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tcpipThe past fortnight - which I have completely failed to 'blog about, at least on LJ/DW - has been at the usual level of activity. Ran the quarterly Introduction to HPC/Linux course at VPAC and the following week sat through the far more intensive, computational-wise, two-day Introduction and Intermediate MPI programming course the following week (Intro Excersises, and Intermediate Excersises). As much of it is in FORTRAN, had the opportunity to joke about the classic "Real Programmers write in FORTRAN" story. For more contemporary note, I have made some comments about the recent decision to fork Mandriva and OpenOffice.org with reference to the old technology versus management debate.
The Isocracy Network had its second general meeting last Saturday (we don't have meetings for the sake of it), which noted the impending establishment of a South Australian branch and an orientation towards reproductive rights in the next state election. Wrote a summary on the recent Venezuelen elections and was contacted by a citizen of said country who generally agreed with what was written; the greatest danger to the place (and said person has direct experience) is a lack of separation between the government of the day and the political process (meaning rampant corruption, administrative punishment of 'enemies' etc). On the Unitarian front, a well-attended service on the state of the homeless in Victoria with a special plug for the City is Ours group. It was almost as well-attended as Rev. Peter Ferguson's previous week's address on "Red Jesus, Fascist Paul". I reposted my comments on France banning the burqa on Facebook which generated some good discussion there.
As usual have had a good past fortnight in gaming; in the GURPS Krononauts story we've started exploring the strange story of the last weeks of Edgar Allan Poe (the character playing the uplifted raven is about to have a lot of fun). In the RuneQuest Prax game of the following week finished the (much overlooked) setting of The Haunted Ruins. On Thursday skipped Mouse Guard in favour of a return to the "delightfully awful" Lords of Creation which resulted in a total party kill... Tonight playing the second session of Britannia Pendragon where a small handful of Britons escaping the Roman invasion are taking a strange clay cup to a place of safekeeping...
The Isocracy Network had its second general meeting last Saturday (we don't have meetings for the sake of it), which noted the impending establishment of a South Australian branch and an orientation towards reproductive rights in the next state election. Wrote a summary on the recent Venezuelen elections and was contacted by a citizen of said country who generally agreed with what was written; the greatest danger to the place (and said person has direct experience) is a lack of separation between the government of the day and the political process (meaning rampant corruption, administrative punishment of 'enemies' etc). On the Unitarian front, a well-attended service on the state of the homeless in Victoria with a special plug for the City is Ours group. It was almost as well-attended as Rev. Peter Ferguson's previous week's address on "Red Jesus, Fascist Paul". I reposted my comments on France banning the burqa on Facebook which generated some good discussion there.
As usual have had a good past fortnight in gaming; in the GURPS Krononauts story we've started exploring the strange story of the last weeks of Edgar Allan Poe (the character playing the uplifted raven is about to have a lot of fun). In the RuneQuest Prax game of the following week finished the (much overlooked) setting of The Haunted Ruins. On Thursday skipped Mouse Guard in favour of a return to the "delightfully awful" Lords of Creation which resulted in a total party kill... Tonight playing the second session of Britannia Pendragon where a small handful of Britons escaping the Roman invasion are taking a strange clay cup to a place of safekeeping...
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-18 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-18 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-19 12:04 pm (UTC)Hint; Do not buy off the shelf alarm systems.
On Error Resume Next
Date: 2010-10-23 09:19 pm (UTC)The more I encounter both DBAs and programmers the more horror stories I encounter of the equivalent of normalisation errors, race conditions, integer overflows, and indeed the removal of any form of exception handling.
Danger! Danger!
Hint; Do not buy off the shelf alarm systems.
Except as a honey pot that is watched by a secure system... :)