scott aaronson interview

Great (long) interview with Scott Aaronson at Scientific American:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/scott-aaronson-answers-every-ridiculously-big-question-i-throw-at-him/

Particularly liked this quote:

> Like, I'm a damn good theoretical computer scientist (and modest too), but I'm not at the absolute pinnacle of the field—so rather than trying to ascend the summit myself, sometimes I can serve the interests of science better by staying on the lower slopes, and just trying to defend the mountain from the forces catapulting dung at it.

Movies + TV

Time for more binge and purge....

Indecent Proposal (1993): the classic love story for the 0.01%.

Death In Paradise (Season 1-2, 2011): entertaining BBC murder mystery set in the Caribbean. Think Agatha Christie meets "A Place In The Sun". Features Danny-John Jules (Cat from Red Dwarf).

Parenthood (1989): Great film with a great cast. I had watched bits of it before, but definitely enjoyed re-watching it in full as a parent.

The World's End (2013): I was really really enjoying this film -- as a hilarious sad-sack bromance a la The Hangover -- right up until the point where blue paint started exploding out of robot heads. After that, things got a bit silly. Still, it was a pretty entertaining to the "three flavours cornetto" trilogy.

The Hobbit - Battle of Five Armies (2014): expectations weren't high but, wow, this was one bloated CGI turd of a film. Never mind Azog, Peter Jackson is the real Defiler here.

Predestination (2014): intriguing little time-travel yarn with Ethan Hawke, based on the 1960 sci-fi short story "All You Zombies" by Robert Heinlein, which was also the inspiration for the Red Dwarf "Ouroboros" episode.

The Drop (2014): solid little crime flick dealing with the Russian mob in Brooklyn which turned out to be James Gandolfini's last film role. Written by Dennis Lehane (The Wire) and, for me, somewhat reminiscent of "A Bronx Tale".

The Imitation Game (2014): Benedict Cumberbatch is superlative in this powerful biopic about the great mathematician/computer scientist Alan Turing and the cracking of the German "Enigma" code in WWII. Unfortunately, the film takes copious liberties with the true story that detract somewhat from its overall impact (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitation_Game#Accuracy). Disappointing, because the true story scarcely needs any exaggeration.

Theory of Everything (2014): excellent biopic about the life of physicist Stephen Hawking. I'd say "God bless him" but he might take that as an insult.

Birdman (2014): self-indulgent arthouse flick about a washed up actor (Michael Keaton) producing a theatre show with Ed Norton as the main actor.

Moneyball (2011): Joe Satriani plays the Superbowl! Oh, and a solid little story about baseball manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), based on the book by Michael Lewis.

Snowpiercer (2013): quirky steampunk sci-fi flick that seemed to combine elements of George Orwell and Roald Dahl. Interesting but didn't get up there for me.

12 Years a Slave (2013): stirring film that leaves you shaking your head to think how recently slavery was a way of life in the USA.

Sunshine (2007): mediocre Danny Boyle sci-fi yarn.

In the Flesh (2013): surprisingly moving BBC drama about zombies, or "partially deceased syndrome" sufferers.

Lucy (2014): flamboyant but ludicrous Luc Besson sci-fi effort about the (unfortunately debunked) idea that we only use 10% of our brains and so what might happen if someone (in this Scarlett Johansson) is able to access the remaining 90%.

Interstellar (2014): excellent sci-fi blockbuster in the mould of Contact (which also featured Matthew McConaughey). Physicist Kip Thorne (who was also involved with Contact) was involved, and helped to make the science as plausible as possible; his book "The Science of Interstellar" is well worth a read.

American Sniper (2014): whatever your view on the second Iraq war, and war in general, there is no denying the heroism of guys like Chris Kyle. I somehow hadn't followed this story in the media, so the tragic epilogue caught me by surprise and left me quite gutted. Powerful film.

Lincoln (2012): I'm not generally a big fan of this kind of epic period biopic, but a superlative performance from Daniel Day-Lewis, together with an undeniably powerful story, won me over.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012): phew, looks like I watched this just in time before the Seymour Hersh article exposed the whole story as a CIA cover up. Well, whatever, but the last 45 minutes depicting the Navy Seal extraction mission is excellently done.

These Final Hours (2013): indie sci-fi flick about the last few hours before the world ends. Set in Perth, which feels strangely appropriate. Liked it.

How To Get Away With Murder (2014):  a brilliant law professor and her class of hyper-competitive over-achievers get more than they signed up for when a theory class on "how to get away with murder" unexpectedly becomes a practical.

