Great Expectations

There are two (or actually three) upcoming movies that I'm thrilled to see once they hit the theaters. It's been a long time since I've been so very excited about films to come.
The first movie is the new Batman movie: The Dark Knight Rises. Christopher Nolan's last couple of movies have been absolutely awesome and I just hope he has preserved his form. The last Batman movie is without comparison the best superhero movie ever and one of the absolute best in the whole action/thriller genre. But in that movie he had an ace (or rather a joker) up his sleeve, in Heath Ledger, who made the performance of a lifetime. It's going to be difficult to top that in the next movie.
Nolan's most recent movie, Inception, was a wonderful science fiction thriller. I know it's not everybody's cup of tea but I just love it. It seems to me that it comes down to whether you're prepared to accept the premise of the movie. If you are, then you are in for a wonderful ride. I guess it's the rule of cool at work.
So with these two movies as his latest achievements I'd say I have good reasons to expect quite a lot from Nolan. Will my high expectations make me disappointed? Perhaps, but I can't shake the feeling.

The other movie(s) I'm really psyched about is The Hobbit (part I and II). After Peter Jackson's phenomenal work with The Lord of The Rings I'm absolutely dying to see how he handles the prequel. The tone of The Hobbit (the book) is quite different, more fairytale like, than epic The Lord of The Rings, so it's not like he can just use the same blueprint once again and expect good results. It is also interesting to note that those parts of LOTR that are similar to The Hobbit are those that were mostly left out of the movies. But I'm nevertheless confident that Jackson will do a good job. I'm particularly pleased that The Hobbit finally ended up as his project given how stepmotherly it's been handled at times.

QOTD

I've spent a lot of time banging my head off these issues:
my head has a lot of dents,
but so have the issues.

Conor McBride on the Haskell cafe mailing list

Women's tennis

I've been following the WTA Championship in Doha this week, as I've been home from work due to a cold. While watching the matches I've contemplated the state of the women's tennis tour. I can't shake the feeling that the level of play could be a lot higher.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching women's tennis and I'm very much impressed by many of the top players. But there are a couple of factors that indicate that there is room for quite a bit of improvement.

First of all, consider the come-backs of Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters. I find it remarkable how well they could compete with the other women after having been away from professional tennis play. Henin reached the final in Australian Open, her 2nd tournament after her comeback. Clijsters won the US Open in her 3rd tournament after comeback. Those are of course remarkable feats, and shows just how good these two players are. But I also think it says something about the competition. In a more competitive tour, like say the men's tennis tours, such dramatic comebacks would be impossible. Reaching the absolute top again in such a short time shouldn't be possible.

Another indication that the level of play is not what it could be is to consider the current world no. 1. I should start by saying that I really like Caroline Wozniacki and have followed her for a few years. But still, I'm not sure she belongs as the world no. 1. I think is says a lot about the tour when the highest ranked player almost completely lacks offensive weapons. Wozniacki's strength is in her defensive play, the fact that she somehow always manages to return the ball. However, tennis is a very aggressive and offensive sport and I think there is plenty of room to improve the offensive play to the level where a player with a game like Wozniacki wouldn't be able to keep up with the pace. Or at least not be the highest ranked player.

Speaking of player ranked as no. 1, there's been a few, including the present one, which haven't won a single Grand Slam. Before Wozniacki, both Safina and Jankovic topped the ranking without having clinched any of the four greatest titles. Maybe I'm being silly here. After all, these players won their ranking points fair and square in other tournaments and collected more points than any other. But I can't help feeling rather unsatisfied by players ranked as no. 1 without a Grand Slam victory. One reason might be that the women's Grand Slam doesn't stand out the same way it does for men. On the men's side the matches are played best of five, which makes these tournaments uniquely tough. For the women, the Grand Slams are certainly something special but they are still played using the same format. I'm not sure whether that counts in favor for the top ranked players without Grand Slam trophies at home, or not. But I still think Grand Slams and the highest rank go hand in hand.

There's no doubt that women's tennis have improved quite a bit over the last decades. In recent years we've seen for instance the Williams sisters developing the game and pushing it to new levels. I hope to see more players stepping and pushing themselves to the point where they set new standards for the game. One example from another sport that comes to mind is Annika Sörenstam, who transformed women's golf.

Lately I've been quite impressed with the way Samantha Stosur is playing. I really enjoy her game when she can keep it together and the strong serve and forehand she has feel like the future of tennis. I sure hope she can improve the other parts of her game to become a more complete player and also become stronger mentally. Then I think she could really push the limits of women's tennis.

