Lev Lafayette's journal

Last month my dear friend Margaret Callow died. Her funeral today, at the Wantirna Seventh-day Adventist Church, is being held on what would have been her 99th birthday. Unfortunately, I am unable to attend, although I am sure that Marg would understand the reasons why; travelling to Western Australia to attend the national conference of the Australia-China Friendship Society with a view toward environmental engineering projects in the PRC.

I knew Marg for just over the last twenty years through the Melbourne Unitarian Peace Memorial Church. We soon recognised in each other common elements of our soul; a committment to the religious liberalism espoused in Unitarian-Universalism, to social justice, to the wondrous reality that is our shared universe, expressed by poet and scientist alike, and a quiet but deep dislike of the treatment of animals in the food industry. More than four decades my senior, I marvelled at her first-hand experience and knowledge of what I could only call "history", and her critical intelligence that was not at all afraid to admit that she had changed her opinions on many subjects as the facts become known.

This marvellous, active, and inquiring mind did not diminish in the years and we would often have quite animated conversations on any topic of interest and importance. My involvement in Linux Users of Victoria led her to try out this operating system when she was in her eighties, agreeing with the principles of free and open-source knowledge. Of course, as good as a mind can be parts of the body do not always keep up to the same standard. I recall shortly after the installation I received a worried 'phone call that everything on her systems had disappeared and she was just getting a blank screen. I asked her to check the power to the monitor, and she assured me that it was fine. Eventually, I took the train out to Boronia from Ripponlea, a 3 hour round trip. Sure enough, the power was on, but the switch had not been pressed. Well, at least it was a good excuse for a visit and some sandwiches.

Small and feisty there were a couple of incidents later in her life that caused more concerns from her friends than to her. I recall several years back in her nineties when she was absent from the Unitarians after a fall and when she returned I asked with concern how she was feeling. She threw a disparaging mock punch at me and exclaimed: "Oh! It's just a couple of cracked ribs!". Clearly, she would was made of pretty strong stuff.

Smart and tough, Marg also had a very gentle and loving side. I recall, after learning a bit about my own unusual family background, she took me aside and said "Well Lev, you don't have a grandmother so I'll be your grandmother if you'll have me". What a curious and delightful circumstances of life that leads to a proposal to be a grandmother! Of course, I readily accepted an offer from such a person of magnificent virtue. If there is to be a word that I would use to sum my experience with Marg, it would be "virtue" - a person of excellence in every domain of life. The world is a place a little more grey now that she is no longer with us, but there is a very bright spirit that lives in our memories.

This afternoon I took a visit to the Melbourne Exhibition Buildings polling centre and cast my vote for the Federal election. I am increasingly confident that this will be a Labor victory, probably with a national swing of 5% or so. YouGov has published their own demographic-based poll which has Labor on-track to win 80 seats, Morgan has a predicted vote at 54.5% vs 45.5% TPP, Newspoll at 54-46, and Ipsos at a remarkable 57-43. I cannot see for the life of me how the Coalition can recover so much lost ground in a little over a week, especially by "desperate, unhinged" comments over an additional 38c per hour for minimum wage workers - I have my own comments on that which I will write up tomorrow.

From a different angle on civic involvement this Sunday I am giving an address at the Melbourne Unitarian Universalist Fellowship at 11 am at the Kathleen Syme Centre in Carlton entitled "We Are We Do: Emotions, Trauma, and Happiness". On a related matter of volunteer activities as a member of the BPD Community Carer's Committee my first practical task - the writing of a recruitment and induction process - has been completed. There is a sense in which my Sunday address I will be thinking a great deal of my old friend from the Melbourne Unitarian Church, Marg Callow who died just on Monday just shy of 99 years old. I will have to do a longer and more dedicated entry about this, as consideration of this remarkable, kind, and intelligent individual deserves a great deal of consideration.

Going backward a few more days (as my last entry was entirely about the election), I should also make mention of a couple of other "community-minded" activities I have engaged in. The most recent was writing a brief review of the works of electronic and early trance musician Klaus Schulze for Rocknerd. How does one possibly summarise six decades of work and more than sixty albums? One cannot do it justice, but the attempt must still be made. Also on the aesthetic dimension, last Friday I attended a Slow Friending dinner game organised by the magnificent Miriam G, of the Wild Arts Social Club. There were close to fifty people in attendance at Platform 28 (a boring mainstream venue, but a very nice function room) as we rotated between tables between courses and discussed challenging questions placed before us. And that's the week of civic involvement; politics, religion, and art - no wonder I'm such a disagreeable fellow!

