If the wind is right you can sail away and find tranquility (Christopher Cross)

Wie geht's?

You find us in Taupo celebrating Jacky's latest completion of a tour around the sun - officially that happened on April 14, but a big shout out to the birthday girl!!

We've had a great stay and shared the celebration with Michelle and Gav. 

One of the highlights - a lovely trip on the Ernest Kemp  (above, with a view of the mountains along the way) to see  Ngātoro-i-rangi - a carving made in the rock face around the lake - only accessible by sea.

Worth including on your list for visiting one of my favourite places on the planet, let along Nu Zild. So many memories here.

As I said to Ma Belle - would be fun to do a time lapse of the last 60 years' Huka Falls visits from first times with my parents and Ross through to my own children to now. Scenery wouldn't change much right? But I'd go from child to grandad before your eyes!

Love and peace - Wozza

If I was a painter, and was to paint the American Eagle, how should I do it?...I should want to draw it....like an Ostrich, for putting its head in the mud, and thinking nobody sees it...(Charles Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit)

Photo by Emiliano Vittoriosi on Unsplash

Wie geht's?

Thanks to me mentioning our first sighting of students using AI in their work submitted for assessment (having signed an authenticity form), our weekly family catch up via zoom featured an interesting discussion around AI generated work and ChatGPT.

Subsequently, the Morning Brew newsletter had an article on a movement advocating a pause in AI development.

Which got me thinking about my consumption of media post our AI assisted world. On our zoom, I jokingly said I'd not be reading anything published post 2020. I'd have to include music in that too right.

Which is nonsense. 

I watch CGI material in movies without too much bother (except when it's glaringly obvious - like the backgrounds on David Tennant's Around The World in 80 Days series aiming to evoke the 19th century); I've flown on planes using auto-pilot for decades; I have no real issues with photo-shopping of static images; or with robots building cars and thousands of other consumer items. Adam told us he uses ChatGPT in his work as a communications manager - no issue with that, either.

You get the idea. The genie has well and truly left the bottle. The horse has bolted and the stable door is flapping in the breeze.

As Keegan indicated, seemingly - it's now more a case of dealing with the AI assisted work as a fact and something to be analysed, rather than as a dangerous anomaly that is considered cheating and needs to be banished. 

It feels like teaching is going to have to evolve quickly to deal with it on those terms (I'm an optimist but I don't have too much faith in teaching's ability to do that - just sayin').

Love and peace - Wozza

P.S. for what it's worth - posts on my weblogs will always be AI free.

Keeping an eye on the world going by my window (The Beatles)

Wie geht's?

We can think otherwise but we can't hide from our genes.

Recently a colleague said that she saw me as a methodical and detail person. I balked at that description initially. It sounded like my dad and my brother, but not me. I like to think of myself as a big picture guy but then I realized - who am I kidding?

I'm more like my dad and my brother than I'd like to think. Just one look at my music collection and my bookcases will give me away.

So, yes! I can now embrace that description LH. You're spot on!

Love and peace - Wozza

That's no moon (Han Solo)

 

Wie geht's?

Arts review part 2 (after Empire Of Light): Birnam Wood.

Warning - if you intend to read the novel avoid this post!

Okay - I did warn you! 

The ending of a story is crucial, is it not?

Well, it is for me. I used to hate it when young students would invariably end a piece of writing with, and then I woke up. Nasty!

Serious novelists should know better.

But, from time to time, I read a book and all can be bright and shiny and brilliant and then the ending can be bleugh.

In a nutshell that sums up my reaction to Birnam Wood.

As a reader, or viewer, I need a pay-off for the bad guys. Blame all of those westerns I ingested as a kid. The black hats always got their comeuppance in the end. In Star Wars, Luke prevails in the end (twice). I need the hero to achieve success on her or his quest. That's the usual trope in an adventure story and I've been conditioned to expect it.

In Game Of Thrones, I gave up watching when a season long torture sequence had no pay-off. Not cool. Not happening.

Eleanor Cotton tries for a similar no pay-off trick in Birnam Wood and it doesn't work. All the goodies die and only one deeply flawed protagonist who I didn't care for much anyway escapes to maybe set in train some comeuppance. Maybe. A glimmer of hope is not enough for me Eleanor!

