Lev Lafayette's journal

In the past several days I've been working on numerous writing projects. which is not so unusual for me. The first is a compilation of transcript and notes from my presentation at the University of New South Wales on cryogenic electron microscopy. The second is an article for Isocracy on a "parliamentary path" for the abolition of economic classes - not that I actually think it would happen, but rather it serves to identify what are the legal privileges that allow for such classes. These two are complete; the third is a major revision content on regular expressions in high performance computing, as I have a training course to deliver on that subject next week, mainly grep, sed, awk, perl, and running such things in parallel. Then there's an increasingly large two-part article for RPG Review on Housing, Food, and Clothing In Imagined Worlds, which sort of combines real-world history, geography, but also adds fantasy and science fiction options. It's pretty much a broad sweep on the sociology of everyday life in many ways.

But it's hardly been all work and no play; not in the literal sense. On Sunday a regular gaming group had 'session 0' of the new Alien RPG, based on the famous film series. It's a pretty simple system, with a highly coarse-grained skill system, but it has flavour and of course, the quotes will come thick and fast. Our ship captain is an android, so what could possibly go wrong? It was the second game for the week, with Thursday evening witnessing the regular Cyberspace game with the usual shenanigans of aliens and corporate espionage in the Stalker zone of central Australia. In my long-running HeroQuest Glorantha game, I have just introduced a chaos version of The Great Dragon. Glorantha never mucked around with dragons, so it is worthwhile to apply the biggest beast of all as the story nears a close.

As we've stepped out of lockdown in Melbourne, I've had additional visitors through my door in the past week. Jac and Damien were guests in a housewarming of sorts, and we managed to down a very good portion of a surprisingly good Aldi brandy for quaffing. I rather wish their mobile phone customer service was of better quality, however; after three months of various calls not getting through (including Net Banking!) with little responsibility I've had to switch to iiNet who offered a good deal and now, of course, the calls are functioning. I've also had a visit from former work (VPAC, UniMelb) colleague Martin during the weekend when we ventured with his family and friends to a New Zealand specialist cafe (yes, there is such a thing) and to the South Melbourne markets. Finally, I had a visit from Bryan K, of the Georgists. His work on land valuation spans decades and for those interested in the economics of such things. "Economics as if location matters", is quite a witty by-line.

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.

Today was Rick Barker's memorial service at the Melbourne Unitarian Church. A small number turned out from his three main areas of activity; people involved at the Unitarians, the various philosophy groups organised by David Miller, and his RPG friends. I guess if I had some contacts there could have been some people from his tramway historical groups and the like. His family in New Zealand were also present, albeit in a virtual sense, as the service was livestreamed via Youtube. First time I've tried this and it seems to be relatively painless. Might do it for future classes, meetings etc. On-topic with the Unitarians, I am giving an address there Sunday week on "Religious Freedoms and Religious Charities", somewhat inspired by the events around a certain rugby player.

It is appropriate, given Rick's participation in RPGs, and RuneQuest in Glorantha in particular, that mention is made of another major announcement this week; that RuneQuest Glorantha Con Down Under IV will be held on the weekend of November 23-24, with (and this is the first public notification) with Jason Durall as the international guest of honour. The main issue at the moment is determining exactly where and for how long the Con will run. Our two options are a long single-day Con at the Kensington Town Hall, or a two-day Con at the University of Melbourne. I forsee a poll of the people to determine the outcome; the RPG Review Cooperative, if nothing else, is democratic.

I neglected to mention that recently I received my last pre-thesis graded assignment for my MSc degree; it was a Distinction grade, and whilst this is good in a formal sense, I am rather annoyed by it, because it was an experiment on my part. Despite all the advertising for critical thinking and independent research, when I did this on the last assignment I was harshly punished for not following the playbook, despite having better outcomes. This time I followed the expectations, avoiding indepndent research, and was rewarded. It's just plain academic laziness that leads to such results. Apropos this week received my grade for the one course for the GradDip in Economics that I'm taking; a couple of percentage points short of a Distinction; it will do for now.

