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Another round of courses on Linux and high performance computing completed this week, followed with another meeting with RMIT for HPC systems engineering. As always the case these are a boot-camp style, where researchers, often with little or no experience with the subject matter, start with the basics and by the end of the third day are applying their knowledge to MPI programming (which is hard). Over a few years I have honed my skills and the content of these courses, and pleasingly this has resulted in rather good course feedback. This last week was very good: 99.09% for the delivery, 96.64% for the content. Sometimes, when results like this come in, I fall under the spell that I might actually be good at teaching, and I might actually know at least a little about Linux, PBS job submission, and MPI programming. Demand for the courses is so high that they are being repeated in a fortnight.
Four gaming sessions of various sorts this week; Thursday night was Laundry Files, where we had to negotiate with Deep Ones and then prevent a rogue group releasing several hundred Shoggoths into the Bass Strait. Friday night was the science fiction horror of Eclipse Phase where we ran through Ego Hunter, which really is a superb scenario, where the tension unfolds beautifully and really captures the theme of the game. There were many opportunities for things to go seriously wrong but to the credit of the players we played damn straight and successfully. The third session, on Saturday, was actually a group Ingress event where a number of us met at the Edwardian Alexandra Gardens. Finally, today, I'm directing a session of 7th Sea Freiburg which involves a break-and-enter in the house of the most powerful man in the city in order to deliver some goods to their imprisoned wife (with swashbuckling and sorcery, of course).
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sebastianne's birthday drinks at the Little Red Pocket cocktail bar. The Japanese styled furnishings was fine, but the music (contemporary R&B) was simply overwhelming, loud, and lacking in quality. Holly is a good citoyen du monde and has been a mainstay member of the Isocracy Network and the Victorian Secular Lobby, both of which have some work to do in coming days. For the former, prior efforts (by LUV) on innovation patents have succeeded beyond original objectives. For the latter, the Victorian Parliament has made an inquiry into End of Life Choices. It seems like it will be a busy week drafting such material.
Four gaming sessions of various sorts this week; Thursday night was Laundry Files, where we had to negotiate with Deep Ones and then prevent a rogue group releasing several hundred Shoggoths into the Bass Strait. Friday night was the science fiction horror of Eclipse Phase where we ran through Ego Hunter, which really is a superb scenario, where the tension unfolds beautifully and really captures the theme of the game. There were many opportunities for things to go seriously wrong but to the credit of the players we played damn straight and successfully. The third session, on Saturday, was actually a group Ingress event where a number of us met at the Edwardian Alexandra Gardens. Finally, today, I'm directing a session of 7th Sea Freiburg which involves a break-and-enter in the house of the most powerful man in the city in order to deliver some goods to their imprisoned wife (with swashbuckling and sorcery, of course).
Spent last night at
sebastianne's birthday drinks at the Little Red Pocket cocktail bar. The Japanese styled furnishings was fine, but the music (contemporary R&B) was simply overwhelming, loud, and lacking in quality. Holly is a good citoyen du monde and has been a mainstay member of the Isocracy Network and the Victorian Secular Lobby, both of which have some work to do in coming days. For the former, prior efforts (by LUV) on innovation patents have succeeded beyond original objectives. For the latter, the Victorian Parliament has made an inquiry into End of Life Choices. It seems like it will be a busy week drafting such material.