Memoro MMXVII, Praedico MMXVIII
Jan. 5th, 2018 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcpipThe New Year brings an opportunity for reflection on past activities, and planning for the year to come. For once I am going to be careful not to take up too many new tasks but rather concentrate on those things that I still have outstanding. It's been a good year overall, and I'm hoping that this coming year I'll tie up a few loose ends.
1. Work and Linux
Memoro, this was my second year as the HPC Training and Support Officer at the University of Melbourne. At the beginning of the year I transitioned from being on a renewable fixed-term contract to a permanent staff member. I had planned on attending four conferences for the year; I attended up attending nine (Wellington, Frankfurt, Paris, Perth, Melbourne (twice), Brisbane, Auckland, Sydney), and giving presentations at five of them (two with German co-authors), along with an additional five presentations for Linux Users of Victoria, plus a guest lecture for the University's cluster and cloud computing course, so eleven presentations in all. The New Zealand visits included firming a good relationship with the fascinating work that Nyriad is engaged in.
There was also the regular training days I conducted as expected, including specialist classes. I didn't finish the VPAC books that I had planned to do, but one, Supercomputing with Linux, ready for the printers. In addition, my chapter in Stig Telfer's book on HPC and OpenStack was updated for a new edition. The GPGPU expansion to Spartan, which was to put our system in the Top 500 of the world's computer systems, didn't quite go as planned due to a vendor's network card issues. The new system did involve staff from other parts of the University and I was given a degree of team and project management over the process. I am, again, deeply in debt to the immense technical skills of my colleagues, Linh V., Daniel T., and Chris S.
Praedico, that the issues surrounding Spartan network's speeds will be resolved (either by expansion or replacement) but in the meantime we'll be able bring researchers on to the new partition as nealy all tasks are single-node. An increasing amount of the group management tasks will fall in my direction, and I suspect that in the first quarter of 2018 the title "Senior" will be added to my job title. I'll continue with the same number of lessons as last year (with perhaps a GPU programming course), but with a reduced number of conferences overall, although there is an additional one (PASC) in Basel, Switzerland, consecutive with TERATEC (Paris), and ISC (Frankfurt). Rather than the perfectionism and density of content that I have aspired to in the first VPAC publication, this year I'll concentrate on getting the remaining books into a publishable state. I also suspect that I will give a similar number of presentations at Linux Users of Victoria.
2. Politics
Memoro, the two political groups I've initiated, the Isocracy Network and the Victorian Secular Lobby, are both doing well, albeit far smaller that they deserve simply due to time constraints. I reduced my written contributions in this regard (eight articles, twenty-three 'blog posts, including the ALP Platform Review), but was pleased to see the overall content go up due to the input of others. I couldn't keep up with The Shambling Mound series. Again four meetings hosted for the year, some good coordination with Greens and social liberals (as expected) and with some good overall results for marriage equality, voluntary assisted dying, and a refocussing in the Labor Party on industrial issues. I also ended up with a few days of some national media coverage concerning a doctor giving some rather dangerous opinions. Oh, and I can have some vicarious sense of success withreddragdiva whose publication Attack of the Fifty Foot Blockchain was released at just the right time. I hope that my own contributions to that publication (which emphasised economic theory than news or technology) were somewhat useful.
Praedico that the planned ISSN and ISBN-level publications for the Isocracy Network will see the light of day (especially now we have an official editor, in the form of Stephen S.). I believe there will be at least three publications in the year, one on Syria and Syrian refugees (which I will edit), one on Australia's former Deputy Prime Minister, Jim Cairns (which I have already written, years ago, but never published), and a Esperanto for Anarchists, which I am currently writing, and I must say is actually a really fun project. Existing activities were a lot of the "here and now" is being done by younger supporters whilst I move to the strategic level makes sense. I just need more younger blood in both organisations who want to take up leadership roles! Which means that is the key objective of the year.
3. Gaming
Memoro, that this was the second year of the RPG Review Cooperative which saw the release of four issues (33-36), a total of 256 pages of content, plus, of course, the publication of Papers & Paychecks, the culmination of a thirty year joke. The cooperative now has a library of several hundred items and is a stable and sound position. We've had monthly movie nights and have close to twenty gaming groups meeting with our members. In actual play, I had plenty of Eclipse Phase, Papers & Paychecks (of course), Laundry Files, Elric!, Megatraveller, HeroQuest, and most recently, some old-fashioned RuneQuest, among others. Apart from my editorial work for the RPG Review journal, I wrote nine articles, conducted three interviews, and had an additional fourteen reviews published on RPG.net.
