Lev Lafayette's journal

World COVID-19 confirmed cases are now at 2.7 million, with 190,000 deaths. The United States is now over 32% of the total number of confirmed cases, and almost 50,000 dead. The Western European countries, still among the worst hit, are managing to slow their number of cases and fatalies down, although the numbers are still far too high. Following pestilence, famine is the next horseman of the apocalypse. As COVID-19 begins to creep into the developing world, there are now serious challenges to the world's food supply, and the possibility of famine is growing, the extent that the leadership of the World Food Programmer are describing a potential disaster of Biblical proportions. It is in the context that I am making a fairly significant personal decision; as friends would know, I have a more-than-significant collection of tabletop RPGs; around $50,000 worth last time I bothered to do a rough calculation. Whilst I have casually traded items in the past, I am going to start doing so in earnest with the proceeds donated to Médecins Sans Frontières, one of my favourite charities. It is just another step in my future life decisions to make every effort to make life more tolerable for those in the worst situations.

The past few days I've been conducting training workshops using the University's video conferencing; the first class, in particular, had a lot more researchers attending that what had registered (close to forty). I had concerns over the capacity of my home Internet's bandwidth to cope with such a large number, but with video and audio feeds turned off (questions were raised in chat), it all coped reasonably well. Two of the courses were pretty stock standard, Introduction to High Performance Computing Using Linux and Advanced Linux and Shell Scripting for HPC, the third is less regular, GPU Applications and Programming. I've been swotting up a bit on the latter because, to be honest, I haven't done any GPU programming myself since the last time I conducted the course and there have been some changes in the system. It is, in some ways, quite flattering to have so many research on the waitlist for my courses (it's around 700), it is nice to be wanted an all that, but I don't scale. Even if I manage 30 or so at a time, once a month, the difficulty in getting through the set is obvious. Maybe I should ask the powers in charge if I can increase to multiple class sets per month. I'll be exhausted, but it will be worth it. I help maintain systems and teach researchers how to use them so that they can provide the results that help make the world a better place. This no mere fancy; massive macroeconomic modelling indicates that the social return on investment in High Performance Computing is $44 return (savings or profits) per dollar invested. I wouldn't work in this industry if it wasn't the case.

Organised some time ago I had arranged for a visit to Hanging Rock (Ngannelong) for Damien B's birthday. Jac and Damien came around on Friday night and we watched the famous 1975 movie Picnic at Hanging Rock, which some kind soul had uploaded to Youtube. It really has stood the test of time with, a combination of implied horror, homoeroticism, and plenty of disturbing exploration of the Victorian social mores (the lines of Doctor McKenzie became a running joke for us). The following day we made our way to the namesake site and, naturally enough, had a picnic. It really is quite an astounding geological formation, a labyrinth mamelon columns made of soda trachyte. Afterward, we made our way to our overnight stay at an old cottage in nearby Gibsourne and had an afternoon meal of brie and Klein Constantia Vin de Constance which is, in my considered opinion a wine that is liquid gold (and with a price tag to match). Even the normally alcohol-free Damien had a glass. The owners of cottage also have a herd of alpacas (llama minimus?), which we took the opportunity to feed this morning.

That evening we played the dystopian SF game Paranoia, which certainly is one of the innovative roleplaying games of all time (The Computer says so, and The Computer is your friend), whose tropes have made there way into a number of cultural artefacts. In recent years, there has been an increasing trend to play it "straight" partially inspired, I believe, by the Paranoia comic, where it can go very dark indeed. We played it with a little bit of that orientation, but a more classic absurdist flavour. It is also worth mentioning that last week I finally finished everything for RPG Review Issue 45, which is almost three months late. My own contribution to this issue include reviews of Chivalry & Sorcery's Saurians, the three volumes of Role Aids' Monsters of Myth and Legend, GURPS Monsters, and Monsters and Other Childish Things. The next issue of RPG Review will be on FUDGE and FATE based RPGs.

Of other note, there is the continuing global pandemic. Last week Australia's DFAT issued their highest level warning to overseas Australians which was basically, "get out now" as countries start closing their borders which, without any sense of irony, coincided with the national carrier QANTAS (and its cheaper line, Jetsatr), canceling all its international flights. The result is a number of Australians are trapped overseas. My advice to anyone in this situation is beg, borrow, or steal (in that order - but ultimately your life is more important than their property) to buy your way home - and friends of those overseas should do everything they can to help those stranded. Which, I must mention quietly, is what I have done for my dear friend lei_loo. They were planning on returning to Melbourne, I noticed their flights were being cancelled, I sent a hurried message, and shortly later had them on the second last seat of the last plane leaving the country. One of the proudest moments of my life, really.

