New Lodging

Been in Austin, Texas, USA, since the evening of Thu 13-Nov-2008. The purpose? To attend Sun HPC Consortium and SC'08.

After staying at the Hilton Airport Hotel, earlier today I had to move to AT&T Education and Conference Center which is owned by the University of Texas at Austin.

One thing I immediately noticed at this AT&T center is its phone+network+TV setup.

The phone is IP-phone (Cisco 7941), the same as what our school (back in Singapore) are using.

The network + TV is exactly the same as the Mio Plan + Mio TV setup, which I happen to use at home. Both the router and the IP-based TV box are located in my room.

The router (2WIRE) looks exactly the same as mine, though it may be slightly bigger, and perhaps, of a different model.

The IP-based TV box looks exactly the same, though this one has an additional USB port at the front. Oh, and the brand is Motorola, while mine doesn't seem to carry a (recognizable) brand. And oh (again), the TV remote control is exactly the same too.

The internet seems to be free since I was not asked whether to pay for a 24-hr internet access (like what some other hotels do). Well, I'm just too lazy to find it out now. So, just plug-in the LAN cable, and everything is set to go.

The internet speed is pretty good too. I tested downloading a kernel-source rpm from an OpenSUSE repository in Germany, and got a reasonable speed (350+ KB/s). The speed was noticable faster when downloading from servers located in USA. Fetching a 170+ MB file (Sun Studio Express 11/08) took less than three (??) minutes to complete (about 4 MB/s).

Well, perhaps this relatively high internet speed is the good thing of staying in a university-owned or AT&T-sponsored accomodation (or whichever it is)...

[Note: “Sun Studio software [is FREE and] delivers a high-performance, optimizing C, C++, and Fortran developer toolchain for Solaris, OpenSolaris, and Linux operating systems, including support for multicore x86- and SPARC-based systems. The toolchain includes parallelizing compilers, code-level and memory debuggers, performance and thread analysis tools, OpenMP support as well as optimized math libraries. With a next-generation NetBeans-based IDE, development of multicore applications has never been easier.”]

[Note: “Sun Studio Express releases contain the latest features and enhancements under development. Express builds are fully-functional; the focus is on new features being introduced into the Sun Studio product”. I am personally enthutiastic with the latest Express version due to the inclusion of a new MPI performance analyizer tool.]

Lost...

and there goes the nice weekend...

Statement of Intent! And, my Gastric...

1-0 to Liverpool!

And the tension almost did my gastric.

This certainly equals the tension on 25-May-2008. That time, LFC had to protect the 3-3 score, against AC Milan in the UCL final, to force the penalty. This time, LFC had to protect our 1-0 lead for 80+ minutes.

Though it's “protecting”, but we didn't just park a bus in front of our penalty box. We still attack, playing one-touch football. XA almost doubled our lead; it's very unfortunate that this freekick hit the post.

All in all, what a statement of intent from LFC to the rest EPL clubs!

Ps. JC's scouse accent is surely very hard to discern :)

King of Comebacks!

So, that's M'boro (or “mie rebus” aka soupy noodle, according to S'porean), Marseille, MU, MCity, and today Wigan.

Surely now LFC is seen as glowing with an unbeatable magical aura. It's like in Hollywood action movies, where no matter what happens, the protagonist just keeps getting up to finish the scripted happy ending.

On the down side, continuous dramatic comebacks (plus RB persistant refusal to make changes before the 70th minutes) really does no good to my heart. Also, I think I really need to start calming down a bit during the equalizer or the scoring of the winning goal. It's late and it's definitely not good to wake up a few good souls who've probably in their level N4 of sleep.

Special mention to XA who is building a growing number of victims in his repertoire: NV (vs MU), TC (vs Evtn), PZ (vs MCity), and AV (Wigan). Now, who perpetuates the rubbish myth that he can't handle the hustle-and-bustle of EPL?

GotoBLAS on Intel Core Duo + SS12

GotoBLAS is renowned as the fastest BLAS library. It has been used by many supercomputing sites to run HPL, the infamous benchmark that determines their position in the Top500.

