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It's getting late at night and I'm preparing myself for a trip tomorrow morning at stupid o'clock across the country for a short visit to Perth. It is primarily a family affair with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caseopaya's brother reaching a significant decade of his life, and caseopaya (under a medical recommendation, no less) needs to attend. I'm trying to arrange a catch up with a few people on Sunday at The Dome in Maylands, but unlike a number of my past visits, there are no plans for a big get-together and feasting. In any case, I do get the sense (from vague scans at the numbers) that we are almost on the edge of a breakout of the novel coronavirus here in Australia. On that note, impressive and brave decisions by the Swancom committee who decided to cancel this year, and likewise for Chaosium Con in Sydney. The capacity of hospitals to manage a large influx of patients is dubious at best, and the hit to the world economy is already significant. Perhaps just as well I quietly shifted my superannuation from "high growth" to "stable" investments this week.
One of the things I am planning in the Perth visit is delivering a few copies of Cow-Orkers in the Scary Devil Monastry to backers in the Kickstarter campaign from a couple of years ago. I've also been working hard on getting the very late 45th issue of RPG Review out, and having written a few thousand words of reviews in the past couple of days, including a very rare supplement (Saurians) for Chilvary & Sorcery and a combined review of the three volumes of Role Aids books, Monsters of Myth and Legend. I plan to finish GURPS Monsters on the plane trip, and a review I started whilst in New Zealand on Monsters and Other Childish Things, which is a bit of a change of pace. If I can, I'll slot in Hunted: The Reckoning as that really is the most disconcerting of "monster" books - it involves humans full of theological righteousness, the worst monsters of all.
Speaking of New Zealand matters, I've had a couple of virtual meetings in the past two days with people across The Ditch. The first was a meeting organised by NESI to help re-build the rather dilapidated state of HPC Carpentry. It was a pretty well-attended meeting, about twenty people in all from several institutions, and with many volunteers at this early stage to carry out the various tasks. Only a few, I note, have put their hands up for the critical role of content production, however, so we'll see how that goes. The second education meeting was a tutorial for MHed 503, Research in Higher Education, obviously a lot smaller. The group discussed a paper on Student Partnerships and in particular the different interpretations from epistemic approaches and ontological assumptions. The general consensus was it wasn't exactly a great paper, but we really did get into destroying it. I was particularly kind in offering a conclusion which suggested further studies on all the things that they left out, which at least one other person picked up on. There are times, not often enough, where my withering criticism in intellectual matters is delivered in such a manner and is no less poignant than a frontal assault. It is something that I should work on, as it was quite enjoyable.
caseopaya's brother reaching a significant decade of his life, and caseopaya (under a medical recommendation, no less) needs to attend. I'm trying to arrange a catch up with a few people on Sunday at The Dome in Maylands, but unlike a number of my past visits, there are no plans for a big get-together and feasting. In any case, I do get the sense (from vague scans at the numbers) that we are almost on the edge of a breakout of the novel coronavirus here in Australia. On that note, impressive and brave decisions by the Swancom committee who decided to cancel this year, and likewise for Chaosium Con in Sydney. The capacity of hospitals to manage a large influx of patients is dubious at best, and the hit to the world economy is already significant. Perhaps just as well I quietly shifted my superannuation from "high growth" to "stable" investments this week.One of the things I am planning in the Perth visit is delivering a few copies of Cow-Orkers in the Scary Devil Monastry to backers in the Kickstarter campaign from a couple of years ago. I've also been working hard on getting the very late 45th issue of RPG Review out, and having written a few thousand words of reviews in the past couple of days, including a very rare supplement (Saurians) for Chilvary & Sorcery and a combined review of the three volumes of Role Aids books, Monsters of Myth and Legend. I plan to finish GURPS Monsters on the plane trip, and a review I started whilst in New Zealand on Monsters and Other Childish Things, which is a bit of a change of pace. If I can, I'll slot in Hunted: The Reckoning as that really is the most disconcerting of "monster" books - it involves humans full of theological righteousness, the worst monsters of all.
Speaking of New Zealand matters, I've had a couple of virtual meetings in the past two days with people across The Ditch. The first was a meeting organised by NESI to help re-build the rather dilapidated state of HPC Carpentry. It was a pretty well-attended meeting, about twenty people in all from several institutions, and with many volunteers at this early stage to carry out the various tasks. Only a few, I note, have put their hands up for the critical role of content production, however, so we'll see how that goes. The second education meeting was a tutorial for MHed 503, Research in Higher Education, obviously a lot smaller. The group discussed a paper on Student Partnerships and in particular the different interpretations from epistemic approaches and ontological assumptions. The general consensus was it wasn't exactly a great paper, but we really did get into destroying it. I was particularly kind in offering a conclusion which suggested further studies on all the things that they left out, which at least one other person picked up on. There are times, not often enough, where my withering criticism in intellectual matters is delivered in such a manner and is no less poignant than a frontal assault. It is something that I should work on, as it was quite enjoyable.
