Crank that CPU like a Soulja Boy
As I type my MacBook Pro is downloading and compiling the necessary source code for ImageMagick. I'm building some Ruby on Rails-based software that requires file uploads and I'm using MacPorts to install the necessary code. My processor is getting a chance to stretch its legs.
At home I'm ripping and encoding Sex and the City episodes for Maggie. Each episode takes about 90 minutes to process on our Ubuntu server and this morning I queued up three ISO files with 6 episodes each, so it should be crunching away for just over 24 hours solid.
As a geek I get a certain sense of satisfaction when I actually push my machines. Because I don't play PC games and my laptop is used for web development that doesn't happen all the time.
I've always reasoned to myself that I liked programming because I'm smarter than a computer but it's infinitely faster than me. By combining our "skill sets" we can achieve great things. Maxing out the CPU makes me feel like the computer is living up to its end of the bargain.
Does anyone else feel that way?
Edit: Almost 24 hours at full throttle:
I should add as a caveat that the opposite is true when it comes to our work servers: I’d prefer to see them doing lots of work and not cracking a sweat because that means we’ve got lots of room to grow, processing wise, as a business.
Why dont you just dupe the DVD’s for S&C?
I ripped the discs to ISO image files, effectively doing just that. But the whole collection takes up about 75GB of disk space where as having them encoded will be about 10GB. Plus watching them on the Xbox is much nicer than the DVD player because we’re using a high-def cable on XBMC and not the DVD player (because of a lack of composite inputs).
My PC is constantly running at 100% CPU. When it started doing this I thought back to the old Uni Lecture days where if your CPU is NOT running high your wasting money.
However the thing here is I’m wasting money by using Windows XP. The reason my CPU runs at 100% is because of a dodgy Windows Update bug (see http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_fix_this_high_cpu_usage_svchost_virus_or_whatever_it_is.html).
Now I get a little annoyed when my PC runs at 100% CPU because it isn’t doing it because of something I’m telling it to do :(
Maxing out the CPU for a good cause is like throttling a car. You know you don’t need to do it all the time but it feels good when you floor it and remember you can.
I’m taming my ways with age but I’ve been known to set up a render farms and clusters just to see how many cpu’s I could simultaneously max out. Felt good watching the jobs distribute to my minion pc’s even if they were a mash of pentium 1’s, 2’s and 3’s ;)
You want to max it by your own doing and not buggy software.