Miss Bala (2011): interesting mexican drama about a beauty contestant who gets caught up in a drug cartel.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014): machine-gun-toting chimpanzees on horseback looks every bit as ridiculous as it sounds.

The Cube (1997): intriguing low-budget "math thriller" from Canada. The script and acting aren't all that hot but the math is cool.

Nightcrawler (2014): Jake Gyllenhaal is excellent as a creepy sociopath who finds a lucrative career in filming late night carnage and selling the footage to unscrupulous news stations.

Dallas Buyers Club (2013): moving aids drama, showcasing impressive performances by Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto. Unlike the unfortunate protagonists, be sure to use protection here (Private Internet Access IYF!).

Son of a Gun (2014): another home-grown WA flick, featuring Ewan McGregor. It's a fairly by-the-numbers prison/robber flick, laden with most of the usual cliches of the genre. However, as a debut effort it's not bad, and McGregor brings some class. A former schoolmate of mine had a role as the scary-looking extra in the prison van in the opening scene.

Locke (2013): strangely gripping for a film that basically consists of a series of phone conversations as a man drives from Wales to London. Tom Hardy is excellent.

Ex Machina (2015): the latest in what's starting to feel like a new wave of A.I. movies. Quite good.

Cool Hand Luke (1967): a dated Paul Newman classic one whose of many quotable quotes was the beginning of the G'N'R song "Civil War": "Whaaaaat we got here is a failure to communicate…"

Gone Girl (2014): Well-acted but pretty silly, and too long.

Boyhood (2014): Excellent coming-of-age story. Starring Patricia Arqette and the chronically under-rated Ethan Hawke, it was filmed over 12 years which seemed to lend it a uniquely "real" feel. The storyline might have been a little cliched in parts but I really enjoyed it.

Dispatches from the graveyard shift

Over the past couple weeks of parental leave, I've found myself alone with the tv most evenings, so have been enjoying clearing my backed-up "to-watch" list:

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996): Definitely one of the lesser oeuvres in the Tarantino canon, but has its moments.

Rush - Clockwork Angels Tour (2013): Instrumentally, Rush are still on top of their game, but Geddy Lee's voice is starting to flag pretty badly and at its worse sounds like a warbly yodel.

Up In The Air (2009): George Clooney is entertaining as a frequent flyer mile-collecting jet setter whose job consists of flying around the country firing people for a living. It's a superficial and ultimately empty life, as is hammered home a little too forcefully in the film's overly formulaic and moralising conclusion.

Planet Terror (2007): another piece of self-indulgent Tarantino homage-porn which comprised half of the "Grindhouse" double feature (in which it was paired with the pretty decent "Deathproof"). It's pretty forgettable fare but, as seems inevitable where Tarantino is concerned, there are some entertaining performances: Jeff Fahey and Michael Biehn are resurrected to particularly good effect, while Rose McGowan (who was a favourite of mine in her Charmed days) is excellent in the lead role.

Blackfish (2013): excellent, very sad documentary film about the plight of killer whales (orcas) that are kept in captivity for the amusement of that other breed of large blubber-girded mammals that is endemic to North America and is peculiarly entertained by silly circus routines and cheesy marketing. It's a disgrace that we can continue to exploit intelligent animals in this way, but unsurprising that it's being done by a big company (Seaworld) in the name of making a buck.

Coffy (1973): a Blaxploitation classic featuring Pam Grier, who would later star in Tarantino's Jackie Brown. Worth it for the soundtrack and spectacularly gratuitous toplessness.

Holy Motors (2012): one of those weird arthouse French flicks that's so arty it doesn't even try to make sense. It didn't really work for me.

Waking Up With Sam Harris (2014): slickly produced lecture and Q+A session exploring the themes of Harris' recent book of the same title. I find Harris an entertaining and convincing speaker, but on the topic of spirituality he is entering some murky philosophical waters and the Q+A discussion reflected that.

Dire Straits - On the Night (1993): live concert video from the early nineties. Mark Knopfler is totally rocking the Jerry Seinfeld jeans + sports jacket look.

Hot Fuzz (2007): the second part of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's "Three Flavours Cornetto" trilogy. Some good laughs but at 2 hours felt a little long — a trimmed-down 90 minute version might have been more effective.

