New Top 10 Team Member - Ugly

Congratulations to Ugly who has now joined the Top 10 on the Team Leaderboard knocking DSE_352_PS3 back to 11th!

Here's how the current top 10 stands:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	283685	1152
2	Jens_Klausen	225613	478
3	Ravenge5	166003	745
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	89463	311
6	peterdiva	73608	111
7	zoneur	61625	135
8	smASHer88	55491	192
9	BulleenAnt1	42274	143
10	Ugly	38557	20

Folding@Home Server changes plan to reduce downtime

Vijay Pande has posted some news on his blog about recent changes regarding the Collection Servers (CS), and also about plans for Server upgrades in the near future.

The Collection Servers have gotten a bit of tweaking, and have been moved onto a new network as the old one has had quite a few problems. Both Servers (171.67.108.17 & 171.67.108.25) are reportedly doing well for now. These servers act as backups when the Work Servers (where you download work units from) can't handle all the completed/uploaded work units, or when they are down.

The Folding@Home team also plan to issue general server upgrades with v5 code (currently in beta testing with Project 3798) early next year, with production Work Servers likely to be updated starting in January. This v5 code is being built from scratch and hopefully will result in much more stable servers for a more reliable Project network.

New Team Member - terminator80

A new team member going by the name of terminator80 has joined our team.

Already returning 2 work units, they have earned 960 points so far and sit 584,890th out of 1,137,792 all-time folders.

Points Milestone - Jens_Klausen - 200k

Joining smASHer88_PS3 in the 200k points Team Member Major Milestones Club category, Jens_Klausen is now the second team member to crack the 200,000 points milestone!

Only joining the team just over two months ago, Jens_Klausen has made a significant contribution to the team's total points in such a short time. Using 2 x GPUs to fold, he cranks out over 4,000 points daily! Now sitting on 205,679 from 433 work units, he's sitting 2nd on the team leaderboard and 22,452nd out of 1,136,995 all-time folders. Well done mate!

Top 10 Team Members Shuffle

Our most recent change to our Team Leaderboard Top 10 sees zoneur move ahead to 7th spot, pushing my computer - smASHer88 back to 8th.

The current top 10:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	277478	1129
2	Jens_Klausen	193199	407
3	Ravenge5	166003	745
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	83243	287
6	peterdiva	61671	100
7	zoneur	55834	122
8	smASHer88	55491	192
9	BulleenAnt1	42274	143
10	DSE_352_PS3	37070	138

Work Units Milestone - peterdiva - 100

peterdiva has made a milestone for returning 100 work units!

Gaining 61,671 points from those 100 work units, he sits 6th on the team leaderboard, and 65,642nd out of 1,135,251 all-time folders. Well done mate.

Points Milestone - Ravenge - 5k

Ravenge5's computer, running as Ravenge has just broken through the 5,000 points milestone!

Currently on 5,283 points from 35 work units, his computer sits 299,565th out of 1,134,191 all-time folders. Good stuff mate!

New Team Member - NTC

Please welcome our newest member to the team - NTC.

They've already returned their 1st work unit for 114 points and they currently sit 928,174th out of 1,134,191 all-time folders.

Main Assignment Server was down temporarily

Reading Vijay Pande's blog (posts 1 & 2), it seems the Main Assignment Server was out of action for approximately an hour, which wasn't to worry as they have other backup servers in place for times like these. This all happened at approximately 4:30 PM PST November 21 (so just before lunch, 11:30 AM AEDT, November 22 here on the Aussie East Coast!)

The main consequence is that the Stats system had to hold off updating for a while, so the Team/Donor stats might not have appeared to update for a few hours. All work unit credits were still counted, but they just might have taken a while to get credited to the Stats system. All should be good now.


PST = Pacific Standard Time = UTC-8
AEDT = Australian Eastern Daylight Time = UTC+11

Points Milestone - QCKRNU - 20k

QCKRNU has now made the 20,000 points milestone!

