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De-nouncing :) the FHCHC - Fiasco High-performance Computing (was "HCHC" and prior the "Hair Cut") Halloween Challenge

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So I would like to gauge interest in a Halloween challenge. Either amongst the team or challenge another team.

I need a hair cut bad, so I was thinking we should put some follicles "on the line", but that can be optional 🙂 I was hoping to get this started yesterday, but work life happened and I ran out of steam...

I would like it to be some kind of challenge and not just set the puters to run open. Maybe have to change to another project every day or so at some odd unworldly hour 🙂. I now see that PrimeGrid challenge runs until Oct. 28th.

So I may make up some crazy rules this weekend and see if anyone wants to participate. Maybe this could be a test drive for Skills Boinc Games platform?

I'd like it to end during the "Witching Hour", somewhere on the planet.

And I really do need a hair cut, so it is no skin off my back to cut some hair (not off my back though ?). Might be fun for the "challenge" losers to have to post some "cut" pics?

This place has been kind of boring, so trying to slice (scary / Halloween reference) it up some
 
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I'm definitely down for a Halloween BOINC competition - @cellarnoise I'm glad you were thinking of ideas for this! My hair stays pretty short regardless all year, though, so I don't think sacrificing my hair if my team loses will do anything since it would be taking off maybe a fraction of an inch 😛

I'll definitely throw some CPU/GPU cycles at it if you come up with the parameters and keep track of the stats. I plan on running the Primegrid race as well but can throw some resources at both if they end up conflicting.
 
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Thanks @Icecold, a.k.a. Lukewarm. I have been following this team and D.C. as a whole much closer the past year, but I still don't know much.

What "Statistic" reporting sites report on the hour or more often that a few times a day? Are most 1/4 day or daily? I don't know how to pull stats from projects more often than what Free-DC does, but I will look into before Oct. 28th UTC if this is interesting to anyone. I'd like to be able to start to pull stats at crazy hours on the planet and maybe under or over a set 24 hour period, just to keep it interesting, if possible.

I don't want "bloody" (not U.K. reference...) participants to have to change challenges. So this would start after the latest Primegrid finishes.

The "Halloween" challenge if it becomes a Frankenstein thing, and if it does not require follicle sacrifice should have some other sacrifice for participants to be top notch for the devilish endeavor. Not just raw computing power. So I'm thinking a changing time start for project switching to time zones that have little to no population (like once a day!, not crazier than that...)

Anyway, I still need a hair cut. And all of them (not just one) from the neck up anyway 🙂
 
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Well "Mark of the Beast" we will try to factor your painful sacrifices into this challenge so that you can still put up "numbers of a beast"!

Everyone, please know that this is all meant to be fun and brains. Nothing tied to religious sacrifice or other more bleeding belief systems ( of the living dead ...)

Maybe this dark endeavour ends up in a black place, but hopefully there is some light at the end of the darkness or at least something other than a cavity (tooth that is).
 
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Not trying to be a killjoy, just letting you know my current situation. I will do what I can to participate.

And I hope you are all vaccinated, that is what is killing my medical support right now. The hospitals are full of UN-vaccinated people, and all surgery's are on hold, mine included. Stupid, since in this country it has been widely available, and FREE for months. Just go to your local Walgreens. But thousands didn't, hence the current situation.
 
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cellarnoise said:
Thanks @Icecold, a.k.a. Lukewarm. I have been following this team a
What "Statistic" reporting sites report on the hour or more often that a few times a day? Are most 1/4 day or daily? I don't know how to pull stats from projects more often than what Free-DC does, but I will look into before Oct. 28th UTC if this is interesting to anyone. I'd like to be able to start to pull stats at crazy hours on the planet and maybe under or over a set 24 hour period, just to keep it interesting, if possible.
Click to expand...
The way I've done it before when needing realtime stats updates is to pull it from the Team listing from the project website itself. It's generally somewhere like Project website --> Community --> Teams --> search for Team Anandtech --> either active users or all users. You would need to pull stats right at the beginning of it, and then another time right when it completes, and use a spreadsheet to calculate the points earned between the 2 stats pulls. There may be a better way but that's how I've done it.

Using Milkyway@home as an example - here is the active users list for our team - https://milkyway.cs.rpi.edu/milkyway/team_members.php?teamid=77&offset=0&sort_by=expavg_credit
 
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cellarnoise said:
What "Statistic" reporting sites report on the hour or more often that a few times a day? Are most 1/4 day or daily?
Click to expand...
Project sites export statistics in several ways:
  • Via the web pages. This is meant for human visitors. These stats are up to date.
  • Via Web RPC. This is up to date too. It's basically a subset of what you can see on the web pages, formatted in XML.
  • As a set of files in compressed XML which you can download. Project sites are often configured to update these files once per day. Some projects do this a few times per day.
    The times of day when these files are created differ between projects too. Also, the creation of these files is a somewhat time-consuming process on the server, such that the time of day when these files appear is not entirely consistent from day to day.
FreeDC, the normal stats tables at BoincStats, and e.g. the marathon contests at Formula Boinc are using the downloadable files from the project sites.

The challenge feature of BoincStats, the sprint contests at Formula Boinc, and SETI.Germany's Pentathlon and WCG Birthday contest pages are using the Web RPC interfaces of the project sites. (WCG's RPC interface is different from BOINC's though.)

Edit:
WCG's own challenge feature uses WCG's daily stats dump at 00:00 UTC. PrimeGrid's own challenge feature uses internal database access, which enables them to take the download timestamp of tasks into account and to include pending credit in the challenge scores.
 