The biggest issue this week in the Australian IT world was the passing of the Access and Assistance bill, which has the IT industry fuming for good reason. It came on a chaotic last day of parliament where this, and a bill to get children to appropriate medical facilities of Nauru were dominant issues. Minister Christopher Pyne made a particularly disgusting tweet, which he then deleted, and my response to him was picked up by Gizmodo.

In other IT issues I conducted training early in the week with an Introduction to HPC and Linux, with a good attendance. Some fellow staff members think that I'm a bit crazy running courses through December, but when you have a waiting list of some six hundred people (yes, you read that right), you have to take every opportunity. Still on the IT agenda visited Anthony L., after work on Tuesday to deal with an old and dying RAID system. It is at the point where I recommended Payam Data Recovery. Here's a pro-tip; don't expect disks in regular use to last six years.

Must also mention that last Sunday gave an address at the Unitarian Church, The End is Nigh: Failed Stewardship of Planet Earth, where I discussed religious apocalyptic visions, real problems with the environment, and the importance of political action.

A couple of social activities in the week; the semi-regular CheeseQuest went well, and we started playing the classic D&D scenario, The Lost City, which should keep us busy for a while. Today, we had a vendor-sponsored "coordination and review meeting", i.e., lunch at Le Bon Ton. which is thoroughly misnamed, but good for what it is; I don't think any of the staff spoke French, let alone any New Orleans variety.

It seems to me that justice and truth are related, even if rationally incommensurable in their content. I recently wrote an example of this relationship based on a short Internet debate this week; The Gaseous Truth in Syria. It was one of a few related experiences on the subject. On Sunday I gave an address to the local Unitarian church on Remembering Martin Luther King Jnr, where I outlined his religious origins, civil rights activities, political strategy, and his concern for economic justice. I am toying with the idea of promoting the latter as an Isocracy-initiated campaign. On that topic last night I went to see a presentation by Ed Dodson at Proposer Australia; Ed is visiting from the United States and is responsible for the School of Cooperative Individualism. It was a lengthy presentation, but gave me some good insights on how "geo-libertarian" opinions developed in the United States Georgist movement.

University House also hosted a burgundy wine tasting yesterday, with Victor Pepin from Bouchard Père et Fils. The presentation was absolutely great, the wines were good, and prices unsurprising, and tempting with the House discount. Still, it's hard to justify when one already has a hundred reasonable bottles or so in storage. Apropos such epicurean delights, for various reasons I've spent a couple of days this week working from home, and whilst the opportunity has presented itself I've found myself taking the opportunity to bake all sorts of fruit cakes, corn breads, tomato bread etc. It's quick to set up, the results are delicious, and it makes a nice change of pace over building HPC software.

I should also mention that RPG Review Issue 37 has been released. It has fewer but longer articles with own contribution being several reviews of appropriate games to the subject of 'Cosmology, Gods, and Religion'. I have a few more up my sleeve and will have to get on to those soon. It is also opportune to announce my retirement as editor of the 'zine after some ten years at the helm (bar one issue). The reins (and the reign) is now being passed to Andrei N., whom I'm sure will do an excellent job for an upcoming science fiction issue. In actual play this week I've managed to run a session of Eclipe Phase and play Megatraveller. Tonight at the Willsmere estate a neighbour has organised a boardgames night - I'll be bringing along Carcassonne, and tomorrow night is the first session of Exalted Journey to the Far West.

Dropped in to the Unitarians on Sunday to hear Paul Dahan give his presentation on Land Price a Cause of Poverty and Source of Unearned Income. It was a good topic, and Paul does get his points in a storyteller's style. Rick B., was meant to be taking the service, but his train of thought was a little askew, so I took the opportunity to task if he wanted me to take over. It was a fairly seemless process. Afterwards Rohan McL. presented to The Philosophy Forum on Ontology and Violence, also held at the Unitarians..

Afterwards that was another session of Eclipse Phase, as the Sentinels finished off their Vurt-inspired hallucinatory scenario (part one, The Vurt in the Mind's Eye, part two, Of Fictions Imitating Reality). In a very closely related science fiction trajectory went to the Astor the following night with caseopaya, funontheupfield and Maria to watch the Tarkovsky psychodramatic film, Stalker. I appreciate the rumours that this is where the KGB poisoned him, but they seemed to do well enough in finding the most polluted place on earth to do the set.

