Issue 63 – Monday 30th August 2021
Contents
HeadsUp
It’s an old cliché that a week is a long time in politics. Perhaps a new one should be that a day is a long time in Covid. Within 24 hours we were gone from Symonds St. I sometimes think of that half-eaten apple I left on my desk in a distracted moment. But now we are home, in all its varied meanings and locations for us all.
First off, a BIG well done to everyone for so quickly shifting gear (literally and metaphorically) into remote mode again. Some have carried more than others in this process. You know who you are and I’m grateful. I guess we learned so much last year that now an action plan is sort of embedded in our cognitive DNA. It’s no less challenging but at least we know what to do and how to get it done. More or less.
It’s worth remembering that home is not so much our new workplace but rather we’re at home, of necessity, and working from what for many are improvised settings. In other words, we need to be easy on ourselves. It’s an imperfect world at the best of times, but most of all at present.
Second, please find ways to keep in touch with those you ordinarily work most closely with. It’s all those opportunistic corridor and common room conversations that are lost in this DIY working world. We have found a few ways to keep in touch however. Thanks to Patricia, we have virtual morning teas. And Sila has reinstated Friday drinks at 4pm at which we suddenly we know a little more about each other’s dogs, cats and some people’s favourite tipples.
Third, take breaks and look after yourselves as well as whomever you share bubbles with (and I don’t necessarily mean prosecco). After a day of one too many zoom meetings and a later need for Panadol, I recently made a decision: I placed “Walk” as a daily recurrent hour-long commitment in my Outlook calendar.
Wellbeing is a many-spoked wheel so through these weeks, do attend to your chosen combination of physical, mental, social and spiritual needs. And, to the extent that it feels comfortable, please bring wellbeing into supervision conversations with postgraduates. While solitude can be enjoyed, its darker cousin, isolation, can be corrosive to wellbeing.
Just as the Prime Minister insists we can beat the virus as a Team of 5 Million, so too as team of 60 or so, we can surely do this: keep students engaged; maintain our research in whatever way we can, and perhaps most importantly, keep in touch with each other.
Its National Poetry Day as I write (who decides these things?). So, to quote a line from my friend and poet Gregory O’Brien “If we all carry each other/ no one will have to walk”. Let’s find ways to carry each other and carry on over the coming weeks, though scattered across many locations. And let’s look back in years to come and be able to say, “we got there”.
Coming up:
Its now only weeks until the ‘site visit; by our School’s External Review Committee. Ahead of their engagement with us 5th-7th October, you may well be invited to join a roundtable or consultation of some sort. Please avail yourself if asked and regardless, please try not to schedule School meetings and events over those three days so as to optimise our collective participation in this first-in-a-decade review.
Robin Kearns, Acting Head of School
Whakawhanaungatanga – Communities
Upcoming events
Geoscience Society of New Zealand
PhD Proposal – Internal Seminar Series
Publications
More Information
Need to store and share research data? Request Research storage or UoA Dropbox for research
Queries about virtual machines? Virtual machine consult or Nectar Research Cloud?
ResearchHub: connects people, resources, and services -research-hub.auckland.ac.nz
Remote working issues: Please refer to the remote working page. If you do not find the answers to your questions, please log a call on the IT Portal for any IT-related issues or contact the Staff Service Centre for other queries.
Two-factor Authentication : Authy
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/about-us/about-the-university/identity-and-access-management/two-factor-authentication/download-authy-for-desktops.html
YubiKeys work but of course require a USB port.
VPN: Instructions on how to install
VPN, Linux: FortiClient is running fine on Linux. Check the VPN link listed above.
VPN, Mac desktops: (information from April, may be outdated). Students may need IT to make their machines mobile and install FortiClient directly from the website. They will also need to set-up two-factor authentication by downloading an app like “Authy” on their phones and then setting up their University of Auckland account. I suggest people do this part before IT gets to them to make the process faster. To do that, they can use the instructions on this page:
To get a mobile account set up, log a service request or go to one of the service kiosks. It is unclear how this is being done remotely but I am sure this can be done. Please let me Ingo (i.pecher@auckland.ac.nz) know if you have managed to install FortiClient on their macs remotely.
FlexIT and Remote Access
FlexIT is straight-forward for remote access to computing power and programs. Alternatively, check if your project/group or so has a virtual machine. Remote desktop access to specific machines can be set up by IT but may note be reliable. Check the Staff Service Center https://uoaprod.service-now.com/sp.
Remote access is possible to some workstations in the geocomputational lab for research, and on a needs basis. This may be a viable solution for specialized data analysis. Please look into alternatives: It is unclear however, if/how on-site desktops can be maintained, if needed..
FlexIT access and requests: Use the FlexIT form in the IT Portal to request access as a staff member, to ask for an application be added, or to report any issues or faults.
FlexIT, Linux: Please check FlexIT link: https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/students/my-tools/flex-it.html. It does not have any information on Linux but should be useful for “translation”.
Depending on your browser (in particular, Firefox), you also need to do the following, from https://communities.vmware.com/thread/595554.
“…tested with the Horizon 4.8.x and 4.10.x clients and Firefox v64.0. Both are 64bit versions, running on Ubuntu 18.04.1
Download the client from the VMWare Horizon Client for 64-bit Linux
In Firefox, open about:config and click through the warning.
Add a new boolean entry called network.protocol-handler.expose.vmware-view and set the value to false
Create a file called `test.html` somewhere on your computer and put the following in it: test
Open the file in Firefox and click on the link, which should prompt you for a path to open the link.
Select /usr/bin/vmware-view and it should work for future uses! “
(1) was provided by UoA but I think it works with generic software from VMWare as well.
Check with Ingo (i.pecher@auckland.ac.nz) if you run into problems.
Software licenses: Software vendors have relaxed their licensing to allow students to install software at home, rather than relying on Flex IT. There is a running list here https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/students/my-tools/flex-it/install-software.html
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