iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 24/07/2026

#anthropic #fable biosecurity classifiers suck. I've been booted out of Fable for: - editing download URL to the latest version of CryoSPARC analysis suite - edited an ansible playbook that installs dozens of R packages most commonly used by life scientists - had "bioteam" name in a playbook

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 12/06/2026

Been telling #AWS #HPC people for a while that old parallelcluster stacks are gonna start breaking soon and have spent weeks upgrading client systems only to discover that AWS pushed the break-date into 2027 thanfully. Blog writeup at bioteam.net/blog/tech/cl...

bioteam.net

Your old AWS ParallelCluster stacks will NOT break in 2026 - BioTeam

Note: This post is pure google bait designed to help others who run into the same problem. We hope it helps!

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 16/03/2026

As an introvert it's my favorite volunteer org. A lot of the other people are retired logging dudes who show up, work super hard while saying perhaps 5 words in total before having a cup of coffee and dipping out until next time, heh. Great great people.

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 16/03/2026

Yep -- alleviate heating insecurity by providing free, seasoned firewood to local households in need. Trying to cut & split 160 cords of wood to season outside this season, then we can give away 80 cords in the fall. The 2nd 80 cords rolls over into year 2 to sustain ~80 cords/year giveaway

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 14/03/2026

I get outside, sometimes. Bethel Woodbank going strong. #maine

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 12/03/2026

If you do #HPC on #AWS via #ParallelCluster then check your versions. A ton of old HPC clusters are gonna fall over in June 2026 when AWS deprecates an old python runtime in Lamda. I've done 3 client upgrades this month and expect more to come ...

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 28/02/2026

#meshcore repeater and #meshtastic router_late role solar fixed nodes up and running in west bethel #maine — trying to grow the LORa mesh in western Maine. Also picked up a pair of Thinknode M5 portable units to use as my Bluetooth tethered clients

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 22/01/2026

Claude code is surprisingly good at sanity checking AWS ParallelCluster HPC config files. When paired with the MCP that queries instances.vantage.sh it can validate ec2 server config and even provide summarized cost updates on what each compute node config change will cost.

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 18/01/2026

Timelapse from the volunteer wood bank splitting session. 24 cords cut and split. Goal is to get to 80 cords this year. Lots more trees on the way so clearing the current pile of rounds was a huge milestone.

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 14/01/2026

Cory with another banger. Coding a rude agentic AI responder to the marketers overusing mail campaign automation. His AI Platypus named Billie can reply rudely in his place

lastweekinaws.com

I Hope This Email Finds You Before I Do

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 24/12/2025

TImelapse Art: Idiot on Tractor, 2025

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 13/12/2025

I lit myself and the tractor up to be super high viz for the trip, heh

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 13/12/2025

Timelapse of the drive to the wood bank. First time I’ve taken a tractor on open road

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 13/12/2025

Been volunteering at a new local firewood bank in Bethel, ME that is just gettting off the ground. Drove our tractor there 6mi over main roads which was a first. This is a Timelapse of the “rounds crew” who saw full length trees into rounds. The wood splitter teams than process the rounds.

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 15/11/2025

Someome awesome is feeding our little free library box with these handouts

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Reposted by Chris Dagdigian

Tobias Mann @tobiasmann.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

This was a fun review. I don't think folks realize how big a deal the DGX Spark is. A year ago an #Nvidia #workstation with 128GB+ of VRAM cost tens of thousands of dollars. Is it better than AMD's Strix Halo? Now that's the real question. #DGXSpark #AI www.theregister.com/2025/10/14/d...

theregister.com

DGX Spark Nvidia's desktop supercomputer: first look

hands on: This relatively-affordable AI workstation isn’t about going fast; it’s about doing everything well enough

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 14/10/2025

Used the US long holiday weekend to run #AWS #ParallelCluster build-pipeline and cluster deploy through a logging squid HTTP proxy to document internet destinations used -- this helps set firewall rules for orgs that block egress by default in research VPCs

bioteam.net

ParallelCluster, External Destinations & Firewall Rules - BioTeam

When Internet egress is blocked by default inside your cloud environment, what external sites and destinations need to be allowed for AWS Parallelcluster?

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 07/08/2025

any #AWS #HPC folks familiar with the managed PCS service who can confirm that when using AWS PCS you can't configure Slurm to be aware of software licenses? Adding license at CLI does not persist & API guide seems to confirm that "SlurmCustomSetting" does not support the "License" param ...