I've had a chance to test the combo of Goto+HPL using Sun's compilers (Sun Studio 12 aka. SS12) on OpenSUSE 11.0 x86 (i.e. 32-bit version). The machine is a laptop: IBM Thinkpad R60 with Intel Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz. [In the past, I've had relied on ACML when building HPL for AMD platforms.]

Here're the steps to build GotoBLAS on the abovementioned environment, assuming that the source archive has been extracted and you're in the source-code directory:

1. Open detect in a text editor, then change FCOMPILER=NULL to FCOMPILER=SUN
2. If your SS12 is installed in a non-standard directory (e.g. /tmp/sunstudio12), then open Makefile.rule in a text editor. Then, apply the following two changes:
   
   • ifeq ($(F_COMPILER), SUN)
     COMPILER_F77 = f90
     into
     ifeq ($(F_COMPILER), SUN)
     COMPILER_F77 = /tmp/sunstudio12/bin/f90
     
   • ifneq ($(OSNAME), SunOS)
     SUNPATH = /opt/sunstudio12
     into
     ifneq ($(OSNAME), SunOS)
     SUNPATH = /tmp/sunstudio12
     

And that's it! Should you wonder that I forgot about the C compiler: no, I don't. Leave it to use gcc.

Note that on this particular environment, -fast must not be used as it results in a floating-point exception on one of GotoBLAS's self-tests. YMMV (your mileage may vary) though.

Note2 that -xtarget=native is safe (again, it has to be qualified as “only on this particular CPU architecture”).

In addition to the built-in self-tests, another test was to build HPL with libgoto.a (and CT8), and then run the xhpl. And, not surprisingly, everything went smoothly; no further hiccups or whatsoever.

Pain

“Lib” just won 2-0, so it's the time for the late pre-match interview again :)

Martin Skrtel: I'll make Everton feel pain
“Pain is part of being a footballer. If you don’t like it then you are in the wrong job. When you play in the centre of defence you have to be prepared for pain.”

It's not that I like pain very much. No, it's totally the opposite. But the mention of it by MS is just befitting with the Naruto story right now. One of the major antagonists is named Pain, and he/they/she/? has/have been getting a major screentime for these last couple of months. His goal? That's right, to bring pain into his (manga) world (here and here).

In the meantime, we're top of the league (at least, for a very short moment until the 10pm SGT matches kick off).

Victory!

Of course, this blog won't have been here had we not beat the devil deservedly just now!

Journalist: Some comments were made by Alex Ferguson about Robbie Keane and the price you paid for him — were they ill-timed?

RB: I think he was surprised about the price because he was cheap. They paid around £30m for Berbatov, Rooney or Ferdinand — or even £35m for Tevez. That is maybe where the surprise came from. [pre-match interview from the official site]

It's not unusual for RB to be “ji-ji-hi-hi” when responding to journalists. This certainly adds to his repertoire, along with “crystal ball” and “rushing to hospital”.
[“ji-ji-hi-hi” is a hakka phrase. (Un)Fortunately I've no idea what the English translation looks like. If you want to know the meaning, go learn hakka :P]

I was late by 10 minutes after buying my dinner, and already the score was 0-1! Which made me so anxious and finishing my meal like crazy in just a few big scopes. But everything is now so so rosy :D. Because it's 2-1 — yeah yeah I know that burying THE most important information is NOT a good writing style. But heck, who cares, at least for now...

It's just a joy to see wave-after-wave of attacks from our left side. Yep, left side, which was the weakest point up until the prior match two weeks ago. No LFC fan would have dreamed to say this before. And what's more is the sight of seeing SG, FT, and (the little) RB warming up! Just show how strong we're now (boasting mode on). And DK, despite all the critics, was involved in several LFC's most dangerous attacks — his assist is obvious and need not be mentioned anymore!

And the Monster. A special paragraph for him who was just on the mission; probably to pay back his red-card contribution in the last season's match against the devil in OT.

It's music time

[Original Post at my Blogs | My Blogs]

Title	:	Classical Music for Dummies
Authors	:	David Pogue and Scott Speck
Preface by	:	Zarin Mehta (Zubin Mehta's brother; Zubin is a well-known conductor who happened to lead a performance at Singapore in 2005, IIRC)
Foreword by	:	Glenn Dicterow (violinist and concert master)
ISBN	:	978-0764550096

This book is by far the most hilarious title of the “For Dummies” series, out of ones I've read. Which implies it's the best “For Dummies” for me, to date.

