Lev Lafayette's journal

After the conference and subsequent weekend in Christchurch, I spent a couple of nights in Wellington, a thoroughly adorable national capital. The first night was spent at the Waterloo Hotel, my favourite haunt, which I've been visiting for at least twenty years. It's budget and slightly dilapidated accommodation, but the thoroughly solid art deco structure and features appeal to my sense of old-world beauty. The following day I caught up with Morgan D., of NZ RPG fame, and author of "FiveEvil". Later that day I made my way out to Pentone to stay overnight with Janet E., and family who, as always, treated me with the greatest kindness. Janet was kind enough to take me out to the rather scenic suburb of Eastbourne the following day, which was a part of the greater Wellington region that I had never been to before.

On return to Melbourne, I've had to dive deeply into various work-related matters, as it's a rather busy time. Friday was spent mainly with Altair Engineering, as they were showcasing their new enhancements to the scheduler, such as Liquid Scheduling, a sort of meta-scheduler. I was impressed by its ability to run job arrays across multiple clusters. It was also a good opportunity to catch up with Craig W., (former tech manager at VPAC) and Tim Connors (formerly of the Anglo-Australian Observatory). The High Performance Computing world is small, but nevetheless I had not seen either of these individuals for some years. Also of special note was attending the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra "Symphonic Showcase" with Nitul D. With some ten thousand people in attendance, the MSO did a great job Rachmaninov's "Second Piano Concerto" and Bartók's "Concerto for Orchestra" and really it made a good excuse for an evening picnic in the Botanical Gardens. Besides, one must both enjoy music practice if one is going to study music theory.

Part III of the New Zealand trip has been four nights in Wellington, firstly at the old deco Wellington Hotel with its many colourful characters and a final night at the somewhat more upmarket Hotel Atura. On the first day, following the recommendation of Martin P., I journeyed through the Bolton St Cemetery and the lush surrounding parklands (which at one stage was going to be a motorway off-ramp, thank goodness that didn't happen), and caught up with Morgan D., a rather impressive figure in NZ's RPG community with various inroads on matters concerning politics and education. Afterward, I ventured through the Wellington City Gallery and then the enormous Te Papa National Museum which has extremely impressive natural history content, extensive items on Maori and Pasifika culture, and a very moving Gallipoli exhibition.

The following day took the funicular up to the Botanical Gardens and Carter Observatory centre, which really has quite delightful information on astronomy, Maori legends (especially Polynesian navigation by the stars), and NZs impressive contributions. Afterward made my way through Kelburn Park for a long chat with Professor James Renwick at the University of Wellington to discuss my next degree, a Master in Climate Science and Policy, and visit their collection of old computing equipment. Making my way back to the harbourside I caught up with Art P., who I know through Multicore World and we meandered through the impressive Wellington City Museum (the short movie on the Wahine disaster always moves me), the NZ Academy Fine Arts gallery, and then the New Zealand Portrait Gallery.

On the final day, I visited Old St Paul's, a great Gothic revival wooden church. then caught up with Rick B's family, including sister Janet E., brother Stephen B., and Janet's partner Don. We had animated conversations over many topics during a very long lunch and trekked along the harbourside until it was departure time. Rick, of course, was a very dear friend for many years and following his death, the connection I've made with his family feels just as strong; like Rick, they all have such sharp intellects and deep hearts committed to a more just society. One other matter I must mention; I did spend quite a bit of time hunting around for just the right pounamu carving for a special friend, which comes with all sorts of significance that most tourists don't realise, and I think I have achieved that.

My last international trip before COVID-19 days was to New Zealand, back in early 2020. Airport staff were just at the point of asking departing passengers whether they had been to China in the previous fourteen days. Because of my love for the place, it is now the first place that I have returned for an actual holiday, with travelling companion Angela D, who has been wonderfully supportive over the past two years and certainly has good reason for a holiday in their own right. Starting at Auckland, we visited the old Symonds Street Cemetery (which is almost a forest), the Sky Tower which does provide some pretty impressive views of the city, the Auckland Art Gallery, and finally a rather good Chinese restaurant which had the best fried tofu I have ever had (yes, worthy of 'blogging).

The following day caught up with Andrew Ensor from the HPC team and Square Kilometre Array group at Auckland University of Technology, before making our way for a three-hour investigation of the absolutely beautiful and diverse Hamilton Gardens. Even given this time, we could have spent another several hours in said location, and I'll certainly be visiting again. By the evening we were outside of Cambridge at the home of one Matthew Simmons, former CEO of Nyriad whom we did work with several years back and now with a number of other ventures in progress. Always a source of excellent conversation, Matthew has been an incredible host in a beautiful country location and we'll be making a visit again on the way back.

