Sleepypete's Pillow

I like to leave my main PC on all day. Or at least, on overnight so I can quickly check my emails on the way out the door to work without having to wait for it to boot up. (see the PS …)

But … The “who’s paying the electric bill?” part of me thinks that might be a little wasteful. So … I remembered back a few years to when the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) was popular. That’s now evolved into an application called BOINC, which can manage multiple projects that will use your spare cpu time for something better than just keeping the house warm.

So I have a series of projects that use the spare cpu cycles on my desktop PC to do sums for research projects. If you look on Task Manager on a work PC, check the “System Idle Time”. After a full day, that System Idle Time could be around 7 hours per cpu core. And that’s with you in for 8 hours. Yep, most of the time your work PC is on, it’s actually doing nothing but waiting for the disc, network or you to tap the keys.

BOINC puts that spare cpu power to good use.

Think of the number of PCs in the average organisation and then multiply it by that 90% idle time. It’s close to Supercomputer power that’s just not being used. The Met Office keep asking for new supercomputers, they probably have enough spare cpu cycles in their offices to not need them (they actually use BOINC too).

There’s a wide range of applications that BOINC runs :

Medical research
Cosmology
Physics
Alien Hunting
Climate research
Cryptography (I don’t support this)
And the list goes on, including apps which I think are a waste like chess analysis and prime number analysis. I’ll also not support the Cryptography apps (I don’t think it’s in my best interest) and a good few years ago I sacked one because it switched from honest medical research to bioweapon research in a misguided response to the Anthrax scare that followed 9/11. I understand what they were thinking but I think it was really bad ethics …

So what makes me choose one ? And what makes me sack ’em ?

Basically, if I think the app is going to be productive and useful I’ll see if can use the machine. I currently run SETI, Rosetta (medical), World Community Grid (medical), Milkyway (cosmology), Spinhenge (dunno!), Einstein (physics/cosmology) and Climate Prediction (gief snow!). Of those, Einstein is being fired but I’ll let it go through the work first.

What makes me ditch a project ?

If it doesn’t play fair with the rest of them then I’ll show what I think of that by not giving it any cpu cycles. There’s a few that have fallen foul of that :

Einstein – floods the machine with work to such a degree that other projects weren’t being allowed a chance.
World Community Grid – some of the projects inside this have been fired because their deadlines are too short.

The way BOINC works is that it divides up calculations into Work Units, small bites that a home machine can cope with. These can take anything between 5 minutes to 400 hours on my Intel i5-2500k powered machine. Each work unit has a deadline by which the results have to come back, these deadlines are usually sensible. However …

WCG – some of the individual projects ask for their results to come back inside a few days, instead of the customary 10 days for a 5 hour work unit.
LHC – set deadlines of less than a week.
GRID – 5 days for the only work unit I’ll do for them.

BOINC will then choose which project it runs based on deadline and time left. If time is tight, it’ll assign a high priority to work that might not be ready in time. GRID’s forced its one app to go immediately High Priority and when LHC@home actually had work, it set the deadlines so short that the same thing happened.

There’s other meanie apps too. They’ll effectively Game the queue system to get priority for their science. I don’t think that’s on and I respond by giving up the spare cpu time to science that plays fair.

What can run it ? Any PC and I think the Linux & Mac powered ones too. I wouldn’t recommend it for laptops because they’re not designed to be running calculations 100% of the time all the time. They get hot because the cpu is doing Stuff. Does it affect things like gaming ? Not necessarily and definitely not for me. I have BOINC set to only do calcs if the machine is idle for 3 minutes which gives Full Steam Ahead to Deus Ex HR or whichever game I’m on.

So that’s BOINC – how I justify having my machine on all day 🙂

PS Time for bootup is no longer an issue … The SSD boot drive in my desktop makes power on happen faster than some conventional machines will come off standby …

One of the few flaws of my latest car is that it doesn’t pick up Long Wave on the radio. That’s not a big flaw but it could have stopped me listening to cricket commentary. And anyone knows me knows that if it were anatomically possible, I’d gnaw my ears off to get to England test match cricket commentary.

