Invasion Day Long Weekend, New Zealand IT Conferences and More

[tcpip]

When I was a teenaged Marxist, my favourite badge was a quote from the Manifesto: The working men have no country. The appeal was very much towards international worker's solidarity and against racist prejudice. Unfortunately, working people are as much - if not more so - swayed by nationalistic loyalties than other classes. In the Australian context however we are led to believe that January 26 is to be celebrated. Celebrate what? It marks the proclamation of British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of Australia. In other words, Invasion Day. Whilst some deny it the question is raised in what way wasn't it an invasion? Tell me what has happened to the diversity of indigenous cultures, now driven to extinction, and whose surviving members still suffer the entrenched structural effects of discrimination. Yet, there is outrage over the graffiti on a fake cottage. This is the effects of reified nationalism; being upset over graffiti over a building, whilst remaining silent and ignorant at the death and destruction of real people.

But of course, it was a long weekend and that does mean the opportunity to spend time with friends and loved ones. On said weekend itself we were visited by ser_pounce and hathhalla where we engaged in an afternoon of food, drink, and merrymaking - including a visit to the local bat colony by the river and a most inspired session of Cards Against Humanity. For our continuing quest to complete the cheeses of the Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch, I made liptauer as a contribution. We're down to about the last half-dozen, which includes those which are not actually cheeses at all (e.g., Ilchester, Caithness, Perle de Champagne) plus those which are somewhat difficult to acquire in Australia (Fynbo, Abertam). I have, as recently posted, made a request to the Adelaide zoological gardens for that rarest of produce, the Venezuelan Beaver Cheese.

It's been confirmed that at the end of next month I'll be visiting New Zealand to be the MC at Multicore World, which will then follow up with the workshop for Computing for the Square Kilometre Array, the world's most impressive radio telescope project (in my considered opinion). On a related topic, next Tuesday is the monthly Linux Users of Victoria meeting where Les will be speaking on Linux on non-Intel architectures , and I'll be putting together a "best of" compilation from LCA2014. This is also dovetailing with another round of three days teaching high performance computing and Linux to postgraduate researchers.

Comments

[iris]

I really need to check out Cards Against Humanity. Everyone seems to play it and it's been at every social gathering/convention I've been to. It seems like it's very easy to customize.

[tcpip]

Yes, we actually discussed customisation whilst playing. We found a Dr. Who version online, and thought that an Australian version would not go astray either.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

My Venezuelan acquaintance tells me they have imported North American beavers captive in Venezuelan zoos, so you can try your luck there as well.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is indeed the case. Perhaps I need to rustle up some of my friends in North America to become cheese smugglers. :)