Using his dual-core AMD processor, he's returned 134 work units so far for a total of exactly 20,053 points. Sitting 15th on the team leaderboard, he sits 145,347th out of 1,133,297 all-time folders. Great stuff mate.

Points Milestone - Jawgz - 10k

Jawgz has now passed the milestone for 10,000 points!

Sitting on 11,007 points from only 21 work units, he sits 21st on the team leaderboard and 206,995th out of 1,133,297 all-time folders. Well done mate.

Work Units Milestone - Aussie Rules Footy - 5k

We as a team have now collectively returned over 5,000 work units!!!

We currently sit on 5,041 work units which has earned us a total of 1,366,048 points so far. We sit 1,136th out of 147,872 all-time teams. Well done guys, we have contributed a great effort to Folding@Home so far, and we should be at 10,000 work units in no time!

Top 10 Team Members Shuffle

With another change to our Top 10 Team Members, peterdiva now jumps to 6th spot, pushing my computer - smASHer88 back to 7th.

There's been a lot of changes on team leaderboard just in November, and I can't wait to see where everyone sits at the end of 2008! Heres the current top 10:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	274698	1118
2	Jens_Klausen	173999	367
3	Ravenge5	166003	745
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	80133	275
6	peterdiva	56927	96
7	smASHer88	55199	191
8	zoneur	51514	113
9	BulleenAnt1	42274	143
10	DSE_352_PS3	37070	138

Points Milestone - zoneur - 50k

zoneur has now passed the milestone for 50,000 points!

Our 8th team member to do so, he joins seven others on the Major Milestone Club for passing 50k points. He now sits on exactly 51,514 points from 113 work units. Currently 8th on the team leaderboard, he's running 75,227th out of 1,132,309 all-time folders. Congrats mate!

Top 5 Team Members Shuffle

It was only 5 days ago, Jens_Klausen nudged aside long-running 3rd placed team member RoXeD, but now it's Ravenge5 turn to give up his long-running team placing as well (2nd). As of today, Jens_Klausen now sits 2nd on the Team Leaderboard, with quite a stretch to reach my ol' faithful - smASHer88_PS3!!! No doubt this guy will chew through the 100k points buffer in no time, i'm just not looking forward to reporting on my own de-throning!

Current top 5:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	273831	1114
2	Jens_Klausen	167279	353
3	Ravenge5	166003	745
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	79173	271

Work Units Milestone - zoneur - 100

Joining the team a bit over a month ago now, zoneur has now returned over 100 work units for Aussie Rules Footy!

Having completed a total of 105 work units, he's gained 47,674 points and as he currently sits 8th on the team leaderboard, he sits 79,589th out of 1,131,392 all-time folders. Well done mate!

Points Milestone - Jawgz - 5k

My mate, Jawgz has recently started folding again, now using his brand new Macbook Pro, he has now passed the 5,000 points milestone!

Since the Intel Macs can only fold using the SMP client, he gains quite a few points from each work unit, just like Ugly with his Macbook Pro. So expect his 10k point milestone to come up relatively quickly.

He now sits on exactly 5,247 points from 18 work units and 299,422nd out of 1,129,902 all-time folders.

Points Milestone - peterdiva - 50k

peterdiva joins the Major Milestone Club for 50,000 points!

Only at the start of this month had he made his 20k points milestone, and now he's sittin on 50k points, and inside the team's top 10! On exactly 50,135 points from 89 work units, he's 7th on the team leaderboard and 76,421st out of 1,129,902 all-time folders. Well done mate!

Top 10 Team Members Shuffle

zoneur has now taken 8th spot on the Top 10 Team Leaderboard, as he overtakes BulleenAnt1, leaving him at 9th spot.

