Lev Lafayette's journal

While much of life is grounded in facts (high performance computing, climatology) or norms (psychology, politics), I occasionally delve into the aesthetic dimension, and this week has had plenty of that. At the beginning of the week, I started playtesting for a new fun boardgame by Benjamin Cadenza, "The Happiest Rat", who is well-versed in cant of rat fanciers and designing a very fun game as well. We've been communicating daily, which indicates both my interest in the game and design and their responsiveness! In other work in the field of Homo Ludens, I'm still working on getting a new issue of RPG Review out; my major contribution is a very substantial multi-session scenario for "Eclipse Phase" entitled "The Europa Sanctuary", which has all sorts of disturbing content. At the moment, the scenario is about 5000 words, and I still have a few scenes to go!

On Tuesday night Ruby and I had a special occasion (with an extra surprise) and went out for dinner followed by an excellent double-feature at Cinema Nova: "Betelgeuse" and "Little Shop of Horrors", two very good examples of artistic comedy-horror films from the 1980s. There is certainly the artisan's charm in special effects that are not computer generated. Also, there was some wry pleasure in witnessing an impressively showy and comic spectre who is also a selfish loser, along with a plant that starts cute and exotic but becomes a blood-sucking monster. In a related genre, Erica and I this week smashed our way through the last session of "The Umbrella Academy" which, whilst not as good as preceding seasons was still very good and had a satisfactory conclusion.

But the best piece of other-worldly art was this evening. Erica and I went to Hamer Hall to listen to the The University of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra perform (among some jazz pieces which it is best I don't talk about), Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade" which is certainly my favourite symphonic suite; there's an excellent brief analysis on the appropriate Reddit sub. From this grand narrative, I cannot pick a favourite movement. With a complex balance and juxtaposition throughout, I am especially impressed with how literary characterisation is expressed through musical motif. There is good reason why music like this continues to be played over a hundred years after its first introduction; the composer actually studied music and sought to produce something lasting and important. That, if nothing else, is the secret of success in what is given the title of "high arts".

Last Saturday I hosted the Isocracy Annual General Meeting (FB), where I gave a presentation on "Climate Change and International Relations" which had a few people attend in person (who received a fairly reasonable Indian meal, produced by yours truly) and a few online as well. The content of this presentation will be put online in a few days, but in a nutshell, it dealt with the evidence of global warming, the significance and trends, responsibility, mitigation and adaption, costing, and international enforcement. That night I attended a social gathering organised by Young Labor Professionals, which was low-key on the politics, but quite excellent on a range of other topics. Also related, the following day I ended up tuning into the Fabian Society National AGM, which was addressed by the NSW Minister for climate change Penny Sharpe, who spoke on climate change politics (I rather suspect we should trade notes).

As for the food, attendees at my now thoroughly regular Friday evening at-home-restaurant had the first bite of the papadam, so to speak. I was pretty happy with how my butter faux chicken, saag paneer, and chakka (jackfruit) curry turned out, along with the mango-sago pudding with gulab jamun and coconut cream. As the evening war on we ended up playing a round of Munchkin and the ever-questionable Cards Against Humanity. It served as a lighthearted contrast to my increasingly intense Call of Cthulhu game which I ran on Thursday night, a visit to Rue's Crew on Saturday playing Root (I sat out this one, but it was good to see the May Fourth factions being employed), and most pleasingly on Sunday Karl B's playtest of a post-apocalyptic Melbourne setting with sapient rats and crows; appropriately I spent quite a bit of time with Liz and Karl's real rodents. Finally, as a somewhat asocial event, last week I also attended (as a last-minute decision) a local flute and bassoon concert entitled "Contrasts" by Simone Maurer and Lyndon Watts. It is handy to live so close where such good music is freely available.

A series of cultural events dominated my weekend; on Saturday I spent a good period of time with Mel S., at the NGV (our regular haunt, apparently) to see "The Picasso Century exhibition, which consisted of a pretty impressive collection of works, not just by Picasso, but also those associated with him (e.g., Braque, Lam, Masson, Metzinger etc) and spanning his Blue and Rose periods, cubism, surrealism, and more, and spanning medium as well with painting, sculpture, ceramics, and short films (the interview with surrealist André Breton was particular welcome). Overall, it was really quite an impressive collection of works, highly evocative for what were troubled and violent times, and also touched deeply upon my desire for another visit to Paris which I have not done for almost three years.

