2006, A year in the life of a Boinc \'newbie\'

Jan: Friday 13th, can\'t go out due to the risk of being hit by a meteorite, so I\'m looking for something useful for my new AMD PC to do in the background while it was hosting Apache 24/7. I found out about Boinc and downloaded it. Decided the right project for me was CPDN, so joined it, but then also Rosetta and SETI since CPDN wasn\'t issuing work at the time. After a few days I managed to get a climate model, and the other projects were put to one side. Team selection: which one has the prettiest signatures? Does this mean I can write \'CRAY-1\' on my PC, since it\'s running a supercomputer application? What can I spend my \'credits\' on, is there a catalogue?

Feb: Discovered the various forums, and started reading and posting. Find out credits are just markers, no free transatlantic cruises for me . A new climate project and model suddenly popped up out of the blue, the BBC/CCE coupled model. These things are huge, will take ages. Overclock my PC to the max (>40%) to make it quicker, lots of help from the forum since I\'ve never done it before. Theoretically should save a month per model. Soon the coupled model arrived at CPDN too. By the end of the month I\'ve read every post I can find on the CPDN boards, so join BBC simply so I can stick my oar in there too.

March: Much to my surprise I was offered a moderator role, no doubt due to my compulsive question-answering <grins>. My sulphur model finished too. Lets get a coupled model spinning <grin>

April: Yet another climate project (SAP) has turned up, it\'s not fair, one single-core computer and three climate projects just don\'t go… meanwhile, a big problem turns up just before the Easter weekend when nearly everyone is away from Oxford. A killer trickle is due to be sent out so that Oxford can issue new models. Put my coupled model out of it\'s misery in advance of the killer trickle <sob>. Frantic weekend on the board, 150 forum posts, all pretty much answering identical questions… got confused when someone asked about something else. Start a brand new shiny coupled model.

May: I happened to notice a special offer on a dual-core Dell, can\'t resist… can finally run the new project <grin>

June: Already done 3 SAP models on the new box, they just seem to fly by, it\'s weird running something which takes weeks rather than months. Mind you, the coupled model will take 4 months on this box, a month slower than my AMD. Ouch.

July: My coupled model is finished, 1,962 hours of CPU time, I think it was the fifth to do so on the CPDN side - yay! Decide to fool around for a couple of weeks before starting the next big model. Overclocking, games, joined a new beta test (5.15), find new and interesting ways to deliberately crash the model, couple of weeks processing for Rosetta\'s biennial CASP7.

Aug: Can\'t resist the urge to upgrade my AMD PC to a dual core! Everything is running SAP at the moment, since it\'s a priority, they want to get their paper written and sent off, not to mention Pardeep\'s dissertation.

Sep: 21 SAP models completed in total by the end of the month

Oct: SAP project reaches it\'s first goalpost at the end of the month, Oxford will be collating the data for all 3,121 completed models to put in their paper. 28 of those models are mine <grin> It would have been 30, but two unexpected crashes intervened this month, one at 99.6% complete. C\'est la vie. Backups for both exist but are too elderly given the short lifecycle of the model.

Nov: Gradually moving my PCs back to the coupled model. One core left finishing off SAP models.

Dec: Got a looping coupled model on my birthday! <growl> Killed it after leaving it a couple of days to make sure. My final SAP model finally trickles in, it\'s the 37th. My models account for just under 1% since 3,855 completed models are on the SAP website now. They should make it into the paper if/when it goes back to Oxford for revision (scientific papers invariably get multiple revisions). Hope the team publishes it on the website when they can, will be interesting reading.

Jan: 13th, Well, that\'s my first year of Boinc done <grin> In summary - 1 sulphur model completed, 1 coupled model completed, 1 looper, one killer trickle. 4 coupled models in progress, 37 SAP climate models completed, 4,900 forum posts written of which the vast majority are on the various CPDN forums. What does that indicate? Probably that I write too much!

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You\'re living in the past Mike. Wrong decade. :)

I do that often as well.

Edited to be in the correct millennium - thanks Geophi :-)

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I'm a volunteer and my views are my own.
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