HPC Conference, Rick Matters, Movies, Illness

The HPC Advisory Council conference went well. It is small and relatively specialist, but the content and location was excellent. My own paper Exploring Issues in Event-Based HPC Cloudbursting was apparently well received at least according to people who told me so afterwards. Not all research comes to a thoroughly positive conclusion and sometimes it is handy for a research group to discover blockers on the way so others can avoid them in advance. I was particularly happy with Brian Skjerven's presentation on Hands-on HPC Containers and being pointed to XALT, a software usage metrics tool, as an extension to LMOD. Something to sink my teeth into next week when I'm back at the coal-face.

Just before leaving Perth I had a visit to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to seek confirmation on the sale of Rick's apartment. That was all confirmed without too much fuss and the following week visited his financial advisors to sign an agreement to implement their plan. Next step will be to clean out his apartment (and the mountain of books) and put the place on the market. At the same time Rick's relatives - Janet, Eileen, and Steve - are visiting for his birthday and we all had dinner with Rick's former neighbour Mel at the positively beautiful Abbotsford Convent, which is next door to where Rick is now housed. There is recognition that he's probably not destined for much longer on this earth so there was some discussion about what to do after the event. The sort of thing we should prepare for of course.

The plane trips to and from Perth provided the opportunity to watch a few movies, most of which were not great. The exception was Selma a historical drama about Martin Luther King Jnr and the famous march. There are some historical inaccuracies (such as the treatment of Johnson), but it is still very worthwhile viewing. Less successful was the Johnny Cash biography, Walk the Line which concentrated (quite well, it must be said) on his various home and tour dramas, but almost completely neglected the latter part of his life and his political views. Way down on the bottom of the pile was Guardians of the Tomb, a Chinese-Australia science fiction action film, which had all the potential (what's not to love with a quest for the elixer of life and pack-hunting funnel-web spiders?) and none of the execution (kudos to Shane Jacobson however whose wit was the film's only redeeming feature). On return to Melbourne went to see Jabberwocky at The Astor with caseopaya and Rodney B. It is aged quite well, and gives a fairly accurate portrayal of medieval life (even with a couple of anachronisms), and skirts a difficult line between being amusing and grim.

Among all this, I have come down with a chest cold, which has delightfully included hemoptysis. It is almost certainly bronchitis, but if I'm not better by Monday it's off to the doctor for me. The first inklings were on the morning of the departure from Perth, but it really kicked on Friday. Hefty doses of cough mixture and pills have allowed me for some semblance of normality on for low-level activities (such as listed), but there's no way I'm for anything too active. I have cancelled one dinner planned for tonight, and the Eclipse Phase session planned for Sunday. I will, however, go The Philosophy Forum to give my presentation on The Philosophy of Technology which I already know quite well and have already written the presentation.