Beatnix Gone

This is a purely personal post, with no updates on the game.

Beatnix Coffee House went out of business yesterday, and today we started selling off its assets and winding it up. Almost three years ago, my wife Penney started Beatnix in collaboration with her mother Sandy (seed capital) and old friend Todd (professionally trained chef). It had been a dream of hers for quite some time, and she made it a glorious reality. We had art, music, poetry, great friends and great coffee. We had cool, funky employees and customers. All four of our children worked there, and two of them performed on stage there, at one time or another. You can read more about it in our local paper or the Beatnix web site.

For most of Beatnix's existence, I was in law school. In recent months, I hosted open mic poetry, but that was about the extent of my involvement. I was very proud, though, of what Penney had accomplished - apart from Todd's tasty muffins and paninis, all of the things that made Beatnix great were due to Penney's creativity and hard work.

Many, many people loved Beatnix, but in the end, that wasn't enough to keep it going. Sandy, Penney and I invested a lot of money that we won't be getting back, and Penney and Todd spent a great many underpaid or unpaid hours. All that is left are memories of the good times we had and the little community of wonderful people that gathered around us. There are quite a few things that we would have done differently, if we had it to do over, but there is no question that we would do it all again if we could.

Days Go By And Still I Think of Y'all

It's been a busy ten weeks; Hence the complete lack of bloggle posts. I have been assigned to defend five clients, so far. I helped three with pleas, and the fourth may not even face charges (I should find out today). Another local attorney, upon learning of my math degrees, hired me for a couple hours of expert witnessing. One of my favorite tasks in law school was acting as a witness during court exercises, and real-life expert witnessing was even better - but sadly, there's very little demand for it around here. Starting a law office is slow going; I don't know how I would have made it this far without your generous pledge drive donations.

Much of the rest of my time has been taken up trying to prepare Beatnix Coffee House for a big move downtown (the building we're in will be torn down later this year) and doing emergency technical support.

One of the technical emergencies was our mail server getting overwhelmed by spam. I finally gave in and configured it to only accept mail for existing mailboxes; Before that, it just delivered any mail addressed to an unknown name to my box. It was very convenient to be able to accept mail at any made-up name without having to fiddle with the server. This change saved the server from the tsunami of spam, but also made all mail to weboggle@shackworks.com bounce . . . and I only noticed this today. Argh. If you sent any email to weboggle@shackworks.com within the past few weeks and didn't get a reply, please re-send it!

Needless to say, among all of this excitement, I have made very little progress on the game front.
But I have been keeping careful track of your feedback, bug reports, and suggestions.

No Tote Bags, Yet

The "Final (I hope) Pledge Drive" is in progress, and going strong! You all have been keeping me busy writing thank-you emails. Some of you (and you know who you are!) have gone above and beyond the call for "a couple dollars"; Whether you have given $2 or $20, though, you're all lovely, generous people, and I appreciate you more than I can say.

Update: All done! Here are some statistics for the week (rounded off, slightly): 550 of the 14,400 players who logged in during the pledge drive donated. This is about 3.82%, which is pretty darn good! It surprised me that only 1,900 of the 14,400 logins were weekend-only players, since I assumed that there would be a larger contingent of people avoiding the site during the work-week for the sake of their productivity.

I tried to thank everyone personally, if briefly, although there was some difficulty with non-functional PayPal email addresses (if your initials are V.H. or K.S. and you didn't get a response to your donation, please write to me!). Your donations have put me on solid footing, and given me the breathing space I'll need to make this whole criminal defense gig work. You can be sure that, no matter where my career takes me, I will always ensure that this game keeps going - and getting better!

And for the 96.18% who didn't or couldn't donate . . . thank you for coming to play, thereby helping to make this site more fun for everyone by adding to the competition! Play on!

Time Keeps on Slipping

By popular demand, there is now a 60-second interval between rounds instead of 30 seconds. Many of you were getting frustrated at not having enough time to review the results of each round. We'll try this for a week, then I'll test out my new quick-poll code to ask you all whether you prefer 30, 60, or perhaps a compromise at 45.

Oh, and I'm off to the courthouse to apply for inclusion in the county's Attorney Appointment List. If all goes well, very soon I'll be able to start defending people who are accused of misdemeanors.

