Well, my blog is kinda becoming a weekly update of things that happened and I am not too happy about it - I would rather write about certain something in great detail than making it look like a Wal*Mart Super Center but it will be a while before I get there. This Wal*Mart approach also has some advantage - in a sense that everybody gets to read about something, something to their liking instead of completely ignoring me (sounds egoistic, but true). Cutting down the introductory crap, let me start writing about worth-mentioning things:

First off, research and computers - nearly first four days of the week (first day of my week is Monday) in addition to much of last weekend disappeared in attempting to compile a certain program for our group on our beowulf cluster. This program, called SMEAGOL 1.0 (developed by few European research groups), needs another program, called SIESTA (no, the program does not sleep - but does the job when you take a nap. No, just kidding - it stands for Spanish Initiative for Electronic Structure calculations with Thousands of Atoms). That’s not the problem I faced. Tricky thing here was the I couldn’t get SIESTA compiled with PGI compilers (results were not guaranteed, however errors were) - so I got it done with Intel ones. Now, when I try compiling SMEAGOL with Intel, compilation process either abruptly stopped or generated lot of unresolved-dependency errors. After about 130+ failed attempts with Intel compilers (yeah, I kinda used every option I knew and used them in different combinations) and few emails flew back-and-forth between Houghton and Ireland, there was no sight of success. Then, from nowhere I get this wild idea of trying PGI compilers (no, don’t let your imagination run wild — neither was I in the bath tub nor was I sitting under Bodhi tree…). First off, I notice that compilation process was atleast 5 times faster with PGI and after a few failed attempts (<50), the process completed without any errors/warnings - /me was undoubtedly happy. However, I still need to wait and see if this executable reproduces the results obtained elsewhere. Developers (one from Trinity College, Dublin) was very helpful during this process and I still have to file a detailed bug report about Intel compilers...

If you have been reading/following my blogs, you may know that I was also working on redesigining the GSC (Graduate Student Council of Michigan Tech) website for the past few weeks. It was made public earlier last week and here is the link to the new version. Some may rise eyebrows (and may not even believe) the # of hours I put into this project - but I believe my trick of merging Linux shell scripting with hard-coded HTML will save a lot of time (and $$$ for GSC) when something needs to be updated. CSS, cross-browser-friendliness, etc., are some of the other noticeable features.

Out to other things now. Softball is going great - in Church league, we finished #1 in the regular season and are just two-straight wins from the championship; in Grad league, we played well to win the double header under 90+ weather against tough opponents and three-straight wins from the championship. It’s very very hard for me to believe that this is my last season in grad league - there are too many good memories to keep with me though. I should probably make a scrapbook (or something like that) - but no definite plans yet.

About my weekly photographic attempts, I did try to shoot some flowers in Rozsa center’s front yard but had the camera in some inappropriate settings and all pictures turned out grainy (ISO 800 doesn’t do well under bright daylight). But shooting full moon was on my mind since I bought this camera but my 70-300mm lens missed the previous full moon by 2 days. So, below is my first attempt at such a thing, shot from M203 in Calumet - may be 2X optical converter might have helped.

This past weekend was also when Aura Jamboree took place. Where is Aura, you ask? Honestly, it’s not on the way to anything - so, if you didn’t know about this place, nobody will blame you. To keep the driving directions short, it’s a tiny tiny little village, located about 15 miles north of L’Anse (now, don’t ask me where L’Anse is…); and just when you start feeling that you are lost & on a wrong road, you will find Aura in few minutes A predominantly farming community established in 1914 by Finnish immigrants, Aura Fiddlers’ Jamboree served (and still serves) as an occasion for people to get together - to make and/or play music, and/or listen it (people like me). Nowdays, it’s just called the Aura Jamboree and attracts musically oriented people from all over midwest. Nice thing about this event is that each performing group gets a 15-minute time slot - so, a different variety of music is never far away 30th edition of this music festival, dedicated to Art Moilanen and Ed Lauluma (local musicians of pretty big fame), had performances from many people I knew, and I probably wouldn’t have known about this event, if not for Dave (Bezotte) - a pretty eventful way to spend a significant day of my life, I guess.. As camera (and other accessories) has become part of any of my travel, I did shoot some pictures. Check them out when you find time — they are here.