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Who would have thought that in the Year of the Rat, I would help initiate a national campaign to draw attention to the extinction of Australian fauna. Well, I knew I was going to but I wasn't sure what I was going to do. With memorial services, letters to politicians, and a mention in parliament, a new national day is established. Now, the United Nations Fifth Global Biodiversity Outlook report has highlighted the extinction of the small brown rodent, bringing particular attention and criticism to Australia's rather weak environmental protection laws. Yet, this is not the only rat-related news a land-mind clearing Hero Rat, Magawa, has received the PDSA Gold Medal for "lifesaving bravery and devotion to duty" (full award ceremony available on Youtube).
Australia's main academic IT conference, eResearchAustralasia (I'm not sure of the "-asia" content), is coming up soon, and I find myself giving two presentations; a full paper on Spartan: From Experimental Hybrid towards a Petascale Future, and a short paper on Contributing To the International HPC Certification Forum. Just to add to the pile of pleasing work, a chapter proposal for a book, Processing Large and Complex Datasets for Maximum Throughput on HPC systems, which I am co-authoring with Bernd Wiebelt from Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, has also been accepted. On top of all this, next week I start with two day's of workshops - delayed from last week's foot injury (which x-rays thankfully showed no break or fracture, but some soft tissue damage); the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are doing their job as did the combination of sick and annual leave.
Mention must be made of "Trump's Virus", and in part I do mean his destructive behaviour in the Presidential debate, which has necessitated new rules, and of course, Trump's continued explicit support for white supremacists. Now of course there is additional news with both the president and "First Lady" (what a weird term) being tested positive for COVID-19, which I noted was within the same day that Cornell University announced that they had tracked down that most coronavirus misinformation can be sourced back to Trump's remarks. Irony, that most uncanny of guests, is knocking at the door.
Australia's main academic IT conference, eResearchAustralasia (I'm not sure of the "-asia" content), is coming up soon, and I find myself giving two presentations; a full paper on Spartan: From Experimental Hybrid towards a Petascale Future, and a short paper on Contributing To the International HPC Certification Forum. Just to add to the pile of pleasing work, a chapter proposal for a book, Processing Large and Complex Datasets for Maximum Throughput on HPC systems, which I am co-authoring with Bernd Wiebelt from Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, has also been accepted. On top of all this, next week I start with two day's of workshops - delayed from last week's foot injury (which x-rays thankfully showed no break or fracture, but some soft tissue damage); the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are doing their job as did the combination of sick and annual leave.
Mention must be made of "Trump's Virus", and in part I do mean his destructive behaviour in the Presidential debate, which has necessitated new rules, and of course, Trump's continued explicit support for white supremacists. Now of course there is additional news with both the president and "First Lady" (what a weird term) being tested positive for COVID-19, which I noted was within the same day that Cornell University announced that they had tracked down that most coronavirus misinformation can be sourced back to Trump's remarks. Irony, that most uncanny of guests, is knocking at the door.
