First of all, I hope you guys can welcome me back here after my being away for such a long time. (It’s been at least a year since I’ve posted on this site, but it feels good to be back! )
The reason I’m posting this thread is that our F@H Team (you can read about protein folding here) is not doing very well.
Basically, we need more people to join the team. Back when we broke 1 million points we were producing over 2600 points a day, now we’re just about 1600 per day. We’re going to be overtaken by a bunch of teams if we don’t get in gear.
How can you help? Well, you can start by downloading their folding client from Stanford University. It runs in the background on your computer and uses unused CPU time to do its calculations, then sends the data in when it’s done. It doesn’t slow your computer down and it’s a great way to contribute to science. It is completely free of charge and does not contrain spyware of any kind. You can download it here.
Thank your very much for reading this, and please consider joining the team!
I’m folding all the time, but I never get any wu done because my compy’s slow and I’m not on much, so the deadline happens. My dad’s doing a bunch though.
1-If using the text only console version (as a service):
create a shortcut and add -config to the target line
under advanced options you can choose to only work on “timeless” wu’s which it doesn’t matter how long it takes they have no deadline and still count.
2-If using the graphical version:
in the config/settings choose genome@home or gah which used to be used for a different project but the gah project came to an end so now that setting gives you timeless wu’s.
I was seriously just about to make some mention of this. There are currently only about 14 people actually still folding. Everyone who has ever been folding needs to start again. And new people starting is good too! We could be doing ALOT better than we are.
Sorry, but I’ve stopped folding for quite some time. I was doing a ton of WU’s for a while and by now would have been in something like 2nd on our team, but I took it off for my own reasons. Maybe someday I’ll start workin it again.
Well, I’ve got a 2.7+GHz Athlon 64 folding 24/7 (except when I’m gaming), and my Dad (Dan_Cyndy_Winterburn) has 3 Athlon 64s of varying speed working 24/7. It’s not a huge contribution, but every bit helps, right?
Mboulanger, it’s good to have you on the team.
If anyone can convince anyone else to join the team, please do so! I know we can get into the top 100 if we get some more people.
EDIT: I would also like to apologize for not posting this in the Folding @ Home recruitment thread. (I should have used the search function.)
WU’s can vary from a few hours to a few weeks. They all vary in size, but they are worth different amounts of WU’s in them. Also WU stands for Work Unit.
WU stands for Work Unit. It’s a work assignment that gets sent out for you to compute.
Some work units are faster than others. Some may take less than a day while others can take a week or more. It also depends on the speed of your computer and how long you leave the computer running each day.
There are a bunch of different projects going. Each project is folding a different protein. You’ll get assigned a WU from one of the active projects.
The work units that take longer are worth more points. They try to set the point value so that all work units are pretty much equal. A work unit that takes48 hours to compute will be worth about twice as much as a work unit that takes 24 hours to compute.
There is a stats page that links you to some stats.
There is a project summary page that gives info about each project.
There is a FAQ that answers some questions about the projects and software.
The WU you have is from Project p1803. It is worth 69 points. It uses the Amber core to do the calculations. It has 1116 atoms. It has a final deadline of 21 days until the WU will expire. All this info is on the Project Summary page.
You want to make sure you get the work units done before they expire. You’ll have no problem getting them done before the deadlines, but people with slower computers may be close to the deadlines.
It is basically getting the next work unit. It usually only takes a couple of minutes or so. If it stays that way for a long time try closing the program and restarting it, or rebooting your computer or something.
Now sometimes down in the bottom it will say “closed connections” and then it’ll say “Welcome to Folding” and then it’ll say “Working…” and it just repeats. I think I’ll try rebooting…
)
