Lev Lafayette's journal

The last week was spent in Sydney for Supercomputing Asia 2024, overlooking Darling Harbour with some impressive storms that made me feel good about being inside. With over 1,000 attendees it is obviously smaller than Supercomputing (US) or the International Supercomputing Conference (Germany, my preferred choice), but there was a very good sense of intimacy at this size. Conferences of this sort do have their share of high-level presentations along with some managerial-level buzzwords of where they think the industry is heading, which are sometimes less true than they would like the dollars to follow. "Artificial intelligence" and "quantum computing" were two particularly notable phrases this year, although with regard to the latter, I do note that more careful minds point out the difference between quantum computing (typically conducted on stock-standard HPC systems) and quantum computers (which are still, after many years, a bit of an experimental oddity at best).

The Conference was especially good for getting a sense of the power of some of the truly big iron. Representatives of the two largest systems, Frontier (no 1), Aurora (no 2), and Fugaku (no 4), were present. It is humbling to see systems that have more nodes than cores in the UniMelb system (which is no laggard), and pleasing to get a good grasp of the architecture. I was quietly pleased that my own comments about HPC microprocessor trends from 18 months ago were quite accurate, and I have a special nod to the Thai supercomputing centre which has really become an impressive national facility in its own right. A nice quirk of the conference was that the voice of Siri, Karen Jacobsen was the MC for the plenary sessions. There was, of course, the opportunity to talk to many vendors who are all doing some very interesting things and making plentiful offers, although I do note that there is often a pitch in favour of monopolisation ("we'll do everything for you") rather than interoperability.

For my own part, I presented a talk the "HPC Certification Forum: An Update", which was very well received (particularly the idea of using the skill tree as a teaching structure), and the poster "HPC Training Generates HPC Results". The evening hosted by Xenon at L'Aqua on Cockle Bay Wharf was very nice, and I happily managed to arrange a dinner to catch up with a few Sydney friends with John A., Julien G., Jiri B., and Adam B. all attending. Most importantly, however - as confirmed - HPC generates an enormous social return on investment, either in cost savings or new revenue. The current figure being quoted is around $77 per $1 funded - which makes it an ultimate infrastructure investment. Of course, the most recent pandemic is a case in point, and today I chaired the researcher meeting for Research Computing Services with Tom Karagiannis and team explaining how they built a massive database of antivirals for COVID-19 related molecular dynamics simulations. It is results like these that prove the worth of supercomputing; the infrastructure that touches and improves all our lives, and yet we can rarely notice.

Have spent the past few days in Sydney, mainly attending the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) Skilled Workforce Summit. Too much of the keynote presentations was engaged in semantic quibbling over "skills" versus "capabilities" and contrived differences between "open science" versus "eresearch", although the sensible point was made that we have a Federal government is actively hostile to public research and advanced education. Quote of the conference must go to visiting guest Hugh Shanahan from the University of London who, when asked the question, "Don't you think we should be building new tools, rather than using 30+ year-old commands?" responded with "Oh get serious and grow up". I almost felt sorry for the person who asked the question, but the reality is we have performance, stability, and flexibility because of such commands and they have changed over time and the tool is the best was to get the task done. Apropos this topic my own presentation was on the International HPC Certification Forum and contributions by Austalia and New Zealand, especially in regard to the Australia-New Zealand HPC Educators repositories, an active work-in-progress. Turn-out, questions, and reactions were all quite positive.

In the first evening there was a post-conference gathering and discussion at The Rose Hotel in Chippendale, just down from a rather famous warehouse that I would visit regularly in the mid-90s. Was pleasantly surprised to run into my former housemate from just prior to that period John A., of Chances fame (well, also Home and Away, Breakers, and Blue Heelers but mainly Chances). We arranged to catch up the following night, and managed to do so quite successfully, along with spending time in the company with Adam B to discuss various Isocracy matters; I have an article on said website Taxing Times in Australia (and elsewhere), which outlines the major problems in our tax system which is costing the public - and I say this with no hyperbole - hundreds of billions of dollars.

In the midst of all this I've been making various arrangements for Rick B.,, and I thank everyone for their condolences in my last post, and on Facebook. His sister Janet and I caught up at Abbotsford Convent the day after his passing with her husband to say our farewells. Afterwards, we caught up with his former neigbour, Mel S., and Yanping G. for a meander around the Abbotsford Convent, one of my favourite parts of Melbourne. I have contacted his financial adviser, his lawyer, and arranged for a cremation with Carlyle Family Funerals. But most importantly for his Melbourne friends, I have arranged for a memorial service at the Unitarian Church, Saturday 17 August at 12 noon; hopefully, I will be able to arrange some sort of video-recording and/or streaming for his family and friends in New Zealand (or elsewhere) as well.

Went to Sydney with caseopaya on Thursday for a few days, including a concert booking at the Sydney Opera House to see New Order in conversation with Mark Reeder on Friday night and then in concert with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. The conversation event was good if not brilliant, but the concert was really something special. I have not had much more than a passing interest in New Order since Substance 1987 as most of the music after that point is not really to my taste. But this really was a superb concert, and in a sense I think the ACO made an enormously important contribution - from their opening rendition of Elegia onward.

Whilst also on Sydney had dinner on Thursday night in Pyrmont with laptop006, John August, and Jiri B. The following day went wandered around Potts Point, Paddington, and Elizabeth Bay, spending quite a lot of time in Ampersand Bookstore and Cafe, which is quite a serious dangerous place for book lovers to visit, whereas a lot of Saturday was spent visiting more bookstores, gaming stores (quite a haul from Games Paradise), and record stores, primarily in Darlinghurst and the city.

