Addictive Photos

I am just flipping through some photos taken by Michael Poliza. They are just beautiful, breathtaking, amazing,... I am addicted already! Hopefully my next bigger holiday / journal will be in Africa *dream* :-)

Robot Soccer

On Sunday I went together with a couple of friends to the AIBO Robot Soccer Exhibition. Three different teams (4 AIBO dogs each team) were playing soccer against each other.
The technical leader of AIBO, Dr Masahiro Fujita, gave a talk about the “History of AIBO League at RoboCup”. He showed videos of each years RoboCup, starting in 1998. While the robot dogs still moved pretty slowly in 1998, it was very interesting to see their improvements over the years.

Sunset at the river

On Saturday evening Ian and I decided to have dinner down at the river. There is this really lovely spot just here. So we went to the Boatshed (our favourite supermarket) and bought lots of yummy stuff: German bread (quite close to real German bread but still too white), smoked salmon, camembert, sparkling apple juice (Apfelschorle :-) ), fresh mango and peaches,…
It was really great! Just sitting there and enjoying the warm colours of the sunset (we actually couldn’t see the sun). But unfortunately we weren’t the only ones who knew about this spot. Two bridal couples came there as well with a photographer who took their wedding pictures.
But the high light of the evening was a school of dolphins swimming up the river and catching fish. We saw about 5 or 6 coming really close to the shore!

Data Collection

On Saturday morning we went to the CAT bus depot and installed 6 additional cameras in one of the buses. I had asked people to come and help me collecting data for a face recognition database (as part of my PhD). I was really happy that more than 30 people came and showed their faces in front of the cameras :-)
Some pictures of the day can be viewed here.

Daylight Saving, Finally!!

After 3 rejected referendums WA finally voted for a 3-year daylight saving period, after which there will be another referendum! So for the whole time of my PhD I will have daylight saving :-)

Work, work, work

I am really busy at the moment, lots to do at uni. At the beginning of December I have to submit my “candidacy”. After the first 6 months each PhD student has to write a short plan of what he or she is proposing to do during the next 3 years. Once this candidacy is accepted I am a “proper” PhD student. During these first 6 months the supervisors will assess the skills of each PhD student and have the chance to reject the candidacy of necessary.
Additional to this I am currently planning and organising a big data recording day. As I am working on face recognition from video at the moment I need a database to test my algorithms. Therefore we were kindly made available one of the CAT buses on the weekend. Probably next Saturday we will record lots of people while entering the bus. Unfortunately we are not allowed to drive around but we can mount additional cameras in the bus and ask people to enter and leave the bus a couple of times. I am actually really looking forward to this.

Red Bull Air Race

The weekend in short

We went to see the movie “Who killed the electric car?” on Friday. It was a really interesting documentation about the EV1, a “electric vehicle” by General Motors, which was one of the first electric cars on the roads in California.

On Saturday we went to a late “Oktoberfest BBQ”. A German guy from uni sponsored German sausages, Leberkäse and made potato salad from his grandma’s old recipe – really yummy!! We had a really nice, relaxing, chatting,… evening.

Today Ian went on a bike race again. But because I don’t like getting up early in the morning especially on the weekend I stayed at home. I just love laying in bed until half past nine on a Sunday morning! And after a yummy breakfast outside in the sunny courtyard I took my little scooter for a ride to Freo. Strolling around the Freo markets (fresh fruit & veggies) and along the cappuccino strip – I love lazy weekends :-)

Denmark

We had such a great weekend! But no, we haven’t been to Europe just for the weekend like actually a lot of (non-Australian) people here at Curtin thought… they should leave their computers more often!!
So we went down south Friday night. We stayed together with 7 others in “The Lookout” which was only 5 min. away from the beach where we went surfing.
I started the Saturday really lazy – I slept in, while most of the others went for a surf early in the morning. We had a huge breakfast together and went to visit some wineries afterwards.






A couple of weeks ago we had dinner with a couple of other Germans and they introduced me to this fantastic wine. They were raving about this little family business near Denmark that produces such lovely vines. So I had to visit Moombaki while we were in Denmark.

And it was indeed a lovely spot - a small estate in the middle of the forest surrounded by wine yards. Lots of birds were flying around and I spotted this beautiful little blue bird, a fairy wren. I never saw such a bright blue bird before.
A couple with 3 little boys (you can actually see them on the wine labels) runs this business. And I think they love doing it! They hand pick their wine and try to avoid chemicals as much as possible. We tested their wines and I was really happy that our friends loved these wines as well. My absolute favourite is the 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Malbec. I think we ended up buying 2 cases (24 bottles) in total.
At night we had dinner in “Mary Rose Restaurant and Tea Shoppe” which is probably the best place in Denmark for eating out.
Sunday morning everyone went for a surf and we had lots of fun. I tried the buggy board for the first time and improved my surfboard skills. But even though I still can’t stand up, I just love lying or kneeing on the board, catching a wave and being pushed to the beach!
Unfortunately the weekend was much too short!!

STRATA AGM

Ian wants do renovate or rather change his unit. He thought about the plans for this about a year ago already. But because his unit is managed by a strata council everything gets more complicated.
Technically he just owns the paint on the walls and the carpets on the floor, everything else belongs to the strata, even the tiles on the walls! But the strata will also pay for all the maintenance of the tiles, the roof, the windows,… but if you want to change something you will have to ask for permission, especially if it is likely to increase the overall maintenance costs.
So yesterday was the big day – AGM (annual general meeting). All the parties (there are 26 units in the complex) come together to discuss general stuff and to vote for or against Ian’s changes. In fact everyone had to accept his changes in order for us to do the renovations.
And so everyone voted ‘yes’ apart from ONE neighbour!! Now we have to talk to him and find out what his “real” concerns are and call another meeting in order to do the vote again… :-( It is just a pain in the bum!
But we are looking forward to the weekend! We are going down south to Denmark to relax and to improve our surfing skills :-)