Travel, Technology, Thoughts
I spent the last day in Toronto visiting Niagara Falls which is about two hours south-west of the city.
After some debate about how to get there we settled on catching the train – which is what I wanted as I love trains.
The train from Toronto was very impressive. Double deck, nice seats, and power outlets for every seat. After about an hour we had to change to a bus to complete the journey – which again was double deck and very impressive for public transport.
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Last week I was in Toronto, Canada attending the 26th Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Conference. Toronto was a great experience and is a rather interesting city.
I flew out of Sydney on Air Canada direct to Toronto with a very small layover in Vancouver. This is my first trip outside of Australia/New Zealand and I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect. It turns out a 13.5 hour flight, 1 hour layover, 4.5 hour flight is a very long time.
Read moreI have recently returned from a visit to Auckland. While I was there I went on a few planned – and a few unplanned – adventures. The photos below are from tramping at Fairy Falls in the Waitakere Ranges, visiting Piha Beach, tramping above Mercer Bay also in the Waitakeres, visiting Karekare Beach, walking around One Tree Hill, visiting friends in Albany, and going to Western Springs Speedway.
Read moreWhile we were in Perth we spent two days travelling on a quick two day road trip up the coast to Geraldton.
On the trip up we stuck to the coast and drove up Indian Ocean Drive, and we returned via Highway 1.
As the photos below show we stopped at many cool and random places and had a great time.
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Last week I was in Perth for the 24th Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Below are photos from around Perth that were taken on the day I arrived and during the evenings.
Overall, Perth is a nice city to visit. Fremantle, in particular, is particularly beautiful. The city feels like a cross between Wanganui and Christchurch, and it was a lot quieter than Sydney.
Read moreI have just got back from a very quick holiday in New Zealand. With the trip only lasting six days it didn’t give me time to catch up with as many people as I would have liked to have seen. However, I still did manage to see a little over 30 family and friends, including a number of members of my extended family whom I had not seen in over two years.
Read moreI have just got back from a very fast weekend holiday in Melbourne.
At 7.45am on Friday I caught the daylight XPT Train from Sydney to Melbourne. I really like trains so spending over 11 hours on a train is better and cheaper than flying. Upon arriving in Melbourne I headed to the airport to meet a friend flying in from NZ to join me for the weekend. Once we had checked into our accommodation we went for a midnight stroll around the CBD.
Read moreThe final day of our road trip was spent travelling from Port Macquarie to Sydney via a detour to Foster and Newcastle. Pretty much unless you are in your 90s, death and blind don’t visit Port Macquarie there are only two pubs and you can’t go to the beach at night. Foster and the beaches around it on the other hand appeared much more appealing and would be certainly be worthwhile investigating. The drive into Sydney is spectacular as well.
Read moreAfter our visit to Movie World we headed south to Byron Bay, before staying the night in Grafton. The next morning we continued south to Coffs Harbour before heading inland to the New England Highway, then after travelling about an hour south back across to the Pacific Highway at Port Macquarie.
Read moreThere are a number of live shows throughout the day at Movie World. One of the new shows is Stunt Driver in which a number of real movie stunt drivers show off their skills to a live audience. The premise of the show is the filming of a chase scene for a movie. The skill of the drivers in the show is absolutely amazing and shows you not everything you see in movies is computer generated.
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