Bitcoin mining - Moving from GPUs to ASCIs

Amazing mining rigs belong
in crappy cases.

Application-specific integrated circuit, that's what ASCI stands for. I always have a hard time remembering, not only what it stands for but what order the letters go in (for some reason I always type ACSI). Bottom line is that it really doesn't matter when it comes to bitcoin mining (also, is Bitcoin supped to be capitalized--maybe we need a consortium to answer these questions).

Recently I retired my two AMD Radeon HD 5830's because the difficulty has skyrocketed so high it's not worth the electricity to run them. I thought about switching them to litecoin, but wasn't happy with the way it worked. I've been easy on these cards. They always had a small overclock (10%), and I kept the intensity down to keep temperatures low. I decided longevity is better than higher speed, and they did a good job for a couple of years. Most recently I sold them on ebay for about half what I paid. Financially speaking these two video cards are the highest return on investment than anything I've ever done with money.

I mine on btcguild (who doesn't these days?), and when they started offering ASCI block erupters for bitcoins I jumped on it. Each one of these things mines faster than the a 5830, and they use less electricity--far less. The fact I could buy them with bitcoins made the deal great.

The only downside was I had to spend real money USB hubs (block erupters are USB devices), and without much thought I picked up a Satechi 12 port hub. To Satechi's credit, they have a great customer service department. Unfortunately this product was not so great. I fully expected the 2 amp DC converter not to power 10 block erupters and a fan, but this hub limits the power... not the converter. When I wired up my own 50 amp power converter I was still limited to the number of erupters that would run. Really who buys a 12 port USB hub to run 12 low power devices? Lesson learned: there is a lot of great information in Amazon comments. Had I read them I would have purchased a hub that works the first time around. After leaving a 1 star product review, Satachi refunded the full cost including shipping of my order. That was even after I informed them I cut the power cable to make use of the DC jack with my other power converter. Not many companies I know would go to such lengths, so props to them.

What was the right hub? Fellow miners and Amazon reviewers agree that Anker makes the right hub for block erupters. They easily power 9 erupters and a fan (I'm really sad to say I broke one of my fan blades... be careful with those things--they are the delicate flowers they look like). Nine erupters per hub makes for almost 3Gh/s. Three hubs later I was mining at ~9Gh/s. Which felt like a lot until I realized difficulty was jumping up like crazy because I am one of thousands of miners moving to easy to acquire ASCI equipment.


As dumb luck would have it, right as the difficulty got so high that my 9Ghz/s was bringing in as little coin as my two old video cards, I get an email from Butterfly Labs. The Jalapeno I ordered in February was shipped. It came a couple of days later in nicer packaging than I expected. They even included this coffee cup with a giant handle. Doesn't that handle seem giant? When I hold it my hand feels really far from the coffee.

This added ~7Gh/s to my mining efforts. No doubt after a jump or two in difficulty it will all be in vain.

Not to be a product review post, but the Jalapeno was much louder than I expected. In it's favor, it is every bit as easy to mine with as block erupter.

I managed to whip up a lame attempt at monitoring software. If you can call it software, it's just a website that grabs the RPC info from bgfminer. It's been a good learning experience as it is my first attempt with the backbone framework. This has been my current side project, and hopefully it will get better as I find time to tinker with it.

Lessons Learned on XKCD Time - At Your Own Pace

The frame showing when I started this post.

I started compiling a list of things I've learned from this XKCD At Your Own Pace project. Arguably I've learned more on this than what I learned last semester at school.

The number one lesson learned was an unexpected feeling. I know putting a project on Github is opening it up to the world to do with as it pleases. In my case it was this guy named MaPePeR. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it now, but my very first thought was "Who's this guy fiddling with my code?" Then I started reading what he changed. My next thought was, "Holy crap all of Github must think I'm a newb," because the changes he made were great. They made sense and I learned something from them. I found I liked it. Social coding  who knew right? I was so excited about it I made my own awful software license. It's bad, don't use it.

That was my big eye opener. I'm more attached to my code than I expected to be, but letting it go has been wonderful. The project is much better for it. I might have to dance with the shift key to type his Github handle, but MaPePeR is a good programmer. I'm glad to have his input.

Some random lessons

• I should have called it "At Your Pace".
• Because that's shorter and I keep typing it anyway.
• Also AYP is a cooler acronym than AYOP.
• I enjoy working with others. Bouncing ideas around, getting feedback. It's a fun way to "refactor" ideas quick.
• Firefox is the pain-in-the-butt browser now (when you choose to ignore IE<=9).
• Web Design, granted plenty more to learn here but I was surprised to get positive feedback from how the site looks.
• Speaking of feedback, user feedback is awesome. Not only does it keep me interested in a project it's a wonderful source of unsolicited ideas.
• The many "step" buttons was from user feedback, so was the linkable frame differences.
• The play back at ludicrous speed was our idea, but everyone was thinking it.
• We were able to troubleshoot a bug that only came up on Mac's because of user feedback. Neither of us own a Mac (okay MaPePeR troubleshooted the bug and I heard about it).

Frame showing when I finished this post

Things I've never had to use before now

• Git merge, because no one forked my junk.
• How to handle a merge conflict. I could really use more practice at this, but at least I've done it once.
• Getting url variables with Javascript.
• Funny story, I was doing this with PHP and having the PHP write Javascript. Yeah that was like the first thing pointed out to me.
• Preloading bunches of images (when necessary), okay I didn't write the script that made it happen, but I get why it's great now.
• Bitly api was watching out for guys like me (see figure 1).
• Google Analytics is cool (I like data see figure 2).
•  particularly data hub activity (I can troll on a new level).

A list of things I never knew existed until I did this project and started working with other people.

