2014 In Retrospective
Jan. 1st, 2015 12:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcpipAnother year has come to a close and with it another 'annual report' of activities which provides the opportunity for assessment and evaluation. When I look back on it I realise that I actually did do a lot, albeit piecemeal. There were no real 'big hitters' for 2014, which is partially why I have a sense of dissatisfaction with myself over the year, even though it was very productive. I didn't actually make any real headway against the major projects that I wanted to work on, instead I exceeded in many minor projects instead. Which an enormous reminder to improve my internal discipline and concentrate on more strategic goals rather than matters of tactical immediacy. This all said, when looking back on the year, I can derive a summary of eight major areas of activity.
1. Music
It became a very active year for music, especially in the latter quarter after my review for Pop Will Eat Itself was noticed by Carbie of The Dwarf. Although I did no musical related writing up to August, from that point onwards there was a flurry of activity on Rocknerd and The Dwarf, with 8 live reviews, 5 album reviews, 1 trivia piece, and 2 musicology articles (another pending publication). Links to the collection is available on my main website, with my personal highlights being the Radio Birdman and Yes shows. I suspect this is going to continue at the same pace in 2015; with eclectic knowledge and tastes in the subject I find that I can put together articles on the subject quite quickly, especially when coupled with industry criticism. Most importantly, this year I have become much more familiar with segmentation and compositional analysis in both overall form and particular musical aspects.
2. RPGs
Gaming-wise, it wasn't until the second half of the year that I submitted anything to RPG.net; nevertheless there are five published reviews of gaming material, plus one further pending, one would work backwards from the links from the latest published review for that list. In actual play, ran around ten sessions of Werewolf : The Yugoslav Wars before putting that on hold in favour of 7th Sea Freiburg, which I've run two sessions so far. I think I ran over twenty sessions of The Great Pendragon Campaign over the year, and a similar number of sessions of Masks of Nyarlathotep. Also played in about twenty sessions of GURPS Middle Earth and about a dozen of Space 1889 Ubiquity. The year also saw three issues of RPG Review being released, one of which was a double-issue. Personal highlights included my ten-thousand word article on The History of Dungeons & Dragons, and Twenty Amazing Game Worlds, although it was also quite a thrill to interview Lewis Pulsipher and Tadashi Ehara. Mention must also be made that my online store has done quite well, and in far greater proportion than my efforts in that direction.
3. Ingress
Almost exactly a year ago I started playing Ingress, spending an hour a day in play, mainly during the sluggish public transport travel to and from work, but also with the notorious advantage of 'couch' and 'desk' portals. The game has a good backstory, an enjoyable social and exploration element, but some significant game-design problems which I have covered in some detail in the past, which ultimately lead to play being more habitual than a challenge. During the year I've made it to level 14; with a very rapid rise recently - from 10 to 14 in six days - due to reaching break-points in the badges system. However based on the current rates of play it will be at least three years to the next break point, which is an inducement to back off.
4. Philosophy
The Philosophy Forum had eleven meetings and six dinner discussions during the year. At the meetings - even with attempts to encourage more roundtable discussion - I was responsible for either presenting in full or leading seven of them, with a bit of a bias towards ontological and epistemological issues; I quite happy with the more anthropological presentation on Magical Thinking. In addition to this I have two addresses at the Melbourne Unitarian Church, both of which were of a more psychological flavour, both of which I was quite happy with - Small Gods on the Pale Blue Dot and Rational Thinking and Emotional Attachments: How can we admit error?. All of these presentations can be found on my 'blog at the Lightbringers website.
5. Politics
It has been quite a year for political activities. From an Australian perspective, we have experienced the first year of Tony Abbott's LNP government, and whilst in such a short space of time one fears hyperbole in describing it as the worst in living memory, the evidence keeps mounting up. It is perhaps with some relief and balance to see that my former immediate manager, Daniel Andrews, was elected on the state level as the Labor Premier. I'll readily admit that I overworked myself in that campaign, both for the Australian Labor Party (as Kew branch treasurer, Kew SECC treasurer and, at the end of the year, Kooyong FEA policy development officer) and also for the Victorian Secular Lobby, where I organised a fundraising and leaflet distribution campaign. Overall, I personally leafleted close to 5,000 households, worked for a day on a polling booth, attended several functions, and donated several hundred dollars in the course the campaign. This is additon to being the chief organiser for the Isocracy Network and the Victorian Secular Lobby which held four meetings, a highlight being the well-attended Isocracy AGM. On the Isocracy Network website I contributed 8 'blog entries and 4 articles, and on the VSL website, I made every effort to keep the relevant collection of news items up-to-date. Finally mention must be made of the passing of Frans Timmerman, a political mentor and leader in my early days in the ALP whose loyalty and careful disposition has left a enduring impression on me.
