NEWS

Hardware freaks trying to make some sense out of a bunch of numbers

New #1!
guru is back on top.....today he passes up davycroc for the top place on Team Lamb Chop.  Congrats!

There has been quite a bit of movement over the past couple of days within the team....I will try to give a synopsis of the movement.  leech has finally passed Panders and is now the #6 team member.  C. Eric Smith moved up a total of 3 spots to #9.  svdsinner jumped up 2 spots to #14.  Fluffypants moved up a notch to #23.  The big mover for the past couple of weeks has been Tobler Design.  They have rocketed up from nowhere, moving up 19 spots in the past 5 days and now is #25....but it just gets tougher to move up from there!

Sorry
I want to apologize for the lack of news updates today and most likely for the next couple of days.  I am pretty busy with stuff at home, plus hockey and plus messing around with Janes F/A-18 :-).  If there is anything really important or earth shattering I WILL post it here though....

One thing of note....is that all the Club Team stats seems to be screwed up.  WUs done by individuals are not being updated into the team totals.  Actually out team totals have gone down, most likely because we lost a member yesterday.  Over the past two days if there has been any change in the totals of a team, it is most likely due to a member joining/leaving a team.  I am not sure what is up....but hopefully it will get straightened out sometime soon.

Back Up
Well the server outage yesterday lasted quite a bit longer than expected....and here is why:

January 6, 2000
The RAID card on the science database server has been acting up, and Sun came to replace it this afternoon. The outage should had been brief, but the server wouldn't reboot after swapping out the card. This card was replaced with a second new card to no avail. The problem was eventually tracked down to a suddenly bad SCSI cable. We should've been able to swap the cable with another, but this cable has a certain special extra-thin jack as to fit on the rather cramped RAID card, and we had no spare cables of this type. So we had to take a standard cable to the machine shop and shave it down to make it fit.

Why they didn't just use a Dremel, I have no clue.

Version 2.0 Next Week?
I have my doubts...but I ran across this Wired article today.  Why do I have my doubts?  Well I would have expected to hear something on the alt.sci.seti, or sci.astro.seti newsgroups about an imminent client release.  The article is apparently wrong about the Version 2.0 client when it says the client will be sped up, but will do additional work.  It has been stated several times in the newsgroups that the new science *will not* be included in the Version 2.0 client, and will be included in the Version 3.0 client.  I emailed Wired feedback about this discrepancy, and they stick behind their story.  Their reporter talked to Dr David Anderson the SETI Project Manager.  Granted the SETI staff is small and there shouldn't be any confusion between them....but, I would take the word of Eric Korpela (who helped program the clients) instead of a reporter who may have gotten v 2.0 and v 3.0 mixed up.

Update:
Just read this from alt.sci.seti, from one of the SETI@Home crew:

On Version 2.0 being released next week..........

Oy. This is Matt from SETI@home and I'm more or less coordinating the
beta testing. The story is this:

We *think* we have the socks proxy stuff pretty solid now. The security
stuff is already in place, as well as other bug fixes and minor enhancements.
We're testing with a couple beta testers right now, will hopefully send out
the full beta to the complete set of beta testers shortly, and if all goes
well, yes, 2.0 may very well be available next week. I reiterate: "if all
goes well." So don't hold your breath.

On the faster FFT and more science being included in the Version 2.0 client..........

If 2.0 isn't ready any time soon we may stick the science code in. But that
may be too much for one release. Chances are we'll release 2.0, let that
soak for at least a couple of weeks, and then release 3.0 with the pulse
detection code.

Beefing Up
The team added a new member, and he/she quickly shot up to the #18 spot.  XYZZY joins the team with 2227 WUs....everyone else behind him moves down one :).  svdsinner has done it again, passing up Dan Dan the Linux Man and into the #16 spot.  Clayton Olley has passed Grimas and is now #28.  Also, R. Marvin passed Dr. Xing and is now #22.

Be Prepared!
From the SETI Home Offices:

There will be a one to two hour outage on 1/6/2000, beginning around noon PST. During this outage we will be replacing a troublesome RAID card.

NO TECH!
Oh well....when i was writing things last night, VA Tech was in the process of taking the lead over FSU, but alas.....they ran out of gas.

Updates
I guess many of you have noticed the changes in the page today.  I did quite a bit of work last night in adding some pages, and features.  I now have a couple of pages (under member charts) which show the ranking and WUs for the top 200 members at the time I saved the data for the team (which is used for all the calculations).  Also on this graph I show the number of work units each member processed for the day, and the number of spots they improved in the rankings (green if they moved up, red if they moved down, and yellow denotes a new member to the top 100!).  I also added graphs for the 101-200 members, this is split up into two graphs for clarity etc.  The last two things I was to amend the "split" graph, and add another "split-type" graph.  On the "split" graph, it now shows the work units produced for the top 100, 101-200, and the rest of the team.  The new graph shows the overall contribution of the top 100, 101-200, and rest of the team to the entire team total.

If there are any problems with the graphs, or with any links, please let me know! -zAmboni

Team News
There were several things of note in the previous couple of days within the team.  First off is a new member who immediately moved into the top 100...and this is BlueElf, and he/she debuts at #32.  Welcome aboard!  BlueElf gave us a nice 1290WU boost in the team numbers, but unfortunately it is doing little to hold off the /. onslaught.  Even with that boost, /. is still projected to pass Team Lamb Chop in the first week of February.

Something that didn't make it into the update yesterday was pretty significant.  SpeedRacer took back the #3 team spot from the SouthPark Admin Crew.  SPAC recently began crunching work units, but unfortunately they didn't process any yesterday.  svdsinner continues his moves up the chart by moving past 3 members and now is in the #19 spot.  tron passed Uncomm0n into the #25 spot.  Other moves included Vulture up one to #31, Darkmage up one to#34, elBeavis up one to #36, and mznthrope hops up one to #38.

