Thursday, March 1, 2012
New Layout, Oops
So I was bored one day (today) and was wondering what new enchanting templates were available from google. Looks like there's no turning back now so if you have any suggestions let me know. I'll play around with the design when I have time.
Google Calendar Theme Change (for Firefox)
So if you're a google calendar user you probably know that google has taken out the old layout because it was "impossible" to maintain two layout. As well, their stance is unwavering. And, if you're like me, you aren't really a big fan of it (though they have recently added a number of new colors that are easier to see). This post is mainly for Firefox users since I'm going to talk about greasemonkey and stylish, both found on the firefox browser. Though I belive that you can run greasemonkey scripts on chrome but I will not talk about it here. So in this post I'm going to show you what I did to go from this (original)
to this
At least for me, it is far easier to see the actual event names and the screen space is used properly, unlike in the first picture (black text to white text). Plus, the space is used better as there is more space for the calendar.
Well, two of my favorite websites when it comes to tweaking websites to your liking is going to be userstyles.org and userscripts.org, with the first one catered specifically to greasemonkey and second to stylish. Now for stylish they do give you options to covert the script to greasemonkey which means running less addon but I guess I'm lazy so I have both addons.
Step 1. Download Greasemonkey and Stylish.
Step 2. The first script to download is found here, called "google calendar better 2011 style." Just click the blue "install with stylish" button and you're done. What this script does (Straight from the website)
Step 3. The second script to download is found here and is called google calendar bars toggler. As its name suggests it allows you to hid the headers and other elements on the google calendar you are not likely to use (ever). It provides arrows (and keyboard shortcuts) for you to toggle their hidden state. The steps are similar to the second where you just click the install button.
And that's it, with these two scripts you can hopefully like google calendar a bit more. For chrome if you go to the script sites I'm sure they provide instructions to install the script as an addon (I've tried this with other scripts), though if you have any questions you can ask in the comments.
to this
At least for me, it is far easier to see the actual event names and the screen space is used properly, unlike in the first picture (black text to white text). Plus, the space is used better as there is more space for the calendar.
Well, two of my favorite websites when it comes to tweaking websites to your liking is going to be userstyles.org and userscripts.org, with the first one catered specifically to greasemonkey and second to stylish. Now for stylish they do give you options to covert the script to greasemonkey which means running less addon but I guess I'm lazy so I have both addons.
Step 1. Download Greasemonkey and Stylish.
Step 2. The first script to download is found here, called "google calendar better 2011 style." Just click the blue "install with stylish" button and you're done. What this script does (Straight from the website)
- white event and task text on all colors
- classic yellow current day highlight
- grey hour label bg color
Step 3. The second script to download is found here and is called google calendar bars toggler. As its name suggests it allows you to hid the headers and other elements on the google calendar you are not likely to use (ever). It provides arrows (and keyboard shortcuts) for you to toggle their hidden state. The steps are similar to the second where you just click the install button.
And that's it, with these two scripts you can hopefully like google calendar a bit more. For chrome if you go to the script sites I'm sure they provide instructions to install the script as an addon (I've tried this with other scripts), though if you have any questions you can ask in the comments.
First post of 2012? Quick thoughts.
Well I guess it's evident now that it is not possible for me to maintain this web page during the school year. And by maintain I mean post new articles here and then. I have some ideas for new posts but I just haven't had the time (or motivation) to use these ideas and actually create the post. I am now going to spend a couple minutes to go through some quick thoughts that I've had on recent events in no particular order.
Windows 8 Consumer Preview/Mac OS 10.7 Lion
Nice name by the way, apparently "beta" is too mainstream. Disclaimer: I haven't personally tried windows 8 (though I would very much like to, and I'm not talking about virtualizing it here. I want the full experience.), but I can't help but say that it's kind of like mac os 10.7 lion. There are some features that I really like, such as the new windows task manager (I find the layout very informative and the colors convey the information efficiently), and I'm talking about the detailed view here.
Though I don't know whether this metro interface is the way to go, with the start menu "gone." The metro UI does not facilitate an efficient desktop experience. Say you just want to search up a program to start up, you would have to press the window key, then you have to find (I believe you press "control-f" to search all apps, and then select the app that you want to launch. But the thing is, the change is too drastic. The change from the desktop to the metro interface just seems so jarring, like I'm moving from one experience to another. I really hope that microsoft provides a way to disable the metro interface. That and a tweak to put back the old start menu and windows 8 would be good to go. In the end I actually have some faith in microsoft on this issue, where they will listen to customer demand and provide options (unlike apple and snow leopard/iCloud).
