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!)

Planned Obsolesence #1: What/Why

What do the following have in common: Lightbulb, Printer, Nylon, iPhone? As you may have guessed by the title of this blog,  they've all been designed to live an artificially short life, and be expensive to 'fix' properly, so you end up just buying more; anyone who's upgraded a smartphone knows what I'm talking about (iPhone 4 -> 4S anyone? Apple's turned it into a business model...)


It's such a ubiquitous practice that there's a name for it - Planned Obsolescence, and there's a lot of things written about it so I won't go too much into the background, but after watching The Lightbulb Conspiracy documentary on the plane about it, and realising it lined up with a few earlier concepts I'd mused over, I thought it relevant to document my thoughts and see what others thought.

There's a 1951 Alec Guiness movie about it: The Man in the White Suit, where as a scientist he invents a fabric that doesn't break or get dirty, but then comes under fire from both employers and employees that selling it will be detrimental to all of them - an interesting split where the usual goals of science/engineering (make the best thing) are at odds with realism/capitalism (employ people, make the best profit).


I think it sums up nicely that, while it's wasteful and has a negative environmental impact (until recylability increases), there are a few benefits - not only for profits (the aforementioned Apple now the #1 business by market cap) and a functioning economy (Kevin Rudd's $1K bonus, anyone?), but more importantly, to the labour force making the product.


You see, and here's the main thing, we have a lot of people in this world, and these people need something to do. In developed countries there's a huge focus of employment and the number of jobs - America's talking a lot about it in an election leadup, and unemplyment is often mentioned as a bad sideeffect of the current European crisis (especially in Spain, where 20% of under-30s have never been employed).  

These people need money/goods to buy/trade for things, and the current best solution we have is to spend a lot of effort creating unneeded stuff, then making sure it's bought. Simply put, without any other solution, if planned obsolescence didn't exist, people wouldn't have enough stuff to do; I think it's ok as a temporary solution, but more on that in part #2.


One thing worth nothing is that not everything is designed this way - sure, consumer electronics is terrible for it, but for example there's a watchmaker with the great tagline "You never really own a Patek Philippe, you merely look after it for the next generation", and the cookware company with "Circulon, guaranteed for life". It'll be interesting to see whether more things like this start appearing.


That's it for part #1, stay tuned for part #2 which'll cover where I think it's heading; plus encorporating any comments from this one - it may be delayed a bit as I'm working from California for the next two weeks however (hence watching the documentary on a plane), though that hopefully means another blog post city topic.


P.S: for posterity, it seems the entire documentary is on youtube. for those interested:
(note: goes for nearly an hour).

Kindling

My posts of late have mostly been about cities around the world, and I have one coming up about Australian cities, but I thought I'd take a temporary break from that to update you on what I've been doing most recently - reading. I have a few friends that are bibliophiles, but since high-school, during my Maths/CS degree and the first few years of work, I slowed to almost nothing read.


...but then I discovered e-books! More at the end, but in short, I was using Apple's reader on my original iPad for a friend's fanfic and some old scifi classics; Sadly that was stolen, but after realising that's mostly what I used it for (plus Tiny Wings and Angry Birds), I opted for a Kindle instead, and am now 14 books through, averaging probably 30min-1hr each day! So without further ado, because it's what bloggers do (it seems) and because it might help someone, some time, who is stuck picking what to read next (as I am) - a summary of some recent books:

Finished recently:

Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
The main driving force behind my current reading frenzy - I like Sci Fi and Psychology, and this mixed them wonderfully. Paced well, you could follow each character's decisions in a believable way, in the foreign world it was set it. A definite recommendation for anyone who hasn't read it!


Slaughterhouse Five / Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut)
So, I've heard quite a bit about how good Vonnegut is, maybe due to his hipster resurgence, but I also ran into one of this books on the SciFi top-100 flowchart, so I figured I'd give them a shot. Partially as they're so short, so not a huge setback even if they're bad. And it's not as though they were terrible...I just couldn't really get into them. Too much topic-shifting I think, I don't know if I'm supposed to supply the analysis of the topics myself, but I prefer it when an author makes a clear point, so I can decide which parts I agree/disagree with and why. But as a said, not too long, so not bad if you have a bit of spare time and can borrow someone's copy.

