It might be useful at this point to let the crew know what is happening with Pirates@Home, and what is not:

* Those who are unhappy that there is little or no work here can take heart in the fact that there is plenty of work on Einstein@Home. Invitations have gone out to just about everybody who signed up with the APS, except perhaps some recent stragglers. If you are not already on Einstein@Home you can now create your own account there.

* The Pirates@Home site is all prepared to upgrade to BOINC 4.66. We just have to "flip the switch". Actually, we have to run a script, and this will be s test of that script. There has been recent work by the BOINC crew on that script, so we are going to wait until the changes settle out before we run the script. Stand by and be prepared for some changes.

* Building on Windows has hit a snag after upgrading the software to BOINC 4.66. The current thinking is that the JPEG library must be rebuit from scratch. The strategy is to work from the simplest apps (hello, yello, lalanne) to the complex (sextant).

* Building on Linux works, but there are some concerns about libraries. To be transportable to a wide range of Linux versions requires a mix of static libraries (for things not found everywhere) and dynamic libraries (for things best done with local versions, such as X11 and OpenGL implementation). The current thinking is that by building on a Red Hat 7.3 machine we've hit a snag due to the compatibility libraries from the dread gcc 2.96 fiasco, even though we have the latest gcc in place. This seems like a good time to go through with existing plans to upgrade machines to Fedora Core 3.

An alternative is to build on a box with a fresh install, and one is in the works. But that machine has had some problems booting from SCSI, so we are changing some hardware. It's been an opportunity for some students to learn a lot about Linux.

* Building on Apple has hit a snag because I cannot get wxWidgts to build, on several machines. This may be a configuration issue. One machine also needs to have another disk drive added for more working space.

And unfortunately someone has to write a thermodynamics exam and read a number of lab reports this weekend, so that someone will not be getting all this done right away. Stay tuned...

The best thing the crew can do right now is crank on Einstein@Home and stand ready at Action Stations for the next Pirates test when it's ready. I think you'll find there are still some interesting things in the works for those who remain ready for work.

As always, thank you for donating your computers and your own time and interest in testing BOINC and parts of Einstein@Home.

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-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats