![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A couple of days ago I had a case of bad timing. In the late 90s/early 00s I used to occasionally chat with a colourful character on Brunswick Street, bedecked in leathers and studs. He stood out in a crowd, and was pretty well known around the traps as a result. Denny C's band even wrote a song based on his public presence. I bought some of his art (regrettably, since lost). It turns out he was a poet, named Grant McCraken and had been a coordinator of the poetry sessions at the Dan O'Connell for the past two decades. Jus Godden recent posted on Facebook that it had been 26 years of the Dan poets group, and tagged Grant. "Oh awesome", I thought to myself. "I'll send him a friend request, it's been literally decades". Bad timing on my part; he died that day. Let that be a lesson in the age of the Internet. If you liked the company of a person in the past, make an effort to track them down sooner rather than later. I have happy memories of being in the company of the crusty ol' cowboy. I wish I had kept in touch.
I've found myself registered for Multicore World, a conference that I was the MC for several years and now find myself as an attendee. As usual, I expect to have extremely high-quality speakers and modest attendance, which is what you get at the pointy end of this discipline. So in February, I'll be making a journey to the fine land of New Zealand, first to Wellington and then, because I'll need to re-enroll for my MHed, down to Dunedin to Otago University and also to ensure that my not-so-secret South Pacific base is in good working order. On that note, I'm now most of my way through my MSc dissertation. My new supervisor, despite prior assurances, is just as obsessed with structure rather than content, which leaves me wondering whether the content is perfect or they don't understand it. I suspect the latter. In my own work I'm smashing my way through some software for our new build system, going in order of the most commonly used applications.
Apart from that, I've been making a lot of preparations for my dice-rolling hobby; Arcanacon is on this weekend I've been getting together a few hundred gaming books ready for potential sale. I will only be in attendance on the Sunday, as Saturday is Damien B's birthday and apart from a necessary birthday feast, I'm also planning on running a session of Charlemagne's Paladins. In addition to that, tomorrow night is our regular session of Megatraveller which, after a couple of years of play, is coming to a close. I also received an invitation to the ARPIA awards, but alas will not be able to attend that either; according to the printers Cow-Orkers In the Scary Devil Monastery should come in physical form on that day, so I have to be ready to collect.
I've found myself registered for Multicore World, a conference that I was the MC for several years and now find myself as an attendee. As usual, I expect to have extremely high-quality speakers and modest attendance, which is what you get at the pointy end of this discipline. So in February, I'll be making a journey to the fine land of New Zealand, first to Wellington and then, because I'll need to re-enroll for my MHed, down to Dunedin to Otago University and also to ensure that my not-so-secret South Pacific base is in good working order. On that note, I'm now most of my way through my MSc dissertation. My new supervisor, despite prior assurances, is just as obsessed with structure rather than content, which leaves me wondering whether the content is perfect or they don't understand it. I suspect the latter. In my own work I'm smashing my way through some software for our new build system, going in order of the most commonly used applications.
Apart from that, I've been making a lot of preparations for my dice-rolling hobby; Arcanacon is on this weekend I've been getting together a few hundred gaming books ready for potential sale. I will only be in attendance on the Sunday, as Saturday is Damien B's birthday and apart from a necessary birthday feast, I'm also planning on running a session of Charlemagne's Paladins. In addition to that, tomorrow night is our regular session of Megatraveller which, after a couple of years of play, is coming to a close. I also received an invitation to the ARPIA awards, but alas will not be able to attend that either; according to the printers Cow-Orkers In the Scary Devil Monastery should come in physical form on that day, so I have to be ready to collect.