It's a pretty full agenda that is planned on this trip, but we're both good with this pace and Angela has been a delightful travelling companion. The following days will see visits to Taupo, Napier, Masterton, Wellington, Whanganui, Waitomo, and then finally back on the silver bird out of the country. It is a holiday, but there are a few work(ish) and study(ish) related matters on this looped tour of the North Island, including my enrolment at Victoria University of Wellington for my next master's degree (climate science and policy).

Have crossed The Ditch once again to visit bonnie New Zealand for two conferences, one on each island of course. Sunday was almost a complete write-off as a result as I spent most of it in the air, first from Melbourne to Christchurch, then Christchurch to Dunedin in a little twin-prop.
As is my wont, and as is provided by Air New Zealand, I smashed my way through several episodes of Family Guy, which suits my somewhat dank and edgy humour. Arriving late in the afternoon I made to the Stafford Gables hostel, which is providing me a 2m by 3m enclosed balcony for $160NZD per night. The building itself is reasonably well-located and has some old-school charm (and is almost clean), but I rather wish I had the chance to read the reviews beforehand. This is, seriously, the worst value-for-money of any place I have ever stayed in, and that even includes the bed under a stairwell in a dodgy hotel in Malaysia that came with free bed bugs.

Anyway, I made a hasty exit to visit the Knox Church to hear their informal service. I've been on their mailing list for years but had never attended. Dunedin was settled by liberal Scottish Presbyterians and they've continued that tradition, with a discussion about the hidden message of the power dynamics evident in Paul's letters to the Corinthians. I had a good chat with members of the congregation afterward. Today, still in pre-conference mode, visited Otago University, paid my fees, and had a good meeting with my supervisor about my MHed thesis. Otago shows a much greater concern with education and learning to what I'm experiencing elsewhere, and is really quite a high-quality institution as a result. Worked as best I could during the day and in the evening marched for an hour out of town (and navigating my way around the hordes of Queen fans seeing them perform at the local stadium) to my secret South Pacific base to meet with the new tenants.

Project Melomys continues with just over a week to go to the official petition launch. The main thing this week to organise is people at the various memorial services, all of which will inevitably be quite small but worthwhile. There's currently about a half-dozen sites lined up, which isn't too bad really. It is well below what I would prefer of course, but that would require at least a couple of people working full-time on the campaign, and that is not a resource that I have available. Still, it is but a start and the Melomys will have their first remembrance, and a wider institutional change will be initiated - and frankly, in the world of politics, you need to target institutions.

A couple of days ago I completed my fifty-second orbit around the sun. There was a small mountain of people on Facebook sending me good wishes, a couple on LJ/DW, and even a few on LinkedIn, which was surprising. I didn't do much on the day itself, much of which was taken up with a move to a new office (and unpacking the following day). Workmates NinjaDan and Martin insisted on shouting me lunch at a local Italian restaurant, and in the evening made my way through a couple of cognacs. The best part of the day was undoubtedly quality communication with friends. I don't know what I"ve done in life to be surrounded by such exceedingly good people (and a remarkable lack of bad people). Whatever it is, I promise to keep doing it as it seems to generate pleasing results.

I've just booked a trip to New Zealand, starting with a week in Dunedin (Feb 9) which will include enrolment for the second year of my MHEd at Otago University, and attendance at EResearch NZ (which has a conference dinner at Lanarch Castle, one of my favourite Dunedin locations). After that (Feb 16) I'll fly to Wellington for attendance at Multicore World, and then return to Melbourne (Feb 21). It would be good if I can convince the university to pay for this, but I'm going nevertheless. The university's travel policy has become increasingly stupid over the years to the point it's not even worth applying, which is really quite shocking. Anyone, I should be able to catch up with a few people in both cities, check on my secret South Pacific base and maybe even enjoy some free time.

Finished a review of Bellanca's book Isocracy: The Institutions of Equality, which is a worthwhile contribution to this nascent political theory. Also picked up the first supplement for Papers & Paychecks, Cow-Orkers in the Scary Devil Monastery, and apropos, finished my part of RPGaDay 2019 (over four thousand words!), which will come out in the next RPG Review. Arcanacon turned out pretty well on the financial side of things as well. The Cooperative store sold about $1800 worth of games among vendor-members, signed up a few people, and sold a few copies of Papers & Paychecks.

The last day in New Zealand was spend in the township of Cambridge famous for horse-breeding and an impressive IT company named Nyriad, whom I've mentioned before. It was good to catch up with the gang, and especially to see their new and expanded offices. Their elaborating well on their core GPGPU technologies, which of course has some relationship with the massive GPGPU partition we're building on Spartan. On the latter we've had our share of challenges this week with getting various cutting-edge version components of drivers, OFED, kernels, and multinode libraries to talk together - and that's aside from the applications. Still, the best possible team is working on it, and to keep everyone up-to-date on progress work has me writing effectively a daily newsletter for the technical working group to give everyone a highlight report of what is going on. It sounds a bit like Project Management, eh?

