4 posts tagged “australia”
Just finished my first day in Sydney. I'm really tired , I couldn't sleep properly on the plane. I got about 2 hours of sleep then I was up all night. It didn't help that the person behind me coughed the whole flight. Why do they seat sick people next to me? I also got clocked in the head by the person sitting in front of me as I was filling out my entry card details. They decided it was a good idea to lean the chair back as far as possible and then fall into their seat. I guess everyone around me was a little shocked when I let out a big "fuck". It hurt so I felt I should express my pain. I got up at 2 am couldn't go to sleep so I watched a movie. No, not that kind of movie. I saw Talladega Nights which was much funnier than I thought it would be.
I had ripped a couple of dvds to my psp. I saw In Search of the Valley which is a documentary about what makes silicon valley the way it is. It's an interesting documentary but very light and doesn't go into depth too much. I would recommend it to people who don't live in the bay area. I also started watching this Bill Hicks dvd I've had for a while but never got around to watching. Bill Hicks had this acerbic wit that really appeals to me. If you've never heard or read any of his stuff I highly recommend it. I love video on demand on Qantas. I ended up seeing Beerfest (yes, I'm classy) , The Pianist (which made me emotional) and Love Actually ( which I've seen 3 times now).
I also got to meet a friend I hadn't seen seen in 16 years. I thought the meeting could go two ways. We'd both have nothing in common anymore or it would be like we had just met yesterday. I think it was more the latter. We reminisced about our childhood our old friends and all the silly things we used to do as kids but seemed so important at the time.
We also talked about this one girl we both had the biggest crush on when were maybe 11 or 12. We met her at some party family friends held. The one comment we had after was "did you see that girl?". This proceeded with us spending every opportunity trying to meet her again. You would think we were both competing for the same girl but I think it was more important for us to trying figure out what she was about and just talk to her. We also both knew we would never tell her anything. We were both dorky little kids (I'm still a dorky little kid, my friend grew out of it). There were some tragic consequences to this. One example is in a bid to have something in common with her my friend got into a particular boy group she was into. I'll give you a hint, they had a song called Cover Girl. My musical sensibilities would never have let me like something like that , not even for a girl (maybe my inability to compromise is why I'm bound to always be alone). As a postscript to this story I saw a picture of her as a grown up a couple of years ago. My one thought was either we were on crack as children or my taste has dramatically changed ;).
We've both changed quite a bit from our childhoods. Ok, maybe me less so since I still spend all my time behind a computer. That core of our childhood still remains and I think it's something that spans time. I was lucky to have a very normal childhood so the memories I have of it are of a really great time. I'd like to meet more people from my childhood to see what sort of people they've become and if I can still connect with them.
Time to go hunt for some breakfast.
There's nothing more beautiful than when your plane approaches the coast of Australia and and descends into Sydney. The flight from San Francisco to Sydney was mostly painless except for the guy sitting next to me (oh cruel fate, see my previous post). He started to take up space on my side of the seat which was annoying. What's worse is that he thought I couldn't see him picking his nose every 5 minutes. There really isn't a stealthy way to pick your nose when the person is seated right next to you and yes I can see you trying to place your treasures under your seat, yuck.
Enough of that negativity. I then caught a plane up to Brisbane and got a home cooked meal. Mums are great :). There was a slight mix up in my schedule so it turned out I had a bunch of meeting in Sydney (where I had just come from ;)). So early the next morning I was back at the airport on a flight down to Sydney. On monday and tuesday I managed to meet all but one of the tech oriented VCs (venture capitalists) in Australia. It was a pretty interesting experience contrasting the difference between how Amercian VCs tend to perceive opportunity and the conservative nature of Australian VCs. It's understandble since the Australian market is so small and the available capital is equally small (YouTube,Skype,MySpace would never have been funded in Australia). It'd be nice to attract at least one top tier VC from the Valley into Australia because there is some great technology. I'm helping a local university pitch their idea to VCs and doing their pitch for the university business competition. I'm not exactly sure how interesting people will find my talk (I'm woefully under qualified for doing this kind of thing) but the technology is quite cool. I want to see more Australian technology out there in the world instead of being stuck in labs and never seeing the light of day due to the conservative nature of Australian business culture. I love the American sense of risk taking and just giving things a go.
The core technology is around image similiarity search. Think of being able to find pictures based on other example pictures. This sort of thing is known as CBIR (content based image retrieval). What the technology brings to the plate is ease of use and speed. They also have some cutting edge face recognition technology. Most of you will immediatly think of Riya and they are probably the best example of very similar technology. I admire Riya a great deal for pushing the boundaries of search in the consumer space. I also believe there is room for other players to enter the market and exploit different techniques. There are quite a few different verticals that people can attack but only a key few will be monetizable relatively quickly. I suspect Riya will get picked up by Yahoo (in response to the Neven acquisition) or EBay in the next 6months to a year. They just need get their visual search engine (Riya 2.0) out there.
When the team has an open web based API for people to play with I'll let you guys know so those coders out there who think they have ideas that can be built around visual search can play around. I think some pretty interesting mashups can be done with this technology. Could even be kinda cool on Vox *hint hint*.
I'm sitting in gate A4 at SFO waiting for my flight to Australia. I'm super paranoid about flights so I end up arriving a couple of hours before just in case something happens. That usually leaves me with a bunch of time to ruminate and attempt to spend my time "productively". I have 2 books , 1 PSP (4 games including roco loco and katamari), 1 wireless connection (youtube playing in the background) and me blogging to pass some time.
I have terrible luck with seating on planes. I either end up with someone sick next to me which leaves me trying to breath as little as possible. It probably looks to the other passengers like I'm on the verge of death. I also end up with people who love to keep going to the restroom. I prefer sitting on an aisle seat because of the freedom it offers but suffer for that choice. I've been known to end up with people who take up way too much space and intrude on my particular area. Then there are the people who figured it was a great idea not to shower (for the last 5 days). Is it bad form to spray air freshner in their general direction?
I'm not a greedy person , all I ask is that I get to sit next to someone low impact or a super model. Actually super models sound like they'd be high maintainance I'll settle for Scarlett Johansson :)
Oh what does fate have in store for me tonight...
As Once the Winged Energy of Delight
As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.
Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.
To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.
Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions...For god
wants to know himself in you.
-rilke
What better way to start a virgin post than to fill it with someone else's words ;). There's something magical about Rilke's poetry and I can't help feel poorer for not paying more attention in my german class. I spend inordinate amounts of time reading his works and trying to get a better appreciation for it. There's always something lurking between the words that needs to be grasped and nurtured to really feel it.
So what delightful entertainment do I have in store for you in the future? I have about 6 books which I finished over the last couple of weeks that I need to review. I've already started fleshing out the reviews but haven't had a chance to really to go through them all. I'm off to Australia on Friday night and I will attempt to post up some video of that little journey. I've been flying back and forth this year quite a bit. Spent the first 6 months of the year in Australia and came running back to San Francisco ;)
Why did the koala fall out of the tree? ... It was dead.
Why did the tree fall down?... It was nailed to the koala.
My friends are probably tired of that one but I'm not :P
