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.

The past few days I have been in Enschede, a moderately-sized former industrial town near the border of Germany, staying at the deco-era Hotel Rodenbach, situated next door to the pleasant Volkspark. The final night we splashed out a bit and enjoyed a meal at their rather nice restaurant; most other evenings we spent in their rather sizable Oude Markt area. Overall Enschede is really pleasant town with a good mix of interesting architecture, with a good student community, and a moderate amount of industry. It has managed to rebuild itself quite well following a rather dramatic decline in its traditional manufacturing base in the 1980s, reminding me of some the New Zealand towns of a similar vintage (e.g., Cambridge).

The purpose of this visit to a such a relatively obscure place has been for a philosophy of technology conference at the University of Twente. My own paper, Transparency and Immersion in High Performance Computing basically argued that (a) the command-line interface will always be necessary for speed and capability and especially for HPC and that (b) it also needs to be updated in terms of syntax, structure, and linguistic scope for greater intuition, although I did have a fairly pessimistic conclusion on the chances this would occur. As once remarked: "We think an act according to habit, and the extraordinary resistance offered to even minimal departures from custom is due more to inertia than to any conscious desire to maintain usages which have a clear function" (Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology).

For a conference that was expecting 50 people and ended up with over 200, it was quite stimulating. I made a couple of relatively important contacts, including Don Ihde, whose phenomenology of technology was extremely influential in my own thinking on the subject, and Rosi Braidotti who gave an absolutely firey presentation on the current state of critical theory and post-structuralism. In addition there is at least three other people whom I am hoping to have further collaborations with in the future across the disciplines of Habermas' critical theory and technology, cultural studies, and Internet privacy. Overall, it was a really good event and a credit to the organisers. Nearly all the speakers I heard were very knowledgeable about their respective subject matter and raised important issues on human-technology interactions, and many were from backgrounds that knew the technical details intimately. But as stimulating as it was, it was also a reminder on the discipline: "if you want to be a philosophy graduate, you'd better get a taxi license as well!". Philosophy as a profession is rarely the path to a secure or even moderate income.

For the past few days we've had the pleasure of strangedave visiting us from Perth, for the stated purpose of attending some Burning Man organising group. It just so correlated with a release of a new edition of RuneQuest by Chaosium. As we are both knowledgeable fans of said product we were able to go through with a critical eye with a certain speed and intensity; my dotted notes are on the RuneQuest rules mailing list; the short version is it's pretty big, very much in the style of the old RuneQuest2, incorporates personality features from the runes to the characters, and includes a fair amount of Pendragon (parental history, passions etc). I intend, of course, to do a more complete review in the near future for RPG Review.

In actual play it just so happened to be RuneQuest week at our regular Sunday gaming group, which involved raiding tombs, battling certain lizard-folk, discovering our original employer had come to the sticky end of a sorcerer, and facing complaints from landlords. Quite a lot packed in for a single session really. In addition, the day previous was our regular CheeseQuest with Damien and Jacqui B., where we played another session of Mice & Mystics finishing off the penultimate chapter with relative ease - one more to go and we've finished the game, which has taken us over a year.

A somewhat disappointing conclusion to the week was the realisation that our much-plagued GPGPU partition for Spartan would not going going to be ready for a Top500 test by the deadline on June 1st (even with Pacific Time taken into consideration). We still have what appears to be intranetwork issues; in aggregate we can be a fair result through individual racks, and obviously on single-nodes we can get excellent results. But the system as a whole shows very poor performance issues. Assuming we can get this resolved we can have another crack for the November list. It's just the nature of the beast; sometimes when you're a blade runner, you get cut. EDIT: Almost forgot, have wirtten a short piece on installation of MrTrix on HPC with EasyBuild in mind.

It's been a busy past few days with various events in the high-performance computing world. Our neighbouring partners, Melbourne Bioinformatics are in the process of having one of their clusters, 'Snowy', upgraded and integrated with Spartan. I raised the issue of ensuring reasonable compatibility of software for users and as a result I have found myself with a list of some six hundred and eighty two applications and versions that I have to install by the time of the move; I should have the first hundred done by the end of the week. Meanwhile, final preparations are underway for Spartan's admission into the Top500, aided by the addition of the GPGPU partition. On the basis of current metrics we're hoping to get around the 250 mark. Meanwhile poor old UTAS has lost their HPC (temporarily) due to flooding. It is a harsh irony that one of the reasons for its existence was to model extreme weather events.

