LA-SiGMA Technical Conference

It was held in Baton Rouge again. I did not pay attention to the conference that much even though I had to give a talk.

We went there on Tuesday by a minibus. Dr. Bishop was the driver. So he took a detour a little bit to the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians in Mississippi and had lunch at Roux 61.

We reached the hotel in Baton Rouge around 4:30. The poster session started at 5. We walked around, had some snacks for a while before leaving for the State Capitol Park. My adviser, Dr. Box, wanted to photograph some birds there. I also enjoyed wildlife there.

The next day I had to give a talk at 8:15. I felt a little bit nervous but everything went fine. We spend out morning at the meeting and went to Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge after lunch. It was fun looking for some rare birds like ibis and other species that I had never heard of. We saw 3-4 gators as well but they were not harmful. They just sat still, though seemed to be aware of us.

I also took some pictures. They were not good because I had to keep my distance from those animals.

Los Alamos Trip

This is the trip for my job interview at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

I flew from Monroe to Santa Fe. Then I had to drive to Los Alamos. I enjoyed the views along the way. But before getting to Los Alamos, I had to climb uphill on the narrow road by the cliff. That was so scary!

This was the rental car I used on this trip. It was Nissan Sentra


I did not have any chances to take picture during the first two days. I had to meet with so many people, and gave a talk about the work I have done. So on the last day, I took the pictures around the hotel instead.









There are many things happened on this trip. First my phone was useless since there was no AT&T signal even at Santa Fe airport. Fortunately I had just bought a smartphone from my friend and I could use wifi at the hotel and the lab.

Second I got lost on the first day. I went straight to the lab after landing at Santa Fe to meet with people without stopping by the hotel. That evening I tried to find the way to the hotel, but my GPS messed up. The hotel was new. My GPS did not know it. I ended up asking somebody to show me the way.

The last day, after flying back to Monroe, I was about to drive home, but my little car could not start. The battery was dead. At first I did not know that. Everything was gone. Even the central lock did not work. I asked an officer at the airport for help. She came to my car with a starter kit. After a jump-start, my car was able to run again. I was so relieved.

Photos from SLC trip

Salt Lake City Day 5 and 6

I did not have anything to see in the morning. Just attended David's (James' friend from UNCS) talk. Then we (James, David, Arash, and me) headed out for lunch at a mall. After that James had to go talk to someone at the exhibit. I also wanted to attend NVIDIA's show about CUDA 5 and Kepler's new features. David was also interested in NVIDIA as well. I did not know where Arash went because he splited from us when we went to Rite Aid (James needed a toothbrush).

NVIDIA's new technologies were so interested that kept me engaged for the whole hour. (I had not focused on something that long for a long time.) The galaxies colliding simulation was awesome!


After the show, David and I did not know where to go because the exhibit was closing. Everyone was packing up. Then we decided to attended some talks that we were not even interested although we ended up hanging outside the room, checking email and whatever. But my computer could not get the connection again. Moreover, it could not even see any hotspot. I thought the hardware was broken, or it was the driver issue. So David let me use his tablet to check email.

At the end of the day, Franc Mueller (These guys' advisor) invited his students to have beers. James invited me as well. We went to Squatter's pub again. I did not call my hotel's shutter tonight because I wanted to walk. And it was not too far to walk as well.

The next day was the last day in Salt Lake City. I packed up and checked out at 11am. Then headed to the airport. James showed up at the airport about an hour later. So we had lunch together, talked a little bit. Then splited because I had to get on board.

Salt Lake City Day 4

Today's highlight was Student Job Fair. I was there, talking to people from many national laboratories, like Firmilab, Sandia, LLNL, etc. I told them about my research in GPU cluster resiliency and performance modeling. They seemed to be interested and asked for sample papers, or apply for postdoc/research positions. They seemed to be impressed my resume as well.

I also had an opportunity to talk to a guy from Argonne National Lab and followed up my postdoc application. The only thing I can do now is waiting for the final decision. And I am waiting for a "Yes".

In the evening I met Dr. Putchong at the exhibit. We had a chitchat about academic situation in Thailand. It was good to know those politic things.

I did not have an issue with my shuttle today because I called them to pick me up around 6:30 which was way ahead of their leaving time.

Salt Lake City Day 3

The internet in the hotel was still not working in the morning. Anyway I had to go to the convention center early to attend the Keynote. The speaker was a famous theory physicist, Dr. Michio Kaku. He had appeared on many medias including news, documentaries, etc. The talk was, of course, very good!

The internet at the conference was also lame. I could not get the connection until sometime later in the afternoon, and lost it quickly afterwards.

I attended poster sessions in the evening. Most of the works were about exascale (huge dataset). I did not pay much attention on the posters. James and I were there to wait for his adviser, Dr. Frank Mueller and his group. We went out for dinner together.

