All Work and No Play
Apr. 25th, 2026 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcpipAs predicted, this entire week I've been buried in work and study, a stark contrast to the week prior, when I engaged in a myriad of artistic engagements. As part of my doctoral studies, I've powered my way through the University of Chicago's content on climate modelling. The professor, David Archer, understands the physics, the modelling, and even the trickier issues involved in translating one to the other, especially given the handful of uncertainties and modelling challenges at scales. His book, "Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast" is a worthwhile introduction to the subject. I have not yet decided what my major paper will be for this study; although I must mention that my paper "Energy Production Under The Paris Agreement: Options for Developing Pacific Island Countries" from the course "Global Energy and Climate Policy" has been accepted for The Intergovernmental Research and Policy Journal; I just have to clear up some formatting issues (one day, we'll all use Markdown).
One fortunate side of my work in supercomputing is the access to some particularly big iron, which might be useful in these situations. The University's own system, Spartan, has grown from being an innovative experimental system on a shoestring budget to become one of the world's top supercomputers. But another part of my role is working with the West Australian Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, home of Setonix, Australia's most powerful system (named after the quokka, you know). This week, we had a visitor from WA, from Pawsey, to discuss the system, and I was involved in wrangling a lecture theatre full of Spartan researchers to come along and hear about how to get access to this grander system. It was a bit of a highlight for the week, as I'm also organising a major project which includes a couple of major transitions which I strongly disagree with on a technical level, which I know will come back and bite us in the future. But I have long been an advocate of not letting work decisions upset me, and I am all too familiar with people acting as if technical limits are negotiable.
I rather suspect that next week is going to be a bit like the past week; the combination of full-time work and full-time study often means there are periods when my social life suffers quite a lot, and this is one of those times when the pointy end of multiple deadlines is looming. It is times like these that I feel a great deal of gratitude for the especially calm and studious Rookery I've built for myself, and for finding myself in a profession where extended periods of solitude are highly beneficial for output. I guess in the past people found themselves in a secluded hermitage; instead, I find myself in the midst of a vibrant city with the plentiful beauty of art and nature, and it takes some willpower to stay focused.
One fortunate side of my work in supercomputing is the access to some particularly big iron, which might be useful in these situations. The University's own system, Spartan, has grown from being an innovative experimental system on a shoestring budget to become one of the world's top supercomputers. But another part of my role is working with the West Australian Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, home of Setonix, Australia's most powerful system (named after the quokka, you know). This week, we had a visitor from WA, from Pawsey, to discuss the system, and I was involved in wrangling a lecture theatre full of Spartan researchers to come along and hear about how to get access to this grander system. It was a bit of a highlight for the week, as I'm also organising a major project which includes a couple of major transitions which I strongly disagree with on a technical level, which I know will come back and bite us in the future. But I have long been an advocate of not letting work decisions upset me, and I am all too familiar with people acting as if technical limits are negotiable.
I rather suspect that next week is going to be a bit like the past week; the combination of full-time work and full-time study often means there are periods when my social life suffers quite a lot, and this is one of those times when the pointy end of multiple deadlines is looming. It is times like these that I feel a great deal of gratitude for the especially calm and studious Rookery I've built for myself, and for finding myself in a profession where extended periods of solitude are highly beneficial for output. I guess in the past people found themselves in a secluded hermitage; instead, I find myself in the midst of a vibrant city with the plentiful beauty of art and nature, and it takes some willpower to stay focused.
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