On the RPG front tonight will witness an episode of Exalted, and I completed a write-up of the last session of this mythic Chinese story last night where the heroes made their way from the court of Wang Shenzhi to Nanping. On Sunday ran a session of Eclipse Phase where the Sentinels made their way to Illa na Gorra off the coast of Ibiza, avoiding such TITAN horrors as Creepers and Factals to find the stack of weapons-manufacturer Helga Busenberg (German speakers may snicker now) only to discover it was she who created said weapons in the first place. Apropos had a committee meeting that evening followed with a meeting today with the organiser of Arcanacon concerning the input of the RPG Review Cooperative for that Con next year.

People are probably aware of recent killings in Palestine which occurred simultaneously with the US moving its embassy to Jerusalem. The protests were part of an ongoing right-of-return campaign by Palestinians. It is appropriate to recall that the Gaza strip was captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War with Israel (5/6) and Egypt (1/6) ensuring border closures with Israel ensures a sea and air blockade. The population is not allowed to freely to leave or enter and allowed to freely import or export goods. It is a prison and given the population density (third highest in the world) it is accurate to call it a concentration camp, or even a ghetto. It makes a good example of the recent post on political partisanship. In encountering apologists for the Israeli regime of recent events, I have found that asking them whether their opinion would be the same if the situation was reversed to be quite revealing.

My fiftieth orbit gathering was apparently enjoyed by all. In hindsight I could have organised a larger group in a bigger venue. As it was India At Q did a brilliant job, and it was a great opportunity to catch up with close friends old and new. One of the more amusing comments I heard on multiple occasions was "You have such interesting and intelligent friends!" - the speaker overlooking the fact that they are one of those interesting and intelligent people. I was in very good spirits in this company and some even managed to convince me to give an impromptu speech which apparently wasn't terrible. I did drink a fair amount and the evening concluding with sipping armagnac. The following morning my head reminded me of exactly how much I had.

Nevertheless, I recovered enough to run a session of Eclipe Phase the following afternoon where the Sentinels are travelled to Luna to find out exactly what Cognite's Overlord Unit (aka Dr. Revolution) is really up to. It had been a pretty heavy SFRPG game few days, with playing Justin A's Eclipse Phase on Friday evening, and Megatraveller the night before (anothe session of Megatravaller is planned for tomorrow night. Posthuman Studios is having an "Open Muse" publication, and I'm very tempted to submit something. I might even find some inspiration from Ursula K. Le Guin who passed away today. Like many others I was particularly taken by The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, etc, but most of all, her essays The Language of the Night. EDIT. Neglected to mention the utilitarian calculation in The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, which was the basis of a Pathfinder Planescape campaign that I was part of for many months.

The past three days I've been conducting training courses for the University of Melbourne researchers (and one from Victoria University). They have been the usual trio which are well established (Introduction to Linux and HPC, Advanced Linux and Shell Scripting, and Introduction to Parallel Programming), but the content never remains static with updates after every time I run the training days. I do have a tendency to try to push more and more information into each iteration, although it is clear that new courses (e.g., GPGPU programming) will need to be organised. Even after all these years they are no less tiring to run however, even with the interesting and inquisitive questions from participants. But providing researchers the systems and ability to conduct their computational tasks is a powerful internal motivation, and one which drives me every day.

It's been a pretty rough week, with continuing problems with the that nasty bit of glue between Spartan and it's underlying network infrastructure. Some of the best minds I know in these matters are all doing their best to fix the problems, all whilst we're in the middle of upgrades (I won't be happy if the upgrades are the problem), but at the moment we haven't narrowed down the cause (if we knew that it wouldn't be a problem). At least we now have the recovery process fine-tuned. On a related topic, tomorrow I'm giving a talk to Linux Users of Victoria on An Overview of SSH. Readers of my 'blog of course get to see presentation slides first.

It's all taken it's toll and I've been fighting off a cold (I think successfully) the past couple of days, not helped by what was otherwise a very busy week. Monday night was Lorna Quinn's art opening at University House. It was also, incidentially, the day I posted some photos of myself from 1993 (1993mohawk1.jpg amd 1993mohawk2.jpgwhich attracted some attention among social media friends. Once again I grumpily have to acknowledge the fleeting superficial power of the arts. On a related sense, Tuesday night was a return to our regular Megatraveller session, where we sorted out our fleet's multifunctional space voyages (we're off to Torpol!)

