Some Computer and RPG Updates

[tcpip]

A good portion of work over the past few days has consisted of building OpenFOAM/5 and Paraview with its amazing dependency chain; only the last components are yet to be done. In much better news, we've finally managed to satisfactorily resolve the network issue we'd been in having with the new GPGPU partition. As a sort of IT reminiscence or self-therapy I've started writing tales of some old computers that I've owned in the past; starting with an Alpha Micro named "Murphy". Future systems will probably include PDP-11, an Apple II, and a Dauphin DTR-1; the latter I still own, and it works (even though the disk drive has long since departed to silicon heaven).

In my ever-continuing quest to combine intellectual games with cultural studies, ran an initial session of Exalted: Journey to the Far West on Thursday. Merging mythic China with the game is relatively easy, although even with multiple rulebooks in the house character generation was still somewhat onerous. The game is verbose with a detailed background, and combined the two make for some heavy going. Juxtaposition playing Carcassonne with a neighbour the night before was notable! On-topic, today is RuneQuest Questworld and tomorrow will be the continuing story of Bishop Giselbert's Four Vassals. Apropos, and cause of much joy, Cyanide Studies has been authorised to produce a computer game of the Paranoia RPG. "Stay alert! Trust no-one! Keep your laser handy!"

I have been struck by reports worthy of ridicule of late. The Sun, never a particularly worthy paper, has raised the ire and mockery of many by arguing with shock that "snowflake students" are claiming that Frankenstein's monster was misunderstood and a victim. It's like they've missed out on two centuries of literary criticism. Worse still is the fact that The Times has made a similar claim. This is just stupid; but on the stupid and dangerous level is the discovery that a fleet of 52 carriages ordered by the NSW government at a cost of $2.3 billion, can't fit through the Sydney train tunnels. I suspect a project plan developed by people who don't actually use trains themselves.

Comments

[minnnty]

my boyfriend and i were talking about the sydney train debacle on our own train trip yesterday. i've visited the city a few times and it's lovely as a tourist, but everything i read about infrastructure and housing makes it seem like the city can't keep up with its own population.

[tcpip]

The issue of Australia's population and it's infrastructure capacity does occasionally come up (like, yesterday. Sydney is at the pointy end of this, and really was never the best place for a city of the size it has - even for the brief time I was living there in the 1990s.

Way back in the early-mid 1970s, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam had a plan, for some of the regional towns to be converted into cities; Albury-Wodonga was one in particular that could have grown and is well-located. These days at least Victoria is thinking of developing its regions as satellites of Melbourne (which over 80% of the growth occurs). Queensland, interestingly, has managed to retain a regional strip of coastal towns, and as a result, Brisbane does not have the same pressures.

[tcpip]

Oh, and apropos..

"The NSW government decision to buy more than $2 billion in new trains that are unable to fit through tunnels in the Blue Mountains would have been better thought through if the government had embraced engineering safeguards that have been proposed for several years.
Believe it or not, anyone in NSW can call themselves an engineer and there is no requirement that engineering advice be taken into account during the conception and development of major projects like this one."

https://www.smh.com.au/national/engineer-could-have-put-nsw-on-right-track-before-we-bought-2-billion-worth-of-new-trains-20180308-p4z3gx.html