Donate Idle CPU Time to Rosetta@Home

If you have a idle compute or idle CPU time, consider donating that CPU time to a good cause via distributed computing.  I donate my CPU time to Rosetta@Home.

Rosetta really needs your help.  They recently started the Institute for Protein Design that aims to design new proteins to fight diseases. Due to overwhelming needs, it's taking 10 days for single protein fold to be computed (about 3,000-5,000 work units) and there is a huge backlog.

My ultra fast 8-core Intel i7 at 3.4Ghz can only chomp through about 18 work units a day on average.  Your help is needed so join Rosetta@Home today.

More info on Rosetta and the good they are trying to do here:

Rosetta@home needs your help to determine the 3-dimensional shapes of proteins in research that may ultimately lead to finding cures for some major human diseases.

By running the Rosetta program (BOINC) on your computer while you don't need it you will help us speed up and extend our research in ways we couldn't possibly attempt without your help. You will also be helping our efforts at designing new proteins to fight diseases such as HIV, Malaria, Cancer, and Alzheimer's.

Please join us in our efforts! Rosetta@home is not for profit and a program of the University of Washington.

Grails48 Hackathon - Minneapolis Team Meet'N'Greet - Sun, 11/4 from Noon to 2p

The Minneapolis Team is having a pre-hackathon Meet'N'Greet to talk about the hackathon and organize for the event. I'm relatively new to the Grails community here in Minneapolis (coming from other languages) and Kurt, Jacob and myself thought it would be great for a meet and greet to talk about EnlistApp.  We'll discuss what the app will should do, plan out tasks, talk about GitHub and more.

Date: Sunday, 11/4/2012
Time: Noon to 2p CT
Where: Bob's Java Hut - 2651 South Lyndale Avenue, Minneapolis, MN

Hope to see you there!

Grails48 Hackathon - Nov. 9-12 - Join the Minneapolis Team

I want to invite you to join the Minneapolis Team for the Grails48 Hackathon that is occurring November 9-12.  It's easy to join at hackathon.io:

http://grails48.hackathon.io/teams/view/615

You don't have to be there the whole time -- even part of a day would be helpful.

Our project is EnlistApp. Enlist is an open source and free application that aims to help non-profits organize volunteers, track volunteer hours and management volunteer rewards.  This application will directly benefit Team Ortho -- they put on running races in the Twin Cities. They support research, education, and advancements in orthopaedic technology; and to promote good muscular, skeletal, and joint health by encouraging an active lifestyle including training for and participating in amateur athletic events.

We already have a start on it here -- uses Grails, Twitter Bootstrap, JQuery, etc in case you want to check it out:

https://github.com/maestrofjp/Enlist-Grails

I'm working on a location.  Doug Sabers has offered ReachLocal's offices (below where we have the GUM meetings) and I'm waiting to hear back from him to confirm.

In the meantime, come join the team for the hackathon.

The Road to Getting Your Digital Life Together

Maybe this will be a bit morbid, but I've heard of nightmares when it comes to somebody dying and not having access to their digital life afterwards. Here is my list of things to do to get your digital life in order.  Not only will it help those that you leave behind; it will make your life easier while you are alive!

So don't think you'll get a jump on those dice of life. Snake eyes will come someday -- whether it's death, theft, flooding or fire.

1. Use a Password Manager

   Don't use the same password everywhere.  That will lead to your digital life being hacked.  Use a unique, strong password for each service and website you use.  I like to usethe open source KeePassX which is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iPhone. You only have to remember one password to unlock your database (make sure it's a good -- it's your master key). I keep my password database synced between my phone and my main computer using a file sharing service (Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc). You can even periodically print out your passwords and put that in a safe place (like a fire safe).



2. Get Your Backup in Order

   Now that you've made your life more secure, be sure to backup all those important documents, photos, and music.  Backup never seems important until you actually need it.  So don't mourn the loss of your prize MP3 collection or your kid's baby pics.  Easiest option is to buy a large external hard drive and use backup software.  Space is cheap so consider 1TB of space or more. Consider getting a disaster proof backup drive. ioSafe makes drives that are fireproof and waterproof.

   Don't rely on remembering to backup.  Set your software to backup on a schedule and prompt you if your backup drive isn't connected to your system.  I'm paranoid and I backup daily. Also any good backup software should be encrypting your backups in case your drive should get stolen or go missing.

   Alternative, you can use a cloud based service however you need a good internet connection and I can only assume it's only so secure.  I mean I know it's not public access, but somebody would have to steal your external drive.

   I use DejaDup on Linux which allows you to backup to local drive or cloud services like Amazon S3, Rackspace and Ubuntu One.  I love it -- just set it and forget it (thanks to Ron Popeil for that line).

   Alternatively for music / photos, there options from Amazon (CloudDrive / CloudPlayer), Google (GoogleDrive/GooglePlay) and Apple.



3. Digitize Your Music and Photos

   Unless you're in the Millenial generation, then you probably have CDs and printed photos.  Theft, flood and fire are all possible. I've spend many an hour ripping CDs to OGG format and uploading to GooglePlay.  Nice side effect is that I can stream my entire collection from my phone / computer and they are backed up!

   I like to use RipperX for Linux which has CDParanoid built-in.  CDParanoid is great for ensuring great rips since CDs that are scratched etc.

   If you don't want to scan your prints in yourself or do not have equipment, you can take prints or negatives to places like Costco and they have services that will do that for you.



4. Get a Will and/or Living Trust

   Ok, I know this isn't part of your digital life, but your Last Will and/or Trust dictates what happens to your stuff -- including your digital life such as music, photos, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. No Will means those that you leave behind will have a hard time cleaning up your digital mess especially if you are more technology savy than your next of kin.  Make sure your Will or Trust states what your executor or trustee should do with your digital life.

   One option is Nolo WillMaker which will create Wills, Power of Attorney, Healthcare Directives and Living Trusts.  Not bad for $42 or even less if you look for Nolo promo codes on Google.  WillMaker works like TurboTax -- you are interviewed and the software walks you through the process.  It even comes with 100+ page eBook to help you decide what options are best for you.

PyCharm - Initial Setup - Don't use OpenJDK

I installed PyCharm today and for the life of me couldn't get it to run right.  Don't use OpenJDK.  There is a check in the pycharm.sh to check for OpenJDK and warn...but I didn't see it because I didn't launch it from terminal.  I launched it from Nautilus.

Mutiple Clipboard Plugin for Eclipse

If you don't have a multiple clipboard on your system and use Eclipse, check out Multi-Clipboard from the EasyEclipse project:

http://www.easyeclipse.org/site/plugins/multi-clipboard.html

It's as easy as punching ALT-V and then press number of the item you want in the clipboard.

Mach-II Moving to GitHub

Mach-II is moving to GitHub. We're in the process of migrating the wiki, but the code has been mirgrated from SVN already:

https://github.com/Mach-II/Mach-II-Framework