Ah September, when the Kids go back to school and the sun tends to come out. Thankfully being at uni means extra time to enjoy any more sun, and do more folding. That being said August was an exceptional month for folding, we managed to produce 2.3 Million Points, and at one point almost 100,000 points per day.
August Highlights
In addition to the mass of points described above there were a few members that stood out, so let’s give them a special recognition here.
SilverCider – Clearly he’s hacked into someone’s folding farm, and changed the settings to his user. Usually totalling at 20,000 points per week, he’s tipped 200,000 points a week this month and is currently going at 140,000, over 50,000 more than our old favourite RedStarGlow.
gclarkey – Seemingly coming from nowhere, (s)he’s stormed through, becoming the 3rd most active folder within the team.
What is Folding@Home?
It is an application the makes use of your PS3’s processing power to solve biological puzzles. These particular puzzles are looking at how protein molecules assemble themselves or ‘fold’. Proteins are exceptionally important molecules and F@H’s biomedical research is currently studying diseases like Alzheimer’s, Huntingdon’s, Parkinson’s and cancer as well as working to develop new antibiotics.
Other research aided by F@H recently has been the study of the influenza virus looking at how mutations might affect transmission rates of different strains of the virus to help predict and understand future pandemics. It is not only biomedical science that benefits either. In 2009 two of the principal scientists behind F@H presented a paper entitled “Folding@home: lessons from eight years of distributed computing” at the IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium.
By contributing to F@H you are helping advance biology, chemistry and computer science, you get to do your bit for the good of humanity, become part of the most powerful distributed computing cluster in the world, according to Guinness, and join in with TSA’s community. If you often listen to music stored on your PS3′s HDD then your PS3 could be Folding while you listen. So go on, join our team and see how high you can climb in our list of TSA’s top 50 folders.
How do you Join the Team?
The first step is to make sure that you change your PC/PS3’s F@H identity from the default to your TSA ID. It could be anything but if you use your TSA ID it will help us recognise you. Then you will need to tell the F@H application you want to be in our team.
Next for stats…
TSBonyman
Awesome work everybody, especially SilverCider and the new team member(s)… hmmm maybe it’s time for me to enlist my employers sausages – i mean server.. :)
Next target – Microsoft!
cam the man
Didn’t get much folding done this past month as I’ve been away for nearly half of it.
nemesisND1derboy
Woop! Made it into the top 50 active users :D Awesome!
Voganlight
I tried to get folding@home on to my computer but it makes my computer so slow it’s unusable. Is there anything I could do about it? I mean, in the time it takes my computer to load up Chrome and go to TSA with folding@home on I could make some sausages for myself…
Jas-n
Folding@home shouldn’t make your computer slow, it only uses what you’re not using.
So it you’re using paint, paint get’s priority.
Voganlight
Doesn’t seem like it. Second I stop folding@home from running, everything is smooth again.
Jas-n
Hmmmm… weird, what CPU you running?
Voganlight
Don’t have a clue. It’s just your regular crappy computer that schools, etc have as well.
Jas-n
Ah, might be why then, most school computers can hardly run 1 thing, let alone manage CPU usage between 2 programs.
RedStarGlow
Congrats to SilverCider. His performance was definitely STEAK compared to my Sausages. But alas, September is a new month and I want the Steak!
bunimomike
We’ll always love your sausage.
yogdog
Soooo many euphenisms :D
Jas-n
yogdog you’re comment is null and void, you need to participate to comment here… or at least say sausages… tell me, how much of this did you actually read?
hazelam
is saying the word sausage worth a tsa point?
hmm, no, i’m not gonna say it.
o_O?
bugger.
anyway.
i’m nearly in the top 100.
Foxhound_Solid
Lol
scion_tc1
Well done everyone! Whether you made it into the top 50 or not, keep it up. If you never made it don’t cry, just do your bit and fold some more whilst eating some sausage sammitchs or something. :)
beeje13
Hmmmm, sausages, folded more this month but went down about 10 places in the active folders! well done team! keep it up :)
Jas-n
Love how you’re all being creative and not just putting sausages… brilliant.
Rocket_345
Was that an observation or do you just want the free tsa point ;)
Jas-n
Just an observation… can get a free point without saying… “that word”
Rocket_345
So to get a free point all you have to say is Sausages. mmm Sausages. That should work. I was going to start folding a month back but i’ve got a feeling my PS3 is going to break anytime soon, though i’ve had that feeling before and nothing happened, but i am being on the safe side.
Jas-n
definitely safe than sorry… can always fold on the PC :).
Rocket_345
I keep forgetting you can fold on PC. Will take a look tomorrow.