The current top 10 looks like this:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	270881	1101
2	Ravenge5	164693	739
3	Jens_Klausen	149488	316
4	RoXeD	132100	543
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	75913	258
6	smASHer88	54907	190
7	peterdiva	47895	87
8	zoneur	42874	95
9	BulleenAnt1	42274	143
10	DSE_352_PS3	37070	138

Points Milestone - Ugly - 20k

Ugly folding with his Macbook Pro has passed the 20,000 points milestone!

Currently on 21,053 points from 11 work units, he sits 13th on the team leaderboard, and 139,958th out of 1,129,195 all-time folders. Good stuff mate.

Top 10 Team Members Shuffle

As promised Jens_Klausen has taken 3rd place on the Team Leaderboard today, pushing RoXeD back to 4th.

EDIT:
Forgive me, but I was actually meant to post the top 10 figures here, as it seems I missed the fact that peterdiva overtook BulleenAnt1 as well, meaning this is now a 'Top 10 Team Members Shuffle' post. So peterdiva moves to 7th spot, leaving BulleenAnt1 at 8th.

As we now have over 60 members in our team to keep track of, you'll just have to forgive me if I miss reporting on something, so please leave comments if I do again.

Top 10 Team Members Shuffle

Another change to the Top 10 Team Leaderboard this week now has peterdiva at 8th spot, leaving zoneur to fall back to 9th.

Expect another shuffle post tomorrow for the top 5 as Jens_Klausen surges ahead, eyeing off RoXeD's podium spot! But as for now, here's the current lineup:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	268661	1093
2	Ravenge5	162863	733
3	RoXeD	132100	543
4	Jens_Klausen	129328	274
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	73683	248
6	smASHer88	54743	189
7	BulleenAnt1	42274	143
8	peterdiva	40951	82
9	zoneur	40474	90
10	DSE_352_PS3	37070	138

Jens_Klausen has added a 2nd GPU!

Future Team Leader, Jens_Klausen has recently added a second ASUS EN9600GT SILENT graphics card to his Computer, boosting his PPD (points per day) output even further!

With his current PPD output of ~4,000, he'll most likely overtake 3rd placed RoXeD tomorrow to continue his push up the team leaderboard!

Previously running a quad-core system with a single GPU, he's told me that the NVIDIA GPU client no longer requires a dedicated CPU core to feed it, so he's squeezed in another GPU for more output. The rest of his CPU time he uses to contribute to the BOINC Distributed Computing program, running under the name Jens.

For those that haven't seen his YouTube video - Folding@Home on a NVIDIA 9600GT GPU, you can either use the link, or go back to his 10k Points Milestone where his video is also featured.

Great stuff mate!

Top 10 Team Members Shuffle

With our fourth change in the Top 10 for Team Members in the space of a week, peterdiva now moves ahead to take 9th spot, leaving DSE_352_PS3 at 10th.

DSE_352_PS3, a now defunct team member, was the first Playstation 3 to join Aussie Rules Footy. Running on a store-display PS3 at my place of work - Dick Smith Electronics, store number 352, it joined the team on the 26th May, 2007 (the Folding@Home software for PS3 was only just released months before in March, and it was also one of the now defunct CECHCxx 60GB PAL models) and was folding consistently as a store display PS3 could until it's last work unit on the 20th September, 2007. I believe the PS3 had to transferred as stock to another store, so that's pretty much how it stopped. Since it started folding at a time when the team only had ~14,000 points, it played a crucial role in getting the team to is first 100,000 points milestone.

Current top 10:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	266801	1086
2	Ravenge5	160823	726
3	RoXeD	132100	543
4	Jens_Klausen	118644	252
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	71623	240
6	smASHer88	54728	188
7	BulleenAnt1	42274	143
8	zoneur	40474	90
9	peterdiva	38231	74
10	DSE_352_PS3	37070	138

Points Milestone - Ugly - 10k

Ugly has now passed the milestone for 10,000 points!

