Each month we feature on of our Team UBBDev Haxxors as our Haxxor-of-the-Month. This month we caught up with Chris Burns (a.k.a. Raconteur ) the captain of Team Seahorse.org , one of our fastest rising sub-teams. Chris and Seahorse.org also happen to be our Content Rulez winner this month, so make sure to check out that interview too.

Interview by: tackaberry
Interviewee: Raconteur

<font color="006699">UBBDev: </font>
Thanks for joining us (again) Chris, we'll try to avoid repeating the same questions as our other interview.

How many computers do you have the UD agent on, and what are their specs?

Raconteur:
Personally, I have 5 machines running. One is a Dell Inspiron 5000, with 96MB RAM and a PIII-600. One is a Sony Viao with a PIII-933 with 128MB RAM.

One is a clone with 256MB RAM and a PIII-850. One is a Dell Dimension with 256MB RAM and a P4-1.5GHZ. The last one is an old Compaq with a PII-90 and 64MB RAM.

<font color="006699">UBBDev: </font>
How many members are on your Seahorse.org sub-team now?

Raconteur:
We currently have 18.

<font color="006699">UBBDev: </font>
A lot of your users are also racking up the points, do you know how many of them are also running multiple computers.

Raconteur:
Yes, actually, several of our members are running multiple machines. Some as many as 9 or 10.

<font color="006699">UBBDev: </font>
Currently, which members of your team have the highest levels, and what levels are they.

Raconteur:
We have: 2 Gold, 2 Silver (both soon to be Gold), 4 Bronze, 10 Blue

<font color="006699">UBBDev: </font>
What have you done to encourage participation by your members?

Raconteur:
Not a whole lot, really. I think our community is just very conscious about global issues, given the nature of the subject matter of our site, so people have just rallied to the cause. We added avatars just like UBB has, and I think the community really enjoys the friendly competition and seeing themselves move up the ranks.

<font color="006699">UBBDev: </font>
When did you start visiting UBBDev

Raconteur:
June of '01 is when I officially registered, but I had been lurking for a while, learning as much as I could about hacking the boards. Once we launched our site (seahorse.org) I wanted to customize the boards much more than InfoPop provided for, so UBBDev became an imperative.

<font color="006699">UBBDev: </font>
What hacks/mods do you currently have installed on your board

Raconteur:
Wow... I have been needing to do this for a while, and you are forcing me to... Ok, in no particular order (we are running 6.04f): The Avatar Hack by qasic, Memberlist by DPK, Preview Post by Leshrac, Statistics by Tovok7 (with several mods by me), Sticky Threads by jordo, WOL by Borg and qasic, Anchor Hack by MasterMind and Borg, Category Strip Hack by Magnum, E-Mail Notification for Replies by Leshrac, Glowing Names by Ramirez and Freakscene, Hypercells by Freakscene, MegaMod by AlBundy, plus many other mods I have done myself for things like additional stats tracking, custom titles and levels of participation, links into our databases, and addition of smilies and graemlins.

<font color="006699">UBBDev: </font>
That's quite a selection. Which hack is your favorite, which is most popular with your members

Raconteur:
Probably WOL and Statistics. The members seem to really like WOL, the additional graemlins, and the custom titles.

<font color="006699">UBBDev: </font>
Which is your favorite target protein

Raconteur:
Well, visually, probably Farnesyltransferase, just because it LOOKS like it is causing problems. My laptop tends to work on RAF mostly, though, and those work units tend to take a long time, which makes me feel (somewhat erroneously) like I am really contributing! :>

<font color="006699">UBBDev: </font>
Personally, what does participating in the project mean to you.

Raconteur:
Well, I have been participating in distributed computing projects for about 6 years now, beginning with the RSA encryption cracking on a 64-bit key.

Then I played with SETI for a while, but as soon as I heard about UD, I left SETI to join here. This project to me is just a wonderful way for people to contribute on a more wide-spread level to an obviously worthy cause. I leave my machines on 24/7, and why not have them be doing something productive? The UD program is a great way to utilize the power of distributed computing to speed up a process that could easily take decades, and I am proud to be a small part of it. That is pretty much my recruitment speech!

<font color="006699">UBBDev: </font>
Do Seahorses get cancer?

Raconteur:
Great question! In all honesty, I don't know. I do not think they do, however there are a variety of illnesses they succumb to that have yet-to-be-identified etiologies, so, cancer cannot be completely ruled out.

<font color="006699">UBBDev: </font>
Thanks again Chris, you and your team are doing an outstanding job! Thanks again for being a part of Team UBBDev.