The Isocracy annual general meeting was on Wednesday night, which was addressed by the state secretary of the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party, on 'The Reawakening of the Working Class'. Kos is a very smart operator and uses strong empirical evidence which matches industry developments with electoral politics and ideological shifts. We also elected our committee (we have Labor, Liberal, and Greens members now). The conversation was extensive and congratulations must be given to Kos for holding up under the circumstances, as he found out just before the start of the meeting that Fiona Richardson had suddenly died. Last night, managed to struggle through a debate at the Secular Society between James Fodor and Leon Di Stefano. James has provided a copy of his presentation slides.

I've been in Perth for the better part of five days now and will be staying a few more days to attend Erica W's unexpected funeral. My original plans were to stay at the Old Swan Barracks for historical reasons, despite some pretty dire reviews. Astoundingly, I was refused entrance on account of not having a passport, driver's license, or proof of age card. Instead, I've been at The Nest on Newcastle, which has been trouble-free. To their credit, booking.com have assured me that the Old Swan will now be required to advertise their ID requirements on their website. I'll be checking out today and will be spending the next few days in the company of strangedave in nearby Mount Hawthorn. Most of the first day was spent in the company of my old friend Andrei N., before heading off to Fremantle for a family dinner at Don Tapa, and a visit to caseopaya's mother the following day, who was pretty surprised to see me. That evening I was hosting a dinner of old friends in Maylands at Amore Mio. They certainly do good food, and catered quite well for our large (c15) crowd, although I take the point it is very noisy. An excellent meeting was also held with Daniel R., convenor of the Final Frontiers RPG group.

As for the HPC Advisory Council conference itself, that was a two day affair at the Pan Pacific Hotel. It was another opportunity to catch up with John Gustafson who delivered the keynote on the first day. Whilst all the talks were of a particularly high standard, I was also particularly impressed by the presentations by Tim Pugh from the Bureau of Meterology and Ashrat Ambastha from Mellonox. As for my own presentation on Architecture Diversity, the timetable was a getting a little out-of-sync but the time it was my turn; I personally felt it was somewhat rushed, but others tell me that it was good. Well, they're the audience so I'll trust their judgment. The conference also had two well-catered sundowners, one at the Pawsey Supercomputer Centre and the other at Down Under Geosolutions; I was very impressed with their data centre with oil immersion server cooling. Post-conference a number of us ended up at Bar Lafayette, which is probably Perth city's best cocktail bar (not that I'm biased); the night ended with the visit from the absinthe faery.

When I return to Perth The Philosophy Forum will have presentation by Don H., on Capitalism and Socialism, which dovetails quite well with a recent publication on New Matilda on the distinction, although said article is a little light on some of the more difficult questions on economic calculation. Appropriately however the annual general meeting of the Isocracy Network is coming up on August 23 at Loi Loi resturant with Kos Samaras, assistant state secretary of the ALP speaking on the state of working class politics. On topic, the Network has taken up publishing a flurry of material from Wes Whitman whose "libertarian social democracy" approach is certainly worth a review. On another related piece, congratulations must certainly go to reddragdiva with his publication Attack of the Fifty Food Blockchain, a critique of bitcoin and other crypto-currencies (short version: they're not money, they're collectable hashes).

Final day in Stuttgart included a long walk through Rotwildpark, a thoroughly beautiful location, and a visit to Schloss Solitude which by good fortune had its rooftop open to visitors commanding some superb views. The journey back to Frankfurt was quick and uneventful and once again checked into the Hotel Colombus where, alas, a top floor has been allocated. In the rather warm conditions that is being currently experienced in western Europe it is a little unpleasant.

The main purpose of this European visit is, of course, the International Supercomputing Conference. The event is just the right size, and with a good combination of medium to some very low level presentations ("low level", as in dealing with the technical details). Of some note was the announcement at the conference that the United States has been edged out the top three supercomputer systems, with the delicate suggestion that the current administration may wish to revisit their committment to advanced research. Among the vendors the can be little doubt that NVIDIA's Volta architecture attracted much deserved attention especially with its performance, energy efficiency, and capability for artificial intelligence - the latter being an interesting focus among a number of presentations.

