Lev Lafayette's journal

Visited hathhalla and ser_pounce for our regular Cheesequest. Amazing fromage of the day was a herbed Corsican. Afterwards played a challenging scenario in Mice and Mystics. This evening did a sence write-up for my long-running HeroQuest Glorantha game. It was the conclusion of a bit of bad luck in gaming sessions this week with the regular Laundry Files game cancelled on Wednesday night, and Eclipse Phase on Friday night. Nevertheless, this has given me more opportunity to work on Papers & Paychecks with the effects of alcohol and drugs and distribution curves added to the repository.

Have finally decided to join the 21st century and bought a chunk of cloud storage for some offsite backups; specifically the Google offering, which integrates well with the rest of its services. Have also discovered and used RClone, which a rather genius piece of work - effectively rsync for various cloud storage vendors. Apropos, a made a talk proposal for OpenStack Australia Day which has been accepted.

Other major events in the past few days has been organising for the AGM of the Victorian Secular Lobby, writing up the major events of 14th and 15th weeks of Lord Dampnut, US President, and attending a great wine tasting at University House for Klein Constantia with a selection of South African and French Savoy wines. The Vin de Constance was pretty amazing; it was sweet liquid gold and with a price to match (on special for a mere $137 for 500ml) .

Working on the transhumanist issue of RPG Review Issue 33 this week, having received (a little late) the interview with Rob Boyle. Reviews for that issue are also gradually making their way on rpg.net, with Eclipse Phase - Gatecrashing, receiving a strong recommendation. The week also witnessed a session of Papers & Paychecks which thematically took aspects of the classic The Keep on the Borderlands; it worked very well. Friday night managed to get some Eclipse Phase play in, a variation of Think Before Asking. Today was another Cheesequest day with hathhalla and ser_pounce where - apart from making our way through several varieties of said food - we also made our way through another chapter of Mice and Mystics.

The Isocracy Network continues at pace with a meeting on Friday night on a 2019 Labor-Green Alliance. Of course, a week is a long time in politics, and the departure of the ultra-conservative Cory Berndai from the Liberal Party does give the possibility of greater control by more liberal elements; the possibility of even a Grand Coalition was raised. There has been four 'blog posts on the Isocracy Network this week, including Actually, Nazis Are Still Bad, by reddragdiva, Tribune of the Plebs by catsidhe, and my own The Shambling Mound's Third Week.

This coming week I leave for New Zealand for a fortnight, which will include visits to some computational centres in Canterbury University in Christchurch, Otago University in Dunedin, MC-ing and presenting at Multicore World (that's quite some speaker's list, then to Cambridge for Nyriad and finally the Auckland University of Technology. I must say I'm rather looking forward to the visit, as it has been far too long since I've had the opportunity to drop into this rather favoured corner of the world. "Home is where the heart is", and mine is very much in the deep south of Aotearoa.

Two major events on Saturday and three on Sunday make for a pretty full weekend. It started with visting hathhalla and ser_pounce for another cheesequest session (Pont-l'Évêque was a personal favourite) followed by a chapter of Mice and Mystics, which we finished quickly and successfully through some particularly hardline decision making and some lucky cards that provides a delightful emergent narrative. Post-cheesequest we went out to The Astor to see the double of Doctor Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy; and ran into justadecoy, whom I hadn't seen for a couple of years. The latter film is, of course, charming and I've managed to see it three times now in recent months. The former I think will be lasting because in additional to some good character development it made excellent use of special effects and colours in a manner that was both artistic and clever in its simplicity.

Sunday started relatively early with a trip to the Unitarian Church, where Dr. Hans Baer was speaking on the recent US elections; it was entertaining enough even if I found myself mostly in disagreement with his strategic considerations, not to mention the only fleeting reference to religious content. Afterwards was a meeting of The Philosophy Forum, where Graeme Lindenmayer speaking on What is Life? What is a Life?, a primarily descriptive presentation but which drew light to some interesting edge cases where the binary between living and not-living becomes a little murky. Afterwards it was a journey to our Sunday session of GURPS Middle Earth which included revived discussion of the geopolitical situation and settlements, before narrowing down to the immediate scenario. Afterwards was a committee meeting for the RPG Review Cooperative which concentrated on the Papers & Paychecks Kickstarter, which remains frustratingly close to succeeding (go support this, now, please).