Following this relatively high culture event, I followed a different path in the evening taking Miriam R, out to see the appropriately-named Pop Will Eat Itself at The Corner Hotel. These scruffy lads were doing what was meant to be the 30th Anniversary tour of their famous genre-mixed LP "This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This!", but due to the pandemic the tour was cancelled twice - my tickets dated from early 2020! Unsurprisingly as a shared pop-cultural point, I ran into several friends at the show and spotted several others. Despite an enthusiastic band and enthusiastic crowd, the show was marred by some very poor sound quality, something that happens too often at The Corner. Whilst putting on a good visual show, support band Snog is well and truly in my bad books as well; in the 1990s I was quite a fan of their work, but in more recent years they have gone down an alt-right conspiracy rabbit-hole, spreading complete nonsense about vaccinations, 9-11, the Sandy Hook massacre, etc. Oh, and anti-semitism, of course. It would have been a better show if they weren't there.

The final cultural event was a playtest roleplaying session for the long-awaited "Gulliver's Trading Company", written by Karl B, set a few years after the famous Swift novel. I have been a playtester for this FATE-derived game for more than ten years and it's great to see that it's now in its final stages. Also, it was excellent to catch up with Liz and Karl, and meet some of their friends and was delighted after the game to visit "The Raccoon Club" afterward. To give a cultural theory twist, one may note that whilst Swift's Gulliver's Travels was popular culture at the time (almost three hundred years ago), it became high culture having survived aesthetic criticism. This probably can be said for almost all high culture - and it is something that can be distinguished from low culture (junk food, fast and mall shopping, sportsball, gossip magazines) which doesn't make the cut.

"Just be kind. Kind to my boys, other people, animals, each other, the planet. We desperately need it."

These are the words of an old friend joanna.griffith in her "Last Post". She was one of the first people I got to know when I moved to Melbourne more than 25 years ago as she headed the local RPG gaming club, Infinite Images. We were never really close friends, but we had a rapport and every encounter I had with her was one that recognised the qualities of a person who was very intelligent (she was Dr Joanna Griffith, veterinary scientist, and well-cited koala specialist - there is now a Southern Koala and Echidna Rescue Jo Griffth Research Initiative), insightful, seriously feisty, just, and also with good humour and kindness. Several months ago I had the opportunity to visit Adelaide where she lived, and of course, I wore the Infinite Images t-shirt on the visit which generated some amusement that I still had the old piece of rag. It also came with a story of some absolutely foul looks I received when wearing it in Sydney one afternoon; it was emblazoned with an RPG fourth wall joke "Don't Shoot! I'm a plot device!". Little did I know it was the day of the Port Arthur Massacre.

But the reality was that Jo was not well; metastatic terminal breast cancer. A few days ago she died, and there has been quite a notable number of posts from those who knew her well. There has even been an article in the local newspaper (paywalled, alas). For my own part, as I have found myself doing a few times in recent years, I took the opportunity for some quiet time by myself and read through her old Livejournal entries. I find it soothing to read such 'blog entries, especially from such a platform. The words written there are often of a personal, reflective nature, and express the human and emotional side well; they speak from the heart. Like others, I wish the very best for her partner Simon and for her two boys and I remind myself that she would not be one for grieving, but it would bring her greater joy if we were inspired by the example of her life. It is in that spirit I will carry my memories of Jo.

As the title implies, Janus has two faces. On the same day I was processing the loss of Jo, caseopaya received our first serious bite for our Willsmere property, mere hours after signing an agreement with an agent, which of course is very exciting in a positive sense. Talk about a day of mixed emotions. We've also had to do the paperwork for a contract for sale, and poor caseopaya has been given all sorts of stressful rigmarole from the banks for other financials, the poor dear. On another positive note, funonontheupfield dropped over last night (this is our idea of cautious social activities) and after dinner, drinks, and conversation, we joined our regular online Cyberspace game - which concluded with a rather dramatic failure at a religious-cult convention involving too many sharp pieces of cybernetics and embedded Gestalt-network chips. It was a great way to end a story arc; Jo would have understood.