But … an away trip with work provided the ideal excuse to test out a new bit of playing with toys. Test Match starts 0600. Trip was scheduled to start at 0600. Spooky coincidence ? Maybe 🙂 To be honest, it was pure coincidence because I budget for a 60mph average, which makes the 120 mile trip roughly 2 hours. And then I add an hour of leeway because of traffic and because it’s always better to arrive fresh and relaxed for a meeting than flustered due to being late. So a 0900 start (set up time needed before 0930 meeting start) meant getting on the road by 0600. I actually managed to get on the road a bit earlier which allowed a chance for a wake up coffee 🙂

Hey – I’m getting away from the purpose of this post 🙂

What apps am I using on the Android phone right now ? When I first got my latest phone, I didn’t think I’d use the smartphone aspects half as much as I do. What makes it better is that I can send the audio from the phone to the car via Bluetooth.

Bluetooth integration – this comes with the phone and car and allows them to do things like handsfree carphoning. The Lexus kit works really well, it’s like having a spiderphone in the car. Impressive.

Tune In Radio –

Lack of LongWave for Radio 4 LW made me go “oops” as I realised it would put a severe cramp into being able to listen to cricket commentary. Enter this app, which allows you to easily get to internet radio stations (that you could get to via their sites anyway!) through its own custom menus. It worked pretty well and its buffering meant that silent moments due to bad signal weren’t plentiful enough to get annoying.

I’d heartily recommend this app, although I’d put a warning down that it will munch through your internet data allocation if you use it too much. Bluetooth integration worked well and sound quality matched or bettered that of the car’s AM radio.

Radardroid –

This is a speed camera database app that runs on an Android phone. It’ll use the phone’s GPS to tell it where you are and lets you know if there’s danger of speeding fines … Bluetooth integration didn’t seem to work though and the database was either patchy or being quiet due to me not speeding. Still, having a “Speed Camera Soon” voice coming from the centre console is better than no warnings at all 🙂

Will have to give it another shot when I’m not using the phone for cricket commentary. I also need to recruit a friend to keep an eye on the speed display while I hit a steady speed like 60 on normal roads or 70 on motorway. Purpose – see exactly how much my speedo overreads, I think it’s a +5% overread which I’m ok with. I’ll need help for that because I don’t want to be holding the phone up to read it while doing 60-70.

Marinetraffic – Lets you see where ships are in the world because there’s loads of people out there who collect reports from the AIS (Automatic Identification System) boxes they have on board. I don’t use this that much but it’s a nice to have if you’re interested.

ECBCricket – Essential for the cricket fan. Gives up to date score info where available.

Game authenticators – After having my Eve account info stolen, I take authentication a bit more seriously. I have both the Blizzard authenticator and the SWTOR authenticator. If you’re involved in either game, it’s worth having the authenticator. It’s free. They give you a number with lots of digits that changes every minute, you put the number in with the login. Hackers could get your password but not the authenticator code.

Facebook – Hey. I’m an info junkie 🙂 Facebook = info. That reminds me … done. (That was me switching Firefox tabs to poke Craziequeen)

Maps – This one came with the Google phone but is handier than you’d think … The traffic overlay lets you quickly check how insane it would be to hit particular roads. Now I just need to remember to check it before venturing out the door …

Notes – Another built in app. I use it to take postcodes to the car for satnav and used it today for logging my journey info. (Miles & Time for expenses and flexi)

TrackID – ever wondered what that great song is that’s playing in the shop ? TrackID might tell you. If you get a signal, which I struggle to get in HMV these days.

Finally, IMDB – the mobile version of the Internet Movie Data Base which occasionally gets used.

I could say I use other apps like the calendar but I’m not that organised 🙂

Cheers Dianne 🙂

If this was Facebook I'd be hitting the like button right now 😉

I wanted to thank you for the hug for me and the kitties
it was appreciated 🙂

Just finished a play through of Deus Ex Human Revolution (DXHR)

I got this one last year but after a short look, I decided to shelve it until I did the PC upgrade planned for the Halloween week. My ageing dinosaur wasn’t really up to the job of running a game as detailed as this.

