The Calm Coder

Profiting from the Future of LiteCoin Mining

2013-04-21T13:46:00.000+02:00

I did some napkin calculations and I think that at the current LTC value it might be better just buying LTC directly, rather than buying a new mining rig.

LTC Mining: 7970x2: 1400 kHash/s
Mining Rig Cost: ~1000 USD for 7970x2

LTC/day@1.4GH/s: 3.86 LTC/day = 10 USD/day
LTC/month@1.4GH/s: 116 LTC/month = 300 USD/month
LTC/year@1.4GH/s: 1410 LTC/year = 3600 USD/year

[Exchange rate USD/LTC = 2.58 USD for 1 LTC]

Mining Rig Breakeven (power cost ignored): ~4 months

Three years ago BTC was valued almost similarly than LTC is today, BTC:LTC is now 1:44.

I ask myself, what fundamentals are going to be in play in the next 3 years.

1) The big BTC miners, like ASICMiner, have so much momentum going atm, i.e. enjoying major mining profit and funding from their IPOs. One cannot hope to get in front of them or the ASIC wave. The result is that the entry-level individual pool share is going to rapidly diminish, as the high-momentum mining giants carve out bigger shares and the mining difficulty rise.

2) BFL, Avalon, KNCMiner are going to push +100GH/s ASIC units like clockwork on production lines in a years time. Only the players with big funds to invest will get on the forefront of this wave, leaving small players in the dust.

3) The players who have already invested in GPU miners will definitely have to reappropriate their rigs, and LTC is perhaps the best option. The memory-intensiveness of LTC will make it difficult for the industry to push out high-hash production-line units, ASIC it seems is not suitable for LTC mining. This is a very interesting dynamic, on one hand we have BTC mining that is going to be dominated by a few players and on the other we have highly decentralized LTC mining that is performed by the everyman on the ground.

4) Crypto-currencies are going to grow despite crashes, due to mistrust in fiat and ease of use. Alternatives like LTC are going to have their place. I expect the 1:44 BTC:LTC ratio to steadily reduce over the next years.

How should one position oneself given these dynamics (not exhaustive)?

1) Get in while you still can, on the dips, at least with play money that you can afford to lose.

2) Play with miner shares like ASICMiner-PT.

3) Earn 28% APR BTC interest as a bitcoin lender.

4) When LTC mining becomes sufficiently profitable (+10 USD/LTC ?) invest in some mining rigs. At least GPU's have resale value if profitability drops later on.

Soylent Follow-up #1

2013-03-21T16:41:00.001+02:00

I'm trying Vanilla and Chocolate mass builder at the moment. Nutritech is excellent, pharmaceutical grade, and it mixes really well with added lactase enzymes. Chocolate + Olive oil tastes better than Vanilla + Olive oil, but both tastes quite salty, even though it contains no salt or Sodium!
Note that I did not mention Sodium as an ingredient in the previous post, but it is required and obtained from a teaspoon of Himalayan Pink salt, ideally.
If you are South African, you will do really well with Dis-Chem's Spectrum Multivitamin+mineral, but it is still hard to get Potassium Gluconate Powder unless you import.
See the nutritional profile of the Dis-Chem Spectrum Multivitamin here: http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/custom/2816181/2

Living on a liquid diet is quite an adjustment, and in my experience you will crave for solid food, so it does take time. This is not for everyone, and I am only doing it as an experiment.
However, actually getting 100% RDA nutrients every day makes a huge difference. I have never felt so composed, focused, calm and powerful as I do now, even from the first day.

I have realized how much my usual diet lacked in the proper array of nutrients. I would partake in solid food when cravings overwhelm, but I would not be dependent on food save for the baseline Soylent consumed each day. Then one has to freedom to omit foods that are less than ideal, like sugars, gluten and excessive red meat.

Care should be taken to optimally digest the whey mix, this is accomplished by making the mixture as thick as possible and allowing for 2 hours to digest before drinking liquids again. You will find that if you drink lots of water directly after consuming the mix, then you are diluting the solution which will result in poorer absorption. Unabsorbed protein will cause gas in the intestines, but if the solution is kept concentrated in the stomach and time is allowed for proper absorption then gas is minimized and absorption maximized.

Soylent Recipe and Nutritional Profile

2013-03-15T00:43:00.000+02:00

Rob Rhinehart is experimenting with an essential, optimized food concoction, but a lot of his readers wanted specifics regarding his Soylent ingredients posted here. I think it is yet laborious to measure out vitamin & mineral powders for every mix, much easier just to use compound supplements and multivitamins.

Choose the right multivitamin base and 90% of the work is done, save for those annoying elements bunking class in almost every multivitamin out there, namely Potassium and Phosphorus. As one commenter aptly put, one's brain will catabolize itself without Choline, another tardy player late to the mix.

I live in South Africa, so I added a local mass builder for the protein & carb requirements. I doubled the dosage to 90g/day protein and 120g/day carbs (mainly maltodextrin). I increased the protein/carb ratio, since I saw a couple of commenters defending ketogenic diets, and I don't want to climb the ceilings from too much energy.

To meet the Potassium RDA is more expensive than meeting the entire Vitamin & Mineral RDA profile, but it's easier than eating 8 bananas a day.

Choline is also noticeably absent from 95% of Multivitamins, but apart from the hassle it is relatively inexpensive to supplement. I added only 1/2 the RDA, since Inositol is also present in the supplement. I couldn't find a full Choline supplement from a supplier that offers international shipping, but it is readily available in the US, e.g. Amazon.

I added a full Probiotic panel with all the exotics, but only at a 1/3 of the recommended dosage. Whilst Probiotics are not entirely essential, I thought it would be a good measure at a reasonable price point.

