Uhhh...

[altivo]

So yesterday I assisted while the judge went over all the entries in the spinning portion of the gallery show. I'm pretty sure she gave me a nice handful of ribbons, but I'll find out for sure tomorrow when the weavers meet in the gallery for their monthly gathering, a preview of the show, and probably a brief presentation by the judge (at least, they had that last year.)

And... *nibbles hoof* a fashion show. Remember that study group I was in last winter? The one where we designed a garment from the threads up, wove the fabric and sewed the garment? Well, we're doing a fashion show to present our results and I have to model the shirt I made. Now I'm not that clumsy, I'm not worried that I'll trip and fall into the seated crowd or anything like that. I just feel really self-conscious about doing this, even though I'm quite pleased with the shirt itself. I wrote the description for the announcer, I've been shown twice just what we have to do, and I'm still nervous about it. There may be a very large crowd of visitors, even though we didn't particularly publicize the event (which is likely to take all of ten minutes.) Most of the folks in both guilds are friends. I know them pretty well, very well in some cases. I'd trust them with money or possessions or even embarrassing secrets. So why am I worried about walking 50 feet and doing two turns in front of them? I dunno, but I am.

The BOINC/SETI/WCG/Einstein stats are now in my user info for those who are curious, so I'll not mention them here any more unless something really interesting happens (like the overwork burns up a CPU or something.) It does generate heat. With an Alpha and a Pentium 4 running continuously at 90% of capacity rather than idling, my smallish home study is quite warm. Should be good for the winter at least.

Comments

[tinbender.livejournal.com]

Well, we're doing a fashion show to present our results and I have to model the shirt I made.

Don't forget to make your "Blue Steel" face ; )


Good luck!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Ha! I'd have real trouble making my hair do that.

[typographer.livejournal.com]

Are you positive that's not El Tigra?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

No idea, actually. But without it, I survived the experience in any case. I laid awake half the night imagining myself tripping while doing one of those silly turns and falling into someone's lap, but it didn't happen.

[damnbear.livejournal.com]

Wear your horse tail, and imagine yourself nude on parade

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The horse tail would be a conversation maker in this group. Many of them have seen photos of me in fursuit. As for the nude bit, just no. ;p

[dongstyle-ltd.livejournal.com]

You're giving something you know to be a kind of performance, perhaps, and all that entails- they may be your good friends but a performance is something that is judged. That said, not only are you performing but I'm assuming this is something you're not familiar with doing.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's an unfamiliar aspect of performance. I've done lots of musical and theatrical stuff on stage, so you'd think it wouldn't bother me, but for some reason, it does.

[dongstyle-ltd.livejournal.com]

Yeah...the divisions go finer the more experience you have with specialised aspects of performance- and it can be quite surprising at times.

My most familiar performance aspect (as you might know) is music- solo and ensemble performances (both on stage and in the pit). I can relate to how you feel now as I'm reminded of the time where I was somehow dragooned into performing freestyle rap at the school's Battle of the Bands. Man did I almost soil my pants. And I even remember thinking, "It's just performance, it's all...music...and showmanship..."

I was afraid of screwing up and being exposed in an aspect of the trade I was unfamiliar with seeing as mistakes would have been disastrous at the hands of my uninspiring rhyming skills. I guess when it comes to performance, arguably the show still goes on if the performer doesn't drop the semblance of performance.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. You're braver than I. I wouldn't touch rap with a ten foot canoe paddle. ;p

[dongstyle-ltd.livejournal.com]

In any event, may your hooves be sturdy and your footwork solid. You'll be right.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I survived, even got applause. And I didn't even smack anyone with the canoe paddle I was carrying. ;D

[corelog.livejournal.com]

I wish I could give advice on the fashion show, but the truth is that I'm stymied. :) If you are nervous about something like that, I don't think anything I say is going to be the least bit helpful, and will probably just sound inane.

