How I miss Brasil, this was probably the most incredible experience of my life.  I have never had so much fun working on projects, learning, and laughing so much in my entire life.  The times I shared with my fellow FIU PIRE students and the CS people at UFF will always be in my heart. (wow that is sappy) now for some great pictures.

 

 

Oh I forgot to mention my first love in Brasil.  THE FOOD!

Seriously the food.

 

Also the drinks.

 

....After our lunch, Zaidi, Seijiro and I went to the "Maracana" one of Rio de Janeiro's famous landmarks. I have been dying to go to this place for years, and to finally be given the opportunity to experience a soccer game at "Maracana" was amazing. We arrived earlier than what we should have, one of the PIRE students thought the game started at 4:30pm which in reality started at 6:30, so we had to wait for almost 3 hours for the game to start. In the mean time we took some pictures out the stadium

 

At 4:30, they started letting people inside the stadium, we still had 2 hours left for the game to start, so we walked around and started taking pictures of inside the stadium 

 

Now the game finally started and let me tell you, it was one hell of an experience. I've been to many soccer games in Miami, and nothing an compare to the atmosphere of the Maracana. We decided to sit on the Flamengo side, the fans their were rowdy, jumping up and down, banging the drums and singing through out the entire game. The game was a nail bitter, the final score of the game was Flamengo 2, Botafogo 2, it ended in a draw.

 

Now as Americans we are addicted to cell phones.  Often we talk until we see the other person.  Constantly we see ourselves talking on the cellphone while we drive, walk, eat, and sometimes we even fall asleep while on the phone.  How do we break this addiction to survive in Brasil?

 

We buy a cell phone.

 Brasil and the cell phone industry

Now in Brasil cell phones are slightly different.  In the USA everyone has a cell phone, which puts a lot of capital into the infrastructure, which in return lowers the price of cell phone plans.  This then fuels our need to TALK ALL THE TIME.  Brasil does not have this infrastructure, so in return their prices are a lot higher.  So less people talk on the phone, thier efficiency is incredible.  Their manorisms will definately be adopted when it comes to cell phone efficiency.

The best option for fellow PIRE adventurers is to get a prepaid cell phone.  As Americans we are already familiar with the prepaid cell phone plans, but there is a catch in Brasil.  Due to the crime and the usage of criminals in prepaid cellphones, you must have a valid Brasilian ID to get a prepaid phone or SIM chip.  Somehow you need to buddy up with a Brasilian and convince him that you REALLY are a good guy and don't partake in criminal activity.

Carriers in Brasil

The best one I would recomend would be VIVO, they seem to have the best prepaid plan along with the best service.  The sales people aren't bad to look at either.  Most places with a cellular credit card machine can recharge your minutes with ease.  They run in packages of R$17 R$26 and R$60.  But be careful these calls are expensive and will not last long.  The actual cell phones for the base model can cost as little as R$49 to R$69.  For me, my purchase was one of these phones.

 

 

The best method would be to unlock a phone from the USA and purchase a chip.  Vivo keeps it exciting by giving you great graphics with your purchase. Most blackberries and Iphones can be unlocked and used with this chip.

 

For people that are in my situation, I purchased a cheap cell phone.  This is my glorious phone in action.

Yes my project finally got a name,  here is the abstract for it.

 

Kaseya IN A MINute

KINAMIN

WOHO>

France is well known for its wine culture. In the Triskell research  team, it is usually the case that if a team member is leaving, he or she will host a little farewell party with some wine and traditional snacks, and all other members, including professors and staffs,  are invited to enjoy the wine and food. It is also the opportunity for networking and cultural exchange. During our stay here, we are fortunate to participate in such an event. It was great, pictures tell~

 

   

As an importang part of our PIRE experience, wenkend trips are always enjoyable and help us relax from the week. We spent the last weekend in Paris~ Unfortunately the weather was not that nice, we were walking along the Seine River in the rain on Saturday and climbed the Effiel Tower (around 700 steps!). The exercise kept us warm, though~  Then we went to Notre Dame. The design of the cathedral is really fancy and detailed! It is just  so delicate and eye catching!  During the time we went there, some religious activities were going on, people were singing songs and candles were lit up. All over the church, there are sculptures and things like such.
 
The next day we went to the Museum of Louvre and museum of D'orsay, saw the Mona Lisa and Van Gough's art pieces. You know how huge those museums so, and we just had to rush from place to place.
 
Another thing I want to metion is the arc of triumph: very magnificent monument~. We climbed up to the tower and enjoyed the view of Paris from the center of the radiant square~ Twelve avenues radiate from the square, all of which are named after famous people or battles.

