a number of dedicated 'Busways', i.e. roads that only buses use. It brings the benefit of buses not slowing for congestion, but also congestion not forming due to busses pulling in and out of stops (anyone who's driven down King St. in Newtown will understand that) but unlike subways, the carriages can enter normal roads too.

What's more, as per a topic discussed on a G+ post of mine, Brisbane appeared to have a functioning Bike sharing system in place - helmets and all; I didn't the time to try it out, but given the well signed bus routes along the water, it seemed like a useful way to get around for those visiting without cars.

So that's it for me from Brisbane - if you've gone and liked it, I'd recommend Adelaide too; if you haven't, drop by and also consider then checking out other places in Qld (great barrier reef, gold coast, cairns, ...); it'll be interesting to see how this city continues compared to say Perth/Sydney/Melbourne.

Round-the-World cities: Seattle

The most recent city in the Round-the-World series is one that I got to spend a day in during my most recent America trip; having a free weekend, and friends from Sydney who recently moved to the area, I flew my way north from San Jose up to Seattle, Washington, home of the Space Needle (pictured left).


It's an interesting place - being located so far North (bordering Canada) it's much closer to my preferred environment (dark-green trees, mountains, snow peaks, ...) and a welcome change from California - what's more, being winter, I did get to experience snow / frozen-rain, a climate I actually quite enjoy.


Before visiting, I didn't really know what to expect - I'd heard of Sleepless in Seattle, but having not watched it, the only cultural reference that gave me any insight into what it would be like was Grey's Anatomy, based in a fictional Seattle hospital -  so I'd heard of the Space Needle, but that was about it.


My first impression was that the public transport was pretty well organised, travelling from the airport to the CBD was really simple; once there, the first port of call was crossing some rather artistically paved streets to warm up in a Starbucks - after all, Seattle is where the coffee giant originated! It does seem to be good at exporting companies, as Microsoft, Amazon and Tully's coffe are all from the area, and a suprisingly large number of other companies are all based in Seattle.

The city centre itself is fairly standard, though it struck me as nicely pedestrian-friendly compared to other US ones - e.g. I felt walking around was a perfectly acceptable way of getting around, not being forced into subway/driving like others. It also appeared quite modern (and glass-y, in a Sydney way, rather than concrete-y), with a good mix of heritage buildings mixed in with office and even architectural curiosities like the famous Seattle public library, pictured above - sadly, I didn't get the chance to go inside, but will make sure to visit it if/when I return.

After visiting the markets right next to Puget sound (note: Salmon candy is as weird tasting as it sounds) and some of the residential outskirts of the city, my hilight, and one of the reasons to go, was a trip to the Experience Music Project museum. Located right next to the Space needle, and designed by Frank Gehry to look like a smashed guitar from above, was first started to feature primarily rock music history, in particular that from the Pacific northwest (Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Heart, ...). To the right, you can see its 'guitar cyclone' built from hundreds of functioning guitars which leads up to a collection of jam/recording rooms and instructional booths for guitar, piano, drums, bass, ... - I could have spent hours there had I not had to catch a flight that night. What's more, as a result of being founded by a Microsoft co-founder, EMP also doubles as a science fiction museum, so a great destination for a musician/programmer like myself - strongly recommended :)


So overall, I'd definitely want to visit again at some point, for longer than a weekend - probably for more exploring of its IT / music scenes, going up the Space Needle, and ideally also visiting the wilderness further out. I wasn't as wow'd by the architecture as Barcelona, or by the sheer size as NY, but I'd place it closer to a much more pedestrian-friendly Sydney, with lots of promise in the future.

Planned Obsolesence #2: Future

This is a follow-up on my first post on Planned Obsolesence - the design principle of making things last shorter than they need in order to drive demand and increase production. There's some good discussion on the related Google+ post on both negatives and positives; e.g the increase in waste vs the extra cost of inventing/making materials that will last that long and providing support.

Today's post instead features something I've mused about before - automation of jobs. You see, as mentioned last post, we have the Man-in-the-White-Suit issues where making stuff that lasts longer negatively impacts both manufacturing companies (selling fewer things) and their employees (less stuff to get paid for making). With the increase in automation, we're still making as much stuff, but the employees don't get to make it.


It's easy to see why it's happening, but hard to know whether it's good or not - take content distribution for example. It used to be that an author would write a book, then work with publishers to sell it to distributors, who'd employ retail staff in a store to further distribute it to a reader. Online stores then arrived, to automate the browsing/purchasing step, and consumers flock there as it removes the cost of the retail staff step. Then eBook usage grows and authors start to avoid publishers, consumers avoid physical distribution, and soon the producer-to-consumer flow has very little overhead; great for both ends of the line, so of course that's where it ends up, hopefully with more content produced and consumed.


The downside now is all the people in the middle having nothing to do. Sure, the usual response is that these 'middle-men' are not contributing in any way, dinosaurs holding on as long and hard as possible (c.f the music industry, and all the SOPA/DRM debates) but it's also miners, checkout-chicks, librarians, ... gradually being automated away, but sadly, we don't have the long-lasting products that caused it in Alec Guinness' movie.


The next obvious question is what can be done about it? For that, I don't think anyone knows yet, otherwise it'd be done already. Assuming it continues, we need to somehow increase the amount of stuff for people to do. The obvious step is a better education system, leading to employment for educators, but also the likelihood that more will end up being able to produce goods or content (e.g. more artists/authors/...) - that said, there's enough trouble running the current system, so it's unlikely any time soon.

So what's left? Perhaps better taxation of the profits being made from automation - e.g. profits made from cutting jobs should in theory be partially used to create more, ideally in things that can't easily be automated but also don't require a functioning education system. I've always liked the much older european architecture, maybe it'd be worth getting people who's full-time job was making the more modern cheaper buildings look better? Graffiti murals (popular in my area), curated gardens, intricate detailing, all stuff seen in much older buildings but missing now due to cost/lack of time. 


I'm sure there are many other things - e.g. aged care is always in need of more resources but requires additional training - so suggestions are welcome though I don't think I know anyone who can make them happen (especially the funding bit...). And maybe I'm just a pessimist and it'll turn out there's still heaps of stuff to do. Oh, and if having long lasting products is no longer bad for (mechanical) employees, can I please have stuff now that lasts 50 years and is modular enough for incremental repairs / restyles?


(Note: Glebe mural image from this blog. Seems like it captures the detailing round the area really nicely!)