HPC and Exams etc, Ingress, Social Events

[tcpip]

With 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.

Comments

[solivini]

You are an extremely interesting person, and I’m really glad we added one another.
I throughly enjoyed the BSC talk on earthquakes and sexual relationships.
Congrats on making the first cut on the exam.

[tcpip]

Yeah, I think this is the start of a classic LJ-style friendship :)

The BSC talk was was pretty funny, but actually quite important. I'm glad they did it.

[ariaflame]

AKA - they changed things and I don't like change? My lack of playing ingress of late is more due to time rather than the newer scanner which took a little getting used to, but wasn't a dealbreaker for me. I wonder where your source for 'majority of layers don't want' came from? Just academic curiosity.

[tcpip]

Well, I asked Dr. Google for people who like the new interface and those who didn't and the overwhelming majority said that they didn't.

e.g., referenced in my article:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ingress/comments/9ukogo/prime_is_pretty_fail/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ingress/comments/9xsgp4/why_does_prime_suck_so_bad/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ingress/comments/cf0cxr/5_minutes_since_redacted_went_offline/

Or, in a more general sense, the Reddit community for Ingress.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ingress/

This ought to be fun.

https://liverpool.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/ringress

[ariaflame]

Ah, so you're saying that the loud people who complain about change appeared to be more numerous than the people who just got used to the change and kept on?

I suppose that would happen yes. Though as I understand it there had to be some change due to changes in supporting code, or code to no longer be supported. So no matter what happened someone would have been unhappy. You'll excuse me if I avoid reddit though.

Surveys eh? How random was that survey? Surely you know better than to trust in online surveys? I'm not saying mind you that your perceptions of it are incorrect for you. Just that in my experience human beings love novelty but hate change. No matter where that is.

[tcpip]

> Ah, so you're saying that the loud people who complain about change appeared to be more numerous than the people who just got used to the change and kept on?<

Well, there is a thread of what people like about the new version but that is relatively sparse.

Judged by an unarguably objectively criteria, measurements do show that to perform most functions chews up battery at a vastly increased rate.

> Surely you know better than to trust in online surveys?<

Depends on to what degree that the extrapolate the date to match demographics really. As it turns out the survey is more about the degree of immersion and doesn't differentiate between Ingress and Ingress Prime. I have written to them about that.

> in my experience human beings love novelty but hate change. <

Sure, that's why changes to UIs are always met with resistance. Because a change in the means to carry out a function means that it is immediately more difficult, thus a net loss.

UIs should always be changed gradually and provide functional improvements, in order to be accepted.

In another place I made a comparison between the squeals of pain when MS-Windows switched their desktop from Win98 to XP or even Ubuntu from GNOME to Unity and back again.