Month: August 2009

Folding@home

Well, it has been a number of months since I have had any of my computers doing any folding for Folding@home and yesterday I decided that should change, but first a bit about what Folding@home is.  Folding@home is a distributed computing project based at Standford University.  The project is studying protein folding to get a better understanding of how it happens and maybe find a cure for some very common diseases such as  ALS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and many others.  For more information check out the Folding@home website.

Like I said before it has been a number of months since I have done any folding, but yesterday that changed.  I have had a Folding@home team going for more than two years with working being done most of the time by computer that are on anyway for some other purpose.  If you have a computer that is on for any reason please consider installing the Folding@home client.  Also, if you would like to contribute to the perrinetech.com team please use team 59767 when you set up your client.  The clients are available to be downloaded from the Folding@home website.  As I write this the perrinetech.com team is in 1953 place of 164144, not to bad when there have only been four people contributing processor time to the team.  I have set a near term goal of making it to some place in the top 1500.  I am not sure how long it will take, but I am confident that we can do it.  So, it would would like to help out please download the client and help us out.

North Shore ATV Ride

Well, as you can tell from some of the photos in the last post I spent the last few days along the north shore of Lake Superior on vacation.  Two of the days several hours each day were spent riding on the awesome ATV trails in the Silver Bay area.  The trails in the area are maintained by the Silver Trail Riders club of Silver Bay, MN.  Needless to say we had a good time.  This was the first time that we had been on these trails so there is always a learning curve to finding your way around.  The first night we spent some time trying to located the trail to finally realize that just down the block from the hotel (AmercInn) we were staying at.  On Wednesday our first day of riding we headed out of town toward Finland, MN, on this day we rode about 52 miles.  The map is available thanks to Google and my GPS.  Thursday we set out to ride some different trails and ended up riding about 41 miles.  A bit shorter distance and a much a few hours less.  Once again thanks to Google the map is available.  Some parts of the trails were very rocky which slowed us down a bit and some where new trails for ATVs and were signed as such, but had not yet been updated on the maps, so that threw us off a bit.  Overall, it was a fun trip and a fun time was had be all.

GPX Track Files
ATV 2009-08-12
ATV 2009-08-13

North Shore Trip Photos Posted

Yesterday I returned from a trip up the north shore of Lake Superior.  This was a trip to just explore and do some ATV riding as we have not gotten out much this year.  We spent a few nights in Silver Bay and did some exploring around there.  The photos from the trip can be seen at http://www.perrinetech.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=10894

Would I use a netbook

Over the last several months I have been attached to the various netbooks on the market.  Yesterday, I was listening to Mobile Tech Roundup and heard Kevin talking about the Toshiba NB205 netbook, and peaked my interest.  I had seen this device a couple of times, in the past, but never thought too much about it.  The battery lift is one items that really peeked my interest, I thought really nine hours on a charge.  Well, as we know those number tend to be a bit altruistic, but even if I could get six regularly, I would be happy.  Also, these the keyboards on these devices have come a long way from when the first Eee PCs arrived on the market.  I had the a change to spend a few minutes with the NB205 yesterday at the local Microcenter and I must say the keyboard and track pad are very usable unlike some other models I have seen in the past.  Also, the track pad buttons are located under the pad rather then on the sides, which I much prefer.  The issue that I have is can I would with the low resolution screen of a netbook.  I am writing this post on a monitor that does 1280 by 1024, nothing special, but bigger than 1024 by 600 as many of the netbooks are.  Also, I have some concerns about the speed, but for the battery life, I think that I could deal with it, after all, it is not much slower then my almost four year old desktop.  I am sure there are other models that have other benefits that I have not seen yet, but I will keep looking and maybe someday I will pull the trigger and purchase one.  The real question still remains would I use a netbook?

Road Biking

I have always owned mountain bikes and until my last bike, that was purchased over 10 years ago, there were usually from Target or some store like it.  Earlier this month I started riding quite a bit more and much more consistently than I had in the past and that got my thinking that it might be time for an upgrade to my bike.  Well, I really didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew that a mountain bike was not the best for the kind of riding that I was doing (mostly paved roads and trails) so  I look quiet a bit online and thought about it for a while.  Then someone I know started talking about road bikes, something that I had not even considered until that point.  I stop by a number of stores and looked.  I eventually ended up taking a Trek 1.5T for a test ride and turned around and bought it.  I could not believe how much of a difference there is between the mountain bike and the new road bike.  It is smooth and all of the power goes into moving the bike.  I am still adjusting to this bike and I am guessing that will take a while, but I am starting to get adjusted.  I really am enjoying it.  My advice is if you are looking for a bike have a good idea how you are going to use it and purchase a bike that will fill your needs.