Lev Lafayette's journal

In utilitarian philosophy, a "hedon" is a measure of pleasure, a "dolor" a measure of pain, and they occur in a period called "episodes". Well, the universe has blessed me in recent days with the visitation of my dear friend from Darwin, Lara D., who seems to appear with a surplus of hedons which she sprinkles around like Tinkerbell, if you can imagine a punkish version of the fairy with devilish horns. Appropriately, this period started with a visit to my old stomping ground in Carlton North to attend the launch of two new books from Rabbit Poetry Journal where a hundred people were squeezed into a space designed for fifty; Connor Weightman's "Fivehundred Swimming Pools" and Eva Birch's "Pearl". Weightman's style is lengthy, externalised, evocative and heavily descriptive as he navigates the effects of climate change. In comparison, Birch offers a filtered, refined, internalised and psychoanalytic view of the self. I offered these opinions to the two poets (knowing a little bit about climatology and psychoanalysis, and maybe even poetry), with their approval. Appropriately enough, it was also on the evening of World Poetry Day.

Continuing the aesthetic adventures, the following evening, Lara and I visited the newest exhibition of Van Gough at Lume. Having attended this "a few" times in the past, you might think there's nothing else to see, but the additions to the new VR landscape were surprisingly good (except for the active characters). The following day including a lengthy session at Anthony L's annual gathering at "Life's Too Short" with the usual suspects from the left-leaning political and diplomatic world. This was also an opportunity for Lara and Erica H., to finally meet, both of whom I share property with, albeit separated by over 5,000 kms. The following day, Lara also had the opportunity to meet Mel S. (who I don't own property with - yet) at the final Melbourne show of Buddhadatta at Gem Bar. This is the second time in recent weeks I've seen this self-described "legendary Buddhist punk sensation", who were supported by Gold Coast Leathers. Unsurprisingly, I have reviewed Buddhadatta on Rocknerd, which also follows a review I have just completed (completely different style, but also from Japan) of the haunting beauty in Sakamoto's Opus and Kagami.

A major activity in the past week has been the substantive start to the Isla Bell Charity fundraising campaign from the RPG Review Cooperative; it's mostly my efforts at this stage, but others are also getting involved in the new future. The canonical list of games for sale and description is available on the RPG Review Cooperative website. This will be updated pretty much every day. The aim was originally to raise at least $5K by the time that Conquest is held; we're well over 20% complete in pledges just after the few day, so maybe that was a bit pessimistic on my part. Further, I have already had discussions outside the Cooperative with other organisations about further potential fundraising activities.

On a related matter, I received a ticket to Knotfest from the Charitable Fund under the proviso that I had "to party as hard as Isla". Whilst a full review is being composed for Rocknerd, I can mention in advance that the festival was absolutely superb, tens of thousands of people. I was particularly impressed with "Within Temptation", "Slaughter to Prevail", and especially "Babymetal". Of course, headline act "Slipknot" themselves really put on an impressive and energetic visual show at volume. On a vastly different scale, the night previous, I went out with Carla BL to see "Buddhadatta", a Japanese Buddhist punk band (yes, you read that right) supported by all-women "Curlers" with their punk-synth, and the experimental noise of "Paul Kidney Experience". More reviews for Rocknerd! Finally, on such social events, I went out with Liza D. last night to a comedy taping show featuring Nicky Black and Jez Watts.

But that's not all! It really has been quite a diverse week. Early in the week, I had two workshops to run, "High Performance and Parallel Python" and "Regular Expressions with Linux"; the former was quite engaging, with a large turnout. Further, this weekend, I also joined a panel to discuss the future of wages and incomes in the age of automation with Adam Ford's "Future Day". Unlike other times in the past when technology has provided productivity and new job opportunities, I think current technologies are largely job replacing, and only a change in the political economy will fairly distribute the productivity gains. Finally, because I haven't mentioned it for a little while, I should say that I'm powering along in my PhD studies and am looking toward an early finish to the introductory unit in Argumentation and Critical Thinking, which I believe I have plenty of experience. The next step will be getting prior credit from my master's degree.

