Wet white stuff

[altivo]

Not nine inches as predicted, but maybe there's five new inches of very wet snow on the ground. Allowing for the amount of it that melted into slush during the first few hours, perhaps the total would have been seven or so if it hadn't been so warm. In any case, it's a mess again. The sticky snow clings to everything, so trees and shrubs are quite pretty. Walking and driving in it, though, is unspeakable.

My BOINC score broke the 100,000 point barrier yesterday, apparently. Still clunking along.

In other geek news, I succeeded in getting Echolink to work as of yesterday. This means, in theory, that I am no longer as isolated from internet audio connections. Skype doesn't work over my tiny bandwidth, but Echolink does. It's a network limited to licensed radio amateurs only, but does offer quite a lot of flexibility. I can listen in to repeaters and audio conferences anywhere that there's an Echolink node, and I can talk back too. Provided, that is, I can get stupid Windows to recognize my headset. It does that on one out of two bootups it seems. The software of course is Windows only, so I have to run XP under VMware in order to use it. After sufficient fiddling to get all the connections working, then everything is functional.

Comments

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

BOINC?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You know, SETI @ Home and all the other similar projects? BOINC is the software shell that manages them.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

Ah. The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That's the one, though sometimes I think it should stand for Berkeley Openly Inferior Network Crasher. There are serious flaws in the thing, some of them apparently recently introduced as "features."

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

It's how scientific progress goes...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Or at least did go until Bill Watterson quit drawing Calvin and Hobbes.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

A dark day for all us humourous comic lovers.

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

Interesting... Mine is at 10,000 but I haven't been running it all that long (since Dec or something). What project are you crunching?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm actively running four projects: SETI@Home, FightAIDS@Home, SIMAP, and Cosmology@Home. I've tried Climate Prediction Net but it fails on every machine I have. I ran Einstein@Home for a while, but it eats large amounts of processor time and delivers paltry credit for the work done. I'm signed up for APS@home but they haven't handed out any work since last October.

I started running BOINC in late September, after acquiring those Alpha servers. I currently have the projects distributed over six machines, the two Alphas being almost entirely dedicated to BOINC, and the other four are Intel machines of varying ages and speeds, running Linux and sharing time with other work.

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

That's quite a spread on the BOINC projects. Mike and I are both running the Rosetta@home protein folding project as it's one of those that can have some real-world benefits (cure me you bastids!) Soon... another rant on priorities. When I think of how many PS3's and other comps that are out there doing basically nothing it makes me want to vomit.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/02/17/sciconsole117.xml

[altivo.livejournal.com]

SIMAP is a protein folding project as well. It runs on the Alphas, while Rosetta does not. Most of the boinc projects only create software for Intel-based machines running Windows or Linux. Nothing for FreeBSD, almost nothing for Macintosh. And very few have anything for the Alpha processor, though with optimized code it crunches numbers like something with three times the clock speed.

For instance, my slower Alpha has a 486 MHz clock rate. The software apparently assumes it will run at the same speed as a 486 MHz Pentium would. Wrong, guys. It finishes work units in less than half the estimated time. Not that this matters, except that boinc always thinks it is overcommitted and therefore won't download additional work until it literally runs out. Once a single workunit is running, I have to suspend it in order to convince boinc to download a second one. And it's wasteful to have only one workunit, because it will finish at some time when the dialup is down and it can't get another right away.

So the Alphas run SETI, SIMAP, and APS (if that project ever has work to distribute again.) The Intels run FAAH instead of APS. Only one machine runs Cosmology, which has a buggy time estimator and tends to hang things up.

[cozycabbage.livejournal.com]

...Tell me: am I a bad person, that I saw "Wet white stuff" and "Not nine inches as predicted..." and thought very naughty things?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I can't tell you that. I can only tell you that I'm innocent enough not to have thought of it.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Although you are quite the dark horse ;)

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

When it's winter here the ol Computers will be firing up to keep things warm ;)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I don't recommend burning computers to keep warm. For one thing, they don't smell very good.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

You'd be surprised how quickly you get used to the pong :)