Lev Lafayette's journal

In August last year I started jotting a few notes on the philosophy of suicide, and today I completed this short essay for Lightbringers. It is not meant to be read as an appeal or advocacy, but rather a matter-of-fact examination of absurdity, of social influences (including the risk of reading and writing such an essay), along with contemporary justifications. The conclusion notes that the politics have shifted, a process that has literally taken hundreds of years, to the extent that most people and increasingly most jurisdictions, accept that medically-assisted suicide is legitimate to provide dignity and agency to those in incurable physical pain. But, I ask, why do we not do the same for those in mental and emotional distress? Unfortunately, I suspect that it is because our society still has not learned to understand that such illnesses can be just as debilitating as physical versions and can cause just as much pain and suffering to the subject. My potential explorations on the subject are far from exhausted, but it is not a subject that I feel that I want to spend too much time on at the moment. Whilst I believe that I have the moral courage to do so, the intellectual stress of writing about this topic in my own emotional state is probably not entirely risk-free.

The unfolding of time does always bring a few surprises on the way, and yesterday it made its appearance in the form of a toothache. There had been a slight nagging pain for a couple of days with an occasional short burst, but yesterday afternoon it went into overdrive. On three occasions I almost passed out from the pain, so you get an idea of what it's like. I had been invited over to caseopaya's new abode for dinner, but I'm afraid I didn't make a great guest as I was moaning and groaning, the pain alleviated by a cold compress, and the collection of some clove oil and various anti-inflammatories to supplement gargling with salt-water and hydrogen peroxide. Running the HPC and Linux workshop today in such a state was quite interesting, as I had to rabbit on for hours whilst holding the compress against my cheek. Tomorrow night I'll be at the dentist's (first visit in 11 years), and hopefully, they'll sort everything out. I am predicting infection through 40-year-old dodgy amalgam. Seriously, I believe we orphans were experimented upon by various wings of the medical profession, and this is an example. After all, who were we going to complain to?

On the topic of various endings, Sunday was the final session of my Eclipse Phase campaign, which has run for over five years - two of the players (no, not characters, players) have died in the course of the game. The final scenario involved the PC Proxies in a desperate position in Cheyenne Mountain, out-numbered and out-gunned with defeat looking increasingly certain. But from their initiative, they were able to make a call for more resources, and bring some balance to the big conflict. But the real tipping point was when an old enemy, the alien Factors, turned up to fight on their side, and victory was achieved. There was a big ceremony, transhumanity had been saved, and whilst there were certainly new tensions rising, but nothing would ever be the same again. It was certainly a story worth telling, but you know, after five years it had to come to an end as well.

First two days of this week were mostly taken up with conducting my regular day-long lecture-workshops, Introduction to Linux and High Performance Computing and Advanced Linux and Shell Scripting for HPC. Whilst I typically hold these classes with a maximum of 20 researchers, with some 700 people on the waiting lists I allowed up to 40 to register for the two classes, booked a larger venue, and had an assistant present for part of the day (getting people to login to the system for the first time is often the biggest challenge, at least in terms of time and disruption). Appropriately I also submitted my first assessed piece for my MHed, which was on the most recent workshop I've designed on Linux Regular Expressions. Also on continuing levels of appropriateness, there was a Board meeting for the International HPC Certification Forum on Tuesday night, and I've found myself continuing for another year as the topic chair for HPC Knowledge.

Apropos the Forum, I'm travelling to Sydney on Sunday for a few days where I'll be presenting at the ARDC Skilled Workforce Summit, on the HPC Certification Forum in general and Australia and New Zealand's contributions in particular. At the end of next month, I also have a trip to Perth where I'll be discussing the matter in further detail at the HPC Advisory Council. The month after that is a conference at ANU for Challenges in High Performance Computing, where I have submitted a paper on Universal Numbers; I haven't heard back from the organisers on that one however. After that, it'll be time for the European holiday, which will be the longest streak of annual leave that I've taken since starting at the University four years ago.

In other more minor items of news, ran a session of Eclipse Phase on Sunday, entitled The Gates of Wrath where the PC proxies have still managed to keep transhumanity largely alive from multiple threat vectors and have returned to that devastated wasteland known as Earth, of all places. It will be interesting to see if the players can come up some sort of "friendly AI" to resolve their most immediate problems. On another pop-culture kick, because I have a little bit of free time at the moment, I've been reading Ellis/Robertson's Transmetropolitan, only some 20+ years after it was published. Such is the nature of cultural products; every new product must compete with the history of all other cultural products.

