[daip] Re; wanted

[Eric Greisen]

Robert Gray wrote:

  Hi!

I'm a current VLA observer (14B-292) and think I need to buy or build an
AIPS/CASA machine and possibly find a co-investigator or paid consultant to
assist with data reduction.  Can you suggest an avenue for contacting
people who might be interested, such as an internal AOC newsletter with
classified ads or a bulletin board where I could post a "Wanted" notice?

This is a bit unconventional, but I don't have an institutional base for
either equipment or colleagues, so I need to improvise.  I'm getting help
from the Help Desk and temporary computing on an AOC node, but I have a
huge amount of data and have not worked with VLA data for 20 years and
things have changed a lot, so I need to marshal some resources (and I've
got a budget to help).  It's a SETI project, "Search of M31 and M33 for
Radio Signals in the 21-cm Band" and I've written a book on the topic *The
Elusive Wow*.

Any suggestions or guidance you can provide will be much appreciated!

Bob Gray

===============================================================

The NRAO archivist forwarded your e-mail to daip and casa-request where 
it belonged in the first place.

You do not have to build your own computer - Dell (for example) will do 
it for you.  AIPS does not go parallel (other than running multiple 
separate tasks at the same time) and CASA's parallelism requires 
multiple computers (a cluster) primarily.  Thus a normal modern 
workstation with a good cpu for number crunching will do.  Since the 
data requirements are huge, get as much high-speed disk as possible. 
For AIPS, more memory really helps with disk I/O and a few algorithms, 
but AIPS is not a memory glutton.  CASA however is and for CASA you 
would want as much RAM as you can afford.  You need to run a Linux 
operating system on the machine - perhaps Dell (or some local computer 
store or ??) can help with that also.

Pat Palmer came to my office yesterday with questions related, I 
suspect, to your project.  He might be able to recommend a student (or 
even himself) as a collaborator.  I develop AIPS as my main job, but the 
pressure of that work has diminished so I might even have some time to 
work on it (in AIPS not CASA).  Could you forward a copy of your 
proposal to me?  I will ask about distributing your query more widely 
within NRAO.

If you were to visit NRAO Socorro, I would be glad to help you get back 
up to speed in AIPS.  Since I do have some vacations planned, you would 
have to check your dates with me in advance of making reservations.

Eric Greisen