Lev Lafayette's journal

This week is eResearch Australasia, probably the most significant meeting of minds in the country of its sort. I have presented several times in the past at this annual conference, and this time I'll be speaking on the "The Spartan HPC Story: From Small Scale Experimental to Top500 and Beyond" which, as one fellow staff member quipped, is "a love letter to Spartan". There is some truth to this; I have watched Spartan grow over the past nine years from being just a plan on paper, raised in innovative poverty, and becoming one of the most significant systems on the planet with volumes of research output. Supercomputing is important, with a return of forty-four dollars in profits or cost-savings per dollar invested. There is not an area of modern technology or science that has supercomputing has not touched (could you imagine where we would be with COVID-19 without supercomputing?), and it pleases me a great deal to be deeply involved in this industry and academic pursuit.

But this is not the only academic pursuit of recent days. I have already started drafting a presentation on bioinformatics HPC education for EResearchNZ, which will be held in Christchurch early next year. Apropos more New Zealand matters, last week I attended the annual Wellington University Alumuni event (when you've graduated from several universities, you get to go to a few of these), where Professor Nick Long of the Robinson Research Institute spoke of their fascinating developments in superconductors (which NZ is a bit of world leader in) for fMRI, electric aviation and space vehicles, and even fusion power. Further, this week I have also finished two major assignments (two PhD reviews) for the subject International Academic Writing for my doctoral studies at Euclid University, and finally, I have started writing a paper on catatonia with Angela L (she's the subject expert, I'm merely a helpful wordsmith making use of his psychology degree).

Far from being a cloistered figure, this weekend's big trip was out to Bendigo with the Australa-China Friendship Society, where we caught up with members of the Bendigo Chinese Association who have done remarkable work in preserving and promoting that community's strong ties to the region of Dai Gum San (Big Gold Mountain). We visited the Golden Dragon Museum, the Kuan Yin Temple, Guan Yin Miao (temple of The Goddess of Mercy), Yi Yuan ("Garden of Joy"), and the Bendigo Joss Hoss Temple. The visit was so enjoyable and educational, and the local Chinese association was so helpful and friendly that I believe it will become an annual trip for the ACFS.

Earlier this week attended part of eResearchAustralAsia presented on "Streamlined Workflow from Instrument to HPC". It was mostly about cryo-electron microscopy, and specifically dealing with the enormous data transfers required and the fine-tuning of software to for the complex steps required to build a three-dimension protein model. SBGrid is a very good option ofr the latter, MediaFlux for the former, although there are some integration challenges with HPC. I have also taken the opportunity to delve a little into MyTardis, which is also used for managing instrument data. On a similar front from that, I've been adding content for my Spartan to Gadi course via a course at NCI and copying the content to Canvas.

In these modern days of technologically-mediated communication, I've publically entered into a relationship with lei_loo (which means that I've mentioned it here and on FB). We've certainly had a bit of history reaching this point as part of an ongoing coronavirus-era romance, and there have been somewhat inspiring grand plans of a future. Of course, now it's down to implementing such things in reality, and given the fact that lei_loo is a few years younger, it must be admitted that there's a bit of a vicarious interest in their success as they engage in their professional life.

A good portion of the evening hours over the past few days has been spent on carrying out the writing for RPG Review, as mention in my last entry; three reviews are done so far (The Free City of Haven, Thieves' World, Night City) a total of close to 4500 words, and about the same number to go until completion. We had a committee meeting last Sunday for the Cooperative and decided that the next issue following this will be an ICE games edition (Rolemaster, Spacemaster, Middle-Earth Role Playing, HARP, etc) with a special emphasis on ShadowWorld in honour and memory of Terry K. Amthor. Appropriately, in actual play played in a session of CyberDarkSpace this week where we questioned an alien visitor to Earth on their status as an illegal immigrant; much unexpected hilarity followed.

The past five days I've been attending eResearchAustralasia via video-conferencing. Despite being online, the conference actually ended up with the highest number of registrations, and a pretty full programme. Despite an absolutely terrible proprietary conferencing system, with pre-recorded presentations one could engage in discussions and QandA whilst the presentation was occurring, allowing for more content than usual. I gave two presentations at the conference, "Spartan: From Experimental Hybrid towards a Petascale Future" and "Contributing To the International HPC Certification Forum", with slide decks and transcripts provided (I don't think anyone else has provided transcripts).

Today I also finished the MOOC for the Linux Foundation's Introduction to Linux course, primarily to compare and check with my own courses for introductory and advanced. At some eighteen chapters and some 70,000 words, it can't be faulted for the extent of its content and there are a few items of content that I can include. The instructional scaffolding and content dependencies, however, are all over the place with relatively advanced concepts thrown in early, basic concepts left to the end, and switching the order of teaching GUI-related actions to the command line. This was a bit of an additional jar following one of the eResearch conferences when the training manager of one of the major providers in the country, talking about such a mismatch, acknowledged he hadn't heard of the term. Maybe that has something to do with the mismatch that they are having between their course content and learner expectations.

