Lev Lafayette's journal

The past week has consisted of days dedicated to the Otago University HEDC Symposium, three days of teaching workshops (Introduction to Linux and HPC, Advanced Linux and Shell Scripting, and, tomorrow From Spartan to Gadi). So far everything is doing well. Also doing well is my interviews for online learning tools, a field that has become all the more important in these coronavirus days. I feel the need to preface each time this is brought up that my study commenced just before the pandemic, a curious contextual serendipity that one would rather not have to experience! Apropos, a week ago I topped the Diamond League in Duolingo, the third time I have achieved such a level. However, it felt somewhat undeserved as I managed to snipe the position with less than 2,000 points - around the same amount that a year previous would need per day for a week to achieve such a position. Despite the flurry of online learning in its various forms, perhaps it is the case that fewer people are taking up languages or with as much gusto as in the past. It would seem that a certain "petite chouette verte" is also a victim of SARS-CoV-2, at least in some regions.

On that matter, the European Union 3G policy of "Geimpft, Genesen oder Getestet" (vaccinated, recovered, or tested) seems to be working surprisingly well with rapid testing tools. New cases having declined significantly in France, Germany, Spain, and Italy in recent months (but, notably, not the UK). Australia continues to lag on overall vaccination levels, and our case rates are three times their peak last year and increasing, with New South Wales and Victoria continuing to fare very poorly. Fortunately, vaccination does work and death rates have not increased proportionally. It is, of course, absolute figures that matter in this context if you're on the receiving end and the reality continues to be if you're wilfully not vaccinated or immunocompromised, life is going to be hard. It is the former group which appropriate disdain should be directed.

Which is one of those matters that vaccination is self-interested and other-interested as it does reduce transmission (the virus dies out quicker in a vaccinated person). It is, in a sense, an act of generosity. Contrariwise, being wilfully non-vaccinated is a sense of selfishness, combined with ignorance that is a danger to others. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of people tend towards generousity and a concern for others, and not just in this area. This is my own round-about way of expressing the pleasure of generosity toward a friend who required some bridging finance for a medical issue, but even more so, a most unexpected gift from overseas which I can only spend in memory of a dear and departed friend. Neither act was necessary, but both are carried out with a collective human spirit that inspires.

Have spent the past few days in Sydney, mainly attending the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) Skilled Workforce Summit. Too much of the keynote presentations was engaged in semantic quibbling over "skills" versus "capabilities" and contrived differences between "open science" versus "eresearch", although the sensible point was made that we have a Federal government is actively hostile to public research and advanced education. Quote of the conference must go to visiting guest Hugh Shanahan from the University of London who, when asked the question, "Don't you think we should be building new tools, rather than using 30+ year-old commands?" responded with "Oh get serious and grow up". I almost felt sorry for the person who asked the question, but the reality is we have performance, stability, and flexibility because of such commands and they have changed over time and the tool is the best was to get the task done. Apropos this topic my own presentation was on the International HPC Certification Forum and contributions by Austalia and New Zealand, especially in regard to the Australia-New Zealand HPC Educators repositories, an active work-in-progress. Turn-out, questions, and reactions were all quite positive.

In the first evening there was a post-conference gathering and discussion at The Rose Hotel in Chippendale, just down from a rather famous warehouse that I would visit regularly in the mid-90s. Was pleasantly surprised to run into my former housemate from just prior to that period John A., of Chances fame (well, also Home and Away, Breakers, and Blue Heelers but mainly Chances). We arranged to catch up the following night, and managed to do so quite successfully, along with spending time in the company with Adam B to discuss various Isocracy matters; I have an article on said website Taxing Times in Australia (and elsewhere), which outlines the major problems in our tax system which is costing the public - and I say this with no hyperbole - hundreds of billions of dollars.

In the midst of all this I've been making various arrangements for Rick B.,, and I thank everyone for their condolences in my last post, and on Facebook. His sister Janet and I caught up at Abbotsford Convent the day after his passing with her husband to say our farewells. Afterwards, we caught up with his former neigbour, Mel S., and Yanping G. for a meander around the Abbotsford Convent, one of my favourite parts of Melbourne. I have contacted his financial adviser, his lawyer, and arranged for a cremation with Carlyle Family Funerals. But most importantly for his Melbourne friends, I have arranged for a memorial service at the Unitarian Church, Saturday 17 August at 12 noon; hopefully, I will be able to arrange some sort of video-recording and/or streaming for his family and friends in New Zealand (or elsewhere) as well.

