December 12th Update

Thought I'd update this for you loyal souls who keep logging on. Thanks for your interest.

Firstly team news. LHC is still AWOL but we should it back in the New Year. Overall the team is slowly but steadily growing and even moving gradually up the rankings, the membership is growing and we have a nice wee community on the forum. In numbers:

Last update 00:45 8th October 2006
This update 23:31 12th December 2006
Total Active Members 215 (+19)
Recent Active Members 106 (+8)
Total Credit 20,808,882 (+3,704,210 =56.1 K/day )
Overall Boinc Place 71st (+2 & more to come)

On the home front my resolve not to tamper with the boinc farm crumbled. I read that the P4-805D was processing power/£ one of the best you could buy and fairly overclockable (it is!) so I bought one [for once PC World was doing a good deal] and what I thought was a suitable LGA775 MoBo. Turned out the MoBo wasn't dual processor compatible so I had to get another one that was. And then of course a 3.2 HT P4 for the board that I'd already bought. Sheesh!

So both my XPs are retired and I've started climbing the rankings again from a low of 540-something to 513 last time I checked. Whoop-dee-doo!

October Musings

Still Split

It's a wee bit frustrating that as soon as we changed our name two of our projects, who had always been reliable in this respectstopped exporting their updates for the benefits of the combined Boinc Statistics sites. As a result TSBT (as we insiders like to refer to The Scottish Boinc Team) is still missing 511K credits from Predictor and 83K from LHC.

That aside the name change has gone swimmingly although the following progress will look a bit sluggish because of the temporarily mislaid 593K.

Last update 01:50 10th September 2006
This update 00:45 8th October 2006
Total Active Members 196 (+1)
Recent Active Members 98 (+1)
Total Credit 17,104,672 (+649,060 =22.4 K/day )
Overall Boinc Place 73rd (-1 but would be +1 without the lost credits)

In fact we are tucking away about 43K per day which for the first time in a long time is significantly more than our rivals "Scotland". Hurrah.

Farm Expansion

Having deretired my XP 3000 I acquired a Mobile XP on ebay to let me make use of an old socket A board and other bits & pieces I have. As a result of this and the revaluing of the BBC trickles I'm managing to hover about 530th in boinc overall. It's tempting to consider how little extra it would take to make me a top 500 contender again. Hmmm... Conroe or cheaper AMD?

Nothing to do with Boinc

Last sunday I saw a red squirrel. This made me happy. Earlier in the day some arsehole broke into my car. This didn't. Funny that.

Hello The Scottish Boinc Team

Well we did it. All but one team - QMC -has been renamed. & BoincStats has got all but 600K of the credit gathered together under the new name. Nobody has left in protest.
So that's a good result so far. Hurrah!

Goodbye Scotland's Seti

The poll closes in about 22 hrs (I really should be asleep) and with no votes so far for the old name it seems sure that tomorrow we will be called something else - almost certainly The Scottish Boinc Team.

Still it feels like evolution not revolution. After all "only" 9 of our 16 millions have been crunched for Seti. We need to acknowledge that other 7 million in the name.

The switch over might be messy so I will note the eve of change stats:

Last update 00:05 29th August 2006
This update 01:50 10th September 2006
Total Active Members 194 (+2)
Recent Active Members 97 (+12!!! all that emailing paid off)
Total Credit 16,455,612 ((+796,387 =72.4 K/day helped by a CPDN/BBC credit recalculation)
Overall Boinc Place 72nd (static but watch out hungarian dudes!)

Scotland's Seti isn't going, just changing and updating but I'll still miss the old name. I feel like a bride on the eve of her marriage - but I'll never find one at this time of night so why bother to think such disgusting thoughts?

Dearie Me is that the Date?

Where does the time go? A shameful seven weeks since I last updated my blog. In my defense I've not been idle.

There's been a fair bit of action on the forum: The name change campaign is in full swing with "The Scottish Boinc Team" currently leading "Scotland's Boinc" & nobody at all opting to keep "Scotland's Seti" which even as a proponent of change I think is a little sad.

I've made a few changes to the website although keeping up with the number of project teams (26 at the last count) to be detailed on the Statistics Page is the sort of challenge that I'm inclined to just avoid.

I've also extended the Boinc Farm by bringing back from retirement an old Athlon XP 3000+ which just needed a PSU & HD to make it useful again. This might slow my decline down the ranks for a little while until I replace everything with Conroes! This gives me 3 cased, & 4 caseless rigs in the main bit of the farm. Just ridiculous - especially in the recent heatwave.