Following my return from the tragically sad events in Perth, I have found myself attending a variety of aesthetic events. This started when Erica H. saw the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Fine Arts put on an opera "Hänsel und Gretel" at the rather impressive new Union Theatre. Sung in German (with subtitles), with a set and costuming that was both minimalist and complete, Lisette Bolton (as Gretel) and Metehan Pektas (as The Witch) were especially excellent performers. Two nights later I was taken out by Fiona C., to "The War on 2024 Annual Comedy Gala" at Hamer Hall. The comedians included Australia's best, led by Mark Humphries, with all providing a thorough satirical and scathing review of the major political news headlines of the past year. Political comedy always has been among the bravest of its art because it channels the discontent of the people as ridicule to those with power, and this was no exception.

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) has been hosting a series of events relating to Icelandic performer Björk. After spending a day out with Mel S., and Erica H., I ventured to the venue to drift off into another world, with Björk’s narrating the documentary "Fungi: Web of Life 3D" where the information, filmography, and narration were all of excellent quality. On Monday, I repeated a visit with Erica H. and Angela M. to see Björk in a starring role for the peasant-class medieval drama "The Juniper Tree" which came with a challenging realistic portrayal of a low-fantasy story. I note with some excitement that ACMI is also currently hosting a "Future Fictions" exhibition, which includes set items and art from "Cyberpunk 2077" and "Blade Runner 2049" and, to stay on theme, more content from Björk, this time in the form of her clothing from "The Gate".

Between this, I ventured out to see "The Garbage and the Flowers", a low-key alternative rock band, at the Tramway Hotel. In the process, I caught up with Guy B., an old Perth friend (and friend of Peter Lyons), and briefly with Ruby M. Last year's EP by said group was sufficiently good that this caught my attention, and I've composed a review covering both the EP and the live show on Rocknerd. Afterwards, I travelled to Springvale to attend the 30th Anniversary Gala Dinner of the Fujian Chinese Association. Attended by around 500 people, the event included a delegation from said province, several state and Federal MPs, and a former Australian ambassador, a notable juxtaposition from the previous event. In my role as ACFS (Victoria) President, I gave a short speech. It must be said that in my experience, these associations really know how to put on an event; the endless stream of superb performances, dancers, singers, etc, was only matched by the equally endless stream of culinary delights.

To finish it all off (temporarily), last night I had Maggie S., over for dinner. Maggie, now long retired, has a rich history in journalism through ABC (where she had a major role in the famous music show "Countdown") and as the Melbourne editor of the magazines "Cosmopolitan" and "Vogue". She entertained me with stories of her interviews and the often challenging chaperoning of various musicians from the 1980s, including Deborah Harry, Andrew Ridgeley, Billy Joel, Boy George, and many others. We spoke a great deal of the notorious wildness of mind common among those with aesthetic inclinations and the problems this may cause, and yet also recognition that art has a healing power. For all the losses of those dear to our hearts, there is still the hope of beauty, justness, and truth in this world - and that is worth fighting for.

With a temporary respite from the rigors of full-time and full-time study, I engaged in a very social weekend. On Friday night I hosted an "Elder Perth Migrants Dinner" with Liana F., Julie A., Erica H., James N., Simon S., and Justine Mc (not a Perth migrant). Dinner consisted of "Pasifika Gnocchi", including various sweet potatoes from the region, and an "Australian mess" (an Eton mess on a pavlova). For entertainment, I constructed an appropriate playlist of our favourites from 1977 to 1994, taking us back to the days of the Red Parrot and The Firm, with a couple of fairly obscure Perth bands (And An A, Accelerated Men) being included. Whilst far from all the "Perth goth migrants" that I know in this city, it was pretty much the capacity I could fit around this dining table and certainly acts as inspiration for further events. It was certainly a very animated evening and I think we finally finished up around 3 am.

The following day was the RPG Review Cooperative Annual General Meeting at The Rose Hotel (not on Rose Street) with Andrew D., Charmaine D., Penny D., Liz B., Karl B., Rodney B., Michael C., Tim R., and Andrew Mc with Jay P., Adrian S., and Andrew P online). It was a good year for the Cooperative with improvements in membership, finances, and activities, even if our flagship webzine had only a single issue in the year. There was an excellent discussion about the use of AI-generated material in publications; we've decided to accept it as long it is credited as such. Afterward, I visited Brendan E., with Kerrie H. arriving later, and watched a few episodes of the WWII drama "The Liberator", based on the extraordinary journey of the 157th Infantry Regiment in Italy and beyond. After that, had dinner with Anthony L, Robin M, Sara, and Matthew W., where there was a fair bit of discussion around the recent fire at the See Yup Temple.