I want to end with a thought that is plenty politically incorrect. I've just read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. It's a fabulous book talking about successful people and the many reasons for their success. A central theme in the book is that some people get a special advantage from an early point in life. This advantage accumulates over the years to make them superior to their peers. One particularly interesting example from the book is hockey players in the NHL which turns out to be much more likely to be born in the first quarter of the year than any other quarter. It's a very interesting story which I will not retell here, I recommend the book instead.

When watching the top players on the WTA tour I can't help noticing that many of them are quite beautiful. Uncommonly so. How come that such a large fraction of female players have such good looks? Well, following the logic from Outliers, I would suggest that there is quite a bit of sexism among tennis trainers. It would seem like the prettier girls get the better training. This gives them an early advantage that will make them more likely to become top stars. Of course, this is just speculation on my part. But if it's true, it would be possible to improve the level of women's tennis by focusing solely on tennis talent and ignore the looks when it comes to training girls.

Aside from these rather inappropriate musings I'm really looking forward to seeing the WTA tour improve and reach new levels of play.

QOTD

I recommend anxiety as the appropriate state of mind when
designing systems of telepathy.

Conor McBride on the Agda mailing list

QOTD

If I was a native american my name would be "foot in mouth"

QOTD

Today's quote is a little longer than usual and comes in the form of a picture.

From Holstee

Facebook ate my blog

It seems since I drank the Facebook kool-aid my need for writing blog posts has decreased markedly. But that's not necessarily a bad thing and I feel that the blog still has its place for more in-depth, lengthier stuff.

While on the subject of Facebook I might add a thought that I've had. There's a lot of talk about various buttons that people think should be added. The most popular one seems to be "dislike". I'm happy we haven't seen this realized, I truly believe the world would be a worse place with this button. Other examples include "Meh" which is also not on the positive side.

I'd also like a new button but a more positive and supportive one. I often find that "Like" is not the right way to show positive support for a post. If someone says they just lost a family member that's not something I "Like". I think a "Sympathize" button would be more appropriate in situations like these. That's the kind of button I think Facebook should add.

WOTD

Word of the day: parapraxis. I couldn't find it in my rather extensive dictionary but internet has everything. The Free Dictionary says:

A minor error, such as a slip of the tongue, thought to reveal a repressed motive

Ran across it while reading "The End of Mr. Y", a thoroughly entertaining but also very disturbed book.

Orc potion

If you ever read The Lord of the Rings (and if you haven't, you should) then you might remember the passage about Merry and Pippin being captured by some Orcs. In order to keep the hobbits awake and giving the strength to run the Orcs force them to drink a special potion. I quote from The Two Towers:

[The Orc] cut the thongs round Pippin's legs and ankles, picked him up by his hair and stood him on his feet. Pippin fell down, and Uglúk dragged him up by his hair again. Several Orcs laughed. Uglúk thrust a flask between his teeth and poured some burning liquid down his throat: he felt a hot fierce glow flow through him. The pain in his legs and ankles vanished. He could stand.

I now know what this mysterious potion is. I've been taking it myself for a couple of days now to keep myself standing. It's Chi san. I can tell you, it's not a very nice sensation to drink it. But does help.

And no, I did not get any money to write this post.

Beautiful pictures

Two galleries I found online with absolutely awesome pictures.

Inside The Tube: Incredible Wave Photography

David Burdeny

Vista Service Pack 2

I've just upgraded to Vista Service Pack 2. So far I'm not that impressed.

Malfemism

Sometimes you have to invent a new word. As a scientist I have to come up with new names for new concepts I think up but it's not that often that I need a new name for something that occurs in everyday life.

This summer I was on a summer school for two weeks together with about a hundred other people. Most where Ph.D. students quite a bit younger than me and inevitably there were a couple of romances there. For reasons I won't go into we started to refer to these romances as "drowning". For example, if we suspected that one guy had fallen in love with someone we would alert that he was drowning. Some couples had serious cases of drowning. It was rather absurd but also a bit of fun to refer to it as drowning.

At some point I commented that drowning was a euphemism but quickly realized that I was wrong. A euphemism is a word which sounds much nicer that the word it is replacing. However, drowning is certainly not as pleasant as falling in love. Hence drowning, in the sense we used it, it not a euphemism. But then what is it? Is there a name for this? No one new, not even the guys from Oxford. So one of them, Christopher Broadbent, came up with a word: malfemism. It's obviously derived from euphemism using a bit of Latin which goes well beyond my knowledge. It's not that it will be the most useful word in the history but I still like it, both for the way it sounds and the fact that it was created for a situation where I actually needed it.

