fred_mouse (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fred_mouse) wrote2025-07-03 11:41 am
fred_mouse) wrote2025-07-03 11:41 am
Entry tags:
typo du jour
..look at the underlying code or moth...
- me, describing someone else's approach to understanding large language models.
Diary of a B+ Grade Polymath (tcpip) wrote2025-06-30 11:49 pm
tcpip) wrote2025-06-30 11:49 pm
Entry tags:
Chaosium Convention Melbourne
My weekend started on Thursday evening, venturing out with Kate R., to the deco Sun Theatre in Yarraville, where a 20th anniversary screening of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" was showing with the making of the film, and with a Q&A session with the director and the producer. It was an especially clever low-budget film, deciding to produce in a 1920s style; black-and-white, silent, and with inexpensive but real special effects. Distacted by dinner, we ended up entering the cinema a good twenty minutes late, so on Monday we decided to watch again at my very local cinema (i.e., my place).
It was all a prelude for Chaosium Con, held at the Moonee Valley Racing Club with some 250 people in attendance. Chaosium is quite a fascinating company, as a producer of board games and role-playing games. Established fifty years ago this year, they have produced a great number of games which are very well received by aficionados, including the high fantasy "RuneQuest" once considered a serious rival to Dungeons & Dragons, "Stormbringer" from the world of Michael Moorcock, Larry Niven's "Ringworld", the highly acclaimed "Call of Cthulhu", and the literary brilliance of the Arthurian "Pendragon", and so many more. The company is "just right" in terms of size; large enough to be a successful global publisher, small enough to have personal connections with the fan base. This probably the right time to mention that my main RPG project for the second half of this year will be writing a campaign for "Call of Cthulhu" with the working title "Fragments of Time, Slices of Mind"; it involves "The Great Race of Yith", and that's all you need to know.
I was there to look after the RPG Review Cooperative stall, which did quite well because RPG fans love rummaging through old games from the 80s, 90s, and 00s. I became good friends with our neighbouring stall run by a blacksmith (Morgan F) and a 3D printer (Ash M). It also turns out that our Cooperative was also the only non-Chaosium sponsor of the convention, albeit with a modest sum. Also from the Cooperative, Liz B., worked on the registration desk, Karl B., ran several sessions of his post-apocalyptic Australian-setting RPG, and Chris McC., ran a session of "Superworld" set in Perth. I am encouraging the committee to release a double-issue of RPG Review for Chaosium games, new and old, this year. They have made an incredible contribution to the gaming world, and it will certainly be a real pleasure to explore and publish with the incredible and creative energy.
It was all a prelude for Chaosium Con, held at the Moonee Valley Racing Club with some 250 people in attendance. Chaosium is quite a fascinating company, as a producer of board games and role-playing games. Established fifty years ago this year, they have produced a great number of games which are very well received by aficionados, including the high fantasy "RuneQuest" once considered a serious rival to Dungeons & Dragons, "Stormbringer" from the world of Michael Moorcock, Larry Niven's "Ringworld", the highly acclaimed "Call of Cthulhu", and the literary brilliance of the Arthurian "Pendragon", and so many more. The company is "just right" in terms of size; large enough to be a successful global publisher, small enough to have personal connections with the fan base. This probably the right time to mention that my main RPG project for the second half of this year will be writing a campaign for "Call of Cthulhu" with the working title "Fragments of Time, Slices of Mind"; it involves "The Great Race of Yith", and that's all you need to know.
I was there to look after the RPG Review Cooperative stall, which did quite well because RPG fans love rummaging through old games from the 80s, 90s, and 00s. I became good friends with our neighbouring stall run by a blacksmith (Morgan F) and a 3D printer (Ash M). It also turns out that our Cooperative was also the only non-Chaosium sponsor of the convention, albeit with a modest sum. Also from the Cooperative, Liz B., worked on the registration desk, Karl B., ran several sessions of his post-apocalyptic Australian-setting RPG, and Chris McC., ran a session of "Superworld" set in Perth. I am encouraging the committee to release a double-issue of RPG Review for Chaosium games, new and old, this year. They have made an incredible contribution to the gaming world, and it will certainly be a real pleasure to explore and publish with the incredible and creative energy.
fred_mouse (fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-30 03:48 pm
fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-30 03:48 pmEntry tags:
'Typo' of the day
Today's annoyance with YouTube auto-craption:
"Current university"
Locals, who know what the tiny set of options are, can possibly identify what 'Current' is relatively easily. In my case, given that I was watching this from within Curtin University, it was even easier, once I worked out that that was what is going on.
