Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a Woody Allen film about our search for a fulfilling relationship. Shown from the point of view of two young American women spending summer in Europe. Not very believable, but still delightful to watch.
Made in 2008, the movie is starring beautiful actors (Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall) and beautiful cityscapes and landscapes of Barcelona and Catalonia.
"Life is the ultimate work of art".
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Byron Bay, NSW
Welcome to Byron Bay, a beautiful little place in northern NSW, about 1 hour south from Gold Coast.
Walking towards Wategos Beach, which like most in Australia, is also a park, with benches, barbies, and public toilets:
Wategos Beach, looking south:
There is a 3.7 km walking trail from the beach, up Cape Byron, to the light house, and then down to Clarkes Beach:
Cape Byron. We saw a couple of dolphins swimming along the coast. Often, during their migration period, you can see whales from here.
Approaching the light house:
And here it is, built in 1901, still operating today. The cycle of Cape Byron lighthouse is 15 seconds. If you get lost in the Coral Sea and see a light appearing every 15 seconds, you will know that is a lighthouse at Cape Byron. If you see a red light, watch out, because you are close to the rocks:
Oh, you can drive up to the light house too, but the parking is scarce, and there is a fee:
Scheduled guided tours of the light house are available for a donation.
The lighthouse currently uses two electrical light bulbs, 1000W each, of which only one is on at any time and the other one is an automatic backup. The base for the rotating lightbulbs and mirrors weighs over 4 tonnes, and is turned by two small electric motors. This is possible, because the base floats in mercury, the same toxic metal used in the past in thermometers:
Going down the trail, a view towards Tallow Beach:
You are here:
Clarkes Beach:
Native vegetation planted on a steep hill:
A road block:
Back at Wategos Beach:
Walking towards Wategos Beach, which like most in Australia, is also a park, with benches, barbies, and public toilets:
Wategos Beach, looking south:
There is a 3.7 km walking trail from the beach, up Cape Byron, to the light house, and then down to Clarkes Beach:
Cape Byron. We saw a couple of dolphins swimming along the coast. Often, during their migration period, you can see whales from here.
Approaching the light house:
And here it is, built in 1901, still operating today. The cycle of Cape Byron lighthouse is 15 seconds. If you get lost in the Coral Sea and see a light appearing every 15 seconds, you will know that is a lighthouse at Cape Byron. If you see a red light, watch out, because you are close to the rocks:
Oh, you can drive up to the light house too, but the parking is scarce, and there is a fee:
Scheduled guided tours of the light house are available for a donation.
The lighthouse currently uses two electrical light bulbs, 1000W each, of which only one is on at any time and the other one is an automatic backup. The base for the rotating lightbulbs and mirrors weighs over 4 tonnes, and is turned by two small electric motors. This is possible, because the base floats in mercury, the same toxic metal used in the past in thermometers:
Going down the trail, a view towards Tallow Beach:
You are here:
Clarkes Beach:
Native vegetation planted on a steep hill:
A road block:
Back at Wategos Beach:
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Google Speaks by Janet Lowe
On 300-odd small pages of "Google Speaks" Janet Lowe tells the story of Google and the key people who run it: Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt.
Sergey Brin: "It’s not enough not to be evil. We also actively try to be good." Despite the many controversies mentioned in the book, this guiding principle is clearly visible when you compare the history of Google with the history of Facebook. Google may be first to create AI and bring an end to the human rule on Earth, but it will do so with good intentions.
This book was published in 2009 - only 3 years ago - and it already shows signs of age: Facebook, which is the biggest danger to Google's dominance of Internet, is not mentioned even once.
A few gems:
Google makes money from advertising, however, initially Page and Brin didn't want to go that route. They wrote: "[...] we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers."
The book contains a guess of Google having 1 million servers back in 2006. This was probably an overshot. Google may have about 2 million servers currently.
The ultimate goal of Larry and Sergey is to create AI. Larry Page: "Google will fulfill its mission only when its search engine is AI-complete. You guys know what that means? That's artificial intelligence."
A few gems:
Google makes money from advertising, however, initially Page and Brin didn't want to go that route. They wrote: "[...] we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers."
The book contains a guess of Google having 1 million servers back in 2006. This was probably an overshot. Google may have about 2 million servers currently.