6. Linux and Free Software
In my final and fourth year as president of Linux Users of Victoria, there was eight main meetings to convene, eight beginners workshops, and the Annual Penguin Picnic. LUV was also a contributor to Software Freedom Day, although this was the first time since it began that we were not the main organisers in Melbourne. A highlight was organising a miniconference and installfest in the La Trobe Valley. My decision not to accept another term as president of LUV I think was for the right reasons, and the incoming president, Andrew Pam, is the right person to take the helm. In addition to the convening and organisational duties, I also presented to LUV on four occassions, along with two presentations to the CPA Young Professionals on Linux and open-source tools, and also at Software Freedom Day. All of these can be found in the relevant section on my main website. As the committment to Linux and Free Software is partially technical and partially social, it was quite a delight to see that the Australian Government Advisory Panel on Intellectual Property, after a two year investigation, agreed that innovation software patents should be ended. In addition to these LUV-based activities, I also attended Linux Conference Australia in Perth early in the year with the role as Community Liaison Officer, where I met some of the remains of Murphy, the first computer I owned. Shortly following that was a journey to New Zealand to act as MC for MulticoreWorld 2014 and then staying on for the Computing for the Square Kilometre Array.
7. Work, Conference Presentations, and Higher Education
This was my seventh year of working at the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (trading as V3 Alliance), continuing in my wide-ranging role of HPC Linux systems administrator, trainer and educator, help-desk coordinator, project manager, and quality management system coordinator. In addition to the usual and often hair-tearing operational duties that comes such roles, I conducted some 23 days of training post-graduate researchers in HPC Linux, PBS job submission, and parallel programming, ran a thorough internal quality audit of the company which led to a subsequent external audit that reconfirmed our ISO 9001:2008 certification, along with the . On top of this I presented at two conferences, the International Conference on Computational Science and the Australasian eResearch Conference, in both cases on issues on teaching of high performance computing skills to a postgraduate audience. The ICCS conference was particularly important as an international "class one" conference. Further, I have received confirmation that my abstracts have been accepted for two further conferences next year following the same theme; The Higher Education Technology Agenda conference and eResearchNZ. I am also particularly pleased to having an ongoing collaboration with John Gustafson in his desire to have UNUMs implemented. As our workplace expands our scope to a wider number of interstate cluster installations and maintenance roles, I have six interstate and international journeys for teaching and presentations in the first few months of 2015 planned.
8. Personal
By almost all considerations everyone goes well on the personal front. My enduring relationship with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caseopaya continues to bring great happiness to my life and I have enormous respect and thanks for the assistance and love she offers. I find myself so often in the company of delightfully intelligent and witty people of gentle and irreverent dispositions, leading to such delightful events as completing the cheeses of the Monty Python Cheese Shop Sketch (except one, which generated hilarity in its own right). Modest improvements in assets and net revenue in personal finances have continued for a second year in a row which is never a bad thing. It has been a sad year, but as predicted, for the animal companions in the house with rodents Lucky, Picador, Prankster, and eventually our adopted visitor Suki, all succumbing to the visit of Thanatos - Mac the cat however continues a constant and quite silly furry friend. Finally, I must admit this year, for the first time, I've really felt my fitness and energy levels decline - never have I felt so old and tired. I am hoping that it is just a temporary issue, and that I can fight it off with extra exercise - but my inner pessimist is saying otherwise.
Actually, when it comes down to it, I really did do a lot last year and maybe I shouldn't be so harsh on myself. I should just concentrate more on fewer but bigger projects in 2015. Happy new year!
