Lev Lafayette's journal

The weekend was a very festive and some ways exhausting affair. Friday night was caseopaya's official birthday night. I took her to The Trust which does fine Italian food at a good price in the excellent surroundings of the former Port Authority Building. Afterwards took her to the SpeakEasy HQ for a double vaudeville and burlesque show - which was combined entertainment, amusement, and a very friendly interactive style. One of the perfomers was kind enough to give a signed CD of her work, gratis. Our table came inclusive with a bottle of wine and the couple next to us decided they didn't like there's - and gave it to us. Let us just say that the birthday girl had a little too much requiring a two hour trip home in the middle of the night.

The following day was a visit to Dylan's birthday gathering through torturously slow traffic at a Korean restaurant which we stayed for a short period and had animated conversation with current and former workmates. Afterwards made our way to Louise and Benjamin's wedding at the Kensington Town Hall, which was a thoroughly enjoyable and simple affair, although I must confess the the poet's contribution, Love Comes Back seemed to include what is perhaps best described as "unusual" metaphors. Not knowing any of the the others there and still a little under the weather, spent nearly all of the ceremony in the company of Chiara, and Adrian.

Following day was a session of GURPS Middle Earth where the GM decided to throw every plant-based monstrosity at us from various AD&D supplements (appropriately, have just completed a review of The Shambling Mound's Eleventh Week), and quite sensibly skipped our usual Sunday dinner outing. On a similar note smashed out a 2500 word article on GURPS Krononauts campaign design for the next issue of RPG Review. Finally, tonight took four visiting in-law relatives out to Tam-Tam, followed by drinks at Trades Hall. Overall, it's been quite a festive past few days, and I don't mind a bit of that in my life. But now the nose is back at the grindstone - until Thursday's international trip.

Many people think they are servants for a strange cat. Well, our cat truly is special. He keeps pet rats, or at least his thinks he does, differentiating between indoor rats (his friends) and outdoor rats (tasty invaders). Last week, for the second time, one of our rats (the appropriately named Scamper) managed to sneak out the front door and spend a couple of days in front garden. Mac Lir protected the area until the rat was located and rescued. I heard once that Manx were once kept as guard cats, a seemingly ridiculous notion. Nevertheless, if that is true, Mac is living up to his history.

Today is caseopaya's birthday, not quite making her a poisson d'avril. As a little gift I found a shell and rhodium cameo with marcasites. Tonight we're planning on going to see a comedy troupe who were big in the 1980s and early 90s but have been largely forgotten now; the Doug Anthony All-Stars, which I guess will mean another review on the ever-growing pile for Rocknerd.

On Thursday evening wrote a short article on issues that I've been considering for quite a while; that is the relationship between the model of perfect competition (and resultant 'free market' political orientation that results), and it difference between the model and actual markets. The assumption that free markets generate perfect competition is probably the worst intellectual fallacy of our modern age, but I am not convinced by anti-market ideology that many opponents have. Rather I am leaning towards the notion of interventions from without that encourage the conditions that perfect competition is meant to have.

It's been a fairly quiet past couple of days at work; the two clusters humming away without much drama, which is really good for the new system with its first 100 beta users giving it a run. It's given me the opportunity to get an abstract in for Questnet 2016, complete some workplace training, work through the planned compute cloud training modules and so forth. Finally, pleasant surprise was the planned new edition of Barbarian Kings looks like its coming back again after a short hiatus, for which I'm writing some material.

Whilst caseopaya is overseas in bonny Scotland (and we're spending our anniversary apart!) we've had the opportunity to converse a couple of times via Google Hangout, which has been acceptable - at least it seems the Blade Runner promise of video phones has come true. It seems that they've picked up more than a few ideas from Access Grid in terms of general scope and scalability. Of course the big issue (apart from the appalling name) is how Hangouts lines up against Skype. There's a couple of popular tech articles available, such as DailyCal's, and UnifiedComms, both of which emphasise an important point - Google has made the effective entry point free, which has certainly helped attract users. Whilst one may note how this is very typical of Google, it is also very important for them to do so as a relative newcomer to the market against a very big established player. It is also a little surprising that Skype didn't predict that this would happen in the first place. I have also taken the opportunity to make some install notes for Google Talk Plugin on Slackware 14. Least this sounds like an entirely pro-Google post, I should quickly add that I am increasingly of the opinion that Google+ is an absolutely awful social media tool, with an astoundingly slow and surprisingly dull interface that is even - and it pains me to say this - worse than Facebook. Also Google recently announced that they're in league with SkyNet; in the end you know the machines will win.

Привет меня новых российских друзей! Apparently my journal is now being recommended and translated among the Russian livejournal community, resulting in a small influx of native Russian 'bloggers to this journal. Alas, I know very little Russian and have even less familiarity with the cyrillic character set. Nevertheless, in honour of these newcomers I promise to make an effort in the coming year to learn at least some basic Russian, which will be a fairly radical departure from the languages which I have some familiarity with (i.e., Tetum, Esperanto, French, Indonesian). I will also admit to some Russian influences in my political outlook. In my teenaged years I was involved in Trotskyist political groups. Whilst their activism was impressive, their cultic approach disturbing, and their politics - like orthodox Marxism in general - is "insufficiently correct". I was impressed with Gorbachev's social-democratic reforms, although they were strangled in the crib by the Stalinists behind the failed August 1991 coup and the subsequent destructive capitalism through Yeltsin's opportunism. It is worth remembering that under Gorbachev real GDP per capita in Russia was the highest it ever had been, and it was rising further. I admit some sympathy to Tolstoy's Christian anarchism, and even more to his Georgist economics (How Much Land Does A Man Need? is possibly the best short-story ever written). More recently I've been exploring the ideas of Alexander Bogdanov; a radical polymath if there ever was one and whose emphasis on systems theorist which is increasingly important in a technologically mediated society.

Have had a great week at work, including writing a firewall document for Access Grid, a FAQ for the same and putting up a proposal to incorporate Livejournal/Dreamwidth technology as a collaboration tool for Australian researchers; I should also mention I have codes for DW if anyone is interested. Also last Tuesday attended Linux Users Victoria; Michael Wahren gave an excellent presentation on where Red Hat is taking virtualisation.

My alternative modernist Middle-Earth article, White Hand Rising, has been reprinted in Other Minds. Final draft (although I am sure there will be tweaks) of Rolemaster Cyradon has been submitted. F2F gaming during the week consisted of D&D3.5 Fantasy Australia on Thursday and RuneQuest on Sunday - both went very well.

Last Sunday gave the service at the Melbourne Unitarian Church. The speaker was Michael Shaik from Australians for Palestine and my opening words, reading and closing words were on-topic with his address. The address is repeated at The Isocracy Network; which is open for comment. Next week I am giving the address entitled "Sympathy for the Devil: The Use and Misuse of Metaphysical Evil", which has greatly amused devilgirly who visited during the week (she has been justifiably shilling a a great film clip.

Meanwhile I'm putting all this together as caseopaya is making her way to Royal Melbourne emergency from home because of abnormal levels of ketones. Yes, it can be fatal.. Update: Have returned from emergency. caseopaya is on an insulin drip. Although she has abnormally high sugar and ketone levels she isn't showing any other symptoms of danger. They are keeping her under observation just the same.