lev_lafayette's blog

The use of cloud computing as an alternative implementation for high performance computing (HPC) initially seems to be appealing, especially to IT managers and to users who may find the jump from their desktop application to the command line interface challenging. However a careful and nuanced review of metrics should lead to a reconsideration of these assumptions.

The increasing size of datasets acts a critical issue for eResearch, especially given that they are expanding at a rate greater than improvements in desktop application speed, suggesting that HPC knowledge is requisite. However knowledge of such systems is not common.

Very much a minor update to the presentation I gave in 2013, this talk provides a definition of supercomputers, high performance computing, and parallel programming, their use and current metrics, the importance and dominance of the Linux operating system in these areas, as well as some practical hands-on examples.

An Introduction to Supercomputers. Presentation to Linux Users of Victoria Beginners Workshop, 21st March, 2015

NGINX has released an article entitled Adopting Microservices at Netflix: Lessons for Team and Process Design. For a high level article it reads well, but closer consideration suggests that it fraught with problems, not the least some rather simplistic panacea attitudes.

GNU Octave is a high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It makes a very good alternative to MATLAB.

Download from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/


wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/octave-3.8.2.tar.bz2


Extract to /usr/local/src/OCTAVE


cd /usr/local/src/OCTAVE
tar xvjf octave-3.8.2.tar.bz2


For those who love their system's uptime it is a sad moment when a power outage causes your system to go down after months or years. Worse still, on a reboot, you discover that your time is out by a hour, courtesy of daylight's saving time. Which is fine in itself, but it would be a better world if we all just used UTC. But that's another argument.

Tutorial presentation of GnuCash given to the CPA Young Professionals group at Victoria University, 19th November, 2014

"Big data" requires processing. Processing requires HPC. Increased processing results in increased research output. Research organisations that do not increase HPC usage will fall behind. HPC requires either 'dumb down the interface or skill up the user'. Making "user friendly" interfaces may not be the right path to take as HPC use will always have a minimum level of complexity. Training courses that use andragogical technqiues correlate with increased HPC use.

Recently a simple statement of PRINCE2 governance structures was provided. From this it is possible to derive a checklist for project managers to tick off, just to make sure that everything is done. Please note that this checklist is tailored and combines some functions. For example, there is no Business Review Plan as it is argued that any sensible project should incorporate these into the Business Case and the Project Plan.

A simple graphic is provided to assist with this process

Linux offers most of the expected file attributes from the command line, including the owner of a file, the group, the size, the date modified and name. However often users want find out when a file was created. This requires a little bit of extra investigation.