China Events, Future Travels

Jul. 10th, 2025 08:29 pm
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Two nights ago, the Chinese consulate in Melbourne hosted a dinner for committee members of the Australia-China Friendship Society. It was held with no particular agenda in mind, but with less than ten people participating in the wide-ranging conversation, as one could expect, it did include a rather pointed look at a certain powerful but irresponsible world leader. The Consul-General was, of course, very diplomatic in his words and I could be a little more blunt (ironically, through understatements), but that is our respective positions. It was also an opportunity to send our farewells to the Vice Consul General who has served here for four years and welcome their replacement, who I am sure will do very well. On a directly related matter, the following night I attended the spectacular "Folk Reimagined" concert at the Melbourne Recital Centre, which was performed by members of the Guizhou Chinese Orchestra and the Australia Orchestra, which was a rather brilliant performance. I attended with Susie C., an old friend from Perth who has recently moved to Melbourne, and Fiona P., who recently spoke at the ACFS on bi-cultural experiences and history. On a much more modest scale, the Australia-China Friendship Society is holding a social dinner next Tuesday at Song's Dumplings; delicious food, inexpensive, and very good company.

As much as I would dearly love to visit Guizhou as soon as possible with its incredible landscapes (there is a very enticing trip on offer in early 2026), it is increasingly likely that I am going on a more distant (and much more expensive) adventure at the end of the year. Kate R., and I are plotting (following plenty of conversation over three extensive visits to the National Gallery of Victoria over three days) about taking a trip to South America and Antarctica at the end of the year, which would include Lima, Machu Picchu, Buenos Aires (where I can satiate my Jose Luis Borge needs), Tierra del Fuego, the Antarctic peninsula, and Montevideo. All of this is, somewhat, a result of having accumulated long-service leave (which I skipped in my last job to take this current one) and a dearth of international travel in my youth, albeit with a few interstate visits. Speaking of which, a quick trip to the top-end is planned in a month to visit Lara D., check out the apartment I helped purchase, and attend some events of the Darwin Festival.

In Which I Holiday

Jul. 7th, 2025 09:45 pm
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I passed yet another iteration of Designers & Dragons Origins to Evil Hat this afternoon.

This is my four-book sequence of product histories for Dungeons & Dragons that I first wrote for DnDClassics from 2013-2017. (It's actually just the OD&D, AD&D 1e, and BD&D histories; there will be more.)

I figure I'm on about my billionth draft by now: lots of writing is actually revising and editing and revising and responding to edits and responding to comments and etc ... And I'm deep, deep into that for these four volumes.

I likely did three drafts of each product history when I wrote them for DnDClassics:

1. Research & write each product history
2. Edit the product history
3. Edit the product history again, the night I posted (usually Sunday night as I recall)

I think I did five more major drafts before submitting to Evil Hat:

4. Revise/update/regularize/expand each product history
5. Edit the full chapter.
6. Edit the full book.
7. Incorporate comments.
8. Edit the four-book sequence

This is on the high end for my drafts, on the one hand because I did the product histories and then the books a few years later, and on the other hand because it's not just a single book, but four books.

I passed the books off to Evil Hat about nine months ago and I've seen them through four back-and-forths of editorial comments and corrections since. The first one was just book 1, but then when book 2 was edited, there were also some minor new edits for book 1 to ensure consistency. Etc. Etc.

Which I guess means this is the lucky 13th draft. (At least for book 1, which got minor edits every time another book did.) Yikes! This new draft was the most major since I handed it to Evil Hat last year. For one, I added cover artists to all the book listings, and added a few new discussions of covers (there were already lots). I also went over some comments we got from a cultural expert on my writing on books like Oriental Adventures and Drums on Fire Mountain. I think it was around 9 days work.

Very happy to see the books back with Evil Hat. I think I'm likely to do one more draft, as I wrote enough fresh text that our editor and cultural expert will both likely have some responses, and then maybe it'll finally be ready for layout? Whew.

As I said, this was a somewhat high number of drafts for my usual work, but there would probably be at least half-a-dozen drafts for most of my books, not counting editing that I do of previous sections as my way to get back into a day's writing.

That's one of the reasons I constantly have the next book in progress and the next and the next. Because it allows me to do fresh creative things and not just editing the thing I wrote last year!
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Yesterday was the aphelion when the Earth reached the furthest distance from the sun at 157 million km (the closest distance, the perihelion, is 146 million km). It seemed appropriate on that day to describe the relatively flat shape of the solar system and how "flat earthers" need to think bigger. Interestingly, the aphelion and perihelion change with some regularity measured as Milankovitch cycles, which is a driver of long-term climate change. On that topic, I had an interview this week concerning my doctoral progress and grades to date ("mention très bien", to use the Université de Paris system). The next part of my studies is "Climate Change Denialism", which I am sure will be absolutely fascinating, having missed out on doing climate change psychology at the University of Wellington. Speaking of which, I attended a University of Wellingto alumni event on during the week with a Professor of Statistics, Peter Smith, talking on "Fluids in your phones?", about the development of liquid antenna for the next generation of mobile devices. And, to continue the theme, I have been recently offered the role to coordinate alumni events for Murdoch University here in Melbourne.

The week has also witnessed some activities in the aesthetic dimension as well. With an early submission made for Midsumma Festival, I have officially become a producer with my inaugural effort being for Liza Dezfouli's comedy-cabaret "Binosaur". Also, I have ventured out locally with Kate R., twice with aesthetics in mind, once was for Lightscape at the Botanic Gardens, which was beautiful, but rather low numbers due to drizzle, and today for a visit to the National Gallery of Victoria. This evening, I attended the awards ceremony for the Melbourne Poet's Union International Poetry Competition, which featured a marvellous and insightful speech by the well-known anarchist poet, Pi O. Finally, last night I visited ACMI for millihertz producing a rather raw and politically challenging audio-visual production with the descriptive title "Cruise Missile Intersectionality".

To finish the alliterative headings, I will conclude with some reflections on "athletics". Last week, I posted an announcement and a couple of photos of my significant weight loss over the past year (117 to 82 kgs), along with a descriptive essay on how I achieved it. I will point out that I'm not planning to lose anymore, although body composition still has room to change. I've had to hunt through my high school records - four decades in the past - to find when I had a similar weight and, in the process, have discovered my athletic records of the time, which were "quite good". I was among the best in the school for medium and long-distance running, plus I played cricket, rugby, football, and volleyball at an interschool level. But ultimately, I couldn't stand the aggressive competitiveness and the yobbish fans, and dropped out of all those activities. I hope that I can avoid all that in this rejuvenated period of my life.

Rebuilding journal search again

Jun. 30th, 2025 03:18 pm
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We're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.

Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.

Chaosium Convention Melbourne

Jun. 30th, 2025 11:49 pm
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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.

March 2025

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