Sunday 01/12/02

The xylus 500 has been updated with a nice increase in the output from the 330 active members in the top 500, going up by nearly 11,000 points.

EM3 version 2.2.6 is out.

Electron Microscope III v2.2.6(Update)

Fixed issue with new beta client 3.24
Improved protein graph display
Queue.dat file version displayed now

This is mostly a bug fix release. Stanford added 16 more bytes to the 3.2x queue.dat file structure which EM III reads. EM now understands the new structure and will display it properly. The problems Linux users were seeing should also be gone. Please let me know ASAP if your Linux box does not display properly on EM III.

I improved the protein graph display as it spent a lot of time doing things it didn't have to. I never went back and revisited this code until it was pointed out that it needed some attention. You can also now grab the middle button and get a live update scroll as you move the bar up and down. I also made the bar solid instead of progressive vertical bars. I think it displays better.

When displaying the information in the queue.dat file, I added another field that shows the version number. This may help when trying to determine what may be causing a problem.

Get it here: http://www.em-dc.com
 

The generosity of leonard has enabled looktall to fold that little bit harder. An almost complete PC was surplus to leonards' needs and he wanted to give it away to someone who could give it a good home and dedicate it to the cause. Of course it was just the thing that looktall was looking for and quickly put his hand up. Here is what looktall had to say today after setting up his new folding machine...

some of you may not be aware of leonard's amazing offer in this thread, so i thought i'd bring it to your attention.

i now have a second (dedicated) folding boxen.
a PIII 450. that may not sound like much, but for someone to give an almost complete PC to a total stranger based purely on the fact that we both fold is an incredibly generous thing to do.
and is something we should try and do more of.

i remember a thread awhile back about having a folding trade type thing going, where those who had some spare parts would donate to those that needed them to get boxen up and running.
that idea seems to have disappeared.
maybe we could use leonard's thoughtful generosity as an example and try and get some more part's giving happening.

thanks again leonard

Update: I have just received a PM from Tori Lee nominating leonard for a Folding Dedication Award and rightly so. I hereby present to leonard a Overclockers Australia Folding Dedication Award, well done mate.

Carrying on the theme of generosity if you have any bits lying around that could be useful to someone else on the Folding team or if you need a few bits to complete another folding machine post in the Folding Exchange. Team spirit and friendship is what got us where we are today and this is just one example so lets build on this and you never know it could be your turn to do someone a favour.

Go ahead, make someone's day.

Thanks to Mr Grimm for pointing out this Fold Monster over at oc.com. Its very impressive and well made, just the thing to get your stats moving at a rapid rate.

I have just had confirmation from petercr that we now have our youngest ever folder on the team. His daughter of almost 4 weeks of age has taken up the cause and has her very own folding machine crunching away. So look out for joannarose in the stats to keep you older ones honest. On the subject of age lets find out how old we all are with this poll.

Monday 02/12/02

On the Google search page for folding@home we have moved up to 7th from 9th last month.

Some more interesting facts from the pages of the Folding Club. We have had 376 members promoted to a new club at least once in the past 3 months.

The Folding Exchange has gathered a bit of momentum since yesterday with a few offers of surplus stuff that folks have lying around. Its all going to a good cause so if you can help someone out lets us now.

TheWeatherMan has released his EM Web Server. Which is a nifty little program that allows you to view what's happening with your folding at home over the internet or from another computer on your network. I made up a page called index.html with links to the pages that I wanted to view, such as curentstats.html and allstats.html pictured below. Well done Larry, another great program from the house of EM-DC.

Electron Microscope Web Server v1.0 (release)

What is EM Web Server? It is a down and dirty, quick and easy personal server that you can launch at any time that makes a folder on your computer visible to others on the Internet who have a browser. You can set up a web page in any folder on your hard drive, or even a network drive, add files for downloading, links, etc. and push a button. Your web folder is immediately available to anyone you give the IP address and port number to. Saves a lot of hassle when you want to be able to post temporary files or pictures... just about anything.