Not that Australia is doing brilliantly in the COVID-19 stakes. I was optimistic about when we would hit a thousand cases, and I should have followed the math rather than being conservative at potential new diagnoses. Incredibly, for a higher education institution, my workplace is still dragging its feet on the working from home option. At this rate they'll have to be directed by an external authority.

In the past few days, I've spent my copious free time in getting two parliamentary submissions in before their deadlines. For Federal government and on behalf of the Victorian Secular Lobby I completed a submission on the second draft of religious freedom bills. These effectively enshrine the right of discrimination as long as it's religiously motivated. The second submission, for the State government on homelessness issues, was on behalf of the Isocracy Network. Just as I completed the latter the committee extended the deadline for submission; so perhaps my personal submission can wait until a later date; to be honest I have no yet consolidated in my own mind what to write about my own experiences as a homeless teenager finishing his high school graduation.

About a fortnight ago we at Research Computing Services moved to our new offices on Leicester Street; we're all settled in now and the general facilities are an improvement to what we had before. A welcome drinks and nibbles gathering was held yesterday and found myself one of the last to leave having engaged in some conversation with the people from Space Management who had come to visit. Also on a similar trajectory, the night previous visited the local Aldi to purchase eleven bottles of their Oliver Cromwell, which had finally made to Australia. This is of note as it has won a few serious awards in that category. I cannot say I'm a big consumer of gin by any stretch of the imagination (caseopaya has a greater interest in that direction), but this was opportune. So having a good stock of the stuff shouldn't go astray.

Due to function clashes, our fortnightly Megatraveller game was shifted to Wednesday evening, where we had to deal with a crazed crew-member (there's always one, right?). I was quite intrigued by the organochloride native sapient lifeform of the hell world planet, but alas the plot didn't deviate in that direction. Nevertheless, it does provide material for the next "Monsters" issue of RPG Review which I am working on, with a desperate need for articles. Tomorrow I'll be running a session of Eclipse Phase, where the mutated exsurgent ex-proxies are going toe-to-toe with insane killer robots. Actually, quite impressed with how well the PCs played their new obsessive-compulsive behaviour in the last session.

Earlier in the week I noted that the coming Lunar new year would be the Year of the Rat; specifically a metal rat. Because 2020 is also famous for being a cyberpunk year, this obviously meant it would be the Year of the Stainless Steel Rat. Which means I've started plans for an appropriately named cyberpunk convention. This was the beginning of a descent into a madness. January 17 was the first anniversary of the death of author Sam Savage; in his honour I decided to add over a thousand words to my previous entry on Wikipedia for his most famous novel, Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan_Lowlife, the story of a highly literate rat that acquires sapience through eating Finnegans Wake, obviously rereading it in the process. As my review from 2008 argued, this is a terribly morose story, indeed "This is the saddest story I have ever heard", to use the appropriate quote and I have bought multiple copies to literary friends. Then the following day was the anniversary of the death of Bishop Hatto, who has a cruel legend of burning peasants alive, and then being attacked himself by an army of rats which, through the Victorian Secular Lobby, has become a day of reminder to religious organisations and their unfair tax benefits and public subsidies etc. Further, I have started what will become a public environmental campaign with a citoyen in Canberra for the establishment a memorial to extinct Australian species - it begins on February 18, a day already announced in memory for the extinction of the first mammal due to climate day, the Bramble Cay melomys. I have this mental image of erecting a giant stainless steel rat in Canberra, which has multiple levels of appropriateness. I haven't even had pet rats for years, but I think I might some weird mental version of rat-bite fever.