In the meantime I will consider downloading the consumer preview, though I will have to find some sort of external hard drive or USB drive to store the temporary windows 8 partition. I don't really have that much time at the moment, perhaps I will do that over the summer.
Google Calendar
I have been a longtime user of google calendar, but a recent change has really infuriated me, and continues to lead me to believe that Google is definitely evil. Google calendar recently eliminated the option to view the calendar in the "classic view temporarily." And they did this pretty suddenly. During the whole time I was using google calendar I received no message, no email about the change. Google said they gave some warnings in advance but for me personally I had no idea they were going to change. And I wouldn't be so vocal about the change if the new layout wasn't so bad. But it is atrocious, where the colors are horrible and the layout is not efficient with space at all.
These days when I have time I'm still trying to find a good replacement for google calendar, so that I can view it on the desktop. I thought iCal would be a prime candidate, but then the font is far too small on the calendar, and there is no way I can change it (I'm talking about snow leopard here). Outlook, turns out, doesn't even support the CalDav protocol. Busycal is very functional but is far too expensive (I'm not paying $50 for a calendar).
Oh yes, this also relates to google, though not specifically to google calendar. But one time I went to google groups to "discuss" the new calendar changes only to find that google had messed that up too. From the old, comfortable gmail-esque layout to the new repulsive layout. For whatever reason the site used up a lot of browser resources too as it was laggy and almost unusable. It behaved a bit better on chrome but seriously.
Last thoughts/Apple
I find that these days I'm losing faith in the big tech companies (I'm looking at you, microsoft, apple, google). Microsoft, well, they've been losing ground for a while now (though some faith was restored in windows 7), the metro interface is not useful in a desktop environment. For apple 10.7 was a disaster (when compared to previous releases, and in this case I'm talking about 10.4-10.6), where apple is slowly clamping down on the desktop OS, and they're not giving users a lot of choice at all. I'm still running snow leopard right now, and I'm not optimistic about mountain lion. I like how they're moving over to an iOS-like environment slowly, but some features are just not refined. I do hope that in the next iteration of OS X such features will be more refined, as in better multi-display support, and better application management when it comes to virtual desktops. I'm talking about issues such as versions and full screen mode multi-monitor support. However, typical Apple doesn't listen to customer feedback, and has said nothing about it. And Google has so far proved itself to be an evil company, with their tracking cookies bypassing browser restrictions (a la safari and internet explorer), and their new policy where they can use all your usage data (from gmail, youtube, etc.) to form an overall comprehensive picture.
I also realize that I am kind of schizophrenic at times, you might say, as I was so intrigued by BOINC when I first started using it. Now I no longer have it on my system. Though, over time I realized one thing. It is that my mac warranty expires in march 2012, and if I keep running BOINC I fear that since the computer runs at a hotter temperature that it'll break down easier. Though if I ever do build a desktop in the coming years I'll run BOINC on that for sure (since I can replace the parts far easier and cheaper than that on a laptop).
Windows 8 Consumer Preview/Mac OS 10.7 Lion
Nice name by the way, apparently "beta" is too mainstream. Disclaimer: I haven't personally tried windows 8 (though I would very much like to, and I'm not talking about virtualizing it here. I want the full experience.), but I can't help but say that it's kind of like mac os 10.7 lion. There are some features that I really like, such as the new windows task manager (I find the layout very informative and the colors convey the information efficiently), and I'm talking about the detailed view here.
Though I don't know whether this metro interface is the way to go, with the start menu "gone." The metro UI does not facilitate an efficient desktop experience. Say you just want to search up a program to start up, you would have to press the window key, then you have to find (I believe you press "control-f" to search all apps, and then select the app that you want to launch. But the thing is, the change is too drastic. The change from the desktop to the metro interface just seems so jarring, like I'm moving from one experience to another. I really hope that microsoft provides a way to disable the metro interface. That and a tweak to put back the old start menu and windows 8 would be good to go. In the end I actually have some faith in microsoft on this issue, where they will listen to customer demand and provide options (unlike apple and snow leopard/iCloud).
In the meantime I will consider downloading the consumer preview, though I will have to find some sort of external hard drive or USB drive to store the temporary windows 8 partition. I don't really have that much time at the moment, perhaps I will do that over the summer.
Google Calendar
I have been a longtime user of google calendar, but a recent change has really infuriated me, and continues to lead me to believe that Google is definitely evil. Google calendar recently eliminated the option to view the calendar in the "classic view temporarily." And they did this pretty suddenly. During the whole time I was using google calendar I received no message, no email about the change. Google said they gave some warnings in advance but for me personally I had no idea they were going to change. And I wouldn't be so vocal about the change if the new layout wasn't so bad. But it is atrocious, where the colors are horrible and the layout is not efficient with space at all.