EM Web Server was written specifically to allow a person using Electron Microscope III, to track Folding at Home clients from anywhere an internet connection and a browser is available, but it can be used for any web service activity. {You can use it to serve up your KDFold stats pages also.) It is easy to check on the status of folding clients by using a browser to access the auto generated stats files using the newest features in EM III. No fancy programs or setups. It's really stupid simple... just the way I like it.

EM Web Server is available now. The basic version can transfer HTML pages, gif and jpg pictures, and text files from only the folder EM Server is running in. You can choose any port you like. The default port should work fine for most people, but if you don't want to specify a port number when using a browser, you can just put 80 in the box for the server port. Once started, your IP address is shown in the Title Bar of the Server. If you are behind a proxy server or a router and you have an internally designated IP address, you will have to set the proxy server or router up so that your IP address and your port selection for the server have the incoming information transferred to it, and information has to be able to go both ways (in and out). This also means you need to know your real IP address. This is a safety feature to try and keep people from using this program as a trojan as the registered version does have stealth capabilities. More on that stuff when I finish the detailed instructions. The current instructions are very basic.

Check it out here: http://www.em-dc.com/emserver/
 

Tuesday 03/12/02

Plext hits the RedLine:

Plext now has the red line in the Top 1000 Users which means he is now the highest producer for the past week for an individual disregarding the anonymous and noname listing. At my last check he had 633 CPUs to his name , almost one third of the way to his target of 2000 CPUs. Maybe Santa can bring Plext the blue line for Christmas.

 

 

 

50K race:

The race between Norgs and z2177199 is going to be a close one. Norgs has 49,804 points and z has 43,389 and is closing fast at the rate of 3,000 points a week. If things stay the same z should just pip Norgs and reach 50k on the 18th of this month leaving Norgs about 80 points short.

 

 

Quick Stat No 357:

	Active CPUs	Points per CPU per week
[H]:	2799	40.04
OCAU:	2666	23.63
OC:	1716	36.83

 Do OCAU members run more clients per CPU than the other 2 teams or do we have a lot slower CPUs?

The gap is closing:

The gap in weekly production between ourselves and oc.com has narrowed to less than 1000 points for the week. If we keep this pace up in just a couple of days we will have the black line back on Statsman.

 

How old Poll:

The How old are you poll is coming along nicely with 168 votes so far.

0 to 20: 61 votes

20 to 40: 90 votes

40 to 60: 17 votes

BTW: Our special little folder joannarose has 43.15 points and is currently in 1588th position at 21:00 WST.

 

Folding Club News:

I have added a 1250 Club to the Folding clubs to reduce the gap between the 1000 and 1500 clubs to 250 points. A day after doing this its a big welcome to Whirlpool who become the first member to sit at the 1250 bar. Darkness has made new badges for the 1250 and 1500 clubs in a nice new colour.

 

Stats AWOL:

The stats server was down earlier today, here is Vijays' explanation

The stats have overloaded the web server and we've been trying to work a fix over the Thanksgiving holiday. We think we know the issue and have made a fix for now.

Thanks,
 

Wedneday 04/12/02

New stats pages:

There are new simplified stats pages over at Stanford along with some new stats mirror to ease the load on the stats servers. Hopefully this will cure the problems we have had with the stats over the past few weeks. Here is a snip from the folding-Community forums and Vijay's announcement...

We've made some simpler team stats pages. You can find them at

http://folding.stanford.edu/teamstats/team1.html

http://folding.stanford.edu/teamstats/team1.txt

(replace the "1" with your team # -- these are for the Pande Lab stats as an example). These will be updated every 6 hours and we will make pages for the top 500 teams. I hope these work well. They should be very fast and will *GREATLY* lighten the load on our servers. If you think they work well, we'll put links on the main site.
Thanks,

Also this announcement about the mirrors...

We also put up 2 more stats mirror servers (so 3 mirrors in all now, 1 for Google and 2 for non-Google, plus the original). We'll add more stats servers as needed to handle the load, but I think this should be ok. We're getting up 3 more just in case. The new servers plus the new team pages should help a lot.

These are our team pages, I have added these to the stats links on this page.

html- http://folding.stanford.edu/teamstats/team24.html

text - http://folding.stanford.edu/teamstats/team24.txt

Note: These new pages update every six hours at these times 5am:11am:5pm:11pm WST.