In addition, received my final piece of coursework for my MHEd, a slightly lower grade than usual for me (I've been a straight-A through this degree). For an essay that was about critical and institutional leadership in the context of economic challenges to higher education, I was absolutely astounded that the marker didn't even make the effort to look up Baumol's Law, given its importance. Really, if you don't know the meaning of something, look it up. The marker also had problems reading meaning in context. Anyway, these are problems experienced unique to this course, so I suspect it is more about the marker rather than me. It also follows my review of the course where I pointed out that it doesn't actually address the stated objectives; I have this weird expectation that a course on leadership to spend much more than one class on leadership theory.

Among all this I've had some pretty poor efforts over the past few weeks from my web and mail hosting provider, Net Registry. Firstly, they shifted my reseller account without shifting the domains causing a number of them to fail. Then, shortly afterward, they switched a number of the domains again, breaking web and mail access. A week of bugging them has led to a partial restore on some of the domains, but it is far from complete. To be fair, usually, they're pretty good, and with competitive rates, but there have been three or four times over the past decade where the support has been a little below average. This experience has probably been the worst.

I've spent the entire week at eResearchAustralasia at the Pullman Hotel, and after five days of lectures and workshops my brain is a combination of full, fried, and tired. Actually, this year's conference was pretty good, with a good balance between technology and collaboration. Attended the pre-conference workshops; one the first day there was collaboration between AU and the EU, which made me realise that the people of the continent are preparing for a hard Brexit and want us onside, which suits me fine. The second day was more of a sysadmins and HPC day which was almost like an AA-meeting of how we all have the same stories of dealing with users, data etc. From the main conference program balanced my attendance between technical tools, eresearch engagement in training. My own presentation, on the use of GPUs for marine population samples went well. Was a little surprised and disappointed at the end of the day by one eResearch provider's CEO claiming that they had to keep their training material private for their business model. They apparently haven't thought hard enough about this.

Whilst on the topic of thinking hard about a subject I have been accepted into the London School of Economics for a Graduate Diploma of Economics, because clearly having four degrees is not enough. I'll be doing this concurrently with a Masters of Higher Education at the University of Otago (I enrolled in the wrong course three years ago and it's taken me that long to get things together to give it another shot). On top of that, I'll consider an offer from another British University of a Masters in Science, specifically on Information System which sadly will require two weeks on-campus in Switzerland (or Manchester). Obviously, it is not too crazy to do three postgraduate degrees simultaneously, especially when I have this overriding meta-narrative consideration of the relationship between higher education, information technology, and political economy. I think in the long run I will be satisfied with ten degrees, although I know that sometime within the next five years or so I'll be due for a change in intellectual orientation towards more aesthetic issues that combines my pre-existing studies in legal and moral regulations, followed by organisational and factual inquiry. Maybe when I'm in my seventies I'll do a Divinity and History double-major and upload my brain just in case I've forgotten to write anything down.

In the vast quantities of spare time I've had this week I've worked primarily on RuneQuest Glorantha DownUnder and the RuneQuest system review article for RPG Review, which now has hit a remarkable nine-thousand words. At this rate I could do an honours thesis on RuneQuest! Further I've translated the Le Monde article on Greg Stafford for RPG Review and was pleasantly surprised to be told that my translation was "perfect". Perhaps my French, at least in written mode, isn't as bad as I think it is? I have been heavily helped in this forthcoming issue on a massive article from Zoe Brain on the Mucky Ducks (yeah, RuneQuest is "that duck game") along with an equally-sized piece from William Noble on Australian prehistorical animals for RuneQuest. In actual play this week our regular Megatraveller game was cancelled so, for the first time is twenty-five or so years, we cracked open the old MARS Illumanti set and cranked up this delightful game of conspiracy. It was a close affair with all players being one turn away from their victory conditions, but with my Discordians making it to the cut first by managing to control a sufficient number of groups, although it was a close call when the Servants of Cthulhu running the UFOs failed to destroy the convenience stores via the Semiconscious Liberation Army. Crazy situations, well-balanced, easy-to-play. No wonder we used to love it so much.

Have arrived in BrisVegas (as it is known by many) for eResearchAustralasia, and am staying at the pretty acceptable Spring Hill Mews. The first day's arrival was spoilt by illness, I suspect because some fucker sneezed on me on the plane on the way over. Still, by the end of the second day I was feeling better and arrived for the conference welcome reception and then joined a group for dinner at Mucho Mexicano. Whilst it is early days yet the conference itself has been so-so from the first few speakers. Leeanne Enoch gave a good introduction to the conference, especially for a politician, and David De Roure's presentation on Ada Lovelace and computer-generated music was quite enjoyable. I suspect for the rest of this afternoon I'll be staying in the Advancecd Computing stream.

