Lev Lafayette's journal

The past several days my "free time", such as it is, has been spent putting the finishing touches on a special 128-page double-issue of RPG Review, celebrating 50 years of Dungeons & Dragons; "the game that changed the world" as "Time" magazine subtly put it. My own contribution, apart from being the editor, includes the history and stats for my first D&D character, Zaxxon, for multiple editions of the game and several reviews for modules from the early 1980s. The issue also includes an interview with Frank Mentzer, the author of the "BECMI" edition of the game from the same period. Adding to all this was the RPG Review Annual General Meeting on Sunday at The Rose Hotel in Fitzroy, where about 15 of us completed our official meeting business in eleven minutes and then spent the rest of the afternoon in fine company. It must be said over the past several years, the RPG Review has been quite a small powerhouse of activity: 58 issues of an online magazine and often with major industry figures interviewed, a massive library of almost a thousand publications, multiple conventions (two for RuneQuest and one for Cyberpunk), and so many gaming sessions involving hundreds of people run by members of our Cooperative. Despite my best efforts to recruit someone else to take over this wild steed, the membership continues to insist that I remain as president, so I guess that's one of my responsibilities in life.

One of the outcomes of that meeting was the enthusiastic establishment of a "Gamers for Isla" campaign. Late last year, there was some public news about the disappearance of Isla Bell, a young artist and environmentalist. Quite a few people in my friendship circle either knew her or her family or were close and promoting the campaign to find her. Alas, she had come to an awful tragedy. But this was no end; the family has established a charity for an art award and scholarship for young women that accord with Isla's passions. Through mutual friends, I have been in contact with members of the family who are also agents of the Foundation, and we're processing what will be a fundraising event to be held at the Conquest Games convention at the end of April. In the meantime, we're definitely encouraging people (and especially members and friends of the RPG Review Cooperative) to donate to the charity. Please let us know if you're doing so because you've seen our campaign; as always, we seek to make a difference. Rest in power, Isla.

When life is busy and being lived to the full, sometimes the opportunity to record and reflect falls a bit of the wayside. As a result, the following is a rather random collection of some activities over the past few weeks, and notably missing a rather extensive discussion on "organised noise" and of course, recent political developments, both of which will have their own entries over the next few days. At this juncture, I wish to give brief reflections on eResearch Australasia 2024, the All Saints' Day cocktail party, and the next issue of RPG Review.

I've written a few notes on the eResearch Australasia conference at the Pullman Hotel in Albert Park. In short, several hundred people in attendance, lots of high-quality content, plenty of opportunity to network, and my presentation on Spartan was very well-received. Since then, I also took the opportunity to bring together attendees from UniMelb for a bit of a debrief session and compiled notes of interest; "many eyes make all bugs shallow". I am still working on an abstract for the eResearch New Zealand conference for next year and also putting my mind to the THETA conference in Perth next year.

The weekend after eResearch, Luna and I hosted an "All Saints' Day Cocktail Party" for former residents and friends of two households in Stawell Street, Burnley and Rushall Crescent, North Fitzroy, from the 1990s and early 2000s. It was really quite a wonderful night to bring people together, and I really enjoyed playing the role of cocktail waiter. A special highlight was the opportunity to catch up with one Fiona C., whom I hadn't seen since Stawell St. We certainly had a lot to say to one another, but after almost thirty years, we still only scratched the surface. For entertainment purposes, I put together a setlist which we ran through a least a few times.

The next issue of RPG Review is already underway. Whilst the release date is December, we are already collecting content for this special double issue, dedicated to fifty years of "Dungeons & Dragons", a rather important popular cultural phenomenon. Of special note is the fact that our interview subject will be none other than Frank Mentzer, who is most notable as the author of the "BECMI" (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortal) boxed editions of the game, which would sell in the millions and be translated into eleven languages. That's kind of a big deal, really. Mind you, our online 'zine has had some astounding interview subjects in the past, and we had over five thousand unique visitors to our site last month with the release of the last issue of RPG Review. So perhaps we're a bit of a cultural phenomenon in our right.

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.

Three dinners and events on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night have left me feeling a little washed out, although all the gatherings were excellent. On Friday night I was joined by Des, Sim, and Robbie as we spent an evening at the Kent St Bar and Hotel Jesus. After the dinner and conversation, Sim insisted on teaching me the Auslan alphabet and a few words, the former of which is remarkably easy to pick up. The following night attended an event of the Wild Arts Club/Bohemian Adventures for an excellent Tom Wait's special event and slow friending at the Hare Hole. Again, a sort of unaggressive barroom jazz that I can tolerate and with appealing content. I loved the fact that the table questions were derived from Waits' lyrics. Finally, on Sunday night had what is coming to be a regular dinner with business partner Anthony L., and Robin M.