 

 

 

WEEKLY STATUS REPORT
Sean Leslie
July 28, 2008

 

ACTIVITIES:
This past week we have been trying to fix various errors while working with spotty internet access. We also have been getting ready to go home and started getting information together to wrap up the project in general. A few changes to the namelist variable input page were made last week as well. While adding drop-down boxes to some variable with a fixed number of values was doable having them inside of if/else blocks was causing an issue we were unable to identify. A solution was chosen just to have regular input fields replace the combo boxes. Work was also done on creating java code that would parse a namelist file and take the values provided in the file and place them in the database. This required some critical thinking as the data fields did not have to appear in any particular order, or even appear at all. The string parsing works but requires testing on tomcat in order to be incorporated into the site.

 

We met with Dr. Duran and showed him what we had done so far. I also got to sight and have a 1 to 1 question answer session with him. We discussed various aspects of our project as well as WRF and grid-enabling it in general. It was a pleasure working with Dr. Duran he was helpful and responded to our questions in an honest and timely manner. If he could suggest a solution to a problem he would provide us with some web resources to look into the solution further, and if he could not help us he would tell us upfront. He proved to be a valued resource as we worked through problems while working in UdG.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
The namelist variable edit page can recall data from the database and add it to its fields, as well as submit data from its fields to the database.

 
ISSUES/PROBLEMS:

• I have been trying and failing to get winSCP working on my laptop. I have given up since we should be able to get this working from campus no problem.
• Having only one machine with winSCP means that only one of us could upload and debug at a time. It would have been great to have all of these tools installed and tested prior to getting to Mexico.

 

PLANS:
Short Term:

• Finish putting some aspects of the site together. Incorporating the work Seychelles and Elias have done with our own.
• Implement interaction with JFM
• Visualization

Long term:

• Finish up project documentation.
• Write a paper.

 

 

Today is my last day in China and last day of my work. It has been a memorable 10 weeks so far. There was work, fun, excitements and frustrations. Sometimes felt really tired of this different life and wanted to return to my comfort zone but at the same time on other sunnier days, life was a bliss here and some part of me wanted to start over with all the unknown adventures yet again.

The work was great. Accomplished quite a lot without feeling too overworked. The hours at office were really productive. I am happy that I could complete the work I planned to in the way I wanted to. Both my group and me knew from the very beginning that 10 weeks is really a very short period of time as far as research is concerned specially, since I strated a complete new project right from scratch. But we were optimistic that we would be able to do enough progress to have a clear roadmap for the future direction. And today I am satisfied that I could narrow down the broad problem, solved part of it and know how to progress to improve it. I will continue working on it once I am back to school and collaborate with my group here at IBM-CRL. We hope to have good results and come up with  paper for the upcoming pacific visualization conference.

I want to take this oppurtunity to thank the INFOVIS group at IBM-CRL and especially to my manager Dr. Shixia Liu. She was helpful and attentive to my requirements all through. The entire PIRE team deserves a special thank from me to make all this happen. Its one of the most wonderful memories I would have with me for a long time.

 25 days from today, in June I had my birthday celebrated here in Beijing. There was a nice surprise party at IBM-CRL as well as a wonderful dinner arranged by Chris, Paula, Leena, Jan Chris and Tariq at a nearby Indian Restaurant. The day was wonderful right from the start and I never got a chance to feel the pang of homesickness, thanks to everyone.

                                                                            

 

 

Also, here are few snaps of me working at IBM-CRL, having group meetings and just having nice time with the group. It was really a tough job getting permission to take these snaps and a lot of paperworks need to be completed to achieve it.

                                                    

 

Today as a farewell, my group is taking me to bowling followed by dinner. I still need to pack and then tomorrow I am off to India for a two weeks break.

I am very excited to be able to see my family after a long time and hope to spend some quality time with them. But, I am feeling a little sad that this journey is over, something I had anticipated for months. In my quite trouble free life at USA, I will miss seeing so many people on the roads, packed buses, taxi drivers each thinking themselves as cousins of Schumacher! I will miss the hard hard spartan bed at the dorm, the nihaos and the xie-xies.......and last but not the least... I will miss my thinkpad..I am sad I have to return it today! :(

Now that I have more time, I will post some of my experience here in China in details.

Till then..... 

 

 

Italy, Germany, and Portugal

Since its been a while since I mentioned what I do outside of my research (due to how much time I spend inside of it), here is some information about some of the fun I have had over the past few weeks. First, there was Italy, which all of us PIRE members here in Barcelona went to. Overall, it was a pleasant stay. Then came Germany, which was the trip I was most looking forward to and it was great. Finally, Portugal, which is where we celebrated Independance Day, was also a great place.

