Productivity in Many Realms

[tcpip]

Have just completed the first draft of a new UniMelb training course on shell scripting for HPC, which frankly is quite a lot to take in for a single day, so I'll need extensive notes as well. During the weekend also gave a presentation for Linux Users of Victoria, on GnuCOBOL: A Gnu Life for an Old Workhorse, with a command summary also available. I am tempted to delve even further into this strange archiac language, if only because of my perverse enjoyment of accounting and organisational logic (horngirl may have an interest as well).

In the aesthetic realm, did a review of 65daysofstatic's, to-be-released album for the game No Man's Sky, which has a number of great pieces and is of lasting quality overall. Also on Saturday visited Brendan E., where he treated us to the comedy-zombie film Cooties which was much better than the rating suggest, and the faux documentary, The Great Martian War. Pusing the aesthetic realm into storytelling, played Eclipse Phase on Friday night albeit with some technical issues, and tried to push some plot resolution in GURPS Middle Earth on Sunday.

For the RPG Review Cooperative, have contacted the BBC over our Watership Down poll, WotC over our 4th edition Open Game License proposal, have started submitting issues of the journal to the National Library of Australia, and have set up the drivethrurpg.com store for impending publications (no items yet, of course). The next issue of RPG Review, in the "Old School Revolution", is well underway with a special interview with Ken St. Andre.

Comments

[delphipsmith]

Finished Ready Player One this weekend. Not great literature, but a really fun wormhole into 1908s gaming nostalgia. As a child of the 80s, I highly recommend it.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Oh, thanks for that, from various reviews sounds quite fascinating. Of course, I'm sure with the title like that you meant 1980s gaming, as charming as the early 20th century was ;)

[delphipsmith]

It's a little-known fact that 1908 was in fact a banner year for gaming heh heh...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Not too far from the truth actually!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Wars

Presumably it was a playtest copy in 1908 :)

... and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books

To think that at the time that was actually a somewhat progressive point of view.

[delphipsmith]

OK, now THAT is pretty cool. Especially the bit about girl gamers :)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I encountered the sort of thinking in Freeland: A Social Anticipation which is a bit of a combination of boy's own adventure plus societal utopianism. The inevitably male protagonist only manages to fall in love with a woman who is of the special sort capable of abstract thinking!

When Clara hinted to me that I was in love with Miss Fox, I laughed at her heartily, and declared that what she took to be symptoms of my passion were merely signs of psychological interest in a woman who was capable of a genuine enthusiasm for abstract ideas.

[delphipsmith]

This book's Goodreads entry doesn't have a summary. Can I use yours?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Please, go ahead. :)

[delphipsmith]

Thanks