According to Boincstats we lost a great heap of members but I think that this is an accounting artefact. In fact we've gained a few (Hello to Marcus & Dalyplanet) and some long retired members have started crunching again. Particularly welcome was the return after illness of Ian (Buster) Gunn whom I for one had assumed was gone for ever.

Here's how we're doing. Quite well really.

Last update 23:45 6th July 2006
This update 00:05 29th August 2006
Total Active Members 192 (not comparable, something funny on BoincStats)
Recent Active Members 85 (ditto)
Total Credit 15,659,225 ((+1,738,206 =32.7 K/day)
Overall Boinc Place 72nd (+1 and further gains likely)

Merger Off

After a promising start, when a fair head of enthusiasm for a merger built up, Scotland got cold feet: I think a wish to retain identity and autonomy lay behind it rather than the previous mistrust. So the merger is off and we've to work out how to grow on our own. At least we're all back home and our BBC CCE team is up to 35th in the world.
Now the question is what to call ourselves? "Scotland's Boinc" is the early favourite but I quite like the sound of "The Scottish Boinc Team"

Last update 21:00 24th June 2006
This update 23:45 6th July 2006
Total Active Members 206 (+1)
Recent Active Members 101 (static)
Total Credit 13,921,019 ((+507,670)=41.9K/day)
Overall Boinc Place 73rd (static, but World Wide Seti & DPRGI Team Italy are just ahead)

24th June Update - The Merger Begins?

Rowpie's been nagging me to update this so here goes.

Merger negotiations are starting in earnest with Scotland, with our opening gambit being 4 of us moving from the SS BBC CCE team to the Scotland one. This practical demonstration of the benefits of merger has been much better received than any earlier abstract discussion ever was. Maybe in a month or so we will have a single unified Scottish team, with nearly 15 Million credits in the bank and earning about 60,000 per day. If it could be done then we would be a top 50 contender in no time at all.

I can see a lot of emailing and forum posting being involved. So far there has been no serious opposition to the idea of a name change on the forum. The wider membership might be more conservative.

The current team position is

Last update 23:45 25 th May 2006
This update 21:00 24th June 2006
Total Active Members 205 (+5)
Recent Active Members 101 (-14) A bit worrying!
Total Credit 13,413,349 ((+742,581)=24.8K/day)
Overall Boinc Place 73rd (-2)

Obviously lending 172,ooo credits to another team doesn't help the accounts in the short-term!

On the personal crunching front I've set myself the following priorities (don't ask why I just have):
1.Concentrate on BBC CCE. I've got myself in 41st place overall for it and would hope I could maybe make the top 25.
2.Run LHC@Home for 50% of my capacity if work is available.
3. Run Einstein on my slower PCs until my TC for this matches my CPDN TC and the team breaks 1 million.
4.Then run SETI on the slower PCs to see if I can at least make it to the top 20,000.
Overall I'm holding steady at about 540th, which is still top 0.1%.

May 25th Update

Over a month since my last post tsk, tsk!

Anyhow , in that time I upgraded my Boinc Farm with the addition of an AMD Athlon64 Dual Core 4400+! Nice. This has helped halt my decline down the ranks and I'm now dropping about 2 places per week rather than a place per day. I reckon I can keep top 600 for the rest of the year and top 1000 for ever.

The team's doing nicely, holding its own, while not quite managing any major breakthru.

The details are:

Last update 23:55 24 th April 2006
This update 23:45 25th May 2006
Total Active Members 200 (+6)
Recent Active Members 115 (+4)
Total Credit 12,670,768 ((+1,026,042)=33.1K/day)
Overall Boinc Place 71st (-1)

Something that might produce a breakthru would be a merger with the Scotland BBC CCE team. Friendly communication has been established with their leader Ian, who seems to be refreshingly free of the desperate paranoia that afflicts some of his team members.

Snowdog has initiated discussions and a poll on the forum which so far shows that of the few people expressing an interest most of us are broad minded about the prospect of a name change and would like to work with Scotland.

We'll see what happens.

We have lift off!

An unprecedentedly excellent 2 weeks, as you'll see:

Last update 00:15 11 April 2006
This update 23:55 24 th March 2006
Total Active Members 194 (+10)
Recent Active Members 111 (+2)
Total Credit 11,644,726 ((+1,570,178)=112K/day!!!!)
Overall Boinc Place 70th (+3)

Most of this has been because of me becoming founder of Seti & Einstein & so being able to contact members who have maybe been with Scotland's Seti for one or two projects but not others. Most of the people contacted so far have been happy to sign up for the team for all their projects. As well as a significant one off boost this has substantially improved our daily average credit. And there's lots more for me to e-mail yet!