He has so far earned 11,641 points from only 6 work units! He also sits 198,464th out of 1,124,796 all-time folders. Well done mate!

New Top 10 Team Member - peterdiva

peterdiva has now joined the Top 10 on the Team Leaderboard!

Relegating DSE_352_Notebooks to 11th place, he now sits comfortably at 10th spot with only a couple more thousand points needed to overtake DSE_352_PS3.

Here's the current top 10:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	265841	1082
2	Ravenge5	159773	722
3	RoXeD	132100	543
4	Jens_Klausen	114773	244
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	70573	236
6	smASHer88	54683	185
7	BulleenAnt1	42274	143
8	zoneur	40474	90
9	DSE_352_PS3	37070	138
10	peterdiva	35831	72

Work Units Milestone - QCKRNU - 100

QCKRNU has now achieved the 100 work units milestone!

Gaining 16,772 points from 100 work units, he sits 15th on the team leaderboard, and 160,240th out of 1,123,968 all-time folders. Great stuff mate!

Playstation 3 Folding@Home client wins Japanese Design Award

The Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry has awarded Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) the 'Good Design Gold Award 2008' (otherwise known as the 'G-Mark' award) for its design of the http://folding.stanford.edu/ application for the Playstation 3.

The collaboration of Stanford University (more specifically the Pande Group team) and Sony Computer Entertainment resulted in a Folding@Home client tailored to the PS3 specifications. Optimized specifically to take advantage of the power of the Cell Broadband Engine, the program is the first of it's kind on a games console.

Sighting a highly detailed world map where the location of other users are shown, and with the addition of a detailed protein visualization (powered by the NVIDIA designed RSX GPU), this earned Sony Computer Entertainment and its Folding@Home program the prestigious award which has been given out since 1957 to award outstanding design in industrial and consumer products.

The award jury commented saying:

"Analysis of proteins for the purpose of shedding light on diseases is just one example of solution design for social issues, a stance that indicates the direction that design should take in the future. Motivating the people who will be involved in these studies will be the key to success, but the program functions well as an idea for making participation in this project visible on a global scale."

Masayuki Chatani, Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Technology Platform commented on receiving the award on behalf of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. saying:

"It is a great honor to receive the ‘Good Design Gold Award’ for our support for the Folding@home project on PS3, Over 1.5 million PS3 users have participated in the Folding@home project and I truly appreciate their contributions for making this project a success. We will continue our efforts in delivering compelling and original services only possible on the PS3 platform."

Congratulations to Sony Computer Entertainment on it's Good Design Gold Award Achievement. They also picked up 'Good Design' Awards for the PlayStation®Network logo and PlayStation®Store user interface design.

Sources:
Kotaku's report & Vijay Pande's Blog
The following is taken from the official Sony press release:

"The “Good Design Award” is Japan’s
only comprehensive design evaluation and commendation system. This system itself
has its origin in the “Good Design Selection System” instituted by the Ministry
of International Trade and Industry in 1957. This year, over 3000 entries were
made and as a result of first and second screening, 1067 items received “Good
Design Award.” Out of 1067 Good Design Award items, 15 entries received “Good
Design Award Best 15,” which includes 1 “Good Design Grand Award” and 14 “Good
Design Gold Award.”"

Points Milestone - Jens_Klausen - 100k

Jens_Klausen has now past the 100,000 points milestone, bumping himself up a notch in the Team Member Major Milestones Club!

Joining the team less than two months ago, Jens_Klausen has been making over 50,000 points / month! Just goes to show that GPU folding pays... pays very well! Haha thats points-wise anyways.. as for the science of Folding@Home, it's still important to have a range of different clients complimenting each other. For example, GPU clients lack flexibility in the type of work they can 'fold', whereas CPU clients have the most flexibility, but are obviously a lot less powerful. PS3s sit somewhere in between. So team members, if your not getting heaps of points for your work.. don't worry, it's all helping out!