With my thesis completed and undergoing revision, I have given my mind a bit of a break, in a manner of speaking. As is my wont, I have turned my attention to my hobby of roleplaying games, and have spent some hours in actual play and writing. Four scenes have been written in quick succession for my HeroQuest Glorantha game, with each of the protagonists finding themselves challenged by an impossible opponent (a dragon with a wingspan of a few thousand kilometres), lost in a land that is effectively a pocket universe in its own right and, appropriately for each of them, facing challenges to their personal cosmological outlook, their relationship with their closest and most hated sibling, and their sense of community duty. Take the wrong choice and they will find they contribute to both their own demise and that of the world, find something within themselves and they might be able to change the critical outcome. Basically, it's critical high fantasy turned up to eleven.

Apart from that, I've been working through a double-issue of RPG Review, having finally acquired enough content to satisfy the 128 page size. Of course, a good portion of this is RPG Review Cooperative Gaming 'blogs, especially a rather hefty backlog of material from my own Eclipse Phase story which finished in March this year. The next issue is already underway, specialising in the games of Iron Crown Enterprises (Rolemaster, Spacemaster, MERP, HARP etc) and especially in recognition of the recently departed Terry K Amthor.

On a related note, had dinner last night with Anthony L, and new friend Hugh S. who - apart from a string of degrees and a legal career - is also a gamer. We dined at Miyako a rather good Japanese restaurant overlooking the Yarra. It was not the first of such events in the week as a couple of days prior tabouli came to visit for wide-ranging conversation and, after expressing an interest in such things, left with a copy of Papers & Paychecks. Among all this was the RPG Review Cooperative monthly committee meeting where we set a date of January 29 for our AGM. I do get the sense of that we're looking forward to a much better year than those past.

I'm at Sydney airport about to return home (aka Plague City, Melbourne, etc), with a few hours to spare which provides an opportunity to pen a few notes of the brief, yet full trip. I checked in at the Great Southern Hotel in Haymarket which, apparently, was a bit of a dive once-upon-a-time, but now makes good use of its various deco features, although it retains some of its less charming history in the front public bar. The Hotel is well-positioned, literally a two-minute walk to Central Station, where I stopped for a brief coffee at the truly beautiful Eternity Café before boarding to Woy Woy. Eternity Café is named after a graffito tag that spanned 25 years from an illiterate soldier, petty criminal and alcoholic who found religious salvation. At Woy Woy, I was given a tour of the locale and surrounds (Umina Beach, Ettalong) by the delightful Belinda F., who described the connection between the town and Spike Milligan. It was the first time I had been to the Hawkesbury River coastal region, and I must mention how much I was taken by the natural beauty, from the deep greenery on the numerous hills, the various waterways, and beaches.

The following day I walked from the city to Marrickville to visit Conan F., at the Exiles Gaming Club and their impressive clubrooms, and engaged in a wide-ranging conversation including mutual activities and cooperation with the RPG Review Cooperative. It's good to have such interstate co-operation. Making my way back to the Hotel I made my way through Newtown, and passed the remains of Gould's old bookshop, the remains which have now shifted. I am pleased to have known Bob Gould in his time, and we got along quite well as mavericks and supporting critics of both revolutionary and reformist socialists (which included ourselves). Appropriately that evening was dinner and drinks with a small gathering including John August of Pirate Party fame; lawyer, academic, and minister, Rev. Dr. Ian Ellis-Jones, the big-hearted and insightful Adam B., logistician and artist Keith N., and a little later by aged-care worker Kate B, whom a shared interest in Bret Easton Ellis could not help but charm.

Thursday day and evening of the Inaugural John Lions Distinguished Lectures. Spending a lot the day in the company of one John Wulff, I believe I have made a new friendship. I have a great deal to say about that conference and announcements, which I will publish in a couple of days, but without putting too fine a point on it, it was quite brilliant. This is to be expected, of course. We are discussing a conference in honour of a professor who provided one of the most remarkable educational tools in living memory and managed to inadvertently produce the most illegally copied book in computing history. It is not surprising that presenters to the conference included absolute Titans of past decades, including Ken Thompson, Brian Kernighan, Rob Pike, Andrew Tridgell, Andy Tanenbaum, and more! Afterward, at a re-dedication of the John Lions Memorial Garden, I spent some time chatting with his daughters whom I got the sense were still a little perplexed by it all. I pointed out that often in the scientific and engineering conferences (unlike rock concerts or political rallies) that it is the smaller events that are the most important because the subject matter is the pointy end of the endeavour. I think they gained some insight on why this was a little slice of history.

