Last day at the Kapteyn Institute
Door: Marten Lourens
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Marten
05 Februari 2016 | Nederland, Groningen
Today I had to be at the Kapteyn Institute for my last day. My job for today was to finish off the notebook. Because there was still quite a lot to do I had to work hard today. I started adding the logo of the RUG and a picture of the Texas Instruments calculator and fixed the pictures on binompdf and binomcdf. After that I wrote and rewrote the explanations and code about plotting graphs and doing calculations with them. This was quite a lot of work that was also energy consuming. Fortunately I got some breaks at 11 o’clock and at lunchtime.
In the afternoon I went to visit the servers at the RUG. This is a restricted area where only personnel is allowed to go but they made an exception for me. It is still quite hot at the servers despite the fact that the servers are cooled. The servers also have a security system that in case fire breaks out the hall will be filled with argon so there won’t be any oxygen left. This way every fire will extinguish. The servers host all the data of the different faculties at the university and also hosts all data of the UMCG. When a server is running at full speed and every CPU and GPU is used one server takes 40 kilowatts per hour. The university works with a reward system. This means that when a faculty achieves something it gets subsidies to build a new server. Building and maintaining a server costs millions of euro’s. To illustrate how much money that is you could say that with that money you can easily build five houses.
After my little visit to the servers I had an hour left to finish all my work which I did. For the people that are interested you can visit the finished version of the notebook at http://www.astro.rug.nl/~lourens/. There are still some problems with the HTML code but I think that is caused by a bug in the export function of the ipython notebook software.
I enjoyed this week very much and I really learned a lot. Additionally I’ve reached all of my goals :). I’ve gained a lot of new experience as I’ve learned a new programming language (Python), learned a little bit Linux command line and as I learned how the Scientific Linux 7 OS works. I also learned a lot about the informatics of astronomy and have now a clear view about the possible study. I also saw a lot of people from foreign countries doing their work and working together. I saw many people from India during my time at the RUG. The reason why many people from India work there is because India is a big provider of professional computer scientists.
I also finished my main external goal which was to successfully create a Python notebook that can be used by first year students.
With this I’ll end my blog and I’ll take some rest this weekend to process everything I’ve learned this week! :)
In the afternoon I went to visit the servers at the RUG. This is a restricted area where only personnel is allowed to go but they made an exception for me. It is still quite hot at the servers despite the fact that the servers are cooled. The servers also have a security system that in case fire breaks out the hall will be filled with argon so there won’t be any oxygen left. This way every fire will extinguish. The servers host all the data of the different faculties at the university and also hosts all data of the UMCG. When a server is running at full speed and every CPU and GPU is used one server takes 40 kilowatts per hour. The university works with a reward system. This means that when a faculty achieves something it gets subsidies to build a new server. Building and maintaining a server costs millions of euro’s. To illustrate how much money that is you could say that with that money you can easily build five houses.
After my little visit to the servers I had an hour left to finish all my work which I did. For the people that are interested you can visit the finished version of the notebook at http://www.astro.rug.nl/~lourens/. There are still some problems with the HTML code but I think that is caused by a bug in the export function of the ipython notebook software.
I enjoyed this week very much and I really learned a lot. Additionally I’ve reached all of my goals :). I’ve gained a lot of new experience as I’ve learned a new programming language (Python), learned a little bit Linux command line and as I learned how the Scientific Linux 7 OS works. I also learned a lot about the informatics of astronomy and have now a clear view about the possible study. I also saw a lot of people from foreign countries doing their work and working together. I saw many people from India during my time at the RUG. The reason why many people from India work there is because India is a big provider of professional computer scientists.
I also finished my main external goal which was to successfully create a Python notebook that can be used by first year students.
With this I’ll end my blog and I’ll take some rest this weekend to process everything I’ve learned this week! :)
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