Lev Lafayette's journal

With a history and continuing engagement in the political process and with formal work and study firmly based on the sciences, my aesthetic side has usually been one of an amateur critic. True, there is something like forty years in this role with my considerations of music, film, theatre, comedy, literature, painting, and (especially) games making their way across a variety of publications; "Metior", "Phantasmagoria", "Mimesis", "Festivale", "RPG.NET", "RPG Review", "Ticonderoga", "The Dwarf", "Rocknerd", even "The Polish Journal of Aesthetics", and probably several more if I put my mind to it. I've even made an effort to compile the reviews, but with the numbers in the hundreds, I still have quite a long way to go. Despite all this, my own contributions to the aesthetic world have been quite modest. I think there's a couple of awful youthful-goth poems somewhere in Metior, but more substantially a publication from Iron Crown Enterprises, "Rolemaster Companion VI" (it sold 10,000 copies and has become something of a collectable), "Papers and Paychecks" and "Cow-Orkers in the Scary Devil Monastery" (with a resistentialist setting), and a rather dry and factual chapter of "Fox Magic" (Japanese kitsune). This is perhaps unsurprising given my interests, but it also comes with more than a hint of theoretical grounding; Murdoch University was flexible enough that, as an undergraduate, I was able to engage in my own accredited research project ("Independent Study Contract") as a course, on roleplaying and simulation games.

In the past season, however, I have started to engage with more standard aesthetic theory, including the Augsburg University course on Udemy and now the University of Edinburgh's courses on music theory. Simultaneous to this, there have also been studies in "Modern & Contemporary American Poetry" from the University of Pennsylvania. The practical grounding of such theory has, I will now admit, led to recent practice. I have submitted poetry and prose to a few US and UK journals, dealing with delightful subjects like violence against children, cancer and suicide, parochial loyalties with genocide and such topics. Further, I have started writing a collection of Gothic Nursery Rhymes, including "Three Tough Rats" (piano) and the beginnings of Edward Gorey's "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" (piano and cello). Because I'm close to mad and love working with text, I've been working heavily through MusicXML files directly. It's the way of the future. All of this is, of course, a precursor to the larger and more serious scientific-music project I have in mind with Mel S. But that's for the second half of the year.

Putting a more practical hat on, I've had a recent discussion and decision with my old friend Liza D., (goodness, it's been around 25 years!) and agreed to act as the producer for an upcoming comedy show she wishes to perform. Liza has a long history in this artform, decades even, whereas I've decided that the similarities between production and project management are simply too great to ignore. Liza has also been kind enough to give me her old set of Casio CTK 2100 keyboards, which really is just for fun. I have minimal skill in such a thing (scales using passacaglia form is my beginner's work), but I've never intended to be a performer. Or, for that matter, to even consider making a living from such activity. Information technologies and market structures are not friends of the artistic community, and dare I suggest anyone who thinks otherwise is almost certainly destined for a lifetime of a meagre income at best

The past year has been an important one for me in terms of scholarship, in the sense of teaching and learning, both formal and informal. This does not include matters I have learned in my personal life and about myself, which, of course, one is fated to be engaging in "continuous learning". That will be the subject of a future post. For now I wish to talk about my academic life, which includes the University of Wellington, Euclide University, Duolingo, and MOOCs. I have already written about my rather extensive teaching and workshop activities at the University of Melbourne, through both Research Computing Services and the School of Computing and Information Systems, and my week at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in my review, "Another Year in Supercomputing (2024 edition)".

In the formal study, this year I completed a Master of Climate Change Science and Policy at Victoria University of Wellington. With coursework completed in the previous year, I had only the dissertation to complete, "Climate Change Impacts, Adaption, and Just Financing for Small Developing Pacific Island Countries". For the degree as a whole, I was an "A" average student, missing out on straight-A's by 2% in one unit. After completing the Master's degree, I looked for an appropriate institution to do doctoral studies. Ultimately, I ended up at Euclid University, a United Nations Treaty Organisation with an emphasis on developing countries in Africa and the Pacific. So far, I've been working through a coursework component, but with prior credit I am aiming to finish by the end of 2025 or early in 2026. Climatology is pretty much my life's project at this point, and what a time to do it; 2024 was the hottest year on record and human activity is to blame (temperatures, by natural forcings would be almost the same as they were 120 years ago).

