tcpip | Computing, Socialising, RPG Review 18

First two days of the past week were spent teaching HPC and Linux to various graduates and post-docs. These courses are always quite exhausting to conduct, but the feedback and demand is always good, so we've moved to a bimonthly schedule. Preparations for the New Zealand tour in a week's time (MC-ing at Multicore World, speaking at a University of Otago). This Tuesday will meet with Greg Wilson, author of Beautiful Code. Apropos all this, I have written down some brief thoughts about listening and meeting Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Yesterday consisted on another excellent day of Cheese Quest with

ser_pounce and

hathhalla, which included Bleu de Bresse, Roquefort, Boursin, and to be very plain, Jarslberg (I brought a goat ricotta which, whilst not part of the sketch, with nevertheless quite nice). Afterwards played Sunda to Sahul, Timeline, Guillotine, and a couple of rounds of Munchkin. Afterwards went to dinner with

doomydoombear, whom we haven't seen for forever and a day, so that was absolutely delightful.

The eighteenth issue of RPG Review has been released, a special edition on the Cthulhu mythos. I think I contributed just under half the content this time, which is a horrible situation to be in for the editor of a fanzine (although not uncommon). The issue includes system reviews (Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, Cthulhu D20), setting reviews (Dark Ages, Dreamlands, Delta Green, Cthulhupunk), alternate settings (Metropolis), designer's notes for EPOCH, and excellent investigative theory article, movie reviews etc. I've also released that most of the major contributors are on livejournal, but in honour of the semi-anonymous system I won't mention them "by name". My editorial engages in a little bit of pop psychoanalysis, suggesting that perhaps Lovecraft's monsters were, in part, a project of his own racism.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Thank you very VERY much for your unbelieving prayers, sir! I was taught to believe that when we pray we're asking the Higher Power(s) for things and/or just talking to them but that when we meditate we are listening. LOL, i like that image of the dusty old phone (i imagine it as being hard, black, plastic with cords, nothin' wireless or high-tech about it, sitting off on some small wooden table - and curiously in my imagination the table is dusted and clean, it's just the phone that's been neglected.) Re: the Armenian church congregation who said they'd think about it - well i guess that's fair - one has to know what one should wish for (e.g. my initial distaste and aversion for a television advertising commercial with paid actors dressed as Buddhist monks "praying" for a full-screen color TV. Note: i don't object to Buddhists or others doing this but I felt mightily culturally offended at this representation of Buddhists and Buddhism. I know the Catholics would have a fit had they been portrayed this way for crass commercialism. Thank goddess, the Wiccans and pagans don't get offended by Halloween images and how they're routinely portrayed. It seems to me i saw a news post recently on Yahoo about a person (female of course, tho at the time I wasn't sure) who got Burned Alive in New Guinea merely for suspicion of witchcraft - sheesh! they couldn't test her for it? I mean just how much does a duck weigh? Shades of Monty Python & the holy Holy Grail!

Back on topic, oh kewl! You were just thinking aloud in print. No prob, I do that a fair bit myself. ;-)

I'm glad you're well, my friend.

P.S. a polymathic tendency sounds wonderful! LOL, I'd rather doubted peer-reviewed Wikipedia would have a clue what that is but found this instead: http://polymathictendencies.wordpress.com/ LMAO!!!!!!

You go, TCPIP! Go, good team, go! (hope you get that gaming reference)

Computing, Socialising, RPG Review 18

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