Another week has somehow managed to go by and when I look back it there has been quite a lot going on. Today I am very pleased to announce that author and anthologist Sarena Ulibarri will be speaking at the Cyberpunk 2020 conference, specifically on the technology panel and with an emphasis on solarpunk; "the future is so bright, you'll have to wear shades". It fitted in well with virtual attendance of at the Cyberpunk Cinema that Travis Johnson had organised as part of the Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival, and, I do suppose also matched with watching Black Mirror: Bandersnatch last night. Goodness there was a lot of association with my own teenaged-years in that semi-interactive film, right down to the Thompson Twins and the use of a Sinclair Spectrum (a 16K computer that I could carry in my coat pocket, "A computer in your pocket? Ridiculous!").

I've spent a bit of time in the evenings over the past several days working on a review of LexOccultum which, coming in two large books, still isn't quite finished yet, but will be published in the next edition of RPG Review, which will be out by the end of the week. It's quite an evocative game in a good setting (a fantasy version of 18thC France), but the game system is a little painful at times. Played our regular session of Cyberspace on Thursday night, which was largely a firefight in the Zone which was pretty sharp and bloody, as such things are in a Rolemaster-based combat system with firearms. Our GM has been pretty good with a style of session write-ups, which give the impression of speedy jump-cuts, which fits the genre. Finally, decided to offload a collection of Avalon Hill boardgames and RPGs this afternoon; within a couple of hours, nearly everything was sold.

There is, as always, many issues to report on about politics and in an Australian context the recent disclosure of war crimes being committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan is being described as "possibly the most disgraceful episode in Australia's military history". On completely different tangents, I spent part of Wednesday night attending the annual general meeting of the Proportional Representation Society; a fair attendance, but an organisation lacking leadership, direction, and flexibility. Finally, whilst doing some basic econometrics studies, I decided to compare income inequality with the total proportion of tax to GDP in OECD countries. Guess what? The higher the tax rate, the less inequality (many caveats stated, of course).

Late last week held two days of workshops, Regular Expressions with Linux and From Spartan to Gadi, the latter teaching researchers how to get on and use NCI's main system, Gadi, the most powerful supercomputer in Australia (and number 24 in the world). Like all the workshops I give they can be quite content-heavy, so a process of adding extra documentation will be a priority for the early this week (NCI, it must be said, really need to update their documentation). Planning on returning to my more usual fare next with Introduction to Linux and HPC, and Advanced Linux and Shell Scripting for HPC. Also have submitted a draft PID for a HPC mentorship programme for researchers that I have in mind (and tied in with my studies at Otago University). I have also just submitted an abstract for eResearch Australasia on the developments of the Spartan HPC system; I think I'll put a second one in for developments in the international HPC Certification programme.

The past few days I've also had the opportunity to delve into the gaming hobby; a CyberDarkspace session on Thursday, a D&D5e session on Saturday, and my Eclipse Phase game on Sunday, plus another scene for my much-neglected HeroQuest Glorantha story on the same day. The CyberDarkspace session ended a particularly good plot arc, but there was general agreement that we should continue that. The D&D5e game was short term, and I confess I had troubles getting into at first because D&D does bore me. But my interest perked up in the latter half of the session. As for Eclipse Phase, that involved burying the PCs deep in the Baikonur Cosmodrone with an evil supercomputer as the surface was nuked; I mean, I may as well turn it up, right?

All this aside, the most memorable experience of the past few days has been the response to my f-locked post on Friday. I don't know what I expected, but the outpouring of solidarity, understanding, and love on the posts and through DMs was overwhelming and inspiring. I want to thank everyone who reached out, you really all have made an incredible difference, and far more than you could possibly know, and indeed it has generated many grounds for self-reflection and cautious optimism. Whilst on the topic of self-reflection, I have to mention that last week I managed to get to have a video-conference with a very old cyberpunk friend who goes by the nom-de-guerre Molly Millions (yes, the William Gibson character) and on Friday night a smashing good video-conference night of drinks and conversation with Holly M., Luke M., and Louisa G. The greatest power of the Internet from a human perspective was always how it brought people together. With video-conferencing it has just raised the visceral component up another level. More bandwidth please!

