Lev Lafayette's journal

Have spent the past few days in Sydney, mainly attending the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) Skilled Workforce Summit. Too much of the keynote presentations was engaged in semantic quibbling over "skills" versus "capabilities" and contrived differences between "open science" versus "eresearch", although the sensible point was made that we have a Federal government is actively hostile to public research and advanced education. Quote of the conference must go to visiting guest Hugh Shanahan from the University of London who, when asked the question, "Don't you think we should be building new tools, rather than using 30+ year-old commands?" responded with "Oh get serious and grow up". I almost felt sorry for the person who asked the question, but the reality is we have performance, stability, and flexibility because of such commands and they have changed over time and the tool is the best was to get the task done. Apropos this topic my own presentation was on the International HPC Certification Forum and contributions by Austalia and New Zealand, especially in regard to the Australia-New Zealand HPC Educators repositories, an active work-in-progress. Turn-out, questions, and reactions were all quite positive.

In the first evening there was a post-conference gathering and discussion at The Rose Hotel in Chippendale, just down from a rather famous warehouse that I would visit regularly in the mid-90s. Was pleasantly surprised to run into my former housemate from just prior to that period John A., of Chances fame (well, also Home and Away, Breakers, and Blue Heelers but mainly Chances). We arranged to catch up the following night, and managed to do so quite successfully, along with spending time in the company with Adam B to discuss various Isocracy matters; I have an article on said website Taxing Times in Australia (and elsewhere), which outlines the major problems in our tax system which is costing the public - and I say this with no hyperbole - hundreds of billions of dollars.

In the midst of all this I've been making various arrangements for Rick B.,, and I thank everyone for their condolences in my last post, and on Facebook. His sister Janet and I caught up at Abbotsford Convent the day after his passing with her husband to say our farewells. Afterwards, we caught up with his former neigbour, Mel S., and Yanping G. for a meander around the Abbotsford Convent, one of my favourite parts of Melbourne. I have contacted his financial adviser, his lawyer, and arranged for a cremation with Carlyle Family Funerals. But most importantly for his Melbourne friends, I have arranged for a memorial service at the Unitarian Church, Saturday 17 August at 12 noon; hopefully, I will be able to arrange some sort of video-recording and/or streaming for his family and friends in New Zealand (or elsewhere) as well.