Other major event of the past days was a presentation I gave just a few hours ago at Linux Users of Victoria, on Open Stack and the Barcelona Summit. I tried to give a conceptual overview of cloud technology in general, and OpenStack in particular with summary detail of the core and optional services, as well as the governance process, the techical changes in the Newton release, and the future of OpenStack's development. The well-attended LUV meeting also was addressed by Jacinta R., who spoke on various types of algorithms including some very recent developments by László Babai on Graph Isomorphism.

It has been a very busy week and a sense of general tiredness is pervasive. Last Sunday I gave a presentation at The Philosophy Forum on Race Conditions for the Human Species: A Global Perspective (there are a few and our actions are piecemeal and responsive). Two days later on Tuesday night, I presented Is Pantheism an Atheism? to the Melbourne Atheist Society (it depends on experience). On Wednesday ran the Introduction to HPC course which received extremely good feedback from attendees. Classes will of course continue on their regular, weekly basis. Next Philosophy Forum presentation I'm giving is in December, The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics, following an encounter with a lunatic who believes that their consciousness creates reality. Seriously, there is a special circle of hell for people who misrepresent the Copenhagen Interpretation in such a populist, ignorant, and ill-considered manner.

It has not been all work and now play however. Sunday night was an enjoyable gathering for sebastianne's "thirtieth" birthday gathering at The Drunken Poet (related to such establishment, I have been interested in the series No Béarla - a first-language Irish speaker attempts to tour Ireland without using English). Last night went to see a gothic superhero double at The Astor; Batman (1989) and The Crow, with thefon, who is visiting us from Perth. Gaming-wise we had a session of Eclipse Phase on Sunday which was something like a cross between Avatar and Aliens, a first session of Delta Green Countdown, which has started quiet enough.

Much has been made this week of the almighty collection of failures surrounding the Australian Census. Apart from legitimate concerns on privacy, with various legal discussions, there was the miserable failure on the night it was supposed to be taken. I described it as: "The Census is a self-advertised Distributed Denial of Service attack". It didn't take the long before official claims that it was an actual overseas DDoS attack - to be honest I didn't think they would be so stupid to make such a claim. Still, on the positive side the recommendations that I initially made to the ABS in 2012 and were part of the formal review in 2013 have been accepted. To express simply, Unitarians were previously listed as a sub-group of Christians. Now they are Unitarian-Universalists and are counted under "Secular Beliefs and Other Spiritual Beliefs and No Religious Affiliation".

Anne Kay, whom I had known for many years through the Unitarian Church, died last Tuesday having turned 93 that day. An independent thinker, a genuine Unitarian, and a person with a subtle sense of humour, she had been well for a number of months, so I can say it was a surprise. What was surprising was her express wish that I conduct the funeral service for her; which will be held this upcoming Tuesday 26th of July at 2pm at the Unitarian Church. I can presume that work is going to give me the afternoon off.

Ran another Introduction to High Performance Computing session on Wednesday which was well received. Actually, I must confess something, which has me a little confused if pleasantly so - is it normal these days for people to be applauded after giving workshops and lectures? I understand it as the norm in a speech and such like, but over the past two years almost every training class I've given has ended in applause. I'm certainly not objecting, but I do wonder if there's been a recent cultural shift that I am unaware of.

Two gaming sessions this week, on Thursday and Friday nights respectively. Thursday night was a session of Laundry with implications that supernatural activity is reaching a critical level and the agency is preparing to become the emergency government, "just in case". Friday night went to Gatekeeper Games for their "dice and drinks" evening, where Karl B., was running a playtest of the upcoming John Carter RPG, which seems to fit well with the genre so far. Next issue of RPG Review is going well, with just over half the page count filled.

Sunday was the poetry and music service at the Unitarians; I presented Cows with Guns with a special dedication. Afterwards ran a session of 7th Sea Freiburg, which included a "haunted house" styled adventure along with casing a gang stronghouse. The former ended with the unexpected requirement of fishing for books, in a literal sense. After that (it was a very busy Sunday) attended a Jesus and Mary Chain tribute gig, which I reviewed for The Dwarf. Apropos have just completed a review of the Campaign Classic Pirates supplement, which will also be on rpg.net soon. Very pleased to have an upcoming interview opportunity with Mark Pettigrew, author of Flashing Blades.

