QMC Newsletter 2015

How to use these forums. Announcements of new versions of CASINO, summer schools and workshops, etc.
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Mike Towler
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Joined: Thu May 30, 2013 11:03 pm
Location: Florence
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QMC Newsletter 2015

Post by Mike Towler »

Dear all,

A quick update on various QMC-related things that may be of interest to CASINO users.

(1) MEETINGS, SCHOOLS and TTI

Some of you will already know this, but it has now been officially decided that neither of our regular events, namely the 'QMC in the Apuan Alps' meeting or the 'QMC and the CASINO program' summer school, will be held this year. This because after ten years it's probably time for a rest, but also because our Apuan Alps Centre for Physics in Vallico Sotto is closed for refurbishment.

'Closed for refurbishment' means that central heating is being installed (if you've been to the events in July/August you probably didn't even notice we
didn't have any, but this was the very good reason for never having 'winter schools'..). Various other things are being done, such as repainting,
refurnishing, replumbing, rebuilding the front garden, and rewiring the church (running about 70 electrical devices off three sockets and long chains of extension leads was never a good idea..). The revamp of TTI's computer and network systems has already been completed. Look, it's even running its own web server now:

http://vallico.it/

Note 'closed for refurbishment' doesn't necessarily mean uninhabitable, so if anyone wants to use the place for anything this year, discussions can be entered into.

Those very kind people who sponsored the TTI archaeological project 'Search for the Secret Tunnel' (most of whom are on this list) will be pleased to know that we have made considerable progress. A full report will be written and sent around to them shortly.

Regular visitors will also be pleased to know that I've managed to buy the quasi-ruined property behind Flora's house for the grand sum of 1 EURO plus
lawyers' expenses. It's been empty for 50 years, and will require considerable tarting up but one day this will be a big part of the forthcoming 'University
of Vallico Sotto'. ;-) It's very grand inside (one of the rooms extends upwards for all of the building's three stories) and it has a lot of potential.

(2) NEW RELEASE OF CASINO

Somewhat later than I had hoped (sadly, I spent much of the period from October to December being very ill) the new 2.14 edition of CASINO will appear sometime soon. If anyone has any development work that they would like to go into it, or any last-minute and not-very-complicated feature requests, do let me know.

(3) NEW PSI-K WEBSITE

I spent a little time in the summer writing a new website for the Psi-k network which is intended to replace the old site at http://www.psi-k.org (one reason being that they apparently liked CASINO's new site at http://vallico.net/casinoqmc !). Many of you will be subscribers to the mailing list of this organization, which for electronic structure people is the main source of information about jobs and conferences and so on (they also distribute very useful grants for workshops and travel). After the summer the project was put on hold for a while, but I have now been persuaded to revive it.. - and I need some people to test it for me. As there are quite a few people on the CASINO forum mailing list now, and you're all interested in electronic structure calculations, you seem ideal.. The new and supposedly fully-functional site can be found at:

http://psi-k.net/

I won't tell you how to use it, as you should be able to figure it out from the instructions given. See in particular 'Information --> How to use this site'. I would be very grateful for any comments, or reports of any problems (I can only test it on a limited range of browsers and devices).

Note that if you are subscribed to the old Psi-k site, you will need to re-register at this one anyway (not only because they want to get rid of the dead and no-longer-interested, but because the other site is so old that no-one seems to be be able to figure out how to extract the user database..). Of course, it isn't yet 'live' so don't use it to distribute genuine announcements or anything until told otherwise. Fake announcements -- especially funny ones -- are, of course, perfectly acceptable (though sadly they will probably end up getting deleted before the site goes live..). :D

One difference with the new site is there is a blog-like 'front page magazine' in addition to the usual list of announcements.. Although they will in principle be moderated, any registered user can submit relevant articles (or photographs or short thoughts or videos or various other things) directly by editing in the browser. You will see that currently, for example, there are reports of last year's 'QMC in the Apuan Alps' meeting, and various bits of QMC propaganda showing how inaccurate DFT is -- and we should probably broaden the scope of this before the site is released. Perhaps by showing how inaccurate other methods are in comparison to QMC..? Feel free therefore to contribute your own posts if you want people to see what you're up to (they won't be deleted if they're interesting, of course). Click on 'Front Page Magazine --> Instructions' to see how to do this.

Have fun!

Best wishes,
Mike
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