But oh! it annoys me that people don't review the captions for even that level of obvious mistake (I'm not calling that one egregious. The ones that mess up the name(s) of Country included in an Acknowledgement of Country are egregious. I've never seen the same error for a Welcome to Country, which I assume is because the Indigenous people associated with the production of such know too well how badly it can be messed up).
fred_mouse (fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-29 09:39 pm
fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-29 09:39 pmEntry tags:
Goal setting question(s)
Now that I've written up the six month summary of how my 2025 New Year's Resolutions have gone, I'm looking at what I want for the next six months. Which might turn out to be a 12 month set of goals; I'm kind of being flexible with whatever works.
But!
One of my intentions is that I have goals for each of the areas of my life that are important to me--there is no rating of how big that area has to be, just that I see it as an important circle. Two of these I did not manage to get a coherent goal for across the last six months. I'm not sure that it is possible to have coherent goals, but that might be me looking from the wrong perspective.
Which is where my question comes in: what suggestions do people have as to goals for 'Family' and 'Social'? I'm okay with drive by commentary from people who aren't familiar with the limitations of my life, because not knowing those details might be an important part of different perspective.
fred_mouse (fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-29 06:04 pm
fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-29 06:04 pmEntry tags:
New Year's Resolutions - close out
Given that the last three weeks have been a completely different pace, and my expectations of my self for the rest of the year are quite different to where I was at the beginning of the year, I'm going to close out the set of goals I set myself at the beginning of the year (Note: I'm not working from that page, but from an offline edited version). The last update I did was May 20th. I contemplated writing a new set of resolutions in this post concurrently with wrapping up these, but have decided instead to create an offline document of Mid-Year Resolutions. I might get around to posting that, but chances are low.
( Lots of details, possibly only interesting to me )
tl;dr: great progress for work; good progress on craft, reading, physical - exercise and health; not great on house, organisation, decluttering, writing, garden, learning, money. No goals to compare to for family or social. Having a list continues to be useful.
fred_mouse (fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-27 10:32 pm
fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-27 10:32 pmEntry tags:
Signal boost
thestory inside is doing July signups. I'm not taking on any extra commitments, not even suggested reading, at the moment, but I have very much enjoyed the suggestions I have had from this group. If you have a TBR list you can share, you too can have this excitement in your life!
It works on a buddy system - they pick three books from your list for you to read, you pick three books from their list for them to read. Sign ups close on the 1st July.
fred_mouse (fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-25 11:14 am
fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-25 11:14 amEntry tags:
Things that make me laugh
in the paper I'm reading right now, I found the sentence
"All these models end up being specific cases of a generalized stochastic differential equation."
and actually laughed out loud (it helps that I'm working from home today; specifically from bed, so that maybe my lower back will stop hating me. I can read just as well in bed, having spent a lot of the last year training to read from the laptop in exactly this position :) And thus laughing is not disruptive)
Why did I laugh? As I explained to artisanat, that is the first jargon filled sentence where I've understood every word and what it means. And then I was asked for examples of words I don't know, which at this point I can think of 'constructivist framework' and 'epistemological' (I'm starting to get a feel for the latter; the former I have zero idea)
ETA: the next sentence read
"We cannot provide a detailed account of these models since they require a certain level of mathematical expertise."
alias_sqbr (alias_sqbr) wrote2025-06-24 05:36 pm
alias_sqbr) wrote2025-06-24 05:36 pmEntry tags:
Australian Songs I like
Local radio station triple J is doing a Hottest 100 of Australian Songs, and I thought it would be fun to make a playlist of Australian songs, in roughly descending order of how much I like them, and then compile my ten votes from there. My actual vote included less white dudes/took into account what was already in the system etc. And I am sure if I made this list on a different day it'd have been different songs!