One thing I have neglected in the past couple of weeks is to give props to some milestones on Team Lamb Chop.  I will try go give some special Ultra Mad Props to the following members:

One Last Note:
For those interested....the hockey game went well last night.  We ran our record up to 9-1 with a 7-1 win last night.

GO TECH!
Sorry for the late update......I had a hockey game right after work tonight....and then I got watching the football game :)  You may notice some differences in the pages today.  I think i am going to add a page sometime later tonight, look for it.  Also I changed the "split" graph.  This graph now shows the daily contribution from the top 100, 101-200 places, and the rest of the team.  Also I am going to add a graph showing the contribution for each of the above in the team total of work units.  

I will keep this short to get the changes done, and also to watch the game :)

GO TEAM LAMB CHOP!

Yes2K
Well apparently there was a Y2K problem over at the SETI home offices.  Apparently this morning the servers crashed due to an Informix problem.  Some people who wanted to check the server status (using the new page on the SETI site) ended up getting a weird result.  The servers were indeed down, but the page problem  (servers being down for 525600 minutes) was due to a non Y2K compliant version of PERL used to generate the scripts.  Here is what Eric Korpela had to say:

>This is from a previous posting by E.Korpela:
>
>"We're in the process of adding a page to the web site.  It's currently
>at http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/sstatus.html and will eventually
>be linked into the home page."
>
>You'll find the server status there.

Unfortunately the version of Perl we were using had a Y2K bug and that page, since New Year's day, had been reporting the the server had been down for 525600 minutes, even when the server was up and running.

We've fixed that, and the informix problem that brought the server down this morning.

Eric

Weekly Stuff
The weekly update was delayed a day...but it is up now.  The return of the SouthPark Admin Crew still wasn't enough to supplant guru at the tops of the Work Units for the week.  guru since the beginning of the year hasn't been crunching for SETI.....and doesn't look like he will be back.  Behind guru and SPAC was Vomesh and svdsinner.  Vomesh and svdsinner are cranking up the competition between each other with lots of WUs and lots of machines.  We will see who will be ahead at the end of next week!

The top mover of last week was LrdHighFxr, followed by SirRobin.  Things are getting tough in the movement competition for the top 100, and the moves may not be that big unless the member has a fleet of computers crunching for them.  We will have to see how things go next week.

Since guru is not crunching out work units....who is going to compete with the SouthPark Admin Crew?  Well it looks like it may be guru again....this time using his alias SpeedRacer.  Looks like SpeedRacer likes some good competition, and now that the SPAC is cranking out work units again, he wants the #3 spot back.  Over the past couple of days SpeedRacer has been ramping things up again, and is going to give SPAC a run for their money.  Yesterday SpeedRacer cranked out another 250 WUs and processed more than SPAC for the day.

svdsinner moved up 2 spots today and now is on the verge of breaking into the top 20....he now sits at the #21 spot.  Other movement in the top 40 includes VulTure moving up 2 spots to #32, and Trinity moving up one to #33.

Interesting
Ok......the on again off again status of the Top 200 on the SETI stats pages is back on again.  The interesting thing about it is that it is a different page that is showing the top 200.  This one looks like it may stick.  Several days ago this page was showing the top 200 for a couple of hours (only to revert back to a top 100), but now this page is showing the Top 200, even at this time.  If you think you made it take a look!  If this page remains, then I will be keeping stats for the top 200!

Update:  Hrmmmmmm......when typing this up I just checked.....now BOTH pages are showing a top 200.  Hey maybe both of them will show it :).  Looks like the SETI guys are playing around with the stats scripting, and hopefully things will stick the way they are right now!

No2K!
As a surprise to a lot of people, the SETI servers passed the Y2K test with flying colors.  The servers seem to have been up without any hitches, and hopefully up for a nice continuous period of time!

New No. 3
Team Slashdot passed MacAddict sometime on New Years Day, and is now the #3 club team.  They still are cranking out work units faster than Team Lamb Chop though.  Current estimates put Slashdot passing us sometime around 2/6/2000.  I have updated the Overall Top Teams this week also.  Team Lamb Chop by passing Slashdot and MacAddict a couple of weeks ago now stands at #7 overall.  Slashdot moves up to #8 dropping MacAddict to #9.  The only other change is that IBM passed Apple and is now #11 overall.

Graphically Inclined
There are two changes in the graphs today.  The first one is that I changed the graphs back, to 1-20, and 21-40.  The second thing you probably have noticed (and I hope that it isn't too annoying) is that the graphs have a white border around them.  This border is actually a by-product of exporting the graphs from Excel, and then saving them as a .gif.  To help save time with the page, and also to have a consistent size to the graphs (no squeezing/stretching artifacts from Frontpage),  I have stopped cropping each of the graphs.  If you think that this looks too ugly let me know.

Top 40 Changes
Over the past couple of days there were some movement in the top 40.  Most notable one is that the SouthPark Admin Crew moved up one to the #3 team spot passing SpeedRacer.  I noticed that since SouthPark has started cranking up WUs that SpeedRacer is ramping up also....not sure if it is going to last, since guru said that he was quitting SETI.   Others moving up include Darkmage and elBeavis moving up two spots each to #35 and #36.

The Page....
The News updates, may be a bit slow in the next several days.  I am trying to revamp the way I have been calculating the numbers and graphs for the page.  It may take me a while to try to get things automated so I can spent a tad less time with it.  I also have a couple of ideas for new things, and would like to implement them also.  Patience grasshoppa!

- News Archives