Lev Lafayette's journal

Last night went to the Astor Theatre with caseopaya and funontheupfield to see Die Goethe-Institut show Nosfertu: A Symphony of Horror with the Ensemble Offspring providing a live score. It really was an incredible version of the film, constructed from surviving pieces (it was supposed to be destroyed) and enormous praise is deserving to Murnau's mise-en-scene. Although I was surprised that the place wasn't packed to the rafters. Who doesn't want to see a film of this calibre at an art deco cinema with a live score? I have been asked to write a short review of the event for Classic Melbourne for the event - that will have to wait until the weekend of course, there is a certain RuneQuest Glorantha conference that I have to attend.

Unsurprisingly said conference has been taking up a good portion of my spare time, with sending the conference journal to the printers, panicking over whether the swag bags will arrive in time, organising catering, and getting a plan B for the registration badges over NinjaDan's 3D printer caught on fire, which was pretty dramatic. Speaking of which NinjaDan has been absolutely legendary in helping out in all sorts of support roles in the badges, catering, and so forth. As a pre-conference event jdurall will be running a session of Call of Cthulhu at the asylum tonight. He was going to be staying here, but instead, we caught, a provided a tour of the grounds. Instead strangedave will be staying instead. Both of these people have contributed enormously to the Con, as speakers on multiple sessions for both days and as GMs for both days.

Speaking of games with friends, on the afternoon of the last post went to visit hathhalla and ser_pounce's place for our irregular cheesequest and boardgames day. We played Broom Service a board-and-card game based on a potion delivery, along with the Glorantha-based Khan of Khans. Broom Service has an interesting feature of being designed by a German company with rules in French and English; there was a couple of times where the familiarity with both languages came in use, as the French rules were clearer than the English. Anyway, for what it's worth managed to come on top of both games, albeit by small margins.

After all this I'll be getting seriously stuck into my MSc Dissertation; I am already around a third through, but seriously continue effectively until formal acceptance of the full proposal. I mentioned in a recent journal entry that I was having problems with my supervisor's rather ornery behaviour; providing significantly incomplete responses, changing requirements, not reading the actual document, and having a lack of familiarity with the content. In any case, after the fourth such response, I asked the college for a new supervisor and, with a surprising lack of administrivia, processed the request within a week. I guess my previous supervisor didn't put up much of a fight on the issue.

Just finished a late double feature at The Astor Theatre with funontheupfield of a pair of scifi classics (and I do mean 'scifi', as distinct from 'science fiction'), Forbidden Planet and The Green Slime. The first is a nice psychodrama with some rather well-done special effects for the time, albeit with a couple of corny components (the heroine's dress could not get shorter), whereas the other had an excellent concept for the monster and all the makings of a good sf-horror flick, but had astoundingly bad special effects, and an utterly terrible romantic tension subplot. Still from such nonsense good works can arise, and I can't help feeling that a more contemporary production could give the core concepts some justice.

As can be expected studies roll at their usual pace. Today, before rushing off to the cinema, gave a two-hour guest lecture to the postgraduate course Cluster and Cloud Computing. There were around 300+ people who had to put up with my voice for that period, and they managed to get some good questions in at the end. On-topic also discovered that I had another (short) paper published in the Journal of Computer Science Education on Towards An HPC Certification Program. Appropriately have been doing more work on that regard with the head of the education and training program from the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.

It comes on receiving my grade for last term's course for my MSc, a first/distinction which I should be happy with. I've also managed to get a good part of my mid-term assignment done for the next part of that course as well as doing some of the weekly work for the MHed, and making good progress for the GradDipEcon - who would have thought I would finish the microeconomics component first? Finally, I must mention I caught up briefly with claudine_c; it must be close to thirty years now that I've known her, initially through the UniMelb French Club (of all things), then through Linux Users of Victoria, and once I managed to get her to give an address at the Unitarian Church on her work in India. We keep finding our paths crossing in a good way every few years.