The Calcium supplement also contains 30% Phosphorus RDA, again for reasons of international availability, but a full Phosphorus supplement may be easily found in the US.

At first I had a separate Vitamin K2 supplement, but since Olive oil contains 10% Vitamin K2 RDA per tablespoon, I thought it to be excessive at 4+ tbsp/day of Olive oil.

An apple a day... I am concerned that not chewing and not using my teeth will be bad in the long run, so I advocate chowing down an apple each day. This will also add some good fibers, missing until now, and give the jugular a good workout.

$90.0/month: Anabolic Mass Builder by Nutritech
$6.60/month: Liquid Multi Gels by NOW Foods
$9.39/month: Potassium Gluconate Powder by NOW Foods
$3.40/month: Calcium by Enzymatic Therapy
$1.96/month: Choline & Inositol - 500 Mg by NOW Foods
$4.97/month: Probiotic Defense by NOW Foods
$30.0/month: Extra virgin Olive oil
$10.0/month: Apples

$156.32/month: Total

The nutritional analysis of the above mix can be seen in the pics below.

Vitamin A, E and the B complex is high above the %DV, but values are below the upper tolerable limits, at least according to a cursory search.

Iron may seem deficient at 9 mg, but apparently that level is good if you are male. Phosphorus is also low at 30%. A commenter mentioned Silicon as something that may be lacking in the long run.

For myself I think it would be good to chow on some greens now and then, just to reconnect mastically with nature. Slow munching on a raw spinach leaf might do the trick, in addition to an apple a day.

Suspend shortcut on Ubuntu Gnome panel

2010-10-10T19:10:00.003+02:00

Admittedly, the default Gnome panel setup on Ubuntu Lucid is rather sleek and utilitarian, alas there are some who would like to suspend to RAM in one click not two. The screen will be locked upon resuming, better safe than sorry right?

1. Create a file named suspend.sh with the following content:

#!/bin/bash

gnome-screensaver-command --lock

dbus-send --print-reply --system --dest=org.freedesktop.UPower /org/freedesktop/UPower org.freedesktop.UPower.Suspend

2. You may need to

chmod 755 suspend.sh

3. Right-click Gnome top panel and 'Add to panel...'

4. Create a new launcher.

5. Select the following launcher properties:

Type: Application in Terminal

Name: Suspend

Command: /point/to/suspend.sh

6. Choose an appropriate icon like e.g. /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/gdu-hba.png , yeah I know that's not what an off-button looks like. It's close, give me that.

From The Calm Coder

Making Python2.6 the default over Python2.5

2010-07-02T00:20:00.000+02:00

On Kubuntu Lucid I only find Exaile to be sufficient for handling my 15k tracks, but after installing Python2.5 (for Google AppEngine) then this fine large collection player gives the unfortunate errors:

ImportError: No module named gobject
AttributeError: 'Exaile' object has no attribute 'dbus'

Somehow Python2.5 overrides Python2.6 as the default, so to upgrade your snake-script you have to:

sudo rm /usr/local/bin/python
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/python2.6 /usr/local/bin/python

For KDE I calmly recommend making a custom Input Actions group (System Settings) for Exaile with the following commands (you'll figure it out):

Stop: exaile -s
ToggleUI: exaile --toggle-visible
Play/Pause: exaile -t
NextSong: exaile -n

Enjoy your 50,000 hours of music, I know I'll do.

SDPA 7.3.1 installation problem in Cygwin

2010-01-24T23:02:00.000+02:00

So you've managed to construct a 40000x40000 linear programming constraint matrix, hoping to solve it with a revised simplex function you coded in c++. Then after a week of research and programming, you find out that the usefulness of your lp solver depends wholly on its numerical stability.

Fortunately, the folks at sdpa.indsys.chuo-u.ac.jp did all the hard work for you, so that you can enjoy the favourable numerical properties of an optimised interior point algorithm.

For some reason however, you still just love working and coding in Windows. So you opt for a Cygwin installation to further that amazing piece of software you have tapped your blood for the past couple of weeks.

After following the reasonable SDPA 7.3.1 installation instructions you are greeted with one of those wonderful compile fail messages:

/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/4.3.4/libgcc_s.dll.a(_chkstk.o):/gnu/gcc/releases/packaging/4.3.4-3/gcc4-4.3.4-3/src/gcc-4.3.4/libgcc/../gcc/config/i386/cygwin.asm:48: multiple definition of `__alloca'

/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/4.3.4/../../../libcygwin.a(t-d000121.o):(.text+0x0): first defined here

/usr/local/gfortran/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/4.5.0/libgcc.a(unwind-sjlj.o): In function `_Unwind_SetGR':

/home/jerry/gcc/objdir/i686-pc-cygwin/libgcc/../../../trunk/libgcc/../gcc/unwind-sjlj.c:204: multiple definition of `__Unwind_SetGR'

sdpa-sdpa_exe.o:sdpa_exe.cpp:(.eh_frame+0x12): undefined reference to `___gxx_personality_v0'

./libsdpa.a(libsdpa_a-sdpa_call.o):sdpa_call.cpp:(.eh_frame+0x12): undefined reference to `___gxx_personality_v0'

Don't stress, be calm. First extract libgfortran.a with

ln -s /usr/local/gfortran/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/4.5.0/libgfortran.a /usr/local/gfortran/lib/libgfortran.a

Then simply edit $HOME/sdpa/sdpa/sdpa.7.3.1.src/Makefile by changing

FLIBS = -L/usr/local/gfortran/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/4.5.0 -L/usr/local/gfortran/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/4.5.0/../../.. -lgfortran -lcygwin -luser32 -lkernel32 -ladvapi32 -lshell32

FLIBS = -L/usr/local/gfortran/lib -lgfortran -luser32 -lkernel32 -ladvapi32 -lshell32

and make again. All should be well in winux land.