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Gatherings, Conferences, The Chameleons
Jan. 11th, 2018 10:10 amLess than two weeks into the new year and I find myself engaging in various social organisational activities and conference preparations. This Sunday is the annual general meeting and BBQ of the RPG Review Coooperative at Studley Park which, it must be said, we've had a stupidly good year for a small club, expanding our library to several hundred items, and getting Papers & Paychecks released. Two weeks after that will the Annual Penguin Picnic for Linux Users of Victoria. In between all this I also have organised a small dinner for the nearest and dearest in Kew for my fiftieth orbit around the sun.
There has also been preparations for the Grand Tour of 2018. At the moment the trip will start in Paris for the TERATEC conference, then across to Frankfurt for the International Supercomputing Conference, down to Basel Switzerland for the Advanced Scientific Computing conference, then to Freiburg's HPC centre, then Stuttgart to visit family and their HPC centre (including the remarkable Department for the Philosophy of Science and Technology of Computation), and then to Enschede, Netherlands, for the conference on Human-Technology Relations. I have abstracts ready to go for for the PASC and Human-Technology conferences, the former on GPU improvements for calculating marine population numbers and movement, and the second for natural language and interfaces improvements in the command line. There is a strong temptation to finish the trip with a ferry across the Channel to the UK.
Speaking of the UK, it is finally hitting me that tomorrow I get to go see The Chameleons, who are - in my carefully considered opinion of course - one the finest of post-punk bands that ever graced this watery world. To this day one finds people who are just a bit overwhelmed in discovering them for the first time. My plan over the next two days is work through their back catalogue in preparation for the concert, as I've been working through Mark Burgess' very readable autobiography A View from a Hill. It also serves a gentle reminder that I have a couple of reviews that I need to finish for Rocknerd.
There has also been preparations for the Grand Tour of 2018. At the moment the trip will start in Paris for the TERATEC conference, then across to Frankfurt for the International Supercomputing Conference, down to Basel Switzerland for the Advanced Scientific Computing conference, then to Freiburg's HPC centre, then Stuttgart to visit family and their HPC centre (including the remarkable Department for the Philosophy of Science and Technology of Computation), and then to Enschede, Netherlands, for the conference on Human-Technology Relations. I have abstracts ready to go for for the PASC and Human-Technology conferences, the former on GPU improvements for calculating marine population numbers and movement, and the second for natural language and interfaces improvements in the command line. There is a strong temptation to finish the trip with a ferry across the Channel to the UK.
Speaking of the UK, it is finally hitting me that tomorrow I get to go see The Chameleons, who are - in my carefully considered opinion of course - one the finest of post-punk bands that ever graced this watery world. To this day one finds people who are just a bit overwhelmed in discovering them for the first time. My plan over the next two days is work through their back catalogue in preparation for the concert, as I've been working through Mark Burgess' very readable autobiography A View from a Hill. It also serves a gentle reminder that I have a couple of reviews that I need to finish for Rocknerd.