Another set of classes this week teaching Advanced Linux and Shell Scripting for High Performance Computing, to a class that was pretty well engaged. Have planned another set for the coming month with a new course in Parallel Computation and Programming. Europe plans almost encountered a conflict when I realised that I depart Melbourne at the same time that eResearch Australasia is being held. Fortunately, I can give my paper at that conference in the afternoon and still make it to the airport to leave in the evening. Nothing like be accidentally well-organised, haha. Oh, and in a great moment in science this week; malaria solved. As a disease that kill over four hundred thousand people per annum, this is big news.

Friday evening was a night on the town with in-laws Arnold and Cathy who are visiting from Perth. We took them to the little Breton crepiere, Breizoz, one of my favourite rustic restaurants which I don't visit enough. It did make me wonder about the status of the Breton language, and some concern that it hasn't (yet) have a course on Duolingo. Clearly we live in the age of the Celtic twilight. Afterwards made our way to Madame Brussels which is a fine roof-top bar with an interesting history (but oh, my eyes, that website!).

Yesterday was a visit to hathhalla and ser_pounce for our regular cheesequest and boardgames (Theomachy, nice concept but dependent on initial hand). It was good afternoon visiting our human friends and their menagerie (cats and ferrets), however our trip was delayed by a police standoff in Fitzroy, which involved the Critical Incident Response Team - we walked past the place where it occurred a few minutes prior to the event, and thus our car was trapped behind the blue line. It must be said, the world is fortunate that petty criminals aren't that smart - the perp in question engaged in actions across the road from a police station.

The thirty-first issue of RPG Review has just been released with an "Old School Revolution" central topic. Our interview subject for this issue is Ken St. Andre. My own contributions include reviews of Castles and Crusades, OSRIC, Basic Fantasy, and designer's notes for Papers and Paychecks, which is reaching the end of the first draft and, following mid-week drinks with fellow committee members Liz and Karl, now has an ISBN assigned to it. The drinks are significant as they were the last to be held at The Corkman, which has just been sold.

The fourth issue of the RPG Review Cooperative newsletter, Crux Australi, was released on Saturday. It includes a couple of very notable developments, the first being the establishment of a members library which has already received a significant additional donations. The other item of note was receiving an article from Lewis Pulsipher. On Sunday played a session of GURPS Middle Earth; a good mystery, a dash of magical realism, and a quick action-conflict scene to conclude.

This weekend I also penned a review of the latest studio album from Shriekback, 'Without Real Strings or Fish'. They've had several "good-average" albums over the past five years or so, but this one really hits the mark with a combination of their ethereal sounds alternating with powerful 'big band' post-punk chorus and lyrical content based around evolution and moral reasoning. It's not quite up there with their best earlier material such as Tench or Oil and Gold, but it certainly in the same ball park.

With a wry sense of aesthetics, caseopaya and I held a cheesquest event with ser_pounce and hathhalla on this publc holiday. Whilst a usual fare was on the table (Slovakian sheep's milk easter cheese, tilsit, gorgonzola, and vegan substitute), it was also necessary to have ANZAC biscuits with Turkish bread and hummus. In recognition of the Canadian forces (and our Canadian visitor), the biscuits were made with maple syrup rather than the traditional golden syrup. Afterwards we played Cards Against Humanity and watched a few episodes of the final season of Moral Orel which was a little disturbing.

For a long time I have disliked "Australia Day" and the 'celebration' of the the landing of British First Fleet in Port Jackson in 1788. At best it is nationalistic nonsense that is grossly insensitive to the past and continuing experience of the country's indigenous inhabitants. Stan Grant's short but brilliant speech is receiving some justified circulation that explains this from personal experience. There is a good petition by Avaaz to change the date (I think Mabo Day would be appropriate). For our own part, Ben Debney has an article on the Isocracy Network, On The Continuing Prevalence of Racism.

