I'm a regular guy, based in London, England. Married, with two beautiful children.
I love watching the heavens, so was thrilled to find the Distant Suns program through the S@H pages. It's wonderful. if you don't have it, then get the free download from.
http://www.distantsuns.dk/
Work-wise, I am a journalist: you can find my magazine at
http://www.crain.co.uk/erj
I got involved in S@H in the days immediately after the official launch in May 1999. Initially, I used only one computer, but gradually persuaded my work colleagues to put the system on their machines as well.
We mostly run Apple Macs in the office, so I have it running on one Beige G3 (233MHz), a G4 (450 MHz) an old iMac (233MHz) and a couple of Wintel machines: both are PII Celeron processors, one is a laptop running at 233 MHz, the other a desktop running at 433MHz. All the machines have 64MB of memory or more and plenty of diskspace. I don't use any of the third party add-ons (SetiSpy/Stash/whatever) so when the Berkely servers are down, the machines just get starved of units.
Back to my home life: when we get our kitchen back from the workmen, I like to cook, especially barbeques (cook-outs), and especially I love Italy: the food, the wine, the people, the country.
Ciao!
Dave S
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| I joined the S@H programme in the early days of May 1999, after a radio programme here in the UK highlighted it. It really caught my imagination as a brilliant technical project, and one which exploited the aims and ideals of the internet, as well as one which will prove useful to mankind.
Will we find ET? Probably, but possibly not in my lifetime. I think there can be no doubt that there are other civilisations in the universe. Are they advanced? are they looking for us? are they hostile or friendly? Who knows?
Since the S@H project has proved so successful, there have been copies. The one which I am most tempted to join is the cancer analysis project. That project seems to have at least as many merits as the SETI project. Anyone who has watched a friend or relative die from cancer will understand these thoughts.
For the time being however, I am sticking with SETI. I like the feeling of being in a development project, rather than a finished, slick semi-commercial project like the cancer one.
Also, SETI requires huge resources, but the researchers have never received enough. If I have resources which can be used, then I am happy to give them to a cause which is close to my heart, and which has, over the years, learned to conserve resources and use them efficiently.
Perhaps there is something of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series in there: the profligate Empire made things which worked well enough by throwing resources at them, whereas the Foundationers had to develop new ideas using creativity and intelligence to compensate for their lack of material resources. The lesson (IMHO) is that creativity, well-applied, can overcome pure strength and power.
Of course Dr Asimov was a way cool guy, and made great contributions to the SETI cause. So, Dr Asimov, if you have access to the celestial web, this work unit is for you!
Dave S
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