Iyep, that's right, pu(1) chuo(4). Perhaps the authors want to dispel the impression that classical music is boring, difficult to understand, and not fun. Or even sadistic — ever watch movies on Sicilian mafia where godfathers seem to have a penchant for this kind of music?

Here are some examples from the book.

On when to clap:

• the conductor puts down his hands and keep them down
• all the players onstage put down their instruments
• everyone around you starts clapping
• the concert hall lights come up
• the players exit the stage, carrying their instruments
• the entire audience leaves the auditorium
• the cleaning crew comes in and begins to mop the stage

On why conductors occasionally ignore the tempo specified by composers:

As a result, in the past century, conductors have felt free to treat the metronome marking only as a starting point — or even to ignore it completely. Beethoven's symphonies, for example, are virtually always played at a slower tempo than Beethoven himself specified. Tradition, along with various theories about the condition of the old man's metronome (not to mention his brain cells), has had generations of musicians to contradict poor Ludwig's specifications.

There's another one on violin: of course you want to play it with the accompany of X. Except that X is dead. [Can't recall X's name, but X is supposed to be a famous pianist.]

Other jokes are thrown here-and-there too, though some feels a bit “crispy” (Indonesian slang for rather-dry jokes). Like these ones on violin vs viola (note: a viola is simply a slightly larger version of a violin):

• Q: what's the difference between violins and violas?
  A: violas can burn longer
  
• Q: how many vioalas are needed to change a lightbulb?
  A: none, they can't reach that high.

Oh, you can find the book at Pageone@vivocity. Disclaimer: I'm in no way associated with the bookstore.

You never Appreciate...

...what you have until you lost it. That's what people say.

In case you're wondering what is “it”, I'm talking about technologies. Specifically, the three-in-one Mio plan of internet + tv + phone. When subscribing to this plan, our internet + fix-line phone + tv will go through one modem-cum-router device. Ah, “centralized scheme has always the potential of single-point of failure” is what distributed-system practitioners would say. Fortunately, I'm here not to talk about computer science or information technology.

So what happened? Well, three days ago, the Mio modem-cum-router was spoilt. It's as if being back to stone age. As if being isolated from anything that was happening outside.

And being reminded how I'm not what I think I am; that this little box is in fact an integral part of my life, no matter how much I've been very wary of internet addiction; no matter how I've condemned the so-so quality of free-air TV programmes.

But I know I'm the not only guilty person — it's my nature as a human to occasionally drag others down into the equation. The place where I'm staying was extremely quite and dark (but not haunted loh!!!) when the box was down. You know, just like in some movies picturing a big, old, dark, deserted castle.

Ah, which bring me to this question: Am I a geek for feeling abit sore just because of internet+phone+tv fasting for three days?

Or, the more proper question is: are you, if you were in the same situation as I was? The answer is yours.

Dilbert (Again!)

Some people gave a stronger reaction to the minus points of Dilbert's face lift, especially on the first two.

Btw, here is the old layout for those who misses it.

Dilbert and Friends Underwent Plastic Surgery

A well-known guru for self improvement of IT-and-management got a total face lift.

Plus:

• strips are in color
• animations (new)

Minuses:

• pages are more crowded compared to the old, plain version
• more Flash usage!
• Animation pages refuse to work in Linux (web-browser = Firefox 3.0 beta 5)

Door to Door: an Unpleasant Experience

I've just recovered from a sickness; my brain hasn't been fully functional. So do excuse me if I looked/sounded a bit peking (e as in the, i as in king. It's a Pontianak Malay's word for crazy). Ah, yes! A rather long winding way to just say that I want to rant.

So, here's the situation. Normally, I'd take a bus to a particular destination, and the overall trip takes about 1 hour. Overall means walk to lift, go down and walk to bus stop (10 mins), wait for a bus (5-15 mins), time spent on a bus (30-35 mins), alight and walk to the destination (10 mins).