Diary of a B+ Grade Polymath (tcpip) wrote2025-06-22 11:40 pm
tcpip) wrote2025-06-22 11:40 pm
Rodent Update, Social Life, Disappointments
I must prefix this entry with a note of appreciation to Kate R., for looking after "mes animaux de compagnie", Mayhem and Mayday, during my first recent trip to China and Rafe EC for the second. It's good to have such excellent neighbours in my life. My companion ratties are now approaching an entire year of age, which, by a rule-of-thumb, is about 30 years on a human scale. As always, I prefer to let my rodent friends a free-range lifestyle and in this case the study is their home. Poor Mayday, however, is currently in protective custody as his larger brother has power-groomed him a little too much, and his back has too many bite marks. Whilst he disagrees, I assure him it's for his own good, and he seems to be recovering in his relative solitude, spending most evenings snuggled up on my shoulder; it's good to be a rat in my home.
This week, after returning from China, I have, as can be expected, caught up with a lot of work-related business. But I have not neglected my social life either. Kate took me out to the "Ballet of Lights: Sleeping Beauty". It was a very family-friendly affair and, as Kate described it, "P-plates for experiencing ballet". But it was at the Capitol Theatre, a venue I adore, and the costumes with embedded lights were attractive and effective. The following day I caught up with Mel during the day, whom I haven't seen for too long, and then Liza D. for dinner and discussion about her forthcoming performance. The following evening I found myself at Carla BL's Winter Soltice gathering where conversation was vibrant and diverse, but spent most time with Julie A., who joined me today at the Australia-China Friendship Society meeting which was addressed by Dr Fiona Swee-Lin Price on bi-cultural experiences, history, and understanding. Frankly, the presentation was nothing less than glorious, and all attendees thought very highly of the presentation and insights.
It has not been all smooth sailing on this return week, however. I have, unfortunately, experienced a couple of disappointments, one in the form of an otherwise knowledgeable person who stubbornly refused to accept a descriptive error on their own part that was objectively wrong. This occurs more often from political partisanship and typically results in increasingly aggressive responses as the cognitive dissonance kicks in. The other, which I look upon from the benefit of extensive lived experience, is a somewhat sub-optimal life-choice for the person, assuming they care about their future success, but normatively it's their prerogative. In situations like this, one can only offer future support, and then we will remember ("memories in future tense", as "The Church" described it decades ago).
This week, after returning from China, I have, as can be expected, caught up with a lot of work-related business. But I have not neglected my social life either. Kate took me out to the "Ballet of Lights: Sleeping Beauty". It was a very family-friendly affair and, as Kate described it, "P-plates for experiencing ballet". But it was at the Capitol Theatre, a venue I adore, and the costumes with embedded lights were attractive and effective. The following day I caught up with Mel during the day, whom I haven't seen for too long, and then Liza D. for dinner and discussion about her forthcoming performance. The following evening I found myself at Carla BL's Winter Soltice gathering where conversation was vibrant and diverse, but spent most time with Julie A., who joined me today at the Australia-China Friendship Society meeting which was addressed by Dr Fiona Swee-Lin Price on bi-cultural experiences, history, and understanding. Frankly, the presentation was nothing less than glorious, and all attendees thought very highly of the presentation and insights.
It has not been all smooth sailing on this return week, however. I have, unfortunately, experienced a couple of disappointments, one in the form of an otherwise knowledgeable person who stubbornly refused to accept a descriptive error on their own part that was objectively wrong. This occurs more often from political partisanship and typically results in increasingly aggressive responses as the cognitive dissonance kicks in. The other, which I look upon from the benefit of extensive lived experience, is a somewhat sub-optimal life-choice for the person, assuming they care about their future success, but normatively it's their prerogative. In situations like this, one can only offer future support, and then we will remember ("memories in future tense", as "The Church" described it decades ago).
fred_mouse (fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-22 06:54 pm
fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-22 06:54 pmEntry tags:
(no subject)
Between one thing and another, I haven't been keeping up on dreamwidth. I'm spending the next hour or so attempting to clear out - there were 317 tabs open in the dreamwidth window when I started; it will be interesting to see where I get to. So many posts from mid-May I was going to reply to; giving myself permission to abandon. And then I'm going to do the same thing with the backlog of my inbox.
And how do I get to 317 tabs? By every day or two scanning my reading list, and opening everything longer than a paragraph that I expect to want to read. This means I can get 'caught up' over breakfast, even if not everything gets read!