John Pozadzides
Aug 22 2006, 06:08 PM
One month ago I announced the formation of the new
Folding@HTMLHelp team (# 51056), in support of the
distributed computing program at Stanford University. Researchers at Stanford have devised a unique program which allows individuals to help by running a small application on their PCs at home that runs unobtrusively in the background.
There are nearly 45,000 teams participating in this project with over 1,000,000 PCs processing data. I'm proud to announce that in the past month the Folding@HTMLHelp team has gone from last place to
the top 10% of contributing teams.
Here are some links to current projects and progress to date:
Please take a few minutes to learn more about
Folding@Home and then install the
tiny application which will quietly run in the background when you aren't using your machine. There are versions for Windows, Linux and Mac and you can even set the application to run as a screensaver so you can see it at work.
I believe that the HTMLHelp team can make a greater impact towards finding a cure than any other team! And to help us get started we are going to have some custom team T-shirts created.
The first 500 team members to submit 20 Work Units will receive a team T-shirt! The shirts have not yet been designed, but as soon as we have a prototype we'll post photos for all to drool over. (If you want to submit a design for consideration, please do!) In order to claim your shirt you only need to do two things (other than using team #51056 of course):
- Please make sure that your HTMLHelp Forum user name is the same name you use in the Folding program! If your name is already taken and you choose another name you must reply to this thread to document the user name you've chosen. That will allow us to ensure that someone else doesn't claim your work and also your free shirt!
- Please enter your mailing address into your profile here on the forums. Don't worry, it is only visible to WDG staff, and we will never sell it, give it away or do anything to betray your trust. We just want to send you a shirt!
Thanks for your support! Now lets
get Folding!
John Pozadzides
Nov 24 2006, 03:53 AM
Folks,
Due to the apparant lack of interest from our user community in this program, I'm withdrawing the plan for T-shirts. Without a larger number of participants it simply wouldn't make sense to try to order a bunch of shirts for this project.
Having said that, I am pleased to report that the HTMLHelp Folding Team has managed to move into a ranking of 1,689 out of 46,663 teams. That puts us in the top 3.5% of teams contribuing to this worthwhile cause.
I would still encourage anyone that would like to participate to join us and donate some spare computing power. I can tell you that I've been running the FAH app on my computer in the background for months and it has never interfered with the performance of anything else I've been doing.
John
John Pozadzides
Nov 24 2006, 03:59 AM
Out of curiosity, does anyone have suggestions for how to get more people interested in contributing to this project? What would make it worth people's while?
How about if we had a member group called something like "WDG Folding Team" (linked to the
team page) and move members who contribute into that group so it appears under their name / Avatar?
Darin McGrew
Nov 24 2006, 11:54 AM
This isn't the first "donate spare CPU cycles" program that I've seen. I don't participate because I don't leave my home computer on when I'm not using it, and because I can't install it on my employer's computers (which run 24/7).
Dr Z
Nov 27 2006, 07:50 PM
Quick question to John:
How much internet connection time needed vs CPU "on" time needed?
I can leave my computer on, for allpractical ouroses 24/7! However, I only have a diai-up connection, and my connection time to the internet is very limited.
Please advise.
John Pozadzides
Nov 30 2006, 05:45 PM
QUOTE(Dr Z @ Nov 27 2006, 06:50 PM)
How much internet connection time needed vs CPU "on" time needed?
I can leave my computer on, for allpractical ouroses 24/7! However, I only have a diai-up connection, and my connection time to the internet is very limited.
Dr. Z,
The vast majority of the time the application is not using Internet connectivity. It spends 99% of the time crunching numbers. When it has completed a task it then needs to upload the results and download a new work unit.
I've noticed that on my broadband connection it usually takes only a few seconds to upload or download, so I think we're only talking about +/- 1MB of data each time or something like that? But I can't find the average update size anywhere.
According to the
F@H FAQ:
QUOTE
At this time, there may be problems if your computer is only connected to the Internet sporadically. We are working on better support for these cases. Only the console version currently works at all over a modem connection, and there still may occasionally be a few bugs with that.
So, you would need to install the Console client as opposed to the GUI, and you can find them both on the
download page.
John
Dr Z
Dec 1 2006, 12:16 AM
Thank you John!
I will try to download and do whatever is necessary, as soon as I can get a few spare moments ( as my wife puts it I may have to give up my bathromm privilages!)
I am not being lazy, but would appreciate you lhelping with some steps.... when I sign up where the team "identification" comes up, what to enter. and I remember your note tto sign up with the same user name that of this BBS.
Please advise and/or correct.
Thank you again for your reply
John Pozadzides
Dec 28 2006, 11:54 PM
QUOTE(Dr Z @ Nov 30 2006, 11:16 PM)
I am not being lazy, but would appreciate you lhelping with some steps.... when I sign up where the team "identification" comes up, what to enter. and I remember your note tto sign up with the same user name that of this BBS.
Wow! Sorry, but I just noticed this a month late.
The install is actually quite simple. After you download the application from
here, install it, and launch it you'll have a little red icon in your system tray that looks like a little gear.
Click to view attachmentIf you right click on it and select CONFIGURE the first thing that pops up will be the screen to put your user name and the team number in (51056).
After that, you're all done! At any time you can right click on that little icon and then select STATUS --> TEAM STATISTICS to see how we're doing. The last time I checked we had made it up to 1,500 out of about 47,000 teams. We can certainly use all the help we can get!