Not cool. Not happening.

I feel like I've wasted effort reading the book when this hollow feeling happens.

Bah humbug!

Love and peace - Wozza

To be able to fly (Hilary)

Wie geht's?

Empire Of Light, starring Olivia Coleman and directed by Sam Mendes, was playing at our local, so Jacky and I bowled on up for a midweek viewing last week.

I'd been keen to catch it but it had been playing in early  afternoon slots and only intermittently in the evening; a sure sign of the target demographic. 

Some thoughts:

You can't beat the theatre experience. In this case we were the only patrons so it kind of felt like our lounge with a huge screen. Great!

Olivia Coleman is versatile and naturally good in everything she appears in - no change here as she carries the film and even makes the romantic fling with a much younger guy (Stephen) seem natural and okay.

The early eighties setting in Britain was beautifully presented: hair styles; soundtrack; tacky neo modernism; colour palette; and the presentation of both entrenched and changing attitudes - a shot of older Hilary and younger black male Stephen on a bus together when an older white male sits behind them is spot on. All done in about 4 seconds.

The down side, for me, was a lack of depth in the plot development and the characters. Apart from Hilary, they're not developed beyond the surface. Even Stephen. It's not too much of an issue though as the acting by Colin Firth et al is first rate. 

So I ultimately gave the film a 3 out of 5 star rating. It's a bit grim in subject matter but the pluses outweigh the negatives. Worth watching if you're in that target audience, I'd say.

Love and peace - Wozza 

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Photo by Alexandre Jaquetoni on Unsplash

Wie geht's?

Another weekend: another wood delivery to stack, another dead tree to chain saw up and put on the burn pile, and as an added bonus - a horse float full of hay to collect and store.

In our preparation for winter, we're not that different to animals in the wild like bears and squirrels.

This will all pay off, I'm sure, when we're sitting inside on a wet, cold, winter's day sipping a hot brew and gazing at the embers wistfully, thinking back to those weekends in autumn when we'd take a break from cutting down broken branches in the aftermath of the cyclone, sitting on the deck with the sun streaming down on our aching, sawdust caked feet, sipping our teas and nibbling on crackers and cheese while Jerry, Rey and Laney mooch around, waiting for us to get back to work.  

Love and peace - Wozza

Tony felt suddenly acutely self conscious of his own freshly laundered clothes, which smelled of the eucalyptus fabric softener used by his mother that, of all the scents of his childhood, held the strongest associations for him of being home (Eleanor Catton)

Wie geht's?

This post is inspired by my good friend GK who suggested I read Birnam Wood. He was keen to hear about my opinions of the actual writing. So here goes with my initial impressions, GK, bearing in mind that I'm only 50 or so pages into it.

Yeah boy, time for some literary criticism, Wozza style.

First things first: I'm happily reading it. I look forward to picking it up.

Partly, because I feel that Catton is writing so that I might enjoy the experience of reading. She credits her readers with some intelligence and I like that. 

Now, I'm no literary snob, I love reading pulp fiction as much as the next philistine.  I'm a big fan of Lee Child novels for instance, but Birnam Wood isn't a novel that I can read in a day or two because it's like someone speaking to me in one or two syllable words. 

Instead, I have to read Birnam Wood in a deliberate way; concentrating and being present. If my mind wanders I lose track.

In that way it's like a Dickens' novel or a Shakespearean play - she invites that comparison with a title like Birnam Wood (her name for a collective of opportunistic market gardeners).

Like the work of those two giants of literature, it doesn't take long to adjust the brain and get in the groove of the writing. 

It also doesn't take long to realise that the language is rich, the sentences are often complex and labyrinthine, and the characters have real depth. Hey! She won The Booker Prize, so she knows what she's doing!

Interestingly, I'm noticing some distinct stylistic changes which suit different subject matter. The interior monologue and character motivation stuff, for instance, tends to be convoluted and that suits the context, while there are plainer, simpler sections for simpler exposition. They all flow quite seamlessly so it's not that obvious and it doesn't get in the way of my enjoyment.

All up, it deserves to be widely read and enjoyed (rather than just admired). That's pretty high praise from me.

Love and peace - WNP