Yesterday I needed to arrive at the same destination before 10am. Since I was still in the recovery mood, I stepped out from my house at about 9:15am. “Ah, I'll be late if I take a bus” was what I thought. So, I duly decided to take a taxi, hoping to reach my destination before or exactly at 10am despite a higher expense. Which is a fair expectation, isn't? Afterall, taxies are supposed to be more mobile and deliver faster than busses.

Nope! Big no no! Not at all! No, no, and no! Have I said no?!?!?!?

First, I waited for a taxi at the entrance of my house complex. See, it took 5 mins to walk from the house's entrance to the lift, go down, and then walk to the entrance of the complex. After failing to get a taxi for about 10 mins, I took a 5-min walk to a taxi stand in a plaza and reached there at 9:30am. Yes, a plaza (BPP — Bukit Panjang Plaza). Actually it's very close to the bus stop I usually used, but still I decided to take a taxi in a (soon-to-be-proved) vain hope to arrive a.s.a.p.

The problem was, it took another 35 mins to finally board to a taxi (i.e. 10:05am). And this was after compulsively pressing the call button many many times. And mind you, there're other travelers waiting there as well. Of course, once boarding to the taxi, it took only 15 mins to reach my destination. The cost? SGD 8.8, nearly 7x the cost of taking a bus (SGD 1.29).

Now, I deliberately leave this till the end: I arrive at my destination at almost 10:30am. This was even later than had I decided to take a bus. Madness! How can it be?! Taxies are supposed to be superior in their delivery time, provided we're willing to pay! But how is it that the total, door-to-door time from my house's door to the destination's door (i.e. the meeting room) was the same?!?!? And yet, I still paid 7x of the cost of busses!!!!

Grrmph $%^#&@%&$@&(*&(#@$@@#

Blokkal: a Blogging Client

Blokkal is a blogging client that supports multiple protocols and blogging sites. Think of it as an alternative to web browsers in creating-and-editing blog entries. Blokkal's features include posting new entries into multiple blogs at the same time.

• Pro: cross-platform; it'll be available for Windows in addition to UNIX. Why? Because the latest version is for KDE 4 and KDE 4 is slated to run on Windows.
• Cons: no WSYIWYG HTML editing (whops, so many cryptic capital letters). This simply means that we won't get the typical experience of editing using a web browser:
  
  
  Instead, we'll be directly working with the HTML source code:
  
  

[FYI, this entry is completed using a web browser (i.e. the WYSIWYG editing route). Yes, I've been pampered with its convenience. But rest assure that Blokkal can really upload entries to your blog; this I've tested.]

Supported protocols:

• Blogger 1.0 (http://www.blogger.com)
• Blogger/GData (the recommended protocol for http://www.blogger.com)
• LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com)
• MetaWeblog API (http://www.wordpress.com)
• MovableType

Before we can use Blokkal to create/edit blog entries, we need to let Blokkal know about our blog account. Let's take a look at how to let Blokkal know about a Blogger blog — the technical way of saying this is “to add a Blogger blog into Blokkal”:

1. Start Blokkal, then “Settings” -> “Configure Blokkal”, and then “Add...”.
   
   
   
2. Select “Blogger/GData...” from the protocol list, then click “Next”.
   
   


3. Enter your Google's username on field “User Name”. Normally, if you have abcd@gmail.com, then your Google's username is abcd. Then, click “Next”. [Note: there's no need to touch field “Account Name”.]
   
   


4. Click “Finish”. If “Connect now” is checked, a new dialog will request for the account's password which is required to connect to the newly added blog.
   
   

Photos from Aachen 2008 (3): a Visual Guide to the Cathedral

[Original Post at my Blogs | My Blogs]

One of the recommended place to visit. It's located in the central area and though I passed through this building every day, only on the second last day (around 17:00) that I managed to enter it.

[Note: this blog includes only pictures essential for my story telling. More pictures can be found here.]


The Big Picture (plus Extremely Important Piece of Information)
Before we start with the visual guide, let's have a look at the Cathedral's schematic diagram:

As you admire the diagram, be informed that this diagram is the result of:

1. ultra-precision high-end scannings using a highly-sophisticated parallel dual-optical device with an 81-megapixel resolution, 120-degree vision, and a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.
   The scanned raw images are then feed into...
   