American Hustle (2013): very decent yarn about a pair of con-artists in 1970s News York. Heavily redolent of Goodfellas, and though it's not quite as good as that film, it's the closest thing I've seen in a long time. The cast is top notch, and Christian Bale in particular is excellent.

movies + tv

Hannibal (Seasons 1+2): Very decent adaptation of the Hannibal Lecter franchise, though the gore factor is pretty full on.

Black Mirror (Seasons 1+2): anthology series of dystopian techno-tales of the unexpected by Charlie Brooker from The Guardian. "The Entire History of You" (season 1, episode 3) was particularly good.

Amazing Journey - The Story of The Who (2007): With the exception of "Pinball Wizard" — and my preferred version of that song is Elton John's version for the Tommy movie adaptation — I've never really understood why The Who were considered such a big deal. Their early yeah-yeah songs (a la "My Generation") just sound like Rolling Stones-lite, while their later concept album "Tommy" just puts me to sleep. Pete Townshend's place in the pantheon of guitar legends seems to be based more on his windmill strumming gimmick than anything else. And watching this documentary didn't really change any of that.

Before the Music Dies (2006): the premise of this fairly tedious documentary film is, in a nutshell, that the music industry has become too commercial and superficial. Unconvincing and overly nostalgic.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014): absolutely LOVED this film. It's the perfect sci-fi film: great action, humour and doesn't take itself too seriously. Tom Cruise is on a roll. 

Elysium (2013): okay, but not great.

Silicon Valley (2014): amusing comedy series about a bunch of nerds trying to get a start-up off the ground. Sort of Entourage meets The Big Bang Theory.

Fight Life (2012): documentary following the training of a group of mixed martial fighters in the lead up to a fight night. The dedication of these guys is impressive.

Los Cronocrimenes (2007): Quirky little time travel story from Spain, about a Peeping Tomas who gets into a spot of chronological bother and has to get his timeline in order.

The Tunnel (2013): British-French adaptation of the Swedish-Danish series Bron|Broen. Featuring Stephen Dillane, aka Stannis Baratheon from GoT. Pretty well done, but the adaptation so faithful to the original that, if you've seen one then the other won't hold any surprises at all.

The Rover (2014): post-apocalyptic Aussie flick, sort of The Road meets Mad Max. Guy Pierce and Robert Pattinson give a good account of themselves but it's pretty slow going.

recent movies and tv

Things have been rather quiet on the movie front, but a few recent ones:

About Time (2013): schmaltzy Richard Curtis rom-com which explores some similar themes to Sliding Doors (and is also set mostly in London). The premise is that a young man discovers a family secret: all the men in his family have the ability to travel back in time to any moment from their past and relive things from that point on. Yet more proof that I'll watch anything with a bit of time travel.

Source Code (2011): low budget sci-fi flick featuring Jake Gyllenhaal, which explores a scenario very similar to the excellent Edge of Tomorrow.

Proof (2005): treacly yarn about a daughter (Gwyneth Paltrow) and her brilliant mathematician father (Anthony Hopkins) who went mad in his last years. It's about the connection between genius and madness, as the daughter tries to understand how much of both attributes she has inherited. Jake Gyllenhaal once more rears his head as a young graduate student. It's not a great film, but you have to give it marks for including a reference to Sophie Germain prime numbers.

Coherence (2013): low budget indie sci-fi thriller flick that reminded me somewhat of The Man From Earth: dialog-heavy, no effects, mostly set in one room, but strangely gripping and thought-provoking.

Things have been more active on the small screen front:

Fargo (Season 1): loved it. The entire cast is excellent and the slow-burn drama and creeping inevitability are strongly redolent of both Breaking Bad and No Country For Old Men.

True Detective (Season 1): I'm not naturally a big fan of Matthew McConaughey so I wasn't chomping at the bit to watch this. Indeed, it took me a few episodes to get into it, but by the end it won me over. The performances by McConaughey and Harrelson are both excellent.

Veep (Seasons 1-3): Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars as the ambitious Vice President surrounded by an entourage of no-less ambitious lackeys and gophers. It's very much in the style of The Office, with relentless fast-paced one-liners. Gary Cole from Office Space is excellent as the number crunching economics advisor, as is Timothy Simons as super-doofus Jonah ("Jonad") Ryan.

American Horror Story (Season 1): dripping with horror movie cliches but a strong cast sucks you in and keeps it interesting even as the plot starts to flounder.

Sherlock (Seasons 1-3): I feel like the last person on Earth to get around to watching this, but I wasn't disappointed when I finally did.

myRig

I’ve recently devoted a bit of effort to setting up a decent practice environment on my iMac. Here are the ins and outs of what’s working for me:

IN: Running my guitar direct into the computer via an Apogee Jam audio interface. It’s a quick plugin and the audio interface doesn’t take up any deskspace.

