While I have Internet connection I wanted to post an update.
I doubt many people will read this but that doesn't bother me in the slightest. I'm not the best writer, I don't construct a structure and my vocabulary is less than stella. If you are here, still reading and none of that bothers you. Please continue to do so :¬)
In my first post I mentioned that I am a gamer and as yet I havn't really spoken about that. Unfortunatly (or prehaps fortunatly) this post isn't going to really focus on that passion of mine but I feel it's very over due and so I feel I should touch on it just a little.
When starting this blog I didn't really have a focus for it, the only intention was to give myself a 'platform' if you will. Seeing as I do have a strong passion for gameing I figured it would manifest on here much sooner, but it is what it is.
Being on the wrong side of 29 I have been around video games for many years. There were probably beeps and bops around my ears before I can remember and with such an environment, unlike some, I cannot remmeber the first game I played. It had to be mid to late 80s and their are strong chances it was either on the Atari 2600 or the Acorn BBC Master. Those eight bit roots stuch with me for a good handful fo years which has progressed fiarly smoothly to my current gaming platform which is the Xbox 360. I do also have a decent PC that I could game on but folding is the priorety for that machine at the moment.
- Mini segue - The team I fold for Redline @ OC3D (98860) has had a currrent boost in numbers which is great and we are climbing the stats really impressivly for a small team. I also cracked 10 million points myself this past week.
I havn't actually played that many games or put much time into the ones I have played this year which is why this blog has thus far been void of any gaming commentary.
Now, moving on from one type of games to another, the Olympic games. The Olympics is currently going on in my home country (the UK for those reading this in the future) and I have to say, team Great Britain is doing much better than I ever expected.
Back in my memories of the 80s and 90s (early 90s at least) being part of Great Britain seemed to be something special. I was only quite young but it felt like we were a country that others looked to for insperation. Not all people from all countrys at all times, but Great Britain felt like it had a spark that helped push us forward even though things wern't always going 100% well on our own soil.
Moving forward, we lost that spark, and with it our showing at international events slipped to the way side.
Now, even during a horrible recession, not only has this contry put on a world show and not embarrassed itself (nothing has fallen apart as far as I know) but our athletes and all the people that support them have pulled out the stops and put out some amazing results.
Before the Beijing Olymics I could only see 'us' (Team GB) as being a total disaster at our home Olympics. Things started to look up a little then but I didn't have much hope of an impressive showing. The previous ten or so years had beaten the optimisum right out of me.
I am glad to say I was wrong. Very wrong. As I type this, Team GB is third on the medals table and by such a margin that I think that place is safely ours. This really does lift my spirits, more than I would have thought something like that ever could.
If even just a small percent of people of the UK have been effected in a similar way, Great Britian is going to be a better place to live over the coming years. Some national pride is restored and prehaps some people will be motivated to chase their dreams.
So, Thank you Team GB. To all those envolved, you have made this a better place to live for at least one person on our shores and with any hope many, many more.
Sunday, 5 August 2012
Thursday, 5 July 2012
It has been a while since I last put a post up here and it is looking like my internet access will be limited in the near future I wanted to get something up here while I could.
The past few months have consisted of lifes usual ups and downs, some of the downs being of the rarer variety but certainly not unique.
I have continued to fold (see my previous post) on an almost constant basis and I have had my fair share of brain melting thoughts (again, see a previous post). Today had me thinking about the Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse, no idea where that came from. Not that it could lead to any particular mind bending sequence of thoughts, given their biblical origin.
Anyway, this is just me touching base.
The past few months have consisted of lifes usual ups and downs, some of the downs being of the rarer variety but certainly not unique.
I have continued to fold (see my previous post) on an almost constant basis and I have had my fair share of brain melting thoughts (again, see a previous post). Today had me thinking about the Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse, no idea where that came from. Not that it could lead to any particular mind bending sequence of thoughts, given their biblical origin.
Anyway, this is just me touching base.
Monday, 19 March 2012
The ramblings of my mind
It has been a little while since I last posted but while one of my (often daily) musings I figured this would be a great time to empty some of my mind onto my blog.
So......
Depending on education (or maybe how many episodes of QI watched) you may or may not know that two objects moving at different speeds do not keep time at the same rate relative to each other. Gravity has the same effect, the closer object to a gravitational pull keeps time at a different rate to one further away.
It goes like this.
