Law Office of Evan Simpson

Since getting chat working, I've been busy, but not with the game. I decided to try to make a go of it as a one-man law office. Obviously I'm a computer geek as well as a lawyer, so I'm going to use technology wherever I think it will help. Bankruptcy law is a very computer-friendly area, since the court requires all filings to be electronic, and there are several sophisticated programs that can be used to help prepare bankruptcy schedules. I can get a ten-case license for Bankruptcy Pro, the one I'm most familiar with, for only $250. I have to keep my overhead low, so renting office space is out of the question. I'm turning this into a positive by making house calls. Add evening and weekend hours, and I think I'll be able to help a lot of people who would have a serious problem with taking half a day off from work to see a lawyer. The site for my Waco bankruptcy law office finally got indexed by Google last Friday, so we'll see how it goes. At least to start, though, I expect to still have plenty of time to work on the game.

Chat!

(updated twice) A lot of people have been asking for this feature for a very long time. For that reason, I'm making a beta test version available even though it isn't fully cooked.

The chat panel starts out closed; To see what people are saying you either open it up (using the little down-triangle icon) or say something yourself. To say something, type it in like you would a guess, but with a single- or double-quote mark in front of it.

In the works: highlighting teammates, and the ability to customize who you see in chat (friends, teammates, people playing 4x4 or 5x5, etc.)

Why You Always Test In Several Browsers

I rolled out a new version a few minutes ago. No one was supposed to notice, since the changes were are internal -- making logins and suchlike more efficient, and making it easier for me to introduce stuff like OpenId.

Unfortunately, I hadn't tested my improvements in any browser other than FireFox on Linux, and it promptly blew up and wouldn't let anyone but me and about four other lucky duckies log in. I spotted the incompatibility after a few minutes, and it should now work for everyone.

If it just sits and spins when you try to log in, click on the "Reload Page" link at the bottom of the sidebar before panicking.

And I'm Back

Well, so much for that. For reasons I'm not going to go into here, I'm no longer employed. It's a shame, not just because I'm out of a job, but because I was really enjoying working there. I learned a great deal, and loved the fact that we could help 90% of the people who came to see us.

So now I'm job hunting again. This may also allow me some spare time to work on the game, but I'm not going to promise anything.

In Which I Announce My Full Employment

I got a job! A good one! This is happy news for me, but not so much for the game (at least in the short term). I'm a bankruptcy-attorney-in-training, and between that and my evening classes in Spanish and Philosophy (don't ask) it's about all I can do to fall into bed in the evening. Still, it's not like development of the game has ever gone on at a breakneck pace.

Sick

A nasty stomach bug has been going around; My friend caught it, followed by my son, my grandson, and my wife. I thought I might make it through unscathed. No such luck. Yech. It hit me around 2pm, and I've spent the rest of the day in bed.

Update: I'm feeling better now. Last night, I dared to eat something other than crackers and applesauce, and nothing bad happened. Seems like half of the people in town have had this bug!

The Recent Unpleasantness

If you've encountered the recent can't-log-in bug, know that I have fixed it. If you haven't, good!

Technical details follow. I really need to move WordSplay; The service I use now is pretty good, but has one huge drawback: no virtual memory. Most 'real' computers, and many systems like the one I'm renting, provide virtual memory to allow you to fully use the physical memory of the system. It does this by temporarily storing some of the contents of memory to disk when there is no free memory left. This means that even if you are running enough programs to take up all the memory, you can still run more -- it just slows everything down. Without this feature, a system either has to refuse to run new programs or kill off a running program to free up memory for the new one. Either choice is bad.

Recently I made some changes that increase the memory usage of the web server, but forgot to reduce the number of connections that it tries to handle. After that, when activity spiked, there was a chance that memory would run out -- and for some reason the system would decide to pick the database server to kill. I've reduced the connection limit now, so this should stop happening.

2008 Fun Facts

Some statistics for WordSplay from 2008:

Month	Players
	Logged in	New
January	16840	13632
February	27673	13883
March	25401	7967
April	22940	5858
May	23039	6098
June	20508	4270
July	19140	3562
August	18056	3097
September	17098	2577
October	17038	2683
November	16894	2403
December	17528	3119

73,717 people logged in and played over 25.5 million games.

In the 4x4 game, the highest score all year was 439, the most words found in one game was 250, and the most words found in one game by only one person was 71.

In the 5x5 game, the highest score all year was 1328, the most words found in one game was 445, and the most words found in one game by only one person was 130.

Brand New Day

Hello, and welcome to 2009! I hope that we all do just a bit better this year than last.

I haven't added anything to the game in far too long, although I've got bits and pieces that I've been working on, like a partly-done Google gadget, the ability for AOL and Gmail users to register/log in using those accounts, and improved server robustness. I'll be getting that last one into production soon, after today's hour-long server outage.

Things have been quiet on the law-job front; a few interviews that didn't pan out, one still to be scheduled. I continue to do assigned criminal defense, which comes in intermittent bursts. For several months I worked on a web site for a special project for my sister-in-law's business, in the vain hope that it would bring in some much-needed customers. The result has been a lot of belt tightening, and a minimal Christmas.

That's enough whining from me. I still have my health, my family, good friends, and a lot of very nice people who enjoy WordSplay and tell me so. In a few weeks, I will start taking evening classes in Spanish, with sign language to follow. And I fixed the headlight and turn signal on my VW Bug myself, for only $27.