Where are all the folders?

SiriusB

SiriusB

SiriusB

Soldato
Joined
16 Dec 2005
Posts
14,443
Location
Manchester
Something has been bugging me since my return a few months ago.

Where are all the folders!?

When I left the fold years ago there were so many people folding, and a large proportion of those were dedicated, nay insane, folders who wouldn't be caught dead with a PPD below 2K!

Where are they all? Looking at the EOC stats I see that incredibly I am the 13th top producer using just two mid-range GPUs, one of which is only part time. Judging by the other 5K+ folders I imagine they are using GPUs. I know a few of you do both SMP and GPU.

But what about the rest? 30 people doing more than 1K PPD. 30. What's going on? :eek: It is a sad time for folding for OcUK when my next stomp [of an active user] is months or even years away :(

Is it just nostalgia of past days of constant parp and counter-parps that has made the current folding seem, and dare I say it, a little dull? We don't even have any news posts anymore. I really hope folding doesn't end up being the preserve of a few crusty old folding veterans who don't when to stop buying new shiny toys upon which we rely to heat our homes and increase our energy bills.

It is for a worthy cause which is why I plan to stick with it for the time being. I just wish the folding members didn't seem so thin on the ground. Am I right in thinking all this, or is it just in my head? Answers on a postcard :p
 
This happened with SETI a few years ago. I remember this being a SETI-dominant forum when I first joined (six years ago now...!), but that steadily declined when BOINC came about. Since then it has become largely focused on folding, so quite what's happened to them is anyone's guess, though I should imagine the recession has had a fair impact.
 
Hey,

I was thinking the same you know... I can remember when myself and ms9cw used to team together to get some high points.... long gone are those days.... I blame rising energy prices!

Stelly
 
I've not been folding that long (10 months) so I don't know about the good ol' days :)
I do notice it seems to come in waves where there is a lot of banter going on, then it goes quiet again.

I think the news helps to promote this, but I don't know why there aren't more people folding, I'm sure there are tonnes of people on this forum with high performance machines that are largely sitting idle inbetween playing games.
 
Well I can't really say why some others have stopped but I've gone from 25k PPD down to 5K PPD. Went over to the states with the prospect of starting a life for myself out there. Took my PC and my PS3 over and had the PC folding 24/7 netting about 25k PPD. My PS3 died a month after going over, restricting me to using theirs every now and again (was staying with friends) so my PC was split between gaming and folding, then their PS3 kicked the bucket and that left me doing all my gaming on the PC.

Got a second PS3 and it was split between us using (them through the day, me at night because our relationship had gone FUBAR). Things went bad between us and they demanded that I was out the house for good, leaving me with no place to live in any country bar a friend in Texas I had never met. Had to sacrifice my PC to them since no courier was interested in shipping it back to the UK, leaving me with their useless laptop for a means of communication.

Deja Vu with the friend in Texas (Same ****, different state) and I have to give up everything else I have almost (still kept one of the 9800GX2's from my old machine). So here I am, without much of a hope in the world, stuck right where I don't want to be, folding with what hardware I have left.

Sorry for the long post :o
 
Was having a look this morning for future parpage and saw a lot of familiar names with zero output. Some of those names were people who used to have high output and were active posters in our little corner of OcUK. Some of them, like growse, Sammael, Gazzza and Sculptor are people I've had interesting battles with in the past. Other names like Berserker and Rich99million were huge contributors to the forum and the team. Shame to see them no longer active :(

Good to see some of the old hands still producing well - people like LigerZero, Biffa, snapshot, walls, lemonman, TMS, Happy, piggott and siriusB - all of whom I remember from previous visits.
Nice to see some new members producing well too, like; dekez, Frank Grimes, marineiguana, JonJ and iancampbell4 to name a few

For myself, I come and go. I get the bug for a while and come stomping in with my size 11 stomping boots, make a big impression for a couple of months and then get fed up and naff off again - until I get the bug again a few months later.

I think the lack of banter is one of the reasons there are fewer people around (the leccy bills don't help either :p). When we had regular news threads, there was a lot more activity. Rich did a brilliant job a while back and, more recently, shadowscotland has been doing a sterling job but seems to have given up for the last few weeks. Trouble is, it's quite an undertaking gathering all the stats and processing them into a news thread and most people have neither the time nor the ability.

To sum up. It may not be like the old days but we still have the basis of a damn good team and there's still a little bit of banter.

As I always used to say:
FOLD ON TEAM 10 :D
 
Senture said:
Well I can't really say why some others have stopped but I've gone from 25k PPD down to 5K PPD. Went over to the states with the prospect of starting a life for myself out there. Took my PC and my PS3 over and had the PC folding 24/7 netting about 25k PPD. My PS3 died a month after going over, restricting me to using theirs every now and again (was staying with friends) so my PC was split between gaming and folding, then their PS3 kicked the bucket and that left me doing all my gaming on the PC.

