davidcook

Every now and then, I play a game or two of Go (mostly against the computer). I haven't been following news from the Go world in recent years, but it seems that computer Go has advanced quite a bit from when I last checked.

Previously, the strongest computer Go programs had reached roughly the level of a 10-kyu to 5-kyu player[1] - well short of even amateur 1-dan level, which is a fair way below the level of professional players.

It looks like computers are catching up now, though - all thanks to programs based around Monte Carlo Tree Search. One program using MCTS is currently ranked around 5-dan on KGS. Recently, a team using the program "Zen" managed to beat a 2-dan (amateur) player in a best-of-5 series, 3 games to 1. More to the point, it looks like the algorithms seem to be highly parallelisable, so simply throwing more computer power at these programs makes them even stronger.

Interesting times in the Go world - probably a few years yet before the Go equivalent of Kasparov-vs-Deep Blue comes along, but I wouldn't want to put too much money on humans staying ahead now.


The other interesting bit of Go news that I saw recently - there's an Australian-born professional Go player. Her name is Joanne Missingham, and she moved to Taiwan when she was 4, and quickly moved up the Go ranks there. She's currently a 5-dan professional, and has done quite well in tournaments and leagues in Taiwan.


[1] There are two levels in Go rankings - "kyu", starting from 30 (for a raw beginner), up to 1, and "dan", starting at 1 and going up to 7 (for amateurs) and 9 (for professionals). To complicate things, the dan levels are not exactly equivalent between amateur and pro - it's generally considered [2] that the highest amateur dan levels are roughly the same level as 1-dan pro.

[2] At least, it was back when I used to follow these things - with the advent of Go servers on the internet, where amateurs and pros play each other regularly, and pro games are often played/relayed live from tournaments, it's possible that the top amateurs are a bit stronger relative to the pros now.

So, Brickvention was last weekend. In short - it was awesome !

Brief history (of the ones I've attended - I missed out on the first few [1]) - in 2009, it was held in meeting rooms on level 12 of the Victoria University of Technology building. I can't remember exactly, but I think the public expo had around 2-3,000 people come through.

In 2010, still at VUT, we had around 4-5,000 people come through, with queues stretching some way around the block (since the traffic flow was limited by the speed and capacity of the lifts). This brought us to the attention of the Melbourne City Council, and after much hard work from the committee, Melbourne Town Hall was arranged as the venue for the next year.

In 2011, the event went well, but word had got around - we managed to get over 7,000 people through, and turned many (hundreds ?) of people away. Many more probably gave up upon seeing the queue stretching completely around the block, with an estimated 2 hours to wait before being able to get in. The hall was packed to its limit all day, and the committee were rather stressed by the end of it.

So, this year. Still in the Town Hall, but with two major changes - tickets were to be sold in advance for specific session times, and there would be two days of public display.
There were some trials along the way (e.g. when the booking site went down for around 24 hours due to a data centre move only a week before the event !), but all 10,000 tickets were sold by Thursday morning last week, much to the relief of the committee I imagine.

The public display days ran much more smoothly than last year - the queue for entry to each session was cleared in around 20 minutes, the hall was never over-full, and the lulls between sessions meant there was time for the committee and volunteers to take breaks when required.
Actually, that was another change this time - bringing in a bunch of volunteers for crowd management and general helping out - which again took some of the burden off the committee, and left them some breathing room to deal with any problems which did arise.

The only real issue was getting a bunch of publicity (radio and TV) after being sold out - in some cases, this wasn't mentioned, leading to people turning up over the weekend thinking it would be possible to buy tickets.

Anyway, the weekend was very good, the displays were amazing as always, and I'm sure everyone is planning their builds for next year even now (I know I am !).
You can see some of the creations here, and some of my photos here (more to come, for some reason iPhoto keeps "stalling" in the middle of the Flickr upload - very annoying).

And on to next year, and another move to a larger venue - this time the Royal Exhibition Building, in Carlton. Hopefully the larger capacity and slightly more suitable space should lead to an even better experience for everyone who goes along. Keep an eye on the Brickventures website for updates on the new venue, ticket sales, and registration to the "convention" day for AFOLs, TFOLs, and JFOLs. Time to get building !