In a less formal environment, I've continued my linguistic pursuits with Duolingo (I've been in their top 0.1% of learners for three years in succession). As previously mentioned ("Matters of Language, Culture, and Music"), this year I concentrated on Spanish, French, Esperanto, and Chinese, completing the new skill tree in the latter and bringing myself to CEFR level B1 in Spanish and A2 in Chinese. I also won the Diamond Tournament once and the Diamond League three times. In the coming year, I plan to concentrate on Chinese, Spanish, and Portuguese as I have plans to travel to both China in the first half of 2025 and South America in the second half. Just for fun, I've started Japanese as well; maybe I'll visit in 2026.

Dovetailing with these linguistic studies was the completion of the Duolingo Music skill tree, participation in the Spanish language choir "Sonidos del alma" (I should join a Brazilian Portugese group as well), and the recent completion of a course in music theory derived from Augsburg University's curriculum, and have followed up on this with additional studies in electronic music. After all these decades as a popular music critic, I realised that, if not the dexterity for performance, perhaps I do have the right ear for composition (dexacuity?). It will be in the second half of 2025 when, alongside my significantly more experienced friend Mel S., the first content will see the light of day, and perhaps with other media included.

That provides a summary of scholarship in 2024 and plans for 2025. My life is one of continuous and lifelong learning, essential in a rapidly changing world, and continuous teaching to those who wish to learn. I am very fortunate in life to have a degree of income, wealth, and disposition that can sustain scholarship. Studying under conditions of an undergraduate's poverty taught me well the need for a materially simple but culturally rich lifestyle, although I do think that the relative impoverishment of our brightest minds is not socially beneficial. Scholarship in itself can bring its own pains; not the least a touch of bitterness in the realisation of the preventable harms in this world. Fortunately, there is a community of scholars: those who do not bow down to Nebuchadnezzar, those who walk away from Omelas, and where at least some virtue can be found.

About a month ago, I decided to supplement my long-standing occasional activity as a music reviewer and critic (Metior, The Dwarf, Rocknerd) with actual practice. True, I touched the bass guitar when I was in my early teens, and four years ago, I started an online course from an Augsburg University lecturer. But these ventures were without much enthusiasm. This time however, I have practised daily and have completed the Duolingo Music course. Of course, I have reviewed the course on Rocknerd, doubling with a long-awaited review of Carbon Based Lifeform's studio album, "Seeker" (2023). Further, I have also joined the local Spanish choir "Sonidos del-Alma", courtesy of an old invitation from Liza D; partially because I have this mad idea in my head about taking an extended visit to South America in the latter part of 2025. Unsurprisingly, I've restarted the Augsburg course as well.

The inspiration for all this comes from my dear friend Mel S., who in a past life was the vocalist for the retro synth-pop band "The Greenmatics", with whom I'm forming a collaboration for a somewhat different sound and audience. To further help things on their way a couple of weeks back I attended two events from UniMelb's Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, one evening after the other. The first was "The Glory of Venice" with Erica, which covered the Venetian school's polychoral compositions of the late sixteenth century. The second event was "A Touch of the Sacred" with Kayo, which included choral numbers by Bach, Puccini, Mascagni, Schubert, Mozart (Requiem, of course), along with several newer pieces. To add to the story, a few days later Nitul and I attended a performance of Reservoir Dogs in the style of Shakespeare; a clever musical of sorts and in Melbourne's historic Little Theatre.

Apropos, on Saturday, Mel, Erica, and I attended the opening of the City of Merri-Bek's annual Summer Show exhibition, which featured over one hundred visual artists at the Counihan Gallery, and what seemed to be at least five hundred people in attendance. I am unsurprised that at least two people I know (Elif Sezen and Diana Videka) had works displayed, so congratulations to both of you! I know that spending the time to convert a concept to an actual completed piece of work can (and should) take weeks of concerted effort. I am not quite in the right mind to pick up the brush just yet, let alone start a master's in fine arts, but neither is beyond my horizon. In the meantime, it is that famous month for novel writing and I have something quite different brewing in my mind. Dare I write a socially up-to-date version of a second-person multiple storyline romantasy? Of course, I do.

