Originally we started out with a little over sixty dual-5420/5520 Xeon servers working on some ubee ddw365‘s (8-12GB RAM each) running one instance of the regular CPU client for each CPU core. This gave a big boost to our rankings, going from… a very low number to the mid-2000s pretty quickly.

As the 5420/5520 servers were used up by new orders (and as we bought more powerful servers), I started running the SMP client (with the -bigadv option to increase the PPD) on a few Dell PowerEdge R810 servers (each with four quad-core HT-capable Xeons – a staggering 32 logical cores per server), which resulted in an enormous PPD increase.

We later had a bunch of GPU Cloud servers sent over from another datacentre, each with two 5620 Xeons, between 12 and 48GB RAM and two nVidia Fermi GPUs (pictured). With sixteen of these servers running two GPU Folding clients and the CPU SMP client (again with the -bigadv option), we shot up the team rankings, going from the low 1000s in early January to our current position of 232^nd worldwide! And we’re still climbing… (Update: 168^th as of 7 Dec 2011)

Some stats, graphs and point/ranking predictions can be seen on the official Folding@Home stats page, the Extreme Overclocking stats tool or the Kakao Stats tool.

The power usage of these servers is also pretty phenomenal; each GPU servers uses a little over 2amps (at ~240VAC) when running at 100% CPU/GPU load, which equates to just under 40 amps for all sixteen . If you are a pro gamer or you work at gamingbuff.com, then you know how great these stats are for GPU combined with our round-up of the best gaming cpus you can run almost any game existing. Each R810 uses about 4amps at full load (2amps per PSU) while the dual-5420/5520 servers only use approximately 1amp each.

And of course, with big power usage comes big heat output: each GPU server throws out an epic amount of hot air at over 50°C (122°F). You could heat a pretty big room with a single one of these GPU servers… as long as the occupants didn’t mind the horrendous noise the fans make at full speed.

After adapting the code a bit, I had a script I could integrate into my existing Launchy setup to let me specify the switch/router IP address on the command line:

Dim sHostname
sHostname = WScript.Arguments.Item(0)
set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.Run "C:\Windows\ssh.exe -telnet " & sHostname
WScript.Sleep 500
WshShell.AppActivate sHostname & " - PuTTY"
WshShell.SendKeys "username{ENTER}"
WScript.Sleep 250
WshShell.SendKeys "password{ENTER}"
WScript.Sleep 500
WshShell.SendKeys "en{ENTER}"
WScript.Sleep 250
WshShell.SendKeys "enablepassword{ENTER}"
WScript.Sleep 500
WshShell.SendKeys "conf t{ENTER}"

The commands in the code above work with the Foundry, Brocade and Cisco switches/routers where I work, so may require some modification to make it work with other devices.

However, running iTunes as an Administrator “fixes” the Shift+Click function, allowing you to update or restore a new/custom firmware to your iOS device.

You need to find the actual iTunes.exe (in C:\Program Files\iTunes\ or C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes\ for 64-bit Windows), as all the normal shortcuts (Start menu, desktop, taskbar, etc) are shell links rather than normal shortcuts and don’t allow you to start as an administrator.

This is mainly a bug-fix release, though I did include two new features:

• Added the imgftw.net image upload service
• The bit.ly URL shortening service can now be used, though it requires a (free) API key from their website

See the ActionFTP page for the download link and the full list of changes and fixes.

[server.mydomain.local] Connecting to remote server failed with the following error message : The client cannot connect to the destination specified in the request. Verify that the service on the destination is running and is accepting requests. Consult the logs and documentation for the WS-Management service running on the destination, most commonly IIS or WinRM. If the destination is the WinRM service, run the following command on the destination to analyze and configure the WinRM service: “winrm quickconfig”. For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic.
+ CategoryInfo : OpenError: (System.Manageme….RemoteRunspace:RemoteRunspace) [], PSRemotingTransportException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : PSSessionOpenFailed

The error message itself has almost nothing to do with the actual cause of the problem. After a lot of Googling I found a post on the TechNet forums from someone who had the same error message, albeit caused by a different problem.

Eventually I figured out that the Server Manager feature installer wizard hadn’t installed the full selection of .NET 3.5.1 Features. After installing the entire sub-tree, the Exchange 2010 installation proceeded without any further problems.

Microsoft have now been kind enough to add automatic feature installation to the installer for Exchange Server 2010 SP1, which should help alleviate this kind of problem in future

Bachelor of Science with Honours in Computer Science (Network Communications) First Class

And my dissertation was an ‘A’ grade

Some big new features:

• HTTP uploads: you can now chose to upload images to imgdash, localhostr or upload3r
• URL shortening: you can chose to automatically shorten links using is.gd, twurl.nl or cli.gs
• Code copying: Can now chose to copy HTML <img>, HTML hyperlink (<a>), BBcode [img] or BBcode [url] tags to the clipboard, instead of just the direct link

Naturally there are lots of other smaller changes and bug fixes as well; see the ActionFTP page for the download link and the entire list of changes.

Upgrade Note: You need to copy two additional files (included in the download) to the WindowClippings directory (Newtonsoft.Json.dll and Newtonsoft.Json.xml).

As many CS4 products are currently still available from most retailers, this could be your opportunity to save a bit of money on the full CS5 price – I saved about £80 on the full price of Web Premium CS5 (Student edition).

After registering your CS4 serial number, visit the Adobe Customer Support Portal (Adobe login required) and complete the “Post Announce Upgrade” form before July 26th:

Assuming you successfully complete the form, you should receive your CS5 upgrade in the mail after a few days.

Notes:

• You must purchase your CS4 product before July 11th, and complete the PAU request before July 26th.
• This handy page on Amazon UK lays out further information and T&Cs, though the offer is not limited to purchases from Amazon.

However, when you start wanting to search for multiple terms, search for certain terms while excluding others, or searching large tables, ‘LIKE’ will get slow and very inaccurate.

One major cause of this inaccuracy is that the search terms are looked for in the order they are specified. For example, the following query would match “We use PHP and MySQL to power this website.”, but would not match “We use MySQL and PHP to power this website.”:

SELECT * FROM articles WHERE body LIKE '%php%mysql%' AND body NOT LIKE '%wordpress%';

After discovering the above limitation first-hand (while implementing a search box on my QuoteDB system), I came an alternative: Full-Text matching.

This article on MySQL Full-Text Searching on the Zend DevZone was particularly helpful on this topic, so I recommend you give it a read. For those too lazy to read the entire thing, Full-Text matching requires a single step before you can use it: you must first add a  ‘FULLTEXT’ index to the field(s) you wish search:

ALTER TABLE articles ADD FULLTEXT(body);

Once that’s done, you can perform very fast and accurate searches, including (since MySQL 4.0.1) boolean mode operators to dramatically increase the search power. (For an idea of the power of boolean mode, have a look at the operators table.)

SELECT *, MATCH(body) AGAINST ('+php +mysql -wordpress' IN BOOLEAN MODE) AS score FROM articles
WHERE MATCH(body) AGAINST ('+php +mysql -wordpress' IN BOOLEAN MODE);

Unlike the ‘LIKE’ search, thanks to Full-Text matching, this query would match both of the “We use…” text strings.

* This included myself, until I discovered Full-Text matching.