Distributed Computing

My computer is on for most of the time without being used. And with the waste of power that it is, it leaves me with two options.
I could turn my computer on and off constantly. Only keeping it on for when I use it, and switching off for the rest. But this means that when I go to sit behind it on a whim, I have to wait for it to boot up. That’s just abominable!
So, I’m left with the other option; doing something useful with it during the time it is not in use. I had heard of a project that is aiming to use such unused computing power to sift through millions of signals received from outer space. The aim of the project is the search for extra terrestrial intelligence : SETI@home.
But as we all know humans were put on earth by god and the question of other intelligence and their evolution is absurd. So, I focused on something more useful: Folding@home
This project makes use of idle computer time of the users to perform simulations of protein folding that will help in understanding diseases such as Alzheimer’s and BSE. So, what this means is that now instead of simply wasting energy, I waste energy for a good cause!

Fridays and Sundays

Today was overcast. I remember as a child (during school) Friday nights would feel overcast — even bright, sunny ones — and I couldn’t help but feel something lacking. Fridays are the weekly holidays back home, and Friday nights would mean the start of another school week; going back to school (and I was never particularly fond of school). This feeling deep in the bottom of my stomach that I had let another day — a day that belonged to me pass by without me noticing. This distant memory has been with me since. Everytime it’s overcast, I get that slight feeling of guilt, of loss that I let something else slip through my fingers…

B??l??r??m h??r ????yi gaytar ma?? olmaz
n?? g??z ya??larila, n?? yalvari??la

Some Links

I’d been meaning to put these two items on here a while back, but keep forgetting.

In the spirit of the recent wave in documentaries and my (somewhat) interest in them, I ran into a documentary called “Revolution OS”. I guess I must have expected something like this to pop up. This movie is a good look into the Open Source movement and other things relating to it, such as Linux. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like the movie is readily available, but the trailer and the song they have on their website is a nice watch!

On a different- yet still geeky- note, I read about an interesting option that is in the works for the user interface of computers. Considering that we live in a 3D world, it would seem like an obvious choice to extend those notions to the desktop world. Well, Sun Microsystems is doing just that. Their project, called Looking Glass is aimed at that. There’s a good movie on their site that shows some of the features of this project (here’s the link).

Choose Life

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life.

- Irvine Welsh

Azeri Poetry

I was reading an Azeri poem, and I realized (again) how beautifully the imagery in eastern poetry is used. Each verse is perfectly set, and I can’t help feeling nostalgic with each line I read.

I apologize to the non-Azeri (Turkish) speaking among the readers. I will try and translate it at a later time.