So anyway, Jens_Klausen is now on exactly 101,720 points from just 217 work units. He's currently 4th on the team leaderboard, and sitting 42,275th out of 1,121,283 all-time folders. Awesome achievement mate!

Top 10 Team Members Shuffle

Our Top 10 team members have had another small change to their lineup, with zoneur now at 8th spot, pushing DSE_352_PS3 back to 9th spot.

Here's how the top 10 looks:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	260631	1061
2	Ravenge5	155266	705
3	RoXeD	129730	535
4	Jens_Klausen	99914	213
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	65453	217
6	smASHer88	54019	184
7	BulleenAnt1	42274	143
8	zoneur	38043	85
9	DSE_352_PS3	37070	138
10	DSE_352_Notebooks	33652	137

Points Milestone - BIGMAN - 20k

BIGMAN has now scored a milestone for 20,000 points!

Sitting on exactly 20,013 points from 57 work units, he sits 142,802nd out of 1,119,765 all-time folders. Great stuff mate!

Work Units Milestone - Jens_Klausen - 200

Jens_Klausen has made the work units milestone for returning over 200 work units!

Currently sitting 4th on the team leaderboard, he sits 43,815th out of 1,119,765 all-time folders with 206 work units and 97,154 points to his name. Well done mate.

Top 10 Team Members Shuffle

Our Top 10 team members have had just a small change in their lineup, with zoneur now taking out 9th spot, pushing DSE_352_Notebooks out to 10th spot.

Here's how the top 10 looks:

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	259951	1058
2	Ravenge5	154290	701
3	RoXeD	128610	530
4	Jens_Klausen	97154	206
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	64309	211
6	smASHer88	54019	184
7	BulleenAnt1	42274	143
8	DSE_352_PS3	37070	138
9	zoneur	36603	82
10	DSE_352_Notebooks	33487	136

Points Milestone - Ugly - 5k

Our first known Mac SMP folding team member, Ugly has just past the milestone for 5,000 points!

He's so far scored exactly 5,657 points from only 3 work units! He sits 285,461st out of 1,118,857 all-time folders. Well done mate.

PS3 Server 171.64.65.83 Reset

Just over half an hour ago I switched on smASHer88_PS3 to successfully download a new work unit - Project 5308 Run 40 Clone 848 Generation 5. Lahm_Family_PS3 then downloaded Project 5308 as well, Run 35 Clone 854 Generation 8.

Reading Vijay Pande's blog, he's told us that they've reset server 171.64.65.83 and that seems to have fixed the PS3 downloading troubles we've been having. I dare say this particular server didn't boot up properly after the scheduled server outage they had a few days ago. There looks to be another scheduled server outage for 171.64.65.XX network on November 5, 7 AM to 8:30 AM PST (2 AM to 3:30 AM, November 6 for us on AEDT) so if ya have some issues then, hopefully it will pass quickly.

PST = Pacific Standard Time = GMT-8
AEDT = Australian Eastern Daylight Time = GMT+11

EDIT: Seemed to be a 3-4 hour period after my two 7hr work units finished where they wouldn't then download another new work unit! However i've turned them back on yet again to download new work units. I seriously hope these troubles are behind us now for the PS3! Haha

PS3 Servers seem to be down

If your PS3 is saying "can't connect to Server" then your not your own. It seems to be another small problem with the servers as many people have reported on the Folding Community Forum. Less than a fortnight ago, PS3 folders experienced the same problem, and it was given a short-term fix.

So hold tight guys, hopefully the Stanford guys are working on fixing this problem as we speak, as it is daytime there now. I'm sure Vijay will give us some official news soon. I have shutdown both my PS3s for now, and will keep checking one of them every now and then and post back when i have success in downloading a new work unit! Haha this doesn't really help our Foldathon, but oh well, gotta keep crunching away best we can!

New Official Team Logo

I've designed a brand new official team logo, just for the hell of it! The old one was getting a bit boring.. needed a refresh. You may also notice the new blog banner. Hope everyone likes!