Humans are fascinating creatures; as regular readers would know I repost my public Livejournal/Dreamwidth posts to Facebook, where most people live in the social media space. Which included (a) a photo and small reference to my new haircut and (b) a reference to the fact that I had raised close to $6K for Medicines sans Frontiers. There was a veritable mountain of comments about the former, and nothing about the latter even though the latter is far more important. Sure, I participated in the conversation as well, but it was still an amusing insight on our culture or maybe even our privilege. Are aesthetics more interesting or easier to talk about? Either way, that figure for MSF is now close to $8K, as one buyer purchased close to 16kg of Dungeons & Dragons books, nearly all modules, and I have over 50kg to post today. And there is still more buyers on the way. So today is mainly dedicated to providing more lists of gamebooks for people to select from and getting some of the postage out of the way. As Bob Bemer used to put it, ((((DO SOMETHING!) SMALL) USEFUL) NOW!).

The novel coronavirus continues it's swathe across the globe. We have now reached over four million confirmed cases, and over 275K deaths. The United States is now a third of the world's confirmed cases, the UK now has the second-highest number of confirmed deaths, and China's numbers are not to be trusted as they expel foreign journalists. Meanwhile Australia is talking about relaxing restrictions in the very week that the R0 value above 1. We're at the stage where people are going a bit stir-crazy from being on restricted movements for so long, and the economic and political pressure is mounting to open up as unemployment rises. Then there will be another outbreak, and restrictions will be re-imposed: Our society will change, forever, as it fluctuates between being half-complacent and half-paranoid."

As a person still in gainful employment and who can work from home, I must confess to being a little frustrated in the past couple of days. Certainly, if I look it at more objectively, I have had some good successes - I'm finally contributing material upstream to the Easybuild repositories, and was able to identify some path and permissions issues with our most recent installation of some computational chemistry applications, and I'm smashing my way through the applications list for the new build system. But there has been one snag with a certain numerical application with a lot of dependencies. The software builds successfully but then fails its sanity check with symbol lookup errors. Given that it is one of the most commonly used applications there's no getting around the need to get it installed. But it is one of those situations where I am reminded by how supercomputing really can be quite challenging.

In my last LJ/DW entry, I casually remarked my intention to sell off the majority of my not insubstantial RPG collection, which I have accumulated mainly over the last twenty years or so, and donate the proceeds to Médecins Sans Frontières. I made a post on a single specialist group on Facebook and, to be frank, the response was overwhelming. I now have around sixty buyers banging on the door, metaphorically, to raid the hoard. In the first three days I have managed to contact about a score of these and, as a result, have raised just shy of $4000 which is pretty good, to say the least. It is a massive change to something that has been part of my life since my early teens, and I have one bookcase of keepers, but when it comes down to it my desire for a massive collection of RPGs pales into insignificance to the benefits that Médecins Sans Frontières in the current situation, and for a snapshot of that places like Ecuador provide a grim snapshot of current events: Dead bodies are lying at home and in the streets of Guayaquil, Ecuador, a city so hard-hit by coronavirus that overfilled hospitals are turning away even very ill patients and funeral homes are unavailable for burial.

Just under three weeks ago, I received a doctor's report that I needed to make a few lifestyle changes with regard to health and exercise. It not that my lifestyle was bad as such, just perhaps a little too far on the gourmand point of the continuum rather than the epicurean. My response has been to tackle the problem head-on, largely following Silver Hydra's cheat mode; I've been doing weights alternating with cardiovascular exercises every day, bar one. That one day per week (the "uncontrol day") provides the opportunity for food like pizza and a couple of glasses of wine or even something stronger. I have almost entirely removed saturated fats from my diet. In fact, I am typically eating just one (post-workout) meal a day, nibbling fruit and nuts during the day. It all seems to have had good effects - I'm down 6kg so far. This is something I want to keep doing. I want to remain in something closer to peak health for my age, for what remains of my life. I might be in the second half of my life, but I am not prepared to relax and gradually fade away. Rather, I am going to burn with the desire to change the world and live my life to the fullest, for as long as I possibly can. As French situationists of the 60s once wrote; vivre sans temps mort - live without dead time.