tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90049252012-01-27T14:18:45.250ZWhere randomness is the only certaintymickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.comBlogger2831100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-28632241264703495112008-01-17T19:34:00.000Z2008-01-18T03:30:24.630Z

This may be no surprise to anyone but I've decided to stop blogging here at Quantumbiodiscs.This blog has been running since 2004, it saw me through the final months of my PhD, my first job as a professional researcher and it played an integral role in luring me to the big wide world of political blogging.From now on I'll be doing all my personal blogging at my shiny new Wordpress blog, Brissie

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-28590327680549450642007-09-10T23:36:00.001+01:002007-09-10T23:36:45.692+01:00

One of my flatmates showed me this ripper of a music video last week. I'm not the world's biggest "Foo Fighters" fan, but I think this is a great song and a great clip.Does anyone else have any good music videos they want to share?

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-20044956917491230152007-09-09T19:17:00.001+01:002007-09-09T19:17:07.010+01:00

So many memories. *sniff*

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-84750478130146085612007-09-03T16:48:00.001+01:002007-09-03T16:48:26.957+01:00

One of my good friends and collaborators, Caterina Mora, is now officially Dr Cat. Yay!

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-36041105323373361412007-08-29T22:49:00.001+01:002007-08-29T22:49:43.775+01:00

For the boys, you guys know who you are:

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-90710979710151958922007-08-08T12:30:00.001+01:002007-08-08T12:30:49.284+01:00

Mark has an excellent post over at LP today. He points out that Howard's approach to this election is going over the top and if he continues in this way he's surely going to lose it. Howard's saturation coverage is having the effect of making him look desperate. His plan, as has been suggested widely, is to call the election as late as possible while keeping the blowtorch on the ALP in the hope

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-63142195855160763622007-07-26T01:21:00.001+01:002007-07-26T01:44:50.021+01:00

I loved the line: In your face interested American public! We report! You shut your fu*#ing mouth!

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-90248711299034924042007-07-26T00:57:00.001+01:002007-07-26T00:57:22.254+01:00

Happy birthday John. I really hope that this is your last birthday as PM...

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-3017383283038863952007-07-25T01:44:00.001+01:002007-07-25T01:44:01.530+01:00

I think Brian May (the guitarist from Queen) has got to be a contender for the title.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-19241781098820491062007-07-25T01:14:00.001+01:002007-07-25T01:14:58.590+01:00

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-87464393173220647632007-07-24T16:34:00.001+01:002007-07-24T16:34:06.159+01:00

I really should get around to changing my banner photo sometime soon seeing as there aren't really any mountains in these parts.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-57088094987605673772007-07-24T15:50:00.001+01:002007-07-24T15:50:52.766+01:00

Well, I know I've been crap at updating my blog recently but the real world has been getting in the way far too much. As many of you know I'm now living in Bristol. I start working in the CS department at the University of Bristol next week. This week, I'm trying to get my life somewhat organized before I start work. Unfortunately, job number one - finding a place to live - is proving to be

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-83354425571603993352007-07-23T16:19:00.001+01:002007-07-23T16:19:19.757+01:00

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-73289630566539586972007-06-19T10:57:00.001+01:002007-06-19T10:57:27.645+01:00

How long has it been since I've written about Rugby? I was in the UK on the weekend and for the first time since forever I was able to watch Australia play live. You know what, I was impressed by what I saw. Australian Rugby has been in trouble this year. The Super 14 season was pretty much a dud for every team except the Brumbies,  the ARU has been completely mismanaged (as have some of the

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-58736663862676566542007-06-18T12:25:00.001+01:002007-06-18T13:20:51.515+01:00

Regular readers would remember that I visited the University of Bristol a month or so ago for a job interview. Well, my interview and talk went pretty well and I got offered a job there a few weeks back. I've been keeping it somewhat under my hat (ie I haven't posted this until today) because I was waiting for the paperwork to come through.If all goes to plan (which it seems to be at the moment)

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-69354624897582263182007-06-08T15:21:00.001+01:002007-06-08T15:21:46.890+01:00

Dave had been busy improving SciRate.com in the last week or two. Now you can comment and there's a funky little "recent comments" and "recent Scitations" box on the side. It's really great to see that people are already getting on board and writing comments about papers!