There has also been a number of gaming events in the past few days as well. I am currently composing this at Arcanacon, which at least has a few hundred people in attendance. It's a diverse and accepting event, of various nerdy ventures and makes for a good opportunity to catch up with a number of people from the community, many of whom I only see at such conventions. The RPG Review Cooperative has a second-hand games stall for members, which has seen a lot of interest from member-vendors and the conference attendees. The day previous was lunch and gaming with Jacobin B., and Damien B., where it was a bit of dual birthday lunch for myself and Damien. Gifts were exchanged and I made various dips, a vegan version of chakhchoukha, and a cherry cake, and then run a session of Dungeons & Dragons for our irregular Charlemagne's Paladins story, where we continue with a third session of the The Lost City of Cyrenaica. Further, on Thursday night was our regular session of Megatraveller, where we played the "lawful" side of a space-pirates game, which hurtles towards a character and profession admixture like Burroughs' Nova Express. Pretty impressive work by our GM to run two sets of characters in the same setting in different sessions towards the same end-point. In addition to all this I have been making progress on Imagined Worlds, my pending book on geography and astronomy for speculative fiction and RPGs in particular, making use of a famous essay Crimes Against Mimesis, but now applied to geography, and also for RPG Review 45, which was technically due at the end of December; the last issue of the year is always late.

The past few days have been throwing myself into various activities after getting (mostly) over the cold last week. I have prepared myself for all the bits and pieces required for RuneQuest Glorantha Con Down Under, and I'm feeling quietly confident that it should all fall into place. Tonight we had a committee meeting of the Cooperative and pretty much checked off all the boxes of things that need doing. I've been composing Metaphysical Musings of the Scholar Wyrm which will be one of my three articles for the Convention special issue of RPG Review. In actual play on Thursday, there was another session of Star Wars: Force and Destiny where we're finding ourselves working for the Empire for the greater good (and they want it for the greater evil). Today I ran Eclipse Phase, where the proxies and their sentinels have been assigned a mission into a radioactive zone of sex-crazed mutant exsurgents; should be fun for them.

Last night was nephew Luke's birthday. After dropping off a nice bottle of whiskey for looking after our place during the European holiday, and as per last year. we took him to a local Thai restaurant, Sukho Thai, which does well with food, price, and decor - plus a nice drop of French red. After giving ourselves a hearty meal, we took Luke to see The Gang of Four, which Luke had familiarised himself with from my collection last time he did house-sitting. It was the fortieth year of their debut album, Entertainment!, and it was a pretty damn good gig. I ended up buying Andy Gill's guitar, making it the first electric guitar I've owned, which is pretty funny for someone who has been reviewing music as long as I have. Unsurprisingly, I've already written a review of the night which is available on Rocknerd.

One other pleasant distraction to this was visiting Brendan E., on the weekend who provided us with the viewing pleasure of Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die. New housemate Hien N. was also present and we all had quite a good time watching this quite tongue-in-cheek movie with some rather good cultural names - Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Bill Murray, Adam Driver. and a hilarious performance by Tilda Swinton. The somewhat mixed reviews of the film seem to have forgotten that this is essentially a comedy film, a spoof of the zombie genre, and to be honest there were some scenes where he could have turned it up a couple more notches in this regard. But it was jolly good fun and not to be taken at all seriously.

Apart from this, I've been working through the dissertation of my MSc thesis, specifically the draft of the literature review. My supervisor is being a bit ornery about getting all the specifics in and I suspect I'll have to provide a third version of the proposal even though I'm getting close to halfway in writing the draft thesis itself. I've also discovered that he doesn't actually read the entire thing - he made a request for the timetable in the last revision when it was at the end of the document. It really does strike me that sometimes various academic reviewers are not as careful as they should be.

The thirty-year-old carpet in our house has to go. Yesterday we took the drive out to a suburban flooring store, picked a laminate and paid a few thousand dollars for underlay, boards, and associated labour, the latter being the most expensive part. Even then it's going to take a fair bit of effort because, well, so many books and bookcases, and the fact we live in a townhouse. I don't so much live in a house but rather a library which, according to many of my friends, is some sort of utopia. I guess even libraries need their flooring changed on occasion and the place is about due for a spring-clean.

Last night was a quite a night out; went out with Brendan E., and new housemate, caught up with Morgan R., and partner visiting from Geelong, and Amy came along as well. We had dinner at the Grace Darling in Collingwood, which is nice decor, but stupidly and unpleasantly loud. Brendan's new housemate is doing a double major in criminology and philosophy, so as one can imagine having a great opportunity to discuss some of those finer points. Also watched a bit of Archer 1999 and the movie Bright, which dealt with some obvious themes in a fantasy-cum-cop-action story, very reminiscent of Shadowrun roleplaying game, as many have noted.