• github can close issues by writing in the commit.
• git bisect, still haven't used it but man that sounds crucial.
• jslint (I may have heard of it, but never knew what it was).
• http://toroid.org/ams/git-website-howto
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenken Really, that's a thing.
• I am the only person who knows about XKCD at my University.

figure 1 - I had a bug in the bitly link creation code.

figure 2 - Google Analytics

This is not a complete list, but it's a start.

Debunking the Myths

When I said soon I wasn't kidding. Here is my second paper. As stated in the last post this is an argumentative that argues for the advantages of open source software over proprietary commercial software.

This time I did not loose any points for work cited problems. It was an A+, but for those of you that might actually look up my sources, take them with a grain of salt. Although there is no plagiarism, I'm pretty sure I might have mixed up some sources with what I actually cited. This, of course, is not something that the teacher would catch in grading because I'm sure she does not go and read every source on every students paper. For the ones I got wrong I apologies. I thought about going back and fixing them all, but instead I think it would be more appropriate to share this in its original form.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dftrrvsj_73p45vjq

Soon we'll be doing our third project, which is actually a presentation. For my presentation I will obviously do a PowerPoint presentation (PowerPoint is all that is available in the class room), and instead of a pamphlet I plan to actually pass out a CD with some open source software on it. One of those mini CD's people will think is cool. I'll post the presentation here, and if I can find a place to host it, the iso of the CD.

The Open Source Advantage

The Open Source Advantage is the informative paper I wrote for my English class. Although I made an A, I did loose points for my works cited page. I had some citations in there I didn't use in the paper, and some that were used in the paper but not on the page. Turns out I got confused with my copy and pasting of sources.

Other than my citation confusion, many people told me the paper was good. That gave me the confidence to publish it to the world. Odds are, no one will see it. None the less, it's out there.

I decided to use Google Documents as my medium to share my paper for a couple of reasons. First of all I didn't have to find a place to host my file. I don't have to make up my mind on what format to save it in. Also, Google Documents gives the option to save in any format if anyone should decide to use my paper for any reason. The link is below.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dftrrvsj_72htjvn3

Thanks for anyone who is interested, and feel free to criticize. I'll post my second paper, which argues the advantages of open source over proprietary commercial software, soon.

Wireless Power

Been a while since I looked into wireless electricity. It's a concept that is cool, but difficult for me to grasp. In my mind, wireless electricity is lightning. As dangerous as that sounds there is a company that not only has working products, but won best emerging technology at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2007. I'm probably the last person to blog about this (sometimes I'm slow), and there are obviously many uses for it. Of course it's my job to come up with cool ways to incorporate it into my trailer.

Also, it's rare I find safe bets when it comes to stock. The company, Powercast, is an L.L.C and not traded on the stock exchange. However, Phillips is a company they are dealing with and even expect to start having products available for consumers before the end of this year. Even if they don't come out with anything until the end of next year, I think Phillips stock might be worth looking into.

Wing Commander

Wing Commander was another great game that was a victim of EA buying out Origin. I can only imagine how great the series would have become if it continued. To date, I have yet to play a space flight combat simulator that compares. Unfortunately, I never owned a copy of it when it was in it's prime. In an effort to show my undying support for Origin, I set out to find a legal copy. Wing Commander 2 is still easily obtainable; as is 3, 4, privateer, armada, and many of the other Wing Commander games I can't remember. WC1 and WC2 were probably my favorites of them all though. I did eventually find the original Wing Commander. Unfortunately, it's not the deluxe that comes with special operations 1 & 2 and the speech pack. But at least I'll be able to play the original game again in all it's glory.

Funny how these old games work. When they first came out everyone was excited because it was new and fresh. Now they're hard to find but they're still exciting when you do get to play them. If only I had known that games like Wing Commander and Ultima were going to be some of the best games in all of history, I would have bought them new, kept all the manual, taken great care to keep the original packaging and documentation in great condition. A lot of these games came with things, unlike todays games. For example, the original Wing Commander came with blue prints of the ships. Ultima came with cloth maps of the world. If a video game company today, could do what Origin did before video games were mainstream, they would do very well for themselves I think.

Observations in Nintendo Demographics

My boss bought a Nintendo DS for the sole purpose of playing Brain Age's Sudoku. This is just a perfect example of how Nintendo is broadening their demographics. It also happens to be one of the rare examples of how a company's strategy is actually noticeable. My boss is just the newest of these examples I'm finding in my life.

The first example was last Christmas when I played Nintendo Wii with my 80 year old grandmother. I have to admit she schooled me at bowling. In the past few years Nintendo has made huge advances breaking out of the 13-24 male bracket. I can't even explain why this is interesting to me other than I can point it out when I see it happening.

By the way, have a lucky 7-7-07.

Google's new Documents and Spreadsheets

Tonight Google updated the look and feel of their Documents and Spreadsheets, and even though I know no one will read it here first I'm proud to be able to be one of the first to announce it. I only know about it because my girlfriend was actually using it as it changed. Here is a nifty screen shot, but the best way to check it out will be to go see it yourself.

Wii Virtual Console

I haven't posted about the Wii yet in my blog, mostly because I've been too busy playing it. With the came virtual consoles, emulators for older games. One of the most recent editions, and my first experience with a virtual console, was the original Super Mario Brothers.

Of course it was great to play this game again on a console, the game was 100% intact, bugs and all. One of the first things I did was go tobut what I found interesting is that the "minus world" which was pretty much the only trick I knew until I did a quick search on Google.

Apparently, there are a number of glitches in the game that have been found, and so far every one of them works on the Wii version.

As exciting as all this was for me to discover first hand, the Wikipedia article for Super Mario Brothers beat me to it.