Lev Lafayette's journal

Yesterday I finished the last assignment for a Graduate Diploma in Applied Psychology at the University of Auckland, and when I receive the stiff piece of cardboard that will be degree number seven to adorn my wall. It was a 1-hour quiz, with 45 multiple choice questions - all of which doesn't sound too bad, but (as with other papers, to use the NZ parlance) they make it quite tough. I received a good mark and now the piece of assignment yet to be graded was an essay on relationship advice (ha, I have experience in that), empirical justifications for the advice, and comparisons with a traditional Rogerian approach. All in all, the degree has been a fairly good experience, albeit heavily orientated to social and developmental (rather than clinical or neurological) psychology. To celebrate Liana F., dropped around bearing an appropriately-named bottle of Accademia Prosecco, which generated an interesting investigation into the etymology of the word (Greek, Ἀκαδημία, "a grove of trees and gymnasium outside of Athens where Plato taught; from the name of the supposed former owner of that estate" also "the name is also said to mean "silent district;" see ἀκή (akḗ, “silence”) + δῆμος (dêmos, “district”)")

Psychology has an interesting tie to my favourite film, "Blade Runner". Of course, the entire film itself is a bit of science-fiction neo-noir psychological drama, with chiaroscuro cinematography, and with excellent narrative and thematic depth. One famous device in the device is the Voight-Kampff machine and test, used to determine whether a person is truly a human or a replicant based on their empathic reactions: "Is this to be an empathy test? Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response? Fluctuation of the pupil? Involuntary dilation of the iris?". Taking on aspects of the old adage of "windows to the soul" and Sartre's concept of "The Look", it was interesting to discover that eye-tracking data (gaze direction, shape and position of pupil and iris, light reflection patterns) is effective at revealing biometric identity, "mental activities, personality traits, ethnic background, skills and abilities, age and gender, personal preferences, emotional state, degree of sleepiness and intoxication, and physical and mental health condition". Somehow, because the universe does this to me, the transition from being a psychology student to a climate science student has come with another Blade Runner transition - due to the extreme forest fires in Québec, the sky of New York city is now looking like something from "Blade Runner 2049 - and whilst social media is having a field day with this it is a dire warning of what is to come. Once again, "Blade Runner" is proving to be unfortunately prescient.

Last week I saw Blade Runner 2049 at IMAX which some fellows from the RPG Review Cooperative. A couple of days later caseopaya and I went to see it at the Balwyn Place in a much smaller theatre. I am somewhat of a fan of the original, indeed I have lived much of its life with it being my favourite film, an advocate for its style and the cyberpunk subgenre it spawned, its themes, and of course, greatly enjoying the soundtrack. Thirty five years after the original, a sequel is released - most of the main actors in the sequle weren't even alive when the original came out. Anyway, I've let my two viewings sink in and given the sountrack several listenings and have felt brave enough to pen a review of the film on livejournal's cyberpunk community (even if I am apparently the last person posting there), and a review of the sountrack on Rocknerd. My summary version is that both the film and soundtrack are excellent, and give respect to the original. But there are some significant problems with both (poor dialogue in the film, immersion breaking and lack of movement on the soundrack).

It was the second post I have made to Rocknerd this week, the first being a few coments on the curious alliance between the Juggalos and the Democratic Socialists of America. On Sunday night caseopaya and I went to see Snog and Severed Heads at the Corner Hotel; surprisingly cheap tickets and a rather good concert as well. So reddragdiva will be getting a third Rocknerd article soon in as many weeks. I do hope I can coax him to write one article for the Isocracy Network as well on his recent book. I also have a review in progress of Slowdive's relatively new self-titled album. Also, in absolutely astounding news (from my perspective anyway), The Chameleons will be playing in Melbourne next year.

The last three days I have been in Sydney for the OpenStack Summit and alas, I haven't had much to do except go to the conference, to the hotel, and take an occasional walk around Darling habour. Most visits I have managed to catch up with a friends this time and I feel somewhat guilty for not managing to do so this time. It is a big event although only have the size of the northern hemisphere summits and I did manage to catch up with a lot of people from that side of the industry. Stig Tifler gave me a physical copy of the book I contributed to. From the several talks I viewed, the two which really stood out where Andy Botting's Monitoring the Nectar Research Cloud (youtube), the Nova Project Onboarding, and Questions to Make Your Storage Vendor Squirm (youtube). Special thanks also to the generosity of Juniper Networks who hosted a harbour cruise and dinner on the Starship Aqua. whilst providing information about OpenContrail.