1. Music
It became a very active year for music, especially in the latter quarter after my review for Pop Will Eat Itself was noticed by Carbie of The Dwarf. Although I did no musical related writing up to August, from that point onwards there was a flurry of activity on Rocknerd and The Dwarf, with 8 live reviews, 5 album reviews, 1 trivia piece, and 2 musicology articles (another pending publication). Links to the collection is available on my main website, with my personal highlights being the Radio Birdman and Yes shows. I suspect this is going to continue at the same pace in 2015; with eclectic knowledge and tastes in the subject I find that I can put together articles on the subject quite quickly, especially when coupled with industry criticism. Most importantly, this year I have become much more familiar with segmentation and compositional analysis in both overall form and particular musical aspects.
2. RPGs
Gaming-wise, it wasn't until the second half of the year that I submitted anything to RPG.net; nevertheless there are five published reviews of gaming material, plus one further pending, one would work backwards from the links from the latest published review for that list. In actual play, ran around ten sessions of Werewolf : The Yugoslav Wars before putting that on hold in favour of 7th Sea Freiburg, which I've run two sessions so far. I think I ran over twenty sessions of The Great Pendragon Campaign over the year, and a similar number of sessions of Masks of Nyarlathotep. Also played in about twenty sessions of GURPS Middle Earth and about a dozen of Space 1889 Ubiquity. The year also saw three issues of RPG Review being released, one of which was a double-issue. Personal highlights included my ten-thousand word article on The History of Dungeons & Dragons, and Twenty Amazing Game Worlds, although it was also quite a thrill to interview Lewis Pulsipher and Tadashi Ehara. Mention must also be made that my online store has done quite well, and in far greater proportion than my efforts in that direction.
3. Ingress
Almost exactly a year ago I started playing Ingress, spending an hour a day in play, mainly during the sluggish public transport travel to and from work, but also with the notorious advantage of 'couch' and 'desk' portals. The game has a good backstory, an enjoyable social and exploration element, but some significant game-design problems which I have covered in some detail in the past, which ultimately lead to play being more habitual than a challenge. During the year I've made it to level 14; with a very rapid rise recently - from 10 to 14 in six days - due to reaching break-points in the badges system. However based on the current rates of play it will be at least three years to the next break point, which is an inducement to back off.
4. Philosophy
The Philosophy Forum had eleven meetings and six dinner discussions during the year. At the meetings - even with attempts to encourage more roundtable discussion - I was responsible for either presenting in full or leading seven of them, with a bit of a bias towards ontological and epistemological issues; I quite happy with the more anthropological presentation on Magical Thinking. In addition to this I have two addresses at the Melbourne Unitarian Church, both of which were of a more psychological flavour, both of which I was quite happy with - Small Gods on the Pale Blue Dot and Rational Thinking and Emotional Attachments: How can we admit error?. All of these presentations can be found on my 'blog at the Lightbringers website.
5. Politics
It has been quite a year for political activities. From an Australian perspective, we have experienced the first year of Tony Abbott's LNP government, and whilst in such a short space of time one fears hyperbole in describing it as the worst in living memory, the evidence keeps mounting up. It is perhaps with some relief and balance to see that my former immediate manager, Daniel Andrews, was elected on the state level as the Labor Premier. I'll readily admit that I overworked myself in that campaign, both for the Australian Labor Party (as Kew branch treasurer, Kew SECC treasurer and, at the end of the year, Kooyong FEA policy development officer) and also for the Victorian Secular Lobby, where I organised a fundraising and leaflet distribution campaign. Overall, I personally leafleted close to 5,000 households, worked for a day on a polling booth, attended several functions, and donated several hundred dollars in the course the campaign. This is additon to being the chief organiser for the Isocracy Network and the Victorian Secular Lobby which held four meetings, a highlight being the well-attended Isocracy AGM. On the Isocracy Network website I contributed 8 'blog entries and 4 articles, and on the VSL website, I made every effort to keep the relevant collection of news items up-to-date. Finally mention must be made of the passing of Frans Timmerman, a political mentor and leader in my early days in the ALP whose loyalty and careful disposition has left a enduring impression on me.