Praedico that there will be another four issues of RPG Review published, however I will be stepping down as editor as Andrei N., will be taking over for the next issue or so (with a transition period). The Cooperative has its AGM in a fortnight; I suspect the group will grow slightly and will have additional publications. But I suspect it is going to have a more stable year rather than a year of substantial growth like the previous two. The Cow-Orkers supplement is well on its way for publishing and the plan is to have that ready by the end of the month. I am reasonably sure that my Eclipse Phase and HeroQuest Glorantha games will finish by the middle of this year; I am not sure exactly what I have planned next. I am tempted to suggest Harnmaster or Swordbearer.
4. Philosophy, Languages, and Other Academia
Memoro I convened around eight meetings of The Philosophy Forum and gave two presentations myself, one on quantum physics and the other on race theory. At the end of the year I stepped own from that role after the better part of fifteen years or so, and David Miller has taken up the role. No other similar presentations, excepting taking one address at the Unitarian church, and for the third year in a row, no additional degrees. I didn't complete any additional language trees on Duolingo either, but rather continued - on a daily basis - improving my familiarity in Esperanto, French, German, and Spanish, all of which are hovering around the 65% fluency on Duolingo's questionable scale. I also took the opportunity to revise my knowledge of Tetum, and made a couple of serious attempts with standard Chinese, although its use of a logographic script is an endless source of frustration.
Praedico that I'll complete the skill trees for Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Chinese, whilst working on some further Esperanto and Tetum projects. Perhaps the year after I will do Arabic, and that will be the end of it. It is not possible, alas, for me to learn all the languages of the world as much as I love them (my interest in Breton is something I will try to curtail - and will probably fail at doing so). This year it really about time that I completed another degree so that will certainly be on the agenda for this year (maybe even two), but it won't be until mid-year. Also, after all those years on The Philosophy Forum it is certainly about time that I sought publication in that area as well for 2019 - Beacon Press is a very good candidate.
5. Music and Film
Memoro I am still attending gigs and writing reviews for Rocknerd, albeit only four completed this year - The Residents, Peter Hook and The Light, the socialist and Juggalo-socialist crossover, and the Blade Runner 2049 (plus a film review on Livejournal, no less). There is a couple of other reviews in the works, including from the SNOG and Severed Heads concert attended. In the meantime The Astor has become even more of a second home than usual, visiting the place more than once a month, with a particular highlight being the Tarkovsky festival that they had early in the year.
Praedico that there will be several reviews based on concerts attended and new(ish) albums. Very high on the agenda is The Chameleons, whom I've been a bit nuts over for decades and who are finally touring Australia in ten days. I might go see PWEI as well, although if I get the "meet and greet" tickets again they might think I'm stalking them. I have also just made a pitch to Filink, so there might be some of material there this year as well.
6. Personal
This year so the second European tour in as many of years with the ever-practical companion![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caseopaya, which included visits to the Rhine, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Mainz, and Paris (finally!), and a fleeting visit to Bangkok. Among the three New Zealand visits I had the opportunity to visit Hobbiton and Farewell Spit. The Paris visit was almost entirely spent on the left bank and the southern half of the city - this coming year (as I can't miss TERATEC) the north will receive more attention. The Rhine trip was really quite great, and of course seeing the Stuttgart side of the family is always a great joy. Once again, Dreamwidth provides a summary of these journeys.
The three visits to Perth were of course great opportunities to catch up with old, true, and devastatingly clever friends, although attending two funerals over there - one for my old friend Erica W., and the other forcaseopaya's mother was a less than ideal circumstances. In between those there was the funeral for our dear friend usekh. It was good to have one last hurrah after the event as a birthday-wake, and of course, his collection of RPGs have found their way as a memorial wing in the RPG Review Cooperative library - and many of his fine clothes are now in my wardrobe. Having another older friend suffer rapid onset dementia and having to take over as power of financial and medical attorney was also quite a challenge. I must also mention the passing of Rover and Tramper rats, ending my fifteen-year association with rattus norvegicus as companion animals.
All of this has taken some toll, and it would be utterly unreasonable for me to suggest otherwise, even if my physical health generally remains pretty stable. Whilst I continue to be blessed in life with good, witty, and frankly often downright brilliant friends, my fiftieth year approaches in a few weeks, and I have been too reflective to even decide if I want to do anything special about it. Finally, this was a good year financially (as was the one previous) with further improvments my moderately good holdings of both fixed and liquid assets.
