Meetings, Gaming, and Visitors

Philosophy Forum last Sunday was Dr. Bill Hall discussing Knowledge and the Singularity, which has a somewhat uncertain conclusion. It is all very well to note the development of human knowledge but the question of whether this is sufficient to deal with the critical issues facing the species was unresolved. Tuesday night was two excellent and useful presentations at Linux Users Victoria on Performance Co-Pilot and Android Security. The former presentation was excellent to the server and cluster level whereas the latter (in Paul Fenwick's enjoyable style) was great for personal applications (plus it introduced me to Pinpoint, a great tool for command-line warriors to make presentations.

Sunday afternoon was also an opportunity to run 7th Sea Freiburg which required some substantial modification to the provided plot to make sense, but with the same intent - the characters fall into financial ruin (as the foundations of their house are attacked) but also acquire significant dangerous wealth almost at the same time (discovered due to the explosion). I did enjoy starting the session for half the party with the phrase "roll for initiative" as they sat down. Thursday night's session saw the beginning final chapter of Masks of Nyarlathotep. Currently in the midst of our regular GURPS Middle Earth rescuing children in Dwarven ruins; we get a lot of that.

Caught up with strangedave and doctor_k_ who were visiting Melbourne on Friday night at the Village Bar, which really is quite a beautiful old building. Discussions were wide and varied over the evening covering childhood vaccinations, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and Glorantha. Can't say I was exactly feeling 100% the following day however.