[1] Due to being on the wrong side of the planet :-) [2]

[2] Weird, Brickvention has no Wikipedia entry ...

Quick poll (mostly for Australians) :
Have you heard of the site Online Opinion ? onlineopinion.com.au

Where do you get your Australian news and opinions from ? Murdoch-land ? (Feral Hun ... errr, Herald Sun / Advertiser / Australian, etc) Fairfax-ville ? (The Age / SMH / etc)
Other sources (Crikey ? ... ?)

I'm wondering because I was recently linked to a post about a new site called "The Conversation", and it reminded me that Online Opinion exists. From what I've seen of it, OO appears to be trying to provide a platform for in-depth articles about Australian (and international) issues, from a variety of sources (including academics, politicians, etc). The Conversation appears to be doing the same. Both sites are not-for-profit and thus less affected by the usual Big Corporate biases.

Anyway, Online Opinion is worth a look from time to time, it seems to do a reasonable job of getting a variety of points of view across.

Edit: And of course, it seems like a bit of duplication of effort - which leads me to believe that not many people (including the creators of The Conversation) have heard of OO, even though it has been around for a few years now.

I made 37 posts, and the most commented-on wasn't the one announcing Our Impending Arrival (April 6th, in theory), but one where I was boggling at the idea that someone talked to 50 people (that was including e-mail, texting, LJ comments, etc) every day.

Actually, I still boggle at that one, and can't help wondering where "normal" (or at least average) lies in communicating with people. Is he hyper-social, or am I relatively non-social ?

Anyway, off on a tangent, here's a photo from my (new-ish) workplace - showing some of the many kitchen/breakout areas around the place:

While we were in Adelaide, rwrylsin and I went to the beach a couple of times (since it's just a short stroll from my parents place). The first time was meant to be a short walk, and turned into a long one, where we both got somewhat sunburned (rwrylsin did have suncream on, but left some gaps; like a real tourist, I didn't have any).
The second trip we were better prepared, and since it was quite warm, determined to make it into the water. We did, and I played around with my camera a bit (claims to be waterproof to a metre or so, this might be the first time I've really tried it out).

Pretty quiet reading year for me, only 22 books (about 62 micro-Nicolls).
These days, I get most of my reading done on the train to/from work, and I cycled to work quite a lot this year. Throw in some days working from home, and that doesn't leave much reading time at all.

I have no particular reading goals for this year, either, apart from working my way through the to-read pile, and vaguely trying to keep up with the authors I like.


1. The Broken Kingdoms - N K Jemisin.
2. Agent To The Stars - John Scalzi.
3. The Bone Palace - Amanda Downum.
4. Late Eclipses - Seanan McGuire.
5. The Revolution Business - Charles Stross.
6. The Trade of Queens - Charles Stross
7. City of Pearl - Karen Traviss.
8. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making - Catherynne Valente
9. The Shattered City - Tansy Rayner Roberts
10. Cat's Claw - Amber Benson
11. Feed - Mira Grant.
12. Rocket Girls - Housuke Nojiri.
13. Deathless - Catherynne M Valente.
14. Half a Crown - Jo Walton.
15. Rosemary and Rue - Seanan McGuire.
16. A Local Habitation - Seanan McGuire
17. The Folding Knife - K J Parker.
18. Among Others - Jo Walton.
19. One Salt Sea - Seanan McGuire
20. Dragon's Ring - Dave Freer.
21. The Hammer - K J Parker.
22. The Kingdom of Gods - N K Jemisin

Back from Adelaide, which means it's time to do this :

Travel Meme
Places where I spent at least one night away from home in 2011:

Cooma, NSW
Penrith (Sydney), NSW
Bairnsdale, Vic
Adelaide, SA

... and that's it. Quiet year for travel, and the first three places on the list were part of the same trip.

Merry Christmas everyone ! (or any other seasonally-appropriate celebration that you may have)

We're having a quiet day at home, just us and the cats, since it may be our last chance to do so, with the baby due early in April. Had a nice Christmas dinner last night with hespa and cumbernotathome, and played Talisman until the small hours (note to self: Talisman is not in any way a quick game).


