[wellylug] Visit to New Zealand

[Ruediger Berlich]

Hi there,

o.k., I was a bit slow with my response. My excuse:
different time zone PLUS I've been playing with Xen
all night - http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/ :-)

Here are a few random thoughts:

Simon:
> Whether the meeting comes about or not, I certainly hope that have an 
> enjoyable three weeks!

Thanks for the kind wishes :-) 
I will certainly enjoy my stay in NZ !


Jethro, Wayne, Jeremy:

There is of course no need to do something like a formal talk.
We could just as well sit down and have a beer together, if anybody
is interested. However, as much as I'd like to come to the BBQ,
on the 27th of December I will be somewhere above Australia 
in a plane, desperately waiting for it to touch down in Sydney :-)   
I will travel to NZ on the 3rd of January and stay until the 25th - I 
want to take a look  at the fireworks on Sydney harbour bridge.

I will bring my laptop, so, depending on the number of people,
I could give you an introduction to Grid Computing also on very
short notice. A network connection (wireless ? hotspot ?) might
in that case be good, though, as I could also give some short 
practical live demonstration of Grid computing, if anybody is 
interested.

Without a beamer, however, the approach of meeting for a beer 
and a chat will not work, if there are more than, say, 3-4 people
(at least if I try to demonstrate something on the laptop).

My suggestion:
I will come to Wellington on the 10th of January, and if anybody
is interested (and there is a lecture room + beamer available), I will
give a presentation. Otherwise we can just sit down for a beer and a 
Pizza somewhere and have a chat.

Reaching me might be a bit difficult, though, as I'm not too sure if and 
when I will get access to my mail. So, I could either call one of you (if
someone could give me a phone number), or ,alternatively, I can be 
reached on my mobile phone on +49 172 2750031.

I will leave Germany on the 25th (flying to Sydney) and will travel
home for Christmas on the 23rd. So it might be good if we could agree
on some preliminary location and on a less preliminary date and time
(I'll be travelling around NZ) in the next two days.

Geraint:

> I wouldn't mind hearing about grid computing as we are about to take a
> laep and roll out a small oracle grid, we should organize a meeting!

Weeeell, I'm a particle physicist, and so the Grid definition we use is a bit
different from Oracle's  :-) 

The idea / problem is basically to find ways of coping with tens of Petabytes
of data that will arise at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva as of 2007.
This is done using techniques often called "Grid computing", and, among other 
things, invoves "clustering clusters" distributed around the globe, i.e.,
building meta-clusters.

Have fun, and, in any case, I'm looking forward to meeting some or
all of you sometime somewhere :-)
Ruediger