Coming to a truce with the Scotland BBC CCE team has also resulted in some of their members, who doing projects other than the BBC joining us for those projects.

Other people are just joining us from nowhere, which is nice. I suppose success begets success.

Hello to: Colin/Colin Paton, KMLogan, Maitland, RAFF, EvilJedi, dtkirk, leeclose, & anyone-else-I've_missed
Farewell to: No-one!!!

10,000,0000, a Lost Bet, Some Trees & New Foundations

Busy, busy busy!

We passed 10 million credits, which was nice.

I bet the Scotland team of the BBC CPDN Project that they couldn't get a new leader appointed in place of their lost founder. They did and I lost, or at least transferred to a worthy cause, £200 so that trees for life (link right) could restore the carbon fixing glory that was the Caledonian forest.

Inspired by them getting a new leader I managed to get myself appointed leader of our Seti@Home & Einstein teams. Although there is no mechanism for it, it is just a matter of asking the right people nicely.

Meanwhile we go from strength to strength, gaining a member a day, and with many more active members. I've tried to capture the comings and goings, my apologies to anyone I've missed.

Last update 23:40 27th March 2006
This update 00:15 11 April 2006
Total Active Members 184 (+10)
Recent Active Members 109 (+14)
Total Credit 10,074,548 ((+382,276)=27.3K/day)
Overall Boinc Place 73rd (-1)

Hello to: Paul, Greenglen, marineris, ScB, Sheridon, ShazzaDouglas/Lady Shaz, Boris mk2, Alex Ball, BadgerWI, dad, Sammy, Paul, Tony Pattinson, sQuonk,
Farewell to: Kevin Dawe, SSGlobalUnion,

Update 27th March

Last update 23:15hrs 9th March 2006
This update 23:40 27th March 2006
Total Active Members 174 (+3)
Recent Active Members 95 (+7)
Total Credit 9,692,272 ((+385,335)=21.4K/day)
Overall Boinc Place 72th (static)

Sorry about the delay since the last entry but as the forum has begun to take off that has kept me busy. If you've not tried the forum get there now and sign up. Reading my occasional ravings is all very well but it's not real communication! As you can see all the recent activity has been very helpful in building the team again. There has been a modest increase in the total members but the number of people active in the last month has risen quite significantly. By the way don't worry about the apparent drop in daily productivity - this is just because SETI, our biggest project hasn't updated it's stats in 2 days - it happens.

A new project is the BBC Climate Change Experiment. As far as I can see this is good old fashioned Climate Prediction Boinc sexed up to appeal to the telly watching masses: Elitist prejudices aside, there is nothing wrong with that if it gets people interested in distributed computing & indeed the project is proving very popular. We noticed that a team called "Scotland" had been set up and was doing quite well. Now it seems a shame to have rival Scottish teams splitting the Scottish effort so I visited the BBC CCE forum and suggested a merger. This innocent proposal proved to be as popular as a turd in a swimming pool and I got thoroughly flamed.

Having had the hand of friendship savagely hacked off I did set up a Scotland's Seti team for this project which you can join or not (please don't get angry it's just an option).

Who'd be a spammer?

Tonight I've been mainly typing addresses into my Outlook Express address book.
I got over 50 addresses from the Einstein@Home team website -as team founder I can see such stuff- and with way too much fiddly cutting & pasting made a group. I then composed an inspirational e-mail and pressed the send button.
Bums! My server rejected the message on the grounds of "too many recipients". It doesn't like any more than 12 (c'mon, I'd have to be a really ambitionless spammer to want to spam just 13 people). However after lots more cutting and pasting I made 5 groups and finally sent my message 5 times. You may have got it. Hopefully lots of lapsed members will have also and will flock back to us like lost sheep redeemed.
So now, before bed, I will update the website at last.

We've got a forum!

Snowdog has come to the rescue and set us up a splendid new forum -the link is on the right. So rejoice, sign up and start communicating as if we weren't all Autistic Spectrum Disorder geeky types!
I'll revamp the website to make this, very welcome, development central to our efforts sometime very soon.

Onwards & Upwards-ish.

