Lev Lafayette's journal

A major activity in the past week has been the substantive start to the Isla Bell Charity fundraising campaign from the RPG Review Cooperative; it's mostly my efforts at this stage, but others are also getting involved in the new future. The canonical list of games for sale and description is available on the RPG Review Cooperative website. This will be updated pretty much every day. The aim was originally to raise at least $5K by the time that Conquest is held; we're well over 20% complete in pledges just after the few day, so maybe that was a bit pessimistic on my part. Further, I have already had discussions outside the Cooperative with other organisations about further potential fundraising activities.

On a related matter, I received a ticket to Knotfest from the Charitable Fund under the proviso that I had "to party as hard as Isla". Whilst a full review is being composed for Rocknerd, I can mention in advance that the festival was absolutely superb, tens of thousands of people. I was particularly impressed with "Within Temptation", "Slaughter to Prevail", and especially "Babymetal". Of course, headline act "Slipknot" themselves really put on an impressive and energetic visual show at volume. On a vastly different scale, the night previous, I went out with Carla BL to see "Buddhadatta", a Japanese Buddhist punk band (yes, you read that right) supported by all-women "Curlers" with their punk-synth, and the experimental noise of "Paul Kidney Experience". More reviews for Rocknerd! Finally, on such social events, I went out with Liza D. last night to a comedy taping show featuring Nicky Black and Jez Watts.

But that's not all! It really has been quite a diverse week. Early in the week, I had two workshops to run, "High Performance and Parallel Python" and "Regular Expressions with Linux"; the former was quite engaging, with a large turnout. Further, this weekend, I also joined a panel to discuss the future of wages and incomes in the age of automation with Adam Ford's "Future Day". Unlike other times in the past when technology has provided productivity and new job opportunities, I think current technologies are largely job replacing, and only a change in the political economy will fairly distribute the productivity gains. Finally, because I haven't mentioned it for a little while, I should say that I'm powering along in my PhD studies and am looking toward an early finish to the introductory unit in Argumentation and Critical Thinking, which I believe I have plenty of experience. The next step will be getting prior credit from my master's degree.