Speaking of such things, played Megatraveller on Thursday night with our switched-characters. The GM is building a narrative where our two-sets of characters, space pirates versus imperium marines, are skirting around each other. In a very different genre it could be like William S. Burroughs', Nova Express, but I don't think it will turn out that way. Today I have an Eclipse Phase session, where the sentinels and proxies have to deal with rogue AIs taking over anti-matter bombs and psionic and psychotic mutants. Also during the week started doing a lot of organisational work for RuneQuest Glorantha Con Down Under IV. Plenty more to be done, however, especially in the advertising and ticket-sales!

The past few days we've had the august presence of John August of the Pirate Party, whose doing a bit of road trip around the major cities of SE Australia. He's had quite an agenda of numerous organisations to visit, being quite the activist, and we've had a number of social events to engage in. Nevertheless, we did manage to get in a trip to the Abbotsford Convent, a number of interviews for Radio Skidrow (on Arthurian legend, the conflict between contemporary studies in business and economics, and Hannah Arendt's views on totalitarianism and evil), and of course, a tour of the Willsere Estate. Apropos the later, I've transferred a stack of posts from the former website I had for the said location to a 'blog on my own website.

Whilst engaging in the estate tour we were joined by Robbie and Eddie. A few months back they were married and, being a bit older, they didn't want any more stuff as wedding presents. Instead, they wished for people to provide something from the aesthetic realm, which included meals ("we both like food, but not making it"). Well, true to my inner restaurant chef that never had a chance to flourish, I went for providing a three-course cuisine provencale of hearty peasant food (soupe à l'oignon, crêpes fourrée coq au vin, pêche cardinal, etc), with matched drinks (concluding with Grand Marnier), and provided with their own laminated copy of the menu to take home. As can be imagined, we went quite late into the night.

It was actually the second-wedding related activity for the day; earlier we had the opportunity to travel up to Healesville Animal Sanctuary to witness the wedding of Matt M and Anna H., with David Ayliffe acting as celebrant (the second marriage from my recommendation in as many months!). There's a video of the proceedings available on Youtube, but special highlights must include the hair-cutting for charity and the personal vows which Rick-Rolled the audience (which worked a charm for most of the people present and left the people outside of the age-range of the meme wondering why the others were laughing). The newly-weds are, also residents of Willsmere are there were a few people from said location present.

Finally, I've managed to get a couple of gaming sessions in the past few days. On Sunday there was the continuing drama of Eclipse Phase where the PC proxies and sentinels make their way to the depths of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to discover the production of another TITAN AI; just what they need. Impressive to see how transferring through gates and morphs in rapid succession can wreak havoc on the mind in the game, especially if it is exotic morphs. On Thursday played a session of Megatraveller, where we "privateers" continue to have to play off more powerful forces around us, whilst simultaneously encountering increasingly dangerous technology. This could all go off with quite a bang.

As a sign of a combination of good luck, a co-operative effort, a Bohemian lifestyle with professional employment, and maybe a hint of effective adulting, caseopaya and I paid off our mortgages today. If you had told me in my youth that I would be in the situation I am now, I probably would have responded with the old adage of the real path to wealth being "inherit it, marry it, or steal it", which is largely true in nearly all circumstances, Stakhanovite claims notwithstanding. The main thing that this does leave out is luck, which is actually the most significant factor, and is no wonder that on occasion people refer to "good fortune". Anyway, the practical upshot is that banks no longer own half our home which generates a nice sense of independence on one's mental state.

Last journal entry I mentioned that I had a somewhat distant Europe trip planned, centered on Zurich, as a residency requirement for my MSc in Information Systems. Well, since then the college has decided to extend the spots in the October residency, so I'll be going then instead. Hooray to completing this a couple of months earlier, because one really needs a fifth degree for the practical purpose of arguing on the Internet. It's a living example of the public sphere, you know. Be this as it may, I'm currently trying to plan an extensive loop of the following form: Zurich to Venice to Vienna, to Bratislava to Prague, then through Germany (probably Dresden, Leipzig, and through to Bremman), then on to Delft, and then Ghent, Paris, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Freiburg and finally Zurich again. Anyway, that's the current plan, and there's a bit of time before I climb into the big silver bird.