OUT: Running through any external pedals before the computer.  After several attempts I gave trying to use my multi-effects pedal (BOSS ME70) or loop station (BOSS RC20XL); the sound quality was mediocre (in comparison to Amplitube – see below) and with power supplies and extra leads the setup/packup effort is substantially increased.

IN: Amplitube 3 as a plugin to Garageband 10. I have found Amplitube 3 to be the best-sounding amp simulator for Mac OSX. Using it as a plugin to Garageband 10 requires a hack (which the good folks at IK Multimedia were happy to provide – it involves copying a certain plist file from one place to another). The best thing is, the basic app is free and comes with some great sounding amps and pedals. I am tempted to explore some of the paid add-ons at some point (Marshall, Fender, Orange, and others – together with a huge range pedals), but there’s no urgent need.

IN: setting up a generic project in Garageband with a number of channels for each type of guitar sound I regular want (e.g. heavy rhythm left/right, heavy lead, clean). I use this as a loop station for jamming along to some chord progression or practising a lead over a given rhythm. There is an irritating bug in GB10 which results in noticeable latency in the sound monitoring when first starting up. I find this goes away as soon as I record something in one of the tracks. Any time I end up with something I want to keep, it’s easy to export as mp3 (or direct to Soundcloud!) or save it off as a new project.

OUT: Amplitube’s loop station in standalone mode. The interface is extremely clunky and limited in features. My experience with Amplitube generally suggests that it’s an app that should be heard and not seen.

IN: Anytune Pro for slowing down and transposing songs, to transcribe by ear and play along to. I experimented with a few apps in this space, but this one has by far and away the most intuitive, well-designed interface – it’s simply a joy to use. The step-up trainer, which automatically plays a section repeatedly at gradually increasing tempos is incredibly cool and useful. It also allows you to quickly browse and import songs from iTunes (no more haplessly navigating the folders where the mp3 files live!) and remembers the various annotations and settings you apply. Overall, this app has dramatically sped up my workflow for figuring out songs by ear.

OUT: Amazing Slow Downer. The original program of its kind, but it has the most atrocious interface of any program I’ve ever used for anything, anywhere. Dropped it like a hot potato as soon as I found Anytune Pro.

IN: Guitar Pro 6, tablature word processor. Very nice, intuitive WYSIWYG editor. You enter the tab (with rhythm values) and it generates the corresponding music notation. I don’t really need the notation, but it looks cool. There are heaps of guitar-centric annotation (slides, hammer ons, tapping, pinch harmonics etc) – the end result is very professional-looking. And the best part is that you can play the score once you’ve written it out, so you can see if your rhythmic transcription is up to snuff. Should be very useful for writing out song arrangements to share with the band.

OUT: Lilypond. It’s the LaTeX of music notation editors. I love the idea, but it’s just not a realistic solution for quickly banging out a rough song arrangement.

Movie night

As I've undoubtedly already mentioned at some point, the once-venerable institution of snuggling up for an evening spent watching one or two feature-length movies has been relegated to blue-moon status chez Gekko. It's still unclear exactly why, but among the contributing factors are surely the following: the lack of movie-length contiguous blocks of disposable time; the ascendence of high-quality tv drama series (and their availability for binge-consumption); a dreary dearth of compelling new film content; me just having more of a life than I used to (okay, just kidding).

The exception to prove this rule occurred over the weekend, as I polished off the following:

Under the Skin

Based on the book by Michel Faber, which I read and quite enjoyed a few years back during a sojourn in Dublin (as I recall, it provided some welcome distraction during the write-up of my PhD thesis). Despite that, I couldn't really get into the movie. Scarlett Johansen was excellent, but the interpretation (which, from memory, took considerable liberties with the original) was just too bleak and arty for my taste.

Wolf Creek 2

A mildly entertaining second outing for John Jarrett's memorable slasher from down under, Mick Taylor, who continues to subvert every cherished outback stereotype. But this one descends into straightahead torture-porn fare, and ultimately doesn't really add anything to the original.

The Man From Earth

Interesting low-budget sci-fi flick from a few years back. The premise is of a university lecturer who, at his farewall get-together before he leaves town, confesses to a group of his friends and colleagues that he is actually 14,000 years old and then tries to convince he isn't lying (or crazy). It sounds kooky, but it makes for a strangely gripping and thought-provoking yarn.