Today was my Public Economics exam, which is probably my strongest subject in this degree and I think I went pretty well. Of course, Public Economics is probably my strong subject in this area because I am fascinated by how unrealistic mainstream economic models are, and what goes wrong when they are applied without due consideration. Issues such as imperfect competition, asymmetric information, externalities, and rent-seeking are the norm, not the exception. Coming up soon is exams in macroeconomics and microeconomics which I suspect will be a lot more difficult for me, especially with the minimal time I have had available to do these courses. The microeconomics subject is particularly heavy on the analytic side which will require a lot of preparation over the next few days - which means skipping a couple of gaming sessions.

In the meantime I have completed the first draft of a paper for Open Philosophy on the problems of reproducibility in computational simulations (it's a special issue on the latter subject), along with the proposal to the Australian Research Data Commons to help establish a workshop-forum and data repository of HPC educational material and delivery techniques. Also worth mentioning that after five years on the waiting list I finished the last component to become a certified Software Carpentry trainer. Finally, have also completed a piece of formal assessment for my higher education degree by writing up the rationale for the International HPC Certification Forum. This is an interesting report, whereby the components are put together piecemeal, reviewed, and then recompiled into the final submission.

My daily 'blog of the federal election campaign continues, although it has slipped to every second day or so as the train-wreck continues in slow-motion. Also, received a midnight 'phone call from a locum at Rick's care facility to say that he had blood in his urine, which is usually not a good sign. There was no associated fever so he was kept under observation. I dropped by the following day to check on him, but and I haven't heard anything else since so one assumes all is well. Any worries I may have need to be put in the "cannot do anything about it" category, especially with the presence of various worries that I can act on.

Have made several preparations for the Isocracy Annual General Meeting (FB link) with Professor Clinton Fernandes on Timor-Leste issues, along with the relase of the monthly newsletter, released the same day I have a few words to say about Invasion Day and Captain Cook. I've also put my hand up to be a correspondent for LabourStart, which will mean a bit of digging around on various matters of industrial action in this country. For what it's worth, a new enterprise agreement is being voted on at work which is a result of the "mostly successful" action of the NTEU. It is still perplexing how some people express disdain for unions, let alone never join, but are quite willing to take the wages and benefits that union members campaign for and deliver. I guess they think that negotiations for wages and conditions is between equals or something.

With a month to go before the end of ticket sales, RuneQuest Glorantha Con III is moving along reasonably well. Mark Morrison has stepped up to announce he'll run a session of 13th Age Glorantha which is very nice of him. Today I officially launched the auction submission and auction bidding pages which includes some of old favourites from my personal collection. In actual play having an off-week as our regular GM is away on holidays, however still planning on our regular RuneQuest game on Sunday. In addition it looks like I'll be going to PopCon in Ballarat tomorrow, a one-day popular culture event, which will provide an ideal opportunity to promote RQ Con.

Yesterday a good portion of the day was spent cleaning out Rick's apartment. It was truly impressive how much he managed to squeeze into that tiny one-bedroom apartment, although a good portion of it was folders stuffed full of print out of journal articles and the like scanning a dizzying array of subjects. Denny of Red Rabbit Rubbish Removal was hired to help out with the job and he brought along a couple of francophone youngsters to help out. In three hours they'd emptied the place with the exception of a small amount of books and various personal effects that I saved. It's a rather amazing and sobering experience to see ninety percent of a person's life go into the back of a truck, yet as Denny pointed out (a) I'll see a lot more of this as I get older and (b) somebody will have to do it to me one day.

That evening managed to drag my somewhat weary carcass off to see The The who are on the final leg of their "comback tour". I have mixed feelings about this band (well Matt Johnson and friends). When I like them, I really like them, and they have a string of great hits all of which are quite worthy. However a lot of their other material comes across quite flat to me, as aural filler. It was an enthusiastic concert for the fans who haven't seen them play for decades, although they came out a little rough on the edges despite obvious competencies. Over the course of the concert caught up with a few people I know, including neighbour Adam, The Dwarf, Gwaine Mc., and at least caught sight of Glenn K., and Robbie C., who I was supposed to see before the show started. Naturally enough will give a more complete review on Rocknerd and, as a reminder to self, must do my increasingly out-of-date review of Blue Man Group.