On Monday evening caseopaya and I had dinner with Anthony L., and Robyn M at Quan 88. Absolutely superb food at a very low price, albeit with very simple decor. We spent the evening primarily discussing political strategy for the coming year, with a particular interest on the inherent requirements test in the Equal Opportunity Act. Our plans include illustrating some issues with the "right" of religious organisations to discriminate via some rather harsh short videos

Slight panic at work yesterday as one of the NFS storage devices fell over and for a period of time approximately half our users were unable to access their home directories, apparently all caused by a single-user's file transfers causing the controller to lose its head. As always, a gentle reminder that computational devices, being set-theory based creatures, have some limits. Today was unable to resist any further temptations from the local pet store and purchased three new rats, as yet unnamed. They're of varying ages, and I was feeling particularly for the oldest who was heading towards a life in a pet store charge. They're settling in, but will require some time. They haven't been handled a great deal and seem even unaware of chocoloate. However I suspect they're learn soon.

Last Saturday night was the Victorian Secular Lobby meeting; a smallish gathering with last-minute cancellations. I gave a presentation which outlines an effective strategy for the small group in the upcoming state election. The following day The Philosophy Forum discussed A World Without Evil at the Unitarian Church; this was preceded by David Bottomley's (son of a former Minister) charming recollection of his childhood at the old (since demolished) neo-gothic church building. This was the second week in a row I had been, the previous week to see the Federal member for Melbourne and old uni colleague, Adam Bandt, speak on avoiding austerity budgets. His reasoning was sound, but sometimes I think he could do with some more fire and brimstone in his presentation. There was also the AGM afterwards; another substantial financial loss and decline in membership. As an more disinterested observer these days, watching the slow-motion train-wreck is almost amusing.

The work-week itself started fairly difficult; Suki rat made a late night decision to chew the stitches out from her tumor removal. So she was rushed to the emergency vet in Collingwood. They're really good there; they flushed her wound and stapled her up. She was in a bad way, in some stress and having lost blood so she spent time in a heat and oxygen tent. Eventually we made it home, and exhausted, the following day I went through three solid days of conducting Linux, PBS, and OpenMPI classes. Feedback was excellent, which remains inspiring. After that I has another presentation to give, to the Young Professionals CPA, where I spoke on Free and Open Source Software For Business Applications (slides available). I thought I was completely scattered; they thought otherwise, and I heard a few horror stories about how proprietary business software is both damaging and expensive.

In the realm of entertainment, my review on The Dead Kennedys gig has been published on The Dwarf; next gig will be The Tea Party and SuperJesus. Gaming-wise RPG Review has been delayed as the author of a key article has dropped out leaving me several pages short. Will be work on an alternative for the weekend. Last Sunday ran another session of Werewolf:The Yugoslav Wars, which involved planning for the capture of a Sarajevo business leader of ill-repute. Thursday night was another session of Masks of Nyarlathotep in Kenya with the party making their way substantially towards the base of the appopriately named Cult of the Bloody Tongue; true to the theme of the game, an impending death and insanity toll approaches.

Last Tuesday night gave a presentation at Linux Users of Victoria on The Innovation Patent Review and Free Software. The recent recommendation that "no method, process or system shall be patentable" in innovation patents needs to be implemented by parliament and extended to cover standard patents as well. LUV's planned miniconference and installfest in the La Trobe Valley is going well too, with good expressions of interest by locals and support from Linux Australia. Tuesday was also the day of running the one-day course in Octave and R; the feedback is good, but I feel particularly exhausted after this one as their is so much material. I am considering redesigning it for a more efficient presentation.

Masks of Nyarlathotep was cancelled on Thursday night, so we played Chez Cthulhu and Trailer Park Gods, which were appropriate lightweight alternatives. Sunday was GURPS Middle Earth where we made it through the first dungeon crawl of the campaign (an old Dwarven barrow). In the online HeroQuest Glorantha game, I've pushed the narrative with (entirely safe-for-work) a trollkin orgy. The only other major social activity of the week was Julie A's fortieth birthday drinks which was a pleasurable gathering. I think I've known Julie for about twenty five years or thereabouts?

On Sunday gave the address at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on Small Gods on the Pale Blue Dot which combined both the perspectives of Terry Pratchett and Carl Sagan, especially the themes of religious sincerity, reverence, and literal perspective. It was a very well-attended meeting, that followed up with a great roundtable discussion at The Philosophy Forum on Language and Meaning (notes pending), which covered different types of communication, the continuum of language within and between species, and an interesting (and unexpected) interest in extreme rhetoric and deceptive uses of language.