Wine Events, HPC Events

It's been a few days of wine-based events, starting with the South American Masterclass on Friday at Union House, featuring samples from Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. There was nothing particularly terrible or spectacular about the selection, with a fair glera and a reasonable malbec. However this pales in comparison with the wine tour we took over the weekend as the Westralian side of the family are visiting. With a small and personalised tour to the small vineyards of Mornington peninsula, we dropped into the Paringa, Panton, Pier 10, and had a pretty substantial lunch at Merricks General Wine Store. Half on taste, half on sympathy, we picked up a few bottles, the relentless laws of economies of scale and capital development will the doom of almost all such places over time - and the success of one or two. Tonight we finished with a dinner at Long Grain.

Still, it hasn't been all play over the past few days. Prior the dinner I gave a guest lecture on the Spartan HPC system to the masters-level course ENGR90024 Computational Fluid Dynamics. More significantly, I've been asked to join the development of an International HPC Certification Program with HPC educators from the University of Reading, Universität Hamburg, and Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin, and others. At the moment it is all very nascent with but a poster presentation for the Frankfurt International Supercomputing Conference and a mailing list, but from such small acorns mighty oaks can grow. It is not as if there isn't sufficient demand for such a group and whilst there have been attempts in the past, if they get PRACE onside that will make a great deal of difference.