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Time is running out on setting up a challenge 😱 .... I think I have some team challenge parameters I would like to try, but tracking stats looks to be a problem.

Can you set up your own challenge on BoincStats or some other site to create a start and end time? My capabilities would only be taking starting and ending stats for team members from current numbers shown on a website like BoincStats and calculating the change for team members myself. I can do this, but it would be nice to use some kind of feature on a reporting site.

I am currently researching on BoincStats, but I don't see an option to set up a challenge...
 
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Well, I am still thinking of setting up a Ween Challenge for the team. Still learning about how fast various Boinc reporting stats site report updates.

More soon. To the death of us all....
 
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I'm not sure on the Boincstats challenges. I had tried to look into that before but I think maybe it's something that can only be initiated by a team founder or something. I'm not sure. If you're trying to do anything that is very precise in terms of timing though I think you might be better off getting stats from the actual project website since those should be 100% up to date.
 
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So to start off.... I don't know what I am doing and have not done this before. So expect a fiasco!

If you are still with me.

Tomorrow about this time I will share the Challenge Project and the start time, though it really looks like there are limited time reported statistics for most projects. So stats will likely be daily and I am not sure if the start time will really matter. So I will share a start time and you all do with it what you will. The start time won't start for a few hours after this announcement, but once again I don't think it will matter.

This Team challenge will run through Halloween ending sometime on the planet. There will be a twist or two during the event, but we shall see if they work out or not.

That is all for now.

Get scary all!
 
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OK! some universal HCHC scary rules and some 1st day challenge guidelines. I was going to be all Scary below, but I am very tired... Long few past weeks. 🙄


HCHC Rules.
1. This is all for fun, and is designed to have those who choose to participate / contribute as much as they can... directly or indirectly to have fun!, with some change ups along the way!
2. As some have figured out the primary challenge is SiDock until the end of the race. Damn youse! Note: I have tried to shut off my contribution prior to the project starts in time....
3. Don't speak about this challenge except to others that you hope will participate 🙂 Fight Club reference - modified.
4. There are no "badges", except maybe some feel good brain endorphins, but those are all on YOU... (I'll send some smoked flesh, but not sure it will get to anywhere on the planet in proper time...)
5. Day 1 stats are based upon a 100 point system and based upon the number of those that say (post in this thread) they are participating. Largest number of Boinc reported points (likely stats off of Free-DC.org) after the challenge starts will be awarded on a 100 point scale. So, 100 points until future rules kick in. (hint) Other participant's points are based upon their stats divided into their percentage of the total points rounded to the whole number. (I've now had a few beers and thought I had this figured out, but will make up the rules later if needed, been a long week and day already 🙂
5. Recruiting someone to participate that has not had any reported point stats on the TeAm's stats weekly updated thread in a few months, but can be verified (you figure it out) as a new recent Anandtech DC participant) will receive 20 challenge points that can not be taken away. (hint).
6. I would have liked to have used Fakaofo, Tokelau (funny English / Anglish name for my adolescent mind, and on my bucket list as a place to visit - look it up it is cool) as the starting time zone, but I think Fakaofo is now beyond it's Witching hour, so.
7. SO... Some have likely figured this out... The HCHC challenge officially starts at the "Whiskey" Time Zone that is often used in aviation and the military as another name for UTC -10! . That is hopefuly when I will (If I wake up) take screen shots of the points and start a spreadsheet of the starting points. And the 1st project is SiDock. SiDock will run the total of the event, Witch!, you are now a frog, ends Oct. 31st, 2021 after some Whiskey....
8. There will be some changes made 24 hours after the start of this challenge or so.

Good luck you all. Contribution to Science always wins in the end!

Halloween references for those... I recommend New Orleans and have others for this time of year, if you want to be disturbed.
en.wikipedia.org

Halloween - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

I really need to eat some food.... Boo!!!
 
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Well, lesson number 1. Don't post incomprehensible rules after a few beers and forget to make the actual starting time clear. Not just the time zone of the start time....

The start of the challenge... is upcoming in roughly 40 minutes.
Zero Hour - Oct. 29th - UTC Whiskey Time Zone

3:00 a.m. PST, 10/29 in my town.

40 minutes notice enough for everyone? 😵

I could move the start time back if needed, but let's see who has an issue with this one. Fiasco initiated.
 
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This thing is still ON!

Contributing to science and my learning of what a real challenge should be and all that goes into it!

I am going to take Stats nowish! 6:00 p.m. PST anyway, but won't post the results until tomorrow sometime. Too tired after the failed brilliant idea from yesterday. I blame myself and the witches. No more waking up for me at 2:00 to 3:00 a.m. PST!!! Thought it might be fun and I would fall back asleep quickly. Wrong. Plus I learned that without any prior notice, few participants notice 🙂 You are all part of a very small sample experiment?

Without automatic stat pulling at odd un-worldly hours humans (this one anyway) are not well suited to the task... BoincStats and Sidock's own website seem to update at most twice a day? Free-DC is 4 times a day of stat website update? Whatever.

So tomorrow just after 6:00 p.m. PST there will be "Twist" that should still keep this challenge interesting, or DC challenges anyway? Or at least be education for this humanoid.

I need some rest! Along with food again. Thinking of bbqing (now in the dark...), a nice Rib Eye - scary, some garlic mash potatoes, and some steamed broccoli.

After some Stats pulling now!
 
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