Bates College 2, Maine

It’s going to be such a shame to leave summer for winter again tomorrow! What a fleeting trip.

P.S. However, the conference became even more useful as my poster was chosen for a talk. Hooray for getting to speak at an international conference! I threw some slides together last night after my name was announced and gave the talk this morning. Went well! Great commentary and feedback. So I go back to Australia with a slightly bigger head than it already may be :p

• Auburn / Lewiston has pretty interesting contrasts going on. On one hand, it’s what my taxi driver called a “welfare city”, with closed, run-down factories and houses. Conversely, because it’s such an old place and part of the New England area.. you’ll get an amazing church thrown in amongst the rubble.

Something like:

Which is literally surrounded by run-down old houses.

• On a more trivial note, though I feel it’s no less significant: People say beverage a lot. Not drink. Beverage. Which is a totally fine word to use, I guess, but is usually said with a smirk in Australia.

Phew, been needing to get that off my chest.

• Also, now I happen to be at a conference at a liberal arts college, I’m surrounded by beautiful women. One such woman who was on par with the rest until she lifted her arms and obviously hasn’t heard of a razor! I guess the art student stigma is true.

This is the dorm I’m staying in:

aaand here’s a couple of pics of the campus:

Okay, gotta rush off. Here are my latest 2 photo albums, for you to sift through at your leiiisure:

Maine, 18th July

Bates College, Maine

I’m here to present some software at a science conference though I have most of the weekend to myself before that begins. Conference is just over 4 days then I’m gone again. How brief!

It was 4 flights and just over 30 hours to get here, which to me actually wasn’t as bad as it was supposed to be. Sure, I was pretty tired and sore by the end though still quite jovial. Every time I felt a bit irked I recalled it took months for peeps in England to get to Australia by horrible-scurvy-boat. If they gave that a go (okay okay, many didn’t have a choice) and many survived then I’d survive 30 hours in a climate-controlled set of planes with sub-par food. Of course United managed to send my luggage from LA to Washington instead of Chicago, but I honestly expected them to, and the luggage reached me the next morning which isn’t so bad. Still, if part of your main business is to route luggage then as a company you’re showing great muppettude by screwing it up so often.

Speaking of Chicago: O’Hare is a huge and modern airport but also really quiet. Very impressed!

So far I’ve been walking around and checking out the town. I ate much lobster at a seafood restaurant, and I drank much beer at a pub outside my hotel and even went clubbing with some locals. Live rap! Perhaps the late night out is why my head hurts this morning and I’m struggling to be articulate.

Everyone’s really friendly. Given its a small town and not exactly an international tourist destination, people are always asking me where I’m from and are quite happy to chat it up. This is in stark contrast to the short attention spans and sharpness of Californians in general. The girls at Dunkin Donuts almost died on the spot at the accent. I was just after breakfast!

Auburn / Lewiston are twin cities and small ones at that. It’s a green, leafy place with ancient buildings about. It’s pretty hot right now also, and humid. Being so high up I didn’t expect their summer to be this warm, but yesterday it was 31C. A welcome change from Australian winter!

Here are a bunch of photos. The daytime ones I took with my iPhone (thanks lost luggage) and dusk ones with my proper camera. Will blog later in the week once the conference kicks off!

Maine, 16-17 July iPhone

aaand when I finally got my proper camera back:

Maine 17th July

Perhaps early-release teething problems.. bugs, glitches, crashes - a generally interrupted gaming experience was always the way it went. And perhaps a modern world where millions of eager players are sitting there bashing at the battered gates of gaming servers in their infancy just means these teething problems are much more out in the open - routed through services under the horrible umbrella of ’social media’.. but it certainly makes for nightmarish PR right at the point where a company is trying to move as many copies of their brand new offering as possible.

In less than 48 hours, there have been 20 pages on the official Electronic Arts blog of angry, confused, desperate comments from gamers just wanting to play what they dropped ~$100 on, the same weekend that they made said financial commitment.

I’m not going to try and aggregate all of the issues being complained about and comment on them. But I will tackle the numerous issues I experienced in just a couple of hours of (mostly trying to) play.

