Blog

COVID19 Update #2

Is there any work to do?

I have been checking my computer almost every day in order to see if the efforts made by the F@H laboratories had any positive effects on the distribution of work units: the result is a big YES!

By checking on the stats page I have seen that not only my computer has started crunching Work Units again but also the rest of the team is picking up speed! This is good news as in the last weeks we have been loosing positions to other teams who apparently had more Work Units to elaborate than us. Although points are not the main reason we are here I must confess that I did not find it fair to have the team growing as never before and not getting work to do! Still there is not much we can do about it if not leaving the computers turned on and hope to get more and more Working Units to work on!

I have double checked my computer right now and currently the working queue is empty and the log is showing the rather annoying message:

WARNING:WU00:FS01 Failed to get assignment from “IP ADDRESS OF THE SERVER”: No WUs available for this configuration

So the truth is that there still are moments where computers are left idling waiting for a new job to do, but the pauses are much shorter now.

F@H communicating, finally! 🙂

I am really happy to see that the F@H laboratory is now communicating through social media much more than in the past. They have been sharing a lot through facebook lately and I have been sharing some of their posts on our facebook page too.

I believe that this interview made by the Financial Times with Professor Greg Bowman is worth watching. Professor Greg Bowman, a former student of Vijay Pande, is director of the Folding@Home project since March 2019.

EPFL is contributing too!

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne has also started contributing to the good cause: the Institute is currently closed and their computers were just sitting waiting for something to do: dedicating them to the F@H project seems to me a brilliant idea to show the world that Switzerland is partecipating to the research as well. I was wondering if it is possible to animate some good old competitive spirits and get also the ETHZ involved? 🙂

I have checked how SCITAS is doing on the stats:

A look at the stats of the SCITAS@epfl team.

From what I have read the hardware they have put at disposal is massive, therefore our team will have a hard time competing. Still, for the moment being, most probably because we have been around since a longer period, our average 24hrs points (3’393’094 vs 2’730’396) is a little higher 🙂 Good job everyone!

SFT stats

New *swiss* competitors!

As I have seen that our team has grown by a lot since the corona virus I thought that maybe some other enthusiastic folder started a new team. I decided to check the stats database at least with one criteria that is with the *swiss* keyword and here it is! There are indeed new competitors for us to challenge:

There are indeed some new competitors!

Historical competitors are:

  • Swiss _Crunchers
  • SwissTeam

The other teams are new! And among them, CG-Crazy-Gamer_Swiss, seems to be one team that has a similar 24hrs average to ours.

A warm welcome to every new folder!

I have seen that some more folders have subscribed to the site, thanks a lot:

  • Anthony
  • eboreg
  • Frederic
  • Merry76
  • siramon

Welcome to all of you and please keep it folding! If you wish to tell us some more about the you, your computer, some kind of feedbacks … please join us on the forums.

Once more thanks everyone for your help, have a happy Easter and … fold on! 🙂

Site updates

As the amount of users interested in joining the Swiss Folding Team keeps increasing, I have decided to invest some time in the site, in order to make it more user friendly.

Even more new folders!

I have just checked the list of members that are folding for the Swiss Folding Team and it is rapidly growing! Have a look at the print screen below:

Even more new users! This is great! A really big thank you to all of you!

Captcha

Bots were increasingly subscribing to the site. In order to reduce the amount of useless registrations on the site I installed the Advanced noCaptcha & invisible captcha plugin. With the help of some friends I have tested it and apparently it is working as expected. I had to cancel all fake users: I am afraid I have canceled some real accounts, I am sorry for that. If you do not mind too much, you may register once more, please.

Widgets

I have added some widgets to the right side of the page and removed other ones who were not that useful. The new widget shows the last 5 blog posts: it should give more visibility to the blog. As it is indexing the English posts only the Italian ones are not showed. Having different widgets for each language will be a challenge: from the quick search I have performed today it does not seem that easy. But maybe that’s just me. 🙂

Language

I have changed the main language of the site into English. When I first created this homepage I was convinced that I would have managed to add more languages, do translations etc. this is why, the first language I have been writing on was Italian. Now I will use English as main language and provide translations in other languages too (if there are volunteers out there to translate posts or even write them, I am all ears. Post a comment below or on the forum as your prefer).

Email subscribers

I have updated the list of users that will receive an email every time I write a new post. It is not that often, believe me. So do not worry about getting tons of emails or SPAM.

Facebook

I am also posting the new posts on the Facebook page. Hope this helps in getting the team and project even more known. 🙂

As always… Fold on!

andi

COVID19 Update #1

Empty servers

Since yesterday I have noticed that my computers are not receiving any workunit from the Folding@home servers. I have done quick research on the folding@home forum and I collected the following information:

  1. The servers which are expected to upload the work units are no further working units to distribute
  2. The number of volunteers has increased so much and in such a short time that the supply of work units has to be increased. The University is increasing the effort. Have some patience, we will receive work to do! 🙂

New members

I wish to thank all the new members of the team! Specifically to @adamralph and @rowtag who have subscribed to the site. I hope we may hear from them once in a while.

Many other have started to fold for the team and with some great perfomances. Have a look here:

SFT Team Members
SFT Team Members in March 2020.

Languages

I have been asked to change the language of the site into English as it makes more sense, being one of the most commonly used languages: I will look into that as it was one of my concerns since the beginning. For now, let’s start with a post!

Explanations

At this link Greg Bowman, co-director of the F@H project, explains what they are doing COVID19 and how we can help.

Let’s hope we will receive more Work Units to solve in a short time! 🙂

Fold on!

andi