Tim Task has come forth and written a foreword for Papers & Paychecks, which is a world of awesome. The printers have also been told that we're ready to publish. Other gaming news for the week include a session of Eclipse Phase, another of Megatraveller and a visit by a few of us to IMAX to see Blade Runner 2049. Those who know me well would know that I consider the original film to be my personal favourite. This sequal has a lot going for it, and given its aethetic importance to my life, I'll be seeing it again tomorrow at the Balwyn and making a specific post on the subject. In addition to this, I've been polishing the last bits of RPG Review courtesy of same very last minute contributions, but with the latest planned for the end of the weekend, it will be Monday before this is released.

I've penned a new article for Isocracy, on the well-intended but ultimately flawed "propertarian" ethical theory of the Non-Aggression Principle. Apropos another Isocracy Newsletter has come out with alerts us to the new role of Steve Sprigis as editor for the various association publications. Our original public officer, and perennial candidate Dr. Joe Toscano has also put up his hand for the by-election in the state seat of Northcote. Finally, I had an encounter with the NSW Young Libs on their attempted "reverse boycott" of Streets icecream. I penned a few words on their loss of empathy.

It's been a tough week at work; not so much on matters of complexity, but rather on sheer volume. With last week's cluster and cloud computing, there has been in an influx of over two hundred master's level students to the HPC system and the inexperience of quite a few is evident. Such is the effects of an entire generation of computer users who have started with the GUI rather than the command-line. Apropos the planned session with the good folk at the University of Freiburg didn't get up for the International Supercomputing Conference. A German co-author responded pithily, You have to see that we are considered heretics. Well, it wouldn't be the first time, that's for sure. So instead we're looking at a publication in Advanced Computing. Given that most of the paper is already written, a draft can be submitted perhaps the end of next week.

Shortly after that caseopaya, funontheupfield, and I are heading to New Zealand. Apparently I can't get enough of the place. The latter has never been before so recommendations were put in place for a short trip; Wellington and the Marlborough Sounds, primarily Havelock and Collingwood with opportunities to take short hikes, go spelunking, horse riding, and to see the strange natural landscape that is Farewell Spit. Given that my past two trips to NZ have been almost entirely work-related, I'm rather looking forward to the opportunity to venture 'cross The Ditch entirely for pleasure. Hopefully I will be able to organise dinner in Wellington for the handful of people that I know there.

The native animal population at our home has had a recent increase with a clutch of friendly young magpies deciding that our home is worth a visit, primarily for cat biscuits. A few days later a blue tongue lizard decided to move in. We think it's still in the house somewhere. Our other animal companions however have not been particularly perturbed by our new visitors; apparently our home is an open-plan zoological garden. I must however express some concern with the health of Tramper the rat. Already close to three years old (about ninety in rat-years), he's doing it a bit tough. He's had a bumblefoot infection for a long time (which curiously, seems to be healing up), he has a large mammary tumour which is quite inoperable without risk to his life, and now he's has advanced glaucoma in one eye. Tramper now spends much of his time snoozing (even on the rat-scale of things), but also has a good appetite and enjoys scritch time. Despite his illnesses, I think he's going to be around for a few more months.

One of the most common errors in computer science is an off-by-one error, and I did just that on my journey from Wellington to Cambridge, having everything booked (flight, shuttle, departure) one day out-of-sync. All was resolved quite quickly, and I was absolutely astounded by the Nyrid staff who caught my email at 6am and managed to collect me at the Hamilton airport. Thus began the beginning of four days in the company of this extraordinay company led by Matthew Simmons and Alex St. John. In my considered option they are following very good start-up logic and are developing some rather impressive disruptive technologies, and I have found need to comment on length on both of these features. It is a constant and powerful working environment there, dedicated on their goal, and the mostly young staff are very sharp. It must be immediately noted that the company really looks after its staff, with two evenings in succession at The Good George, and a recruiting BBQ today which is all worthy of note.

I've been hosted at the remarkable Earthstead villa, which appropriately includes Ian McKellen's name (aka Gandalf) in the guestbook. Yesterday was a day off from my usual schedule and Nyriad took me and Andreas Wicenec to Hobbiton. It was, of course, a wonderful location and great to have the set kept in place and obviously enough I took a few photos. The Green Dragon Inn was a particularly nice touch. The tour, however, is guided and is all over within a couple of hours - we were fortunate to arrive early as the queues later on were quite substantial. I am somewhat conflicted between the obvious need to explain the filming and set and how the very same destroys the magic of the film, and downright mocking of the apparent need to slap a trademark on everything ("Hobbit Holes (TM)", really?). I couldn't help but be a little disappointed by the sheer indifference of the tour guide when I pointed out that Bilbo's door lacked Gandalf's rune.