Last update 23:55hrs 1st March 2006
This update 23:15hrs 9th March 2006
Total Active Members 171 (+1)
Recent Active Members 88 (+1)
Total Credit 9,306,937 ((+185,354)=23K/day)
Overall Boinc Place 72th (-2)

As predicted, we've slipped back a bit, not because we're doing badly, but just because a couple of other teams have powered past us: I don't anticipate being overtaken by anyone else before we hit 10 million. We could, with only a marginal raising of our game, even overtake World Wide Seti. Anyhow, it's the taking part that counts, and we're certainly doing that.

Thanks to FlyingfocRS, a Scotland's Seti stalwart of old, who has become the third member of uFluids team, this, the youngest of our teams, is now the highest placed (albeit against a meagre field) in 39th place.

T

March Update

As a new month, and a new season if you believe the Met Office, dawns the team stands as follows:

Last update 23:00hrs 24th Feb 2006
This update 23:55hrs 1st March 2006
Total Active Members 170 (+1)
Recent Active Members 87 (-3)
Total Credit 9,121,583 ((+104,796)=21K/day)
Overall Boinc Place 70th (static)

So, healthy enough. We still have a trickle of new members and are holding our own in 70th.

Without a recruitment drive, people and machines, we might expect to slip a little over the next few months, maybe to about 80th. This is because by and large we were early switchers from Seti Classic to Boinc. Now the big hitting teams have been forced to make the switch they are beginning to overtake us.

It's a bit like my own crunching rankings: I bailed out of S@H in about 1970th place, then quickly rose to 214th for Boinc but since then I have, despite gradually increasing my productivity, sank to 450th. My RAC placing is 919th (and that's with my friends' Sempron doing it's "burn in test") so my long term goal is to hold on to a top 1000 placing.

As regards uFluids, I finally made the top 100 (98th) and the team (all 2 of us) are 42nd. One for Hitch-hiker's Guide fans to savour.

The message of the post is RECRUIT!! Scotland's Seti Needs You. I'm off to find the e-mail addresses of inactive members to bully them into getting going again. You do what you can.

Latest Score = Nine Million

Well done everybody. We made it to 9 million and will soon be in 8 figures. We continue to accrue new personnel. The details are below;

Last update 23:40hrs 16th Feb 2006
This update 23:00hrs 24th Feb 2006
Total Active Members 169 (+4)
Recent Active Members 90 (+3)
Total Credit 9,016,787 ((+177,750)=22K/day)
Overall Boinc Place 70th (static)

My own Boinc farm has been augmented by a Sempron 3100+which I've built for a couple of friends and will be testing for a few days. Call me a sad geeky git, I'll not deny it, but there are few pleasures like slotting together various bits and finding that you've successfully brought another computer into the world.

On a less satisfying note, my internet car selling has all turned a bit sour. The buyer, who is in the motor trade, now claims that the car, which he inspected & drove 500 miles home, and on which I had spent nearly £500 making sure that the body work was as good as new, has body work defects which, "if I'd spotted them at the time I'd have walked away", and "really it should cost £1800 to sort out but my mate will put it right for £300". None of these however show up on the photographs that I've invited him to send me as "it's too shiney!" All of which invites a four word reply, making condensed but witty metaphorical reference to coitus, travel & mortality, but which I have so far resisted in favour of civilised negotiation.

Finally I'm a wee bit dissapointed to see that my blog is only getting a couple of hits per day. Still, given the number of Blogs around it was probably unrealistic to expect this one, however exquisite my insights into distributed computing, and, however exciting the other meagre glimpses of my life I offer you, to become required cult reading overnight. C'est le internet!

I've got a counter!

Like I say, I've got a counter. Puerile, but it makes me happy!

You'll be pleased to hear that my car selling exploits went off happily. The man gave me a huge wad of notes that triggered the "Excuse me for asking, but are you a drug dealer or other gangster, sir?" script when eventually I could find a still functioning branch of the Clydesdale Bank (on-line banking is great but of limited use when you want to unburden yourself of an armfull of low denomination notes). By the way, "No I've just sold a car for cash." is quite a good reply, especially if you are a drug dealer or other gangster.

The team is doing not badly and acquiring members somehow - another 3 since the last post. Nice!

Update 16th Feb

Okay-dokay, here's where we are compared to where we were:

Last update 00:00hrs 7th Feb 2006
This update 23:40hrs 16th Feb 2006
Total Active Members 165 (+2)
Recent Active Members 87 (-3)
Total Credit 8,839,037 ((+259,992)=26K/day)
Overall Boinc Place 70th (static)

So the good news is that more people are joining the team (welcome, whoever you are) but the bad news is that some members, while not leaving the team , are ceasing to be active crunchers.

