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tcpipA pleasing result of the week was the publication of Chimera and The Cyborg with colleagues at the University of Freibug on HPC/Cloud hybrid systems (and more). Today (and tomorrow) I've been teaching a c50 person group of postgraduate mechanical engineering students on HPC and Linux, and to be honest, I thought they would have more of a background on the latter. I am sympathetic on what must be a steep learning curve, as today we combined my usual introductory and advanced courses in a single six-hour session, which was pretty gruelling for me and it would have be very hard for those unfamiliar with the basic content.
Despite time pressures, I have taken the opportunity to attend to a few social events this week. Gaming-wise there was Megatraveller last week, with Lexoccultum tonight (mid-17th century western Europe plus supernatural). Last Sunday was our regular RuneQuest game where we continue to push aside increasingly challenging opposition. Plus, visited Brendan E., on Sunday (as we'd missed each others birthdays), and he treated us to a couple of SF-action films, Oblivion and Spectral. The gender-roles in the first were irksome and the science behind the second was flimsy, but this aside, both sit into the mixed to good range. Which, interestingly, is where I put the Jesus & Mary Chain concert we attended at The Forum on Tuesday. It was well-performed, but I wasn't really taken by setlist, which was a really curious combination of choices.
There was once a movement that said we should have 8 hours work, 8 hours rest, and 8 hours recreation. The sense of balance is notable and subtracting the rest component it basically argues that there should be a 50%/50% work-life balance. Of course that doesn't include transit time to work, the prevalance of unpaid overtime (call it "wage theft"). but nor do is include weekends either. By these metrics I am currently running on (0.5 work + 0.5 associations + 0.5 GradDip + 0.5 MSc + 0.25 MHed) = 2.25 full-time lives. Although to be fair, a lot of the the latter two is material I am familiar with. I just hope I can keep it going for a couple more months as to complete degree number five. All the degrees, you see. Actually, my intention is retire with ten; putting "lifelong learning" intp practise. Maybe then I'll actually be confident enough to write more.
Despite time pressures, I have taken the opportunity to attend to a few social events this week. Gaming-wise there was Megatraveller last week, with Lexoccultum tonight (mid-17th century western Europe plus supernatural). Last Sunday was our regular RuneQuest game where we continue to push aside increasingly challenging opposition. Plus, visited Brendan E., on Sunday (as we'd missed each others birthdays), and he treated us to a couple of SF-action films, Oblivion and Spectral. The gender-roles in the first were irksome and the science behind the second was flimsy, but this aside, both sit into the mixed to good range. Which, interestingly, is where I put the Jesus & Mary Chain concert we attended at The Forum on Tuesday. It was well-performed, but I wasn't really taken by setlist, which was a really curious combination of choices.
There was once a movement that said we should have 8 hours work, 8 hours rest, and 8 hours recreation. The sense of balance is notable and subtracting the rest component it basically argues that there should be a 50%/50% work-life balance. Of course that doesn't include transit time to work, the prevalance of unpaid overtime (call it "wage theft"). but nor do is include weekends either. By these metrics I am currently running on (0.5 work + 0.5 associations + 0.5 GradDip + 0.5 MSc + 0.25 MHed) = 2.25 full-time lives. Although to be fair, a lot of the the latter two is material I am familiar with. I just hope I can keep it going for a couple more months as to complete degree number five. All the degrees, you see. Actually, my intention is retire with ten; putting "lifelong learning" intp practise. Maybe then I'll actually be confident enough to write more.
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Date: 2019-03-14 07:34 am (UTC)Oblivion ... well, that was a whole bag full of stuff. Weird ideas, plot holes, compelling scenes, sophisticated visual metaphors, even more egregious plot holes, et cetera.
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Date: 2019-03-14 11:36 am (UTC)Yeah, plotholes and improbable coincidences are quite a thing in Oblivion.
But overall, neither film was bad just a didn't quite sit right and, in both cases, unnecessarily so.
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Date: 2019-03-14 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-14 08:24 am (UTC)Five degrees may be enough to start with. :)
What cross-synthesis (if any) are you looking for amongst the disparate learning? Maybe you can find something new in the interstices.
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Date: 2019-03-14 11:31 am (UTC)Specifically, I am very interested in the economics of high-performance computing education (and in a broader sense approaching this with an information systems perspective).
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Date: 2019-03-14 09:03 pm (UTC)VR learning? Or augmented human learning? Or a combination?
All of it will have to come; it is inevitable excepting we kill ourselves or destroy civilisation first.
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Date: 2019-03-15 02:57 am (UTC)It has a rather good return on investment, and when put into a public research category that's fairly important.
Although I must say I did explore the idea of VR-enhanced learning and as a game for one of the InfoSys subjects.