Monday 05/04/04

This weeks xylus 500 is here.

Friday 09/04/04

Well it has finally happened, we are now out producing the [H]ardOCP team with almost 200 active members less than they have. Over the passed few months we have ramped up quite a bit to cover the loss of plext's usual 120k output, down to 20k now. We now have quite a few more members producing in the 10 to 20k range and of course Brainy and new to the team TEAM_RIOT in the 30k range. All this means our base has grown stronger and if plext returns to his former output that will be the icing on the cake that will help close the gap quickly in our quest for the top folding team once again. It is going to be a long haul to reach the pinnacle but it can be done if we keep on doing what we have been doing over the past few months.

Another interesting development has been the surge made by the oc.com team recently and it is going to be a close tussle between three teams if they can maintain their impressive growth in output.

Congratulations to petercr and wife on the arrival of a beautiful daughter Mia and sister to Joanna. Peter has setup a folding box in Mia's name and she is now folding under Miacr to take over the title of OCAU's youngest folder formally held by joannarose, who now has over 31,000 points to her name.

As threatened previously, my new baby daughter Mia has joined our folding team taking the mantle from her sister Joanna as being the youngest folder. Keep an eye out for Miacr slowly working her way up the stats ladder. Points donations in her name would be more than welcome

Mia was born yesterday (7th April) at 2:20pm, weighing in at 3.8kg (8lb 6oz oldspeak) and 52cm long. Mother, father, baby and folding boxen are all doing well...

Sunday 11/04/04

This weeks xylus 500 is here.

Monday 12/04/04

Sunday 18/04/04

This weeks xylus 500 is here.

Tuesday 20/04/04

Yesterday Vijay made an announcement about readjusting the points system to make things a bit more even between the Tinker and Gromac WU's.  Also the reference machine has gone from a Celeron 500 to a 2.8GHz Pentium 4.

New reference machine for FAH points determination
In the coming week, we will roll out our new points determination system. The advantages are:

1) There will be much more standardization for points and deadlines.

2) The points and deadlines will be determined on a more modern machine (2.8GHz P4), although they will be scaled to match current Gromacs projects.

What is the upshot of all of this? Put simply, Tinker WU points are about to go way up, Gromacs will be mostly the same, and there will be less fluctuation between projects. We take the points in FAH very seriously and try not to make such significant changes without much consideration. Indeed, this is the first change in the history of the project. However, this change is critical to account for changes in FAH donator computer hardware over the last 4 years.

We will post more specific info in the FAQ as we roll out the new points.

Today we have all the above in place with some of the Tinkers increasing in value by 171 points. Only 2 of the Gromacs got adjusted down, p212_villinURE212 decreasing in value by 25 points and p257_NpN decreasing by 12.83 points. Three Gromacs stayed the same value and the rest went up. The total value of the current projects comes to 2295 points. The readjusted values of the projects comes to 4862 points, that's more than a 100% increase in value overall. So expect a big increase in every ones output over next few days, the Folding Clubs are going to get a hammering once again.

There is a bit of confusion about returning WU's that were issued before the new points system came in. Vijay says they will be credited with the new points but some people say that they are still getting the old points. Sungjoo from the Pande Group is looking into it, either way it wont be a problem in a couple days.

the new points will be awarded to WUs that come in after the switch, even if they were assigned before the switch. Points are awarded when they are received and the assign date is not used for credit (other than determining deadlines, etc).

I have made a table with all the old and new values here. The Forum has several threads relating to this here and here and on the Folding@Home News page  There is also new EM3 protein data file available for download here, thanks Larry.

Monday 26/04/04

This weeks xylus 500 is here.