Italy

This was my first visit to a European country other than Spain, and it was intersting to see the similarities and differences. It was also the first time that I was in a country where I did not speak the language, which was quite difficult, yet strangely entertaining. We started off in a Rome, which was a very nice place with a friendly atmosphere. On the second day we went to Naples (Napoli), where there was more sightseeing and exploring to do. First, we went to the (ruins of) the ancient city of Pompei, which was destroyed by a volcano. Some of the structures were still in place and you could vaguely tell what they were (e.g. homes or restaurants), but very little. After getting back to Naples, we did some exploration of the city. It was not as pleasant as Rome in terms of views and cleanliness. Also, the beaches were a bit dissapointing since there was no sand. However, I was glad to see more of the "real Italy," as opposed to the more touristy Rome.

The next day was a shorter day, and it was Sunday so it was the proper day to stay again in Rome and go visit the (nearby) Vatican City. After seeing the huge cathedral and a portion of the Sunday mass, we went out to witness the Pope himself address the crowd. He spoke a prayer in various languages. Each corresponding country would of course cheer when he spoke in theirs. A great experience indeed.

- The Colesseum
p6201003 - Pompei
p6221190 - The Pope

Germany

I was eager to go to Germany since I found out that I was coming to Europe in the first place. As an auto enthusiast the reasons were this were the Autobahn and the Car Museums of the big european companies (Volkswagon Group, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW).

Arrival

Well, first of all, I missed the first bus to the Girona airport. Which meant that I was taking a bus that would get me there 20 minutes before the flight. Fortunately, I got the director to get a bus out 15 minutes earlier (>si estas leyendo esto, gracias). Traffic was good as well, so I ended up arriving with a few minutes to spare. My first stop was Hamburg, since it was the closest city to Wolfsburg (aka Golfburg for the Volkswagen Golf, which is popular in the area, and the fact that VW headquarters are here) that RyanAir had service to. Hamburg actually turned out to be a nice city, although I did not spend much time there.

p6261201 - I missed the first bus to the Girona airport, so this is what time I got there (for a 5:40 flight)
p6271214 - hamburg rail lines from central station

Day 1 - Wolfsburg

On the second day, I visited the VW headquarters an museum (i.e. the Autostadt). This was a huge place, so I am glad I scheduled an entire day for it. In fact, I was going to go to a nearby science museum, but had no time. The Autostadt is both entertaining and educational. I found out about design processes of the cars, a history of automobiles in general, with an emphasis on VW's role, and about future trends with alternative fuel sources such as their own SunFuel.

p6271251 - Inside the VW pick-up center, if you look close, you can see a bunch of cars lined up - vertically and horizonatally
p6271325 - Peice of decorated landscape. There were four of these, as there are four circles in the AUDI logo, which I came to find out stands for the four companies that merged to form AUDI in order to survive tough times. The next day I found out that the Daimler-Benz merger was done for the same reason.

Since Berlin was nearby and I had a few hours to spare after the Autostadt closed, I went by there, since that was the most touristy and historical place of Germany, although, frankly I was tired of such things after Barcelona and Spain. Overall, it was also a nice city, but frankly I have nothing special to say about it (I was only there about 4 hours). I include some pictures below.

Day 2 - Stuttgardt and (not quite) Munich

This day should have been two days, as I didn't anticipate how much time I would spend in city one (that and a mishap with the DeutcheBahn and being lost in translation). In any case, it was still the highlight of all of my getaways here in Europe. I started off going to the Mercedes Benz headquarters and Museum. I must recommend anyone interested in the automotive world to come here if they ever can because it is quite a spectacle. I spent much more time here than I expected to. I learned a bunch about the invention of the automobile and events that motivated and advanced the industry. I also learned some other interesting little facts, such as that "Mercedes," is actually not the name or any of the inventers (who are Daimler and Benz) nor their family, but rather the daughter of a race car driver who helped put their brand on the map. Purportedly, she never even learned to drive.

xp6281434 - me before the Mercedez-Benz Museum
- Thanks to Daimler-Benz, even really fast runners were no longer able to escape the police (well, we can thank Motorola as well)
- Very cool stuff. Applications of EEG to improve driver safety

My next trip was to Munich, which is the home base of BMW. Their museum closes at 8 PM, so I should have had a couple of hours there despite staying at Benz so long, but a misunderstanding with the DeutcheBahn caused me to miss it. I ended up getting there are about half past 8. I still got to see it from the outside (boo hoo) and I saw some of the other things that BMW has there. They actually have an entire hotel there, with some of their cars inside. Additionally, there are a few small museum-like sections there. It is right across from the olympic stadium, which I passed by as well.

xp6281748 - Dome in the olympic stadium - Munich
- Festival-type thing by the olympic stadium. Intersting "cultural" experience
- Back inside the BMW hotel. I can't think of a better way to decorate the interior of a building (except maybe with Lotus' and Porsche's)

Overall, this was a very educational couple of days. Not only did I learn about the history of automotive, including the events that helped the industry grow so much, but I also became aware of some of the cutting edge research going on in the industry. Particularly intersesting were the EEG-based driver safety feature that Meredes is looking into, which I would like to look into some more, and the alternative fuels (or alternatives to fuel).