• The online cheat detection program Punkbuster that accompanies B: BC 2 throwing me out of a game after a few minutes of action with a “Pb Init Failure” error.
• Me following their advice (some other guy’s blog link as EA’s advice is in-game..) on the issue above and finding that while I no longer get the error.. I get even less feedback in that it just crashes back to the menu now without so much as a cryptic error for me to grit my teeth and Google.
• The server browser taking forever to refresh games that I can join (not very new to the Battlefield series in general). I shouldn’t have to wait 5 minutes to see a list of servers, mostly very far away from me (in Australia) that I don’t care about, so I can try hopelessly to join a server with 31/32 players playing only to see that that spot was filled 4 minutes and 59 seconds ago anyway.
• Oh and the latest trick? Probably the most fun thing that can ever happen to software of any kind. Just crashing to the desktop. I mean, just disappearing in an instant, leaving me staring at the boring-ass wallpaper I haven’t changed in 3 months because I should be throwing grenades at an APC instead of interior decorating.

I’m sure that they’re working very hard at Battlefield HQ to solve all of this. And they are saying as much in their public dialogue, which is good of them. But I’d rather see a game released a month later that I can actually play and enjoy than turning 25 and spending a couple of hours being frustrated over software, on my day off from being a software developer.

Perhaps the worst part is, for the hour or so of playtime I got in around the chaos: The game was really bloody good. Gorgeous and immersive to a level unseen in previous Battlefields, or perhaps any war game online.

It’d be just nice to play it, that’s all.

Stuff I hadn’t experienced until this year, in absolutely no order whatsoever

• TV show Dexter
• Guitar Hero
• Hey, I’m also learning to drum and can do it pretty well now!
• Ben Folds, and Ben Folds Five Albums
• Pixies’ albums
• Cycling for more than 3 hours at a time
• Seeing South Australia, including the Barossa Valley
• Seeing the Northern Hemisphere
• .. In the form of various parts of California
• .. For free too! Including going to the Apple conference
• Speaking at various conferences. Including being invited to do so.
• The Django web framework, and the Python programming language
• Espresso coffee
• Kevin Smith’s output! Including but not limited to SModcast
• How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory
• Dating, like a supposed adult ’should’
• The Australian Synchrotron, our premier scientific facility
• Moving out again.. this time on my terms with great success
• Wearing shirts and stuff, looking a little more professional
• Blues clubs!
• iPhone!
• The Tweetie twitter application
• Enjoying Sushi
• Hosting and organising events
• XBox
• Noise cancelling headphones
• A double-necked guitar
• A gay bar* (*not gay :P)
• Waking up every day and being pretty sure that my future looks bright

I’m sure I’m missing significant chunks here, but this is what springs to mind. This year was a blast, and it doesn’t appear that the good times are going to dry up any time soon. I’m back home in 8 days, see you all then!

Click for a supposed fancy-gallery (I haven’t tried it yet..)

Casa de Steve

Picasa web albums because Flickr is sucking now and won’t let me log in.

• I went to my last.fm profile and took my most listened to songs for the past year
• So yes, that means that a lot of the songs aren’t from this year, or even this decade
• And because there are a lot of repeat bands, I took the highest song from each distinct band

10. Belle and Sebastian - Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying (1996)

I’m so glad a Belle and Sebastian song made it into the top 10, as it’s also a recent obsession. They’re right up there with Crowded House, The Decemberists, hell even The Beatles in the ’sweet melodies’ stakes. This particular song is also a favourite for me to play and sing with my acoustic guitar.

9. The Decemberists - We Both Go Down Together (2005)

Sounds like an R.E.M. song, but still awesome. The Decemberists are the most underrated band still going around. Pick up Castaways and Cutouts, Picaresque, and the new one, Hazards of Love. They’re all melodic genius.

8. DOOM - That’s That (2009)

Rap Alert! *sirens*



The new single off the new album from DOOM (formerly known as MF DOOM). I just love his flow, lazy but clever. This doesn’t even strike me as a song, it’s more like a freestyle but wow.

7. Jebediah - Leaving Home (1997)

Has to be one of the top 10 pop-punk songs of the 90s, and Australian too!

6. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cotton Fields (1969)

An old song which is a cover of an even older song. But the Creedence version rocks. All the harmonies. It’s just a country song, but wow.

5. Wilco - Jesus, etc (2002)

A sweet song.. instantly likeable

4. Pixies - Here Comes Your Man (1989)

The poppiest song that never was. They even start with a, “A Hard Day’s Night” style opening chord. I’ve been somewhat obsessed with Pixies all year. This song’s a good introduction to the uninitiated as to why.