At 10pm, we (James, his two friends, and me) walked back to Shilo hotel where James stayed. I called my hotel asking for a shuttle, but the lady at the front desk said that no more shuttle going to the convention center anymore because the driver had to go pick up people at many places and by that time it would be the time she left her duty. So James talked to her and argued with her on the phone, but there was no use. Good thing was a guy at the front desk at Shilo hotel offered me a ride since James was a guest at the hotel. I ended up paying him $10 for it. That Econo Lodge's shuttle and front desk did it again!

Salt Lake City Day 2

It should be day 1, but since I got some rest, about 3 hours, I would consider it Day 2.

The technical program had not started yet. So I did not have access to any available sessions. Still I hung around the convention center, figured out which talk I would attend until an alarm burst out. Everyone in the convention center slowly evacuated from the building. Most of us were just confused and wondered what was going on. I met James and Clayton during that time. So we went out for lunch afterwards.

I went back to the convention center, tried to check email, but could not get access. The signal was strong but for some reasons, I could not go anywhere. Then I thought that there was no point to be there anymore. So I came back to the hotel and took a nap for an hour, and went to an art building which was right next to the convention center to attend NVIDIA's talk about new technology, K20.

Then I hung around with James at the Opening Gala event. Clayton did not join us. He had been invited to somewhere else. We did not hunt for free stuff like the very first times we had come to SC.

After the gala, I tried to call the hotel's front desk to ask for a shuttle bus back to the hotel. I had waited for so long before a lady and the front desk finally picked up. Also when I reached the hotel, the internet did not work. I still could not check my email. And those were the second and third unimpressions about this hotel.

Salt Lake City Day 1

First, my flight from Monroe to Dallas was one and a half hours delayed. Second, the flight from Dallas to SLC was about 2 hours delayed. I was supposed to reach SLC by 10:30pm, but the flight arrived at around 12:30am. I missed the shuttle to the hotel. So I had to take a cab. Fortunately a girl that I had talked to at Dallas airport while waiting for the fight was in the line, too. So I asked her if we could share the cab. I was gladly wanted to share. Then we rode together. I reached the hotel eventually, and saved $10.

I went to bed around 2:10am and woke up at 5:30am this morning. How on earch! It would be because of the time difference. =(

Seattle Day 6-7: A Pleasant Journey

It was the first morning at La Quinta which is a little bit far from the conventional center but they had breakfast. Though it was not too far to walk.

At the conference, I attended Checkpoint Optimization session and learned that whatever you would show on the screen, you had to be able to justify it clearly. The assumptions should be rationally clarified.

After that I went to a job fair. There were many national labs, universities, and industrial companies that came to recruit. Most of them had internships. Some of them also had post-doctoral positions. I had a great opportunity talking to Argonne NL, they were going to buy a huge cluster called BlueGene/P. Then they would need us soon.

Los Alamos NL was pretty interesting. I knew it when Clayton went there for an internship couple of years ago. Lawrence Livermore had a biggest booth there. They had many positions opened.

Some other NLs were also interesting, like NOAA, Lawrence Berkeley, etc. There were even a lab from Singapore and King Abdullah University from Saudi Arabia. They tried to present themselves a lot.

I spent a lot of time at the job fair. Unfortunately I did not bring my resume and business cards with me. I had not had intention to find a job at first but it turned out that I was pretty excited talking to those people (esp with a guy from Argonne).

Late afternoon, I went to Cray booth at the exhibition just to ask about OpenACC. A guy there pointed me to PGI which was the one that work a lot with the compiler. It was great talking to the people there.

In the evening, I was so exhausted but still stuck with Dr. Box to a party, just to have a free dinner. The food was just to fill my stomach, the music there was too loud. If I remember correctly they came from our neighbor, Texas.

Dr. Box and I did not wait for the raffle. We know that we had never been lucky this way. We went back to the hotel around 8 something.

The next morning, after breakfast at the hotel, I packed and tried very hard to stuff everything I had got from the conference into the bag. It turned out that I had to enlarge it a little bit.

Dr. Box gave me a ride to the airport and now I am waiting for the flight home.

Seattle Day 5: Interesting Talk

I went to the keynote in the morning. The speaker was the CEO and co-founder of NVIDIA. The room was so packed that they had to split the other group to another room with video linked to that room. I was in that group. =(

After that I went to a paper session that was about GPU optimization. That was interesting. There was something that quite similar to my research.

I spent almost the whole afternoon talking to the people in the exhibition. Talking at NVIDIA booth was pretty interesting. They introduced me to the new standard called OpenACC which would change your serial code to parallel with just adding couple of lines.

I also got 6 more t-shirts. Just wonder how I can pack them into my bag.