For Sunday, the big event was the Melbourne Drone Orchestra at the Mission to Seafarers. The building has been an oddity that I've observed for more than twenty years, so it was quite an adventure to step inside this old-world and quirky Spanish mission-styled building. The Drone Orchestra event was held in the Nora Dome, originally a gymnasium for sailors, and with the shape providing superb acoustics. The event itself consisted of some experimental-industrial musicians, including my dear friend Carla L. who played a combination of bass and theremin. Other musicians turned it up a notch and by the end, there were people performing drums and sax, and even drums, guitar, and vocals simultaneously. The evening also witnessed the opportunity to catch up with folk musician Penelope S., whom I haven't seen in many years, and also Liana F., who invited me along in the first place. At the end of the evening a few of us (Erica H., Sophie P., Shane decamped to The Rookery for late-night kir royale cocktails and discussion about Australian arthouse films.

After a couple of weeks of politics and study (more of the latter is impending) it was very pleasant to spend a lot of the last week engaging in some more light-hearted entertainment, in the form of music and film. For the former, I received a mid-evening message from Glenn K, inviting me to see Ride at The Forum. Whilst likable, I didn't really consider them to be my thing, but one should make use of the advantage of living close to the CBD. As it turned out, it was a great night out and I've said as much in my review on Rocknerd. It also provided a good juxtaposition to the Pop Will Eat Itself concert at The Corner a several weeks prior, both in comparison of the two venues and as a pair of thirtieth-anniversary touring albums; "Nowhere", and "This Is The Day ... This Is The Hour ... This is This!", respectively. I really have been quite lax in my music reviews this year (not to mention my RPG reviews), and with scant weeks left before the end of the year, I will endeavour to do something about that.

One fellow attendee at Ride was Erica H., making it the fourth evening in succession I had been in her company. In the previous three we, being of a certain age, followed our classic gothic predilections and made our way through the Wednesday Netflix series, which was thoroughly charming, and I'm really impressed with how Jenna Ortega describes taking on the role. Last evening another visit witnessed the viewing of "I Am Mother", a rather good Australian science-fiction thriller. Over the weekend, visited Brendan E., who is a regular provider of popular culture knowledge to me. I completely neglected to mention several weeks back he entertained with Everything Everywhere All At Once, a thoroughly good SF mind-bender with lots of comic content, and this weekend we delved in the Korean medieval naval war film prequel "Hansan: Rising Dragon", whilst finishing the "implausible but mostly true" story of the SAS, "Rogue Heroes". Finally, another entertaining event of the weekend was attending Penny A's "garden party", which Liana F., openly hi-jacked as her birthday party as well. Plenty of delicious food, and fascinating conversation, and I seem to have made a couple of new friends as well. For now, however, it's back to having the nose at the grindstone, I still have a psychology degree to finish!

In a few minutes I will be boarding a plane to visit my old hometown of Perth, Western Australia. It's a short visit and the primary reason will be to attend the national conference of the Australia-China Friendship Society for reasons of the Avatar Mountain environmental business, with the intention to visit concrete manufacturers as well. Nevertheless, whilst I am there I will take the opportunity to catch up with friends and have arranged a dinner on Sunday the 12th at Bistro Bellavista. There are a couple of individuals whom I'm quite keen on seeing as we haven't been in each other's physical company for more than twenty-five years and of course many others who I make every effort to see each time I journey to The Western Lands.

The journey comes on the back of finishing the final pieces of assessment for the first unit of the Graduate Diploma in Applied Psychology; after presentations, essays, and interviews this was a short but surprisingly difficult exam that dealt with the finer points of quantitative research methods. It seemed appropriate that after such an exam I attended the Melbourne Recital Centre for a presentation entitled "Sampled Reality", student material with atypical instrumentation (voices, household objects) was digitally transformed and introduced with a personal psychological statement. It is hardly a new approach and it was by necessary experimental, but I was quietly impressed by one that included a fair component of a rhythmic narrative. Afterward, we dined and drank at Milk The Cow, a worthy licensed fromagerie.