As for BOINC, well, I'm already watching your stats daily now anyways. :) Are you enjoying the results?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm a little frustrated with the stats. I'm accumulating a huge backlog of "pending" credit. One of my machines, with 385 work credits at this point, isn't even appearing in the BAM statistics after a full week.

[corelog.livejournal.com]

Sounds to me like you've fallen victim to cache thieves. :) SETI@home has a lot of trouble with people who grab ten to twenty days of work at a time, out of paranoia that they might--oh no!--get a "no work available" message and their precious crunching machines might sit idle for an hour or two. Of course, grabbing twenty days of work at a time means that BOINC won't report completed credits for an equal amount of time--20 days. :P Or however deep the cache is. And some cache thieves don't complete any of their stored units at all, which means you have to wait for it to time out so the server will reissue the work to somebody else.

My pending backlog has beem rather large for my tastes in the past as well. But it all comes through in the end. As for BAM not showing all your hosts, I don't think it shows all mine either. I haven't figured out why not. :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I figured it was something silly like that. They probably should set limits on downloads, the way CPDN does, or shorter expiration dates, the way WCG does on some things, so as to discourage that sort of attitude. My answer to having no new data available is just to be on more than one project for each machine. Chances are if SETI has no data available, WCG or Einstein does.

The sixth machine finally appeared in the stats this morning. Several files that it processed are indeed stuck in "pending" which no doubt occasioned the delay. BTW, I discovered that you can find out who has the matching file and even send them a nasty e-mail. Not that I've done so, but it's an interesting finding.

[corelog.livejournal.com]

Quite a few people do have "backup projects" on their machines, for when SETI goes down, but many of them really, really hate that. They carp endlessly about it. :P Which is why it does no good to send the others nasty emails--they tend to get uptight and wave around their "right" to make sure their machines are used "productively" (according to their definitions), etc.

Like too much of today's society, I find most people to be too concerned with their "rights" and desires, and not nearly enough concerned about their responsibilities and obligations to society.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That's a side effect of publishing the stats and letting people make it a "competition" or "sporting event". With teams even.

And I do find myself amused by watching my numbers crawl up in the chart. It's strange that I'd be gaining ground so quickly. Evidently a lot of people sign up and then lose interest very soon. Probably those who never report any new work should be dropped out of the tables after a couple of months.

Oh, and I survived my "fashion model" experience OK. It was sort of fun, if not very professional. And no, I didn't bonk anyone with the canoe paddle.

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

Ok, so I am going to ask the dumb blonde horse question. At the end of the day, is there any point to all this number crunching other than it being some geeky computer hobby that is ultimately pointless in it's results?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Most of the BOINC projects do number crunching for legitimate scientific research projects. Some are astronomy or physics, like the hunt for as yet undiscovered pulsars or unrecognized particle traces in accelerator data. Some have medical applications, such as finding new drug compounds that can be used against difficult viruses like HIV or Dengue fever. Some are pure mathematics, proving difficult theorems or finding huge prime numbers that can be used for encryption purposes.

I find it necessary to read the description of each project carefully because I'm not interested in donating my CPU cycles to some drug company that will then use it to reap huge profits at the expense of sick people. Otherwise, I'm perfectly happy to help with astrophysics or mathematical research.

This is the stuff that used to be exclusively the realm of the big, expensive supercomputers. Now it can be distributed to thousands of small computers and processed piecemeal for a much lower cost.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I'm catching up on my missed posts, *giggles as he sees you nibble your hoof* Don't nibble your paffers the stuffing will fall out :)

Sounds like you need some extra cooling :) I suggest a copper core heatsink with aluminium fins with ducted bracket to allow a larger slower rpm fan to increase air speed through the fins. Decent cooling compound perhaps a fan controller to up the speeds in higher ambient temps however I've been a voter of just having fans run full anyway.

The room itself just needs more air flow through it to remove that extra heat, extractors to outside is a ticket :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The Intel machine has all that. The Alpha has an aluminum heatsink. Both have noisy fans. I hate fan noise.