In the meantime have engaged in the usual activities of work, study, and gaming. For the former, second half of the course, Advanced Linux and Shell Scripting for HPC was taught at the Peter Doherty Institute. I get the impression they were pretty happy with their new found knowledge of RegEx and the power of a useful shell loop when combined with a here-doc. For studies I have an MSc assignment to complete this weekend, primarily comparing different environment scanning approaches according to the proximity of activity. Finally, in the gaming hobby, funontheupfield introduced us to the rules-light Kids on Bikes, based on the pre-mobile 'phone era of which all players were familiar with. The building of the setting and character relationships is a cooperative venture, and we picked up from a previous setting a couple of years back, a not-quite Wonthaggi, for our rather fun game of Cats Against Cthulhu. That was somewhat light-hearted; this one went quite grim real quick. Yet, we've also retained the unknowably sapient cats and the eldritch horrors, which probably means it's going to end up being quite the surreal horror. I'm rather looking forward to it.

Apart from the structured environment of work, my most focussed activity of the past week has been the Federal election which I've been watching with a serious and slightly nervous eye. As usual I've been recording major events on my Isocracy 'blog every couple of days, although one item that hasn't been added (can't be too parochial) is the local cross-preferencing between Labor, the Greens, and an independent ex-Liberal which means that the blue-ribbon Tory seat of Kooyong is likely to fall to the Greens. It's well deserved really; Frydenberg's economic management as the national treasurer has been appallingly bad, and there's nothing good to be said about his party's record on climate change, refugees, or LGBTI rights, which are major issues in this solid liberal seat.

On Saturday I hosted the annual general meeting of the Victorian Secular Lobby, which was addressed by Terry Laidler, who spoke a on the Cardinal Pell sex-abuse case and the hierarchical power structure within such organisations which leads to such behaviour and cover-ups being depressingly common. There was a lengthy discussion after Terry's address (it was remarkable that he attended, given that his brother had died the day before) concerning the Lobby's immediate activities - equal taxation of commercial activities owned by religions, and a submission to the mental health Royal Commission.

Other activities included finishing my final assignment for the penultimate course in my MSc in Information Systems, glad to get that out of the way. I've been particularly uninspired by this particular course, now only one unit (and a thesis and residency) to go. Also confirmed this week that I am now an official Software Carpentry instructor, after being on the waiting list for five years; good to finally get that done.

I ran a game of Eclipse Phase on Sunday as the Proxies and their Sentinels try to hunt down a "Thing-like" beast which doesn't have the obvious signature of the famous monster. Hunting monsters of a different sort on Thursday played in a session of LexOccultum which included various investigations before a cliff-hanger encounter with a werewolf; this mini-campaign to be concluded next week presumably with The Big Fight(TM). This week I'll put together the very late edition of RPG Review Issue 42.

A pleasing result of the week was the publication of Chimera and The Cyborg with colleagues at the University of Freibug on HPC/Cloud hybrid systems (and more). Today (and tomorrow) I've been teaching a c50 person group of postgraduate mechanical engineering students on HPC and Linux, and to be honest, I thought they would have more of a background on the latter. I am sympathetic on what must be a steep learning curve, as today we combined my usual introductory and advanced courses in a single six-hour session, which was pretty gruelling for me and it would have be very hard for those unfamiliar with the basic content.

Despite time pressures, I have taken the opportunity to attend to a few social events this week. Gaming-wise there was Megatraveller last week, with Lexoccultum tonight (mid-17th century western Europe plus supernatural). Last Sunday was our regular RuneQuest game where we continue to push aside increasingly challenging opposition. Plus, visited Brendan E., on Sunday (as we'd missed each others birthdays), and he treated us to a couple of SF-action films, Oblivion and Spectral. The gender-roles in the first were irksome and the science behind the second was flimsy, but this aside, both sit into the mixed to good range. Which, interestingly, is where I put the Jesus & Mary Chain concert we attended at The Forum on Tuesday. It was well-performed, but I wasn't really taken by setlist, which was a really curious combination of choices.

There was once a movement that said we should have 8 hours work, 8 hours rest, and 8 hours recreation. The sense of balance is notable and subtracting the rest component it basically argues that there should be a 50%/50% work-life balance. Of course that doesn't include transit time to work, the prevalance of unpaid overtime (call it "wage theft"). but nor do is include weekends either. By these metrics I am currently running on (0.5 work + 0.5 associations + 0.5 GradDip + 0.5 MSc + 0.25 MHed) = 2.25 full-time lives. Although to be fair, a lot of the the latter two is material I am familiar with. I just hope I can keep it going for a couple more months as to complete degree number five. All the degrees, you see. Actually, my intention is retire with ten; putting "lifelong learning" intp practise. Maybe then I'll actually be confident enough to write more.