Funerals, Birthdays, Art, and Thesis
It has been a strange past few days as I've experienced quite a range of emotional states, each quelled by the other and high levels of activity. The most notable was on Monday for _fustian's funeral. Appropriately held at Lonegran and Raven the event was both respectful, combining a genuine sense of grief at the loss of our dear friend yet interspersed with good humour. The Wake, held at the rooftop of Naked for Satan, provided fine views over the city and included some rather stylish steampunk and art nouveau furnishings (and, decoupage nudity). At the end of the day, I think the most important thing that could happen is that the torches of Jeremy's projects are taken up by others. He contributed a lot; we can build upon them.
There were quite a few "Perth migrants" at the funeral and a couple of days prior I had the opportunity to mix with a slightly different crowd from the same era and even subcultural interests at Liana F's birthday gathering. As such things are, there were points of contact between the two groups with funontheupfield present at both events and a source of a great deal of conversation. I found much of my discussion that night, over a couple of bottles of wine (and felt rather poorly the following day as a result), was with an ADF veteran who had certainly seen more than one needs to see from such experiences that continue to affect him and his friends.
On Sunday, for something completely different, went to the Rising: A Miracle Constantly Repeated exhibition at the old rooms of Flinders Street Station with lei_loo. It wasn't a bad exhibition really, even accounting for their pitch for world's worst website, with various installation pieces exploring chimeric creatures that combine human-like forms with the more bestial, and clearly inspired from Australian fauna. But the real highlight was less of the exhibition, but rather the building itself, long closed to the public eye with the old ballroom, games room, etc all in a dilapidated condition.
And as the final item in this rather all-over-the-place past few days, today I finished the draft of my thesis for a Master's of Higher Education at the University of Otago. It requires some spelling and formatting changes, and a few minor additions and corrections, but the 25,000 words or so is done and finished a year early. Thus the end is near from two years of coursework, and one for the thesis. The title is "The Future of the University in the Age of the Internet", essentially looking at demographic changes, public economics (externalities, cost-disease), digital content provision and licensing, and a qualitative survey of learners, educators, and designers. Rather like my MSc in Information Systems, I find that there are significant advantages in the "free and open-source" approaches to content provision. This entry was originally posted at https://tcpip.dreamwidth.org/328976.html.
There were quite a few "Perth migrants" at the funeral and a couple of days prior I had the opportunity to mix with a slightly different crowd from the same era and even subcultural interests at Liana F's birthday gathering. As such things are, there were points of contact between the two groups with funontheupfield present at both events and a source of a great deal of conversation. I found much of my discussion that night, over a couple of bottles of wine (and felt rather poorly the following day as a result), was with an ADF veteran who had certainly seen more than one needs to see from such experiences that continue to affect him and his friends.
On Sunday, for something completely different, went to the Rising: A Miracle Constantly Repeated exhibition at the old rooms of Flinders Street Station with lei_loo. It wasn't a bad exhibition really, even accounting for their pitch for world's worst website, with various installation pieces exploring chimeric creatures that combine human-like forms with the more bestial, and clearly inspired from Australian fauna. But the real highlight was less of the exhibition, but rather the building itself, long closed to the public eye with the old ballroom, games room, etc all in a dilapidated condition.
And as the final item in this rather all-over-the-place past few days, today I finished the draft of my thesis for a Master's of Higher Education at the University of Otago. It requires some spelling and formatting changes, and a few minor additions and corrections, but the 25,000 words or so is done and finished a year early. Thus the end is near from two years of coursework, and one for the thesis. The title is "The Future of the University in the Age of the Internet", essentially looking at demographic changes, public economics (externalities, cost-disease), digital content provision and licensing, and a qualitative survey of learners, educators, and designers. Rather like my MSc in Information Systems, I find that there are significant advantages in the "free and open-source" approaches to content provision. This entry was originally posted at https://tcpip.dreamwidth.org/328976.html.