Recovering slowly from my illness (and I'd better be, I have teaching tomorrow and the day after), I've had a bit of a foray into the old hobbies in science fiction and fantasy. On Thursday night, courtesy of Google Hangouts, I joined our regular Megatraveller game whilst dosed up and rugged up. The plot led us to discover a great ancient treasure - which turned out to be weapons of mass destruction - and our unhinged ally had demanded his 20% share of the take; this could be a problem. This is trouble enough, but on Sunday things went a level higher in my Eclipse Phase story. Confronted with a psychotic alien on one hand, and an AI attempting to turn Mercury into a Dyson Sphere to steal the sun, and the Factor aliens threatening to supernova the sun, the PC Proxies and their Sentinels managed to save the day, in a manner of speaking by destroying Mercury. Eclipse Phase is always a game of horror and existential risk so perhaps it is no surprise that as a story comes to an end, everything gets turned up to eleven. Also during the past few days managed to put together my character for a new RuneQuest Roleplaying in Glorantha story; a durulz (cursed humanoid duck), named Rowena Wigeon.

RPG Review 42 has just been released (astoundingly late) with an emphasis on The Wilderness and the Wilds. My own articles are reviews of Outdoor Survival (old boardgame from the 70s), AD&D Wilderness Survival Guide, D&D 5e Wilderness Survival Guide, Eclipse Phase: Sunward, and Eclipse Phase: X-Risks. Sunday evening was also committee meeting time for the publishing cooperative, and on Wednesday night we'll be attending Twilight Zone: The Movie. Further to all this, Continuum, the national science fiction convention, was on this weekend. If I had been of better health I would have liked to go along for at least part of it. Nevertheless just returned from a dinner with some attendees on Lygon St; R, J, and darklion. Very much a pleasure to catch up with an old friend of many years.

Much of the past few days have been spent working on a rather onerous project management assignment for the hypothetical development of a Target UK branch, taking into account the interesting disaster that was Target Canada. The difficulty of the assignment was partially length, but also the required inclusion of a presentation and notes, which really wasn't necessary or appropriate. It wasn't helped by the course coordinator providing rather different suggestions on what the content should be in the assignment brief and in the class forums (if I ever do that, slap me with a fish).

Despite this still have managed to fit in a couple of social events this weekend, including attending Matt W's housewarming-cum-birthday in Carlton. A rather gorgeous modern two-story apartment with exceptional views of the inner northern suburbs. Good conversation and cheer from a gathering that started and ended relatively early (gone are the days when I'd go home as the birds were waking up, I suspect). The other gathering of note was today's gaming session of Eclipse Phase. The PC Proxies are having all sorts of external and internal trouble as war is hotting up, blackmail occurred and one of their party is revealed as a double, if not triple, agent, whilst at the same time arranging for a hive-mind community to potentially gain access to enhanced psychic powers. Sounds like an X-risk, right there. The session concluded with a Quentin Tarantino-like feel with a posse arranged with some itchy-trigger Sentinels.

Way back in the early 90s when I shared a dilapidated house with reddragdiva, I was introduced to a band called New Waver, whose EP Darwin Junior High really tickled my sense of cultural elitism. Since then they have do a magnificent set of altered covers, available on Bandcamp, Bohemian Suburb Rhaspody. Anyway, it was quite a pleasure to discover that the main force behind the project is now a lecturer in CompSci in the same building as I work in, so I spent a good couple of hours last week talking about culture and music with him - and I suspect more such discussions are around the corner. If only I had some artistic skill of my own I could contribute in a practical manner.

Many people like the approaching end-of-year, "it's good to wind-down, there are holidays" etc. I inevitably find myself a little manic as I want to get more of my unending list of things completed by the end of the year. Busy people never have enough time. Just as in the last post I'd produced around ten thousand words of content in a few days, this post also sees several thousand words completed in the past few days mainly in various gaming subjects again, such as Papers & Paychecks and RPG Review 41, but also for Exalted China and Eclipse Phase based on two game sessions this week. The Exalted China episode, entitled The Hanging Garden, was very much in the classic mythic Chinese style with a tragic romance, a hungry ghost, and a jealous warlord. Today's Eclipse Phase game evolved escaping from the clutches of the malicious Chinese supercomputer, 'Mogwai', from Vostok base in Antarctica, thus the scenario title, The Devil in the Icehouse, which also involved planned Dyson Spheres and a future Shkadov thruster.