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-59370286273746577412007-06-06T13:46:00.001+01:002007-06-06T13:46:51.447+01:00

I just thought I'd let people know that from now on I will be posting most of my political posts over at Larvatus Prodeo as one of the regulars there. My first article as a regular can be found here. Sometimes I might cross-post my articles between the two blogs when it makes sense to do so.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-3126809713642496982007-05-23T13:34:00.001+01:002007-05-24T13:11:52.850+01:00

PhD comics rips out another classic.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-5770579933936846492007-05-23T13:20:00.000+01:002008-11-13T07:45:57.693Z

One of the best things about living in Europe is that it's easy to travel between countries. On the weekend I dipped down to Italy for the day to check out Bolzano, a town in Süd Tirol. Bolzano is just over the border with Austria and culturally it is quite similar to Innsbruck. Fortunately, the Italian influence is just strong enough to demand a high standard in coffee!Here are some pics from

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-18149266136519718252007-05-08T15:53:00.001+01:002007-05-08T15:53:17.748+01:00

Following the example of Dave I thought I'd start posting my travel plans for all the world to see. For the next week or so I'll be heading to the UK. I will be traveling to Bristol for an interview and will be there till the weekend. After that I'll be in London where I will catch up with a whole bunch of people and maybe sneak in a little research on the side. On Thursday I'm giving a talk to

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-79306594585400767342007-05-04T09:39:00.001+01:002007-05-04T09:39:59.864+01:00

This is so fantastic:

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-91338966688316313402007-05-03T08:56:00.001+01:002007-05-03T09:25:20.621+01:00

Yes minister: Season 1, Episode 1, first half:    Season 1, Episode 1, second half:   Err, Season 1, Episode 1, third half...

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-48105966876521885992007-05-01T12:27:00.001+01:002007-05-01T14:29:23.535+01:00

I don't know how many regular readers noticed me mucking around with the template of this blog yesterday. I was attempting to switch over to one of the New Blogger templates. Unfortunately, I seem to be encountering real conflict issues between the Haloscan commenting system which I am using and the style editors in the new template. I have no idea why, but it seems when I install Haloscan

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-18722644122404093232007-04-30T13:37:00.001+01:002007-05-01T14:28:48.733+01:00

Weird question no? This is the sort of stuff that I worry about as I fall asleep at night. Well no, not really but it's something that I thought about late last night after watching Spiderman 2. I'm gonna go all out there and say that Spiderman, or rather Peter Parker, is the best fictional character that is both a physicist and has appeared on the big screen. Can anyone out there come up with a

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-16389636179126325352007-04-24T14:07:00.001+01:002007-04-24T14:07:41.011+01:00

I've been on a bit of an unannounced hiatus for the last three weeks. This wasn't because I was intentionally avoiding blogging, but rather because since Easter I've either been snowed under or on holiday. One of the major blogging killers of the last three weeks was the IQING conference that I was running here in Innsbruck. Unfortunately, as an organizer I felt a bit left-out of the scientific

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-3645609672175729352007-04-05T17:06:00.001+01:002007-04-05T17:06:25.965+01:00

Oh, and Happy Easter everyone!

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-46504418942359823362007-04-05T17:05:00.001+01:002007-04-05T17:05:23.233+01:00

Sorry for my lack of blogging this week, my co-organizers and I have spent the week finalizing everything for IQING 5, which is starting next Wednesday. If you are interested in the scientific content of the meeting, you can download a book of abstracts here. If you are attending the workshop you might be interested in all the new information we've put up on the website in the last few days.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-79388927852028925262007-03-30T14:21:00.001+01:002007-03-30T14:21:18.950+01:00

Jon Stewart sums up the abysmal shenanigans at the White House correspondents dinner last night:    I couldn't bring myself to actually post the video of the performance, it's just way too crap for this blog. Sorry but it has to be said, KARL ROVE YOU ARE CRAP AND IN NO WAY ARE YOU FUNNY. Instead, here's a link to Stephen Colbert's speech at last year's correspondents dinner - which is probably

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-39141174537167342642007-03-30T13:56:00.001+01:002007-03-30T13:56:46.315+01:00

I just heard that my old frisbee team, the UQ Ultimate Lovers, have won the Dog Cup (Brisbane's elite-level ultimate frisbee competition) for the first time! Congratulations to Brett, John and all the others involved!