So here's a new word for you: malfemism, for when the actual word is too nice and boring.

Google Toolbar

I've had my ups and downs with the Google Toolbar for Firefox this week. Normally I think it has some valuable features in addition to what Firefox offers although I only use a fraction of all the things you can do with it. But things have been a little frustrating the last few days.

It started with Google announcing Sidewiki. Reading their announcement really got me fired up. This is something that I've been thinking about and wanting for many years. Well frankly, the scale was a little smaller in my head. What I've been after is a way for academics to annotate papers they read with comments and share them with others in a simple way. I've discovered quite a few bugs in research papers over the years and at times I've been frustrated with the fact that no one takes responsibility for these, not the published and very seldomly the author(s). So naturally Sidewiki got me very enthusiastic because it's just what I wanted, and on steroids even!

So I rushed to download the new Google Toolbar which is needed to access Sidewiki. After I restarted Firefox I looked around for the new feature. After a few moments of unsuccessful searching I went to consult Googles help section. As it turns out Sidewiki doesn't work in all languages yet, and one of the unsupported languages is Swedish. Dang! But why am I using a Swedish toolbar in the first place? I often use the English language version of software because I often find that the Swedish translations can be confusing and I tend to use the English terms anyway.

The next step was naturally to download the English version of the toolbar. But the download page didn't give me any choice of language. After a couple of minutes of more research I find out that the language of the toolbar is determined by the language used for Firefox. So it turns out I have a Swedish version of Firefox, something that is complete news to me, especially since all the menus are in English. Argh! And the reason for this is because I choose the Swedish as my language when installing Ubuntu some two years ago since Ubuntu handles the installation and upgrading of Firefox.

To sum up, I can't use Sidewiki because some decision I made a couple of years ago. Sigh. There are of course a whole number of things I can do to make it work but I don't know of a single one which I would actually be prepared to do at this point. I just have to be patient for a Sidewiki to be translated to Swedish.

There was also one other thing today. The new version of Google Toolbar that I now have installed has a feature for translating web pages and offering this translation of pages not in your home language. I've already disabled this feature for English pages. But a few moments ago I visited a Swedish page. Google Toolbar identified it as being in German and offered to translate into Swedish. Hello?

Couplandisms

Douglas Coupland is an author that I've been following rather closely during the years. He has a way of describing the modern world in a way that's funny, clever and very much to the point. One of his key ingredients in these descriptions are phrases which captures modern world truisms, something he refers to as Couplandisms. Given my taste for quotes I really cannot resist these. Coupland maintains a page full of these phrases and it's little goldmine. Here's a few examples.

We’re rapidly approaching a world comprised entirely of jail and shopping.

If you don’t change, then what’s the point of anything happening to you?

Figure out what it is in life you don’t do well, and then don’t do it.

Is there anything in the world more annoyingly creepy than an unspoken dress code?

It’s weird when people start sentences with ‘frankly’ — as if their other sentences don’t count.

I don’t want any vegetables, thank you. I paid for the cow to eat them for me.

The Couplandisms are a quotes from his various books. Maybe sometime I'll write about which of his books I recommend and which I don't. For now, have fun with the Couplandisms.

Looks like a Berg

This got to be a pretty unique career among actors. Check out actor Carl Bressler's listing on imdb. Twelve of his twentysix characters that he has played has the last name 'Berg'. That's over 46% of all his gigs! I guess Carl Bressler simply looks like a Berg.

Stand Up Comedy

One of the best stand up comedians I've ever heard: Adam Hills.

85

Currently, as I'm writing this, the number of movies I've seen on imdb's top 250 list and the number of geocaches I've found are exactly the same. 85. What a coincidence.

A while ago I added two counters on this blog to show my progress with both of these activities. You can see them to the right.

These two things, watching movies and geocaching, are two of my main hobbies at the moment. Though I have been watching movies for quite a longer time than I have been geocaching. Given that I have only been a geocacher for less than a year the number of geocaches I've taken will exceed the number of movies I've seen pretty soon. It's possible to take quite a few caches in a short time and it's also a good way to get some exercise. It's not quite the same for watching movies.

