I have a team I talked into participating in the 2008 Lunar Lander Challenge. This is teh first step in a longer range goal.

He's TOAST. I can't wait to see what the /. crowd says.

There are some from O'Reilly, but I was wondering if anyone had any good, strong HowTo kinda books. I did some real time coding six years ago, but I assume its moved on considerably.

I realize not many of you read this rather inactive journal, but...

On my blog I have a post up that attracting some interest wrt the Permian Extinction.

If you care to meander over and look, be my guest.

Cray Inc. (NASDAQ: CRAY) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science announced today that Cray has won the contract to install a next-generation supercomputer at the DOE's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC). The systems and multi-year services contract, valued at over $52 million, includes delivery of a Cray massively parallel processor supercomputer, code-named "Hood."

The contract also provides options for future upgrades that would quadruple the size of the system and eventually boost performance to one petaflops (1,000 trillion floating point operations per second) and beyond.

A successor to the massively parallel Cray XT3(TM) supercomputer, the Hood system installed at NERSC will be among the world's fastest general-purpose systems. It will deliver sustained performance of at least 16 trillion calculations per second -- with a theoretical peak speed of 100 trillion calculations per second -- when running a suite of diverse scientific applications at scale. The system uses thousands of AMD Opteron(TM) processors running tuned, light-weight operating system kernels and interfaced to Cray's unique SeaStar(TM) network.

Cray will begin shipping the new supercomputer to the NERSC facility at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory later this year, with completion of the installation anticipated in the first half of 2007 and acceptance in mid-2007.

Read about it here.

My journal writing/blogging has moved to here.

/. has lost a lot of my interest after getting annointed in the world of HPC. So much of what people say here is just plain wrong.

tschuss

I am a bad man to show you all this and the reaction.

I hear that damned song all teh time on my wife's radio station, but that's gotta be the best use for it yet.

The sombre picture outlined above should dispel once and for all the romantic idea of the superior ecological wisdom of nonWestern and pre-colonial societies. The notion of the noble savage living in harmony with Nature should be despatched to the realm of mythology where it belongs. Human beings have never lived in harmony with nature.

From page 199.

There's a guy with a really cool interactive map that allows you to set the depth of the sea rise from global warming. I selected California as the kick-off point for the link (since that's where I am) and a depth of 9m since that's what the climate folks keep talking about around where I work. I only wish that he'd put a depth of up to 35 m. That's the Pliocene depth and very close to what the coming temeprature regime would be after a century or two. It'd be helpful for writing.

Average Olympic Athlete.

I don't look so German anymore!

You can see the bands of different cultural groups though (Mediterreanian, Germanic, and Slavic). Very interesting.

The first one is Megatokyo. It's effectively a manga written by an American. It has some rather interesting characters even if the plot doesn't seem to move very fast.

The second is The Order of the Stick. This is an absolute must if you were ever a D&D player. It's so fscking hilarious.

...You really ought to read this. Working in Berkeley and Oakland has made me believe a lot of what he's said.

Normally Phil pisses me off. However his comments there match reality in the Bay so well, this link has to be put up.

Look here and plug-in NERSC for the division search. There is one listed opening for the sysadmin section, but there are really going to be two or more.

Read the pressy thing here.

Getting this machine through acceptance sucked Korean century old eggs. We had to change cluster file systems (an fs that eats user data is baaaaad), found bugs in AMD chipsets, had freakin weird project management from the vendor, and worse.

( ) smoked a cigarette
( ) crashed a friend's car
( ) stolen a car
(x) been in love
(x) been dumped
( ) shoplifted
(X) been fired
(X) been in a fist fight
(X) snuck out of your parent's house
(x) had feelings for someone who didn't have them back
( ) been arrested
( ) gone on a blind date
(x) lied to a friend
(x) skipped school
( ) seen someone die
(x) had a crush on one of your internet friends
( ) been to Canada
(x) been to Mexico
(x) been on a plane
( ) purposely set a part of yourself on fire
(x) eaten sushi
(X) been skiing Cross country counts, right?
(x) met someone from the internet
(x) been at a concert
(x) taken painkillers
(x) love someone or miss someone right now
(x) laid on your back and watched cloud shapes go by
(x) made a snow angel
( ) had a tea party
(x) flown a kite
(x) built a sand castle
(x) gone puddle jumping
( ) played dress up
(x) jumped into a pile of leaves
(x) gone sledding
(x) cheated while playing a game
(x) been lonely
(x) fallen asleep at work/school
( ) used a fake ID
(x) watched the sun set
(x) felt an earthquake
(x) slept beneath the stars
(x) been tickled
(x) been robbed
(x) been misunderstood
( ) petted a reindeer /kangaroo
(x) won a contest
(x) run a red light/stop sign
( ) been suspended from school
(x) been in a car crash
( ) had braces
(x) felt like an outcast/third person
(x) eaten a whole pint of ice cream in one night
(x) had deja vu
(x) had deja vu
(x) danced in the moonlight
(x) liked the way you looked
(x) witnessed a crime
(x) questioned your heart
( ) been obsessed with post-it notes
(x) squished barefoot through the mud
(x) been lost
( ) been on the opposite side of the country
(x) swam in the ocean
(x) felt like dying
(x) cried yourself to sleep
(x) played cops and robbers
( ) recently colored with crayons
( ) sung karaoke
(x) paid for a meal with only coins
(x) done something you told yourself you wouldn't do
(x) made prank phone calls
(x) laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose
(x) caught a snowflake on your tongue
(x) danced in the rain
(x) written a letter to Santa Claus
(x) been kissed under the mistletoe
(x) watched the sun rise with someone you care about
(x) blown bubbles
( ) made a bonfire on the beach
(x) crashed a party
(x) gone rollerskating
(x) had a wish come true
( ) jumped off a bridge
(x) ate dog/cat food
( ) told a complete stranger you loved them
( ) kissed a mirror
(x) sang in the shower
(x) had a dream that you married someone
( ) glued your hand to something
( ) kissed a fish
(X) sat on a roof top
(x) screamed at the top of your lungs
( ) done a one-handed cartwheel
(x) talked on the phone for more than 5 hours
(x) stayed up all night
(x) picked and ate an apple right off the tree
(x) climbed a tree
( ) had a tree house
(x) scared to watch a scary movie alone
( ) believe in ghosts
( ) have more than 30 pairs of shoes
(x) worn a really ugly outfit to school
( ) gone streaking
(x) gone doorbell ditching
( ) played gay chicken?
(x) pushed into a pool/hot tub with all your clothes on
( ) told you're hot by a complete stranger
( ) broken a bone
(x) been easily amused
(x) caught a fish then ate it
(x) caught a butterfly
( ) laughed so hard you cried
( ) cried so hard you laughed
( ) cheated on a test
(x) forgotten someone's name
( ) french braided someone's hair
( ) gone skinny dipping in a pool/hot tub
( ) been threatened to be kicked out of your house
(x) loved someone so much you would gladly die for them