Friday 06/12/02

New stats bar additions:

I have added a Top 25 Overall points scores and a Team stats section and changed the frames around a bit.

Sunday 08/12/02

xylus 500:

This weeks Top 500 has been updated. xylus has added a world ranking column to his report.

Wednesday 11/12/02

We here in the house of Folding do our little bit for humanity for free and one day hopefully in the not to distant future we can say that we helped find a cure to some dreadful disease.

Production:

Productions levels have never been so high and continue to increase by the day. We are double our production of just one month ago just before the Gromac's hit. A big factor in this increase is  Plext and his house of mega boxen which is currently churning out the points at over 8000 a week. Not to be out done DG has moved into Plexts' slipstream and has just moved into the 6500 PPW club and not to far behind DG is Z on 4000 PPW. Those 3 mega farmers combined are producing more points than the whole team was back in May. As you can see from the activity on the Folding Promotions page everybody is producing at record levels as a result of points friendly proteins and a general increase in available MHz. Keep up the good work and one day we will hopefully be able to make a move on the No1 position again.

Monday 16/12/02

Tuesday 17/12/02

I hereby state that I intend to beat DG to the How??? score
*plext lights fuse and runs off to watch fireworks *

DG never one to back down has replied and has accepted the challenge and is ready to fight....

Fireworks started. I now have to pull all machines from all other projects and work my arse off to get things happening again.

From Feb1 2003 I will donate a weeks worth of production from the home farm (at least 600 points) to the person who has shown (to be adjudged by our illustrious leader) that they are going just that little further for the team.

Sunday 22/12/02

Wednesday 18/12/02

Folding Exchange:

The Folding Exchange is still going strong and has been made a sticky. If you have any surplus computer bits hanging around that may be useful to someone else on the team lets us know what you have, or if you need something to get another folding box up and running don't be shy to ask.

The How?? challenge:

I have put up a little chart on the How??? challenge which will be updated daily. plext sure has a big handicap and needs to come home really fast to hold off DG.

Power to Burn:

Its been a while since we have visited this page over at ARS which compares the different DC teams and the different projects that they are involved in and adds up the combined CPU power for each project.

Rankings are based on LL's 1 Ghz normalized comparisons and 30 day averages
44 genomes = 4.5 folding = 4.0 seti = 1142 RC5 = 100.0 ECCp109

The Folding teams have shot up the rankings since I last looked, but its my guess that the formula hasn't changed for a while and doesn't take in to account the generous nature of the current crop of proteins.
 

Tuesday 24/12/02

The Linux and Windows 3.24 clients are through with testing and can be downloaded from http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html . Thanks for all who helped by testing it and providing feedback. The Macintosh 3.24 client will be released once its ongoing beta is complete.
Below is the final (long) change log. (There are a 2 items that mention that they will start working as we update our servers and start new projects, and this will pick up steam at the new year.)
Enjoy,
Guha

- Benchmarking improved in consistency and uniformity.
- Support for sending a measure to the assignment server of time taken on past work units (a weighted average), to use as a predictor of how large a work unit can be handled. Can view this measure using verbosity 4 after finished units, but AS not using yet.
- If bad arguments given, will exit only after a key press.
- If upon startup, FAHlog.txt exceeds 50Kb and a is to be started, the old one is retained under the name FAHlog-Prev.txt.
- Deadline information included with work (Printed to unitinfo.txt and available in queueinfo). Active units checked for expiration periodically all others checked for expiration at autosend time. Configuration option of ignoring deadline information (to use if system clock is bad -- not just telling incorrect absolute time, but having an incorrect conception of what one second is, for instance) if so desired.
- MyFolding.html page written out by client with useful links (which Linux and Win. console users did not have easy access to before)
- In making request to server for work, inform on whether have units done
waiting to be uploaded to server. If so, servers running new code will
give a new unit instead of giving same (servers will shift over as projects
come up).
- If a work unit is rejected for any reason, server now returns reason
to client, which prints it out. (In this client, and servers will transition
to the new code as projects come online.) If work unit is fatally flawed,
then deleted from queue.
- "Could not transmit unit" statement now also includes date unit was
completed ("Could not transmit unit x (Completed xxxx)").
- Checks for bad URL, port on reception of work unit, deleting it before
even starting work if bad.
- Time stamp on every line of FAHlog.
- Arguments to client printed to log.
- Some log messages modified (like the requested, and deserved, "Thank you"
added!). Some further spacing changes may be desired.
- File "unitinfo.txt" printed and updated, with information and progress
for current work unit. (Had been requested for use by 3rd party people.)
- Client FAHlog output overhauled to use Windows API functions. (Interested
in hearing if you see any change in performance, particularly from those
Win95/98 users who said log froze sometimes.) Log file is locked for
writing by other programs while client running.
- Networking overhaul to give a Configuration option of using whatever proxy settings are used by Internet Explorer.