I have just returned from the day of RuneQuest Glorantha Con Down Under III at Kryal Castle, the closest thing that Australia has to a real castle. From all accounts so far from the fifty plus attendees the event went very well, starting with panels on the new edition of RQ and secrets of Glorantha, along with game sessions of Khan of Khans, Pendragon, 13th Age Glorantha, and RuneQuest Roleplaying in Glorantha. In addition to this, there was the usual stream of Castle events, and we all stopped our normal session to watch the joust (other Con attendees visited other facets of the Castle's exhibition). In the evening session, we started off with a game of Twilight Trollball followed by a rather impressive buffet BBQ and a freeform game, "All The King's All". Full conference attendees also received a free copy of RPG Review Issue 40, and many received the last few copies of the Mimesis Roleplaying Journal which I was involved in more than twenty years ago. The Abbey Tavern was the ideal place on the Castle grounds to hold the event and special credit must be given to the staff who were kind, professional, and provided veritable mountains of delicious food.

There are many people to thank for this conference and first off the generosity of Michael O'Brien and the Chaosium team must be stated. They collected gold coin donations from their surplus stock, had a giveaway game for the last leatherette copy of RuneQuest RPiG in Australia, the Argan Argar Atlas Collection. The White Bear and Red Moon book I donated for future Conventions sold for over $3KAUD, so that buyer is thoroughly appreciated as is the purchaser of the RuneQuest 6: Adventures in Glorantha book which sold for over $800AUD. All of this goes into a special fund run by the RPG Review Cooperative for future RuneQuest and Glorantha conventions. Susan O'Brien is thanked for her awesome work in running Khan of Khans, along with the panelists and GMs, David Cake, Pete Tracy, Justin Akkerman, Martin Dick, Hugh McVicker, Mark Morrison, Darius West, Garry Fay, Brian P, and Andrew Bean. Everyone was delighted with the conference badges by Daniel Tosello, and there was great support provided Erica Hoehn, Robbie Cameron, Michael Cole, Ivan Rajic, James Haughton, and Rodney Brown. Heck, there was a lot of people who helped out and whilst I had my own level of blood, sweat, and tears in the project, the aforementioned deserve accolades for their contribution. Chaosium, however, has instituted a new award; The Greg Stafford Memorial Award for Gloranthan Fandom, and yours truly is the inaugural winner. When the award was presented Andrew Bean said: "You went on a heroquest and brought RQ Con Down Under back from the otherworld. Greg would be proud." Kinder words could not have been spoken. For much of my life I've been questing for Runes, and on Sunday I received the most magical of all; the Greg Rune.

I've spent the entire week at eResearchAustralasia at the Pullman Hotel, and after five days of lectures and workshops my brain is a combination of full, fried, and tired. Actually, this year's conference was pretty good, with a good balance between technology and collaboration. Attended the pre-conference workshops; one the first day there was collaboration between AU and the EU, which made me realise that the people of the continent are preparing for a hard Brexit and want us onside, which suits me fine. The second day was more of a sysadmins and HPC day which was almost like an AA-meeting of how we all have the same stories of dealing with users, data etc. From the main conference program balanced my attendance between technical tools, eresearch engagement in training. My own presentation, on the use of GPUs for marine population samples went well. Was a little surprised and disappointed at the end of the day by one eResearch provider's CEO claiming that they had to keep their training material private for their business model. They apparently haven't thought hard enough about this.

Whilst on the topic of thinking hard about a subject I have been accepted into the London School of Economics for a Graduate Diploma of Economics, because clearly having four degrees is not enough. I'll be doing this concurrently with a Masters of Higher Education at the University of Otago (I enrolled in the wrong course three years ago and it's taken me that long to get things together to give it another shot). On top of that, I'll consider an offer from another British University of a Masters in Science, specifically on Information System which sadly will require two weeks on-campus in Switzerland (or Manchester). Obviously, it is not too crazy to do three postgraduate degrees simultaneously, especially when I have this overriding meta-narrative consideration of the relationship between higher education, information technology, and political economy. I think in the long run I will be satisfied with ten degrees, although I know that sometime within the next five years or so I'll be due for a change in intellectual orientation towards more aesthetic issues that combines my pre-existing studies in legal and moral regulations, followed by organisational and factual inquiry. Maybe when I'm in my seventies I'll do a Divinity and History double-major and upload my brain just in case I've forgotten to write anything down.

