Matrix

I was very much looking forward to the new Matrix - Resurrection movie, and I hate to admit it, but I was extremely disappointed with it. It's not often that I think about walking out of a movie, but I was prepared to make an exception this time. Even the person I was watching it with - who had been looking forward to seeing it even more than I, contemplated leaving. So what was it? The characters were familiar - Neo, Trinity, Morpheus and others - but the plot was slow and there were too many fight scenes with little reason or rationale. True, they were pretty amazing, but since they weren't integral to the story - well, not all of them - It reminded me a little of The Lord of the Rings movies - walk, fight, walk, fight, ethereal lady ... and continue. Of course, there is no ethereal lady in the Matrix - unless you count Trinity - but, did I mention, there was lots of fighting!

Python

Who knew it would be so interesting to type random words, numbers, and symbols into an application and have it do stuff for you? And who knew that Python would share some similarities with Excel? Yes, I have finally done my first bit of coding … using the Python programming language and I enjoyed it very much.

I was a bit surprised when I didn’t sleep/dream in Python last night. I remember when I was learning to type at school, I used to type in my dreams all the time - want to say something … type. Funny stuff, but I have spoken with others who had the same experience.

Wordle

Is Wordle “new” or just an old game in a new format? Wordle, of course, is the word game that has taken the internet by storm. One (only) Wordle is available each day. The player has 6 attempts to determine the Wordle of the day, getting feedback at each attempt. If they have a letter in the correct place, it turns green. If they have a correct letter but not in the correct place, it turns yellow. Letters not in the word show as grey. By deduction and reasoning, and some luck, the player then has to work out what the Wordle is. There has been screeds written about choosing your first words to give you a better chance of getting the Wordle out in six tries - although the fun is trying to get it out in as few tries as possible - to score bragging rights. You can share your Wordle result without sharing the words although some folk have been known to Tweet screenshots of their working - which is a bit mean giving there is only one Wordle a day.

Wordle has recently been purchased by The New York Times so it will be interesting to see if they monetise it or whether it remains free to play.

 

Popular?

Australia's most popular barista made coffee. Hmmm.
Who determines the meaning of the world "popular"? Because I would have bet - contrary to what their sign would have me believe - that the most popular barista-made coffee in Australia does not come from Maccas! And if Maccas, or a disinterested third party, had conducted a survey would they have put the names of other popular coffee franchises on the list? And if they did, would it have been representative given that most coffee chains are not Australia-wide and even food franchises that are nationally available rarely have a dedicated cafe area? So ... what is their definition of "popular" and how representative was their research?

Archival items

Did you know you can access the Archives of The New York Times online? I was researching technology and the Pandemic and looking through The New York Times recent articles when I stumbled onto a reference to the Archives and that the contents are available - mostly free to subscribers. And the Archivesy are searchable. They can be viewed as text or, via their Time Machine, on the printed page of the edition. I spent some time reading an issue from April 1880! Who knew there was an Institute of Technology even then! And that it would be so engaging to read history in the making. 

New words ...

Each year, new words are added to the dictionary ... and I'm not sure how long it takes for the dictionary people to come knocking at your door after you have coined a word, or a term, but the people who came up with something to call the people who steal delivered parcels from people's doorstep (or wherever the delivery folk have left it) should be hearing the knock on their door any time. Their term? Porch pirates. It's a growing problem of course. I have been watching a few videos on YouTube lately about the elaborate lengths people go to to get back at people who steal their parcels or catch new porch pirates. I quite like the glitter bombs when they go off in their car or house ... or wherever. Better when they get caught on elaborate cameras set up in the "stolen" parcels - with the camera feed going to the cloud so it doesn't matter if they get rid of the actual camera. Smile!

Shortages ...