The ultimate goal of Larry and Sergey is to create AI. Larry Page: "Google will fulfill its mission only when its search engine is AI-complete. You guys know what that means? That's artificial intelligence."
Sergey Brin: "It’s not enough not to be evil. We also actively try to be good." Despite the many controversies mentioned in the book, this guiding principle is clearly visible when you compare the history of Google with the history of Facebook. Google may be first to create AI and bring an end to the human rule on Earth, but it will do so with good intentions.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Karate My Life
Written by Kanazawa Hirokazu in Japanese, translated into English by Alex Bennett.
Apart from Chuck Norris, Kanazawa Hirokazu is probably the most famous karateka alive. Sensei Kanazawa worked all his life to popularise Karate around the world. He organised clubs, wrote books, travelled, performed in public and on TV. "Karate My Life" contains detailed account of that work.
The book is very personal. It details Kanazawa's childhood, talks about his reasons to start practising martial arts, reveals thoughts on family, and on getting old.
Kanazawa was born in 1931 and started travelling in the early 1960s, when the memories of Japanese atrocities were still strong. In Britain he overcomes initial hostility of a British woman whose husband was a POW killed by the Japanese, and of a chinese restaurant owner whose whole family was slaughtered by the Japanese Imperial Army in Imphal.
You can see sensei Kanazawa performing various kata, for example Heian Godan - the fifth basic kata, on youtube.
A few karate terms:
sensei - teacher
sempai - senior student
budo - martial arts
dojo - training hall and the people who train there
kata - form
kumite - sparring
kihon - basics
Apart from Chuck Norris, Kanazawa Hirokazu is probably the most famous karateka alive. Sensei Kanazawa worked all his life to popularise Karate around the world. He organised clubs, wrote books, travelled, performed in public and on TV. "Karate My Life" contains detailed account of that work.
"In the world of budo everybody is of equal standing regardless of race, creed, or religion. Good people stand shoulder to shoulder within the great family that is the dojo. Even if the dojo is small, the way pursued is great and it links the whole world together."
The book is very personal. It details Kanazawa's childhood, talks about his reasons to start practising martial arts, reveals thoughts on family, and on getting old.
Kanazawa was born in 1931 and started travelling in the early 1960s, when the memories of Japanese atrocities were still strong. In Britain he overcomes initial hostility of a British woman whose husband was a POW killed by the Japanese, and of a chinese restaurant owner whose whole family was slaughtered by the Japanese Imperial Army in Imphal.
"I realised then that we are all put on this earth inextricably linked to our past. There is a thread that links parents to their children, and then their children. If one generation is careless, the repercussions will be felt for generations to come. We all have a responsibility to prevent such things from happening."
You can see sensei Kanazawa performing various kata, for example Heian Godan - the fifth basic kata, on youtube.
A few karate terms:
sensei - teacher
sempai - senior student
budo - martial arts
dojo - training hall and the people who train there
kata - form
kumite - sparring
kihon - basics
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Geeks Bearing Gifts by Ted Nelson
Geeks Bearing Gifts v.1.1, subtitled How the computer world got this way, is a collection of thoughts and notes about people and events of the computer revolution. Written in 2008 by Ted Nelson, a legend himself, the man behind Xanadu.
This book sucks a bit in how it is delivered: proofreading could have been done better, the text in low-res illustrations is barely readable, the disjointed style feels more like reading notes, or encyclopaedia, and finally, the chapter summaries are completely unnecessary. The 200 pages of Geeks Bearing Gifts are divided into 50 chapters numbered from -27, through 0 (UNIX®), to 22. Each chapter starts with a summary, which I started skipping after a few chapters, because a half page summary in a two page chapter means re-reading the same information shortly after reading it for the first time. Irritating.
Still, for a computer geek, this book makes an interesting read. Let me end with an unusually succinct summary of the last chapter "Why We Fight", which contains Ted's manifesto:
This book is great, because we get an insider's view into the fascinating history of our biggest invention - the computer.
This book sucks a bit in how it is delivered: proofreading could have been done better, the text in low-res illustrations is barely readable, the disjointed style feels more like reading notes, or encyclopaedia, and finally, the chapter summaries are completely unnecessary. The 200 pages of Geeks Bearing Gifts are divided into 50 chapters numbered from -27, through 0 (UNIX®), to 22. Each chapter starts with a summary, which I started skipping after a few chapters, because a half page summary in a two page chapter means re-reading the same information shortly after reading it for the first time. Irritating.
