Coral Charm

Another one of my peony plants has started to bloom. This peony is called Coral Charm. I've had it for a long time. I love the color. I took this photo in the morning with the sun shining on it.

Wait Is Over

I woke up this morning to find one of the flowers had opened on my tree peony. The petals will eventually white. This sight made my day.

Anticipation

My peonies will be in bloom soon. Always something to look forward to.

9600 GT

I bought a graphics card to go along with my new monitor. The PNY Verto 9600 GT was on sale. Seems like a nice card. Doesn't run too hot.

I've resisted the temptation to build another system for distributed computing. I'm trying to save money. I will likely do my next upgrade when Nehalem comes out, assuming of course there are no major bugs with the new platform.

Chimei

Several weeks ago, I treated myself to a new LCD monitor. It has a 22" screen and is made by a Taiwanese company called Chimei. Actually it's Chi-Mei. The company is not well-known in the US. But it makes the LCD panels for a number of other companies, including Dell and Acer. I really like the monitor. Lots of real estate and picture quality is very good. No stuck pixels. I also purchased a 9600GT graphics card. I'm not a gamer, so I think I'm set video-wise for the next few years.

Wireless

I finally got around to moving my noisy Clovertown system to another room at home. I found a wireless adapter that supports Server 2003 x64. The abit adapter is tiny, but works well. Best of all, it's free after rebate.

Nothing much has happened in my life. As the saying goes, same old, same old. My wife is getting ready to retire. I think she has mixed feelings about that. Retirement is a dramatic change in any person's life. But she already has home projects lined up to keep her busy. Not sure how I will feel when it's my turn to retire.

Kouhaku Snub

I'm a little miffed that one of my favorite singers, Ayako Fuji, was not invited to perform at NHK's Kouhaku Uta Gassen singing competition. This is an annual New Year's Eve event in Japan. Aya-chan had made 15 appearances in a row at Kouhaku. Not sure why she didn't make the cut this time. A few other well-known singers like Takashi Hosokawa were also snubbed.

VHS

Although I'm fairly savvy when it comes to computers, I've ignored other parts of the technology revolution. I don't own an iPod and I still watch movies on VHS tapes. I bought a DVD recorder and have transferred many of those movies. But the quality of the DVD copies leaves a lot to be desired. I do use a small video processing unit to help improve the picture quality. Still, the video transfer is not as good as I had hoped. So I hang onto my VHS tapes. A number of old movies that I like were never made available on DVD, at least not in the US. Many of Kenji Mizoguchi's films, for example, are not available on DVD. I'm just glad I held onto my VHS player.

More than a year later...

I've been folding for the World Community Grid for more than a year now, and I must say it's become very addictive. Running computers at full load, around the clock for months, may seem boring and even wasteful to some. But hopefully researchers can make good use of the work units being processed and completed by thousands of home users worldwide. I think more people would take part in folding projects if they knew they existed. Even my sister, who is a retired nurse, wasn't aware that this kind of work was going on.

Storm

A series of winter storms hit my area this week. The worst one was on Friday. Wind gusts reached 65-70mph. Lots of trees and power lines were knocked down. More than a million homes and businesses lost power. Fortunately my home did not lose electricity. But there were a lot of broken tree branches around the house. Just spent the morning picking most of them up. The storm also closed Interstate 80 in the mountains because of blizzard conditions. Don't you love winter!

780i

This will likely be my next motherboard, the 780i. EVGA has a special offer now. If I return my EVGA 680i board and $90, I can get a new 780i. Seems like a pretty decent deal. The 780i supports both Wolfdale and Yorkfield processors. It also supports triple-SLI. But I just need the board for crunching work units, so a cheap video card will suffice. Note the unusual-looking heatsinks on the board.

Merry Christmas

A Merry Christmas to all of you who've stopped by and posted comments. Hard to believe this blog is almost two years old. Admittedly I have not posted as regularly as I used to. Maybe I've run out of interesting things to say. ;) By the way, that's not my cat in the above picture. My cat usually likes to sit under the tree and take naps. :)

Skulltrail

Early next year, Intel will release a special board for the gaming enthusiast. Skulltrail will have quad-SLI support. It can run two quad Xeon processors (LGA771) and will require the use of fully buffered memory dimms. Unlike most server-type motherboards, Skulltrail will reportedly have overclocking options in the BIOS. The other interesting feature is that the board can accommodate LGA775 heatsinks. The whole system will cost a lot of money. But for those wishing to overclock a server board, this is probably the best option, though an expensive one.

Furtwangler

I love Beethoven's music. And perhaps the most famous Beethoven conductor is Wilhelm Furtwanger (1886-1954), a controversial figure because of his alleged ties to the Nazis. But the fact is that Furtwangler never joined the Nazi party and did not approve of them. After World War Two he was charged with supporting the Nazis, but he was eventually cleared on all counts.

Furtwangler's recorded performances of the Beethoven symphonies are among the best, if not the best. The recordings made during the war are the most intense I've ever heard. The Fifth and Ninth Symphonies recorded in the 1940's are especially good. If you love classical music and haven't heard Furtwangler's Beethoven recordings, you owe it to yourself to listen to some of these performances.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Save some white meat for me. ;)

Server 2008 x64

Now giving Server 2008 64-bit a try. The OS generates more BOINC points per day than Server 2008 32-bit or Kubuntu 64-bit. Seems pretty stable.

Kubuntu

I'm giving another operating system a try - Kubuntu 7.10 64-bit. Has a really nice desktop interface. In order to get the BOINC client to work properly, I had to install 32-bit libraries. BOINC works fine now, but some of the 64-bit programs don't. Not sure how to fix that. Since this OS is being used for distributed computing only, it's not that big a deal.

64-bit

I have converted most of my machines used for distributed computing to 64-bit operating systems. I and others have discovered that a x64 OS will boost production (i.e. generate more points on a daily basis). A year or so ago, this was not really needed since BOINC (the distributed computing client that I use) was available only as a 32-bit program. But there is a 64-bit version now. I have found that the x64 client, combined with a x64 OS, will increase production by 10-15%.

Server 2008

One of my machines used for distributed computing is now running on Windows Server 2008 (Release Candidate 0). The operating system will be officially released in late February. It runs BOINC, CPU-Z and the CoreTemp program just fine. One of the main features of Server 2008 is its virtualization capabilities. I have not had a chance to play with the OS. As soon as it was installed, I immediately put it to work on distributed computing.

Q6600

I will be building another system soon. It will be used for distributed computing only. I ordered a Q6600 quad-core (G0 stepping) and an Abit IP35 Pro. I've heard good things about the Abit board, so I will give it a try.

Thanks to the cooler weather, I can run my machines at slightly higher speeds. During the summer, the room temperature got unbearable at times. Computers generate more heat than people think. In an effort to conserve energy, I tried not to use the A/C a lot. But now, that's not a problem. My cat spends more time with me because the room where I have my systems running is the warmest one in the house. Cats always know the coolest and warmest places when they want to take a nap.