Glad I waited, the DXHR experience was well worth the wait. Gamers expect different things nowadays from our A List titles. We look for story, gorgeous graphics and the ability to do exactly what we want in the game. That’s pretty rare, even in new games. We also look for voice acting to replace the text only stuff we had before dvd’s came along to hold all the data.

In short (okok it’s me), we’re looking for an immersive experience where we escape into another world. Whether that be fantasy, Earth fiction or other world fiction.

DXHR is what I’d call Earth fiction, based in the near future where augmentation technology is becoming part of everyday life. That’s where amputees get their limbs back by technology providing artificial replacements. You are launched into a world with conspiracy, prejudice and urban decay utterly rife. You feel as if the rule of law is being set aside in favour of companies operating above that law ignoring the corrupt governments that get in their way.

And they pull it off very successfully too. I’ve happily been jumping into the DXHR world over the past few evenings, finishing it off tonight. I’ll try and avoid spoilers.

The game engine plays a lot like a normal First Person Shooter with role play aspects built in. You steadily build up your character over the course of the game, adding more and more bionic capabilities to your character. Those include a radar, eyes that see through walls, hacking (big part of the game), limbs, lungs, everything.

Stealth is a massive aspect to the game. The ideal way to play through is to take down one or two bad guys at a time. The game is set up so that if you try to take on 3-4 armed men at the same time by storming in all guns blazing, you die fast. That difficulty just adds to the immersion. The cover system is very well realised. And you have a valid choice between lethal and non-lethal. My 3rd play through will go for the “Pacifist” achievement now I’m practiced in the stealthiness. (Want to play with the big guns in the next run)

It starts to blur the line between Game & Virtual Realm in a way that MMOs can’t touch and games like Mass Effect are only just getting close to. It’s far in advance of the older FPS’s.

I’m kinda in danger of going too geeky here so I’ll try and avoid getting too deep into techy nerd-dom. Suffice to say this game is about as close to letting the gamer do precisely what they want when it comes to dynamic combat situations.

However … there’s a catch. For all the stuff it lets you do while in combat, it’s still severely limited while in story mode. A criticism of a lot of FPS style games is that they are on rails and this game is no exception. Outside of side quests, you’re driven down a specific path with not much chance for straying. That said, it’s a very good story. If it were a book, I’d give it a good few reads.

Right – I can no longer ignore the dinner bell coming from the microwave.

DXHR – Pro’s : immersive, extensive, excellent story and great stealth combat system. Looks great too.
Con’s : it’s on rails. And that’s about all I can think of.

PS Note I didn’t include “free of bugs” in my list of what gamers look for. Sadly, we still buy games from companies that have terrible records with keeping their games bug free. I’ve just added DICE (Battlefield 3) to my Do Not Buy list, which also includes Bethesda. Too many bugs in their previous games for me to consider buying Skyrim.

Just over a year ago, I thought the iTunes library had gotten a little too old. One way I decide what I listen to is what I’ve listened to least … And because some stuff had got into the library donkeys year ago, it was getting to be a while between listening to some of the best tracks in there.

I get bored of some stuff really easily … That’s a drawback of having the kind of memory I have. So I vary what I listen to by queueing up albums from the Longest Since Played list and the Least Played list. The next two albums I listen to will be a Simon & Garfunkel collection followed by Whatever by Aimee Mann. Apart from a pair of new Doctor Who soundtrack cd’s, I’ve listened to everything in the library at least twice since resetting all the play counts last year.

What’s got the most repeat listens so far ? One rule here – only one track per artist or group. And I’m picking my favourites. Cos I can 🙂 Youtube links where I can find ’em like usual :

1 – Cardigans with In The Round. Absolutely, totally, utterly love this track. This one is in the lead with 18 plays and a few more of their’s are in the Most Played list too. 03.45am No Sleep is particularly special. This is the best though and will always get me joining in, no matter who’s around to hear (before the run away screaming part).

