Keeping it simple today. I just received this, so I’m passing it on. Good projects, useful work. Get involved. Involves no sugar pills, baking soda, or other form of piss-taking.
Runs on BOINC.
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Tag Archives: Geekery
iPhone massage. Seriously. I couldn’t make this stuff up.
I don’t own one of those expensive fruit-branded smartphones that do lots of fancy stuff, like tell you which song you’re listening to, but sort of suck as actual telephones. I know, it probably marks me out as terminally uncool in the fashion world, but I point to my old PalmOS PDA for instant geek hipster cred. What I do have is a smart phone based on a rival OS that’s probably just as bad but doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg just to use as an electronic diary and occasional GPS. Oh, and sometimes I use it to call people; it works quite well for that too.
LHC@home 2.0 accepting new accounts
Image via Wikipedia
I blogged about LHC@home 2.0, aka Test4Theory@home, about a month ago. The project had just been moved from invitation-only alpha testing to the first stage of beta testing. Response from would-be participants was literally overwhelming (it exceeded system capacity in under 48 hours), with new accounts being created at a rate that must have warmed the cockles of many more hearts than just this battered and cynical old one. Which, despite snarky comments from the SO, is certified healthy. That’s what drinking in moderation, not smoking, eating (mostly) proper meals and doing sport, all the while having loads of fun, does for you.
Anyway, this little bit of good news popped up in the BOINC client this week:
We’ve recovered from the initial tsunami of volunteer support last month – thanks, everyone, for your enthusiasm and patience! So now Test4Theory is opening gradually to new volunteers using invitation codes.
If you want to test the project, please, sign up for an invite!
If the number of requests remains very high, we won’t be able to accommodate everyone, so we’ll be picking users randomly each week and sending them invitation codes – an invitation lottery. Thus, if you want to try the project and help debugging it sign up and good luck!
So if you’re interested in joining the hunt for answers to the unsolved mysteries of particle physics, now’s your chance. Feel free to join the team.
Related articles
- Party time for particles: LHC@home 2.0 (anarchic-teapot.net)
- Coming attractions at the LHC (quantumdiaries.org)
- LHC Particle Detector Finds No Hint of New Physics (wired.com)
Today’s the day, Freddie fans!
Today, 5th September, 2011, Freddie Mercury (né Farrok Bulsara), singer, songwriter and all-round phenomenon, would have been 65 years old.
For all those who appreciate his voice, or are struck by his talent even if you don’t like his music…
For all those who have friends or family who have been infected with HIV/AIDS…
For all those who have children or relatives or friends who may be at risk…
People in the adult film industry…
Mature people, who imagine it’s a young person’s disease…
Straight people who think it’s a gay disease…
You need to talk about it. HIV, that is. Not be afraid of it, but use protection and encourage others to do so too. Help people to learn more about it and how to protect themselves. Help people who already have it to live the normal lives that are now possible with the help of modern medicine.
Party time for particles: LHC@home 2.0
Image via Wikipedia
LHC@home 2.0 is an extension of the LHC@home platform, launched in 2004 to help physicists simulate protons beam dynamics in the LHC. At that time, doing full-fledged simulations of particle collisions was beyond the scope of volunteer computing. So LHC@home was used to calculate the positioning of various types of magnet along the circumference of the monster boson-botherer, including the ginormous 35-tonne superconducting dipole magnets (1,232 of them, placed and tested one at a friggin’ time).
What is the LHC going to be used for? Seriously badass physics, viz.:
- To find out if the Higgs boson exists and can be detected;
- Look for supersymmetric particles;
- Try to make sense of the whole matter/antimatter puzzle (antimatter isn’t a perfect reflection of matter and there’s far less antimatter than matter, but no-one knows why);
- Serendipity.