A few days ago I went on a semi-regular op shopping trip with Mel S. and Erica H. Between op shops we ended up visiting a little show by Cat People of Melbourne who were being hosted by Cat Napping cattery. We chatted with Gina B., who was one of the organisers, and we managed a tour of the latter but avoided the "play with kittens" option for the former because I knew there would be a good chance that I would leave with a cat (and that's a 15-20 year committment). Well, as luck would have provided, it now seems that in a couple of weeks, I'll be the temporary carer for two cats as it is. The Feline Fates have spoken, but that's for another story. After the cats and op-shops, I went to the Coburg Post Office Hotel for the "Women's Guitar Group and Friends" gig, which is pretty much of independent punk style. My main interest was seeing Carla L's band "Mutiness", who performed very well (along with the very polished "Plaster of Paris"), caught up with Paul J., and later Liana F., turned up as well.

Since then I've boarded the big silver bird and ended up in Darwin. It is an actual holiday from work, but I have still been checking in a bit because of the new starter. After an evening at a cheap motel, I have landed at Lara D., and Mia's place with the ever-delightful Cocoa rabbit. Due to some interesting repairs being conducted Lara has had the opportunity to joke that I've helped her move into the same place twice whilst living 4,000km away. Just good timing on my part, I guess. But the main reason that I am in the top end is for the National Conference of the Australia China Friendship Society, which has the sort of all-star cast that you would expect. More on that on the next entry in a few day's time.

Today is RU OK Day? and various businesses and organisations host morning tea's across the country supposedly on the topic of mental health. As a Mental Health First Aid person, I find it, whilst usually well-intentioned, is often more than a little cringe-worthy. My own workplace was no exception; almost two hundred people crowded into a space, providing a great opportunity for a super-spreader event, and a couple of more senior managers spoke a few motherhood statements about the importance of mental health, how the past couple of years have been especially difficult, and the recommendation of checking the website. None of it was untrue as such, but it didn't exactly come across with the spirit of availability and supportive empathy, which must come first.

On topic, clinical psychologist Sanah Ahsan has written an excellent piece in The Guardian highlighting how so much of mental health is orientated towards individualised understanding (which is great when it is appropriate) when for many people social inequalities manifest themselves as mental health issues. Universal basic income, for example, reduces depression and anxiety among financially insecure young people. Perhaps on that note, I should mention that I attended Wesa Chau's campaign launch last night, the Labor candidate for Prahan with some 70 people present who made a point of highlighting Royal Commission into Victoria's Mental Health system and the implementation of the Commission's recommendations.

On the final tangent, there is much to be said for the healing properties of music although the popular claims of "The Mozart Effect" are complete nonsense (the effect is temporary and modest at best and works regardless of genre). Nevertheless, the mood and mental health benefits of music and the neuroscience of music in general; stress relief, cognitive performance, energy levels, etc have more than incidental evidence and one intuitively suspects that the type of music will correlate to the effects; it is, after all, a "sound language". I must also mention that I am still making good use of the University's concerts around the corner from home. The Klara Quartet from two nights ago, in particular, featured a wonderful version of Dvořák's Piano Quartet No.2, and a few days prior to that attended the Mirmir 2 concert with Virginia T., which included the very challenging and dissonant Schnittke Quintet.

Have spent the better part of the past two days at work (along with some additional hours) working on an Introduction to GPU Programming course that I am delivering tomorrow. It is the first of such courses, so I suspect it will be a bit rougher than usual, plus it compresses a lot of material in a single day, covering architecture, OpenACC, and CUDA programming. I might squeeze in an OpenCL example if all goes well by the end of the night. Although GPUs have a limited range of application (essentially SIMD tasks, or at least for that component), their capability is really the last thing driving performance in the world computing space these. I guess next month I'll arrange for a transition course from the University to NCI, after all, that is supposed to the national peak facility. In other work-related matters discovered today that we have the AFL Grand Final day as a holiday at the University, which stands out as an oddity in not having state-holidays. If I recall correctly I actually turned up last year.