Meanwhile, after 8 and a bit years, this is my 1000th LJ post !

(sort of - since I'm actually cross-posting everything from Dreamwidth these days. Also, just ran the import of all my LJ entries into DW, and DW shows 1008 posts now ... )


In other news, I reached my cycling goal of 6,500km this year on the ride home on Thursday, and sometime in the last couple of weeks, went past 18,000km in total on this bike. I'm aiming for less next year, though, there were days where it felt like I was riding just to keep on track for the numbers, rather than because I wanted to ride. Also, there'll be a baby around :-)

Finally, heading to Adelaide tomorrow ... see some of you there !

I'm on holiday ! No work until the 3rd of Jan.

... this may be my longest break in quite a while, actually - I haven't taken much leave in the past year, and before that I was contracting for 18 months, so didn't take much time off at all.
I'm planning to save most of my leave for around the time the baby arrives (early April).

We're off to Adelaide on Monday afternoon, and coming back here on Friday. Haven't spent that long in Adelaide for the last couple of years either ... hmmm !

Right, first the main news - rwrylsin and I will be in Adelaide soon ! Arriving on the afternoon of the 26th, departing again on the 30th. Anyone want to catch up ?

In other news:
- finally bought a flute ! I got a Pearl Quantz 665RBE, with open holes, split E, offset G, and a B foot (errr, translation for non-flautists - it's shiny ! :-) ). Have had a few practice sessions with it now, and it does indeed sound good.
- have clocked up just over 18,000km on my bike (since Dec 08), and I'm now getting near my goal for the year of 6,500km.
- made a shed ! From a kit, that is. Well, except the door doesn't fit, so I need to adjust it a bit ...
- ... and that was in aid of turning a room from "it looks like a fencing club exploded in here !" into something resembling a nursery. Once the fencing gear is moved out, painting will follow, then we'll be vaguely ready.
- read rwrylsin's LJ for updates on "Bub" (or "Bump"), life in general, and cat photos.
- how can it be less than 10 days until Christmas ?! Who authorised this ? I'm not ready !

The Work Day :
Last Saturday, I cycled into work, arriving around 8am. I was there to assist with a software upgrade on the payments processing system, the final upgrade before the project ends (don't worry, I am already part-assigned to a new project, I'll be there for a while yet :) ). In our final practice run, we managed to finish the main portion of the upgrade in about 4 hours. Allowing for the usual delays and extra teams involved in dealing with our production systems, I figured we might be done by 1-2pm.
All went well until the database upgrade, which failed with a mysterious permission error in a place we'd never seen such a thing before. Investigating took a long time, and didn't really turn up a cause, but in the end we got it to work by simply restoring the DB and trying again. Sigh. Computers, eh ?
Left the office around 8:30pm, cycled home, had dinner and collapsed into bed.

The Festival Day :
Last Sunday, I didn't get to sleep in to recover from Saturday, because the Maroondah Festival was on. Our club was running a "come and try" stall there, similar to the one we ran two weeks earlier at the Whitehorse Spring Festival. It went well, lots of kids came and had a go (mostly after lunch, the morning had been a bit quiet - I remember looking at my watch at 1:30 and thinking "this could be a really boring afternoon at the current rate" - and the next time it slowed down enough to check the time, it was already 2:30). We had managed to get a grant to buy some of the "Mini-Fence" kit - plastic masks/swords, which means jackets and gloves aren't really required. This makes it much quicker to set up a pair of prospective fencers for one of the coaches to work with, and much less frustration in finding gear that fits. A couple of kids had a go, and then came back for another, and another, and then had a couple of turns in the regular kit with metal swords, and another final go with the plastics as well. I guess they liked it.

The Active Day :
Yesterday. Started the day with the regular fencing training session, and I managed to find some epeeists to play with ! After that, we returned home and lunched, and then I mowed the lawns, and played with the cats for a while (Ella is still a fiendish string-chaser, Abby sometimes joins in).
Then went for a bike ride (50-odd km), had dinner, went to see 3 Musketeers with rwrylsin, and finally went for a midnight shopping run (usually a bad idea, they always turn out more expensive than the regular ones for some reason).

