Angels and Demons Saturday, Jan 28 2006

I had borrowed a copy of the Da Vinci Code from a friend and I loved it. Perhaps this is my own inside joke but throughout the book, imagined Robert Langdon in his adventures and then replaced him with a professor I’ve ever had in the past. Now that is a constant source of amusement. Especially when I think of the faculty who deal with Art and Art History.

So now I finally got around to reading Angels and Demons and let me tell you, it’s quite a page turner. It’s not quite as good as the Da Vinci Code , but the action is consistent through out the book. Perhaps it’s my background in Art and Art History that makes the books so appealing and fun to read and see all the famous works and places appear throughout the book.

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Ender’s Game Friday, Jan 20 2006

I went and got this book a few days ago at the recommendation of a friend and before I knew it I was hooked. I seriously couldn’t put the book down. Today at work, I put down my lunch and used my entire lunch break to read instead … minus the interruptions.

I’d like to go off on a tangent here for a moment, if I may. Why do people never have any problem disturbing someone who is reading a book? I mean if you’re at a movie people don’t come up to you and start talking to you, but people constantly come up to me and try to strike up conversation while I’m reading — which of course forces me to look up from my book and be polite — as if reading a book was not a worthwhile activity. Please don’t do that.

As I was saying about the book, it’s absolutely amazing. It is a sci-fi book and it may not be your cup of tea but it brought out so many emotions in me. Perhaps it touched me because I was a mere 11 years old when I had to deal with a war . I really don’t know. I’ve never had the luxury of looking at life through the eyes of someone who hasn’t lived through a war so perhaps I just think everything relates to it some way.

I don’t want to give too much away but the book digs deep into human psyche, manipulation and control, but most of all it’s about what happens when there is a lack of communication.

If you like books, go get this one. You won’t be disappointed.

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Downtime Wednesday, Jan 18 2006

 

Ever heard of Distributed Computing? Well, I had looked into it a while ago but I just wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it. Recently I thought about how much downtime my computer has (when I’m sleeping, at school, at work, out climbing, out camping, etc.) and it turns out it’s a lot – most of the time in fact. I still don’t feel like shutting it off ever, so it ends up not doing anything while it’s on except wait for me to return. I finally decided get involved with distributed computing and it’s actually pretty cool. I feel like I’m doing something good.
My computer is part of Stanford’s Folding at Home project which simulates the folding of proteins, RNA and nanoscale synthetic polymers in an attempt to discover more about Alzheimer’s Disease, Huntington’s Disease, Cancer, Osteogenesis Imperfecta, Parkinson’s Disease and the Ribosome. A worthy cause indeed!

If you get the graphical client for Windows, this is what it will look like when it’s running:

You can, of course, turn this off and just let the client run in peace. You can change a ton of settings and run the client as you like it. You can, for example, set it to run all the time at the lowest priority – that way if any other program needs more cpu time, FAH automatically backs down. You can set how much processor you want to allow FAH to use at most, I keep mine usually at about 90 percent. You can also set FAH to run only when it’s in screensaver mode. This means you set the screensaver to turn on after x amount of time and the FAH client does not use any of your resources unless the computer has been idle for that time.

When you open up the client you see the protein or fold currently being worked on. You can set it to display as the ball and stick model or the space-fill model. The information on the left shows your your name, your team number (446 is the google team), the number of WU (work units) you’ve finished, protein that’s being worked on, how many frames have being simulated out of the total and average time it takes to process one frame. Below that it shows when the next frame will be done and below that it shows how long it will take, approximately, to finish the entire work unit. This will change depending on how much free processor time the FAH client can get.

If you’re interested in distributed computing, visit http://folding.stanford.edu/ for more information.

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American Gods Tuesday, Jan 10 2006

I swiped this book off my friends desk recently and so far I have to say American Gods by Neil Gaiman is one of the more interesting stories I have ever read. The writing isn’t necesserily the best – and I would say the same of Stephen King whose Dark Tower series I enjoyed thoroghly – but the story certainly makes up for what it lacks elsewhere. The book stars out with a crown jewel of irony (the fatal kind) for our main character, Shadow, which aside from ruining all his plans removes all and restrains that would stop him from getting involved with a mysterious character who tells him his name is Wednesday, becuase the day was … well Wednesday. With every page Shadow sinks deeper into this intriguing new world he never knew existed, and you will anxiously turn the pages to follow him.

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