Apropos caught up with Yaoping G., for lunch this week. We shared a conference session earlier this year on the philosophy of technology in the Netherlands, and we have a mutual interest in science fiction (her paper on The Man in the High Castle is a worthy read). Apart from such intellectual meeting of minds, the other major social event of the past few days was the annual Willsmere Christmas party. We did catch up with a few locals and took some time hanging out in what was supposed to be children's petting zoo. Of course being big kids we stayed for quite some time with visiting sheep, goat, rabbits etc. Finally, despite my own protests to the contrary, it looks like I will finish yet another Golden Owl before the year ends - specifically Spanish to Esperanto. It turns out that I have several three-quarter finished trees in my cross-language efforts and many of these are coming to an end, which contributes to what will be a very productive 2018.

Have arrived in BrisVegas (as it is known by many) for eResearchAustralasia, and am staying at the pretty acceptable Spring Hill Mews. The first day's arrival was spoilt by illness, I suspect because some fucker sneezed on me on the plane on the way over. Still, by the end of the second day I was feeling better and arrived for the conference welcome reception and then joined a group for dinner at Mucho Mexicano. Whilst it is early days yet the conference itself has been so-so from the first few speakers. Leeanne Enoch gave a good introduction to the conference, especially for a politician, and David De Roure's presentation on Ada Lovelace and computer-generated music was quite enjoyable. I suspect for the rest of this afternoon I'll be staying in the Advancecd Computing stream.

Before leaving Melbourne, I did have the opportunity to run a session of Eclipse Phase finishing the Chain Reaction scenario, which will then be followed up with the subsequent related scenarios. In addition, Karl B., has assisted with the final editing of Papers & Paychecks although, alas, I still haven't managed to track down Tim Kask to do the foreword. On my return to Melbourne it looks like I'll finally get around to seeing Blade Runner 2049, given that I am "a bit" of a fan of the original.

Prior to departure I also managed to see Peter Hook and the Light, at their final Melbourne concert, performing Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures and Closer (after selling my previous tickets to fustian_). It was a great concert and in next couple of days I hope to have a review written for reddragdiva for Rocknerd, which I'm sure he's looking forward to. Should also mention that I'm half-way through writing an article about that strange alliance that's grown between the Democratic Socialists of America and the Juggalos.

It's been several days since I last posted, with a week dominated by work-related activities. There was three days of training which I arranged and sat in on from the West Australian Pawsey supercomputing centre, one introductory course, then OpenMP, then MPI programming. In the meantime my courses I announced in the last post were filled in under twelve hours, so a new set have been advertised for next month. After the Pawsey course was the OpenStack Australia Day, which was really quite good. Large enough for three streams of speakers (business, technical, innovation), but small enough to be inimate and an opportunity to catch up with many co-workers in this space (good period of time spent with Francois from ChCh, Dylan from CSIRO, and Tim from Red Hat). My own talk The Why and How of HPC-Cloud Hybrids with OpenStack was very well received with standing room only in the hall. I will be repeating it on Monday at Telstra.

Other major events of the week included a battle-heavy session of Eclipse Phase last Sunday. The previous session was staging and preparation. This one included the interesting physics of fire and movement on a small asteroid. Finally, the most important out-of-work activity of the week would have to been the Victorian Secular Lobby Annual General Meeting, which had a few new members turn up, along with an excellent presentation on the state of secularism in the Liberal Party by John Bade - a rather sobering presentation on how traditional liberals in that group need to toughen up against the theocrats, especially given that Senator Bernardi has left the party and merged with Family First. It might be a painful split for the Liberal Party, but it they will be stronger for it in the longer run.

It is true that I have several major interests in my life, external to hearth and mind. There is a professional dedication to provide researchers the skills to use free and open source computional tools. There is a political side dedicated to the practical implementation of personal liberty and social democracy, and the continuum that is between. There a long-standing interest in philosophy which, despite its innate propensity of some of its adherents to lead to unverifiable metaphysical presumptions and scholasticism, is at its heart the most important and most difficult field of inquiry. My other academic pursuits betray interests in organisational structure, strategy, and management, the effectis of normative systems on positive economics, and of course advanced adult and tertiary education. Aesthetically, I am known to have a some love of high art, yet also with deeply ingrained rocknerd sensibilities.

Then there's roleplaying games. My public vice whether it is from orcs, and hobbits, of faerie tales and dragons, or little green men from Mars, spaceships and wormholes, or even - to a lesser extent - superpowered individuals who wear their underwear on the outside. I know about 'Of Dice and Men', I have 'The Elfish Gene' (to use two pun-inspired books on the subject). But despite these popular culture affectations, where else do I find improvised theatre that places the characters in the heroic age of mythology, or the troubles of transhuman speculations. Where else do I find the exploration of models of reality with genre influences and debates? It is in roleplaying games, the undergound home theatre of the era, that is the only refuge for cerebral geekdom. After all there's not one, but two serious books entitled 'Philosophy and Dungeons & Dragons'. I feel it more important to do one on RuneQuest.