2 – All About Eve with Apple Tree Man (strange video…). This one somehow hasn’t managed to get in the Most Played (needs 13 and has 12) but it’s better than the one that did (Devil Woman cover).

3 – Dire Straits with Expresso Love. It’s the guitar intro (Knopfler is a god) combining with the piano that makes this track special. 17 plays for this one.

4 – Bunnies ! The video to What’s A Girl To Do by Bat For Lashes has about 800,000 views on YT. At least 1% of those will be from me & my sister, we are firmly under the spell of Natasha Khan.

5 – Goldfrapp’s Eat Yourself is in there with 15 plays but I actually prefer the Live Lounge cover of It’s Not Over Yet. But I don’t think that’s written by Goldfrapp so I’ll link Utopia instead. That voice is incredible (too good for laptop speakers he says adding it to the iTunes DJ queue) and to show it off so well live is making me want to check if they have any local tour dates coming soon.

6 – Has Edie Brickell for One Last Time but the YT of that doesn’t work. I’ve linked No Dinero far too many times so here’s another one off the excellent Stranger Things album : Buffalo Ghost.

7 – Always had a soft spot for Kate Bush, although that’s for the early stuff. Not so keen on the new stuff. But when Don’t Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake came on iTunesDJ, I just had to follow it with Oh England My Lionheart too. And it’s one I can sing along to as well ! (When my voice is happier than it is at the moment)

8 – Oh yes. From one incredible lady singer to an incredible lady artist : KT Tunstall with That live version of Black Horse & The Cherry Tree.

9 – Michelle Shocked is in the library at 9 with Memories Of East Texas but I’m linking something more Bloggy : Anchorage.

And last one for today (gotta leave some !) :

10 – Has Norah Jones with Man Of The Hour but I’ve linked that a few times too. Don’t Know Why it can’t be something that’s a little … different … this time. Magic with added puppets.

10 songs is enough for one post. Saving some for later. Songs like Set The Fire To The Third Bar, The Incidentals but All I Need right now with the weather gone chilly is a little California Dreamin’ (Buffy’s on).

PS The iTunes library doesn’t know about the late night karaoke sessions where I dial up the favourite songs on Youtube for a bit of singing along to. That kind of thing is a “Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid”. Muahaha.

The gameplay is outstanding as well – really enjoying the stealthy play 🙂

Aye, the view looks amazing!! It is incredible what they can do now! hugs Sandra

The computery thing that has my attention at the moment is Deus Ex Human Revolution. It’s a pretty new A List game that came out last year. It looks awesome.

Just look at the view :

I was heading up to Upper Hengsha from Lower Hengsha and caught sight of that out of the window. That’s a cheat though as what’s outside the window isn’t as dynamic (doesn’t change) as the environments you play in so not as much computer work is needed. But that doesn’t change the fact that pooters have improved considerably from the early days of 3d cards … Back then that stunning vista would have been blurred out by fog to hide the lack of detail.

I have to admit that I’m getting considerable enjoyment out of this game. Some of my regulars feel like a grind. I enjoy Moo2, MoM and Settlers IV but the Big Fun of those happens just for a fraction of the time you play them for. This one, it maintains an excellent pace keeping the action going along with a decent storyline. I’m glad I waited before playing it though, as the lack of grunt from my last PC would have marred the experience.

The writers have a sense of humour too :

Wasn’t me ! Honest guv.

(click piccys for something closer to the original full 1080p goodness)

One thing I’ll do when I get home is dive through a series of websites having a look at what has happened over the day.

(Some people do that at work all day instead of doing work … but I can’t see how they find the time outside lunch or tolerance to suffer the limitations of internet at work)

Anyway. Latest one to cause a twitch is this one from Tomshardware – MIT Scientist Demands Gas Tax to Make Cars More Efficient.

