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Continuing The Madness of March
Mar. 17th, 2023 04:30 pmI rather wish there was an additional week this month. That would at least give me the opportunity to voice my rather strong opinions about the ludicrous submarine purchases, obselete before they hit the water and the opportunity costs that come with them. I would also have a few, more beneficial, words to say about the Voice for First Nations people referendum, and earlier this week I attended a forum at the St Kilda Cricket Club with Senator Jana Stewart speaking, along with Josh Burns (Federal MP) and Nina Taylor (State MP) in attendance. Comments on these matters will come soon; I also have to organise an Isocracy AGM for next month on the topic of housing affordability; there are reasons for high rents, mortgage stress, and higher interest rates.
Instead, I have been buried in teaching, learning, and work. This week I ran two Linux and HPC workshops and next week I have tutorials and lectures to deliver for the University's Cluster and Cloud Computing Course. Among these, I've had some particularly tricky software installations to do, involving far too many R packages in two cases and a recent release of PyTorch (have you tried building that from source? So many dependencies, so many patch files needed). Among all this, I have buried myself in the coursework for my last Psych unit and the four Climate Science units, along with finishing the Yale University "Science of Well-Being Course" (it made very little difference to me, it would make a big difference to others). True, I am ahead in everything in this regard, but I need to be. This is one of the maddest months in recent years in terms of workload.
Still, there have been a couple of social occasions. Earlier in the week I was visited by John August, National Treasurer of the Pirate Party, who was briefly visiting from Sydney and we conversed about various matters of philosophy, politics, and some "difficult" people. Last night I had yet another visit to The Capitol Theatre (it's becoming my second home) with Erica H., to see a screening of the Hitchcock classic "Psycho", which come with an introductory lecture by no less than Professor Adam Lowenstein of Columbia University, who is on tour. Erica is probably the biggest Hitchcock fan I know, so the opportunity couldn't be missed for this rather brilliant piece of film art, and Lowenstein's lecture provided additional insight.
Instead, I have been buried in teaching, learning, and work. This week I ran two Linux and HPC workshops and next week I have tutorials and lectures to deliver for the University's Cluster and Cloud Computing Course. Among these, I've had some particularly tricky software installations to do, involving far too many R packages in two cases and a recent release of PyTorch (have you tried building that from source? So many dependencies, so many patch files needed). Among all this, I have buried myself in the coursework for my last Psych unit and the four Climate Science units, along with finishing the Yale University "Science of Well-Being Course" (it made very little difference to me, it would make a big difference to others). True, I am ahead in everything in this regard, but I need to be. This is one of the maddest months in recent years in terms of workload.
Still, there have been a couple of social occasions. Earlier in the week I was visited by John August, National Treasurer of the Pirate Party, who was briefly visiting from Sydney and we conversed about various matters of philosophy, politics, and some "difficult" people. Last night I had yet another visit to The Capitol Theatre (it's becoming my second home) with Erica H., to see a screening of the Hitchcock classic "Psycho", which come with an introductory lecture by no less than Professor Adam Lowenstein of Columbia University, who is on tour. Erica is probably the biggest Hitchcock fan I know, so the opportunity couldn't be missed for this rather brilliant piece of film art, and Lowenstein's lecture provided additional insight.