We’re hiring at VPAC down here in Melbourne.

We’re after a systems administrator to “take an active role in building the national APAC Compute Grid” and “assist with the day to day operation of the VPAC SuperComputers“.

You can find the job details here & even apply online. We’re after someone who groks Linux/UNIX, HPC/Grid and Java, but will consider talented people with a subset of those skills (though the Linux/UNIX thing is pretty crucial).

Trust me, it’s fab and you get to play with cool things.. 🙂

I’ve now put a small selection of photos up in the photo gallery from our trip to the UK this year! They’re not great quality, being done with my camera phone which had a bit of a smudged lense. 🙂

A quick example, this is Donna on the beach at Towyn..

After 3 weeks in the UK for CCGrid 2005 plus Donna’s talks, not to mention a slightly early celebration for my fathers 80th (we had to fly back the day before alas)! For his birthday we presented him with a Clarks Pie with lit candle on top as a tidy treat for him!

Unfortunately whilst we were away our ADSL modem got reset as part of a blackout here and came back up in the wrong configuration, which stopped our email working here at csamuel.org, plus the Nobody Nowhere and Auties.org websites. Despite sterling work by our house sitter via an hour long phone call to me in a car park on my mobile I couldn’t properly diagnose what was wrong and it was only when we got back last night that I was able to figure out what was wrong and revert it to the correct configuration.

Unfortunately as part of “fixing it” I streamlined some of the firewall rules by merging some together, forgetting that the rule I was merging them into only applied to a single class C subnet, so even though ADSL was up and running email came to a screeching halt. I spotted my thinko today and corrected it, leading to a new law: Never Change Firewall Rules When Jetlagged.

Now it seems like everything is tickety-boo again, so if you’ve emailed me or Donna and had it bounce then can you please retry it!

Wonderful news, for the first time in a long, long time Wales beat England in Cardiff in the Six Nations Rugby (11-9).

Dai iawn, pawb!

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is accepting donations for disaster relief in Asia as a result of the earthquake on the 26th December. You can also donate directly to the Red Cross / Red Crescent society in your own country, the IFRC maintains a directory for all countries RC organisations.

Aussies, here is the Australian Red Cross donations page.

A happy Newtonmas from myself and Donna. Yes, today we celebrate the birthday of one of the worlds most influential people, Isaac Newton. Drop an apple on your head in his memory (and no, not on anyone else and especially not from a great height!).

Hmm, with the name Newtonmas one has to wonder if that’s intertial or relativistic ?

PS: Thanks for the idea Alec. 🙂

Just had an email from a friend that I met at last years IEEE CC&Grid conference in Chicago. It says:

In February 2005, it will be ten years since
Emma and I met (on a cold undergraduate night in
Plymouth).

We've been a blissfully happy item ever since
and thought we'd do something to mark the occasion.

I am therefore delighted to announce that Miss
Reeves has accepted my proposal of marriage.

Rich
--
http://boakes.org

Please join with myself and Donna in congratulating them!

I’ve been helping Donna out with some new websites.

One is still under construction, though it has some information about what it’s aims are. It’s called Auties.org and describes itself thus:

Auties.org is a website to promote the entrepreneurial (self employment) skills of people diagnosed on the Autistic Spectrum Australia wide (and in some cases display these skills to those overseas). Auties.org is run by a committee of people formally diagnosed as being on the Autistic Spectrum…

The other is Nobody Nowhere, an enigmatic website with quite a story behind it (literally!).

OK, finally gotten around to adding more photos to my gallery!

There are snaps from our recent holiday in the Grampians where we were miles from anywhere with no mobile coverage, no computers, no people, just lots of wildlife, trees and mountains!

I’ve also started a new album called Historic Australia which now has its first entry, the homestead of James McClay near Moolart in Victoria. The house has a prominent name/data over the door which helped me track down this entry about Scots who emigrated to Australia. He is also mentioned in this document as being the secretary of an Anti-Dredging Committee in Maryborough, 1905.

Well as I’ve had my Permanent Residency for almost 3 months today was the day to take the plunge and try and convert my UK license to an Australian one.

As the UK is one of a number of “Recognised Countries” all that was needed was an eyesight test and the “Road Law Knowledge Test”, which is the same test that people who want to learn to drive here must do. It’s a computer based test with just over 30 questions and I managed to pass first time with a perfect score!

They then endorsed my UK license (i.e. punched a hole in my UK photo license and stamped the paper counterpart) to show I had an Australian license instead and make it invalid to use anywhere.