And that's about it for reflecting on the past year and preparing for activities for the coming year. I have prepared myself for a more stable year, designed on completing outstanding objectives rather than taking up new ones. Excelsior! Labor omnia vincit!
1. Work and Linux
Memoro, this was my second year as the HPC Training and Support Officer at the University of Melbourne. At the beginning of the year I transitioned from being on a renewable fixed-term contract to a permanent staff member. I had planned on attending four conferences for the year; I attended up attending nine (Wellington, Frankfurt, Paris, Perth, Melbourne (twice), Brisbane, Auckland, Sydney), and giving presentations at five of them (two with German co-authors), along with an additional five presentations for Linux Users of Victoria, plus a guest lecture for the University's cluster and cloud computing course, so eleven presentations in all. The New Zealand visits included firming a good relationship with the fascinating work that Nyriad is engaged in.
There was also the regular training days I conducted as expected, including specialist classes. I didn't finish the VPAC books that I had planned to do, but one, Supercomputing with Linux, ready for the printers. In addition, my chapter in Stig Telfer's book on HPC and OpenStack was updated for a new edition. The GPGPU expansion to Spartan, which was to put our system in the Top 500 of the world's computer systems, didn't quite go as planned due to a vendor's network card issues. The new system did involve staff from other parts of the University and I was given a degree of team and project management over the process. I am, again, deeply in debt to the immense technical skills of my colleagues, Linh V., Daniel T., and Chris S.
Praedico, that the issues surrounding Spartan network's speeds will be resolved (either by expansion or replacement) but in the meantime we'll be able bring researchers on to the new partition as nealy all tasks are single-node. An increasing amount of the group management tasks will fall in my direction, and I suspect that in the first quarter of 2018 the title "Senior" will be added to my job title. I'll continue with the same number of lessons as last year (with perhaps a GPU programming course), but with a reduced number of conferences overall, although there is an additional one (PASC) in Basel, Switzerland, consecutive with TERATEC (Paris), and ISC (Frankfurt). Rather than the perfectionism and density of content that I have aspired to in the first VPAC publication, this year I'll concentrate on getting the remaining books into a publishable state. I also suspect that I will give a similar number of presentations at Linux Users of Victoria.
2. Politics
Memoro, the two political groups I've initiated, the Isocracy Network and the Victorian Secular Lobby, are both doing well, albeit far smaller that they deserve simply due to time constraints. I reduced my written contributions in this regard (eight articles, twenty-three 'blog posts, including the ALP Platform Review), but was pleased to see the overall content go up due to the input of others. I couldn't keep up with The Shambling Mound series. Again four meetings hosted for the year, some good coordination with Greens and social liberals (as expected) and with some good overall results for marriage equality, voluntary assisted dying, and a refocussing in the Labor Party on industrial issues. I also ended up with a few days of some national media coverage concerning a doctor giving some rather dangerous opinions. Oh, and I can have some vicarious sense of success with
reddragdiva whose publication Attack of the Fifty Foot Blockchain was released at just the right time. I hope that my own contributions to that publication (which emphasised economic theory than news or technology) were somewhat useful.Praedico that the planned ISSN and ISBN-level publications for the Isocracy Network will see the light of day (especially now we have an official editor, in the form of Stephen S.). I believe there will be at least three publications in the year, one on Syria and Syrian refugees (which I will edit), one on Australia's former Deputy Prime Minister, Jim Cairns (which I have already written, years ago, but never published), and a Esperanto for Anarchists, which I am currently writing, and I must say is actually a really fun project. Existing activities were a lot of the "here and now" is being done by younger supporters whilst I move to the strategic level makes sense. I just need more younger blood in both organisations who want to take up leadership roles! Which means that is the key objective of the year.
3. Gaming
Memoro, that this was the second year of the RPG Review Cooperative which saw the release of four issues (33-36), a total of 256 pages of content, plus, of course, the publication of Papers & Paychecks, the culmination of a thirty year joke. The cooperative now has a library of several hundred items and is a stable and sound position. We've had monthly movie nights and have close to twenty gaming groups meeting with our members. In actual play, I had plenty of Eclipse Phase, Papers & Paychecks (of course), Laundry Files, Elric!, Megatraveller, HeroQuest, and most recently, some old-fashioned RuneQuest, among others. Apart from my editorial work for the RPG Review journal, I wrote nine articles, conducted three interviews, and had an additional fourteen reviews published on RPG.net.
