Update 27th March

Last update 23:15hrs 9th March 2006
This update 23:40 27th March 2006
Total Active Members 174 (+3)
Recent Active Members 95 (+7)
Total Credit 9,692,272 ((+385,335)=21.4K/day)
Overall Boinc Place 72th (static)

Sorry about the delay since the last entry but as the forum has begun to take off that has kept me busy. If you've not tried the forum get there now and sign up. Reading my occasional ravings is all very well but it's not real communication! As you can see all the recent activity has been very helpful in building the team again. There has been a modest increase in the total members but the number of people active in the last month has risen quite significantly. By the way don't worry about the apparent drop in daily productivity - this is just because SETI, our biggest project hasn't updated it's stats in 2 days - it happens.

A new project is the BBC Climate Change Experiment. As far as I can see this is good old fashioned Climate Prediction Boinc sexed up to appeal to the telly watching masses: Elitist prejudices aside, there is nothing wrong with that if it gets people interested in distributed computing & indeed the project is proving very popular. We noticed that a team called "Scotland" had been set up and was doing quite well. Now it seems a shame to have rival Scottish teams splitting the Scottish effort so I visited the BBC CCE forum and suggested a merger. This innocent proposal proved to be as popular as a turd in a swimming pool and I got thoroughly flamed.

Having had the hand of friendship savagely hacked off I did set up a Scotland's Seti team for this project which you can join or not (please don't get angry it's just an option).

Who'd be a spammer?

Tonight I've been mainly typing addresses into my Outlook Express address book.
I got over 50 addresses from the Einstein@Home team website -as team founder I can see such stuff- and with way too much fiddly cutting & pasting made a group. I then composed an inspirational e-mail and pressed the send button.
Bums! My server rejected the message on the grounds of "too many recipients". It doesn't like any more than 12 (c'mon, I'd have to be a really ambitionless spammer to want to spam just 13 people). However after lots more cutting and pasting I made 5 groups and finally sent my message 5 times. You may have got it. Hopefully lots of lapsed members will have also and will flock back to us like lost sheep redeemed.
So now, before bed, I will update the website at last.

We've got a forum!

Snowdog has come to the rescue and set us up a splendid new forum -the link is on the right. So rejoice, sign up and start communicating as if we weren't all Autistic Spectrum Disorder geeky types!
I'll revamp the website to make this, very welcome, development central to our efforts sometime very soon.

Onwards & Upwards-ish.

Last update 23:55hrs 1st March 2006
This update 23:15hrs 9th March 2006
Total Active Members 171 (+1)
Recent Active Members 88 (+1)
Total Credit 9,306,937 ((+185,354)=23K/day)
Overall Boinc Place 72th (-2)

As predicted, we've slipped back a bit, not because we're doing badly, but just because a couple of other teams have powered past us: I don't anticipate being overtaken by anyone else before we hit 10 million. We could, with only a marginal raising of our game, even overtake World Wide Seti. Anyhow, it's the taking part that counts, and we're certainly doing that.

Thanks to FlyingfocRS, a Scotland's Seti stalwart of old, who has become the third member of uFluids team, this, the youngest of our teams, is now the highest placed (albeit against a meagre field) in 39th place.

T

March Update

As a new month, and a new season if you believe the Met Office, dawns the team stands as follows:

Last update 23:00hrs 24th Feb 2006
This update 23:55hrs 1st March 2006
Total Active Members 170 (+1)
Recent Active Members 87 (-3)
Total Credit 9,121,583 ((+104,796)=21K/day)
Overall Boinc Place 70th (static)

So, healthy enough. We still have a trickle of new members and are holding our own in 70th.

Without a recruitment drive, people and machines, we might expect to slip a little over the next few months, maybe to about 80th. This is because by and large we were early switchers from Seti Classic to Boinc. Now the big hitting teams have been forced to make the switch they are beginning to overtake us.

It's a bit like my own crunching rankings: I bailed out of S@H in about 1970th place, then quickly rose to 214th for Boinc but since then I have, despite gradually increasing my productivity, sank to 450th. My RAC placing is 919th (and that's with my friends' Sempron doing it's "burn in test") so my long term goal is to hold on to a top 1000 placing.

As regards uFluids, I finally made the top 100 (98th) and the team (all 2 of us) are 42nd. One for Hitch-hiker's Guide fans to savour.

The message of the post is RECRUIT!! Scotland's Seti Needs You. I'm off to find the e-mail addresses of inactive members to bully them into getting going again. You do what you can.