Last week, on Monday, I attended an NSF panel to discuss a survey that is administered by NSF regarding High Performance Computing Clusters as a part of a larger survey. The discussion was around the utility of the current survey and the results of the survey and what can be done to improve the use of the data. It was interesting to hear that with the exception of one attendee, most of us are either non-users of the data or casual users of the data. There was one person who is a heavy user because she is involved in writing a research paper on this subject with an Economist. In my opinion, NSF should partner with EDUCAUSE Core Data Service (CDS). EDUCAUSE administers a detailed annual survey that is filled out by a large group of its members and it has also developed a fairly complex tool to consume the data by slicing and dicing the data. Why replicate the effort and especially when there is an overlap in questions. Besides, we all are being surveyed to death!
Since I talk about a “duality” issue below, I thought I would share a picture of a sculpture from our trip that I talked about in my last post. If you look carefully, you should see an elephant facing left and a bull facing right. Sculptures of this kind are all over the place in that area and seems to have been a favorite pastime or challenge for the sculptors during the 6th – 11th centuries!
On thursday, I went to Google in NY City to talk to Google Sites developers (along with representatives from two other educational institutions) about how we use Google Sites and the issues we face and of course, our own opinions on how they can improve the product. Given that this team had been listening to a wide variety of users for almost a week, they seemed genuinely interested and attentive to what we had to say. I am thankful to get the opportunity and I hope what I had to say was useful.
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Can’t wait for next Tuesday. I want all the election commercials to be over. They are mostly lies and misinterpretations and sometimes outright silly, childish and stupid. Whereas the election season helps the the mass media and several local economies in the battleground states, the scale of it (about a billion dollars for presidential election alone) is repulsive. I don’t see this improving. In other words, I don’t see this election bubble bursting any point soon. I will be watching the results on Tuesday night and catching a 5:30 AM flight to Denver to attend the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference. Depending on how close the election is, I may or may not get any sleep Tuesday night. I wonder if any economist has bothered to calculate the productivity loss during the presidential election year.
On the other hand, we know that a ballpark estimate for the cost of Hurricane, SuperStorm or FrankenStorm Sandy (The picture on the left is from: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2012/h2012_Sandy.html) is $20-$60 Billion. It was amazing to watch it unfold on TV. Here is a case where the science is really making a difference – well, up to a point. Knowing about it ahead of time, modeling its path etc. have come a long way and predictions about Sandy were extremely good. This of course helped with the evacuations, cancellations of NY City Subway etc. etc. However, there was nothing anyone could do to reduce or stop the devastation that Sandy caused. The sheer power of nature unfolded right before our eyes and ears and even the politicians took a pause. In NJ, at least for a short moment, it appeared that the NJ Governor, a Republican, and the President came together. Of course, the skeptics see some hidden agenda here.
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Things got a little bit out of hand this past week. On Friday night we went back to CT. I came back to Boston on Sunday to go see the Patriots. An exciting game that Patriots managed to win. That night, I went back home very late. Since I was unable to find a reasonable flight from CT to Philly (where EDUCAUSE conference was held), I decided to take the Acela express. This required me to get up very early and go to New Haven, only to find that the train was 45 minutes late. However, it was a comfortable ride and the difference between flying and riding the Acela in terms of the time spent was roughly the same.
The free WiFi on Acela was unreliable. So I used my Verizon 4G MiFi which also was not reliable. I bet I had far better luck with my 3G when I used to ride Metro North. Could this be because of WiFi interference? Could it be because Acela was going fast? Who knows? We need more reliable connectivity. I was pleasantly surprised to see Acela full both ways!
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This was yet another great summer for me and I am sure it is true for many of you. Now, the phase of getting ready for the start of the Fall semester begins. Gone are the days when this used to be the most stressful part of the support services, especially the technology side. The network bandwidth was never enough, students brought computers that would not easily connect to the network, registration systems were too slow because of the lack of compute power, so on and so forth. Most of these are non-issues, unless we want to make them into issues by introducing some unnecessary and overcautious administrivia in the middle.
All of our summer projects have gone really well, many of which I have already mentioned. Especially worth mentioning are Google Apps transition and Drupal. Given the relative enormity of these projects, we have made amazing progress in such a short time thanks to diligent and creative work by the respective teams. This in no way minimizes several other important projects we have completed, of course.
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It has been a terrific day today. The Cricket World Cup that began about six weeks ago came to a fantastic conclusion with a classic game between India and Sri Lanka. Though I was born in Sri Lanka and grew up there, I belong to India, so I support them always and wanted them to win this one. India’s last World Cup win was in 1983.
Sri Lanka put up a total that was considered hard to beat, the legendary opening Indian pair got out early to set up a drama that finally ended in India winning it. Several days of me getting up between 4 AM and 5 AM to watch these games is over. Thanks to advances in technologies, the diehards like us were able to view live cricket through willow tv. Not sure how many simultaneous viewers watched some of these games, but the experience was flawless. After a short nap, it is time to root for UConn Men tonight.
Northeast Regional Computing Program (NERCOMP) is a regional affliate of EDUCAUSE. Many of the Higher Ed institutions from the Northeast and a few from other states such as New York and Pennsylvania are members of NERCOMP. My association with NERCOMP goes several years back in that I have presented several times at NERCOMP SIGs (Special Interest Group meetings) as well as in their annual conferences. I have also been a member of the Program Committee and I was elected in early March (2011) to serve in NERCOMP Board for the next three years. I really like the the NERCOMP annual conference which provides an excellent venue to network and listen to colleagues on topic of direct relevance to what we do.
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Last week, on Monday, I attended an NSF panel to discuss a survey that is administered by NSF regarding High Performance Computing Clusters as a part of a larger survey. The discussion was around the utility of the current survey and the results of the survey and what can be done to improve the use of the data. It was interesting to hear that with the exception of one attendee, most of us are either non-users of the data or casual users of the data. There was one person who is a heavy user because she is involved in writing a research paper on this subject with an Economist. In my opinion, NSF should partner with EDUCAUSE Core Data Service (CDS). EDUCAUSE administers a detailed annual survey that is filled out by a large group of its members and it has also developed a fairly complex tool to consume the data by slicing and dicing the data. Why replicate the effort and especially when there is an overlap in questions. Besides, we all are being surveyed to death!