Micro (Michael Crichton with Richard Preston)
I'm a big fan of Crichton, and was sad to read about his death in 2008, so you can imagine my surprise at seeing him release a book. After reading the Pirate Latitudes, I was even then more surprised at seeing another of his published. I think it suffered a bit from the Honey-I-Shrunk-the-Kids-style premise being not as interesting to me as previous books of his I'd read (Timeline, Prey) but well researched as always, and I was a fan of how the plot unfolded.


1984 (George Orwell)
Another of my to-do list of classic SciFi that I needed to read - it was clear to see why this has the reputation it does, and it's certainly deserved. Not the fastest read, but very well told, and amazing for something written when it was. I'm not sure, but I'd like to think Orwell was just very observant and good at warning people (successfully, too) against what can happen if we live in certain ways. Definitely worth a read if you haven't yet - as an added bonus, I understand a lot more references now.


Curse of the Spellmans / Revenge of the Spellmans (Lisa Lutz)
To avoid reading only dark SciFi, I broke those up with this light-weight detective series about an erratic PI and her family - not the most thought-provoking, but fast to get through and good character writing. I'd definitely put this in the Airport-fiction category, good for winding down at the end of a day, especially if you're borrowing a friend's book.

Currently reading:

Blue Monday (Nicci French)
Continuing my SciFi break, I searched for psychological thriller recommendations and found a list from the Guardian I think, and eventually picked this one off it. Pretty standard psychoanalyst-helps-the-police-solve-a-case story set in London, it took a while to get going but I'm enjoying the atmosphere, and the depth of characters makes me feel that all the threads will start intertwining with each other into one epic mess to unravel, so this has the promise to be entertaining, but I'll have to wait and see...




So that's it for now, I hope this has helped someone, at some point, pick a book to read/buy. Additionally, if you have any recommendations for me based on my thoughts above, please do add them in the comments below! I'm always looking for more to add to my kindle To-Buy list (there with Philip Kerr, Iain M Banks, A Fraction of the Whole and a few others...).


As a brief epilogue, I'm impressed with the number of eBook stores / services popping up. Even though eBooks are the simplest thing to pirate (I mean, everyone can access 1Mb text files...) I still find myself buying $10 books because it's so easy, and I get good recommendations. A double win as self-publishing an eBook so easy, hopefully more will be written, and the extra buying data will provide good personal recommendations - and maybe even the good ones will turn into physical books, so that industry can grow too. What I'd like to see next is data sharing - so you can buy from multiple retailers / genre-specific 'publishers', and read them on whatever device you have; but also periodicals, so popular writers (i.e. bloggers) can deliver their content straight to eBook readers.

Comment Away!

For those who hadn't heard, Blogger recently launched the feature I'd been working on for the last few months - threaded commenting: http://buzz.blogger.com/2012/01/engage-with-your-readers-through.html


This post is mostly just a call to everyone reading to comment more on blogs - Blog authors like it when they get (non-spam) comments, and commenters get to engage with the author and hopefully discuss with someone who shares an interest. More on this later, but first I have to say, a big thankyou to our users; for both their patience in getting this feature, and the positive reaction to it. What do I mean by the latter? I was a bit of a social-network junkie after launch, searching for reactions, and so throughout this post the images I'm using will be screen-shots of a choice few (click to enlarge):

*Squeee* I love reading feedback like this, and just want to keep doing stuff people will like! My hope all along was to give people what they wanted - including me! As a long-time Blogger user, it was obvious that comments were under-utilised. As a Blogger developer though, I not only could see how much potential better commenting could have, but also how to fix it. After my time with Wave conversations, the first thing was obviously the most demanded - threading:

An artistic entry - believe me, I have a dorky smile too :D

You see, people like related sections of discussions to be next to eachother, in particular, if an author responds to a comment a few days later, ideally it'll appear right under that comment. Alternatively, if a second commenter has a particular agreement/disagreement with something said before, it's best to attach their reply to the right location. Note that we also now indicate which comments come from the author, helping their opinions stand out; additionally, comment previews and loading more comments will no longer reload the entire page - two more barriers to posting.