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-19043104600083685202007-03-30T13:54:00.001+01:002007-03-30T13:54:15.192+01:00

My brother (who I am super-proud of) is currently representing UQ and Australia at the "Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition" in Washington DC. I just thought I'd draw people's attention to the fact that his team are totally awesome (they recently won the Australian championships) and that they have made their way to the quarter finals! Apparently they come up against a team from

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-33779144319447078842007-03-29T12:59:00.001+01:002007-03-29T12:59:55.567+01:00

Given that posting cute cat pictures pretty much eats up all the internet bandwidth that isn't used for pornography, it was probably only a matter of time before someone started posting quantum cat pictures. Please, no Schroedinger cat jokes in the comments. Hat tip to Zarquon who posted a link in the comments at LP.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-57729049454115007042007-03-28T13:27:00.001+01:002007-03-28T13:27:17.090+01:00

My friend Flic flagged this Colbert gem:  

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-15192213833983193952007-03-28T12:40:00.001+01:002007-05-01T14:30:05.324+01:00

Cross posted at LP, if you would like to comment please do it there:Inspired by this thread and the Ruddsters Rampant Rollout I have a question for LP readers of all political persuasions:In the upcoming election campaign what are the "dream" policies that you would love to hear your political party of choice put out there? More concisely, in the next term what do you want your government to do

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-91182338500492917622007-03-27T12:54:00.001+01:002007-03-27T12:54:25.351+01:00

I'm so hanging to get something with this in it. IBM are officially awesome.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-4586634623257895882007-03-23T15:55:00.001Z2007-03-23T15:55:44.258Z

Apparently the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's navy have captured  15 British sailors and marines and taken them from Iraqi waters into Iranian territory. Hopefully this situation is just some sort of mistake and doesn't get out of control...

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-43580687614515277752007-03-23T15:42:00.001Z2007-03-23T15:42:58.349Z

I'm not usually one to get involved in the operation system wars, but I thought that this clip was pretty funny:  

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-21018665165465925612007-03-22T09:43:00.001Z2007-03-22T09:43:06.492Z

Ever since I started blogging I've regularly been asked the question, "where do you find the time to do it?". I don't know how many of you really keep track of this blog, but there are very few articles on it that take me more than five minutes or so to write. I think the hardest thing about blogging is keeping track of the 'sphere in general. If I drop out for a week or so it can be really hard

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-33500914282072524802007-03-21T12:31:00.001Z2007-03-21T12:31:40.890Z

Cross posted at LP. People have been saying it for months now, Howard thinks that he can win this election by playing the "man of conviction" role and talking up his government's economic credentials. In the past week we've seen him try to play his great international leader shtick, only to have his message drowned out by the Santoro scandal.  You have to hand it to him, the plan was beautiful.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-34663057926471366792007-03-21T09:32:00.001Z2007-03-21T09:32:37.260Z

"Pirates of the Caribbean 3 - At World's End" is being released in a couple of months. Awesome.  

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-22552769314447649192007-03-20T14:57:00.001Z2007-03-20T14:57:11.878Z

(Note: The ideas in this article aren't strictly my own. I'm borrowing most of this from discussions I've had with various people including: Dave Bacon, Jennifer Dodd, Mike Nielsen, Aram Harrow, Caterina Mora, Joe Renes, Andrew Hines, Gavin Brennen, Frank Verstraete, and Scott Aaronson.) I've been thinking a lot lately about the ways in which us quantum information geeks discuss and disperse

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-41243776929968749662007-03-20T09:31:00.001Z2007-03-20T09:31:16.439Z

  I just saw this on YouTube:   Obviously I don't know if Obama's team planned this, but even if they weren't involved it demonstrates that there is a lot of hostility among many Democrats towards Hillary Clinton. I guess we have one hell of a primary season ahead of us.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-58504736716187869932007-03-15T11:54:00.001Z2007-03-15T11:54:51.247Z

