Lev Lafayette's journal

Wednesday night was trip down memory lane to hear Kirsty Gusmao Sword speak about language and education issues in Timor-Leste. The main issue being is that there are some sixteen or so indigenous languages, two official languages (including Portuguese), and other commonly spoken languages (English, Bahasa). Kirsty was arguing for a human rights issue for youngsters to be educated in the native language, but there was some government resistance to this, despite good evidence that this can establish base literacy. I mentioned by own background - albeit over ten years old - with this subject and noted that it was considered a problem then. It seems to me, in addition to the human rights approach, there's a functional approach that can be used as well i.e., local languages for district and sub-district use and early primary, Tetun for national and older education, and Portuguese for international relations and foreign affairs.

Another nice experience was seeing David Attenborough at the Regent's Theatre on Saturday (which alas, a double booking led me to miss Denny C's buck's day/night). It wasn't a bad show, but nothing special. It had Ray Martin as the compere, which isn't great but fortunately he kept his mouth shut for most of the evening. Most of the footage I had seen before, albeit not in 3D. David drops a level in my estimation when asked the question of which animals he didn't like and he answered 'rats'. I will endeavour to educate him on the moral and intellectual superiority of the rodent genus.

Saturday attended the Linux Users of Victoria meeting with Daniel Jitnah giving a talk on graphical IDEs in Linux. There was discussion on Anjuta, KDevelop, Qt Creator and interestingly Lazarus, the Free Pascal IDE. Unfortunately it was also noted that the LUV server was suffering a serious problem at this point and it won't be until Thursday before we can get it up and running, I suspect. In the meantime, I will be presenting (again) at the CPA Young Professionals group, giving an in-depth discussion on GnuCash on Wednesday night.

Two major gaming sessions in the last week. Thursday's game was Pendragon, as we near the end of the final twilight phase of the grand story, where technology has reached an incredibly anachronistic and baroque level. It included Sir Urré’s Healing (Malory XIX, 10-12) and, as a side story, the players dealt with raids by King Brian, uprisings by Saxons in the same locale, and theft of incredible horses. In Sunday's game of Werewolf : The Yugoslav Wars went quite well. The pack managed to smuggle their 'Paleo-Eurasian' wolves and kidnap victim to the UNESCO zoo in Heidelberg, drug the guards, and then made an epic set of subterfuge border crossings into Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbian Krajina, and finally to their base located in of Republika Srpska. It was a delightfully troubling ending with their "rescue" screaming about guards with drugs, torture, and the taint of the Wyrm, along with the increasing realisation that having Interpol on your tail (pun not intended) is not the best, even with the use of fake identification.

In comparison yesterday was a complete write-off. From the mid-evening Sunday I came down with thumping headache, concrete joints, burning up, mouth as dry as a galah's cage. I buried myself in the doona and drank about 30 litres of water as I boiled the 'flu out of me. Still not feeling one-hundred percent but will soldier on regardless - especially given that I've been informed that my good friends at The Dwarf have found a spare ticket for me to see the defining classic prog-rock band, Yes tonight.

Friday afternoon V3 hosted it's second researcher presentation, this time with Dr. Andrew Hung of the Health Innovations Research Institute of RMIT. His talk was on Novel Treatments for Neurological Disorders, specifically the use of conotoxin receptor interactions with Gromacs. Who would have thought the little blighters could actually be useful, eh? The next day Saturday was Software Freedom Day, held at the Electron Workshop. It was the first Melbourne SFD for several years that I did not have an primary organising role, although I was responsible for promotion from the LUV side of things. One speaker didn't show, so with half-an-hour's notice I cobbled together a talk on Opportunities and Issues in Free Software where I argued that free software will be increasingly dominant, but will increasingly suffer free rider problems. Another talk was on bitcoin; whilst an advocacy talk it contained what would be expected - I have more negative opinions on this collectible code, based around the realisation that it doesn't deal with liquidity problems and doesn't have the status of legal tender.

