Directory

An educated redneck from Dallas, Texas, USA.

When I was in grad school in 1985 at the State University of New York at Buffalo, my master's thesis was to construct and present a computer program that predicted the secondary structures (helix, sheet, loop) of proteins based on their amino acid sequences. Tertiary structure (i.e. folding) prediction was a pie-in-the-sky fantasy. Imagine my delight, a quarter century later, to find out that not only are people determining tertiary structures of proteins, but they've made a *game* of it.

I play to win; but I am not always in a serious mood. You can often find me in global chat cuttin' up with my trusty cyber-horse "Trigger" and/or my evil cyber-nemesis "Headless Chicken Villain". Say howdy if you see us.

Hello :) I`m a scripter, so most of my points are from running recipes (mostly mine ofcorz :). Feel free to comment or put ideas about what script should work.

Want support me? PM for my paypal ;] My old P4 HT need to be finally replaced :P

TYVM all folders supported me :) My target is about $500 - nothing really top, but over 5x times faster ;] On today (15-05-11) I have $70 :))

Status on 29-05-2011: $320 :) Thanks to the donor who wishes to remain anonymous :) Getting closer :)

02-06-2011 Okay, this is enough for jump start a "base": mobo + memory + processor + chassis. Only lack of some video card will brother me now (my target is cheapest NV GTX 460, rest of stuff I take from my current build). Paypal flushed to normal account, need wait 2-3 days for money transfer. Then I make some shopping :) I hope in about week I can tell that my P4 is history :) Thanks again to all donors :D

06-06-2011 Logged to my bank account and... Yes! Got another 70E (about $90) form another folder :) Also my paypal transfer went into real world :)

Balance: $410, I decided to do it NOW. Shopping time! :]

AMD Athlon II x3 450 AM3 95W BOX Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 XFX Radeon HD 6770 1GB PCI-E BOX Geil DDR3 PC12800 2x2048MB 1600MHz CL8 --- added $50 to fill the gap ;] Hopefully selling my old (current) hardware will cover it ;]

About week co complete and delivery. I`ll have my Foldit b-day present :))

Stay tuned!

(9th-11th off-line - ISP problems...)

09-06-2011 Gap filled, another donation - second form same person :) Thank you!

10-06-2011 11pm Package is waiting! :) Yay! Unpack, hour of screwdriver work and.... gang! My power supply not have proper connector to power up new graphics card! My old one have standard molex, and there we have "special" 6pin connector... Good that mobo has internal GPU so I can runt it anyway. Connect HDD... Power on.... BSOD. wtf? Reset.... BSOD. Darn! Looks like windowz not like when it is moved on HDD to totally different machine. OK, backup partition, format, win7 DVD... BSOD??? "not acpi compliant"? update BIOS??? this is less than year construction!... grrr.... 2am... ok, XP first then... working. Now run setup 7 under XP... works.... 3am.... ok 4am and Seven boots up properly :) YAWN. Download Foldit... works :) Restore some backups... Wow, 428 looks pretty fast now! (snooze) 11-06-2011 10am Another shopping trip to get 500W PSU that have proper connectors. 11am Now put card again... connect to monitor? wtf? NOOOOO!!! It have mini HDMI! ... geez (old one was on normal hdmi connector)... another trip to buy proper cable ;]

12-06-2011 00:40 am ;] So it is up. All works really cool and pretty fast. No comparison at all. Only my room is getting hotter.... ;]

Thanks 100s times again to all donors :D Everyone except one want to be anonymous, so I decided to not post any names there.

Now back to folding!

2011-09-05 update. Top 10 solo broken! I`m now #9 :) From day I have new machine I`m in solo top20 on almost every puzzle. And have my 1st #1 solo :) Also got Master Soloist achievement. Again thanks to all players that helped me to make it happen :)

2011-09-24 Rank up! After scores are fixed and counted again I`m #8 solo :)

25-09-2011 Because there are questions there is my Paypal: rav3n_pl (at) wp.pl Any penny is good to help keep my wife and kids from PC :P Again thanks for all support/donations and good words :)

29-09-2011 Rank up again! From now my best place is #7 solo! :)

19-10-2011 #6 global solo! My new best place ever! Also got some funds, my BBF* hard drive is close :) Thanks again for all good words and all donations :)

*BBF=Better, Bigger, Faster ;]

2011-10-23 rank UP! I get #5 solo :) HDD postponed, need UPS in first place, i have few second blackouts every day... annoying! It is killing my PC ;]

Now back to folding!

The Thunk lives in Illinois, is 15 years old, and a rather skilled folder by now. Xe is a rather ossem octopus that folds on the ossemer team Anthropic Dreams. Xe is usually around on global chat whenever xe's not in, and would be willing to be of assistance, or play elaborate jokes on everyone.

Matthias Gaebel ist ein 39 Jahre alter Falter aus Deutschland.

M.G. is a 39 years old bloke from the region between Danmark and Switzerland.
Yes, that's in Europe.

He is unrelated to cheese.

IT background. Very interested in the game dynamics and the scripting, but for now just learning the various tools and enjoying the challenge of the game.

Recently joined the Contenders group which made me realize just how little I know about protein folding. Great group of very talented, extremely friendly people.

Having an IT background and some sidetrips into computer art and intellectual property management gave me a good starting point for Foldit.

I like to push frontiers and discover new ones. The avatar is a thermal image of one of the high performance computers I built for citizen science projects like foldit and boinc.

Contenders is my home and I feel happy being among like-minded souls who are passionate about what they do.