2. a novel yet efficient integrated post processor which is capable of uncompromising noise separation, dispersed clustering, fuzzy regression analysis, high-degree meta-cognitive, adaptive dynamic inference, etc.
   This will produce an in-memory abstract schematic diagram which will be...
   
3. projected as a persistent concrete schematic diagram using the provably high-tech plotting device which has a strongly optimum degree of freedom and is controlled through a network of multi-billion nano components.

The Exterior
Let us now start the virtual visual tour by firstly examining the four exterior sides:





The entrance is located at the left-side of the diagram.


The Interior: Palatine Chapel
As shown by the annotated diagram below, on the lower left of the Palatine Chapel (i.e. the circular area in the center) are two staffs selling photographing tickets. Since a chapel is used to holds masses, attendances are expected and hence, the chairs :). The next picture shows the view to the x-y-z direction.



In the location marked by x, there is Pala d'Oro (the golden altar) and Shrine of Mary (above the altar). The Shrine of Mary is said to store a number of relics. There is also a statue of Mary in location y. The location marked by z is the Gothic choir hall which is surrounded with colorful glass windows. Only guided tours are allowed to enter this choir hall. In the middle of the choir hall hangs a sun-shaped ornament with an illustration of Mother Mary and baby Jesus. The last picture shows area w.

The ceiling of the chapel is painted with an illustration of verses from the book of Revelation (I think).



The 8-side interior walls have carvings of Latin phrases. Unfortunately I took pictures of 7 sides only. As I recalled, I started shooting from the x direction followed by the other sides in a clock-wise direction (as per my mighty diagram).









Related Sites
1. Aachen Cathedral, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aachen_Cathedral
2. Aachen Cathedral (Kaiserdom), http://www.sacred-destinations.com/germany/aachen-cathedral.htm
3. Sacred Destination Travels Blog: Aachen, http://sacred-destinations.blogspot.com/2008/01/aachen.html

Photos from Aachen 2008 (2)

[Original Post at my Blogs | My Blogs]

The weather in Aachen is unpredictable, according to the locals. And so, even though it was already in the spring, I was still fortunate enough to see a little bit of snow. It may not be like in Antarctic, but still it's refreshing for someone like me who's been staying only in tropical countries with two seasons (i.e. rainy and summer).

What else can we see? Well, here're two pictures taken within 5 minutes. While not immediately apparent, they're two different phenomena. Really, you just have to trust me!


Such views are common. The white trails may be due to the cold temperature, and the extreme frequency is probably due to Aachen being located at the border of three countries: Belgium, Germany, and Holland.

The church of St. Nicholas is located at one of the alleys in the central area:

Photos from Aachen 2008 (1)

[Original Post at my Blogs | My Blogs]


Frankfurt Train Station
The train station is just the opposite of the airport; both are connected through an overhead linkway. From the Frankfurt Intl. airport, travelers can easily continue their journey to other cities by trains.

The City
Buildings with middle-age architecture and streets made from stone can be found at various places in the central area. Most of the middle-age buildings I encountered are Catholic churches. Some of the photos below show the St. Elizabeth church.

The famous university, RWTH Aachen, occupies quite a portion of the city. In fact, it is as if the whole campus is a town. Further details on total campus area or portion of the city occupied may be found on the wikipedia or other sources in the Internet.

[Note: Photos of the Town Hall and the Cathedral will be on a separate post]

Aachen: Miscellaneous Events

[Original Post at my Blogs | My Blogs]

As I'm spending my last night in Aachen, here're my two last-minute tidbits from today:

1. Aachen Cathedral
   Visitors are free to go inside the church. However, one has to pay for two Euros in order to take pictures — tripods are not allowed but flash is. After paying, one will get a ticket that is valid on the next visit.
   
   
   Hm, now I'm wondering if the "next visit" actually means "subsequent visits". If it does, then I need to preserve my ticket in case of a tiny possibility to revisit this city in the future. Yeah, I do have a bit of "mental dagang" (i.e. an extremely calculating mentality).