Last night attended the 73rd annual general meeting of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia (Vic-Tas), which didn't exactly have an enormous turnout but it was a pleasure to catch up with some familiar faces, including Lyle Allan. The President, Dr Stephen Morey provided a four-point action outline which I think really needs some tightening up. The advocacy of below-the-line voting I think is something really reserved for political wonks, and sat a little oddly with guest speaker, Dr Narelle Miragliotta who spoke on convenience voting and especially how voters love it, and political organisations are lukewarm. Curiously voters seem indifferent to security concerns of electronic voting, which is a bit of a worry. Interestingly, the PR society doesn't cover my main interest which is the formation of all-inclusive proportional governments, such as the Swiss model.

The night previous caseopaya and I went to the local talent concert series at the University of Melbourne where the grand finale of the night was a rather good presentation of Saint-Saëns, Piano Trio No 1 in F major, Op 18. Afterwards had a meal at a local Lygon Street restaurant established by a Syrian refugee family. With all my various travels and teaching I haven't been as often as I would like to University House and I certainly haven't found an excuse to organise a dinner or any sorts at one of their special dining rooms (although they don't come cheaply).

In my masses of spare time, I have managed to squeeze in some gaming over the past few days. Last Sunday was our regular RuneQuest session which went well with a series of lucky dice rolls as we continue our efforts to bring order to the chaotic ruins that we inhabit. Following from a discussion on the RuneQuest Rules mailing list I have started an article (currently c1500 words) reviewing the various editions of the game from the design features of modularity and flexibility and making the argument that we're all actually playing RuneQuest 1st edition with elaborate house rules. Finally, astoundingly pleased to see that a new edition of Bunnies & Burrows is up Kickstarter. I have received the OK from co-author Dennis Sustare to write an Australian scenario and campaign pack for the new edition. That will be the next project after RQ Con DownUnder.

The double issue of RPG Review 23-24 has been released with the final article, a top-twenty of RPG game worlds concluded. Still working on the web version, as opposed to the PDF, up-to-date, but that should occur soon. Also have had two reviews published on rpg.net, Never Unprepared, for session preparation and Odyssey for campaign management. Thursday night was an enjoyable session of Masks of Masks of Nyarlathotep, with two investigators deciding to take a general plot to seek a sanatorium on Cyprus, rather than continuing their journey to Kenya. They arrived just after Cyprus has become a Crown Colony, and sought assistance from new player-investigator, Constantin von Economo. This afternoon was a session of GURPS Middle-Earth, which ran well.

The LNP Federal government continues to their utmost to destroy any notion of the Commonwealth of Australia, with demands that the unemployed make at least forty job applications per month. Some have shown that this can achieved easily, albeit at a processing cost for business. This clearly ties-in with their work-for-the-dole programme, which is shown to reduce one's chance of finding employment. The practical upshot of all this is that a number of us are plotting a job search agency that automates the application process with relevant positions. Watch this space for further developments in Zardoz Employment Services.

Also in the realm of practical politics is the Isocracy Annual General Meeting (FB link) for August 16th at Trades Hall. Guest speaker is Sol Salbe from the Australian Jewish Democratic Society, and we're hoping to have a speaker from Australians for Palestine, all due to recent events in Gaza. The Network has already made its position quite clear (Apartheid and Zionism, A Zero State Solution; a secular, democratic, liberal, socialist Palestine that is a Jewish homeland. Impossible? In the realm of political change, you start with the ideal and work backwards on how you're going to achieve it.

Wore my The Clash hoodie into work on Friday, causing a flurry of activity and discussion on musical tastes. I had previously discussed my recent acquisition of the Rob Jo Star Band, a very obscure 1975 French version of Hawkwind (or at least that my reading of them). Later that day spent a small fortune to buy two VIP tickets to see the new Pop Will Eat Itself. Ever since my mid-teens my musical tastes have been generally eclectic with an emphasis on the alternative contemporary styles, matching with other aesthetic choices. From the early and mid-70s, there's a tendency towards the amalgam of progressive, psychedelic, art-rock and proto-punk (Hawkwind, Brian Eno, Yes), are my preferences. From the late 70s to late-80s strong punk, gothic, and post-punk influences (The Clash, The Dead Kennedys, Bauhaus, Joy Division/New Order, The Chameleons, Shriekback, The Cure). The late-80s to the mid-2000s my preferred sounds are mainly in the industrial, electronic body music, and other electronica styles (Front 242, Skinny Puppy. Pop Will Eat Itself, Leftfield, Nine Inch Nails). Don't ask me about post-2005 I'm still thinking about it!