I see that I haven't been doing a very good job keeping this blog up to date. I'll have to remedy that soon, but in the mean time let me plug a good cause: the Rosetta@Home project.
While I've participated in a number of distributed computing projects over the past ten years or so (I can remember running a distributed.net encryption cracker on my FreeBSD box during the late 1990's), I'm particularly enthusiastic about recent projects with a more direct tie to the human condition. In particular, there are several projects underway that are attempting to understand the three-dimensional shapes of proteins in research that may help solve some terrible diseases (e.g., HIV/AIDs, Malaria, Cancer, and Alzheimer's).
I have chosen to contribute to Rosetta@Home as it is not-for-profit. Additionally, as part of the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC), it is easy to run on my Linux and Windows machines.
While there are no guarantees of finding quick cures, it feels good to use spare computing cycles in this effort. I encourage you to read about this project and consider helping.