Later in the afternoon wandered around the small town of Cambridge which continued its very English style (town name, nearby Hobbiton) by distracting me with a regional game of cricket. Seriously, I can imagine hobbits playing cricket. The local team was quite successful bowling out the opposition with a lead over one hundred runs. I must confess a conflicted relationship with sport. I love the pace and skill involved in Australian Rules Football, and enjoyed playing in my youth as a defensive half-back line player and occasional ruck-rover. With cricket I enjoy the narrative, the gradual unfolding over summer's day to five. It was another game of my youth, and played the role of an unorthodox opening bowler who would bowl spin as well as the typical pace (opening batsmen were often very confused as a result). In both cases however, as much as I could enjoy watching and playing such sports it was aggressive competitiveness and boorishness common in both players and especially fans that put me off. I suspect I am not alone in this assessment.

Many of Australia's public holidays are quite comic. Determined by state goverments, in Victoria we have holidays for a horse race and a football game. But apart from stupid holidays we also manage to have grossly offensive ones, and worst still, the national day, January 26, which celebrates the invasion of the country by British forces and sequence of genocidal policies against indigenous Australians. I have written an article on the Isocracy Network which outlines the history of Australia's establishment, the effects, and how a Treaty with the indigenous peoples could resolve many issues. As for the day itself, I cooked up a storm of some basic dishes (risotto, French onion soup, bread and butter pudding etc). On related political issues have arranged for an Isocracy meeting for February 10 (Labor-Green alliance strategy meeting (FB)).

During the week I've made arrangements for a short tour of New Zealand in a manner that's rather like a mini-version of the grand Europe tour of last year. On February 15 I will be going to Christchurch to visit their Bluefern HPC facility, followed by a trip to Dunedin to see their HPC staff, as well as to check on our secret base. After that I'll be going to Wellington to MC and present at Multicore World, then up to Cambridge to see the work of the good folk at Nyriad who are doing some great co-work with us, and hopefully to drop into Hobbiton, and then to the Auckland HPC centre, before making my way back to Melbourne: two weeks of meetings, conferences, and taking journeys in light planes around the country.

In miscellaneous activities had a hackathon with the Papers & Paychecks rules on Wednesday night, that will be followed by a game of GURPS Middle Earth tomorrow. My review of D&D Basic Set has been published on rpg.net. A subchapter of the Building Clusters and Clouds book has been written up on Data Centre Preparation. Apart from that there's been a lot of language study; French, German, Spanish, Esperanto, Tetum, and Mandarin pretty much every day, with Russian somewhat less regularly.

Following caseopaya's suggestion we took the southern scenic route rather than cross-country across central Otago. It's a little longer, but a lot more impressive. The journey starts in Clutha country (which we call, unsurprisingly, Cthulhu country) and then into the Catlins, hugging the south coast of the South Island, an area especially rich in greenery (podocarps, rimu, kahikatea, silver beech, numerous ferns), and howling powerful winds at lookout points from the Southern Ocean.

Lunch was at the Southland Museum and Art Gallery in Invercargill, my birth town. There is not too much to say about Invercargill; it has a few fine old buildings, wide streets, a Scottish heritage and accent, and superb gardens, but it's mainly a service town for surrounding farms. The museum is very good, the art gallery just terrible, but the main attraction is grumpy old Henry, the tuatara.

From Invercargill it was more southern coastline journeys with more wild lookouts until reaching Manapouri, the edge of Fiordland, for an overnight stay at the Lakeside Motor Lodge, which comes with just stunning views. After this it was a short journey to Te Anau downs (about 30km north of the main town) as a launching spot for Milford Sound ventures. We took several trips along the roadside of this world famous national park with its dense foilage and extraordinary mountains, including Lake Mistletoe, Lake Gunn, Mirror Lakes, and the numerous lookouts. We also took a cruise on Milford Sound, a place of astounding beauty, certainly one of the best in the world. We spotted numerous fur seals and bottle-nosed dolphins and I managed to get absolutely drenched whilst assisting the ship collecting water from one of the more prominent waterfalls that come off the cliffs.

I leave it to Douglas Adams to explain:

Fiordland, a vast tract of mountainous terrain that occupies the south-west corner of South Island, New Zealand, is one of the most astounding pieces of land anywhere on God's earth, and one's first impulse, standing on a cliff top surveying it all, is simply to burst into spontaneous applause.

- Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

After a couple of days there, we left for Queenstown, having an afternoon at nearby Arrowtown and catching Peter Caulton playing at the local park. Our journey finished with a tour of the impressive Kiwi Birdlife Park, home of some of the rarest birds in the world (although I take issue with their claim that the tuatara is a dinosaur).