Grids, ScotGrid and GU

I gave a talk to the Distributed IT Group at the University today, entitled Grids, ScotGrid and GU: Computing from here to eternity? It was a general introduction to EGEE grids and contained some specific information on how to get started with the Glasgow cluster.

You can get the talk here.

Start Them Young...

Spent most of the last 2 days showing S5/6 pupils round the computer cluster and talking about the LHC. It was quite fun, but rather difficult to give a talk in an air conditioned noisy room - but their time was so short there was no chance of taking them to a quieter room to speak to them. I scooped up various posters from around the department (proton model, aerial view of LHC, ATLAS, ScotGrid poster) and had the RTM running on the projector.

Unfortunately RTM was a bit broken, but they could still see Europe pulsing with computer centres and be impressed.

Impressive storage facts (measured in 8GB iPod units):

1. The LHC would fill an 8GB iPod in < 10s
   
2. If you stored a year of LHC data on 8GB iPods the pile would be 12.5km high.
3. If you tried to listen to all of that iPod data as music, it would take you almost 30 000 years.

School kids often affect extreme levels of disengagement, but most of them seemed to enjoy it.

Come and study physics then!