Music this week

Not a lot of super-new albums this week, but two 2015 favorites along with one soundtrack:

  • Jamie XX – In Colour. Been listening to this album for most of this month and really enjoying it. More so than The XX, which I already enjoyed before this. Favorite songs: Sleep Sound, Loud Places and Girl.
  • Mass Effect Official Soundtrack – Jack Wall. Excellent ambient music to listen to while working. Fits nicely into the background.
  • Lapalux – Lustmore. An album released on Brainfeeder, Flying Lotus’ record label. Sounds a lot like Flying Lotus, which is a good thing.

Movies this week

I saw three movies this week:

  1. Ex Machina – young programmer conducts a Turing test on an android with artificial intelligence created by a rogue scientist. Very thought provoking but one glaring thing bugged me the whole time: one rogue scientist in a bunker is not capable of building both the hardware and software of a life-like android!
  2. Margin Call – a dramatized story about the 24-hour period which preceded the 2008 financial crash, starring Kevin Spacey. Tense, realistic, and insightful.
  3. Infernal Affairs – the 2004 Hong Kong cop drama which inspired Martin Scorcese’s The Departed. This had been on my to-see list for a long time and it did not disappoint. Very, very good film.

Books this week

  • The Checklist Manifesto – Finished this week. About the importance of maintaining lists for managing complex problems. Written by a surgeon who effectively brought about significant change in hospital infection rates by enacting checklists for doctors and nurses to reference as they treated patients. Link to The Checklist Manifesto on Amazon.
  • Ready Player One – Started this week. About an 18 year old who masterminds a near-future virtual world called OASIS which is basically exactly like the Oculus Rift. Link to Ready Player One on Amazon.

Articles this week

  • Ray Kurzweil’s The Law of Accelerating Returns – very lengthy report on the accelerating rate of change that we are seeing in our lifetime. Written by one of the world’s foremost authorities on futurism and AI
  • The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence – a good layman’s description of the road from present-day to ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence). Exciting and a bit frightening.
  • The Strange Phenomenon of Music ‘Skin Orgasms’ – BBC article about the science about “frissons”, or the physical reaction we feel to musical crescendos that stimulate a natural thrill response.

Daily Habits

I’ve been doing well keeping up with my daily habits. Here are some of them:

  • 3x weight-lifting gym sessions
  • Daily supplements: fish oil and 5k IU of vitamin D
  • 10k steps per day
  • Daily meditation (using Headspace for this)
  • Daily Chinese practice (vocab list review)
  • Wake up by 8:30am
  • 33 daily push ups, one for each year of age
  • Record my weight (currently 88kg, or 195 pounds)
  • Floss daily

One Video

I came across this video of Rhonda Rousey this week, describing the distinction between her and “Do Nothing Bitches”. She is worthy of all adoring devotion that she gets. She has an upcoming UFC title fight this Saturday, too.