Another activity over the weekend is that I bought myself a bike for the coming months of sunshine ("laughs in Melbourne"). Specifically, a Trek 7.1 FX, which is really an excellent road bike and one which I picked up for quite a bargain. When the weather is suitable, I quite love cycling, it operates at a pace that is sufficiently speedy but also allows immersion into the environment, somewhere in-between walking-running pace and that of a motorised vehicle. Also, it is obviously good for health reasons.

For RPG updates, RPG Review issue 55-56 are, of course, late as usual. This issue is a special on "Law and Politics", and we're still getting a bunch of content together. I'm writing a social development system for GURPS, taking the existing technology levels that the game uses and introducing institutional and legal technologies and the scope of different governments. It's beginning to read and look like a social theory essay, but that's understandable given that technology (physical and social) amplifies our activities. In actual play, continuing sessions with Burning Wheel Thirty Year's War and GURPS Dark Sun on Monday and Thursday evenings respectively. The former is proving very entertaining delving deeply into a fantasy version of the chaos that was early modern Germany.

After many months of COVID-19 delays, caseopaya and I are finally getting around to putting our Willsmere property on the market. The Willsmere Estate is certainly a nice place to live with astounding natural surroundings and for those who have an interest in local history, the former use of the grounds and buildings as an asylum should certainly intrigue. Anyway, we're in talks with a couple of real-estate agents, and we've had a couple of nibbles of interest. It would be awesome to sell to someone we know of course, so if you're looking to buy and have deep pockets I'm sure we could come to an arrangement, right? In a manner most inappropriate for a seller (yet suggested to me by my mentor many decades ago), I am more than willing to engage in a full and frank discussion about what is wrong with the property; not much to be honest, but better if the vendor tells you than the buyer discovering it after purchase.

The working week was a difficult one for me. Not because of the work, per se, but rather the conditions. Last week was particularly warm making a good night's sleep something of an impossibility. Yes, I do have air-conditioning, but I prefer to use it only in the most minimal amounts, partially because I have this weird sense of environmental responsibility (although I am now with a 100% renewables electricity provider) but also because I am particularly prone to terrible headaches from said devices - and even the occasional nose-bleed. More to the point, I was attending the EasyBuild user's conference which, being hosted in Europe, meant that I was getting up at 1am in the morning for a conference that finished at 6am - just in time for work. Now the sessions are all recorded on Youtube. However, I did at least make some effort to be in attendance - because on the first day they proudly announced that they now have attendees in four continents because there was a person registered from Australia. EasyBuild really has made a big difference in the installation and optimisation of HPC software, and I'll be writing up a conference report in the next few days.

Whilst I couldn't really have evenings, last weekend I did (on advisement) take the unusual opportunity to relax a bit (a temporary cool change also helped). Providing post-housing company, caseopaya and I have smashed our way through several movies, of the fantasy variety, for kids young and old. My pro-rodent bias was charmed by "The Tale of Despereaux", and surprised by many of the cast. Following this, two of the three movies in The Hobbit series, which I think are quite well done and I don't mind the elaborations to the original story. Then there was Terry Gilliam's "The Brothers Grimm", which combined visual appeal and some adult-level Python-noir comedy, and finally in great contrast, "Eragon", which is definitely for the youngsters with a plot and dialogue that really does seem like a young teenager's Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Appropriately then, the weekend also witnessed the Annual General Meeting of the RPG Review Cooperative at the Rose Hotel in Fitzroy, which was a really was a good excuse to catch up with fellow gamer friends whom I hadn't seen for a year or more. Meeting business took thirty minutes; a meal and a few drinks later and I believe a few hours had passed.

It's a couple of months late but RPG Review Issue 49-50 has been released. This is the Cyberpunk 2020, Year of the Stainless Steel Rat double issue, with transcripts from the conference proceedings, a setlist of cyberpunk music, various cyberpunk scenarios and campaign settings, film and soundtrack reviews of Blade Runner 2049 (OK, that's previous work of mine) and a review of the Cyberpunk 2077 computer game. I feel that the publication is really a little moment in the history of the genre, and I am so thankful to all of those who contributed during the day. I am a little embarrassed that it is late, but as many will know life events have hit me very hard indeed in recent months.

Still, if any good did come out of the conference on a personal level it was my introduction to the new genre of "solarpunk", and their practical engineering perspectives and optimism (founded on good science, I might add) that despite the unnecessary barriers (usually relating to political economy) we can actually make a better world. An immediate case in point is The Economist's modelling that SARS-COV-2 has resulted in 7m and 13m excess deaths worldwide (in stark contrast to the 3.3m as stated cause of death) but contrasted with the prospect that new mRNA vaccines may also provide pre-emptive protection against future variants. I must quickly add, you do not need to be a research scientist to be contributing to saving the world or even a single life. You just need to have eudaimonia, the path of virtue, as your motivation. That is the only criteria on which one should judge another for equality.