In the past several days I've had some enjoyable gaming experiences: last Thursday was a build-up session for our Laundry Files storygame, and on Sunday was the first session of a new Eclipse Phase story. Most importantly however was the first release of the RPG Review Cooperative's first newsletter. On Saturay we also had another awesome cheesequest day, a dual-birthday gathering for myself and ser_pounce where we played Anti-monopoly (amusingly subject to its own trademark law suit) and Set.

Work has been 'challenging' over the past few days, which is never an enjoyable thing to have to write in this profession. The old cluster, Edward, is really showing its age and limits. One of the storage arrays is currently out when the disk filled to a hundred percent over the weekend, causing NFS to fall over yet again. Five of the disks and a controller card are out over the two storage arrays which we've been screaming about, like foreever [insert Valley accent]. Fortunately I've managed to source replacement parts which we'll install tomorrow. Bringing up the downed array is a matter of some priority so user jobs don't die screaming in a heap.

This week I wrote or submitted three contributions to various government agencies. The first was a draft for Linux Users Victoria, on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with particular attention drawn to intellectual property issues. The second was for the Victorian Secular Lobby, which was submitted to the Victorian parliamentary committee on end-of-life choices, based on last week's draft. The Isocracy Network is also considering a submission. The third was a submission to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, to the Cultural Diversity Review, specifically on the classification of Unitarians as "Christian (Other)" in the Australian census. For the Victorian Secular Lobby, it's been a particularly good week with Special Religious Instruction taken out of the education curriculum.

I've had a busy end-of-week socially; on Thursday night strangedave and doctor_k_ were visiting Melbourne, so we organised dinner and a tour at the asylum for them and mortonhall and Trevor (LJ name?). Great conversation and a pleasant walk of the grounds. Did the same for visiting Westalian nephew Luke from Muzzle and his friend Nick on Saturday night. Also on Saturday went to see ser_pounce and hathhalla for the grand final of the cheesequest; a contest between (substituted) white stilton, epoisses (fantastic soaked in champagne), and a small mountain of the garlic-and-herb boursin, made by yours truly, plus a few others just to complement. We also played Mice and Mystics, a cooperative storytelling boardgame, where we were seriously defeated twice. Also had an interesting political and plotting dinner on Friday with Anthony and Daye.

The final social activity of late this week was a session of 7th Sea where the PCs are increasingly coming to to terms with the scale of the political danger they've put them in; it's a fantasy version of a resource course. Apart form all this I've been playing house a fair bit, after purchasing a big antique sideboard, rearranging a variety of furnishings (especially bookcases) in the process. I don't really live in a house; it's more like a small library and museum. Or at least that's the plan.

Arriving in Melbourne last Saturday managed to experience two days at home before flying out again to deliver more HPC training at the Univeristy of Sydney. Fortunately one of those two days was an allocated CheeseQuest day with hathhalla, ser_pounce, and of course, caseopaya, and it was the day of substitutes. Specifically, ser_pounce brought over Carré de l'Est (substitued with Epoisses), Caithness (Blarliath), Ilchester (Charnwood Applewood Smoked Cheddar), Dorset Blue Vinney (Shropshire Blue), and Fynbo (White Castello). Because it was Easter, I made another cheese from the famous skit, specifically Czechoslovakian sheep's milk cheese, or to be precise, sweet easter egg cheese (hrudka), as a desert. Plus we played a little Chez Cthulhu and watched some Moral Orel. To say the least is was a delightful and delectable day in very fine company.

The following day however it was back in the big silver bird, arriving once again at the functional, very inexpensive, and less than salubrious Macleay Lodge. It is a place that those with secular semi-Calvinist dispositions will love, and as a result I find myself quite comfortable there, and the more than an hour walk to and from the campus is probably doing me good (it certainly helps Ingress play). They were another good class, and I was particularly impressed by the contributions of one John Dodson who has been using UNIX since 1973. Off-campus, visited a seller of another swag of RPGs which I picked up on a bargain (with an appropriate excess luggage fee). But the real highlight of the visit was another dinner in Manly with the good Rev. Dr. Ian Ellis-Jones, a person who is certainly too critical of his own intellect and achievements, but wonderful company just the same. As often the case our conversations found there way around various topics of a trinity of politics, religion, and philosophy.