Before leaving Melbourne, I did have the opportunity to run a session of Eclipse Phase finishing the Chain Reaction scenario, which will then be followed up with the subsequent related scenarios. In addition, Karl B., has assisted with the final editing of Papers & Paychecks although, alas, I still haven't managed to track down Tim Kask to do the foreword. On my return to Melbourne it looks like I'll finally get around to seeing Blade Runner 2049, given that I am "a bit" of a fan of the original.

Prior to departure I also managed to see Peter Hook and the Light, at their final Melbourne concert, performing Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures and Closer (after selling my previous tickets to fustian_). It was a great concert and in next couple of days I hope to have a review written for reddragdiva for Rocknerd, which I'm sure he's looking forward to. Should also mention that I'm half-way through writing an article about that strange alliance that's grown between the Democratic Socialists of America and the Juggalos.

Following a very brief time at home boarded the great silver bird again for another journey, this time across The Ditch to Queenstown, New Zealand. The direct flight from Melbourne goes over some spectacular landscape over the Southern Alps, and as for Queenstown itself, well the tourist promotion shots are indeed accurate. caseopaya has joined me on this journey, and we've helped ourselves to some fine drinks for the venture (my choice is Laphroaig whisky quarter cask, her's is Grey Goose cherry vodka).

We're housed in the rather comfortable Rydges Hotel with lakeside views from the eigth floor, the same place that the eResearchNZ conference is being held. Arriving the day before the conference started we talk the opportunity for a bit of a journey around town, and amuse ourselves by visiting their rather amusing haunted house experience (a sort of LARP, if you will).

As for day one of the conference itself, it's been an quite a good event with 170 registrations, an impressive increase over the years and certainly good on a per capita basis for NZ. Jane Yu from IBM's plenary covered what was probably three talks; after that attended the HPC applications workshop for the rest of the day - about a dozen short talks. Also very pleased to catch up with a large number of individuals whom I've encountered at previous conferences (eResearchNZ, Linux Conf AU, Multicore World).

Spent the first three days of the week running the usual trilogy of courses in Linux and High Performance Computing for researchers, including a head of department. It was a difficult group in some ways with highly disparate background abilities and my tiredness didn't help. Following this spent some time putting the finishing touches on my up-coming presentation in Cairns next week at the International Conference on Computer Science as well as putting together a related paper for eResearch Australasia, as well as an initial investigation for the education workshop for the world supercomputing conference. In between all convened an excellent meeting of Linux Users Victoria on OpenStack and Docker.

Last Sunday played in Karl's Space 1889 Ubuquity game which involved some fine stealth by the good British imperialists against the dastardly Hun imperialists in the Victorian-fantasy concept of Venus. The game is going quite well, especially for an episodic story that lacks an overarching narrative. Despite the setting-centered orientation the Ubiquity component has added a lot for character focus as well. On Thursday night ran Masks of Nyarlathotep (excellent fan trailer linked) which featured a classic set-piece scene in the Egyptian scenario, involving a grand rescue of NPCs from the midst of massive cultist ritual (think of the Indianna Jones Kali Ma scene), followed by a chase scene underneath the pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx. This rather epic set piece is derived from H.P. Lovecraft's Underneath the Pyramids, and despite a little bit of help from the Goddess Bast, it really was their own bravado, planning, and luck. Lovecraft's story describes well the "Children of the Sphinx" who gave chase:

I would not look at the marching things. That I desperately resolved as I heard their creaking joints and nitrous wheezing above the dead music and the dead tramping. It was merciful that they did not speak . . . but God! their crazy torches began to cast shadows on the surface of those stupendous columns. Heaven take it away! Hippopotami should not have human hands and carry torches . . . men should not have the heads of crocodiles. . . .

Last weekend went to see Donna Williams and the Aspinauts perform, rock musical style, the play Footsteps of a Nobody, derived from her bestselling book, Nobody Nowhere. The rock musical is hardly the sort of stylistic genre which I have much time for, but the band performed well and, of course, Donna's story is one worth telling which she did with expected passion.

Yesterday sat the Financial Management exam which was extremely difficult. I suspect my results will be significantly different to the 88% I received for the assignment in the course. There is a good argument that the exams for such subjects should be open-book, but alas such enlightened education policies have no reached this institution. Thursday is the Management Perspectives exam which I hope to do better in.

On Sunday I gave the service for former Senator Lyn Allison's address at the Unitarians who spoke in her current role as President of Dying With Dignity. I chose appropriate readings and notes from her address will be available soon. After the service conducted a session for the Philosophy Forum on Genes, Media and the Mind.

Somewhere amongst all this I've been doing some HTML/CSS coding for a RMIT website (because apparently nobody else in ARCS does this) and need to prepare for my presentation the eResearch 2009 Conference in Sydney next week (whereupon I shall be visiting said city for all of two days). I've also managed to squeeze in another playtest session for Rolemaster Cyradon last Sunday and another this Thursday.

I must confess that the past and coming week is leaving me quite exhausted, not in least because of the knowledge that it won't be until next Wednesday that life will return to a normal pace.