One of the reasons I wanted to do an advanced diving course at Magnetic Island was that it includes a day-trip to the site of the wreck of the SS Yongala, supposedly one of the best dive sites in the world.
Unfortunately I couldn’t do the course due to (relatively) poor weather, but yesterday (my last full day in Australia) I was able to go out on the day trip with Adrenalin Dive, based in Townsville.
I had two ~30-minute dives with a maximum depth of 23 metres (The deepest I’d been previously was 12 metres!). The marine life at the wreck was incredible! There’s a huge variety of fish, including a couple of giant Groupers and the odd Reef Shark but the highlight for me had to be the Hawksbill Turtles that lived in and around the wreck.
Although the visibility was less than 10 metres (I’m told 20+ metres is normal), these were undoubtedly the best dives I’ve done, and a great way to end my time in Australia.
I’m currently sitting in the airport at Cairns waiting on my flight to Tokyo. I’ve still got about an hour before boarding, but that’s alright, there’s free wireless here!
It’s a little strange to be leaving the country I’ve been travelling through for the last 7 months or so. It seems I’ve been here long enough that other travellers look at me and think I must have some idea what I’m doing with this travel lark! I ended up helping a couple of people plan trips down the East coast to Melbourne while I was sitting on Magnetic Island! I don’t mind it all. I asked the same questions 6-months ago. It’s just a little strange being “that guy” now!
Anyway. Today I’m travelling from a country I know quite a bit about, to one that I’m relatively clueless about. I can’t wait to see it though! Lots of raw fish and robots everywhere! Awesome! That, and I’m meeting my parents and brother there. That should be good too!
According to the well-respected technology journal The Sun, the Conficker worm is supposed to kill us all sometime on Wednesday.
That’s right, it’s “deadly”. Even Snow Crash didn’t kill people!
Part of me hopes it’ll do something cool, or at least interesting. (Gaining sentience, taking over the world’s nuclear weapons, experimenting with time-travel and attempting to kill the mother of the unborn future leader-of-mankind, for example) But, it’ll probably just send a lot of spam.
During the Second World War, Townsville was an important base for supply ships and troops. In order to defend it from the Japanese fleet, two huge gun emplacements were created on Magnetic Island along with the command and signals buildings needed to support them.
I didn’t have time to see them the last time I was on Magnetic Island, but time isn’t really an issue now, so I walked up there this afternoon and got some great views of both the bay and the interior of the island!
I saw an interesting Gamasutra article on Slashdot today about creating game AI which is “stupid” enough to be beatable, but “intelligent” enough to make realistic mistakes.
Taking poker as an example:
For weak poker AI, an intelligent mistake consists of figuring out what you should do, and then not doing it, so long as not doing it does not make you look stupid.
For example, if the human player just put in a big raise, yet you know there’s a 75 percent chance your hand is the best, then an intelligent mistake would be to fold. The odds are the AI would win, yet we are simulating a weak human player, and weak human players often fold to a large raise when they are unclear on their odds.
Conversely, weak human players often call when their chances are weak. It’s a natural thing to do and allows us to reduce the strength of the AI player, without it looking artificially stupid.
There’s also mention of a fairly cool sounding chess program:
The programmers of Fritz hit upon a solution that involved the AI deliberately setting up situations that the human player could exploit (with some thought) that would allow the human to gain a positional or piece advantage. Once the human player gained the advantage, the AI would resume trying to win.
At no point here is the AI actually dumbed down. If anything, there is actually quite a bit more computation going on, and certainly more complexity.
I’ve been in Sydney since returning from New Zealand. To be honest, apart from catching up with some of the people I met in New Zealand, I haven’t been doing very much and it feels like I’m just killing time before my flight to Tokyo.
I think I’ve done everything I’d planned on doing in Australia, and seeing as I’m departing from Cairns and have to travel up the coast again anyway, I’ve decided to go back to Magnetic Island for a while.
I’m hoping to do an Advanced Open Water diving course while I’m there, but even if it doesn’t go ahead, I think I’d prefer to kill time on a small island than in Australia’s biggest city!
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has created this Surveillance Self-Defense site to educate the American public about the law and technology of government surveillance in the United States, providing the information and tools necessary to evaluate the threat of surveillance and take appropriate steps to defend against it.
It looks pretty cool!
The legal aspect of it is probably only really of use to those in America, but the Defensive Technology section applies to everybody.
The last leg of my journey on the Kiwi bus took me from Queenstown to Christchurch, where I planned to spend my last few days in New Zealand before flying back to Sydney.
When I was in Dunedin, I’d hoped to see a Super 14 game at Carisbrook but due to the schedule, this was not to be. Fortunately, the Crusaders were playing at home the day after we arrived in Christchurch and there were still plenty of tickets available!
The game itself was a little scrappy until the last 20 minutes or so (Wellington won 24-30), but as a spectacle I’ve never seen anything like it at a rugby match. With cheerleaders, horsemen dressed as knights and a military helicopter landing to deliver the match ball, it was more like the build-up to an American football game than anything I’ve seen at Murrayfield!
As I still had a couple of free days before my flight, I decided to hire a car, drive up the coast and spend a night in Kaikoura with some of the people I’d met in the Deep South. One of the main attractions in Kaikoura is swimming with dolphins. Unfortunately, despite the weather in Kaikoura being brilliant (Christchurch had been a bit cold and wet for a few days!) the swell was bad enough that no boats were leaving the harbour. But the weather on-shore was good, and there was a hot-tub and plenty of beer at our hostel.
I can certainly think of worse ways to spend an afternoon!