The Lazy Day :
I'm dressed and breakfasted, and so far, that's it.
Ahhh, weekends ...

So, in this post, theferrett wrote :
I talk to at least fifty people every day – texting with my sweeties, answering comments in my blog, solving tickets at work, social networking with editors and fellow writers.

... so I started adding up. Outside of work, I typically communicate with fewer than five people per day (on average). That includes in-person, e-mail, texting, etc (but discounting reTweets and FB Likes).
On work days, I talk to maybe 10-20 people more - and at the high end of that range, I come home feeling overdosed on people and retreat to my cave computer.
If I was regularly talking to 50 people in a day, I suspect I'd run away and hide in a cave by the end of the month.

So, the obvious question - how many people do you generally communicate with ? And do you feel that's too many or too few ? And where do you find the time for all that anyway ?

(and will I get more responses if I give in and make a poll ? :-) )

Final update on the results from the fencing World Championships, the team events.

Men's Sabre :

1. Russia
2. Belarus
3. Italy
4. Germany

... that looks like a pretty traditional bunch for sabre :)

(closely followed by Romania, Hungary, Ukraine, and USA)

And Australia in 23rd.


Women's sabre :

1. Russia
2. Ukraine
3. USA
4. Azerbaijan

11. Great Britain
22. Australia


Women's Foil :

1. Russia
2. Italy
3. Korea
4. Poland

14. Great Britain.

The final featured a come-from-behind victory for the Russians, from 35-39 down, to win 45-44.
The Italian team featured the Gold and Silver medallists from the individual competition,
but Larisa Korobeynikova managed to outscore the new World Champion 10-5 in the final bout to seal the win.


Men's Foil :

1. China
2. France
3. Germany
4. Poland

9. Great Britain.

Another close final, China started the final period up 40-35. Le Pechoux gained 9 hits to 4 to take the match to extra time, but the Chinese fencer managed to close it out 45-44.


Men's Epee :

1. France
2. Hungary
3. Switzerland
4. Korea

25. Australia

The 3rd/4th place play-off was a low-scoring match - final score 15-14 to Switzerland,
the score remained at 0-all for the first three periods, and 1-0 after five !
(I suspect liberal use of the "passivity" rule !)


Women's Epee :

1. Romania
2. China
3. Italy
4. Germany

14. Great Britain

The final was another low-scoring match, won by Romania in extra time, 27-26, with China's Li Na outscoring her opponent 9 - 7 in the final period, not quite enough to catch up for the win.

The final individual events at the World Championships this year were men's foil, and women's epee.

Men's foil first :
1. Andrea Cassara (ITA)
2. Valerio Aspromonte (ITA)
=3. Victor Sintes (FRA)
Giorgio Avola (ITA)

More medals for Italy ! They've had a good tournament so far.

Factlets: Youngest born in 1996, oldest born in 1971.
Cassara has been in the top 10 of men's foil rankings since 2003/03, and has won 21 tournaments in that time, but this is his first win at World Championships/Olympics.

Placings for Aus/NZ/GBr fencers :
27. Jamie Kenber (GBR)
34. Laurence Halsted (GBR)
35. Richard Kruse (GBR)
82. Edward Jeffries (GBR)
109. Jozef Slowiaczek (AUS)
115. Mark Jamrozy (AUS)


Women's epee:

1. Li Na (CHN)
2. Sun Yujie (CHN)
=3. Ana Branza (ROU)
Anca Maroiu (ROU)

Placings for Aus/NZ/GBr fencers :
15. Corinna Lawrence (GBR)
52. Elisa Albini (GBR)
61. Georgina Usher (GBR)
68. Evelyn Halls (AUS)
110. Jennifier McGeever (GBR)

Factlets: Youngest born in 1996, oldest born in 1967.
Li reached no. 1 in the Women's Epee rankings in the 2006/07 season, coming 2nd in the World Championships that year, but had fallen down the rankings to around 80th place before this tournament.
She came through the tournament the hard way - winning only two bouts in her pool, and fighting eight DE bouts on her way to winning. This was her first win at major Championships (Olympics/World).