Following the topic of electronic music, I wrote a fairly lengthy piece on the death of Vangelis this week for Rocknerd, which follows a prior piece on Klaus Schulze, and must be followed on recognition of the recent death of Dave Smith, the lead developer for the MIDI protocols. It is yet another example of the engineer's curse; there would have been no Vangelis or Schulze, or for that matter pretty much any musician from 1980 onwards if it were not for the work of Dave Smith. But is by consumption of music that most live, rather than its production, and production protocols are a step even further removed even if they are a necessity to the final contemporary product.

There are two items of psychological note this week for me. The first was submitting my first assignment for my GradDip in Applied Psych at Auckland University; I am not entirely happy with it. The topic was effective means to reduce re-offending, and whilst my knowledge of the topic is pretty good and I could provide good references to the main drivers (certain mental health conditions and substance abuse combined is a very significant driver), I did not do so well in the short "elevator speech" that was part of the assessment. In any case, I am powering through the rest of the first course as well as working on the academic integrity course. The second part was attending my first session for my own chronic depression and driven dysthymia and, of course, issues from my partner once removed. At one stage it seemed my poor therapist was going to burst into tears as I told the story, but I will take it as a positive from a caring and sympathetic listener. It was interesting that my therapist raised, unprompted, the same remark that several of my friends have asked me quite bluntly on a certain matter: "Have you told her?" You're all correct, of course, and I was wrong to be silent to on the matter. Foolishly I considered the matter to be a sign of dependency (and people of my generation value their independence enormously) and did not speak of it, when in fact it was a vulnerability that was being cared for. So, in the future, they will be informed of the situation; but the time is certainly not right at the present. My apologies, gentle readers, to be so necessarily vague.

Social events over the past several days have been quite prevalent. I had a surprise visit from Conan F., of the Exiles Gaming Club who was in town from Sydney and correlated with Liana F., dropping by after seeing a rather skilled photographer. The following evening Simon S., and Jude S., came over for dinner, the latter being a particularly competent reviewer of the arts and former ministerial advisor. The following was a close-to-birthday lunch with a former housemate and a dear friend from decades ago, Lauren R. Always a delight to be in their company, and given how nearby she works further reunions will certainly occur. That evening was another visit to the Shibari Lounge with Liana; my prior comments apply and I will confess that I was perhaps not in the right spirits for said event. Finally, last night was seeing the subtly-named Hard Ons gig at the Espy in St Kilda. For a while, in the 80s they were Australia's most prominent punk band. As for the Espy, once a beautiful dive, now quite a horrendous mainstream venue. We ended up having pre-gig drinks at the Prince of Wales which, whilst it has been cleaned up a lot, is still a pretty pleasant place to visit. Nevertheless, the Gershwin Room at the Espy has remained in a dilapidated beauty, and the Hard Ons delivered in their famous hardcore surf-punk style with new front-man Tim Rogers (Box The Jesuit, You Am I). That evening was a birthday of significance for my dear old friend close to thirty years Des J., and I attended with an equally dear old friend Robbie K., and a new friend Simone G. who certainly brought a smile to my face.

There's been a small flurry of the articles on the Isocracy Network in the past few days; my own contribution, just posted, is a comparison between New Zealand and Sweden for dealing with the novel coronavirus. Wes Whitman has contributed a piece on the economic policies of James Meade, a rather under-rated 20th-century economist. Finally, there is new contributor Derek Wittorff on "The Radicalism of Systems Theory". All bodes well for tomorrow's annual general meeting of the Isocracy Network which will be held over Jisti.

Today I also completed a massive, three-thousand-word, review of The War of the Worlds, including the original book, the radio drama, the musical version, and the most recent film; I couldn't resist adding a little bit of discussion of coronavirus into the mix as well. On a different aesthetic orientation, there is my own health and personal body sculpting, as I've remained at consistent weight for the past three weeks, and there are still several kilograms I wish to shed. As a result, I am also doubling-down on the exercise I do and have built myself a small collection of industrial-EBM tunes to listen to as I do so.