In the vast quantities of spare time I've had this week I've worked primarily on RuneQuest Glorantha DownUnder and the RuneQuest system review article for RPG Review, which now has hit a remarkable nine-thousand words. At this rate I could do an honours thesis on RuneQuest! Further I've translated the Le Monde article on Greg Stafford for RPG Review and was pleasantly surprised to be told that my translation was "perfect". Perhaps my French, at least in written mode, isn't as bad as I think it is? I have been heavily helped in this forthcoming issue on a massive article from Zoe Brain on the Mucky Ducks (yeah, RuneQuest is "that duck game") along with an equally-sized piece from William Noble on Australian prehistorical animals for RuneQuest. In actual play this week our regular Megatraveller game was cancelled so, for the first time is twenty-five or so years, we cracked open the old MARS Illumanti set and cranked up this delightful game of conspiracy. It was a close affair with all players being one turn away from their victory conditions, but with my Discordians making it to the cut first by managing to control a sufficient number of groups, although it was a close call when the Servants of Cthulhu running the UFOs failed to destroy the convenience stores via the Semiconscious Liberation Army. Crazy situations, well-balanced, easy-to-play. No wonder we used to love it so much.

Attened the Linux Users of Victoria Beginners Workshop with Deb Henry presenting on MythTV. It is not a subject that I have paid too much attention to in the past, typically being fairly indifferent to home entertainment systems, and quite happy with my largely 1980s/1990s era technology. Nevertheless I felt somewhat inspired as we projected Metropolis at the V3 Alliance training room, and I was very impressed by the storage efficiency of the system as well.

Afterwards convened the Isocracy AGM at Trades Hall; the turnout was more than expected and Sol Salbe and Michael Shaik both gave excellent presentations on the subject of 'Peace with Justice in Israel/Palestine'. With humour and sincerity both gave pessimistic accounts of the current state of affairs, pointing out that the current situation has widespread soft support within Israel and internal change will largely occur from external pressure, which is certainly not forthcoming from within Australia. Transcripts will be forthcoming very soon. The AGM also made some small amendments to our platform, specifically item 9. There was a real feeling of optimism for the organisation in the quality discussion at dinner afterwards.

Returned home from the Isocracy Network AGM to find that the books from Kickstarter project I backed many months ago had arrived; the Guide to Glorantha Volumes I and II. I have commented on the sheer beauty of these huge (size and pagecount) and lavish tomes. Glorantha is really the ne plus ultra of an imaginative and detailed fantasy world with extraordinary narratives in mythic style, and these books are pinnacle of publishing achievment for that world.

Went to be bed feeling quite elated; everything had gone well during an extremely content-filled and diverse day.

Friday night caseopaya and I went to the VPAC end-of-year dinner at the Rainforest Room at the Melbourne zoo. Had good conversations with the new HPC centre manager and the CEO and their respective partners on a wide-range of topics. Eventually made it home in the wee hours, "a little bit" ineberiated on the cheap red wine that was on offer. Found myself awake and at the Melbourne Convention Centre by 9am for the Parliament of the World's Religions, where I was looking after the International Council of Unitarian Universalists (ICUU) stall. I agree strongly with a local Greens MP (and a Christian) who was argued that it is "vile" religious bigotry that this conference has received $2m in funding from the State government, but next year's Atheist Conference will receive nothing. I intend to go the latter as well, of course, being that most rare of creatures, a religious atheist.

Stayed there until just after 3pm then made my way to Willsmere (the old Kew Asylum) where we are looking for a potential apartment to purchase. Made it home, had a bite to eat, and then went out to see The Church play at the corner hotel; a fairly good show, a strong performance and wide-ranging selection of material, although lacking in their very early material which I prefer. The cover of Smashing Pumpkins' "Disarm" was particularly amusing. Again made it home in the wee hours, but at least this time thoroughly sober.

Following morning had to journey to the Melbourne Unitarian Church where I gave an address on 2012: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Nonsense. Afterwards chaired the Philosophy Forum discussion on The Virtual World. Following that ran a session of RuneQuest where the PCs successfully escaped an attempt of Trolls to crush a Trollkin rebellion; there is now a trollkin and dark elf community in the middle of Sun Duchy who worship the Black Sun, a very cute tangent to the standard Gloranthan mythology.