Yesterday's events were men's epee, and women's sabre.

Women's sabre :
1. Sophia Velikaia (RUS)
2. Mariel Zagunis (USA)
=3. Olga Kharlan (UKR)
Julia Gavrilova (RUS)

Placings for Aus/NZ/GBr fencers :
38. Joanna Hutchison (GBR)
44. Louise Bond-Williams (GBR)
54. Chrystall Nicoll (GBR)
59. Sophie Williams (GBR)
93. Alexandra Carroll (AUS)
104. Caitlin Taylor (AUS)
106. Jessica Brooks (AUS)
121. Cheryl Chan (AUS)

Factlets: Youngest competitor was born in 1996, oldest was born in 1972.
Velikaia has been in the top 10 of women's sabre rankings since the 2003/04 season, but this is her first major title (Olympics/World Championships).
Velikaia was 2nd at the Ghent/Gand tournament in 2007 - rwrylsin was also there, and came 77th (they didn't fence each other, though).

Men's epee:
1. Paolo Pizzo (ITA)
2. Bas Verwijlen (NED)
=3. Park Kyoung Doo (KOR)
Fabian Kauter (SUI)

Placings for Aus/NZ/GBr fencers :
31. Seamus Robinson (AUS)
70. Jonathan Willis (GBR)
154. William Dolley (AUS)
169. Ross Austen (AUS)
171. Zaccaria Casagrande (AUS)

Factlets: Youngest was born in 1995, oldest was born in 1961.
As far as I can tell, this is Pizzo's first major tournament win (he has previously placed 2nd and 3rd a few times). He was at the 2008 Challenge Monal tournament, and came 46th. I was also there, and came 96th.
Seamus Robinson (AUS) beat the 2009 World Champion, Anton Avdeev, in the round of 64, but lost to Alfredo Rota in the 32.

It's World Championships time in fencing !
Here are some results from the first completed individual events ...

Men's Sabre :
1. Aldo Montano (ITA)
2. Nicolas Limbach (GER)
=3. Luigi Tarantino (ITA)
Gu Bon Gil (KOR)

Factlets: Tarantino was the oldest competitor in the MS, born in 1972. Youngest was born in 1995.
Montano had previously won individual Gold at the 2004 Olympic Games, and Silver at the 2007 World Championships.

Placings for Aus/NZ/GBr fencers :
62. James Walsh (AUS)
63. James Honeybone (GBR)
90. Alexander O'Connell (GBR)
105. Sutherlan Scudds (AUS)
113. Frederic Jaccard (AUS)
127. Mitchell Fox (AUS)


Women's Foil:
1. Valentina Vezzali (ITA)
2. Elisa Di Francisca (ITA)
=3. Nam Hyun Hee (KOR)
Lee Kiefer (USA)

Factlets: Oldest competitor was born in 1960, youngest was born in 1995. Bronze medallist Kiefer was one of the youngest present, born in 1994.
Vezzali has previously won 3 individual Gold medals at Olympic Games, and 5 at World Championships.

Placings for Aus/NZ/GBr fencers :
41. Yuan Ping (NZL)
43. Natalia Sheppard (GBR)
54. Martina Emanuel (GBR)
64. Sophie Troiano (GBR)
69. Anna Bentley (GBR)
97. Jenny Bonney-Millett (AUS)


More results to come ...

... so I made a post titled "Questions" which claims to include a poll, only it ended up with one question, and no poll. And I'm posting late on Saturday night, so no-one's reading this stuff anyway :-)

Here's the other question :
I have a bunch of old video game boxes (flattened, in a box). Should I keep them ? Is that the sort of thing that anyone collects ? (They're very far from what anyone would call "mint" condition)
Should I just take photos and recycle them ?

So, I was reading this article, and one line jumped out at me :
children routinely receive up to 20 courses of antibiotics before they reach adulthood

... because I don't recall having any antibiotics as a child (although my memory gets pretty fuzzy before 5ish). As far as I know, I've had one course ever, 6 years ago when I had a nasty bacterial chest infection. So, that means it's poll time !

