wherever

Have been thinking about how the internet works. It is really quite amazing to see all the “stuff” out there. But, even a PDF document can take up to a minute to download on a network connection. Times to come will be even more amazing, I hope. Another really cool thing on the internet is Mapquest. What a great feature! Custom driving directions from your location to your intended destination. Turn here, turn there, its great. When it works properly of course. As with anything in this world, it is not error free. Not much you can do, but to always carry a road atlas. Definitely a life saver, although not error free itself, but can usually lead you in the right direction.

Distributed.net stats are coming back online again. Good thing, they have been down for a while. Although I do not actively particiapte in d.net anymore, I still am quite interested in the concept of distributed computing. The computing power working on that project right now is simply amazing. The best part of d.net is the use of extra CPU cycles that would otherwise be wasted. Can you imagine the endless loss of computing cycles that goes on each day.

Currently, I am active in the SETI project, member of TeAm AnandTech. You can check out my SETI stats if you like, not very impressive at all. The only drawback of the client is that it bogs down the machine its running on. This would be negated if the screensaver was used. However, the command client is by far more efficient in completing work units. The price one pays for that extra bit of computing power dedicated to SETI.

Another really cool and innovative thing that SETI die-hards do is create SETI farms or nodes. These nodes can be created with as little hardware as a motherboard, network card, memory, CPU, and power supply. With todays motherboards, they contain integrated features, such as video, audio, and LAN. One may lose a bit of performance with this type of chipset, but the space savings, and simplicity, allow this to be an effective solution. A server will send a boot command to the node to start and run a ramdisk. Thus, no need for an expensive physical hard drive.

Going to be doing a bit of travelling this weekend. Going to sunny Cali. Should be a good time. I would post my flight information, but what is the point? I know when I am supposed to be there, do you?

NOTE TO SELF: Include section on BTE. Also find great animated GIFs.

Link of the day: SETI farms

Found a site dedicated to the rescue of Golden Retrievers in the Chicago area. I have always loved the golden retrievers. I have not had the pleasure of having a golden retriever. But, I do have a beagle. Check out the little buddys page. I know that the page is lacking in content, but version 2.0 is in the works. One thing I hate having to deal with when looking at dogs is this. If you “relinquish” your dog, then why the hell did you get the thing in the first place? I understand that living situations change, but the whole idea about having a pet is to make it a member of the family. That pet is now going to be a member of your family for its entire life. To give up such a member is the equivalent of abandoning your kid(s)/spouse. I do not even want to explore puppy mills and the like. That being said, might have to create a section on the links page to include worthwhile dog rescue societies.

For those looking to add some cool colors to your web site. If you would also like such a listing, then here you go.

Frames in web pages has also become a necessary issue. If you notice, the current pages at jetskr9.com use tables to separate the links on the left of the page from the actual content of the site. Sucky content, but content nonetheless. I think that frames would be more appropriate in this application. From current experience, it sucks to have to update all of my pages whenever links are removed/added/moved.

Have you ever taken any of the NETg courses? I understand that the courses are meant for a novice. But, all user courses require you to spend one-third of the course going through how to click File, Open, etc… In this day and age, you would think that everyone knows how to do that. Better yet, why does NETg not have an intro course that goes over the File, Open junk before one starts the training of a specific application.