EOY in the HPC World, SF Updates
Dec. 15th, 2017 12:30 pmIt's that time of year where I realise I could really do with another thirty days up my sleeve to get everything done that I had planned to do in the year prior. Still, I'm not doing too bad on my typically overly-optimistic list. It is a striking contrast to so many end-of-year festivities that seem to occur around me, whereas my much preference is to simply keep working and chip away at the daily operations and project tasks. I recall rather fondly a comment by Chris Samuel (who should update his 'blog) many years ago that he would be worrying about an incomplete work task on his death-bed. Chris gets a special mention here as one of the week's activities was a farewell lunch hosted by Melbourne Bioinformatics, as Chris is leaving for Swinburne University to work with their new astronomy-orientated cluster. It was especially good to see so many ex-VPAC people in attendance. I must mention also in passing the recent release of Thylacine genome was done by computer system at NeCTAR and the VLSCI.
The continuing quest for network improvement in our cluster's new GPGPU partition continues to be an issue (despite a generous luch at a vendor coordination meeting at Hofbräuhaus), although I'm pleased to see that most of the necessary research software has been installed. Most of this week has been running classes for researchers on Linux and HPC, HPC shell scripting, and parallel programming. I was feeling more than a little under the weather, but powered through with a combination of extraverted feedback and Sudefed (tm). I think the latter course needs some further development, particularly in the OpenMP section, and there will be in the next year to develop a GPGPU course.
In gaming news, last night![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
funontheupfield ran a session of FATE Red Planet, a pulp-style Soviet utopian SF romp. It dovetails nicely with a few reviews I've had published on RPG.net, namely Eclipse Phase Rimward, GURPS Transhuman Space, and GURPS Reign of Steel, and follows sessions of Eclipse Phase last Friday night and Sunday afternoon. Finally, last Saturday attended the 40th anniversary of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which really a film that a lot going for it - and also as a precursor to both Poltergeist and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
The continuing quest for network improvement in our cluster's new GPGPU partition continues to be an issue (despite a generous luch at a vendor coordination meeting at Hofbräuhaus), although I'm pleased to see that most of the necessary research software has been installed. Most of this week has been running classes for researchers on Linux and HPC, HPC shell scripting, and parallel programming. I was feeling more than a little under the weather, but powered through with a combination of extraverted feedback and Sudefed (tm). I think the latter course needs some further development, particularly in the OpenMP section, and there will be in the next year to develop a GPGPU course.
In gaming news, last night
funontheupfield ran a session of FATE Red Planet, a pulp-style Soviet utopian SF romp. It dovetails nicely with a few reviews I've had published on RPG.net, namely Eclipse Phase Rimward, GURPS Transhuman Space, and GURPS Reign of Steel, and follows sessions of Eclipse Phase last Friday night and Sunday afternoon. Finally, last Saturday attended the 40th anniversary of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which really a film that a lot going for it - and also as a precursor to both Poltergeist and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.