flypig.co.uk

Now

A /now page, for sharing what I'm currently working on. Updated 31 December 2024.

Work

We're experiencing turbulent times at work. I'm not directly involved in the process but m any of my colleagues are and it's inevitably affecting morale. Although I don't disagree with the overal aims (moving from many small projects to a few challenges that are more focused), it's hard to remain positive about them when you see the reality of how it impacts on individuals.

This aside, things are going fine for me at work. I continue to improve my skills in HIgh Performance Computing and especially distributed compute for large Machine Learning models across multiple GPUs and nodes (MP and MPI). Counterintuitively, since all of the HPCs run LInux it turns out to be surprisingly similar to my previous life working on smartphone development.

This means I get to apply many of the existing skills I've built up over the years. I'm not doing as much direct development work as I'd prefer, but that aside I'm finding it rewarding.

Right now I'm organising a three-day training course for the end of January to help the Turing's researchers and developers get the most out of our HPC resources.

Rest

Christmas has just been and as I write this it's New Year's Eve. So there's plenty going on. The holiday period has been heavily disrupted this year, but in the new year I'm hoping things will start to get back to normal. So not so much rest right now, but it was nice to see family over the Christmas period.

Play

One of my Christmas presents was a new home server to replace the previous one that failed in June. The new device is a fanless mini-PC from CWWK housing an Intel i3-n305 processor. It's small but with the entire case being an almighty heatsink it's surprisingly heavy and feels increditly robust. Inside it I've installed 16 GiB of RAM and 1.5 TiB of SSD. My task now is to transfer the contents of Constantia Mk II over to this new device to create Constantia Mk III.

I also have a new phone — a Jolla C2 running Sailfish OS — which I need to set up and configure. My plan is to use it for at least a month before deciding whether to keep it over my current Xperia 10 III. It's nice to have a new device and the C2 has a larger screen, but otherwise the Xperia actually has better specs so I don't know what my decision is going to be.

Finally I'll be travelling to FOSDEM in February where I'll be helping run the Linux on Mobile stand and giving a presentation on Mobile Browsers. It's going to be a busy January!