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Project Melomys, Rocknerd, New Zealand
Feb. 7th, 2020 04:25 pmIt seems that I skipped my regular beginning-of-week journal entry, and it's not surprising either. Much of my time has been spent on "Project Melomys", a day initially inspired by First Dog on the Moon's cartoon about the first mammal extinction due to climate change. FDontM predicted that we would forget about the little brown rat but, as is my wont, I marked in my diary. Then ![[facebook.com profile]](https://www.facebook.com/favicon.ico)
Nevil.KingstonBrown made the remark that Australia needs a memorial for extinct and endangered animals, and the plan was hatched. On February 18 there will be a launch of a petition to the Australian Parliament to establish such a memorial and museum, and there will be gatherings around the country to remember the Bramble Cay Melomys. A Facebook group has been established, which has over two hundred members, and various MPs and environmental groups are being contacted every day. This little brown rat is getting some traction.
In the past several days I've also made two contributions to Rocknerd. On Sunday Andy Gill of the Gang of Four died. As the recipient of his guitar when he last performed in Melbourne it was only appropriate that I write up some valedictions to his many talents in musical performance, music production, and video production. A few days later, I posted a review of Grum's Deep State, which if nothing else indicates a diversity of taste and perhaps even good taste. To add some additional colour to the mix, have purchased tickets to see Pop Will Eat Itself and Snog. Currently thinking about getting the "meet and greet" tickets for China Crisis when they visit later this year.
On Sunday I take the big silver bird to New Zealand where I will "work from home" for the next two weeks. Starting in Dunedin I'll re-enroll for my second year of my MHEd at Otago University, meet up with my supervisor, and visit my secret South Pacific base to ensure that the new tenants are looking after the mystical Lodge. After that, it will workshops and conferences for eResearchNZ, where I've been co-opted to speak on a panel about cloud computing because you always need one curmudgeon nay-sayer. Also particularly interested in the workshop on use of Singularity containers on HPC. After that I'll travel to Wellington to attend and present at Multicore World, where I'll present on Complex Problems Actually Have Complex Solutions.
In the past several days I've also made two contributions to Rocknerd. On Sunday Andy Gill of the Gang of Four died. As the recipient of his guitar when he last performed in Melbourne it was only appropriate that I write up some valedictions to his many talents in musical performance, music production, and video production. A few days later, I posted a review of Grum's Deep State, which if nothing else indicates a diversity of taste and perhaps even good taste. To add some additional colour to the mix, have purchased tickets to see Pop Will Eat Itself and Snog. Currently thinking about getting the "meet and greet" tickets for China Crisis when they visit later this year.
On Sunday I take the big silver bird to New Zealand where I will "work from home" for the next two weeks. Starting in Dunedin I'll re-enroll for my second year of my MHEd at Otago University, meet up with my supervisor, and visit my secret South Pacific base to ensure that the new tenants are looking after the mystical Lodge. After that, it will workshops and conferences for eResearchNZ, where I've been co-opted to speak on a panel about cloud computing because you always need one curmudgeon nay-sayer. Also particularly interested in the workshop on use of Singularity containers on HPC. After that I'll travel to Wellington to attend and present at Multicore World, where I'll present on Complex Problems Actually Have Complex Solutions.