GUI specific-
- If choose "Ask before networking" in Configuration, will take effect
even on next get work, without restart needed.
- "Status" menu item to launch MyFolding.html.
- "Status" menu item to view queueinfo added.
- Bug fixed where if click off systray menu, menu did not disappear.
- Tool tip on systray icon now gives program status (including work
progress if currently working)
- When move mouse over hyperlink portions of display, mouse icon becomes a hand.
- Bug fixed where if move display, then the links at the bottom of the
display (ticker tape ones) did not always work.
- Menu item ("Status") added to give easy access to Team Stats page, User Stats page, and Logfile.

Console specific-
- Answers to Configuration questions now validated. One letter answers (i.e. "y" or "Y" instead of "yes") allowed.

Friday 27/12/02

Sunday 29/12/02

Monday 30/12/02

Use this program to monitor your Folding@Home console. This screensaver can be used in conjunction with your EM III monitoring program. The screensaver is not designed to take the place of a monitoring program, it is designed to give feedback on your folding progress while providing a nice graphics screen. The screensaver is compatible with Windows 95/98/ME/NT/W2K/XP.

Instructions for use:
Extract the files to your Windows folder.

Go to the screensaver control tab in your Windows property settings.
Select EMSaver.
Press the "Settings" button.
Open the folder where the Folding client exe is installed, usually called FAH3Console.exe. Drag the exe file to the text box and drop it. You can monitor any client on your network or your local drive, the program doesn't care. If you monitor a network client do not have the screensaver launch the program!
If you have Chime installed, you can choose to view the proteins with that program or the EM screensaver will use its own default graphics.
You can download the Chime file here:
http://www.mdli.com/chime/progs/2.6/MDLChime26SP4.exe
Select "Always On Top" for full screen coverage.
Select "Show Mouse Cursor" if you want to manipulate the chime display, or you don't want mouse movements to close the screensaver. Press the Escape Key to exit.
Select "Display Tray Icon" if you want to keep the program running in the background when you are using the computer. You will currently have to right-click the icon to restore the screen if you want to view the window again. A future version will re-activate that screen if you have not used the computer and it would have normally activated the screensaver again.
Select "Launch FAH when Screensaver starts" if you want the screensaver to activate FAH if it isn't already running.
Select "Close FAH when Screensaver closes" if you want the client turned off when the screensaver exits.
Select "Hide FAH when Screensaver starts" if you want that.
Select "Show FAH when Screensaver closes" if you want it restored to view when the Screensaver exits.
You can choose one of the 4 display modes for Chime if you select to use that option. If Chime isn't installed, the program will detect that and turn off that option if you select it and just use the normal API graphics.

You can use the selection for password protection if you want and the EM screensaver will use the standard windows screensaver password you have chosen.

It currently requires one complete frame before time predictions, etc are provided.

Email me if you have issues, comments, suggestions, etc. I don't want to make this program too complicated, so keep that in mind when suggesting things. My Email address is on the EM-DC web site.

Get it here in the download area: http://www.em-dc.com

Enjoy,

Larry

Tuesday 31/12/02

Happy New Year:

This should be the last news post of the year so have a good night and I will see everyone next year for another twelve months of Folding goodness. Good night and Happy New Year.