Sydney and Supercomputing

It appears that I have landed in Sydney to attend a particularly important nerd-fest, Supercomputing Asia 2024. I'll be giving two, thankfully short, presentations at this event: "HPC Certification Forum & Skill Tree: An Update" and "HPC Training Generates HPC Results". In accordance with my tastes, I'm staying in a budget hotel (Siesta Sydney) which is close to the conference and has good amenities, albeit with a bed that's far too soft. Today was spent entirely with the IBM Storage Scale User Group which discussed the many complexities involved in having storage that's big, fast, and robust. It all dovetails quite nicely with a visit from HPC sysadmins to our workplace from Princeton University, with whom we shared information about implementations of Mediaflux. Supercomputing is a curious profession I have fallen into for the last 17 years; it comes across as rather niche, at best. But it touches and improves our lives in so many ways across healthcare, materials, engineering, and more. The return - almost entirely externalities - is an extraordinary $44 per dollar invested. Supercomputing is perhaps the most remarkable form of social infrastructure that we can invest in and yet is also so indirect and distant from most people's lived experience.

Before my departure I managed to get a few social events in; Erica H., joined me on Saturday for my third visit to Triennial at the NGV, and I still think I could go again. On Friday, I was party to a delightful sunset dinner evening with Julie A., and Liana F. (Julie's cake was quite impressive!), and we ended up playing "Munchkin" until the small hours. Apropos such events, last Saturday week enjoyed a games-day with Chester and Balaram for the amusing and high-speed "silent cooperative" game, "Magic Maze". Further, this coming Saturday is the Annual General Meeting of the RPG Review Cooperative, Inc., at the Rose Hotel in Fitzroy; our AGMs are short, the social event is always enjoyable.