Update: ARGH! I HATE DAYLIGHT SAVINGS! IT MAKES MY LIFE HARDER!
Just wanted to get that off my chest.

Update update: Change of plans - I'm going to try 45 seconds for a few days, to give you all a feel for it, before I poll everyone.

Thoughts and Numbers

Just a quick update, to let you know how the game is doing, and how I am doing.

First, some statistics on the game:

In February, the number of players logging in each day ranged from 6,568 to 8,051.
32,729 Players have registered.
1,306 registration emails sent since the 15th are still pending.
131 donors made 151 donations before 2007
433 donors made 486 donations during 2007
39 donors made 39 donations so far in 2008
Thank you!

The new server design and code seem to be handling the load without any trouble. Most of the problems have been in the design of the game board and the wording of the emails, and thus my fault ;-) The rest are either browser incompatibilities, over-protective Norton and McAfee software, or still mysteries to me.

I am about to go take a two-day CLE (Continuing Legal Education) seminar that will satisfy most of my professional requirements for the year, but more importantly will enable me to start defending people accused of misdemeanor offenses. I hope that this step will allow me to get my financial house back in order, and help some people who really need it at the same time. Unless I get more clients than I anticipate, though, this will still leave me with plenty of time to keep improving the game.

Facepalm

A new version went up early this morning. It should speed things up a lot, and fix many of the minor bugs that y'all have been reporting. There's also a first draft of score list "abbreviation", in which only the most "interesting" parts of the list (i.e. you and your team, people you have marked, the top 5, and the bottom 2) are shown right away.

Oh, and it had a "fix" for the problem of pop-up blockers preventing the links to this blog and to PayPal from working. This "fix" rendered those links completely inert, even for players without pop-up blockers running. The situation has now been remedied, and those responsible (me) have been smacked.

Nomination

Here's a post to present my favorite names from among those suggested so far, and to provide a home for your further suggestions:

LinkLetters, Word Weaver, Word Weasel, Word Flex, Word Maze, Word Jam, Logophilia, Logomania, Word Ferret, LetterNet, WordCore, Word Mine, Oh My Word

Dammit, Jim, I'm a Lawyer, not a UI Designer

Many of you like the new design. Many of you loathe it. Whichever way you feel, please understand that I'm not wedded to the way it looks now - it's not "my way or the highway." Only one thing about the new site is fixed in stone, and that is that each player shall have a cookie containing a unique account code if they are to play. This is the reason for the email-based registration system. There are other ways to provide this cookie. Two that I have in the works are Facebook-based registration, and sub-accounts (allowing registered players to generate account codes for their kids or students). But if you routinely clear cookies, or play on a new computer every day, you're going to have to log in. Sorry.

Everything else is subject to change at your suggestion. I have had an unavoidable enforced break from working on the game, due to paid work on a deadline, and this has given me a chance to reflect on things as the praise, complaints, and cries of "Help! I can't play" have rolled in. I'm not a good user interface designer, and I know it, yet I keep trying to guess at design elements that will work, spending precious time implementing them, then discovering too late that they were mediocre additions at best. I need to stop guessing.

I need your help. While I squish bugs, please give me ideas. However you feel about the current look, think about it. What do you like? What do you not like? SPECIFICALLY. I'm not talking about bugs, new features, or general sluggishness here, just design. It would help me to hear either "I like that the board is resizable, and the way it is done" or "The list of guessed words would be much better if it was one word per line, rather than a comma-separated list." Not helpful would be "I hate the look" or "Don't change the score list!" or "The last round word list is confusing." These are not specific recommendations. If your first reaction is "Make it like WEBoggle!", then I have to ask "Really? Just like it? With 200+ players in the score list?" One of the motivations for the new, flexible interface was the volumes of complaints that I got about the old interface.

There are radically different views amongst you. This is why configuration options have multiplied, and why I added Themes and drag-and-drop rearranging of parts. At the moment, Themes are just simple color schemes, but they can radically alter the look of the game.

Here are some possible topics: Should I discard the ability to rearrange the play area? Enhance it, allowing free-form positioning and sizing rather than columns? Should I have two alternating page layouts, one during play and one during scoring (and the ability to stay on the scoring page even though a new game has started)? Put in a toggle button to turn the "frames" of the game parts on and off? Use a different color scheme? Change fonts?