Got a second PS3 and it was split between us using (them through the day, me at night because our relationship had gone FUBAR). Things went bad between us and they demanded that I was out the house for good, leaving me with no place to live in any country bar a friend in Texas I had never met. Had to sacrifice my PC to them since no courier was interested in shipping it back to the UK, leaving me with their useless laptop for a means of communication.

Deja Vu with the friend in Texas (Same ****, different state) and I have to give up everything else I have almost (still kept one of the 9800GX2's from my old machine). So here I am, without much of a hope in the world, stuck right where I don't want to be, folding with what hardware I have left.

Sorry for the long post :o
Click to expand...

Dude. That sucks :(

I hope things pick up for you soon :)
 
Senture said:
Sorry for the long post :o
Click to expand...

Oh man that must have been rough. I can understand you not getting on with some Texan you have never actually met, but what happened between you and your original friend? You don't have to answer that, I am just being nosey! :p

As for foldage, we as a team are still throwing out a good chunk of points, I just cant think if just half of the missing foldees were to take it up again we would be a stomping machine! Plus it would liven things up again around here :D

I know the news post is very time consuming, and I may even offer to have a bash at it myself. I just have no idea where to start :p Either way it doesn't have to be much. A current leader board with the week's parps, stomps and getaways would be enough. As Stan says, it was the news threads that got people talking.

It probably isn't all as bleak as I made out in my OP as last night I was a teeny bit glum and bored. Today is a new day and the birds are shining and the sun is singing... or something...
 
SiriusB said:
Oh man that must have been rough. I can understand you not getting on with some Texan you have never actually met, but what happened between you and your original friend? You don't have to answer that, I am just being nosey! :p
Click to expand...

It starts like all of them do for me, great start then we get down to business. First few weeks were all about finding my feet and getting used to a new country. After that we faced hard times as a family, loss of income, stuck indoors, power, cable and all the rest constantly getting turned off. I wasn't in much of a position to help at the beginning by plan, but when it came to going over there, I was able to help them money wise and around the house.

They had a lot of pets, a cockatoo, turtle (very small one), 15 dogs and a cat. They were quite impervious to the noise the pets made at night when they wanted out from the kennel so this screwed up my sleep pattern a lot which cause a lot of friction. The main turning point really was their statement of "you don't do a ****ing thing to help this family". OK so when you decide to lock 8 dogs in a tiny bathroom for 2 days on end because you don't want to look after them, and they make a total mess (feces everywhere!) and expect me to spend hours sanitizing it every couple of days which takes hours, and I paid the rent, cable and power ($900 worth) when I came, this counts as nothing?! go **** yourself (point of thought, not outburst).

After then, they were constantly in a position of "no money" but yet they always went off, had steal (sometimes spending $100 on a meal!), and leaving me to eat ****ing noodles. Let me tell you, after you've eaten noodles every single day for 3 months on end occasionally getting the odd mouthful of steak or a burger, you begin to think "these people are a right bunch of c-words". Final breaking point was when I decided to sell my PS3. As I said earlier, the one I took over died quickly, and theirs followed shortly. I get my second PS3 and we all share it. After so much of getting a few hours in per day of not being bored and ****ed off, I got their dead one fixed and decided to sell my one. A local shop offered $100 for it but I knew I could get $200 off fleabay. They said "we'll take it off your hands for $100 if you wish", but it wasn't enough. So I stuck it on fleabay and that ensued the argument of "I'm a selfish *****". We had it out in one of the biggest arguments I've had in my life (about 8 hours of screaming and cursing at each other), and they demanded me out of their place.

I couldn't get anything sorted with shipping my stuff back to the UK so I traded my extremely good PC for a crappy Acer 5515 laptop. In the last couple of weeks they had money coming in but didn't buy any food for me at all because, and I quote "you're leaving, why should we give a **** about you". I had enough by this point, bags packed, but ticket bought, time to be a vindictive ****. Whilst they were out, I took my account details and games off their PS3 I got fixed, ripped the warranty sticker off and cooked the PS3 along with sticking 1.8v through the Q6600 in my old machine. Not the sort of thing I have ever done before nor do I condone it, but if you want to give me the middle finger, **** you too.

Sorry for the even longer post but in a nutshell, that's it.
 
Wow... crazy people!

Why would anyone have that many animals when they don't have any money?

As for being vindictive, if I had to leave my PC behind I would have taken the CPU with me, desoldered some capacitors on the motherboard and rearranged a few cables on the molex plugs on the PSU! :p
 
Not sure I can follow that... sorry
But the news will be back (sleep depravation stopped all my non-esentials)

Was looking the other day at the EOC summery and thought the opposite - that a lot of 10k+ ppd members.
We've always been a small band of folks - but our average ppd per member was always high.
Quality over quantity anyday (but both would be nice :D)
 
Also given the output of the most of the top 100 teams these days we need 3x our output to be amongst the front runners.

Top 10 all > 1.2mill PPD
Top 20 all > 750K PPD

We are just scraping by in the top 50
 
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Not as far as I am aware. Considering the hardware they must have knocking about it would be someone with a very respectable PPD. Pretty sure none of the top 20 work for OcUK!
 
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