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HPC and Exams etc, Ingress, Social Events
Jul. 20th, 2019 09:40 pmWith two double-sized workshops next week, I've made the first cut at a summative exam which is still very much a work-in-progress. It will certainly serve as a handy template when extended to other courses as well. Of interest in the HPC space (and I completely neglected to mention the last post) is Spartan, the once-tiny experimental cluster (which ended up at the equivalent of c200 in the Top500) passed 10,000,000 jobs last week. Apropos, was pleased to see one of the researchers whom I taught a few weeks ago made their way into the papers with their research on the Buruli ulcer. I thought it was a very good advertisement for the serious importance of HPC, and then the same day I receive a video from the Barcelona Supercomputer Centre which shows an interesting correlation between earthquakes and sex; well, I suppose that will at least attract a bit of attention.
Yesterday Ingress went offline for a day, or rather, the traditional Ingress scanner was down for "routine maintenance" (which has never happened before). I tried using Ingress Prime, not for the first time, but the experience was, again, extremely unsatisfactory. I started to think about why Niantic is so determined about introducing an interface which the overwhelming majority of players don't want, and I ended up with a 1500 word essay, How Niantic is Killing Ingress on the relationship between the game, the business, and data collection. The end of September will be a sad day when the traditional scanner comes to an end and the game will be largely abandoned.
On the topic of games visited Andrew D., on Thursday for our regular gaming session and we decided to have a one-off game of Dog Eat Dog, a narrativist game of colonial occupation in the Pacific (or elsewhere for that matter). We ended up with an amalgamation of Islander cultures colonised by the Republic of Deseret (like Dogs in the Vineyard, see what I did there?). Following up on more social activities the evening prior had a visit form nephew Luke, who picked up his Cure t-shirt as he looked after our place during our recent jaunt to Sydney to see said band. Of interest is his planned trip to Borneo. Finally, today had a visit from work colleague Martin P., and his daughter Tessa. The latter will be staying at our place during October whilst we are taking a trip to Europe, and a post-lunch tour of the estate was provided.
Yesterday Ingress went offline for a day, or rather, the traditional Ingress scanner was down for "routine maintenance" (which has never happened before). I tried using Ingress Prime, not for the first time, but the experience was, again, extremely unsatisfactory. I started to think about why Niantic is so determined about introducing an interface which the overwhelming majority of players don't want, and I ended up with a 1500 word essay, How Niantic is Killing Ingress on the relationship between the game, the business, and data collection. The end of September will be a sad day when the traditional scanner comes to an end and the game will be largely abandoned.
On the topic of games visited Andrew D., on Thursday for our regular gaming session and we decided to have a one-off game of Dog Eat Dog, a narrativist game of colonial occupation in the Pacific (or elsewhere for that matter). We ended up with an amalgamation of Islander cultures colonised by the Republic of Deseret (like Dogs in the Vineyard, see what I did there?). Following up on more social activities the evening prior had a visit form nephew Luke, who picked up his Cure t-shirt as he looked after our place during our recent jaunt to Sydney to see said band. Of interest is his planned trip to Borneo. Finally, today had a visit from work colleague Martin P., and his daughter Tessa. The latter will be staying at our place during October whilst we are taking a trip to Europe, and a post-lunch tour of the estate was provided.