3. Ben Folds Five - Underground (1995)

This song is so much fun. I’m not sure why it took me until recently to hear it for the first time off an old JJJ hottest 100. They’re talented little bastards, particularly Ben, who I saw this year also and blew my mind away.

2. Them Crooked Vultures - Mind Eraser, No Chaser (2009)

I may have made my top 10 albums of the decade list too early. Them Crooked Vultures (Josh Homme - Queens Of The Stone Age, Dave Grohl - Foo Fighters & Nirvana, John Paul Jones - Bloody Led Zeppelin For Crying Out Loud) form a damn fine supergroup with a self-titled debut album. This song happens to be my most played from this album. It’s also a free download on iTunes. Since I rated QOTSA - Songs For The Deaf #1 on my favourite albums of this decade, and this sounds like that album on steroids, you can imagine I was happy to receive it.. still over the moon now. Hell, I just like watching Dave hit skins.

1. Pearl Jam - The Fixer (2009)

This song is a 90’s grunge band reborn with a sound that’s both classic Pearl Jam, but ultimately fresh and just catchy as all hell. I saw them in concert this year, and they had this much energy for the entire 3 hours they were on. Eddie Vedder is probably the second nicest guy in rock, behind Dave Grohl.

..Merry Christmas all!

Update: Crumpet blogged her top 10 albums

10. King Geedorah (MF DOOM) - Take Me To Your Leader (2003)

Why I love this album:
One of two rap albums on this list, and a moderately obscure one to start with. Strange, masked New York rapper MF DOOM makes an album about a three-headed “Space Monster” King Geedorah. Yeahhhh.

I’m happy to report that this album’s beats and raps are about as odd as its subject matter (songs with slowly changing tempo? sure!). Yes, it’s abrasive. It contains a mind boggling amount of voice samples, mostly from old movies and tv shows.. But I’m also happy to report that under the layer of plain weird that’s thickly laid on it is a collection of catchy, addictive rap. It was my driving music for about half a year. That has to earn it some kind of place in a top 10!

9. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois (2005)

Why I love this album:
A long, overblown, collection of songs. Ridiculous arrangements, and someone singing in an over-sentimental fashion about people and events in history seemingly without pausing to decide whether it was his place to write songs about an entire state of the US and its colourful history (not his first time, and not his last too!).

Unfortunately for me and my preconceptions about this album, it damn well works and is just as good as Sufjan clearly believes it is. Some of the songs are borderline nauseatingly happy, flamboyant.. in that awful theatrical style I loathe so much. But again, it works! Perhaps it’s the intertwined soft, cute acoustic numbers that keep me from going over the edge of ‘ugh!’, but whatever. Put this album on when going on a long road trip in the sun. I did, and it was the most fitting thing ever.

8. The Decemberists - Castaways and Cutouts (2002)

Why I love this album:
This is 2000s American indie/college rock summarised. A collection of great tunes, with just enough pretentiousness for your average tweed-jacket wearing art student to shuffle his feet to, but not enough that it gets in the way of it being a plain old solid pop/rock album. I also see it is a very American college rock album as bands like this never get the exposure they deserve in Australia. Well, that was until I was shocked to see they’re on the bill for the Big Day Out festival this January. Of course, they’re billed right at the bottom. I hope for their sakes they get discovered down here in a big way. People need to hear albums like this.

7. Radiohead - Hail to the Thief (2004)

Why I love this album:
This will get a lot of *WHAT?!* from Radiohead fans. This decade they’ve put out In Rainbows, Amnesiac and Kid A, an album considered by a lot of critics as the outright best album of this decade, period. I mean out of anyone, not just Radiohead.

Yet here I am ranking Hail To The Thief above them all. I’ll admit up front that this was the first Radiohead album I heard in its entirety, and it was in a pretty monumental time in my life, so there’s memory attached to it. However, I considered all of that when coming up with this list. There are songs on the other three albums that I like more than any of the songs on this album. But on the whole, as an album I find it the most listenable from start to finish. I believe Hail To The Thief is underrated - possibly because Radiohead had reached such great heights that people’s expectations were completely unattainable in reality. Go back and listen to this album and appreciate it for the great collection of songs it is.

