Last night I went to see Cory Doctorow speaking at ACMI for a fireside chat with cory doctorow.

‘Cory Doctorow’

Cory talked about culture, copyright, and DRM. Specifically, he talked about some of the crazy things the entertainment industry are doing, and how this indicates their business models aren’t in very good shape.

Some signs your business model is crap:

• suing your customers ( RIAA )
• locking in your customers ( Apple )
• removing features customers have paid for ( TIVO )
• highjacking your customers computers by installing root-kits ( Sony )
• competing to see who can have the most restrictive DRM ( Blu-ray and HD-DVD )

Cory’s an excellent speaker, and he’s obviously passionate about the topic. His published books are also available under the Creative Commons license, and he has worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, among other things. If you get a chance to see him speak, I’d thoroughly recommend it.

But the best bit about the night? M1K3¥ and Cory had met at conjure, so I got to tag along and have a drink and a chat with Cory and his girlfriend after the lecture!

Bron and I decided to go for a bushwalk to Mount St. Gwinear for Easter Sunday. It’s about 120km from Melbourne, in the Baw Baw National Park. The walk is 6km, and the guide (pdf) estimates it at about 3 hours.

We arrived to find about 6 inches of snow, and two police officers waiting for a search party who were bringing down a walker who’d spent an unplanned (and rather cold) night out in the snow!

‘A snowcovered Mt. St. Gwinear track’

Despite not being prepared for the snow (we had raincoats, but not really suitable footwear), we decided to give the walk to Mt. St. Gwinear a go. It turned out to be a fairly easy walk even in the snow, in the dry it would probably only take about an hour.

The view from the top was pretty good, we had a bit of lunch, and then made a snowman, which Bron dubbed ‘Claire’.

‘Claire the snowman’

We didn’t have any gloves, so Claire was pretty small…

‘Claire the snowman’

And, of course, the odd snowball got thrown…

‘snowball fight’

Luckily the weather stayed fine, in fact it warmed up quite a bit and the snow began to melt making it hard to keep our feet dry. It turned out to be a really nice walk, even with the wet feet on the way back.

My results for Level 3 JLPT finally arrived in the mail last night. I took the test last December, but I was starting to wonder if I’d filled in the application wrong because the other day I noticed on the official JLPT site that the results were announced on Feb 9th. I’m not quite sure why it took 2 months for the results to arrive (or 2 months to process them in the first place for that matter, since it’s all done by computer). Anyway, the good news is I passed!

‘My Level 3 JLPT certificate’

Total : 309/400 (77%)

When I signed up to take the exam I really thought I had no chance of even passing (60%), I just applied to provide a little more incentive to study. And even after my trip to Japan I only scored about 70% on a practise exam a few days before the actual exam (that last minute cramming paid off!). So I’m very happy with the results :–)

The break-down for the different parts of the exam:

Kanji and vocabulary : 65/100 (65%)

I definitely expected this to be the hardest for me, learning new words is very hard (I seem to forget them as soon as I’ve heard them!) and Kanji is an absolute killer to learn (I keep putting it off). I’m quite happy this was actually over the pass-mark on it’s own!

Listening : 78/100 (78%)

About the level I expected after taking the exam, my listening improved a huge amount from the 5 weeks I spent in Japan in Sep/Oct last year, so I thought this would be the easiest part. I think I could have actually done better at this, but I missed a couple of the questions because I tuned out a bit during the exam! With only one chance to hear each question you’ve really got to keep focused for this part of the exam.

Grammar : 166/200 (84%)

I’m pleasently surprised by this result. We do a lot of grammar in my Japanese class, so I thought I should do okay, but since we won’t finish all the Level 3 grammar until at least the end of this year I expected to have a bit more trouble!

Maybe my JLPT Level 3 Exam Preparation wasn’t as bad as I thought after all!

I was watching the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games on TV, and even though it was kinda tacky, this image (an overhead shot of the MCG – those are people making the letters) made me think about how much I enjoyed the last few weeks during the Games, and how much I’ve come to enjoy living in Melbourne.

‘I ♡ M - an image from the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony’

I was actually expecting to be a bit put-out by the Commonwealth Games, with extra traffic, crowded and late trains, and crowds in the city. But the peak-hour trains seemed normal (I left home at the same time as normal and wasn’t late), and the extra trains & trams seemed to copy pretty well in the evenings, so it didn’t bother me at all (admittedly I don’t drive much, so if the traffic really was bad I wouldn’t really know).

In fact the extra trains on the weekend meant it was a good opportunity to travel out of the city (and avoid any crowds). On the first Sunday of the games I ended up taking a daytrip out to Sherbrooke Forest (pdf) (1 hour out of Melbourne, at the end of the Belgrave Line) for a very pleasant bushwalk.

‘Sherbrooke Forest - 1 hour from Melbourne by train’

At the end of the day we headed back into the city, which was certainly busy but was actually a great atmosphere. There were plenty of free events around Federation Square and Alexandra Gardens for Festival 2006, which seemed very popular – some people were queuing for 2 hours to get into the circus, and we got turned away from the events at the Myer Music Bowl because it was full.

‘One of the events from Festival 2006’

The fish on the yarra (and the hourly lightshow) seemed particularly popular.

‘Fish on the Yarra in the afternoon’

‘Fish on the Yarra in the evening’

As well as watching the closing ceremony on the TV, I was able to grab a few shots of the fireworks over the city skyline from my balcony.

‘Fireworks across the city skyline’

‘Fireworks at the MCG’

I’m glad I got to experience Melbourne during the games, I hope those of you living in Melbourne didn’t miss out.

Note: okay, so I basically rewrote this page (it’s my blog, I’ll rewrite if I want!) and added some more pics. One of these days I will get around to adding a proper photo gallery to my site.

This week is my fourth week as a student of aikido (合気道).

合 – harmony
気 – spirit/power
道 – way/path

Aikido, which can be translated as “Way of Harmony with Ki”, was developed during the middle of the 20th Century by O’Sensei Morihei Ueshiba (植芝盛平) – by all reports an incredible man.

O’Sensei Morihei Ueshiba

Aikido is a martial art, and while it could be used to injure other people, the focus is on neutralising (potentially multiple) attackers, and as such it is very effective for self-defence. In fact, O’Sensei was a deeply spiritual man, and an important facet of aikido is the corresponding responsibility given the potential for injury that comes with the knowledge of aikido techniques.

“Aikido is the bridge to peace and harmony for all mankind.”

O’Sensei Morihei Ueshiba

I’m studying aikido at aikidojo in West Melbourne. Aikidojo practices the Iwama Style of aikido, which is based on maintaining the aikido as taught by O’Sensei to Sensei Morihiro Saito in Iwama, the spiritual home of Aikido (the home of both the Iwama dojo and the Aiki shrine).

Aikidojo - Aikido Takemusu in Melbourne

Aikidojo is not a large dojo, but there is an incredible level of experience among the members. I went to dinner after one class and by my rough estimate the cumulative experience of the six senior members at the table was around 65 years! I’m very lucky that I get the chance to learn in that environment!

Even after a short time, it’s definitely clear to me that aikido is not something you ever “master”. Rather it’s something that will always involve learning on many levels.

“Life is growth. If we stop growing, technically and spiritually, we are as good as dead.”

O’Sensei Morihei Ueshiba

I think that’s one of the things that I find most compelling about it.