Have just arrived in Europe after spending the better part of twenty hours in flight via Bangkok, which is about as good as it will get travelling from Australia; roughly a nine hour trip from Melbourne to Bangkok, two hours at the airport, then roughly eleven hours to Frankfurt. At the Melbourne airport had a chance encounter with frou_frou who is on her way to Wales for a heritage tour. Our journey was via Thai Airways; polite, functional, and inexpensive. Neither the food nor the in-flight entertainment is anything special (indeed the latter is overly cautious), but it does the job. Of some note was The Shannara Chronicles; I wasn't fond the books when I was in my early teens finding them too derivative of The Lord of the Rings, and too much like someone's D&D game mixed with a Gamma World setting. What I have seen of the TV series hasn't dissuaded me of that point of view. Obviously sleep deprived I also watched The Sound of Music, which remains a curious film, with its saccharin yet memorable score and an unreal but still charming plot. By chance I finished the film exiting Austria airspace, as one of those little moments where life imitates art.

Just prior to leaving Melbourne I dealt with a couple of major issues concerning Rick B., including completing a new financial statement for VCAT, and moving him from Carnsworth to Mercy Place Abbostford. I am working on the basis that the latter has a significantly more affordable fee structure and that is does have a better sense of community. It was quite a trial getting all the necessary paperwork together for the move - who knew that even in for the same purpose that state and federal governments won't share medical information even if the POA tells them to? Anyway, it's done now and the next step will the sale of his apartment. Once that is done I can close the door, as it were, on what has not been the easiest set of financial transactions that I've had to deal with. I seem to be taking greater care of another person's finances than my own, although this said, there is also greater need.

After spending a couple of days fighting off a cold, I have finally succumbed and decided that I really need to spend a day or two at home. So here I am wrapped up in several layers with Mac the cat and the laptop to keep me entertained as I doze in and out of a foggy delirium. Still, it is not nearly as a bad as the poor state that co-worker Martin P., has found himself in. A few weeks back he was admitted to hospital with loss of taste and fading vision; turns out he had a tennis-ball sized brain tumour on his frontal lobe. He has a mighty scar, like Frankenstein's monster, and is in very good spirits, despite having issues with short-term memory. We both took some delight in the discovery that a brain sample is being used on our Spartan HPC which of course he has done a bit of work on. It will make a great talking point for the next course.

On work matters, I think I have seen my desk once this week. Monday I worked from home whilst dealing with some Rick B. matters and Tuesday I had off as time-in-lieu. Yesterday I was at one of the University's internal management development courses, specifically 'Authentic Leadership'. It wasn't bad, but not really as challenging as I would have liked it, although I do speak from a privileged position - after all I did do a trimester course on the subject as part of my MBA. In other work-related matters, had a very good meeting with the internal staff teaching group (curiously linked with the above) on website accessibility. They were quite open to the fact that they had problems, and appreciated the irony that their anti-discrimination learning module was, in fact, discriminatory.

The Rick matters this week consisted of a one-hour meeting with his financial advisers (we're going to have to sell his flat), a quick visit to his lawyers, taking him for a check on the state of his facial skin cancer (all good), and finally organising access to his accounts. Having paid some $30K of my own money to cover his expenses, it is good to have turned that corner. There was a meeting with VCAT this week as well as UnitingCare had initiated proceedings due to my refusal to pay the full-rate until the Dept. of Human Services had made their assessment, which I told them every time they contacted me on the matter. Well, the Tribunal wasn't going to put up with their nonsense and despite them bringing three of their managers to the party, I walked out with guardianship intact, plus an opportunity to open the will (one wouldn't want to automatically sell it if it had already been bequeathed). As for UnitingCare, well, whilst I can be magnanimous in victory or loss, there is also a side of me that is vindictive towards those who negotiate in bad faith.

This week also witnessed a visit to The Astor with caseopaya and funontheupfield to see the film A Brief History of Time which they were showing in honour of the recently departed Stephen Hawking and donating part of the proceedings to MND Australia. The film covers both life and cosmology, and is hard to dislike on that basis, and often is quite funny. He was, at least in his early university days a somewhat indifferent and rapscallion genius. Notably, at this stage missing his estranged first wife, Jane Wilde, although notably it is remarked that without the combination of MND and Jane he probably wouldn't have achieved what he did. Also found Holly and Luke after the film who had been in attendance. I also took the opportunity to re-read the book - it has been some twenty-five years since I last turned those pages, and despite the title it's not just about time, but rather cosmology in general.