In any case this was a roleplaying weekend, starting no less with an interview with Dan Davenport from RPG.net on IRC over the upcoming Papers and Paychecks. Best line of endorsement that came from the interview: "I have to say, this game has some solid mechanics for a game based on a joke". After that I finished my interviews for the Alternity Player's Handbook and Gamemaster's Guide, and did a write-up of the last episode of our Eclipse Phase. The following day it was writing a review of the old TSR game Gangbusters (which took a lot less time), and putting it altogether to be released as RPG Review 32 which includes - no less - an interview with the author of BECMI D&D, Frank Mentzer. That afternoon was our session of Eclipe Phase using the new playtester rules which have some nice features (but that's all I can say at this stage, because I'm under a NDA). Of course, this wan't all I did over the weekend - but because things have been a bit RPG-heavy of late, I have felt the need to justify this idle pursuit within myslf.

Whilst others on Saturday were concerned on which side of the grand ritual of the boot would be premiers for the year, we nerdlingers held a Cheesequest day, between myself caseopaya, hathhalla, and ser_pounce. I made a small mountain of liptauer (including a surprisingly tasty vegan not-cheese variant), which was contrasted with a crumbly Warrnambool cheddar, and some Wensleydale with cranberries. All of which was accompanied with a tofu goulash, which another European dish of "find vegetables, add 'x' (spices, stock, cream etc), simmer". Afterwards we played the classic realist-comedy game of Junta where one plays a ruling family of a Latin American dictatorship. The idea, of course, it to get as much money as you can into your Swiss bank account from foreign aid before the international backers give up on you. An early run as El Presidente followed by a well-time assassination resulted in my victory.

Overall it was a good weekend for games; played Eclipse Phase Mars on Friday night via our usual multinational Google Hangouts group, and on Sunday ran the Eclipse Phase Extrasolar group, and gave them a little more than they bargained for with robotic spiders under the sea. It is something worth realising; GMs of Eclipse Phase can be a lot challenging to their player-characters because of the backup system - even more so than fantasy GMs with various Raise Dead or Resurrection magics. Indeed, there is something to be said about the hostile alien system where the GM goes out of their way to confront the PCs with deadly forces that are beyond their capacity to defeat in a stand-up conflict. Interestingly the game dove-tailed well with The Philosophy Forum group which met earlier that afternoon. Our planned speaker had fallen ill and thus could not attend, but nevertheless was kind enough to provide some papers on the pro-technology environmentalism and its relationship with transhumanism, which was just as well given the excellent turnout.

Baa baa black sheep how much wool can you carry? 'Well, it all depends on the load-bearing capacity of my legs, and now we have new ways of calculating this'. Yes, I'm the co-author of a published paper (I helped with the computational side of things) with the snappy title: Spatial Distribution of Material Properties in Load Bearing Femur as Characterized by Evolutionary Structural Optimization. I have also been preparing papers for my presentations at eResearch Australasia next Tuesday, and OpenStack Summit in Barcelona in three week's time. Janie G., from SA will be our housesitter whilst we're away. All legs of the transport are now booked with a combination of train and bus through Germany, Switzerland, France, and Spain. In the next couple of days I'll get what remains of the hotels bookings done.

Today was Anne Kays' Memorial Service at the Unitarian Church. The opening hymn was Paul Robeson's Hymn to Nations. I followed with a selection from a John Chadwick poem for the opening words, then four eulogies by family members and friends (providing superb recollections of Anne's life and contributions), a musical Interlude (Judy Small "A Heroine of Mine"), a historical and religious reference to Anne Askew, a reading from "The Inquirer" by Florence W., and finally closing words from Sean O'Casey's, Sunset and Evening Star, and for closing music Nana Mouskouri's "Amazing Grace". I must confess I felt more uncertain conducting this service than any other, with a sense of deeply wanting it to be just right, due to both the honour of being selected to give the service by Anne and a desire to give respect to her memory. Members of the family seemed to think it went well, so I can feel satisfied with that.

The days preceding were a mixture of various social occasions. Last night was a night at the Astor Cinema to see a couple of classic B-grade Christopher Lee films; The Wicker Man and Dracula Prince of Darkness. Sunday's gaming session was Eclipse Phase where the PCs had the first real experience of an extrasolar planet and an experience not unlike the first half of the movie Aliens. Continuing to work backwards, Saturday night was a big dinner at Vicky's Restaurant with log_reloaded in celebration of her completing her Diploma of Accounting.