Since when does any store run out of hummus? It's not something I want all the time but I just felt like some yesterday .. and when I realised how little we had left it went on the shopping list for today. Simple enough ... except our usual Coles store had run out of it ... and a heap of other stuff as well. The other stuff I understand ... but hummus? Usually there are buckets of it everywhere but this time not one little tub of it ... even in those flavours that people tend to choose last - if at all. And don't get anyone started on toilet paper ... people just seem to grab rolls of it whenever there's even a rumour of shortages. At least there haven't been any stories of fisticuffs over it as there were at the start of the CoVid pandemic.

Hot ... hot ... hot ...

Is there nothing that Wikipedia doesn't know? Probably ... but it does know that the hottest day in Australia - which was previously in Oodnadatta (South Australia) on 2 January 1960 - has now been joined by another equally hot day - at Onslow (Western Australia) on 13 January (2022). Both temperatures came in at 50.7°C (123.3°F). They're not the only places in Australia to have high temperatures - both New South Wales and Queensland have had temperatures at 49.5°C (121.1°F) or above in the last 50 years or so. It's interesting, though, that even Australia's southernmost State has had over 40°C temperatures.

While it could appear to be getting hotter, I was reading the other day about 1816 - The Year Without a Summer. According to Wikipedia, severe climate abnormalities caused global temperatures to decrease by 0.4–0.7°C (0.7–1°F). It was the coldest it had been in Europe between 1766 and 2000. The result was major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere. The reason: a volcanic winter event caused the massive 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies (now known as Indonesia).
It wasn't all bad though (?) ... it was while Mary Shelley was holed up during this period that she entered into a writing competion to see who of her compatriots could write the best horror story ... and thus Frankenstein was born ... or would that be ... created!

Ethically speaking ...

Philosophy. Hmmmm. I've never really dabbled in it much but I am doing more now that I'm studying a subject that references ethics. I need to give details of three types of ethics - and who knew there was more than one? So I have been looking at Utilitarianism and Kantianism for a start and cannot believe how well some folk explain the concepts. I have found a YouTube channel called Crash Course which clarifies and gives very clear examples of the different principles involved. I'm going to have to watch them a few more times though to make sure I understand them well enough for my next project: determining who was ethically responsible for (spoiler alert!) the death at the end of Louise Penny's The Long Way Home. I had been wondering about it (in terms of what could have been done to prevent it) and now I have a framework in which to process it, I am looking forward to the exercise.

Receipt issues

What do you do when you have a receipt you're holding on to for someone and then you leave it in the car and it fades to the point where you can't read it? Well, you can try to photograph it using different filters and have some degree of success, or you can contact the store and see if they can print out a duplicate - if you could work out what the bar code or identifier on it was (because it really doesn't seem to be there any longer) , or ... you can take it to Coles and they will put it under their special light so they can read it without any problem at all ... and then they print up a Duplicate receipt for you. Problem solved!

Not the duplicate receipt.

Loss of faith?

Who would have thought that Australians seem to be losing their faith in traditional religions? Don't take my word for it... let's use an independent source - the Australian Census ... well a few of them anyway. 

In the years since 1966, those reporting no religion in the Census have increased from 0.8% to 30% in the 2016 Census. That makes approximately 7 million Australians who claimed to have no religion. Hmmmm.

The figures from the Censuses (is that a word), bearing in mind the ones from 1966 to 2006 are not included here:
Census 1966 - Those reporting no religion - 0.8%
Census 2006 - Those reporting no religion - 19%
Census 2011 - Those reporting no religion - 22%
Census 2016 - Those reporting no religion - 30% - approximately 7 million Australians.

Data from Census 2021 will be released from June 2022 and it will be interesting to revisit this then to see if there has been an increase in "no religion" with CoVid and other world events or maybe something else entirely. 

Quick reminder: According to Wikipedia: Religion is a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements; however, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion.