Still, for a computer geek, this book makes an interesting read. Let me end with an unusually succinct summary of the last chapter "Why We Fight", which contains Ted's manifesto:
"Today's computer world is a godawful mess, ghastly for many people. But there yet may be hope."
Saturday, July 21, 2012
In the Land of Israel
In the Land of Israel, Amos Oz shows us a glimpse of "a few places and a few people" in Israel in Autumn 1982. This interesting, but difficult to read book throws us into the complexity and diversity of political views, religious beliefs, economical situation, history and present of various inhabitants of the land of Israel at that time.
Amos's journey starts where he grew up, in the Geulah quarter in Jerusalem, now taken over by the Hasidim, and ends in the port city of Ashdod. In between, we travel with the author and listen to his conversations with people of Bet Shemesh - a stronghold of Likud west of Jerusalem, Tekoa - a Jewish community in the West Bank (historical provinces of Judea and Samaria), Ramallah, an anonymous veteran village, Ofra - a Jewish settlement in West Bank, the East Jerusalem office of Al-Fajr Al-Arabi - The Arab Dawn, and the city of Zichron Yaakov.
In Ofra the author presents his views on statehood, which I will sum up here with these two excerpts: "Nationalism itself is, in my eyes, the curse of mankind", but "[...] existence without the tools of statehood is a matter of mortal danger [...]".
About the author: "Amos Oz was born in 1939 into a family which, as he has said. 'dreamed in Yiddish, conversed in Russian and Polish, read books in German and English', but taught him one language only: Hebrew."
And on a lighter note, since I live in Oz now, "oz" in Hebrew means courage or strength, but be careful how you spell it. :-)
Amos's journey starts where he grew up, in the Geulah quarter in Jerusalem, now taken over by the Hasidim, and ends in the port city of Ashdod. In between, we travel with the author and listen to his conversations with people of Bet Shemesh - a stronghold of Likud west of Jerusalem, Tekoa - a Jewish community in the West Bank (historical provinces of Judea and Samaria), Ramallah, an anonymous veteran village, Ofra - a Jewish settlement in West Bank, the East Jerusalem office of Al-Fajr Al-Arabi - The Arab Dawn, and the city of Zichron Yaakov.
In Ofra the author presents his views on statehood, which I will sum up here with these two excerpts: "Nationalism itself is, in my eyes, the curse of mankind", but "[...] existence without the tools of statehood is a matter of mortal danger [...]".
About the author: "Amos Oz was born in 1939 into a family which, as he has said. 'dreamed in Yiddish, conversed in Russian and Polish, read books in German and English', but taught him one language only: Hebrew."
And on a lighter note, since I live in Oz now, "oz" in Hebrew means courage or strength, but be careful how you spell it. :-)
Monday, July 9, 2012
History's Greatest Deceptions
The full title of this book by Eric Chaline is History's Greatest Deceptions and the People Who Planned Them.
Surely you have heard of the Ponzi scheme, but do you know the history of Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi himself?
A woman cannot be the leader of the Catholic Church? ...unless she can hide as well as pope Joan did. According to legend, she was exposed when she went into labour ...in public ...riding a horse.
These two cases are among fifty deceptions grouped into religious, military, financial, scientific, and three other categories. The stories are short. More like teasers than full biographies. Nevertheless, you may find something interesting. For example, I learned that long before East Germany became notorious for its strong woman athletes, there was a Polish woman Olympic medalist Stanisława Wałasiewicz who turned out to be a fraud when an autopsy was made on her after being accidentally shot dead in a Cleveland shopping mall.
A woman cannot be the leader of the Catholic Church? ...unless she can hide as well as pope Joan did. According to legend, she was exposed when she went into labour ...in public ...riding a horse.
These two cases are among fifty deceptions grouped into religious, military, financial, scientific, and three other categories. The stories are short. More like teasers than full biographies. Nevertheless, you may find something interesting. For example, I learned that long before East Germany became notorious for its strong woman athletes, there was a Polish woman Olympic medalist Stanisława Wałasiewicz who turned out to be a fraud when an autopsy was made on her after being accidentally shot dead in a Cleveland shopping mall.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)