So, I hope you all comment more, which can then lead to posting more and overall improved content creation and discussion on the net. Many things I know are very talk-based with not much listening, which I think is a shame. While doing the twitter searches above, I was impressed at how it's moving towards conversing with others online, not just consuming their status - especially when it's people you wouldn't have met normally, but who write about what interests you. I hope to continue improving things, but while that's happening, remember to add comments on blogs you read, and for authors, reply when people share their thoughts!

An existence conundrum...

(Sydney, looking at the CBD and bridge, with some effects added to the image).

I've been using Google+ more recently - e.g. see my profile here; which may explain why the already-slow output of posts has gotten even slower. Then I was looking through various sections of our Blog UI and realised that (a) I'm getting enough views of the posts here to make it worth posting stuff, and (b) There are enough readers / followers that might not read G+ that I feel I should add things here too. So I've added the followers widget to my blog ( check over on the right there >> ) and decided to cross-post interesting G+ posts, starting with this:

Here's a thought puzzle....where's the error?

1) There are many many species in the universe, some much more advanced than us, some less.

2) It's possible for an advanced enough species to make a technology that destroys all species in the universe.

3) Any technology will eventually be used for a malicious purpose.

If they're all true, we'd no longer be around, so there's a flaw somewhere...my guess is #2: that species would destroy themselves (and those around them) first. Apologies, not very cheery I know, but an interesting thought experiment still. What do you think?

Some discussion is already available on the original post, but some things to consider are the speed at which the destruction will reach us, the theory that the Universe is accelerating away, the concepts that have arisen around theoretic technologies like Grey goo, and a cover-all explanation of existance, the Anthropic principle.

Stay tuned, I have a few updates planned soon too :)

More Round-the-World: Tokyo

My job certainly lets me work on interesting things, but also as part of being on a globally distributed team I get to visit a lot of places too - most recently was a visit to the Google office in Tokyo to catch up with some engineers over there; and while not part of my earlier trip around the globe, I figure it's best to keep this Round-the-World series of city summaries going for as long as I'm able to travel to them!

Firstly, Tokyo is certainly a Megaopolis (well, part of one); and of the previously mentioned cities, I'd place it between London and New York in terms of style and population density. That said, due to the size it covers, and the height of most of the buildings, it didn't feel quite as tighly packed as New York - certainly there were lots of smaller back areas where the roads weren't as busy, and plenty of parks / palaces to look at.

On the left is an example of one spot much closer to the Barcelona feel of quiet, small one-way streets, of which there were a number - I imagine not the worst spot to live if you had to be in the middle of such a large city. Parking is at a premium (not surprisingly),  and the personal car usage seemed much closer to e.g. London than New York - on the right is an example of how they managed to fit that many cars - there's a road (complete with carpark median strip), and two more roads stack vertically above it - certainly not something I'm used to seeing in Australia...

But enough of the city analysis - a had a productive week with the Tokyo folks, but once work was over I had organised myself two days of free time to look at all the sights around Tokyo. Above you can see a shot from Hibiya park, an amazingly picturesque nature area just south of the imperial palace in Chiyoda. At this time of year in particular it was a great mix of green, yellow and red on all the trees - as proven by the number of photographers standing around this pond!

The other day was spent walking around Shibuya, Harajuku and Shinjuku, partially for the shopping/atmosphere, but also to visit the place that stuck out most from the one other time I'd visited - the Meiji shrine. It's a Shinto shrine plus related buildings opened in 1920 to honour Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken - and is essentially a fully open giant forest with around 200,000 trees, right in the middle of an otherwise busy area. I definitely recommend it to anyone visiting, it had the feel of an even more enclosed/private central park.

Overall, I think the language barrier is enough for me to not want to live in Tokyo (even if it's close to good ski slopes!) although visiting the smaller cities further out would be interesting, and Japanese architecture is certainly impressive - both what has been built, but also plans for what cities could look like in the future. Plus, I got the chance to walk around Tokyo R246, a street circuit that I've 'driven' around loads in Gran Turismo games, but might save for a later blog post. Instead, I leave you with recent attempts to art-up some pictures from my trip - the first from inside the Meiji shrine forest, the later of a parking area on my walk home from the office (click to enlarge)