Late last week spent two days giving workshops; Parallel Programming (CPU-based), and GPGPU Programming (GPU based). Both classes, at least in my opinion, went smoother and were better structured than the last time I delivered them. Whilst teaching is slowing down for the year, I suspect I have probably four more day-workshops to give before the ( Read more... )

Do you have a love for a place or people that you have never been to? For me, it is Brittany (Bretagne, Breizh), the north-western corner of France. To be sure, I do have a thing for wild coastlines and cool, stormy, maritime climate, which also explains why I like the land of my birth, the South Island of New Zealand. Whilst still spectacular, I ( Read more... )

Two Epicurean additions this week, which is becoming a habitual Friday evening event. Firstly, faux canard à l'orange, which I really didn't think would work but it did, which was consumed with a time-honoured favourite cocktail of sidecars (gin and cognac versions). The evening was appropriately finished with a viewing of Agatha Christie's, The ( Read more... )

Earlier this year I made a start on a combination study-guide, Esperanto for Anarchists which, as the name suggests would include both a self-paced learning guide on Esperanto but with anarchist content inspired by the synthesis from the times of Republican Spain, "Paroli Esperanton estis iam esenca parto de anarkiismo". I have recently dusted off ( Read more... )

The past few days have been particularly productive, work-wise. I managed to craft two abstracts for potential presentations at eResearch Australasia, one on the recent architecture changes to Spartan, and another on curriculum development for the international HPC Certification Forum. Another activity that has taken a modicum of time has been ( Read more... )

In the past few days, I've spent my copious free time in getting two parliamentary submissions in before their deadlines. For Federal government and on behalf of the Victorian Secular Lobby I completed a submission on the second draft of religious freedom bills. These effectively enshrine the right of discrimination as long as it's religiously ( Read more... )

I've spent a good portion of my free time in the past week doing an extensive literature review for my MSc dissertation in information systems. As literature reviews should do, it addresses a core concern of my inquiry: a major conflict between business and economics, as both academic disciplines and professional practice; in former, there is an ( Read more... )

Monday evening we went to The Astor to see Liquid Sky, which I hadn't seen in about thirty years or so. It is a decidedly B-grade film in terms of production and acting, but does a good presentation of the glam-punk fashion scene of the time, and has a superb plot. April is looking like a challenging month there with Eraserhead, Dune, Inception, ( Read more... )

It seems to me that justice and truth are related, even if rationally incommensurable in their content. I recently wrote an example of this relationship based on a short Internet debate this week; The Gaseous Truth in Syria. It was one of a few related experiences on the subject. On Sunday I gave an address to the local Unitarian church on ( Read more... )

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