Last Day - Cologne

Cologne was the city with the nearest airport for RyanAir, so it was my final destination. It is also closest to the famous Nurburgring, which is a famous road for testing a cars limits (many automakers use it). Since I was unable to rent a car, I canceled my trip over here. Instead I opted to do some sightseeing in Cologne. This turned out to be a good idea, since there were some spectacular views.

xp6291803 - Catchedral at Cologne. You can hear the service bell pretty at a pretty far off radius from the cathedral itself, when mass is about to start
xp6291868 - At the chocolate museum. I got to see how one of these are made.


- Shot taken from a bridge at Cologne
- Cool scenery walking through the woods
- View from the top of the Cathedral. Getting up here requires climbing up 300 steps! (no elevator option)
- I didn't have much time at Frankfurt, so here's the Central Station with a nice skyline

Portugal

Note: I could not post any of the pictures of Lisbon since the USB output of my camera failed, apparently. I will modify this section when I am able to access the picture files

Portugal was my final visit to another country. This was another recommendation by Marlon. We spent all our time in the capitol, which is Lisbon. The city itself has a cozy and laid back feeling to it. People are generally friendly. In terms of tourist attractions and architecture, it was definetely the least extravagant of all the places I had been to, which helped to make it the most quiet and laid back. We had no official "plan of action" here. Instead, we went to a few of the cultural and tourist attractions. Of which there were a few statues. There was a very nice part that had a well-decorated peice of landscape and a nice view of the city.


IMG - landscape


We took a trip to the aqueduct, which was a fun adventure since it involved going through all kinds of terrain, but we weren't really able to see much of the aqueduct itself.

The next day we went to the bay area. First, we went by a park with a tall monument and then we went to the beach. The beach was surprisingly full for a Friday. The overall beach area was nice, although the water was just above freezing. Figuring I would probably not be visiting Portugal any more, I decided to jump in and try it out anyway. This was my first chance to test the waterproof abilities of my camera (it survived). Inadvertantly, I guess it also allowed me to test the freeze-proof feature, which it also survived. Altough perhaps this is what did the USB input in. Oh well.

IMG - beach

Activities

• Executing mpitrace and amon/aprof benchmarks on Mind and GCB
  


• Modifying amon and aprof for MareNostrum
  


• Created script to fix current amon data from MN and allow batch prediction
  


• Using aprof for prediction on MN.
  
  

  
  

Accomplishments

• We fixed the problem we had with aprof not being able read amon data due to its output by modifying both the parser of aprof and the output of amon. The latter by both modifying its source code and using an external script.
  
  

  
  



• The other problem from last week, which was the fact that wrf.exe processes in aprof input files were low, was investigated. I added some things to are benchmarking script to do this. I realized that there are more wrf.exe processes in the amon output than are being taken in by aprof. So I suspect aprof is not grabbing all the inputs.
  
  

  
  



• Mind is successfully generating mpitrace files and converting them to Paraver.
  

Problems

• GCB is having problems generating mpitrace files, due to an issue with the PAPI library.
  
  

  
  



• Some of the paraver conversion executions in Mind result in memory allocation errors, which we suspect now is due to the fact that the traces are very large (e.g. more than 4 gigabytes in total), which we have learned is typical.
  
  

  
  

Plans

• Use the fixed amon data and modify our prediction script to generate prediction data for MN.
  
  

  
  



• Use the successfully-generated paraver traces of Mind to do prediction.
  
  

  
  



• As time allows, fix the problem with GCB. With Mind working, I do not see this as an urgent issue.
  
  

  
  

About this document ...

Javier Delgado

This document was generated using the
LaTeX2HTML translator Version 2002-2-1 (1.71)

Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996,
Nikos Drakos,
Computer Based Learning Unit, University of Leeds.


Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999,
Ross Moore,
Mathematics Department, Macquarie University, Sydney.

The command line arguments were:

latex2html -split 1 07.14.08.tex

The translation was initiated by Javier Delgado on 2008-07-15