Meanwhile, some people still can't play. I'm on it.

Aftermath, and Onwards

It's mostly working, for most players. Now I will make it work well, for everyone. My priorities for the next week are:

1. Get Safari on Mac working again (Safari on Windows works fine).
2. Make the interface snappy, or at least not slow. I feel your pain - my development machine has all kinds of debugging stuff turned on, and the game drags. As a band-aid, I will add a setting that cuts the score list down to size. I propose that, when this setting is turned on, the score list will show only the top five + your team & members + at least 5 players just above and below you + any players you have marked. Please suggest alternatives / variants in the comments!
   

I apologize for this transition. I am frustrated that everyone isn't able to have fun. It will get better.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention: a few hours after last night's transition, all seemed to be going well, so I went to bed. A half-hour later, network access to the server was cut off for about three hours. The server itself was fine, but nobody could reach it. Argh!

Crossing the Finish Line

Beta version w18 is live; It should fix the column bug, focus-grabbing, and other minor issues. Thanks to a diligent, skilled, and generally nifty volunteer tester, I was able to iron out the IE6-specific issues. This version has passed all tests on IE6, IE7, Safari 3, and Firefox 2. I'm going to leave it alone for a few hours, and if disaster doesn't strike, I will make the supremely painful (for fans of the old interface) switch-over from WEBoggle.

If you are an old-interface fan, please explore the customization possibilities of WordSplay's interface before you give up on it. Drag the panels around, resize the board, turn the guess notifications on and off - take it for a proper spin. It has lots of options.

If you can't play, due to some bug, email me right away and describe the step at which the game fails (loading the front page, registering, logging in, going to a game, etc), your browser and operating system, and the result of visiting http://www.wordsplay.net/?tests. I will do my utmost to get the new game working for everyone - I don't want any of you to be left out!

Once more into the breach...

I just put up version 17, which tries to do the same things in very different ways. Does that make sense? In any case, there should be all sorts of minor improvements in speed, play, and appearance. It also tries to let you know if (and which) words you've guessed didn't make it to the server in time for scoring due to Internet lag. The board-resizing bar (for those of you who find the default too large) should be easier to see.

If you are only seeing two columns, not three (not counting the sidebar menu) please let me know! This is a bug that I've only just become aware of, and I don't know the circumstances under which it appears yet. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, hoping that I'm nearing the finish line with this release.

Painfully Slow, But Progress Nonetheless

I just put up a revision that works (for me) on Firefox 2, IE 7, and Safari 3. This includes game board resizing, prior round score formatting, additional code to try to diagnose the funky problems some people are having with server communication, and minor new options.

One new option is themes, under the "Play" customization menu. These are basically color schemes, at the moment, though one of them is an attempt at a more bare-bones look for those who find the new interface too "busy". Another is guess feedback, under the "Status /guess input" customization menu. Here, you can choose whether to get feedback on the words you guess, and where.

If you don't see the text insertion point (the blinking vertical bar) in the input box, don't panic! Try typing a letter of your guess anyway - it should work, and the insertion point should re-appear.

Happy New Year!

Finally! Wordsplay's interface is completely rewritten. It has many new features, including:

• Drag and drop to rearrange the parts of the playing area.
• Collapsible sidebar, with the option to have it auto-collapse when you start playing.
• You can tell it to start one of the games as soon as you log in.
• Ban (hide) other players who you think are cheating or using obscene names. If many people are banning the same player, I'll investigate.
• Mark other players, to keep track of them if they change names.
• Resizable game board, with auto-sized font.
• Choose whether you are allowed to type words that are not on the board.
• Choose between the normal count-down timer, one that only updates on the half-minute until the closing seconds of the round, or no timer.
• Teams are revamped. When you change your name, you have the option to pick a team name. Members of a team see the scores of their teammates, while non-members only see the team score. You can choose not to see any teams in the score list.
• When typing guesses, press Tab to rotate the board, space or Enter to submit your guess, or Delete to erase your guess.

I hope to wrap up the Beta by next weekend, so if you don't already have a login, get one! I expect to keep the current WEBoggle interface as "Classic" mode, but it will become part of WordSplay, and therefore will require the same login.