Someome awesome is feeding our little free library box with these handouts

This was a fun review. I don't think folks realize how big a deal the DGX Spark is. A year ago an #Nvidia #workstation with 128GB+ of VRAM cost tens of thousands of dollars. Is it better than AMD's Strix Halo? Now that's the real question. #DGXSpark #AI www.theregister.com/2025/10/14/d...

Used the US long holiday weekend to run #AWS #ParallelCluster build-pipeline and cluster deploy through a logging squid HTTP proxy to document internet destinations used -- this helps set firewall rules for orgs that block egress by default in research VPCs

Western Maine chores

any #AWS #HPC folks familiar with the managed PCS service who can confirm that when using AWS PCS you can't configure Slurm to be aware of software licenses? Adding license at CLI does not persist & API guide seems to confirm that "SlurmCustomSetting" does not support the "License" param ...

Mural progress. West Bethel, Maine

some cryoEM validation runs via cryosparc.com software integrated with #AWS parallelcluster HPC and using an FSX/Lustre parallel filesystem built from S3 input cryodata bucket via Lustre/S3 data repository associations. Can't do that on-prem!

todays remote office

demo pics; former weed grow. all the drywall and insulation was wet, moldy and full of animal droppings. rented scissor lift goes poof this week so we gotta finish up

indoor & outdoor chores this weekend

Dirtwork when weather allowed, indoor demo when rain got too heavy

The maverick hybrid truck was just to be for high MPG errand running and dump runs …. But I needed a rock bucket for the tractor and saw a sweet hydraulic dump trailer on dealer lot…. guess I tow stuff now. Swore I’d never own anything that could tow, hah!

Tractor and mini excavator stuff today

Still the coolest critter thing we’ve found at the Maine spot this year

@techaro.lol users of spack just became collateral damage in the anti AI-scraping wars. All I'm trying to do is use spack.io to compile relion.readthedocs.io/en/release-5... for CryoEM analysis on an HPC cluster. I know this is not your fault of course but wanted to point out an edge case

Found one other #meshtastic node while out on a coffee run today. Three are mine hah

NYT gift link, no paywall

Indoor chores on this rainy and snowy day

#muderbot trailer !!!!! youtu.be/vEioDeOiqEs?...

western Maine project continues. When this was a gravel pit they piled the good topsoil in one spot but it got overgrown w/ sumac & weeds. Eventually we are gonna rent a big ass screening machine to separate out good dirt from rocks/trash and use the lovely soil for meadow planting & remediation.

No longer just a “tractor guy” as the Chinese mini excavator arrived. Midlife crisis takes many forms, heh. This is the ECE CTX8012 Pro model. 1.5 ton diesel w/ all the features I wanted like swing boom, aux hydraulics, two speed tracking, expanding tracks & quick hitch

So this happened … Mother Nature is lit.

Speedrunning regaining my expired #aws certs. Got five in five days, although two were the foundational tier exams. Gonna pause and study hard for the next series. I want Architect Professional, SysOps Professional and the Security Specialty certs next. AWS Professional exams are *hard* though

I cynically joke about companies wanting to use LLMs because they don’t know how to build a proper UI, but actually this is a perfect use case

Annoyed that I let all my #AWS professional, associate and foundational certifications expire out of laziness so I just booked 4 remote proctored exams in 4 days. Gonna clear the foundation/associate ones before taking the Professional exams later.

#unifi #ubnt nerd stack rebuilt at the commercial lot we are rehabbing. Paired a second UBB wireless radio bridge so we can put APs and cameras up on a third building. Radios links are *fast*. All managed via @hostifi.com

I do a lot of #HPC clusters running #AWS #Parallelcluster for computational chemistry, specifically integrating it with the www.schrodinger.com small molecule & molecular dynamics tools. Wallclock time to create a new on-demand GPU node & scale it in for a job was 4min 9sec. Fastest yet!

Date night

I used to post google bait on that other site that would allow people experiencing the same problem I had to find a potential solution. Lets see if this works on bsky. Gonna post a multi-post thread on the most opaque #AWS #Parallelcluster #HPC debugging hassle I (very occasionally) encounter ...

Every day I do a “old man walk”so I don’t spend all day sedentary at a keyboard this week it’s all been snowshoe. Normally I go at dusk but today was early enough to get good pics of the tracks left behind

first building we are rehabbing on the 12acre commercial lot. New roof & solar already in. weed growers trashed it, all drywall and insulation was moldy & they covered the beautiful windows. nice to see it opened up! And opening up the windows makes a huge difference #Maine #BethelMaine

After chores

Chores

14 years ago we made snowbank monster #2 after a big storm

I work on the biggest GPU supercomputers on the planet, and none use a parallel file system, full stop. As Jeff says, file-based storage offers nothing uniquely useful to training. Files are for people, and no people are touching data when training at scale.

Aurora is finally here! The jokes end today y'all. #Aurora2025 #HPC www.anl.gov/article/argo...

One downside to consulting w/ ton of lifescience orgs is sheer volume of mandatory compliance training -- I have no issue with that, except I have to essentially repeat the same Adverse Event / Pharmacovigilance / Safety etc. courses like 6-10 times a year, all with nearly identical content heh

You can now sign into multiple AWS accounts in the same browser. Firefox market share plummets. GDP increases by 3.6%

First time setting up #UniFi BBBs building to building wireless radio bridge. Love the status color ring it uses. Here im just updating and adopting the devices before hanging them outside. Gonna be a 60m run to add WiFi APs and cameras to a remote building.

West Bethel Maine

googling for days to find/remember the OSS tool I used to assist w/ petabyte scale data movement and stumbled on my own 2020 beowulf post with the answer. FPart/FPsync is a great tool for crawling filesystems & delivering manifests to armies of data moving agents: github.com/martymac/fpart

NYT gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/a...

ok bsky where is my #chinese #mini-excavator & mini #skid-steer community? Do we really all have to use facebook groups to discuss buying, fixing and operating these things cuz that's where all the action seems to be ... www.agtequipment.com/collections/...

Worked all holiday break so snuck out to the Everglades national park yesterday. Back to BOS tomorrow if weather gods allow

I don't actually know computational chemistry but I can follow an online desmond MD tutorial to see if I can figure out why the hell Schrodinger 2024-4 can't see my compute node GPUs ... slightly worried that I built the job wrong and the errors are not HPC/Slurm but because I'm a Schrodinger idiot

I looked down. I was dripping onto the floor, a mix of blood and fluid. I hate it when I leak.

1000x one of my favorites of the series