These days when I have time I'm still trying to find a good replacement for google calendar, so that I can view it on the desktop. I thought iCal would be a prime candidate, but then the font is far too small on the calendar, and there is no way I can change it (I'm talking about snow leopard here). Outlook, turns out, doesn't even support the CalDav protocol. Busycal is very functional but is far too expensive (I'm not paying $50 for a calendar).
Oh yes, this also relates to google, though not specifically to google calendar. But one time I went to google groups to "discuss" the new calendar changes only to find that google had messed that up too. From the old, comfortable gmail-esque layout to the new repulsive layout. For whatever reason the site used up a lot of browser resources too as it was laggy and almost unusable. It behaved a bit better on chrome but seriously.
Last thoughts/Apple
I find that these days I'm losing faith in the big tech companies (I'm looking at you, microsoft, apple, google). Microsoft, well, they've been losing ground for a while now (though some faith was restored in windows 7), the metro interface is not useful in a desktop environment. For apple 10.7 was a disaster (when compared to previous releases, and in this case I'm talking about 10.4-10.6), where apple is slowly clamping down on the desktop OS, and they're not giving users a lot of choice at all. I'm still running snow leopard right now, and I'm not optimistic about mountain lion. I like how they're moving over to an iOS-like environment slowly, but some features are just not refined. I do hope that in the next iteration of OS X such features will be more refined, as in better multi-display support, and better application management when it comes to virtual desktops. I'm talking about issues such as versions and full screen mode multi-monitor support. However, typical Apple doesn't listen to customer feedback, and has said nothing about it. And Google has so far proved itself to be an evil company, with their tracking cookies bypassing browser restrictions (a la safari and internet explorer), and their new policy where they can use all your usage data (from gmail, youtube, etc.) to form an overall comprehensive picture.
I also realize that I am kind of schizophrenic at times, you might say, as I was so intrigued by BOINC when I first started using it. Now I no longer have it on my system. Though, over time I realized one thing. It is that my mac warranty expires in march 2012, and if I keep running BOINC I fear that since the computer runs at a hotter temperature that it'll break down easier. Though if I ever do build a desktop in the coming years I'll run BOINC on that for sure (since I can replace the parts far easier and cheaper than that on a laptop).
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Grid Computing: Folding@Home vs BOINC Part 2 (BOINC Guide and Conclusion)
In this part of the review I'm going to go over how to install BOINC as well as its operation and configuration. One think that I really like about BOINC is that there's an unoffical wikipedia for it, one that is up to date and is generally helpful. Here is the download link for the client and here's a short list of instructions. The install instructions are straight forward, and are identical to that of folding@home (Extract, put in applications folder, run).
Though, there are differences, and when you start running the client you have to choose a project to run. In BOINC, you have to make a username/password for every project you choose. This allows you to manage the preferences online. For just all of the projects you can create a new account from the client, except for world community grid where you need to go to their website in order to sign up. After you have signed up you "log in" using the client. I'm not going to try to persuade you to join a project in this post, as I'm sure it depends on your interests.
Here's how it looks once more, where only the active tasks are available. I have changed around some of the projects since last time. Just a bit more on this, this is the advanced view. I highly recommend the advanced view over the simple view (you can change it by going to "view" in the menubar and clicking "advanced view."
Preferences (Processor usage)
So after you have signed into a project it starts chugging away. Now for the preferences, there's actually a very detailed explanation of all of the settings here, or you can just click the question mark on the botton right (next to "ok" and "cancel"). On Mac if you have an ATI processor the GPU option won't make a difference. For more information there's an article on the wikipedia here. An important setting is going to be the % of the processors and % of CPU time, as you will be using this to control the temperature of your computer. Just a note, for the % of the processors if you have say a quad core processor with hyper-threading and say 100% it will give you 8 logistical processors and not 4 due to the hyper-threading. For example if you use 50% it should only use your four cores (and thus should not use hyper-threading). I personally have my CPU time set at 15% (at most). This is low because I want to preserve my fan speed. I could theoretically schedule BOINC to only run during the night but I still want it run without the fans being too involved (at 2000 rpm as I stated earlier). With these settings I can set BOINC to calculate while I am out and about, as long as my computer is plugged in.
Preferences (Network/Disk and memory usage)
For network I didn't change anything, though just a note. If you select "network activity always available" in the "activity" menubar item the preferences won't affect it. Only thing I changed in memory usage was to decrease the maximum memory usage of active use to 40% (which may still be high depending on your computer's total amount of memory), and I left it at 90% for idle since memory use for me at that time is not a concern.
