Looking good
Yesterday I managed to do a bit of work from home, and while today's spoons were being hoarded for an ACS meeting, I did a bit more work during the day. Tomorrow I may combine the two and actually make a functional appearance at the office. Fingers crossed!
The ACS meeting was an update on last year's "Space - there's a lot of data out there" re local radio astronomy projects and ridiculously large numbers in computing, network and power requirements. By current standards the computer required to process the astronomy data would also require about half of the current electrical supplies available for Perth.
I imagine some of the numbers have been updated in the last 12 months, but the presentation seemed much the same as last year. It had benefitted from exposure to school groups so this time the presenter explained a few concepts along the way. Last year I planned to learn more about astronomy computing requirements and that's still the plan for this year's professional development activity. I'm quite attached to my professional status, and I like having these annual goals for self-improvement.
What's quite exciting about these developments is that we're going to need new green sources of power to run the various sites, and major advances in programming and storage to keep up. My SF soul wants something crystalline. That said, the meeting went long and the chair was hideously uncomfortable so I was glad to be out of there. No mention was made of my 10th anniversary (I had hoped for a pin, or a pen), but there was a huge pile of new members to welcome, not all of whom were callow youths. There seemed to be many more women than usual too, possibly as many as one in ten.
Coming soon, seminars (workshops? master classes?) about workplace bullying and gender inequality in payscales. There's something coming up about social networking and privacy, but I suspect it's another recycling attempt which I've seen before. Maybe this time it will be a bit more beefy, although it did cause me to join Twitter so it must have made some kind of impact.
The ACS meeting was an update on last year's "Space - there's a lot of data out there" re local radio astronomy projects and ridiculously large numbers in computing, network and power requirements. By current standards the computer required to process the astronomy data would also require about half of the current electrical supplies available for Perth.
I imagine some of the numbers have been updated in the last 12 months, but the presentation seemed much the same as last year. It had benefitted from exposure to school groups so this time the presenter explained a few concepts along the way. Last year I planned to learn more about astronomy computing requirements and that's still the plan for this year's professional development activity. I'm quite attached to my professional status, and I like having these annual goals for self-improvement.
What's quite exciting about these developments is that we're going to need new green sources of power to run the various sites, and major advances in programming and storage to keep up. My SF soul wants something crystalline. That said, the meeting went long and the chair was hideously uncomfortable so I was glad to be out of there. No mention was made of my 10th anniversary (I had hoped for a pin, or a pen), but there was a huge pile of new members to welcome, not all of whom were callow youths. There seemed to be many more women than usual too, possibly as many as one in ten.
Coming soon, seminars (workshops? master classes?) about workplace bullying and gender inequality in payscales. There's something coming up about social networking and privacy, but I suspect it's another recycling attempt which I've seen before. Maybe this time it will be a bit more beefy, although it did cause me to join Twitter so it must have made some kind of impact.