Parallel Thinking Conference Day 1

After an early-morning stroll with geocaching on the LSU campus we had our first full day at the conference where the topic is not so much parallel programming as it is parallel thinking. We talked a lot about how one could distribute problems across many nodes and what the various advantages and problems with that approach might be, got a nice introduction to the Shodor website (our host is the "short dork" for whom it is named) and played with a lot of tools (the lead instructor's philosophy is to introduce a tool, work with stuff other people wrote with that tool, and then write your own. It's both effective and fun. Then at the end of the day we all went to a local diner called Chives where Southern Man ate delicious baked catfish and Caesar salad and was introduced to a delicious local ale called Abita Amber that he will definitely try again.

Much of the gang at Chives. Photo Credit - our very capable server.