I now have a weekend, a day and a half of work at the office, and then off again for another three days of training. After that is another five days of training at Macquarie University and Sydney University again. After that I'll be up to the Gold Coast to present at the THETA conference. By that stage, from my quick reckoning, I would have spend ten of the last twelve weeks either overseas or interstate. To be frank it has reached the point of being a little exhausting, holiday time intermixed with the presentations and courses notwithstanding. Despite making some excellent contacts and opportunities through what must be said are very successful ventures, the "operations" side of my life is being neglected. I am rather hoping at some stage, perhaps in a month, just to spend a few days at home.

On Saturday caseopaya and I attended another part of round #2 of cheesequest with hathhalla and ser_pounce; I made liptauer, but I suspect the wensleydale/stilton with cranberry will win the round. We also played Pandemic a great cooperative game - the disease defeated our collective efforts twice, along with Nuns on the Run, an impressively well-themed 'hide and seek'.

In the world of the Ingress augmented reality, have picked up a rather impressive Enlightened hoodie courtesy of agent ozmusic. It has a battery powered glow-trim, which is quite amusing. Hit level 11 in the game today, which has been quite a wait. However due to the achievment requirements, I'm expecting to hit level 12 next week, and 13 by the end of the year. After a year of play, I have will be considering how much more I continue with it. For a long time it has been more habitual than anything else.

Although the timetable is habitual, roleplaying is anything but in content. Last Thursday was another episode of Masks of Nyarlathotep where the foreign investigators did much better than the previous session in piecing together various leads in their journeys in 1925 Shanghai. Sunday was GURPS Middle-Earth, where we flushed out a demon. My character's overconfidence led to to try to challenge this creature in single-combat on top of a peaked tower; my strategic sense led me to duck away whilst it was peppered with missile fire. In other roleplaying matters, I somehow completely neglected to mention my review on rpg.net last month of The Shab-al-Hiri Roach. Tonight, have just finished a review of a Yaquinto classic from the early 80s, Pirates and Plunder.

Late Friday afternoon received informal notice that the company would receive ISO 9001 recertification which is obviously good news both for the organisation and for myself as the coordinator of the QA system. Quality Assurance is one of those areas which is really quite essential for organisations to succeed even if they don't apply for formal certification, as it encourages consistency, transparency, multiscoped improvement, and customer focus - as numerous studies illustrate. The two-day audit really had plenty of good things to say about our practises and our use of controlled documents, revision control, and pretty clear objectives. Adopting other certification standards (e.g., information security) is also of interest.

Afterwards attended the Lawrence Krauss dinner at the University of Melbourne, hosted by the Skeptics Society. Krauss spoke mainly on the recent discovery of gravity waves very shortly after the beginning of the universe singularity in a phase-state-like transition from supersymmetry, and then had a little rant about religion in education systems. Well located for the discussion (right next to the lectern), I asked about the temporal effects of spatial contractions from such waves, and the role of religious atheists and a secular approach to religion as a counter to theological dogmatism. Also present at the dinner was Cindy L., whom I hadn't seen for at least a dozen years. We took the opportunity the dinner to have a couple of drinks and catch up; she's spent the better part of the past decade or so in a hedonistic global exploration. Nice work if you can get it ("and you can get it, if you try").

On the following day caseopaya made the journey to the 'burbs to visit hathhalla and ser_pounce for another round of our cheesequest. This was a particularly special event because (Venezuelan Beaver Cheese excepted) we have completed all the cheeses of the skit - the final cheese was smoked Austrian, which involved me finding some imported (frozen!) limburger and smoking the cheese with hickory. We also played Runebound, a moderately good boargame although the exclusive portrayal of semi-naked female characters could make a special issue of gomakemeasandwich.

After cheesequest made our way to usekh's fourtieth birthday party at the very pleasant and tres gothique Back Bar in Windsor. Despite continuing issues with ".xxx" as it was once cryptically named (not it's not a MS-DOS program or a top-level-domain), the evening's namesake seemed to be in excellent spirits as one would being surrounded by so many good and close friends. It was rather like an local aging goths gathering in surroundings were one could actually engage in conversation; there were many people whom I hadn't seen for quite a while and alas, fewer still that I had the chance to have a long yarn with. Thanks are especially due to txxxpxx for organising group gifts which I'm sure will be thoroughly appreciated.