Thanks,
John
pandy
Dec 29 2006, 01:55 AM
John, I think dr Z is asking what to enter in the team field. It's 51056, right?
Frederiek
Dec 29 2006, 05:16 AM
QUOTE(pandy @ Dec 29 2006, 07:55 AM)
John, I think dr Z is asking what to enter in the team field. It's 51056, right?
Yep.
Are you folding, Pandy?
For Mac OS X users, go see InCrease (http://calxalot.net/InCrease/ or
http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/16999), a GUI for installing, configuring, monitoring, and controlling the Folding@home command-line client.
Comes in real handy.
pandy
Dec 29 2006, 03:02 PM
Nope, afraid not.
Dr Z
Jan 4 2007, 07:39 PM
Thank you John!
I just downloaded and installed it.
John Pozadzides
Jan 23 2007, 03:55 AM
Just as an FYI.
The Folding team is up to # 1,404 of 47269. This means we've broken the top 3% of teams, but the progress has really slowed. I'm guessing that we're now competing with the other teams that are fairly serious...
John Pozadzides
Apr 16 2007, 11:47 PM
Another update, we're now up to #1186 of 61017, which puts us in the top 1.9% of all teams!
I have to say that Dr. Z is rocking out with 29 WUs so far, but what the heck is up with Frederick?!? 9,000+ points with only 6 work units! Are you running a CRAY or something? Those must be some massive WU's and that must be a heck of a machine you're crunching them on.
John
Frederiek
Apr 17 2007, 09:41 AM
I use Increase on a Mac Mini, which provides me to pause folding temporarily. I just recently changed Mac's, so reinstalled Increase. On my old iMac, I tried things to see what happened, as I'm totally unfamiliar with these terminal-like things. I don't even know what you're talking about when saying "9,000+ points with only 6 work units".
It's been a while now since I last folded, specially when I run several memoryheavy apps at the same time. But, I'll be back as I find this a very good initiative!
John Pozadzides
Apr 17 2007, 11:45 AM
QUOTE(Frederiek @ Apr 17 2007, 09:41 AM)
I don't even know what you're talking about when saying "9,000+ points with only 6 work units".
Well, just take a look at the
team statistics and you'll see that it shows everyone's stats stack ranked. Your stats are way off the chart for some reason.
A work unit is one of the pieces of data that your machine pulls down from the Stanford servers, processes, and then uploads the results. You get a different number of points for each work unit completed based upon the size and complexity of that WU. For example, you might do 3 small Work Units for a total of 500 points, or you might do one medium sized one for the same amount.
If you look at your own numbers, your WU to points ratio is off the chart compared to everyone else! This either means that you have such a fast computer that they are sending you massive WUs to complete, or that your computer is just taking a very long time to complete each WU.
It's possible that you've checked the option in your folding client that says something like "allow receipt of large work units", but I've also got that checked and I haven't see the same results. So, either way it's a mystery. Especially if you're running it on a Mac Mini!
I'm just appreciative that you are participating in this project whenever possible.
Take care,
John
Frederiek
Apr 17 2007, 01:04 PM
I understand what a work unit is and how it works, but not all options on the folding client. I left all options unchanged, as far as I remember. And I don't think I called for any special sized WU either. BTW, all that ran on the iMac, so probably it ran slow. I have hardly run Increase on the Mac Mini yet, just to set it up.
I'm a very careful person, suspicious of any unknown apps on my computer, but I really hope solutions will be found for those illnesses, if not for us, then at least for our children.
Take care, you too
Frederiek
Effovex
Apr 20 2007, 08:47 PM
My stats do not appear to be updating nor counting for the team. I did a huge WU with the console version (250,000 frames) but it wouldn't register my name, so I uninstalled it, and then installed the graphical client. Which appears to be working and using my username, but I've done two WUs and yet my username doesn't even appear on the page.
Effovex
Apr 21 2007, 07:33 AM
Okay, it finally updated. Took a while.
Frederiek
Apr 22 2007, 04:02 AM
Welcome to the folding team, Effovex!
Glad to see long time forum members joining the folding.
Take care.
Frederiek
Apr 23 2007, 11:42 AM
I get the feeling that the team page of folding@home already adds the points before a unit has finished. I looked at the number of total points I had yesterday, with a unit for 1210 points still working. Today, when that unit finished, I got a unit for 1760 points. I then checked the team page again and the difference with yesterday's total was… 1760 points.
Maybe that's how I get this high total of points on so little units. As I lost assigned units when I switched Mac's.
John Pozadzides
Apr 26 2007, 10:42 AM
Me too! That is awesome! and yes, sometimes it can take a little time for the stats to update... and sometimes it even drops WU's.
But I find it really hard to complain to a volunteer organization about not getting my "points". ;-) (Even though I secretly want to.)
John
Frederiek
Apr 27 2007, 03:01 AM
Personally, I don't care about the points. This is not and should not be a competition, the subject of health being too important for that.
Dr Z
Jun 5 2007, 05:23 PM
Aquick note to John...
Recently I bought a laptop also. And finally got a wireless modem (speed is claimed to be equal to DSL). Just downloaded and and installed Version 5.3 on the laptop also. Now I have two computers "folding". By the way the laptop will also be on 24/7 except when in transit, or if a thunder storm is ecpected.
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