Last Thursday, ran a session of Pendragon specifically the Castle of Maidens scenario from Malory; it's almost ended in a TPK. I now have the troubling situation where one PC is very powerful compared to anything else that beginning characters can come up with, but it's also near the end of the epic story. As a weird spinoff, it looks like I might be giving an address at the local Unitarian church on the Arthurian legends; after three years of pretty thorough research on the subject, perhaps this is understandable. Apropos gaming, Sunday was the third chapter of Werewolf:The Yugoslav Wars, which introduced the classic Valkenburg Foundation set of scenarios, but located near Novi Grad in Republika Srpka. I think I'm going to quite like this scenario pack; it actually speaks seriously about introducing thematic concerns into the narrative with the gradual introduction of an over-arching general theme.

Had a slight case of gastroenteritis last night and part of today, and surprisingly I suspect from lactose which is a first for myself. Sensibly took the day off work and finish my major research project for EDU 4441: Tertiary and Adult Education; specifically I have written on the The Provision of Free and Open Source Tertiary Education Content, which basically suggests putting as much content online that can be automated and distributed, and redirect resources to the labour-rich content (guided tuition, research, etc). Was highly inspired by a Wednesday night meeting of the Victorian branch of Australian Science Communicators who were discussing the effect and implementation of MOOCs. All this follows from the LMS discussion that I led a couple of weeks back on stratification which generated an excellent discussion, part of which I've saved for prosperity, especially important given the ridiculous "league leaders" approach that elite institutions have and the interest of the new education minister in quality rather than quantity of graduates.

Last touches of RPG Review issue 21 are being put together; had hopes for an interview with the people behind PCGen, but alas it seems that this will not be the case. As a follow-up to last week's article on The Representation of Computers in Roleplaying Games, this week's offerings include the kin article The Representation of Roleplaying in Computer Games. Like mana from heaven David Staples has provided the absolutely brilliant crossover of systems administration and eldritch horror with Code of Cthulhu. All this follows from an excellent session of Space 1889 on Sunday (leading me to read Guy Boothby's Dr. Nikola's Experiment. Ran Pendragon on Thursday which involved tracking down the demon Voso who has ended up on the Isle of Man (using a modified version of the Paulag Cat scenario from Savage Mountains (a good campaign pack if you can find it). Insofar that I have a social life outside of politics, gaming, education, work & etc., at all I must mention catching up with James Von Sutekh (FB), whom I hadn't seen for at least a decade; excellent conversation and very interested in his rather cutting-edge research into hep C transmission in the prison system. Also, whilst being virtual friends for several years, met uke quite by accident last week; will be visiting for a longer discussion soon.

Have purchased a second-hand T61 Thinkpad, very nice machine and practically free these days. Having taken the plunge to install Linux Mint and discovered an interesting wireless quirk. Linux is now also part of a new rifle that has 100% accuracy to 900 yards, and an effective range of 1200 yards. Finally, caseopaya is, understandably, pleased with recent efforts from Melbourne medical researchers in insulin mechanisms. Meanwhile in commercial world there's the the succulent smell of fresh oven-baked jumped shark.

Thursday night was an interesting game of Pendragon where the PCs came into conflict with each other over competing, but similar, objectives against a usurper lord, and a bastard knight - although I must confess that finding noble inheritance laws from the Romano-British period is somewhat challenging, although the remarks in De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae are not positive. In other gaming related events, have written a review of Twilight 2K which will also be published on rpg.net soon. As the review suggests I've made significant changes to the background and simplified the combat system.

We have a new car; our third Nissan Micra. There was also a hospital visit this week; more about that in the near future. Tomorrow I take the address tomorrow to Nigel Sinnot's address on clinical depression; next week we swap roles and I'll be giving an address on The Contribution of Unitarian-Universalists To Isocracy. Next Sunday is the annual LUV BBQ, after that is the AGM for the Victorian Secular Lobby. The first Isocracy book has began yesterday, a collaborative social science effort with a historian, a psychologist, a legal theorist and a social theorist putting it altogether.