There has been some more social activities as well; I was subject to a film interview by Dell on the sort of HPC work conducted at the University, and had dinner with a number of their staff at the well-reviewed Immer Satt. I have also had the opportunity to catch up with several individuals from my last visit to this part of the world, including colleagues from Stuttgart and Freiburg Universities as well as establish contacts with well people from Auckland University of Technology (quite a trip) and GENCI (Grand Equipment National de Calcul Intensif) who I will be visiting in Paris this Friday.

An arrival to the South Island was met by fires in Christchurch. As if that poor city has not suffered enough from the terrible earthquakes of 2011 which still scar the city. The famed central Cathedral is now but a shell of what it once was, and like all great ruins is gradually being taken by nature. The official part of my visit was to the University HPC team who have shfted most of their facilities to their national infrastructure. Still, I managed to have enough spare time to vist the impressive Canterbury Museaum and take a walk around the botanical gardens before spending a night in a former prison cell, which is certainly an imaginative use of such facilities.

The following morning caught an early flight to Dunedin and chatted with a final year engineering student who had also apparently had been on the flight with me to Christchurch. Her home was Dunedin and her trip to Melbourne was her first overseas jaunt. Arrival at Dunedin was faced with the announcement that their famous chocolate factory, would be closing down. For many this is heartbreaking; it is one of Dunedin's prize businesses, even the home of Dunedin's first computer. For the three hundred and fifty workers there it is absolutely devastating; and capital does what it always does, moving to the cheapest location. For advanced economies, I often point to the example of Germany who still have a powerful manufacturing industry.

My first day was spent with David Eyers and Jim Cheetham who cover HPC and security respectively, and their insights on such subjects will be taken home and again, as is my want, visited the Otago Museum. I've also been contacting many people I know in NZ about whether they would be interested in taking the recently retired Avoca system across The Ditch. I rather like the idea of NZ having a Top500 system on its shores. The following day was free time and the opportunity was taken to visit our South Pacific base are looking after it. The musicians who live there are doing a great job and apparently a new LP, "Lodge Music" will be released in the near future. I'm quite looking forward to it.

New Year's Eve was spent at two gatherings; one hosted by Anthony L., which has a solid gathering of aging radicals, aesthetes, academics, and even diplomats. The second was hosted by sebastienne, and included the goth, punk, metal, and geek set. Both were great nights, although I suspect the latter would have been more in tune with my review on Rocknerd of Mogwai's Central Belters which was completed that day. As the fireworks went off saithkar made comment about their expense and aesthetic nothingness, which led to me bring enlighten all with the use of dead children as a unit of currency (this will be my reading for tomorrow's Unitarian Poetry Service). A recent production of a pair of pistols valued at 4.5 million USD is another case in point; that's a lot of Dead Children.

The new year has already been busy enough in work, extra-curricular, and social activities. In the former, have started providing summaries of the European tour, and have put in a submission for a BoF with the University of Freiburg for cloud/HPC hybrids at the International Supercomputing Conference. Have recently fought some particular annoying R libraries (one lacking in complete dependency listing). Fortunately a discussion came up on the EasyBuild mailing list just at the right time, leading me to 'blog Installing R with EasyBuild: Which path to insanity?.

Apart from the aforementioned NYE gatherings, also took the opportunity to visit Brendan E., on new year's day, who treated us to viewings of Marauders and Tripping The Rift. The former was a good example of some serious violence and conspiracy, but alas ended up being a little too prosaic and simple on the latter. The latter is an adult-themed sf comedy cartoon, which does make modest use of genre-referential humour. In more film-related activity went to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, with funontheupfield. It was feel-good film in the Potter-genre, and obviously well-designed for a 3-D version. I confess to being surprised at the massive all-ages turnout, having never delved deeply into Potterdom.

The new year has also seen a little bit of a flurry of activity on the political scene as well. Last night had dinner with members of the Labor Party and the Greens who are sensible enough to see that they have a common conservative enemy that is more important than any difference they may have between them. Because I am sufficiently non-partisan will be doing the same with a member of the Liberal Party early next week. The Isocracy Network 'blogs have had a few entries this year already, including one by myself on the impeachment proceedings of the South Korean President.