I've entitled this post after a current affairs show that seemed to be aimed at smart kids in the seventies, and just so incidentially because it has been seven days since my last update, and because I've been listening to a certain Comsat Angels album. Actually the latter is terribly inappropriate for me; a seven day weekend? By morning of day one I'd be going stir crazy. If there's no peace for the wicked, I must be one of the most wicked people on earth (silence from the peanut gallery, if you please!). Still, I have had the good fortune, as it were, to work from home today as I was required to chaperone Rick B., to the skin cancer surgeon for the removal of a facial lesion. A fascinating procedure to witness and remarkably quick; all done in twenty minutes - the journey from the aged care centre and return took as long, and the wait for taxis was utterly abominable. Outside of this time I've taken the opportunity to write up my KPAs for work this year as well as establish what is effectively a project management database of staff and tasks.

Yesterday I gave a brief presentation on Spartan's training program at an ANDS workshop at Monash University. There was a couple of good presentations on adult education which led me to scribble a few notes, but I was slightly horrified at the discussion on university websites where the key speaker was making what I consider to be some basic mistakes (as beautifully elaborated by a certain XKCD comic). It seemed to be an well-meaning error, but it was another example of an endemic style-over-substance unfortunately common in many university marketing approaches. Far less acceptable is the brand policy of the the University of Melbourne. I feel slightly sickened and angry just reading this sort of bullshit.

More happily, I have had some pleasant social occasions over the past few days. On Monday we went to see Silent Running at The Astor, which is a terribly flawed yet also glorious film. If I were, in any sense, involved in the film industry I'd be pitching for a remake. Maybe I should just write it myself? On related matters, I made an eleventh-hour submission for the Eclipse Phase Whispering Muse submissions, interviewed Terry K Amthor for RPG Review, played two sessions of Eclipse Phase, and one of Megatraveller. Finally, in Rocknerd news, published my review of The Chameleons, which proves I'm a tragic fanboy. My review of Mark's autobiography is still being worked on.

It's been a strange and disruptive past few days, and one which I am at peace with a certain resilience to stich things together and still have the opportunity for other actions. Initially the most serious problem was the discovery early Tuesday morning that Spartan had crashed. I quickly diagnosed it as a networking issue; the home, project, and scratch directories had all been lost and along with it, every running job screamed and died. As others came on board and I fielded users, we eventually narrowed it down to what appears to be a bug in a Cisco switch that was sending duplicate packets. Congratulations are due to Nhat, NinjaDan, Linh, and Mark M., for their efforts here. Making good of the opportunity we restarted all the nodes with a kernel upgrade as well, which were intending to do anyway, and brought nearly all the partitions online. Overall the detection, investigation, and recovery took the better part of two days, and I cannot help but be impressed by how calm and smoothly the operations ran under such apparent disaster. Arguably the degree of panic in situations like this is an indication of experienced versus inexperienced sysadmins.



The following day went to the hospital to visit Rick and also to see the social worker and doctor to discuss his situation. I signed myself up to pay for his transitional care until VCAT approves my application to receive power of financial attorney in addition to medical attorney. Six months ago he was giving presentations on the admixture of modern humans with archiac hominids, and the peculiar differences between reptilian and mammalian brains. Now, due to rapid onset dementia, he doesn't know what suburb he'd lived in for the past thirty years, the fact he has a brother, or where he was born, and his vocabulary has been reduced to probably less than a dozen words. He'll be spending his days staring out the window or at the television in his room, and that's all there is to it. I'll visit his flat and see if there's any music for him, based on prior studies. It's terrible witnessing such a clever and diverse mind disappear so quickly.

There have been other activities in the past few days. I have preparing heavily for the Isocracy AGM on Wednesday evening which will be addressed by Kos Samaras, assistant state-secretary of the Victorian ALP, speaking on The Reawakening of the Working Class. My own latest written contribution to Isocracy in the past few days has been a piece of the advantages of proportional representation. On Wednesday night we caught up with old university science fiction friend and now Greens activist, Tom S. and friend to see the director's cut of Dark City, the noir SF film which still well holds over the years. Finally, to finish things off last night went to a meeting of Free Software Melbourne at Electron Workshop; whilst it was supposed to be a games night we were distracted by the presence of Margaret Gordon, a documentary maker who wanted to know more about this Linux thing.