It also brings me a little bit of pleasure to know that today I finished the second chapter of my thesis for my masters in higher education. This was a bit of a challenge as I initially found myself going down various rabbit holes until I reached the point, where I had pretty much start from scratch, with a greater sense of mental discipline. The chapter, some five thousand words in length, includes a review of studies on how information and communication technologies have influenced the university, various economic theories relevant to public funding of education (positive externalities, public goods, rent-seeking) with an emphasis on institutional economics, and finally the cognitive and cultural side, where andragogy is one vector along with that of high-context and low-context communication cultures and how this influences online course design and delivery. Now, on to the rest of the week; I have a gruelling six-hour exam on Wednesday for macroeconomics, followed by a job interview the following day. Then, after that, a brief break and - assuming all goes well - I'm off to Sydney for a few days.

I'm running two day-workshops later this week, including one for those transitioning from Spartan (our UniMelb HPC) to Gadi (the NCI flagship system, #24 most powerful in the world). This will be the first time I've run this workshop. The day after that is a course on regular expressions, the awesome tool for discovering patterns buried deep in text. This is one I've done before, albeit once. The latter has a degree of appropriateness given an article I power-produced this morning entitled "Process Locally, Backup Remotely" inspired by the use of perhaps the most trivial regex tool; grep.

I feel even more productive than usual, and I know that this is because of an on-going bout of driven dysthymia. I have attended two counseling sessions in the past week to discuss associated matters related to the topic, one organised through work which was less than useful as it was more about burnout and pitched at a high level. Still, others got something out of it. The other was a one-to-one session which was just the sort of thing that I needed. I know that I haven't been in a very good place for some weeks now, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Using the old Victorian method of not naming names, but rather providing initialisation, I would like to really reach out to "the kindness of women" (and they have all been women) who have really been there for me over the past several weeks, including EH, LG, AH, PA, and most recently JW.

Which does lead me to consider the life choices taken by people. Of course, my libertarian side deeply respects the right of people to make their own choices in life, even completely wrong choices, and even destructive choices, and long as they have ownership of them. But I do shake my head in some wry despair when people seem to forget that life is a one-shot adventure, and when excellent opportunities present themselves, they're worth taking! But of course, that does require the ability to recognise such things for what they are; and if when one has a tendency to think in the short-term, to decide on feelings rather than reasons, to consistently fail by not completing one's own goals or promises made to others, etc., well, they're going to find themselves in the same sort of place in five years time that they're in now, or worse. And maybe wonder then what they missed out on.

Whilst on the topic of commitments and adventures (even if imagined), I have been doing a lot of RPG related activity over the past several days, including games of RuneQuest, D&D5th, and Cyberpunk 2020. In addition, RPG Review 47 has been released with the special topic of "In Sickness and In Health", which includes my formal resignation as President of the Association and Editor of the journal, pending for the end of the year. The opportunity is there for someone to take up the role of what has been a fairly successful group and publication. But there has to be change with growth, and that goes with the organisation - and myself.

Unsubstantiated speculations of past lives aside, we have but one life to live. We were all born, never asked, and I feel no disdain to those who rather wish that they weren't here in the first place. For this is an imperfect world, indifferent to our sufferings, and a source of what the philosophers call "natural evil". The situation is hardly helped by the systems of power that we have in place that encourage rule for selfish gain and against public welfare. But as much as we are thrown into this place we have a responsibility to ourselves, at the very least, to make the most of it whilst we can. The time comes, all too soon, when one lacks the physique to engage in the world with the same sort of vitality as one did in their youth (assuming one has been sufficiently lucky in that regard in the first place). This means in one years we have one perhaps should do their absolute utmost to make discoveries or inventions, take up the fight for justice and freedoms, create artifacts of lasting beauty etc.

This, continuing the theme of my previous journal entry, leads me to consider my involvement with roleplaying games. Certainly, I have been continuing with my fundraising sales for medicines sans frontiers; close to another $1000 raised in the past two days alone. I also have been spent a great deal of my spare time in the past few days writing content for RPG Review 46, which is dedicated to heavily narrativist orientated FATE games. The situation wasn't helped when I discovered that some ten pages of relevant material that I was going to use by Simon S., was material that I'd included some issues prior. As cooperative storytelling in a shared imaginary space at their best RPGs are great dramatic art. Most of the time however the content is pretty low-brow, knuckle-dragging even at times. A lot of work goes into producing this 'zine, and at times like this, I cannot say I particularly enjoy it. But I have a responsibility as someone who has taken up this voluntary role in the incorporated association in lieu of anyone else wanting to do it, and I have a sense of responsibility to the readers, who number at least in a few thousand. I am just feeling weary, and as much as every cost is an opportunity cost, that applies even more to time as it does to as money.

