anautonomousagent – Page 74 – An Autonomous Agent

BOINC

On December 30, 2012

In astronomy, boinc, computer, cuda, einstein, gpugrid, gtx 580, milky way, primegrid, seti, space, website

When I had a Windows 95 PC back in the late 1990’s I would run the SETI@HOME program. As most people know this is a way to help search for ET. I can not remember exactly but I believe it took at least a day of continuous processing on my IBM Pentium MMX 166 MHz processor to complete one work unit.
About a year ago I rediscovered my childhood urge to find ET and decided to run SETI once more. I discovered that SETI now runs through a program call BOINC. More information on BOINC here.

BOINC, as I understand it, has enormous potential; especially with CUDA. I bought the CUDA enabled GTX 580 to create a monster gaming rig (See post on my gaming computer). When I run SETI, the GTX 580 completes the task in about 7 minutes. Just incredible. My Core 2 Duo laptop took 7 hours.

On BOINC I am apart of the following applications: SETI, GPU Grid, PrimeGrid, MilkyWay@Home, Einstein@HOME, and others.

Tree of Knowledge – Maturana and Varela

By anautonomousagent

On December 30, 2012

In Bach, biology, book, brain, complexity theory, consciousness, Douglas Hofstadter, escher, francisco varela, Godel, humberto maturana, tree of knowledge

I have yet to read Tree of Knowledge by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela (ISBN-13: 978-0877736424). I have the book, sitting in my room. Flipping through the pages, it seems like a must read. The book came to my attention after reading some reviews on Amazon about Godel, Escher, and Bach.

YouTube Channel – mojiito’s eargasm

By anautonomousagent

On December 30, 2012

In dark, deep house, germany, house, music, playlists, video, youtube

If you ever want to be awed by great music AND video then mojiito’s eargasm is the channel for you. Check out his playlist called the eyegasm and you will immediately be absorbed into a world of aesthetic beauty, entranced by the quality of music and video. I am not sure how I ran across his channel; but I think it was a random grip of curiosity while listening to various minimal or deep house songs.

YouTube channel – El~

By anautonomousagent

On December 30, 2012

In dark, deep house, greece, house, music, playlists, underground, youtube

The other day I happened across a wonderful YouTube channel called El~. Containing hundreds of uploads of deep house/underground/dark songs, I explored the channel. To my amazement and happiness, I found that the user had posted about 30 playlists, containing probably a thousand or so songs of the deep house/dark style. I Love IT when I make such finds on the Internet!! The user has a taste (perhaps this is not the best term) for music that I find remarkably similar to my own. Keep it up!

Phase Transitions and Signs of Life – Ricard Sole

By anautonomousagent

On December 30, 2012

In book, complexity theory, emergence, investigations, phase transitions, ricard sole, santa fe institute, signs of life, stuart Kauffman

Phase Transitions by Ricard Sole provides a mathematical account of many current areas of research in the field of of complexity. The book demonstrates the wide range of topics that involve complex systems. I feel that the book would be a good reference for further study, as it contains many references.

I was first introduced to the writings of Sole when I found his book entitled Signs of Life. Signs of Life can be considered as a prelude to Phase Transitions. I believe that it was by accident that I found Sole’s book in the library catalog, or perhaps it was after I had read Emergence The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson. I feel like Johnson mimicked the outline and ideas of Sole, but that is only my opinion. Sole’s book provides amazing details on the prevalence of complexity all around us. The book provides a simple and easy to read introduction to the concepts of complexity and serves as a starting point for Kauffman’s books Investigations and Origins of Order (both Sole and Kauffman work/worked at the Santa Fe Institute), which I discuss in other posts. (ISBN: 9780691150758)