As you certainly now, the IAC is working on improving the
Information flow and Communication among its personnel (see
CD
18/05).
The "SIE de Investigación y Enseñanza" would like to
make its own small contribution, by launching the "SIENews". In these
newsletters, that we plan to publish about every month, we will try to keep you
informed about new software installations and upgrades, upcoming technical talks
and courses, highlights from our Forum, etc.
Courses and talks: Python, Parallel Computing and Condor.
After the summer holidays (for most of you), what better way to
get up to speed than with the talks and courses organized by the SIE. In
September we have scheduled an intensive course (4 days) on Python; a two
day course on Parallel Computing; and a talk about the Condor distributed
computing system. You can find details about all these at
https://research.iac.es/sieinvens/SINFIN/sie_courses.php.
New Web server in the CCA.
Astrophysics undergraduate students are very important customers
for us, and we feel we have a duty to provide them with the same information
and tools we make available here at the IAC. To this end, we have
installed in the CCA a new Web server (with PHP and mySQL),
tunez,
(only accessible from the CCA). It hosts a Forum, a Wiki area, a news-publication
tool, and a mirror of our own website. With this new server, students as well
as professors will be able to participate in forum-based discussions, upload/download
courses-related material, publish news, and keep up to date with our own activities.
Private wikis and forums: sharing information within your
research group.
You are probably aware of the Wiki system
http://venus/SIE/wiki/pmwiki.php
installed by the SIE (which lets you create collaboratively
generated information), and the SIE Forum
http://venus/SIE/forum/index.php
(which lets you have online discussions). What you are probably not
aware of is that you can create private
wikis and forum topics
for your particular subject of interest, which can be protected by a password.
Get in touch with us if you would like to know how...
New software installations and updates.
We strive to provide our users with the latest advancements in
astronomical software, and we do not want to be caught off-guard when
software updates or new packages become available. In the last couple of
months the following softwares have been updated (Linux and Solaris unless
indicated otherwise):
Starlink to December 2004b,
GAIA to
v2.8-0,
IRAF
to v2.12.2a,
R
to 2.1.1,
MIDAS
to 05Febpl1,2 (only Linux),
Cloudy
to 05.06.07,
HEAsoft
to headas v6.0.2,
g3data
(new, Linux only: it's a tool to extract data from graphs).
100th anniversary of Condor at the IAC!
Well... not exactly. Condor has been
scavenging at the
IAC for only a bit more than a year, but during this time it has put to
good use well above one million hours of CPU (
above 115 years),
which otherwise would have been wasted. If you want a piece of this cake
(
http://venus/SIE/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38),
check out the
Condor page at
https://research.iac.es/sieinvens/SINFIN/Condor/
and/or come to the next
Condor talk (20th September).
New reservation tool for the IAC car in La Palma.
The old Web form was somewhat clumsy and confusing, wasn't it? So
we implemented a new application (based on a freely available PHP-based
tool) that allows to see at first glance when the car is booked or free,
and prevents from overlapping reservations:
http://venus/inves/booking_calendar.
Please remember that, in order to use it, you need first to register.