It seems that John Howard has decided to take a play right out of the Republican handbook - when you are getting hammered in the polls pay a token visit to your troops in a combat zone. Apparently Howard has flown to Afghanistan on the way back from Japan (I don't really see how that is "on the way back") in order to gather information about the possibility of increasing the Australian troop

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-11195385969834072902007-03-02T00:45:00.001Z2007-03-02T01:57:53.516Z

I'm stuck in Chicago right now. My plan was to fly from Munich to Albuquerque via Chicago and then to catch a bus to Santa Fe on Saturday. That plan came unstuck when there was a big-ass storm in Chicago about the time I was scheduled to land. This storm threw the airport into chaos mode and everything got delayed by hours. Anyway, my original flight was cancelled and I was offered a flight on

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-85173593685096219992007-02-28T18:58:00.001Z2007-02-28T18:58:12.224Z

Tomorrow morning I'm on my way to New Mexico to be interviewed for a job at this institute. I'm so hanging for a good burrito and a margarita.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-20892431573640630982007-02-24T16:53:00.001Z2007-02-24T16:53:07.615Z

Scott Aaronson succeeds in combing the worst title with the best explanation of Shor's factoring algorithm.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-13849412246068172502007-02-21T11:47:00.001Z2007-02-21T11:47:30.265Z

Wonkette on the increasing politicization of "MySpace": But by the time November 2008 comes around, it’s entirely possible that every single American will have a MySpace page and will be able to vote for president online by clicking the dancing Santa Claus zwinkie on the refinance/free ring tones/Match.com/Adult Friend Finder ad. Or maybe whoever has the most “friends” becomes president, which

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-18367654153293937652007-02-20T11:13:00.001Z2007-02-20T11:13:06.094Z

Sean asks a very good question. Well, Ben made this comment and then not long later I found myself drinking beers and wearing  XXXX Gold hat at the Regatta Hotel waiting to meet up with Peter, Aggie and Stephanie for a night of shenanigans... In the end I think I heard the rest of the countdown at the Regatta Hotel. Apparently it finished like this: 1Augie MarchOne Crowded Hour 2Eskimo JoeBlack

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-88256231300387100862007-01-30T02:18:00.001Z2007-01-30T02:18:35.629Z

Well QIP has kicked off and we've already had a bunch of talks. The quality of the talks so far has been very high. Off the top of my head I can count 6 quantum bloggers sitting here in the lecture theater at QIP, so, I'm guessing all of you who aren't here will hear a lot about what's going on at the conference. We have a wireless network here so we'll be posting often I guess...

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-90440093709308987472007-01-30T02:10:00.001Z2007-01-30T02:10:45.180Z

Aggie is having a party in Brisbane on Friday night. It may have something to do with the fact that a lot of us all have friends in Brisbane at the moment (but nothing to do with QIP, even though I'm sure many people at QIP may be interested in attending).

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-32239903112126090902007-01-29T07:57:00.001Z2007-01-29T07:57:42.290Z

I thought I'd just point out to people attending QIP that a bunch of us are planning on having a few pre conference drinks tonight at "The Pavillion" at West End from about 7:30 PM. The Pavillion's address is 123 Boundary St, West End. It's about a 15 minute walk from the conference venue. Here is a link to  where it is on Google maps.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-46177620278711867022007-01-26T04:42:00.001Z2007-01-26T04:42:47.095Z

I've been pretty impressed by what I've heard so far. Sarah Blasko, so awesome. The Living End, amazing. On the hip hop front The Herd and the Hilltop Hoods have been awesome as well...  I should point out that if you are overseas you can get a webstream of the countdown from the official site. Well, here in Queensland we are still in the 40s, but here is the current list from the Hottest 100

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-23940566689843988732007-01-26T00:44:00.001Z2007-01-26T00:44:04.249Z

Yep, that's my plan for today. Something that has become a bit of a Quantumbiodiscs tradition has been me working on Australia Day and liveblogging Triple J's Hottest 100. This year it has a twist, I'm working on an Australian Research Council grant and I'm actually here in Oz listening to JJJ on the radio. I've been looking forward to listening to this for a while, it's been ages since I've been