On the personal crunching front, I had a wee embarassmentette when a 3.06 Hyperthreading P4 CPU I bought on eBay to replace a 2.4 NonHT P4 turned out to be for laptops only and so was FAU. That'll teach me to read the adverts properly.

However, this eBaying disappointment was offset by selling my car for £5710. So I'm off to the airport tomorrow to meet a a bloke from 500 miles away who wants to pay a huge amount in cash for a car he's never even seen: I can only assume that he is; (a) a money launderer; (b) a counterfeiter; or (c) has more faith in human nature than a cynical old git like me.

State of the Team Feb '06 (Psst...Wanna Buy a Used Car?)

Just to move briefly off-topic, and steering dangerously close to self interest, I've just embarked on my biggest internet adventure yet, trying to sell a moderately valuable car on e-Bay. (Follow the link on the right if you're interested.) Last time I tried anything like this it was a knackered old Fiesta on QXL (you're probably too young to remember them) and the dodgy geezer that won it never paid up. Hopefully e-Bay 2006 has rather more robust procedures than QXL 2000.

Boinc-wise the team plods on having settled into 70th place which, with the current members and productivity is roughly where we will be for a while. This isn't bad but we could do better. In order to boost our profile I've asked for links to our sites to be added to the official Boinc Website links page.

I've not quite given up on u-Fluids yet but am only running it half time on one PC. Even so I've got to 134th place and the team is up to 50th. It's still only Snowdog and me in the team. This may be understandable & wise considering the problems I've had.

To return to the note of ego-centricity on which I started this I've renamed the Blog in my honour, because I want to & I can, basically.

Finally I've not the hang of tables so here are some very brief facts about the state of the team as of now (nb recent = the last month):

00:00hrs 7th Feb 2006
Total Active Members 163
Recent Active Members 90
Total Credit 8,579,045

I will try & update this and comment on changes every few weeks.

Who wants to be a millionaire?

I am!

I crunched my one millionth credit today: the first in the team to do so (although at least 3 others could join me by the end of the year); the 40th in the UK; and the 422nd overall to do so.

Not too shabby or what?

uFluids Dissappointment

I'm surging up the uFluids ranks (top 400 already & dragged the team, ie Snowdog & moi, up 19 places to 66th) so I should be pleased. But I'm not, as my overall prodctivity has plummeted from about 3000/day to 1200/day.
Now, some of this is due to to me having quite a lot of credit pending for E@H as well as uFluids (nearly all of this should be allocated to me in due course, although now I remind myself, Predictor@Home has owed me 1300 credits for months now, grr...). The main problem, however, is that the uFluids program just doesn't seem to work properly on some of my machines.
What seems to be happening is that some workunits are completing and disappearing and I get neither credit nor pending credit. My computers divide clearly into the produce and produce-nots so as a preliminary measure I'm detachng the program on the latter, and will be watching the others carefully.
Anyway, with my productivity restored I hopefully will become a boinc millionaire tomorrow. :-)

uFluids Update

So far so good.
I got joined up & got some work without any hassle (not always easy with the smaller projects). After less than a day & running the project part time I've got 157 credits (twice as much pending) and lie in 1169th place (admittedly out of 1591 productive users). The team's up 1 spot to 85th as well.

Lets see if I can make the top 100 within a week! Or would that just be showing off?

uFluids Project

I've probably risen as far in Einstein (85th) and CPDN (162nd, I used to be 74th you know) as I'm going to so I think I will add to my portfolio the uFluids project. This is one of the smaller projects. So far the only member of the Scotland's Seti team is Snowdog. On his own he has brought the team to 86th place with 2086 credits. It shouldn't be be too hard to make rapid progress up the ranks in a small scale newish project, so come on give it a go. The project URL is http://www.ufluids.net//

State of the Team 22 Jan 06

Hmm....

Just tried to do a post setting out a few stats in tabular form about the team. Looked fine until I previewed it when it became obvious that this post editor thing is WYSIWYG-NOT. Totally unreadable so I'll give up for tonight. Any advice on getting tables into these things?

It works.

Thanks to all those kind enough to have bothered to visit the site & especially comment on the blog.
News-wise Scotland's Seti have passed the 8,000,000 CS mark although we've slipped back to 67th place. Which is still pretty good out of over 39000 teams: In particular we are one of few teams to be top 100 for all 4 main Boinc Projects).
Now I know I've got an audience I'll set to building the under construction pages and also get advertising the team.

Happy New Year/Happy New Website

The new website is launched on time and fairly complete. Hope you like it, or at least see it. I await comments with baited doodah.