Folding from orbit
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
I should be packing for my business trip tomorrow but I fired up the PS3 and installed the Folding at Home applet along with a new update - screenshots attached. You may have seen the Slashdot on this the other day that the globally linked PS3s are actually outstripping all the PCs that have been folding proteins for a year or more. Tiny specs are visible from the 20,000 or so sold in Australia in the last week, but check out the US spread of active flags (but I guess it is the evening here and more people have them on, at least on the East Coast where it is very early in the morning).
If I leave it idle for a few minutes the GUI dissolves to a slow tumble around the planet, luminescent and peaceful. Not many PS3’s in Africa yet, but a couple in Capetown and a fair few in Cairo. I wonder if you could use this data as some plot/appraisal of geo/economic wealth indexed to leisure. It’s really quite interesting - you can see the hotspots of Seoul and Singapore, but obviously only a faint smear on Port Moresby. Iran is totally dark, with Hawaii an angry and fitful spark in the middle of the Deep Blue Sea.
Just thought you might like to see this. If I turn off all the lights in my room I can almost pretend I am John Glenn looking out through my 1080i window at the Earth spinning below.
Anyone else folding?
Will probably not leave it caning - fans are buzzing and it will likely as not catch fire and burn the house to the ground in my absence.