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-80997168585707722532007-01-26T00:31:00.001Z2007-01-26T00:31:55.278Z

What Tim said.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1695460506030503722007-01-25T00:13:00.001Z2007-01-25T00:13:29.798Z

Dave has just publicly announced a new project that he has been playing with for a couple of months now. SciRate.com is a website that allows you to rate new papers on the quant-ph arXiv each day. How does this work? You register with the site and everyday you go there and "SciTe" papers that you think are pretty snazzy. Why would you want to do this? I think Dave explained this pretty well: "

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-81304850124880306132007-01-19T05:03:00.001Z2007-01-19T05:03:00.594Z

There has been a bit of an outcry about John Howard's little holiday in Broome earlier in the week, which I think Tim Dunlop summed it up best. Essentially, Tim points out that this episode should be a little worrying for members of Liberal party as it displays a lapse in political judgement. Over at LP, Mark wrote an interesting piece yesterday about the potential consequences for the Liberal

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-51869848614324906202007-01-19T03:47:00.001Z2007-01-19T03:47:10.092Z

Has anyone else noticed that the surf has been up on the arXiv this week? It looks as though a lot of people are punching out the papers in preparation for QIP. Some of the papers that I expect I will be reading in the next few days include: A simple family of nonadditive quantum codes Authors: John A. Smolin, Graeme Smith, Stephanie Wehner Quantum Walks, Quantum Gates and Quantum Computers

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-26924614323884427362007-01-18T23:04:00.001Z2007-01-18T23:04:51.396Z

I went for a run this morning, I lost. The final score was, Hills, heat, and humidity: 1 mick: 0

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-57880902980339160522007-01-16T00:37:00.001Z2007-01-16T00:37:12.992Z

Just letting people know. I'm jet-lagged as hell too. Oh, and I watched "The Departed" on the flight from Singapore to Brisbane, ya gotta love any movie that has the Dropkick Murphy's in the soundtrack!

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-21791348878911662262007-01-16T00:35:00.001Z2007-01-16T00:35:06.255Z

Well, here I am writing a post in Singapore airport. I'm testing whether my laptop survived the trip after some moron dumped their gigantic carry on bag square on top of it. What happened to the airlines getting all serious about carry-on baggage? Actually, they are serious enough if you are a half-savvy twenty something. However, you'll get off scot free if you are pushing 70 and are so out of

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-88988523007175769332007-01-12T15:31:00.001Z2007-01-12T15:31:51.864Z

On Sunday I'm off on a bit of an adventure, I'm flying back home to Oz. The main reason that I'm heading home is to attend QIP 2007 but I'll be doing about a thousand other things before and after the conference. I always enjoy the flight home. I've had all sorts of hellish journeys over the years but very little shakes my enthusiasm for that high that I get when Brisbane's humidity wraps around

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-63933018039903168232007-01-11T10:14:00.001Z2007-01-11T10:14:00.217Z

This is pretty awesome.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-37881678348904066492007-01-10T13:03:00.001Z2007-01-10T14:00:45.455Z

In what might seem to some to be an obvious statement, George Bush is not America. Not now, nor ever. George Bush is quite simply the man who has been elected President. American presidents come and go, America itself has stuck around for quite a while. This is a point that Tim Dunlop has been pushing, quite rightly, this week at Blogocracy. The Australian Government and the media keep toeing the

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-60327077492870398702007-01-10T08:38:00.001Z2007-01-10T08:38:05.375Z

My "Recent comments" widget on my sidebar doesn't seem to be working so well at the moment. However my normal comments are working fine. I think this probably has something to do with switching to the new Blogger. My comments are managed by Haloscan and over at there forum it seems that people are reporting a bunch of bugs mainly to do with people that have multiple sidebar widgets (people like

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-13946080531550677032007-01-09T15:26:00.001Z2007-01-09T15:26:18.596Z

Word is that the leader of the Australian Greens, Bob Brown, has approached the ALP in an attempt to get a preference deal for this year's federal election. Brown is pushing the line that the ALP either does a deal with the Greens, with the hope of ALP preferences giving them the balance of power, or faces the prospect of a hostile Coalition-led Senate if the ALP takes the lower house. The Greens