It's getting late at night and I'm preparing myself for a trip tomorrow morning at stupid o'clock across the country for a short visit to Perth. It is primarily a family affair with caseopaya's brother reaching a significant decade of his life, and caseopaya (under a medical recommendation, no less) needs to attend. I'm trying to arrange a catch up with a few people on Sunday at The Dome in Maylands, but unlike a number of my past visits, there are no plans for a big get-together and feasting. In any case, I do get the sense (from vague scans at the numbers) that we are almost on the edge of a breakout of the novel coronavirus here in Australia. On that note, impressive and brave decisions by the Swancom committee who decided to cancel this year, and likewise for Chaosium Con in Sydney. The capacity of hospitals to manage a large influx of patients is dubious at best, and the hit to the world economy is already significant. Perhaps just as well I quietly shifted my superannuation from "high growth" to "stable" investments this week.

One of the things I am planning in the Perth visit is delivering a few copies of Cow-Orkers in the Scary Devil Monastry to backers in the Kickstarter campaign from a couple of years ago. I've also been working hard on getting the very late 45th issue of RPG Review out, and having written a few thousand words of reviews in the past couple of days, including a very rare supplement (Saurians) for Chilvary & Sorcery and a combined review of the three volumes of Role Aids books, Monsters of Myth and Legend. I plan to finish GURPS Monsters on the plane trip, and a review I started whilst in New Zealand on Monsters and Other Childish Things, which is a bit of a change of pace. If I can, I'll slot in Hunted: The Reckoning as that really is the most disconcerting of "monster" books - it involves humans full of theological righteousness, the worst monsters of all.

Speaking of New Zealand matters, I've had a couple of virtual meetings in the past two days with people across The Ditch. The first was a meeting organised by NESI to help re-build the rather dilapidated state of HPC Carpentry. It was a pretty well-attended meeting, about twenty people in all from several institutions, and with many volunteers at this early stage to carry out the various tasks. Only a few, I note, have put their hands up for the critical role of content production, however, so we'll see how that goes. The second education meeting was a tutorial for MHed 503, Research in Higher Education, obviously a lot smaller. The group discussed a paper on Student Partnerships and in particular the different interpretations from epistemic approaches and ontological assumptions. The general consensus was it wasn't exactly a great paper, but we really did get into destroying it. I was particularly kind in offering a conclusion which suggested further studies on all the things that they left out, which at least one other person picked up on. There are times, not often enough, where my withering criticism in intellectual matters is delivered in such a manner and is no less poignant than a frontal assault. It is something that I should work on, as it was quite enjoyable.

The past couple of days have been busy times within the Isocracy Network. Firstly, there is the submission to the ALP's national executive reviewing the 2019 election. Isocracy has made a submission as an "interested party" with an orientation around statistical analysis of the results and an interpretation that stronger legislation to ensure honest election campaigning is required. Appropriately we're having a meeting (Facebook) in a fortnight on this very subject with Oliver Yates, the independent liberal candidate who is challenging the Treasurer on the basis of deceptive campaigning. Finally, we're just about to set up a branch in Indonesia, courtesy of an active contributor in that part of the world. On a related note, briefly attended (by accident, initially) a protest at the University of Melbourne against a meeting of the 'Victorian Women's Guild', a TERF group. Was in conservation with a young protestor about the event and she mentioned various TERF/SWERF essentialists who were behind the event and mentioned a certain UniMelb professor. I mentioned that I had crossed swords with them some twenty years prior on similar issues. It wasn't until well after that I realised that they were probably barely over twenty themselves.

Spent a good part of yesterday editing the increasingly late issue of RPG Review, based on cosmology and time-travel. I have several reviews in place for the upcoming issue. I think I would have had it close to finishing (still awaiting the magic of strangedave's article of Glorantha cosmology) but lost a few hours due to a migraine. Nevertheless, awoke in time to venture to The Astor to see Peter Strickland's comedy-horror-melancholy, In Fabric, part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, and which was introduced by the cinematographer, Ari Wegner. It was quite a clever film, somewhat in the style of the original Suspiria and probably with the same budget as well. In related RPG news, our regular Megatraveller game was canceled with a couple of people unavailable, so we played Hacker instead, a fun game with useful insights into hacker culture, although technologically placed in the pre-mass Internet days. It appropriately followed an amusing day at work where I installed FreePascal on the HPC on request from a user, and followed it up with GnuCOBOL, for aesthetic reasons (along with a multitude of sample short test scripts, based on a workshop-talk I gave at Linux Users of Victoria a few years back). Actually, GnuCOBOL may be very appropriate for experimentation as it's a transpiler, which means in theory one construct multi-threaded and message-passing applications with relative ease.