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On the 17th February 2020 Wendy and I set sail on Queen Elizabeth on a two week cruise up to Papua New Guinea, returning to Sydney on 2nd March.
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After a stop in Brisbane on the way the ship headed north to Rabaul, returning by:
Kiriwina Island; Milne Bay (Alotau); the Conflict Islands; and Cairns in far north Queensland
Sydney to Rabaul is around four thousand kilometres
In mid July 2016 Wendy and I took flight again to Europe. Those who follow these travel diaries will note that part of out trip last year was cut when Wendy's mum took ill. In particular we missed out on a planned trip to Romania and eastern Germany. This time our British sojourn would be interrupted for a few days by a side-trip to Copenhagen and Roskilde in Denmark.
I've long been interested in the advent of artificial intelligence (AI). It's a central theme in my fictional writing (The Cloud and The Craft) and is discussed in my essay to my children 'The Meaning of Life' (1997-2017). So, I've recently been exploring the capabilities of ChatGPT.
As today, 26 January 2024, is Australia Day, I asked ChatGPT to: 'write 1000 words about Australia Day date'. In a few minutes (I read each as it arrived) I had four, quite different, versions. Each took around 18 seconds to generate. This is the result:
Our recent trip to Central Australia involved a long walk around a rock and some even longer contemplative drives.
I found myself wondering if there is more or less 'life' out here than there is in the more obviously verdant countryside to the north south east or west. For example: might microbes be more abundant here? The flies are certainly doing well. Yet probably not.
This led me to recall James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis that gave we readers of New Scientist something to think about back in 1975, long before climate change was a matter of general public concern.