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 05/08/2025

Mural progress. West Bethel, Maine

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 28/06/2025

... but not as much money as owning and depreciating premise HPC and storage and running those workloads in a colo or on-prem. It's the monthly cloud charges for provisioned storage that are killers at petabyte+ scale

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 28/06/2025

Specific win in my niche is for CroyoEM where it is common to ingest & persist petabytes of data but only run analytical pipelines during certain defined periods. Keeping data in standard tier S3 storage class and only creating a POSIX filesystem (and HPC cluster!) when needed saves lots of $$

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 28/06/2025

biggest thing on-prem: not paying every month for the full raw storage! For PB scale stuff the cloud math is scary. Keeping it in S3 and making lustre "when needed" has become semi viable for certain workloads in my niche. Contorting infra to keep cost down has diminishing returns ...

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 28/06/2025

the link between fsx/lustre & S3 via DRAs is magic - being able to create parallel filesystems off of a bucket or bucket prefix & then persist changes & POSIX stuff into S3 so you can destroy the lustre filesystem when the pipeline completes is transformative. My favorite AWS thing at the moment!

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 28/06/2025

some cryoEM validation runs via cryosparc.com software integrated with #AWS parallelcluster HPC and using an FSX/Lustre parallel filesystem built from S3 input cryodata bucket via Lustre/S3 data repository associations. Can't do that on-prem!

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 24/06/2025

demo pics; former weed grow. all the drywall and insulation was wet, moldy and full of animal droppings. rented scissor lift goes poof this week so we gotta finish up

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 16/06/2025

indoor & outdoor chores this weekend

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 17/05/2025

Dirtwork when weather allowed, indoor demo when rain got too heavy

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 04/05/2025

The maverick hybrid truck was just to be for high MPG errand running and dump runs …. But I needed a rock bucket for the tractor and saw a sweet hydraulic dump trailer on dealer lot…. guess I tow stuff now. Swore I’d never own anything that could tow, hah!

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 29/04/2025

Tractor and mini excavator stuff today

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 21/04/2025

@tgamblin.bsky.social -- thanks for the hint! Changing to curl for downloads was far easier than the other ideas I had

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 19/04/2025

Still the coolest critter thing we’ve found at the Maine spot this year

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 18/04/2025

@techaro.lol users of spack just became collateral damage in the anti AI-scraping wars. All I'm trying to do is use spack.io to compile relion.readthedocs.io/en/release-5... for CryoEM analysis on an HPC cluster. I know this is not your fault of course but wanted to point out an edge case

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 18/04/2025

Found one other #meshtastic node while out on a coffee run today. Three are mine hah

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 12/04/2025

Indoor chores on this rainy and snowy day

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 05/04/2025

western Maine project continues. When this was a gravel pit they piled the good topsoil in one spot but it got overgrown w/ sumac & weeds. Eventually we are gonna rent a big ass screening machine to separate out good dirt from rocks/trash and use the lovely soil for meadow planting & remediation.

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 29/03/2025

The tractor has bucket, forklift & grapple attachments up front and the rear PTO shaft powers a tree shredder, snowblower and drags road grading tools. Excavator has a dig bucket, landscape bucket, stump ripper, rake & posthole augur digger attachments on a quick swap mount. Exciting!

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 29/03/2025

Dirtwork on ~14 acres in western Maine. The excavator joins our 40hp tractor for running tools & implements. It’s gonna be used for trail/meadow building, woods/site cleanup, trenching, tree stump removal, firewood processing etc. The tractor does most of what we need but is large and can’t dig.

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 29/03/2025

Chinese excavators often ship with veg oil instead of hydraulic oil so first thing you do before playing with it is swap ALL the fluids and grease all the fittings. This thing has 26 separate grease couplers

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 29/03/2025

No longer just a “tractor guy” as the Chinese mini excavator arrived. Midlife crisis takes many forms, heh. This is the ECE CTX8012 Pro model. 1.5 ton diesel w/ all the features I wanted like swing boom, aux hydraulics, two speed tracking, expanding tracks & quick hitch

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 22/03/2025

The semi believable backstory I heard was that originally AWS did it to help resellers by hiding client true spend amounts behind barriers. Now everyone agrees it’s spectacularly dumb and they can’t easily change it. Upside is it’s a slam dunk AWS cert exam question heh

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Chris Dagdigian @dagdigian.com · 22/03/2025

So this happened … Mother Nature is lit.

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