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-82110034626440644332007-01-09T15:01:00.001Z2007-01-09T15:01:18.447Z

TJ is back.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-20306190100518397502007-01-09T13:38:00.001Z2007-01-09T13:38:01.497Z

Arnie has a new plan for near universal health care for Californians. Did I ever mention that I really like California? Of all the places that I've been to over the years California was one of the nicest.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-11757462236938558932007-01-03T15:25:00.001Z2007-01-03T15:51:02.075Z

Apparently there was a UFO sighting at O'Hare Airport in November. Some United Airlines staff spotted a disc shaped object hovering over the terminal which apparently freaked them out enough to inform the control tower (which couldn't see anything). Anyway, I'm not so interested in the whole UFO thing but I am interested in what one O'Hare union official, Craig Burzych, said about it, "To fly 7

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-21846635568255701582007-01-02T11:48:00.001Z2007-01-02T11:48:30.521Z

Peter Garrett, the ALP's new spokesman for climate change, environment and heritage wrote an awesome op-ed in the Sydney Morning Herald today. Garrett rightly takes issue with the governments bizarre view that introducing nuclear power stations to Australia is a valid approach to combat climate change. While it's true that nuclear power involves no carbon emissions, and that Australia has an

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-65117666512343297912007-01-02T10:59:00.001Z2007-01-02T10:59:21.317Z

The Daily Grind Network puts out with the funny a couple of times a day and is usually worth a look if you are in need of a little chuckle. They had a cracker of a title on one of their posts today: 'A paper curtain has descended across Europe': Bucharest, Sofia fall to EU I think the title sums up the post pretty well... By the way, how many other EU researchers out there spent a significant

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-34901530607653234492007-01-02T09:33:00.001Z2007-01-02T09:33:36.199Z

Well, I've moved my blogger account over to the Blogger beta (though I'm not sure it's officially a beta test anymore). I've already noticed that it's changed some of my template settings. If anyone expreiences anything weird could you let me know? Also, has anyone switched over to their new template manager yet? Does it destroy all the 3rd party software in your blog?

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1167728705463496682007-01-02T09:05:00.000Z2007-01-02T09:05:05.683Z

Our institute's espresso machine is down! God knows how I'm going to get any work done today without a reliable source of caffeine. Not a good start to the new year.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1167726516200349252007-01-02T08:28:00.000Z2007-01-02T08:28:36.283Z

It appears that over the holidays I was tagged by Dave so I guess I better play along: So the game is, take the closest book to you right now, go to the fifth sentence on page 123, write the following three sentences in the blog, and tag three people. I'm at work so, surprise surprise, the book closest to me is "Quantum Computation and Quantum Information" by Michael Nielsen and Ike Chuang. So,

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1166710507650416812006-12-21T14:15:00.000Z2006-12-21T14:15:07.753Z

Merry Christmas everyone. I'm off on holidays so I probably won't be posting anything until the first few days of January (the actual day will depend on the magnitude of my inevitable hangover).

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1166004350667882102006-12-13T10:05:00.000Z2006-12-13T10:05:50.750Z

Yesterday Kofi Annan gave the US an earful, today he's having a go at the quartet (US, Russia, the EU and the UN) for not doing enough to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When most people get the boot from a job they find themselves down at the pub with some mates slagging off at their old boss and some of those pricks from the office that they never got along with. When you are the UN

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165921766531557902006-12-12T11:09:00.000Z2006-12-12T11:09:26.536Z

Kevin Rudd has announced that he'll drop dopey the "visitor values pledge" policy of his predecessor Kim Beazley. When Beazley announced this policy a few months back it sounded like a piece of wedge politics done on the fly, which is essentially what Rudd said about it today, "I think it probably wasn't properly considered at the time". I'm beginning to see an upside to the ALP having a new

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165920647186073882006-12-12T10:50:00.000Z2006-12-12T10:50:47.253Z

Kofi Annan took a final swipe at G.W. Bush's foreign policy today and the current direction of world politics. I liked this statement in particular, "no nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over all others.". I think many world leaders should think long and hard about that quote.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165855008473244302006-12-11T16:36:00.000Z2006-12-11T16:36:48.540Z