6. Eminem - Marshall Mathers LP (2000)

Why I love this album:
Eminem is damn clever, when you get down to it. He’s just plain witty in an offensive way some people love and others can’t stand. I’m more in the ‘love’ category and feel sorry for those who can’t get past being offended at the stuff he’s saying. His beats are catchy and his rhymes are top notch. To this day, I’m still hearing clever little lines in his songs that I’ve missed or never stopped to interpret before. It really sucks when someone is really controversial but isn’t good enough to back up the shock tactics with raw talent. Eminem is not one of these people. Somehow he manages to be twice as good as he is vulgar - and on this album he’s very, very vulgar.

5. Queens of the Stone Age - Rated R (2000)

Why I love this album:
The second Queens’ album posesses much more diversity than your average hard-rock band outputs in an entire career. It’s probably their most accessible album on the whole, but but don’t mistake it for pop in any sense. There are enough heavy, enough drawn-out jams.. enough energy-charged screaming, enough plain stoner-rock weirdness to please those who graduated with Josh Homme from the kings of strange drawn-out rock jams, Kyuss.

4. Red Hot Chili Peppers - By The Way (2002)

Why I love this album:
One of the most underrated albums of the decade. Yeah, I went there. Yeah, it’s by one of the most successful bands in the world - yeah it spawned at least 3 hit singles. However, as an album it’s probably their most cohesive effort to date and they don’t get enough credit for it. Sure there isn’t much of that funk they’re renowned for. But it’s the melodies that really stand up here. Not just that. It’s the harmonies. Guitarist/backup singer John Frusciante said he wanted the entire album to have ‘Beach Boys’ harmonies throughout.. the result sounds amazing.

3. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)

Why I love this album:
A close second in the ’sweetest melodies’ stakes (you’ll see!). I remember hearing this album for the first time just after it came out and throwing it away because I hated it. It just didn’t seem catchy at all. The arrangements were hard to follow, the effects appeared to get in the way of following the melody in the first place and I couldn’t see why everyone was raving about it.

Seven years later, I gave it another shot. After a couple of listens and more ‘mature’ ears I was hooked. Every song is a great one. The album is truly inspired, if a little off-kilter - but that’s part of its charm.

2. Beck - Sea Change (2002)

Why I love this album:
After breaking up with his long term girlfriend, Beck got all sad and wrote these songs. His earlier albums featured a lot of samples, and were pretty electronic and just.. schizophrenic. Surprising how different this is. Slow, pretty songs. Usually with minimal, acoustic-guitar arrangements, light on synth. The songs themselves aren’t all sad. Some sound hopeful, all have great melody.

1. Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf (2002)

Why I love this album:
The Queens’ third album sees ex-Nirvana drummer and current Foo Fighter’s frontman Dave Grohl back behind the kit. The album definitely gains an edge from his hard-hitting, excellent drum work. It’s a heavy, dense and intense album, yet it stays fresh throughout its hour runtime by having 3 different singers taking lead (Josh Homme, Nick Oliveri, Mark Lanegan) and at least 5 different song writers. After all is said and done, this album just rocks your face off. It’s that simple.

But first.

Due to ‘popular’ request, here’s me in my dorky apple gear! Waiting for the plane.

*Shock*. I even managed to sleep on the flight.

You see, I have this thing where I can’t sleep on anything moving. So as far as my memory stretches back, I can’t recall ever doing it. But this time around, I managed 4 or 5 hours on the 13 hour flight to Sydney. This made things much less boring! Here’s to you, sleep.

Aside from that, I watched a tonne of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ (cheers, Simey, Jackie for recommendations). And I bought these two books beforehand:

Based on an interesting and inspiring Ted talk I saw by the author a while ago.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It’s a really interesting take on happiness and something I can relate to.

Then for something completely different, based on multiple recommendations (and it was $4 in Borders San Fran!)..

The Areas of My Expertise

by John Hodgman

So it’s.. interesting. Schizophrenic in a way.. but with largely funny results.

For my last day in San Francisco, I decided to simply revisit my favourite parts of the city. I walked for about 4 hours, without many photos.. as I had taken photos of everything before! But here’s a few worth sharing…

And yep, a ‘Hollywood’ style school bus!

Unless I find something groundbreaking I just have to add.. this concludes the blogging on my trip to California. Thanks to those who read (about 40 of you psychopaths and stalkers daily according to my analytics!), and for sending me feedback via email/IM/sms/whatever. Knowing people were getting a kick out of seeing these entries, it was a blast to do.

Lastly, don’t forget to check out my Photostream for a whole bunch of photos that didn’t make it to the Big Time of this blog and are merely serving coffee as unpaid interns on my Flickr site.

Signing off.