What I liked/didn't like
One thing where BOINC is ahead of folding@home is its GPU support. At the moment it does support Macs that have NVIDIA GPUs, however my computer has an ATI version, which is not currently supported. However, the current beta version will be able to detect the ATI GPU. In fact, right now for the primeGrid project, already in the preferences there are options use of the ATI GPU. It's just the client that's lagging behind (apparently due to the lack of mac testers). On folding@home there is no support at all for Mac GPUs.
The settings for throttling the CPU is also far more varied, and allows me to set up a schedule where it can run. This was far from true for folding@home. I also enjoyed the fact that these work units are far smaller than that at folding@home, and at time it's interesting to see what tasks are available and active.
One word of caution, one time I shut off the client and closed the lid on the laptop too early. This caused errors in the client (specifically "task x exited with zero status with no 'finished' file) and made me abort a task and reset a project. So be careful when you shut off the client, and allow it to have time to fully quit or else there might be errors.
An update on that error, it came up again after I waited for the app to shut down. I'm going to experiment with just ignoring the error and see whether it'll continue processing.
Conclusions
So in conclusion, BOINC does everything folding@home does and more. It gives you more overall configurable options for the client, has a more intuitive and refined interface, and gives you access to a far greater reach of projects than that of folding@home.
Though, there are differences, and when you start running the client you have to choose a project to run. In BOINC, you have to make a username/password for every project you choose. This allows you to manage the preferences online. For just all of the projects you can create a new account from the client, except for world community grid where you need to go to their website in order to sign up. After you have signed up you "log in" using the client. I'm not going to try to persuade you to join a project in this post, as I'm sure it depends on your interests.
Here's how it looks once more, where only the active tasks are available. I have changed around some of the projects since last time. Just a bit more on this, this is the advanced view. I highly recommend the advanced view over the simple view (you can change it by going to "view" in the menubar and clicking "advanced view."
Preferences (Processor usage)
So after you have signed into a project it starts chugging away. Now for the preferences, there's actually a very detailed explanation of all of the settings here, or you can just click the question mark on the botton right (next to "ok" and "cancel"). On Mac if you have an ATI processor the GPU option won't make a difference. For more information there's an article on the wikipedia here. An important setting is going to be the % of the processors and % of CPU time, as you will be using this to control the temperature of your computer. Just a note, for the % of the processors if you have say a quad core processor with hyper-threading and say 100% it will give you 8 logistical processors and not 4 due to the hyper-threading. For example if you use 50% it should only use your four cores (and thus should not use hyper-threading). I personally have my CPU time set at 15% (at most). This is low because I want to preserve my fan speed. I could theoretically schedule BOINC to only run during the night but I still want it run without the fans being too involved (at 2000 rpm as I stated earlier). With these settings I can set BOINC to calculate while I am out and about, as long as my computer is plugged in.
Preferences (Network/Disk and memory usage)
For network I didn't change anything, though just a note. If you select "network activity always available" in the "activity" menubar item the preferences won't affect it. Only thing I changed in memory usage was to decrease the maximum memory usage of active use to 40% (which may still be high depending on your computer's total amount of memory), and I left it at 90% for idle since memory use for me at that time is not a concern.
What I liked/didn't like
One thing where BOINC is ahead of folding@home is its GPU support. At the moment it does support Macs that have NVIDIA GPUs, however my computer has an ATI version, which is not currently supported. However, the current beta version will be able to detect the ATI GPU. In fact, right now for the primeGrid project, already in the preferences there are options use of the ATI GPU. It's just the client that's lagging behind (apparently due to the lack of mac testers). On folding@home there is no support at all for Mac GPUs.
The settings for throttling the CPU is also far more varied, and allows me to set up a schedule where it can run. This was far from true for folding@home. I also enjoyed the fact that these work units are far smaller than that at folding@home, and at time it's interesting to see what tasks are available and active.
One word of caution, one time I shut off the client and closed the lid on the laptop too early. This caused errors in the client (specifically "task x exited with zero status with no 'finished' file) and made me abort a task and reset a project. So be careful when you shut off the client, and allow it to have time to fully quit or else there might be errors.
An update on that error, it came up again after I waited for the app to shut down. I'm going to experiment with just ignoring the error and see whether it'll continue processing.
Conclusions
So in conclusion, BOINC does everything folding@home does and more. It gives you more overall configurable options for the client, has a more intuitive and refined interface, and gives you access to a far greater reach of projects than that of folding@home.
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