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Settlement for my new apartment was on Friday, putting me in the frankly ridiculous situation of currently owning three places. Of course, I still have to move all my possessions and prepare the Willsmere house for sale, and I'm actually sufficiently cash poor at the moment that I can't do this right away (my conveyancing agent wanted their fees and stamp duty paid up-front, so that's $20K down the drain). Still, under our current law, buying is so much more sensible than renting if you have the up-front cash for a hefty deposit. Our housing and land system is so broken in favour of the landlord class, against new developments and renters, that it is almost always utterly irrational to rent as a matter of choice. All this could have changed for the better in the 2019 Federal election, but a campaign of fear, uncertainty, and doubt put an end to that. It's all a very illustrative example to me of what I utterly hate about politics - the irrationality and rejection of public welfare, the lies by vested interests and their ignorant allies, the power games - and the recognition of the utter necessity of engagement in it. It is all very well to have good relationships with your friends and build helpful communities, but all of that can be undone with a stroke of a pen and even greater welfare could be generated with the same pen. As Martin Luther King Jnr said: "What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic."
Whilst on the topic of love and while I should be happy with the new life ahead of me, the opposite is the case. I have been struck by a horrible experience of utter emptiness from correspondence earlier this week. In a continued streak of tumultuousness in affairs of the heart, it is again mia koramikino (as the Esperantists say). It has left me feeling utterly gutted, leaving but an empty shell of a person. The sculpture in Geneva, Melancholie by Albert Gyorgy, quite captures how I feel. I find it particularly poignant that the head is still attached; the thinking stoic mind separated from the visceral romantic body. However, a day after this correspondence, we had an old friend in the form of Rob L., visit. Rob runs a brewery and as an expert on such matters and brought over some local beers. It turned into "German night", as I cooked up kaese spaetzle and pfitzauf, and concluded the evening with mummelsee geist alcohol. It was lovely conversation, providing a sense of physical and social fullness, and yet one that contrasted so strongly with my emotional state. Naturally enough, I will write more about the latter, when I have composed myself.
I must conclude on a work event that I was responsible for organising; "Sam Blake and the Zodiac Mindwarp". Whilst it was restricted to staff of Research Computing Services and some selected researchers close to that body some notes can be provided about the event. Sam was part of small international team that cracked the 340 Cipher after fifty years by the Zodiac Killer, and some of that work was done the Spartan HPC system. I remember the news quite well because it's not every day that the system you work with effectively has a news embargo requested by the FBI! Sam's presentation did cover a range of issues in cryptography and the cipher in particular, along with the significant international coverage of the news, and illustrated a few example scripts that he used on the system. I pointed out very quickly with a few tweaks we could have made them run them a couple of orders of magnitude quicker. Who knew that communication could be so important even in technical fields? Anyway, there is future work that could be carried out and I hope to work a lot closer with Sam to see this to realisation.
Whilst on the topic of love and while I should be happy with the new life ahead of me, the opposite is the case. I have been struck by a horrible experience of utter emptiness from correspondence earlier this week. In a continued streak of tumultuousness in affairs of the heart, it is again mia koramikino (as the Esperantists say). It has left me feeling utterly gutted, leaving but an empty shell of a person. The sculpture in Geneva, Melancholie by Albert Gyorgy, quite captures how I feel. I find it particularly poignant that the head is still attached; the thinking stoic mind separated from the visceral romantic body. However, a day after this correspondence, we had an old friend in the form of Rob L., visit. Rob runs a brewery and as an expert on such matters and brought over some local beers. It turned into "German night", as I cooked up kaese spaetzle and pfitzauf, and concluded the evening with mummelsee geist alcohol. It was lovely conversation, providing a sense of physical and social fullness, and yet one that contrasted so strongly with my emotional state. Naturally enough, I will write more about the latter, when I have composed myself.
I must conclude on a work event that I was responsible for organising; "Sam Blake and the Zodiac Mindwarp". Whilst it was restricted to staff of Research Computing Services and some selected researchers close to that body some notes can be provided about the event. Sam was part of small international team that cracked the 340 Cipher after fifty years by the Zodiac Killer, and some of that work was done the Spartan HPC system. I remember the news quite well because it's not every day that the system you work with effectively has a news embargo requested by the FBI! Sam's presentation did cover a range of issues in cryptography and the cipher in particular, along with the significant international coverage of the news, and illustrated a few example scripts that he used on the system. I pointed out very quickly with a few tweaks we could have made them run them a couple of orders of magnitude quicker. Who knew that communication could be so important even in technical fields? Anyway, there is future work that could be carried out and I hope to work a lot closer with Sam to see this to realisation.