Although I am not completely bound to the imdb top 250 list I find it is a very good source for watching good movies. Last night they showed the Hitchcock movie Rebecca on Swedish television which I enjoyed very much.

What makes games fun?

It has happened more than once as we sit and play some board game that we try to analyze why we think the game is fun or not. Why is it fun, what is it that makes us want to come back to a game over and over again? Quite frankly, I don't know much about this, even though I happily engage in these kinds of discussions and offer various explanations. It's an interesting topic.

There are of course people who have looked into these things, game designers who want to know how to best please the game playing crowd. And it can be very interesting to hear what they have to say. Some time ago I came across an article which talked about randomness and how it affects the popularity of a game. Even if you only have the slightest interest for these kinds of things I can recommend that you read the article. It really goes into some depth as to when randomness is perceived as something positive and when it has a negative influence on game play. Any attempt from my part to summaries what he's trying to say would do it injustice so I won't comment on it any further. Just read the article.

Also, make sure to read the extra section on Randomness in Chess which has some interesting nuggets such as this one:

All good games have a "rock, paper, scissors" metagame. By "rock, paper, scissors," I mean to imply three or more strategies that work to defeat one another without any one being dominant. How do I know this? Because if one strategy could dominate, it would, and the game would collapse in on itself. Thus by the knowledge that a game has lasted the test of time, I know it has an inherent "rock, paper, scissors" metagame.

Asperatus

Last week we had some really interesting clouds here over Gothenburg. The light they give feels rather ominous and they have a very characteristic wavy underside. In the Cloud Appreciation Society these types of clouds are referred to as Asperatus and considered to be a class of its own different from the standard and well established types of clouds. This name and classification has not yet gotten widespread use outside of the society.

I didn't take any pictures of the clouds when they appeared but there are plenty of nice pictures in the Cloud Appreciation Society Gallery along with a little bit of discussion about this type of cloud.

Winning and losing at the Crucible

I've noticed an interesting pattern among those players who reach the final in the World Championship in Snooker. For many of them it seems better to actually lose the final. Of course everyone wants to win it, but if you take a look at the history it shows that handling a victory is a lot more difficult than winning in the first place. This naturally doesn't hold for the more experienced players like Ronnie O'Sullivan but for younger, more inexperienced players, being the runner up might be one of the best things that happened to their careers.

The first piece of data I'd like to present is the fact that no-one has ever defended the title the first time they became reigning world champions. Steve Davies, Stephen Henry, Ronnie O'Sullivan, Mark Williams, none of them could repeat their first victory the year after. Indeed, it's only Steven Henry and Steve Davies who have defended a title at all in the Crucible.

Next let's look at a few examples of wins and losses in recent history. In 2005 we saw Shaun Murphy take the victory. He dismissed his opponents with a form of play never seen before nor afterwards. No shot seemed to difficult for him, he potted everything in sight. But after becoming the world champion he struggled a bit and basically had to rebuild his whole style of play, leaving his impossibly offensive play for a more tactical one. He has said in interviews that he was very disappointed not having defended his world title and that surely must have had a detrimental effect on him.

Another example of a struggling champion is Graeme Dott. He won in 2006 but after that he started a decline which hit rock bottom during 2008. It seems he didn't pot a single ball during that year, I even saw him miss the pack of reds in the first shot of a frame. I'm glad to see though that his slump is over, he's won a couple of matches this year and won his first match this World Championship against the ever unlucky Barry Hawkins.

What about those who lose the final? Here we have two excellent examples to support my theory: Mark Selby and Ali Carter. Mark Selby has become the one that many people see as the true contender against O'Sullivan. And indeed, after his defeat against John Higgins in the final at the Crucible in 2007 he has displayed a lot good snooker and won several tournaments. It seems as if he took his game to the next level after being in the final. The same holds for Ali Carter who has had a fantastic season, taken his game to absolute top class and won his first tournament. It's clear that both these players has benefited a lot from their successes in the World Championships.

If you know your snooker history you'll be likely to point out that Graeme Dott did in fact lose a final before actually going on to win it. The thing is, I don't remember enough to recall how that affected his play afterwards but it could have been that bad since he came back to win the championship two years later. So if anything I'll count him as yet another case in point.

So there you have it. For many players it might actually be ultimately better for them to lose the final. They have a lot less pressure to live with, only the fantastic experience of performing really well at the most important tournament of the year. It's the really great players who manage to come back after an early win in their career and repeat it, even several times. This is a testament to how important the mental part of snooker really is.