Queensland national Party Senator Barnaby Joyce on John Howard's plan (actually, this plan has Andrew Robb's grubby fingerprints all over it) for introducing mandatory English and "values" testing of migrants to Australia: "We're trying to stop people who have militant ideas who want to destroy our nation - I've got no problem with that whatsoever," Senator Joyce said. "What has to be proven is

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165840756719984622006-12-11T12:39:00.000Z2006-12-11T12:42:48.310Z

Over the weekend I finished watching the last season of the West Wing, I'm really going to miss that show.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165840395632989332006-12-11T12:33:00.000Z2006-12-11T12:33:15.693Z

I'd like to remind all you quantumish PhD students and Postdocs out there that registration for IQING 5 closes on the 31st of December - that's less than three weeks away! IQING 5 is open to all quantum information oriented PhD students and young Postdocs. Theorists and experimentalists are encouraged to apply. For more info go to the website.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165410829561691382006-12-06T13:13:00.000Z2006-12-06T13:19:05.256Z

I think they might be.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165409729519588202006-12-06T12:55:00.000Z2006-12-06T12:55:33.680Z

... is that Rolf Harris can still generate headlines. Rolf Harris to me is a remnant of an Australia that has long since disappeared (though unfortunately a lot of the racism of that time has managed to hang around). There's got to be a whole generation of young folk scratching their heads over this story. My main lasting memory involving Rolf Harris is from when I was a young 'un and I saw a

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165407987866259032006-12-06T12:26:00.000Z2006-12-06T12:26:27.886Z

According to the SMH Kevin Rudd is approximately 180 cm tall. That's not so little and makes my use of "little Kev" seem more than a little stupid, especially seeing as I'd be looking up to him. According to the SMH a lot of people make this mistake, mainly due to the whole schoolboy nerd look that he has going on. Sorry Kevin, I will endeavor to call you "not quite so little, but not entirely

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165407667100147552006-12-06T12:21:00.000Z2006-12-06T12:21:07.160Z

The NYT has an interesting piece on the fate of the two giant Buddhas of Bamiyan Valley in Afganistan that were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. I've occasionally wondered what happened to this site in the aftermath of the US-led invasion. It's nice to know that people are now debating how to restore the site. It makes me feel that the war in Afganistan might actually be winnable.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165399974211174762006-12-06T10:12:00.000Z2006-12-06T10:12:54.300Z

Aussie Bob over at Surfdom has pointed out that the new ALP leader, Kevin Rudd, should be getting behind a push some liberals in the Liberal party (the few that are left) to ensure that David Hicks is either charged or brought home. Apparently there is a challenge on in the Federal Court claiming that Alexander Downer and Philip Ruddock have the power to bring him before Australian courts but

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165331051668158732006-12-05T15:04:00.000Z2006-12-05T15:04:11.716Z

Cool.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165327283318260372006-12-05T14:01:00.000Z2006-12-05T14:01:23.393Z

Hehe, awesome.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165314390792713352006-12-05T10:26:00.000Z2006-12-05T10:27:18.326Z

I am so totally behind this if if leads to me getting a jetpack or a rocket car. This reminds me of one of my favourite exchanges on the West Wing about technology development during the Cold War (and implicitly about NASA): Leo: My generation never got the future it was promised... Thirty-five years later, cars, air travel is exactly the same. We don't even have the Concorde anymore.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165311977040818072006-12-05T09:46:00.000Z2006-12-05T14:42:06.290Z

Bloody hell. Another coup in Fiji. They seem to have evolved into a standard component of the Fijian political system. I don't know why the Fijian public tolerate having their wishes trampled over by the military or whatever special interest group is heading the latest coup. I guess that these coups keep happening because they are relatively bloodless and they don't really affect the citizens

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165308718927870752006-12-05T08:51:00.000Z2006-12-05T08:51:58.990Z

The whole damned Ozblogoshpere is giving their two cents worth to Rudd and Gillard, so here's mine: Expect the Howardistas to go on full attack mode against the Rudd/Gillard team in the lead-up to Christmas. They will be doing everything they can to make sure that Rudd has no Lathamesque honeymoon with the voters. Wedge politics will be the name of the game in the coming weeks, the new ALP team