6. Linux and Free Software
In my final and fourth year as president of Linux Users of Victoria, there was eight main meetings to convene, eight beginners workshops, and the Annual Penguin Picnic. LUV was also a contributor to Software Freedom Day, although this was the first time since it began that we were not the main organisers in Melbourne. A highlight was organising a miniconference and installfest in the La Trobe Valley. My decision not to accept another term as president of LUV I think was for the right reasons, and the incoming president, Andrew Pam, is the right person to take the helm. In addition to the convening and organisational duties, I also presented to LUV on four occassions, along with two presentations to the CPA Young Professionals on Linux and open-source tools, and also at Software Freedom Day. All of these can be found in the relevant section on my main website. As the committment to Linux and Free Software is partially technical and partially social, it was quite a delight to see that the Australian Government Advisory Panel on Intellectual Property, after a two year investigation, agreed that innovation software patents should be ended. In addition to these LUV-based activities, I also attended Linux Conference Australia in Perth early in the year with the role as Community Liaison Officer, where I met some of the remains of Murphy, the first computer I owned. Shortly following that was a journey to New Zealand to act as MC for MulticoreWorld 2014 and then staying on for the Computing for the Square Kilometre Array.
7. Work, Conference Presentations, and Higher Education
This was my seventh year of working at the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (trading as V3 Alliance), continuing in my wide-ranging role of HPC Linux systems administrator, trainer and educator, help-desk coordinator, project manager, and quality management system coordinator. In addition to the usual and often hair-tearing operational duties that comes such roles, I conducted some 23 days of training post-graduate researchers in HPC Linux, PBS job submission, and parallel programming, ran a thorough internal quality audit of the company which led to a subsequent external audit that reconfirmed our ISO 9001:2008 certification, along with the . On top of this I presented at two conferences, the International Conference on Computational Science and the Australasian eResearch Conference, in both cases on issues on teaching of high performance computing skills to a postgraduate audience. The ICCS conference was particularly important as an international "class one" conference. Further, I have received confirmation that my abstracts have been accepted for two further conferences next year following the same theme; The Higher Education Technology Agenda conference and eResearchNZ. I am also particularly pleased to having an ongoing collaboration with John Gustafson in his desire to have UNUMs implemented. As our workplace expands our scope to a wider number of interstate cluster installations and maintenance roles, I have six interstate and international journeys for teaching and presentations in the first few months of 2015 planned.
8. Personal
By almost all considerations everyone goes well on the personal front. My enduring relationship with
caseopaya continues to bring great happiness to my life and I have enormous respect and thanks for the assistance and love she offers. I find myself so often in the company of delightfully intelligent and witty people of gentle and irreverent dispositions, leading to such delightful events as completing the cheeses of the Monty Python Cheese Shop Sketch (except one, which generated hilarity in its own right). Modest improvements in assets and net revenue in personal finances have continued for a second year in a row which is never a bad thing. It has been a sad year, but as predicted, for the animal companions in the house with rodents Lucky, Picador, Prankster, and eventually our adopted visitor Suki, all succumbing to the visit of Thanatos - Mac the cat however continues a constant and quite silly furry friend. Finally, I must admit this year, for the first time, I've really felt my fitness and energy levels decline - never have I felt so old and tired. I am hoping that it is just a temporary issue, and that I can fight it off with extra exercise - but my inner pessimist is saying otherwise.Actually, when it comes down to it, I really did do a lot last year and maybe I shouldn't be so harsh on myself. I should just concentrate more on fewer but bigger projects in 2015. Happy new year!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-02-01 06:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-01 10:44 pm (UTC)The problem I think I've been having is the numerous small tasks are complete in themselves and not part of a bigger plan.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-02 03:31 am (UTC)And I sympathise on lots of small things that aren't part of the bigger picture. Can they be patchworked together to make a useful Thing that they are leading towards?
no subject
Date: 2015-02-02 03:40 am (UTC)Mind you, fellow project managers look at me like I'm an alien when I say that I can follow dependencies from the information given in a plain-text file.
> Can they be patchworked together to make a useful Thing that they are leading towards?
Interesting that was what I was thinking of after your first comment. See what you did?!
no subject
Date: 2015-01-01 04:51 am (UTC)A most productive year. Looking foreward to seeing more of you in 2015.
no subject
Date: 2015-01-01 09:40 pm (UTC)Will be good to catch up again soon.
no subject
Date: 2015-01-01 08:53 am (UTC)Have a healthy and successful new year, dude!
no subject
Date: 2015-01-01 09:45 pm (UTC)But really I should be writing more books .. plus for the first time in a few years I didn't finish a degree of some sort.
no subject
Date: 2015-01-01 11:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-01 11:47 pm (UTC)