There’s not much in the story (Tomshardware is a bit of a lite news site which is ok cos lite = variation). But there’s enough in there to tweak me into a rant mode. One thing that regularly hits the news is Green Taxation. Things like charging a congestion charge based on what people drive and where they drive. This usually gets touted as something needing devices to track exactly where you drive and thump you in the wallet if you dare to venture down the wrong alley.

I have a simple line when it comes to position tracking Congestion Charges. It’s RUBBISH !!!!

The one in London is relatively ok but that’s because it depends on number plate recognition for when you enter or leave the Forbidden Zone. But tracking people’s cars is crazy in all sorts of ways. Every car would require a tracking device and that device would need to be monitored with the results translated into charging you for where you’ve been. Plus there’s the Orwellian aspect of nabbing people for speeding based on the info from the tracker.

Device based tracking of cars for congestion charging is an awful way to go. I doubt whether the revenue raised would match the cost of the administration. It’s too heavy handed and rather unnecessary.

So – this brings me to the article (which is ok and doesn’t deserve a rant). It’s looking for a gasoline tax, the idea being that vehicles that use more petrol get hit by the tax more. Petrol tax makes a huge amount of sense :

It’s a charge on petrol used
People with gas guzzlers get hit hardest
Which makes Eco people happy
Driving on congested roads makes you burn more fuel
Doing Idiot speed is directly more expensive
It doesn’t need any tracking devices

There’s a lot of good reasons for it. In Britain, we have 2 main forms of tax associated with our cars : Road Tax and Petrol Tax. Road Fund Tax is a 6 or 12 month fee that gives you a disc that all cars over here need to display. To get one you need valid MoT (annual roadworthiness check) and Insurance. It has a sliding scale based on the car’s emissions :

1999 Puma – £210 per year (actually £215 because it’s old)
2002 Focus ST (hot one) – £260 per year (or £130 for the same age turbodiesel)
2011 Lexus CT hybrid – no charge
2012 Bentley Mulsanne (example!) – £460 per year with more in the first year

There’s more charged in the initial years for the nasty cars. And that’s not always the 4x4s … The sporty cars tend to be nastier on emissions than the SUVs. Nissan’s Juke SUV is the same tax as the Mk1 Focus turbodiesel.

Ok – how about petrol tax … This is where the Greenies should wake up and realise there’s already a massive congestion charge. More info here but it boils down to the government taking 80p out of every 133p per litre. (60%)

All those reasons I put above apply to petrol tax as a congestion charge. But that’s not the end of the story. The Tomshardware article attacks the overriding trend of modern cars : More solidity leading to more weight, more power included in smaller engines being pushed harder. What cars have I had ?

Astra 1.6 – not too efficient carburettor engine, gave about 36 mpg. Light car, light engine – 90bhp/tonne.
Belmont 1.8 – fuel injected, gave 40-45mpg. Probably 110bhp/tonne. No catalytic convertor.
Puma – saddled with catalytic convertor – 36-40mpg. 110bhp/tonne.
Focus ST – 28-32mpg. 130bhp/tonne (maybe)
Lexus CT – 47-55mpg (expecting more in summer). 95bhp/tonne.
(bhp/tonne isn’t the whole story – diesels develop less power but extraordinary torque. BHP = top speed, torque = acceleration. The CT has almost double the torque of the ST170 so acceleration is comparable)

The faster cars have been going Munchies on the fuel. Modern fuel injection gives better economy but it’s taken away by the catalytic convertor. The engines have got more powerful but weight added for improved safety has kept them the same speed.

Yeah – cars have been getting more efficient (and consistent!) over the years with better and smaller engines … but. Without innovative stuff like Toyota’s hybrid system or the well intentioned stop/start devices, we’ll not get more actual efficiency in our cars. Maybe it’s a call for a return to light weight shopping trolley cars like that Mk1 Astra.

Oh my god I’ve Wall Of Texted again …

Tax on fuel consumed = good (although I do remember buying fuel for a quarter the price we pay now)
Congestion charge by tracker device = nasty, unworkable, cost more than it could ever bring in.