Edit: Apparently can't add a poll after the entry has been posted. Bah. Poll is now here.

Meanwhile, it looks like life is really stressful for cats around here :



(more random cat photos on Flickr)

So, I rode in Amy's Gran Fondo on Sunday. To summarize: Ow ! But I did have fun, and finished the 110km timed section in just over 4 hours 20 minutes.

My legs are feeling much better now, after working from home yesterday to let them recover a bit, and I'm even considering riding to work tomorrow.

( Read more... )

Now I just need to decide whether to do this ride again next year, and try for a better time, or try out one of the many other rides around Melbourne and Victoria. And maybe I should throw in some longer rides on weekends, just for fun.

Thanks to recommendations from james_davis_nicoll, I've been reading Rocket Girls, by Housuke Nojiri. I'm about 60 pages in, and it's good fun so far, but the pacing and dialogue have a more manga/anime feel than novel-ish.

So, at lunch-time today, I was wandering around Minotaur, and browsed the Manga section, and noticed that Rocket Girls was shelved there - with a big sticker on the front saying "NOVEL".
I didn't go back to the fiction bookshelves to see if it was also shelved there, possibly with a "NOT MANGA" sticker on it ...

I also noticed something slightly unusual - book prices have actually come down. They're still higher than US prices, of course, even when we've been sitting over AUD 1 to USD 1 for a while now, but quite a bit less than previously (e.g. new-release MMPBs around around $15-16 now, they were up to $20-22 some months ago). Now if only prices for other imports would follow (notably, Lego, bicycles, and camera equipment).

So, I've completely failed to mention that I'm going for a little bike ride this Sunday. 120km of it, in fact, in Amy's Gran Fondo.

What's a Gran Fondo ? It's described as a mass-participation competitive ride. "Mass participation" means about 2500 cyclists, in this case. Obviously, it isn't possible for 2500 cyclists to race in the conventional (first past the post) fashion, it would be chaos - instead, everyone gets a timing device on their bike, and get timed at various points on the circuit (including a fairly challenging hill climb for the KoM). We'll be setting off in groups of about 100 - still pretty large, but the hills along the way will no doubt reduce those. And all of the roads on the route will be closed, which should make for a nice ride indeed.

My original plan for cycling this year included "planning to do the Kinglake ride in April or so". But, every time I looked at the website of the organisers of the previous Kinglake rides, nothing had appeared mentioning a ride in 2011. After April, I stopped checking, figuring it wasn't happening this year. Then, in August, I signed up for this weekend's ride.

It turns out the Kinglake ride was on, but it got moved to September, last weekend in fact. If I had gone, it would have been 120km riding in cold, windy conditions with rain and hail - reports from those who rode mostly talk about how close they were to giving up part-way through.

This weekend ? The forecast is for sunny and 23 or so in Lorne, where the ride begins. I think I got very lucky there - could easily have ended up doing Kinglake instead if I'd seen their website at the right (wrong!) time ...
I'd better remember the sunscreen :)

Melbourne people (in fact, those on the East coast of Australia in general) - does it feel to you like we're slipping back into an "El Niño" weather cycle, after the "La Niña" we've had for the last year or so ?

To me, the chief sign of being in El Niño conditions is that weather forecasts tend to predict more rain than actually arrives - and for La Niña, the converse was true, the forecasts said "patter" and we got "splash!" and "splosh!" and "glubglubglub!".

And even though the Melbourne water storages are still slowly filling up, that's mainly due to the ground having being thoroughly saturated through summer and spring, rather than much winter rain being around. Not that I'm wishing for too much rain, but the storages have just limped back up over 60%, it would be a pity to return to the conditions where we lost 10-20% in a year.

I guess I'll just wait and see what Spring holds ... fingers crossed that it's a good one.


(... alternatively, maybe we spent A Little Too Long in Glasgow, if you know what I mean)



Edit: We have a steel roof. The pattering noise I can now hear on the roof is ... irony.