Five New Year Tech Resolutions for 2009

Posted at: Saturday 3rd January 2009 by Alex Watson

We bring technology and tradition together to come up with five noble aims for the new year

3. Explain games to a non-gamer

You probably got games or gaming hardware for Christmas, but instead of hunkering down with your coffee, headphones and WASD keys for hours on end, take some time out of your next gaming session to explain what you’re doing to someone you know who doesn’t play games. Your mum, your dad, your girlfriend, your brother. Gaming has continued to get bad press throughout 2008 – it’s still OK for politicians such as the Mayor of London to lump gaming in with gang violence and rent-a-gob celebrities in his rhetoric – and it’s not just up to the games industry to change this. As a gamer, you know the reasons you spend hours in front of the PC. You know what makes Left 4 Dead amazing and Fallout 3 breathtaking, so tell someone. Even better, show them. Stick them in front of the computer and get them to try it.

4. Start Folding

Folding@home is a project close to our hearts here at CPC, as it combines the high-technology of distributed computing with a good cause and a competitive use for fast CPUs and GPUs. Based at Stanford University in the US, Folding uses the computers of people all round the world to research protein folding. The project has already published a number of peer-reviewed results, and its aim is to gain a greater understanding of diseases such as Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s. For every piece of data your PC folds, you’re rewarded with points; you can join a team and of course, there’s a leaderboard, which is where the competition comes in. Custom PC’s Folding@home team has been folding since 2004, and it’s currently at number 5 on the world folding leaderboard. You can join our team by downloading the client, and using the team ID: 35947.

For more info, see here or check out our Folding forum.

5. Try some new technology

It’s easy to get stuck in your ways when it comes to technology, easy to make snap judgements based on background noise more than experience. Plenty of people profess to hate iPods having never used one, call Twitter irritating or dismiss Linux with jokes about sandal-wearing users. Make 2009 the year to try something new when it comes to tech. Go in with an open mind and give it a go; plus, at least then if you do actually hate it, you’ll have plenty of real reasons to back-up your bile.