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165245724694597772006-12-04T15:22:00.000Z2006-12-04T15:53:37.603Z

John Bolton has been axed stood down as the US Ambassador to the UN. It was predicted that this would happen with the Dems taking the Congress but it's nice to see it actually happen.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165242651333041032006-12-04T14:30:00.000Z2006-12-04T15:14:04.910Z

Well, it is barely worth commenting on now (there were a million posts out there about this before I was out of bed this morning) but Kevin Rudd took over the Australian Labor Party leadership today toppling Kim Beazley from the leadership. Little Kevie knocked off big Kim in a party room vote Monday morning. Kevin will be sharing his leadership duties with the new deputy Julia Gillard. The vote

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1165054213154025272006-12-02T10:10:00.000Z2006-12-02T10:14:11.026Z

This is cool, thanks TJ.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1164969774367639402006-12-01T10:42:00.000Z2006-12-01T10:42:54.373Z

A new quantum blog has just popped up on the intertubes. Aggie, a quantum information theory student doing her PhD at UQ has decided to join this whole blogging caper. Regular Quantumbiodiscs readers will have seen Aggie occasionally popping up in comments around here. Go check out her blog I'm sure it'll turn out to be fab (does anyone say "fab" anymore?).

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1164968386594168622006-12-01T10:19:00.000Z2006-12-01T10:25:59.983Z

This video is one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. The old drunken idiot is Glenn Milne, a senior political correpondent for News Limited in Australia. He's renowned for being an "insider". In reality, he basically publishes any old gossipy trash that he's fed by a pollie. The skinny guy is Stephen Mayne. He setup the daily internet newspaper Crikey and is also a politcal activist.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1164120402118907022006-11-21T14:46:00.000Z2006-11-21T14:46:42.116Z

From Dave, apparently we'll soon be ably to download the WHOLE quant-ph arxiv onto our computers. Damn, that will be so convenient.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1164119925291513352006-11-21T14:38:00.001Z2006-11-21T14:38:45.303Z

I'm sitting in Salzburg HBf (Salzburg's main train station) at the moment on the way to Vienna. This city is seriously pretty. I'm going to have to come back here for a weekend or something. - Damn, I just tried to post this while the train was in the satation but it didn't work. Stupid fake public access wireless networks.

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1164119899610093092006-11-21T14:38:00.000Z2006-11-21T14:38:19.836Z

I don't know how many of you noticed but I'm trying to post more regularly after my slackness period over the summer (winter if you are in Oz). My posting dropped off a bit last week though due to my completely hectic schedule. Among other things, we finally managed to get out our registration announcement for IQING 5. This involved getting a real website up and running, though this was made

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1163672035861101622006-11-16T10:13:00.000Z2006-11-16T10:25:30.406Z

Registration is now open (as is our fancy new site) The fifth Informal Quantum INformation Gathering (IQING 5) is taking place in Innsbruck on April 11 - 14 2007. IQING 5 will bring together young researchers working in the field of quantum information science so that they can discuss their research in an informal environment. Junior postdocs, PhD students, and Diploma/MSc students working on

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1163603811124330102006-11-15T15:16:00.000Z2006-11-15T15:16:51.143Z

I totally missed my blog birthday. I've been doing this blog for a little over two years now, wow. It all started with some lame post on the 4th of November 2004. The official line is that I started this blog because I wanted to write more about politics, physics and whatever else popped into my head. In reality, I probably did it because I was in the middle of writing my PhD thesis and wanted to

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9004925.post-1163601594843909792006-11-15T14:39:00.000Z2006-11-15T14:42:05.696Z

Damn, I'm going to talk up a comment of Kim Beazley's again. Like I said in the last post, this is weird for me because I'm not normally a fan. In the last week or so the Queensland and New South Wales state Labor governments have had all sorts of dirty laundry aired. We've had drug-fueled sex scandal suicide attempts, extortion, and even a bit of old-fashioned corruption. The leadership of the

mickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08835110280480984884noreply@blogger.com0