The Digital Divide

It's amazing what you learn along the way. A TAFE Queensland subject is Develop and extend critical and creative thinking skills. On Page 17 of the Learner Guide, there's mention of something akin to that Generation Gap that folk used to talk about. These days it's more likely to be the Digital Divide. There are two sides of the Divide - and most folk are on one side or the other - Digital Immigrants or Digital Slaves. If you're older, if you grew up in the 1950's and 1960's, you are more likely to be a Digital Immigrant - everyday technology is new and something that you need to learn, normally grudgingly. The other group, the Digital Natives, born in the 1990's and 2000's has no fear of trying a new device or system - it's just natural for them. The boundaries are blurred of course, they must be, given people's different experiences and proclivities ... and don't think I won't be starting to catalogue the folk I run into from now on.

Stellar Pizza ... not just Rocket Scientists?

Did someone say Rocket Scientists? Despite what we may have thought, rocket scientists aka aerospace engineers scored no more than the general population in a study led by researchers at universities and hospitals in London and Bristol. They were given the Great British Intelligence Test which looked at areas of cognition like planning and reasoning, working memory, attention and emotional processing. Who took the test? 300 Aerospace engineers, 12 neurosurgeons and 18,251 members of the British public. According to the report by Rebecca Sohn I read on space.com there were differences between the groups, but they were hard to interpret - but, bottomline, it seems any of us could turn our hands to rocket science, if we were so inclined. 

But what about those who do become rocket scientists? What do they do next? Well, if you've been working with SpaceX, you might turn your hand to Pizzas. Three former SpaceX engineers have set up Stellar Pizza, billed as a robot restaurant which will be able to churn out a pizza every 45 seconds! Benson Tsai, CEO of Stellar Pizza, worked at Elon Musk's SpaceX before rounding up 23 former SpaceX employees to build an automated, touchless pizza-making machine which can fit in the back of a truck. It takes about five minutes for the pizza to be produced from start to finish ... and while the article I read in Business Insider said while Stellar Pizza offers a pepperoni or supreme pizza, customers can build their own with toppings including onions, bacon, chicken and olives.

Cinema - and lots of it ...

In 1895, December 28, Auguste and Louise Lumiere staged the first commercial movie screening at the Grand Cafe in Paris.  There were ten short films on the program, each one about 50 seconds in length.  (Take a moment to compare that with the recently-released Don't Look Up - which comes in at 2hr 25m.)
To commemorate all those years of moving pictures, Moon Film (known for reediting popular films so folk can watch them backwards - and who even suspected that that was a thing) have compiled Cinema - 120 years in 120 seconds. It's definitely worth the 2 minutes to see how many of the films you recognise - and how many you don't. I wonder what films they will use when they update it next.

Drink anyone?

I must admit I wonder about the cost of drinks at the Club - and they're subsidised - and I can't really imagine paying more than $20 for a drink, regardless of how special it is. So I wouldn't fare well at The Ritz-Carlton Tokyo where, according to Travel + Leisure, they sell the world's most expensive cocktail - at $22,600. It's called Diamonds Are Forever and as well as Grey Goose vodka and lime, it comes with a $16,000 one-karat diamond in the bottom of the glass. The drink is (or was definitely before CoVid) served tableside and was accompanied by a live band performing Diamonds Are Forever. The drink sans diamond would set you back $6,600 - so the Greygoose must be spectacular - and the band. It's not for me ... nor is the Ono at Las Vegas' XS Nightclub. It comes with a pair of silver cufflinks and an 18-karat white gold chain ... and no change from $10,000. Question: how much would you tip for a $10,000 drink ... or two?

Omicron ... timing ...

I admit to being confused over the timing. Omicron hit the news in mid-November but already in the UK they're finding that booster protection against Omicron drops at 10 weeks. How can they possibly know that unless Omicron has been around for longer than we've been led to believe? According to an article by Hannah Seo at popsci.com, the UK health agency making the booster findings said there were some caveats to the data - like there not being many Omicron cases in the UK relative to other variants, and their working with a small and perhaps not representative sample size. It did "confirm" that Omicron is not as severe as Delta, but that it would need to be 90% less severe than Delta for hospitalisations not to reach previous levels. Hmmm. But still how can they know this after the Omicron variant only made the news 6 or so weeks ago?

Great work Santa!

Top Marks to my Secret Santa. 

