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It's been a busy week on the academic front, with a paper submitted for the International Conference on High Performance Computing & Simulation on the issues around "cloud bursting" in HPC, followed by another for the International Conference on Advanced Computing. In addition, I was invited for my annual guest lecture in the master's level course on Cluster and Cloud Computing; a long lecture this time (about 2 hours) although the 200 or so students seemed pretty engaged with plenty of interesting questions afterwards. A curious conclusion to the week was the discovery I had been published in an IEEE journal last year, based on the request for a follow-up publication.
In after-hours activities caught up with Paula and met Verity B., at the New International Bookshop who had contributed chapters to a newly edited volume of "Wobblies of the World". Although I am not in attendance, tonight there is a tribute benefit for Simon Millar, a trade union activist who recently died. Simon and I were housemates some thirty plus years ago in Perth, and his sudden passing was really quite unexpected. Apart from our mutual interest in left-wing politics, Simon also was a gamer. He probably would have been amused by the unlucky TPK on Sunday running Eclipse Phase, and equally so by the character contortions from Thursday night's session of Exalted.
On topic thoroughly amused by an RPG designer who takes the opportunity to justifiably criticise the design of New Orleans. Rubbish maps by fiction authors for their imagined worlds are a pet hate of mine, and to see reality itself turn this on this head is quite delightful. It also says a great deal about the town planners of said city. It does bring to mind however a discussion that I had recently that my next career should be in the arts (because it would fit the Socratic triad). I wasn't sure exactly what aesthetic endeavour I would engage in, but something that would suit my existing studies would be urban planning. But that's several years in the future of course.
In after-hours activities caught up with Paula and met Verity B., at the New International Bookshop who had contributed chapters to a newly edited volume of "Wobblies of the World". Although I am not in attendance, tonight there is a tribute benefit for Simon Millar, a trade union activist who recently died. Simon and I were housemates some thirty plus years ago in Perth, and his sudden passing was really quite unexpected. Apart from our mutual interest in left-wing politics, Simon also was a gamer. He probably would have been amused by the unlucky TPK on Sunday running Eclipse Phase, and equally so by the character contortions from Thursday night's session of Exalted.
On topic thoroughly amused by an RPG designer who takes the opportunity to justifiably criticise the design of New Orleans. Rubbish maps by fiction authors for their imagined worlds are a pet hate of mine, and to see reality itself turn this on this head is quite delightful. It also says a great deal about the town planners of said city. It does bring to mind however a discussion that I had recently that my next career should be in the arts (because it would fit the Socratic triad). I wasn't sure exactly what aesthetic endeavour I would engage in, but something that would suit my existing studies would be urban planning. But that's several years in the future of course.