Faster movement = slower time (from the stationary or slower relative space)
Higher gravity = slower time (see above)
So everyone on Earth is moving through space. Both through the Earth spinning on its axis and the Earth moving round the Sun. I imagine the solar system is moving relative to the centre point of the galaxy and the galaxy itself is moving through .. 'wider' space.
Where in the universe is point zero. With no movement and no gravitational pull. Is it the centre point or are there numerous 'sweet spots'. My initial instinct is that there is only one point as everything else must be moving..... I dunno more thought on that another day.
At this point zero what speed does time pass at compared to 'earth time'. No movement and no gravity, it should be quicker... but by how much.
These are the sort of questions I pose myself with, but I don't have the means to even begin to figure out.
So......
Depending on education (or maybe how many episodes of QI watched) you may or may not know that two objects moving at different speeds do not keep time at the same rate relative to each other. Gravity has the same effect, the closer object to a gravitational pull keeps time at a different rate to one further away.
It goes like this.
Faster movement = slower time (from the stationary or slower relative space)
Higher gravity = slower time (see above)
So everyone on Earth is moving through space. Both through the Earth spinning on its axis and the Earth moving round the Sun. I imagine the solar system is moving relative to the centre point of the galaxy and the galaxy itself is moving through .. 'wider' space.
Where in the universe is point zero. With no movement and no gravitational pull. Is it the centre point or are there numerous 'sweet spots'. My initial instinct is that there is only one point as everything else must be moving..... I dunno more thought on that another day.
At this point zero what speed does time pass at compared to 'earth time'. No movement and no gravity, it should be quicker... but by how much.
These are the sort of questions I pose myself with, but I don't have the means to even begin to figure out.
Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Folding at (my) Home
Running Folding at Home or simply 'folding' as it's known is something that I dipped my toe into a few years ago but at the mid point of last year (2011) I jumped back in. At its simplest it is just running yet another application on a PC, at very extreme it could really change the future for human kind.
Do I feel like I am changing the future for humans by running this application? No, not really... well yeah kinda. Lets look into this further
Its fair to say some people do not understand why I would have an interest in folding. Some would say I am just wasting electricity, others might say I have been suckered into doing it. There are also likely those that when receiving a rebuttal to the first statement will follow up with the second. I mean, if someone wants to know what could be worth the extra carbon output or extra cost the electricity, the natural response is going to require a powerful answer in these times of eco craziness combined with a recession. So out comes the 'I'm helping find a cure for cancer'....... Yeah it does sound a little far fetched.
Does my involvement really help speed up the discovery of a cure for cancer, if one is even possible? In the grand scheme of things my contribution is probably but a drop in the ocean. So the answer to that question is no.... but (you knew there was a but coming).... folding is very much like voting. My single voteprobably doesn't make a difference, but it's the combined effort that produces the result.
So that explains my response of no / yeah kinda to what I feel my contribution means to the whole of Folding at Home Now for the why (something that I shoehorned in right at the beginning of the previous explanation).
Having brought up voting I'm now going cram religion into this (not too deeply though - don't run for cover). There is a school of thought with religion that goes something like: If I don't worship 'a god' and 'that god' turns out to be real, I have doomed myself. If I do worship 'a god' and 'that god' turns out not to be real, what have I lost?
That can be applied to folding, more or less. These days religion is on the down slide because the "what have I got to lose" is tangible. Our (as in people in general) lives are so busy that a trip to church on a Sunday is actually a big chunk of time lost doing things that would otherwise be done in the week. I know there is more to it than that but that's for another post (probably written on another blog). Soooo back to folding. To keep people interested the people behind the folding at home project have created a hook. The data that needs processing is split into work units and sent out to donors (users running their application ) and points are awarded for every unit that is processed and returned successfully.
The points don't really mean anything other than for bragging rights, but they have helped cement a solid community. Teams of people getting together and combining their points to try and be the team with the most points. Not only that but friendly inter team rivalries can crop up too. All this helps more work units get processed than without any hook in two ways. Firstly it keeps people more interested in continuing to fold and secondly the rivalries push people to squeeze a few extra points out of their computer, requiring a bit of extra effort (one way or another) that otherwise would be deemed unnecessary.
It's the community that keeps me going. I am part of a great team (Redline @ OC3D) and while we are not the biggest team we pull together, giving help, advise or encouragement where needed. All this has landed us at rank 53rd in the world out of many thousands of teams.