The wrapping was an absolute masterpiece - from the ransom demand lettering to the misdirect on the box. The presents from under the tree were carried out to the area where all of us were sitting, enjoying nibbles and each other's company. We were 14 in all - not too big a group so we could all delight in the unwrapping. When Santa's Helper handed mine over - after we worked out that Santa had a tiny issue with spelling my name - I was delighted to see the cut-out letters and the effort that had gone into keeping Santa secret. Off with the wrapping and all over the box were hand-drawn arrows "Top". I was a bit concerned - because that box had not been pointing "Top" - so hopefully there was nothing that needed to be kept upright in there. Opening the box (from the Top), there were lots of little boxes in there. I unwrapped one and it had a light bulb in it; the same with the next one. Okay, so it looked like the light bulbs fitted into something - and sure enough, after taking the rest of the boxes out, there was a false bottom - and more cut out letters - OPEN OTHER END. I did - and there was one of my favourite things - a hot/cold sippy mug. Thank you Secret Santa! 

So, if the gift wasn't something you put light bulbs in - what was in those boxes? It took a bit to get in to them - how much sticky tape had Santa used!?! Lots - is the answer. And I have to say, it's the hardest I've ever had to work for lollies - just the one in each box. 

Thanks heaps Santa!  (PS  I know who your helper was!)

 

Artistic pursuits ...

What does it take to get someone to take up "creativity"? A friend we visited recently has just taken up art - something which she really had little interest before - not surprising really as she was told by a teacher when she was 7 that she couldn't draw. She didn't contest that notion until earlier this year - at least 50 years later. And, who would have thought? That teacher was wrong ... very wrong. Ja is now working with an art teacher - starting out with pencil, then colour pencils (who knew you had to be taught how to use them), then water colour paints ... and she's about to branch out to acrylics ... and she is talented! I was amazed at what she's been able to produced - especially the apple she did in pencil on her first attempt - and the flowers in water colour! I don't think there will be any stopping her now.
I was speaking with Sa today and as well as drawing, she too is about to branch into something else creative ... writing. She has some books from the Library which she is studying so she can learn more about it and she was saying that she hadn't ever really thought about whose point of view a story was being told from ... she does now.
So what takes someone down a creative road? What makes them wake up one day and say - I'm going to do art, or I'm going to write? And what keeps fuelling that passion/desire?

A little light on ...

There was a post on FaceBook today or maybe it was yesterday saying something like there are still 364 days until Christmas and some people already have their lights up. We have loved the Christmas lights this year - and we have seen a few - on the Gold Coast, in Lismore and in Toowoomba. We know for next year that we need to get to some lights earlier in the night - we had a few that went "click-click" on us - which is our shorthand for saying that the creative and well-meaning house-holders turned off their lights just as we approached. With a couple we actually saw the lights go off - with others we didn't and that started what was then a mystery for us because we didn't know what had happened - in Lismore especially ... we saw a house not far from us which we missed on the first go around the block - and then we couldn't find it again ... what the? ... and the what is because they had turned the lights off. I would like to say we worked it out then and there but it wasn't until the next morning that it dawned on us. And what a relief that was ... you know how it is when you think you have a good sense of direction ... and then it seems like you really don't?

Mmm ... coffee

Well, I finally did it ... after much consideration and deliberation I have purchased a coffee machine. It was on special at Aldi and came highly recommended - but would we use it? Would it make the coffee well enough? Would we like the coffee? Would we pick the right pods? The right strength coffee? First World problems to be sure ... but still important to folk who have never had a coffee machine before .. but have considered it many many times.
I tried the machine this afternoon and I quite liked it ... the prepared beverage was hot enough, and I didn't mind the strength of the pod I had chosen - but S said she wouldn't mind her coffee a bit stronger. There are two settings on the machine - short cup and long cup - so I will try short cup for her next time - and maybe a smaller cup. Hours of fun coming up as I try to perfect the beverage.  Then, maybe it will be time to upgrade ... but that won't be for years yet!

Coffee machine on the left.