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Spent the better part of Saturday the ALP National Conference, which was a pretty average affair. The new national policy is largely OK, especially when considering a party that is dominated by a socially conservative wing with a large liberal-socalist internal opposition. Much of it was a creature of compromise (e.g., the two state-"solution" for Israel-Palestine, the passing to another committee the role of the socialist objective, the 'conscience' vote following by a binding vote relating to marriage equality). It was particularly good in relation to climate change mitigation. Even most of the asylum seeker policy was tolerable with a doubling of the humanitarian intake (by 2025), the abolition of TPVs, but also accepting offshore processing. The three-day notification by the leader, Bill Shorten, to accept boat turnbacks was an ambush, which has shored up his otherwise vapid leadership but at the cost of total loss of trust among those on the left. He'll be struggling to staff the booths on election day.
It's been a busy week for gaming; last Sunday week was GURPS Middle-Earth where we went through the second session of The Battle of Four Armies at Almost Helm's Deep. On Thursday played in a our regular session of Laundry Files which is pretty epic involving nano-bot shoggoths whilst fighting zombies on an oil-rig. On Friday night joined a new gaming group in Westgarth who are running Eclipse Phase, which I make a welcome return to - I get to play my social-democratic Octopoid. Sunday was 7th Sea Freiburg which has been skipped for a month due to familial duties. The session was more of tying up some lose knots, but also the planning to invade the home of the villain banker-landlord who is keeping his mail-order bride imprisoned. Some time has also been spent on further work on Spirit and Sword, especially on redesigning the activity spheres to incorporate environmental as well as occupational positions.
I have been running myself a bit ragged at work of late, and really need to slow down, especially if I'm going to be able to run courses next week with any sense of effectiveness. There's been a mountain of enrolment applications from the University of Melbourne, received almost immediately after advertising, but there is still some doubt on whether they are prepared to pony up for the courses. It makes enormous sense for them to do so; researchers who are trained in HPC finish their research earlier. But future benefits, even significant ones, often lose when confronted with short term costs.
It's been a busy week for gaming; last Sunday week was GURPS Middle-Earth where we went through the second session of The Battle of Four Armies at Almost Helm's Deep. On Thursday played in a our regular session of Laundry Files which is pretty epic involving nano-bot shoggoths whilst fighting zombies on an oil-rig. On Friday night joined a new gaming group in Westgarth who are running Eclipse Phase, which I make a welcome return to - I get to play my social-democratic Octopoid. Sunday was 7th Sea Freiburg which has been skipped for a month due to familial duties. The session was more of tying up some lose knots, but also the planning to invade the home of the villain banker-landlord who is keeping his mail-order bride imprisoned. Some time has also been spent on further work on Spirit and Sword, especially on redesigning the activity spheres to incorporate environmental as well as occupational positions.
I have been running myself a bit ragged at work of late, and really need to slow down, especially if I'm going to be able to run courses next week with any sense of effectiveness. There's been a mountain of enrolment applications from the University of Melbourne, received almost immediately after advertising, but there is still some doubt on whether they are prepared to pony up for the courses. It makes enormous sense for them to do so; researchers who are trained in HPC finish their research earlier. But future benefits, even significant ones, often lose when confronted with short term costs.