Praedico that there will be another four issues of RPG Review published, however I will be stepping down as editor as Andrei N., will be taking over for the next issue or so (with a transition period). The Cooperative has its AGM in a fortnight; I suspect the group will grow slightly and will have additional publications. But I suspect it is going to have a more stable year rather than a year of substantial growth like the previous two. The Cow-Orkers supplement is well on its way for publishing and the plan is to have that ready by the end of the month. I am reasonably sure that my Eclipse Phase and HeroQuest Glorantha games will finish by the middle of this year; I am not sure exactly what I have planned next. I am tempted to suggest Harnmaster or Swordbearer.
4. Philosophy, Languages, and Other Academia
Memoro I convened around eight meetings of The Philosophy Forum and gave two presentations myself, one on quantum physics and the other on race theory. At the end of the year I stepped own from that role after the better part of fifteen years or so, and David Miller has taken up the role. No other similar presentations, excepting taking one address at the Unitarian church, and for the third year in a row, no additional degrees. I didn't complete any additional language trees on Duolingo either, but rather continued - on a daily basis - improving my familiarity in Esperanto, French, German, and Spanish, all of which are hovering around the 65% fluency on Duolingo's questionable scale. I also took the opportunity to revise my knowledge of Tetum, and made a couple of serious attempts with standard Chinese, although its use of a logographic script is an endless source of frustration.
Praedico that I'll complete the skill trees for Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Chinese, whilst working on some further Esperanto and Tetum projects. Perhaps the year after I will do Arabic, and that will be the end of it. It is not possible, alas, for me to learn all the languages of the world as much as I love them (my interest in Breton is something I will try to curtail - and will probably fail at doing so). This year it really about time that I completed another degree so that will certainly be on the agenda for this year (maybe even two), but it won't be until mid-year. Also, after all those years on The Philosophy Forum it is certainly about time that I sought publication in that area as well for 2019 - Beacon Press is a very good candidate.
5. Music and Film
Memoro I am still attending gigs and writing reviews for Rocknerd, albeit only four completed this year - The Residents, Peter Hook and The Light, the socialist and Juggalo-socialist crossover, and the Blade Runner 2049 (plus a film review on Livejournal, no less). There is a couple of other reviews in the works, including from the SNOG and Severed Heads concert attended. In the meantime The Astor has become even more of a second home than usual, visiting the place more than once a month, with a particular highlight being the Tarkovsky festival that they had early in the year.
Praedico that there will be several reviews based on concerts attended and new(ish) albums. Very high on the agenda is The Chameleons, whom I've been a bit nuts over for decades and who are finally touring Australia in ten days. I might go see PWEI as well, although if I get the "meet and greet" tickets again they might think I'm stalking them. I have also just made a pitch to Filink, so there might be some of material there this year as well.
6. Personal
This year so the second European tour in as many of years with the ever-practical companion
caseopaya, which included visits to the Rhine, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Mainz, and Paris (finally!), and a fleeting visit to Bangkok. Among the three New Zealand visits I had the opportunity to visit Hobbiton and Farewell Spit. The Paris visit was almost entirely spent on the left bank and the southern half of the city - this coming year (as I can't miss TERATEC) the north will receive more attention. The Rhine trip was really quite great, and of course seeing the Stuttgart side of the family is always a great joy. Once again, Dreamwidth provides a summary of these journeys. The three visits to Perth were of course great opportunities to catch up with old, true, and devastatingly clever friends, although attending two funerals over there - one for my old friend Erica W., and the other for
caseopaya's mother was a less than ideal circumstances. In between those there was the funeral for our dear friend usekh. It was good to have one last hurrah after the event as a birthday-wake, and of course, his collection of RPGs have found their way as a memorial wing in the RPG Review Cooperative library - and many of his fine clothes are now in my wardrobe. Having another older friend suffer rapid onset dementia and having to take over as power of financial and medical attorney was also quite a challenge. I must also mention the passing of Rover and Tramper rats, ending my fifteen-year association with rattus norvegicus as companion animals. All of this has taken some toll, and it would be utterly unreasonable for me to suggest otherwise, even if my physical health generally remains pretty stable. Whilst I continue to be blessed in life with good, witty, and frankly often downright brilliant friends, my fiftieth year approaches in a few weeks, and I have been too reflective to even decide if I want to do anything special about it. Finally, this was a good year financially (as was the one previous) with further improvments my moderately good holdings of both fixed and liquid assets.
And that's about it for reflecting on the past year and preparing for activities for the coming year. I have prepared myself for a more stable year, designed on completing outstanding objectives rather than taking up new ones. Excelsior! Labor omnia vincit!