The weather, it must be said, was quite humid and stormy throughout the three days and is getting worse with strong winds and floods. Our flight back to Melbourne was delayed for over two hours, with one hour spent sitting on the tarmac as other runways were closed on account of the weather. I could help but notice the absence of cats - zero spotted - and the plethora of dogs - about a hundred spotted. Where has Sydney's cats gone?

Another three days of training completed at the University of Sydney for the researchers on their new cluster. Some of the in-class feedback has been quite inspiring. One person started laughing in the middle of the class and when asked what was wrong, he mentioned how he was just remembering how boring lectures were and how he'd fall asleep in them; "I am learning so much today!" he countered, which just goes to show the advantage of smaller workgroups with proximal development and connectivist approaches. Another came up to me and mentioned how the class had increased his desire to become a computer science educator. A third went home and spent two hours hacking on a bash script which iterates over an array of R files and uses sed to change the parameters within those files; it will save him many hours of work in the future and has offered the script as an example in the intermediate course (which deals with all three). So all in all, it's fair to say it went really well.

After the classes took the Manly ferry (it really is quite an impressive trip) to catch up with the good Rev. Dr. Ian Ellis-Jones who shouted me a lovely dinner at Havana Beach. The meal itself was very tasty with generous portions, however the real highlight was the wide-ranging conversation which covered many matters religious, political, and philosophical. Ian is widely read and thoroughly rational thinker and my only regret from the night was that it had to come to a close. Next month when I return I shall ensure additional time in his company.

The following day trundled to the airport under some heavy load; I had excess baggage with some 35kg of roleplaying books I'd picked up on a bargain. Tomorrow caseopaya and I will be taking the silver bird to New Zealand, partially for the eResearchNZ conference in Queenstown, partially to check on our property in Dunedin, partially to meet with supervisors etc for my Master of Education course at Otago Univeristy, and partially for a trip to Milford Sound. In the meantime, I am giving a presentation to the Linux Users Victoria beginners workshop today, on "An Introduction to Supercomputers" (very much a repeat of a talk I gave in 2013) and have completed my presentation to eReseachNZ on "Skill Improvements versus Interface Designs for eResearchers" - in both cases DW/LJ readers get to see them first.

Victoria has a public holiday last weekend for for Labour Day and the Moomba Festival. Melbourne must be the only place in the world which officially celebrates a festival which means "up your arse" in the local indigenous vernacular. On Saturday night attended an amusing Velvet Goldmine themed-party hosted by severina_242 and _zombiemonkey. It was a relatively small gathering, but people where in very good spirits. The following day ran an episode of 7th Sea, involving a complex murder mystery which had some of my players rather stumped and ended with one of the main suspects also being killed. Following day caught up with Angela D., who is visiting for a short time from Norfolk Island; after dinner went to her 53rd story apartment which does have some pretty decent views over Melbourne. In between all this have been working on the paper for THETA 2015 on Software Tools Compared To User Education in High Performance Computing.

Arrived in Sydney this afternoon for training of researchers at the University of Sydney in the next two weeks. Staying at the not-so salubrious Macleay Lodge, which is very well positioned, inexpensive, and comfortable enough to someone used to sleeping rough. Despite my many visits to Sydney, the area is one which I am less than familiar with, so took an opportunity to familiarise myself with Potts Point, Elizabeth Bay, and Woolloomooloo; the latter really should have a university campus and a department of philosophy as per the classic skit (although aspects of it haven't dated that well of course). The area is quite beautiful in many ways, lovely old buildings of excellent quality and design, high density but with plenty of foliage and parkland, meandering streets, etc. Hoping to catch up with a number of people and have arranged a dinner at Opium Den on Saturday evening.

Work provided health-checks for staff; for someone who is physically completely out-of-shape (let's say I fall into the very overweight category), my blood pressure is fine, my pulse-rate is fine, by cholesterol levels are fine and my blood sugars are fine. Apparently I am the rare creature, the healthy fat man. Nevertheless, I am now making some effort to rectify the negative effects of a sedentary lifestyle; I have taken up fencing again at the local University club. Personally I prefer half-drunken swashbuckling in rural areas (which I used to do) to the more formal rules of competition fencing, but nevertheless it is a start back into using stabby-pointy things.

Next weekend coming caseopaya are in Sydney. We'll be staying at The Centre in Randwick, attending the ANZUUA conference, seriously for me, probably more nominally for caseopaya, although some of the agenda makes me smile and shake my head; a workshop on postmodern prayer? Well, I suppose we are a broad church. Hoping to catch up with a range of Sydney-siders many of whom I haven't seen for years. We have later Friday evening free and Monday afternoon; probably the Zoo Bar (175 Oxford St, Bondi Junction on Friday), open to suggestions for Monday afternoon.

First bit of animal news is the discovery that naked mole rats don't get cancer. An entire species of male sharks are really dickheads. Finally, two sets from Cracked (who have done the transition to the Internet so much better than Mad); the truly weird weird animals, giant versions of disgusting critters and biggest assholes in the animal world. Finally local rodents, Trouble, Mischief and Calamity, celebrate their first birthday (making them about 30 in human years) with cheesecake and chocolate sauce.

Edit. Almost forgot to mention; great equinox dinner on Wednesday night at the Mooroccan Soup Bar followed by drinks at Deco, organised by _nightflower with several guests including horngirl and alchemon. Great night, and special thanks to _nightflower_ for arranging it!