Work-wise my usual tasks have taken a step back this past few days as I've made some major revisions to the parallel programming (OpenMP, MPI, OpenACC, CUDA) programming courses that I'll be conducting on Monday and Tuesday next week, along with courses on regular expressions and running jobs on Australia's peak HPC system the fortnight after that, then there's an additional course on mathematical programming in an HPC environment (Octave, R, Mathematica, etc). All-in-all it's been many thousands of words written and re-written over the past several days, all of which will provide lasting content. It's almost as if words have a deep and special meaning to me; that words, especially matters of promising and forgiveness (as Hannah Arendt famously pointed out) have redemptive power to the human spirit. There is much more I could say about that, but that will have to wait a few more days.

It seems that I skipped my regular beginning-of-week journal entry, and it's not surprising either. Much of my time has been spent on "Project Melomys", a day initially inspired by First Dog on the Moon's cartoon about the first mammal extinction due to climate change. FDontM predicted that we would forget about the little brown rat but, as is my wont, I marked in my diary. Then Nevil.KingstonBrown made the remark that Australia needs a memorial for extinct and endangered animals, and the plan was hatched. On February 18 there will be a launch of a petition to the Australian Parliament to establish such a memorial and museum, and there will be gatherings around the country to remember the Bramble Cay Melomys. A Facebook group has been established, which has over two hundred members, and various MPs and environmental groups are being contacted every day. This little brown rat is getting some traction.

In the past several days I've also made two contributions to Rocknerd. On Sunday Andy Gill of the Gang of Four died. As the recipient of his guitar when he last performed in Melbourne it was only appropriate that I write up some valedictions to his many talents in musical performance, music production, and video production. A few days later, I posted a review of Grum's Deep State, which if nothing else indicates a diversity of taste and perhaps even good taste. To add some additional colour to the mix, have purchased tickets to see Pop Will Eat Itself and Snog. Currently thinking about getting the "meet and greet" tickets for China Crisis when they visit later this year.

On Sunday I take the big silver bird to New Zealand where I will "work from home" for the next two weeks. Starting in Dunedin I'll re-enroll for my second year of my MHEd at Otago University, meet up with my supervisor, and visit my secret South Pacific base to ensure that the new tenants are looking after the mystical Lodge. After that, it will workshops and conferences for eResearchNZ, where I've been co-opted to speak on a panel about cloud computing because you always need one curmudgeon nay-sayer. Also particularly interested in the workshop on use of Singularity containers on HPC. After that I'll travel to Wellington to attend and present at Multicore World, where I'll present on Complex Problems Actually Have Complex Solutions.

A good portion of the past few days have consisted of moving various furnishings around in preparation of getting part two of our flooring done; thirty plus years old carpet goes out, laminate floorboards go in. The problem of being a somewhat bookish person is that one ends up with literally dozens of bookcases, and these aren't much fun to carry upstairs. Playing furniture Tetris is an interesting game, as well as the contents of an additional three rooms, are squeezed into the already furnished two which have had their flooring done. After that, it'll be to get the questionable electrics in the place fixed. Capital depreciates, land increases in value, and that is why the earth should not be owned.

On that topic the Isocracy Network is having its annual general meeting (FB) in two weeks. Apart from discussing Nicolò Bellanca's book on the subject, there is also the Victorian Parliament's inquiry into homelessness, which we have more than a few issues to raise (land prices, public housing supply, harmful effects, etc). In my own adventures in landlordism, our tenant in Dunedin is moving out to get their own place (congratulations Dominic!). Against the advice of our estate agent, I am recommending that the rent should not be increased.

Despite the various time-dependent home activities (all work and no play etc), last night caseopaya went out to see We Lost The Sea, a Sydney-based band which I first encountered a couple of years ago. They started off a metal band until their vocalist committed suicide. After that they transmogrified into something that is a cross between math rock and metal, which some punters are calling "post-metal" (really? as if "post-rock" wasn't bad enough), with now two albums out in the new style (Departure Songs, Truimph & Disaster). Also caught up with funontheupfield who randomly turned up at the gig.

In a previous entry I mentioned the issues I was having with my MSc dissertation supervisor. I decided to apply for a new supervisor and, credit where it's due, the college organised one within a matter of days. After explaining the various issues I was facing the new supervisor accepted the extended proposal without any further additions or amendments, which suggests to me that it was fine as it is. I have joked about the funny McSweeny's article on the hilarious the snake-fight portion of your thesis defense, but there is some wry amusement to be derived by the fact that I had a poisonous snake of my very own. I assure you, the snakes are very real.