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It's been quite a busy past few days and across a multitude of activities. At 1am in the morning no less I had an online meeting with some colleagues in some European universities for developing an international certification for high performance computing. It comes just after the university finally decided to confirm my trip to the International Supercomputing Conference, but all the other activities I will have to take as leave, which isn't great, but I can live with it. Flights have been booked and conference registration fees paid. That itself comes after the NTEU organised a strike at the University over agreements, superannuation, and academic freedom. The strike coincided with others, and ended up being part of 100,000 people strong march through the city; I've penned a few words on labour markets and the importance of unions.
On a related topic the Victorian Secular Lobby held its annual general meeting today with Meredith Doig from Reason, a new political party. A great deal of discussion was generated on the current takeover of the Victorian Liberal Party by Christian theocrats, and the tax exemptions that religious organisations receive for their commercial activities, which really is an extraordinary situation. The Victorian Liberal issue is quite a worry as it suggests that they're going for a polarising and rather nasty election, which will target the safe schools programme, voluntary euthanasia, abortion decriminalisation etc, which is really going to make things uncomfortable for traditional liberals in the party.
I've managed to get a bit of gaming in the past few days as well. Played Megatraveller on Wednesday where we allocated our six-ship fleet on various tasks and set up the next target for our expanding commercial and military protectorate. Last night played Eclipse Phase dealing with some especially explosively cold environs. For my own EC game which I'll run tomorrow, did a write-up today of the last session; I've gotten into the habit of making puns for the chapter and subchapter headings. Also, in fairly big news, have released RPG Review Issue 38 which has Space Opera subject, and with Terry K. Amthor as the interview subject. My own contributions include a Spacemaster scenario, and reviews of several SF RPGs, including FASA's Star Trek (1983), ICE's Spacemaster (1988), WEG's Star Wars (1996), Mongoose's Traveller (2008), and Piazo's Starfinder (2017).
Finally, a number of people expressed their condolences for the loss of Tojo, which was the topic of my last post. In that, I expressed concern for the state of his cat, Sabre. Well, being the big soft sucker that I am, I couldn't bear the thought of homeless ageing cat so we've taken her in. As it turns out this is going to take some work - she's never seen another cat since her kittenhood and she freaked out a bit when she discovered Mac was cat number one. Mac, of course, is confused by her reaction. She's currently staying in the bathroom, having hissy fits if anyone approaches her. Hopefully, she'll calm down in a few days as she's suffered a bit of a shock. But I can tell this might take a while.
On a related topic the Victorian Secular Lobby held its annual general meeting today with Meredith Doig from Reason, a new political party. A great deal of discussion was generated on the current takeover of the Victorian Liberal Party by Christian theocrats, and the tax exemptions that religious organisations receive for their commercial activities, which really is an extraordinary situation. The Victorian Liberal issue is quite a worry as it suggests that they're going for a polarising and rather nasty election, which will target the safe schools programme, voluntary euthanasia, abortion decriminalisation etc, which is really going to make things uncomfortable for traditional liberals in the party.
I've managed to get a bit of gaming in the past few days as well. Played Megatraveller on Wednesday where we allocated our six-ship fleet on various tasks and set up the next target for our expanding commercial and military protectorate. Last night played Eclipse Phase dealing with some especially explosively cold environs. For my own EC game which I'll run tomorrow, did a write-up today of the last session; I've gotten into the habit of making puns for the chapter and subchapter headings. Also, in fairly big news, have released RPG Review Issue 38 which has Space Opera subject, and with Terry K. Amthor as the interview subject. My own contributions include a Spacemaster scenario, and reviews of several SF RPGs, including FASA's Star Trek (1983), ICE's Spacemaster (1988), WEG's Star Wars (1996), Mongoose's Traveller (2008), and Piazo's Starfinder (2017).
Finally, a number of people expressed their condolences for the loss of Tojo, which was the topic of my last post. In that, I expressed concern for the state of his cat, Sabre. Well, being the big soft sucker that I am, I couldn't bear the thought of homeless ageing cat so we've taken her in. As it turns out this is going to take some work - she's never seen another cat since her kittenhood and she freaked out a bit when she discovered Mac was cat number one. Mac, of course, is confused by her reaction. She's currently staying in the bathroom, having hissy fits if anyone approaches her. Hopefully, she'll calm down in a few days as she's suffered a bit of a shock. But I can tell this might take a while.