Gave introductory Linux and HPC day-courses at University of Melbourne last Thursday and Friday, followed by a presentation at Linux Users of Victoria the following day on Compiling from Source in Linux. The former courses had a particularly high-ratio of staff, rather than the usual collection of postgraduate researchers. Regardless the feedback was equally positive. The presentation to LUV was quite challenging, as I quickly realised however the single talk could easily be several, and as a result I touched upon several items (compilation options, makefiles, autotools and other autobuild systems, environment modules, etc). Nevertheless the post-presentation discussion was excellent; Rodney B., asked whether I had used material from other courses. When I revealed I had not he described the presentation as "embarrassingly good" - which I suppose is positive. At times like these I can have the conceit that I might actually be reasonably good at this HPC Training racket.

After LUV attended the monthly RPG Review movie night at The Astor. It was a monster-themed double with Kong: Skull Island, followed by the 1970 Hammer film, When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth. The former was fairly good, a rather fun combination of King Kong and Apocalypse Now. The latter was absolutely terrible, with the one redeeming feature of the film being carried out in a constructed language. On related popular culture matters played GURPS Middle-Earth the following day and our party of do-gooders successfully defeated the evil sapient trees built by a mad druid. Apropos had some pretty regular sales from the RPG Review in the past couple of weeks, and am reminded that both the RPG Review journal is due, along with Papers & Paychecks.

Two major events on Saturday and three on Sunday make for a pretty full weekend. It started with visting hathhalla and ser_pounce for another cheesequest session (Pont-l'Évêque was a personal favourite) followed by a chapter of Mice and Mystics, which we finished quickly and successfully through some particularly hardline decision making and some lucky cards that provides a delightful emergent narrative. Post-cheesequest we went out to The Astor to see the double of Doctor Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy; and ran into justadecoy, whom I hadn't seen for a couple of years. The latter film is, of course, charming and I've managed to see it three times now in recent months. The former I think will be lasting because in additional to some good character development it made excellent use of special effects and colours in a manner that was both artistic and clever in its simplicity.

Sunday started relatively early with a trip to the Unitarian Church, where Dr. Hans Baer was speaking on the recent US elections; it was entertaining enough even if I found myself mostly in disagreement with his strategic considerations, not to mention the only fleeting reference to religious content. Afterwards was a meeting of The Philosophy Forum, where Graeme Lindenmayer speaking on What is Life? What is a Life?, a primarily descriptive presentation but which drew light to some interesting edge cases where the binary between living and not-living becomes a little murky. Afterwards it was a journey to our Sunday session of GURPS Middle Earth which included revived discussion of the geopolitical situation and settlements, before narrowing down to the immediate scenario. Afterwards was a committee meeting for the RPG Review Cooperative which concentrated on the Papers & Paychecks Kickstarter, which remains frustratingly close to succeeding (go support this, now, please).

Monday night was at The Astor Theatre to see the John Carpenter double, Escape from New York, and The Fog. The former I had not seen since it came out (1981) and the latter I had not seen at all. The films were pretty cheesy, but very good cheese at that. Quite glad that I decided to go - I also had the opportunity to introduce myself to the new theatre cat, Duke. I do like visiting the Astor with its beautiful deco features and propensity for classic and arthouse films, and its very inexpensive as well. Tempted to see their upcoming vampire double that's coming up.

On Tuesday went to the first meeting of the year of the University of Melbourne Secular Society and have followed up with a media release from the Victorian Secular Lobby on the rather silly idea that MPs should register their religious affiliation. The Lobby is planning on having its AGM at Parliament House in mid-April with Maree Edwards, the state member for Bendigo West to discuss the politics of the Bendigo Mosque.

Sunday was a game of the classic and original Cosmic Encounter from the 1970s; a very simple game to pick up but with some rather subtle strategies. Afterwards we did a playest of Nic Moll's (of Owlman Press new superhero game, Verge. It needs work, but has a good core feature of having the characters with a strong relationship with each other. In addition, my review of Libris Mortis has been republished on rpg.net.