Just so everyone knows, this is the original logo it is replacing -

I'll try to post some modified logos soon so that they can be used as forum avatars etc.

November 2008 = 2nd Team Birthday Foldathon!

Marking the 2nd Birthday of our Folding@Home team Aussie Rules Footy, we are going to celebrate by hosting a 'Foldathon'!

Basically, a Foldathon is where you fold as many work units as you can during a set time period (ours being the whole month of November), and building as many points for your donor name as possible.

As well as acting like a Team Member Recruitment Drive, we want to see how far we can push our Team Ranking position, as it stands at 1279th at the moment. By folding as many work units as possible, we'll be doing a lot of important work for Stanford University. It's also a way to create a bit of friendly competitive spirit amongst our team members, spurring them on to either putting on extra machines for themselves, or encouraging their friends and family to join the cause!

I've changed the 'Team Birthday' countdown clock to reflect the time period of the Foldathon. So we now have to the end of November to make as many points as possible!

Here's a snapshot of our current team stats which will be used in combination with a snapshot early on the 1st of December to decide a Winner of the 2nd Team Birthday Foldathon! Where a team member has more than one folding name, the sum of their folding names will be used.

Aussie Rules Footy

Date of last work unit	2008-10-31 08:30:13
Active CPUs within 50 days	33
Team Id	52735
Grand Score	1106761 (certificate)
Work Unit Count	4402 (certificate)
Team Ranking (incl. aggregate)	1279 of 146442
Home Page	http://team52735.blogspot.com/
Fast Teampage URL	http://fah-web.stanford.edu/teamstats/team52735.html

Team members

Rank (within team)	User	Score	WU
1	smASHer88_PS3	257161	1047
2	Ravenge5	153170	696
3	RoXeD	125120	517
4	Jens_Klausen	84908	180
5	Lahm_Family_PS3	61759	201
6	smASHer88	54019	184
7	BulleenAnt1	42274	143
8	DSE_352_PS3	37070	138
9	DSE_352_Notebooks	33487	136
10	zoneur	32860	73
11	mikael	26502	127
12	peterdiva	20962	54
13	BIGMAN	19683	56
14	Delta_Leviathan	18817	132
15	Greg	16622	114
16	magicgate3	13335	56
17	ROO_BOY29	13055	46
18	QCKRNU	12655	66
19	ahmsnake	11179	45
20	savernake	9445	38
21	Jacko	7230	36
22	rossqo	5596	10
23	mgpower0	5280	3
24	bec_clarke	4413	41
25	PS3	3982	33
26	hobbozzrock	3685	15
27	Ugly	3513	2
28	MitchAllen	3160	39
29	Ravenge	2917	24
30	nitty	2750	4
31	Jawgz	2434	16
32	erBotty	2250	5
33	J4CKT	2220	9
34	BOONDOCKS	1500	1
35	TheePi	1388	36
36	ningcaptor	1036	9
37	luigi4562	953	7
38	Rfscann	935	6
39	Suzy_Wong	837	4
40	SHELL86	765	2
41	CCz619	625	5
42	Bennymac	598	4
43	wilson	545	2
44	QUEBEC	500	2
45	Bioufaxxx	500	3
46	Revolutionary_For_Life	372	2
47	goddest	340	1
48	PS34LIFE.ZACHZEHRUNG	287	1
49	KillerKahuna	287	2
50	Curer_Of_Diseases	256	3
51	naomi	250	1
52	captinmax	250	1
53	nigel	250	2
54	Beauwoodland	186	1
55	chris_be	186	1
56	J4CKT_PC	149	3
57	Shinobi	125	1
58	dcbunny	98	2
59	Jorgo	30	2
60	THAmyth	0	4
61	ronnie	0	3
62	Bernard	0	5

Thanks guys for your participation and good luck!