I have other personal reasons for folding which I won't go into (none of which involve myself or any close family suffering with cancer) for I have rambled on enough. However I feel even without those the whole thing is a worthy cause.
So that's why I do it, why I will probably be posting folding updates and why I'm not going to stop any time soon. :)
Do I feel like I am changing the future for humans by running this application? No, not really... well yeah kinda. Lets look into this further
Its fair to say some people do not understand why I would have an interest in folding. Some would say I am just wasting electricity, others might say I have been suckered into doing it. There are also likely those that when receiving a rebuttal to the first statement will follow up with the second. I mean, if someone wants to know what could be worth the extra carbon output or extra cost the electricity, the natural response is going to require a powerful answer in these times of eco craziness combined with a recession. So out comes the 'I'm helping find a cure for cancer'....... Yeah it does sound a little far fetched.
Does my involvement really help speed up the discovery of a cure for cancer, if one is even possible? In the grand scheme of things my contribution is probably but a drop in the ocean. So the answer to that question is no.... but (you knew there was a but coming).... folding is very much like voting. My single vote
So that explains my response of no / yeah kinda to what I feel my contribution means to the whole of Folding at Home Now for the why (something that I shoehorned in right at the beginning of the previous explanation).
Having brought up voting I'm now going cram religion into this (not too deeply though - don't run for cover). There is a school of thought with religion that goes something like: If I don't worship 'a god' and 'that god' turns out to be real, I have doomed myself. If I do worship 'a god' and 'that god' turns out not to be real, what have I lost?
That can be applied to folding, more or less. These days religion is on the down slide because the "what have I got to lose" is tangible. Our (as in people in general) lives are so busy that a trip to church on a Sunday is actually a big chunk of time lost doing things that would otherwise be done in the week. I know there is more to it than that but that's for another post (probably written on another blog). Soooo back to folding. To keep people interested the people behind the folding at home project have created a hook. The data that needs processing is split into work units and sent out to donors (users running their application ) and points are awarded for every unit that is processed and returned successfully.
The points don't really mean anything other than for bragging rights, but they have helped cement a solid community. Teams of people getting together and combining their points to try and be the team with the most points. Not only that but friendly inter team rivalries can crop up too. All this helps more work units get processed than without any hook in two ways. Firstly it keeps people more interested in continuing to fold and secondly the rivalries push people to squeeze a few extra points out of their computer, requiring a bit of extra effort (one way or another) that otherwise would be deemed unnecessary.
It's the community that keeps me going. I am part of a great team (Redline @ OC3D) and while we are not the biggest team we pull together, giving help, advise or encouragement where needed. All this has landed us at rank 53rd in the world out of many thousands of teams.
I have other personal reasons for folding which I won't go into (none of which involve myself or any close family suffering with cancer) for I have rambled on enough. However I feel even without those the whole thing is a worthy cause.
So that's why I do it, why I will probably be posting folding updates and why I'm not going to stop any time soon. :)
Saturday, 4 February 2012
Introduction
Hello all who my pass through here.
As of right now I'm not sure what shape this blog will form. My main passion is gaming and so it's fair to assume 'video' games are going to feature.
How much personal gumpf ends up in here is yet to be decided, but none of it will be all that exciting.
Those who have looked at my profile will have noticed I run folding at home on my PC(s). Folding at Home is a distributed computing program from Stanford University which to cut a long story short is designed to aid the research in finding a cure for cancer. More information can be found at their website http://folding.stanford.edu/ . For those in the know, I fold for team 98860 - Redline @ OC3D.net
That's my first post done and dusted. It's just an intro and hopefully as the blog progresses some form of focus will be established. I will add another post soon with details of my current gaming habits and what's going on with my folding.
Until then......
Thanks for reading
Peter
As of right now I'm not sure what shape this blog will form. My main passion is gaming and so it's fair to assume 'video' games are going to feature.
How much personal gumpf ends up in here is yet to be decided, but none of it will be all that exciting.
Those who have looked at my profile will have noticed I run folding at home on my PC(s). Folding at Home is a distributed computing program from Stanford University which to cut a long story short is designed to aid the research in finding a cure for cancer. More information can be found at their website http://folding.stanford.edu/ . For those in the know, I fold for team 98860 - Redline @ OC3D.net
That's my first post done and dusted. It's just an intro and hopefully as the blog progresses some form of focus will be established. I will add another post soon with details of my current gaming habits and what's going on with my folding.
Until then......
Thanks for reading
Peter
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