2. Diet cookies
   In a shop selling chocolate cookies, I picked a box of a chocolate cookies (how obvious). When I was about to pay, the lady shopkeeper pointed to the word "Diät" on the box and said something like "this is for diet". I was quite puzzled at first and had to ask whether the "diet" means "for those who want to lose weight"! Which apparently does!! Which then made me to quickly replace with another brand, plus a couple of other choices, and then left (after paying, of course).
   
   Later on, I made this guess on why the diet-cookies reminder: it is because of my excellent physique — I who am not in the slightest need of losing weight! Whether this turns to be true or not, a danke to the shopkeeper is in order. Otherwise I may be getting slimmer after consuming those diet cookies.

They're all the same

[Original Post at my Blogs | My Blogs]

Q: What's the difference between 3 and 7?
A: As one of my lecturer said from UI, it depends on the context!

For sure, they're mathematically different, strictly speaking. But in the context of temperature, they're the same; for me, of course. It's just like how certain things work: when things go beyond or below a certain threshold, things do not matters anymore.

So, any difference between 3 and 7?
Same lah (seɪm lɑh -- Singlish), same lah (sɑmə lɑh -- Pontianak-style Indonesian which is very much Malay), sama lah (sɑmɑ lɑh -- Indonesian), sami mawon (sɑmĭ mɑwŏn -- Java).

The Nth day in Aachen

[Original Post at my Blogs | My Blogs]

Here's a recap of my experience with the local weather:

1. Monday morning: 3 degree C


2. Tuesday morning: 1 degree C, and snow everywhere


3. Wednesday morning: -1 degree C (or was it -4?), no snow


4. Thursday morning: 3 degree C, windy

So, my first snow & below-zero-degree experiences.

First day in Aachen

[Original Post at my Blogs | My Blogs]

Started my travel by heading to Changi airport (SIN) on Sat 01/Mar/2008 21:30 SGT. The flight departed on Sun 02/Mar/2008 00:00. Incidentally, I met with my professor from Fasilkom UI, Dr Stef, who'll be a visiting professor in Lisbon and Dresden for the next 3 months.

After a roughly 12-hour flight, arrived at Frankfurt on Sunday 02/Mar/2008 06:30 CET. Continued my journey by train to Cologne/Köln (about 1 hour) during which I met another Indonesian working in a German education foundation. From Cologne, I had to rush for the next train to Aachen which arrived 5 minute after. Finally, arrived at Aachen after another hour of travel; check in to hotel around 11:00.

After settling down, went for lunch and then tried to make our way to RWTH. During the way, took some pictures of the city and also a visit to the town hall. Heading back to hotel around 16:30.

The weather is windy, temperature is about 2-11 C. And the wind is really strong; one can clearly see the cloud move very fast, unlike in Indonesia or Singapore. With such strong wind, it's no wonder to see wind turbines being used to generate power; something which is not feasible in Singapore (or SE-Asia?) -- at least, as was told by a from-aeroplane-to-hardisk engineer.

Linking [was: Away (Again)!]

Finally the COW code can be built using Pathscale, though it still encounters runtime crashes. Well, at least I can tick one field in my battle plan as both completed :-) and defeated :-(

The problem was solved by compiling the library in which the COW code depends to with a certain name-mangling convention. Basically, the functions name (in Fortran objects) must not be ended with double underscore.

And now, let's conclude the porting activities for this week; let the battle continue after the Lunar New Year.

Away (Again)!

In less than 6 hours I'll start my journey back to my hometown to celebrate the Lunar New Year. So what I'm doing in this hour? As usual, last minute express packing and making sure not to oversleep.

And who says coffee is needed to stay awake? The COW codes I've been porting is giving me all sort of trouble when linking Fortran objects (using Pathscale). And I have zero knowledge on Fortran! Okay, maybe 0.00000000001 since I managed to solve a compilation problem by commenting out two lines of "implicit none".

Come think about it: my cohorts who still stay in the IT field are "moving forward" with all sort of MVC or RDBMS mappers or whatever frameworks. Not to mention those who've attained "enlightenment". I, on the other hand, am "going backward" to Fortran.