Seattle Day 4: LittleFe Buildout

Nothing much in the morning. I just attended some sessions which are not so interesting.

In the afternoon, I had to team up with Dr. Bishop to assemble a LittleFe (a small cluster with 6 mother boards: 1 head node and 5 computing nodes, also had a GPU integrated on each board). Dr. Bishop was going to carry it back to Ruston. And hopefully, we can use it in our classes.

In the evening, the exhibition opened. I enjoyed hunting free stuff, got 3 t-shirts, pens, screw drivers, and some toys. I also won a car race at QLogic booth and got a box of car toys. I gave it to Dr. Bishop because he had a little boy.

Seattle Day 3: Gather up

Dr. Box, Aig, and Mon arrived at Seattle yesterday but we could just get together today.

I went to have lunch with Dr. Box. He introduced me to Dr. Hong Ong and his team from Malaysia. They also work on CUDA too, focusing on data transfer between GPU and CPU memory because the GPU memory is so small. I recalled that I had also come across this problem when I had been working on Haplotype Inference problem with BIOTEC.

In the evening I met Aig and Mon at the conference and went out to have dinner with Dr. Box at a Chinese restaurant in China town. I made me miss Chinese food back in Bangkok. ^^

Seattle Day 2: In the Conference

It was the first day of the supercomputing conference. After registration, I got a badge and a bag. I liked the bag. It was well designed for keeping a laptop, an iPad, etc. There was just one thing that I didn't like about it. It was a shoulder bag. Well, I preferred a backpack.

I also had a chance to meet many people from many fields because this event was not just for computer geeks. There were also physicists, biologists, mathematicians, etc, whoever that used huge computational systems to solve their problems. It was a good opportunity to make connections. ^^

Seattle Day 1: Just Landed

I left Ruston around 10:15 AM with Dr. Bishop. He drove.

After a long flight (around 6 hours with one stop at Houston airport), we landed around 6 PM. Then we tried to catch a free shuttle but no luck. So we took the light rail instead. Around an hour later, we arrived at Red Lion Hotel. I got into the room 710, dropped the bags and went back to meet Dr. Bishop at the lobby again. We walked to the opposite building just to have dinner. Once we got back to the hotel, we saw 4 police cars at the front door. No accident, nothing to give a clue what was going on. No one knew why they were there. So I just headed back to the room because I was so worn out.

UK Day 39: Hatfield House

Holland Trip

Netherlands Day 1-2: On the way / Zaanse Schans / Amsterdam


Netherlands Day 3: Keukenhof / Queens Day in Amsterdam


Netherlands Day 4: Dom Tower/Centraal Museum, Utrecht


Netherlands Day 5: Haarlem

UK Day 24: Windsor Castle and Punt's Family

On April 23 - 24, 2011, P Punt took me to Windsor Castle. Unfortunately, taking pictures was not allowed inside the buildings. I stayed with her family that night. We had a good time chatting about the time from our college. And the next day there was Easter activity for her son, Ethan.

UK Day 10: London For the First Time

I took a coach from Grovehill to Victoria station, then walked and walked and got lost around Buckingham Palace and walked and walked to Club Quarters near St. Paul's, where Dr. Box stayed. Dr. Box took me to have lunch, his favorite roasted duck, at Four Seasons on Queensway. Then we took Tube (subway) to Portobello Road Market at Notting hill, walked all the way there, and went to Harrods, took a look at the luxury stuff in the most luxury shopping center before getting tired and went back home.

UK Day 3: At Town Center of Hemel Hempstead

On a walk








Liliana is looking at the duck




Liliana and her mom, Monica




Go shopping




Barbie in Barbie car

Day 8... D'Arbonne Tour

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Last Saturday, I went to D’Arbonne State Park with my Thai friends. It is a little bit far from Ruston to the north. There is a big lake there that many people go fishing in. They may also go camping and cook the fish they caught.

My friends and I saw some boats with one or two men on board each. They were enjoying fishing. Once they got a fish which I don’t know what type it is. My fiends and I didn’t fish because we pity the fish. We just hung around, walked along the nature trails and sensed how nice the nature is. Pine cones were around. White flowers, red flowers that I don’t know their name bloomed in spring. We took many pictures of flowers, trees, birds, and even worms. We found a lizard that I have never seen before. It stood still on a branch of a tree. It was as small as a thumb with long tail and glazed brown skin. One of my friends tried to get close to it to take a photo. But it ran away suddenly. I really don’t like it. Actually, I’m scared of lizards.

We had dinner at McDonald’s and hung out at the lakefront until it got dark because we wanted to take some pictures of sunset. We had to wait for many hours but it worth to wait. It was a beautiful scene when the red sun caught the horizon at the end of the sky. Then, the sky turned red. Birds flew back home. In the dark, the lakefront was filled up by many insects that made us get into the car and leave.