Evan's Bloggle

Law Office Update

2010-03-09T22:27:00.003-06:00

Just to let you know, things have been going quite well on the lawyering front. I was going to say "you can tell from my long absence ..." but stopped when I realized that, given my posting frequency, you really can't tell anything from the time between posts.

I have over a dozen clients now, and have successfully filed several cases. After a few months, I decided to share an office with another local attorney who mentored me back when I was just getting started. I still make house calls, but quite a few people prefer to meet at my office. When I'm on the road, I use a nifty little HP netbook with built-in Verizon cellular data service and a (relatively) portable little HP LaserJet 1018. One of these days I'm going to get myself a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 Portable Document Scanner, and my house-call kit will be complete.

Oh, and I recently got my 15 seconds of fame on local TV (skip to 1:59 for my first echoey appearance).

Law Office of Evan Simpson

2009-09-28T00:18:00.003-05:00

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!

2009-08-27T14:32:00.005-05:00

(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

2009-08-21T22:32:00.002-05:00

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

2009-08-03T15:01:00.004-05:00

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

2009-02-24T22:36:00.002-06:00

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

2009-01-28T20:37:00.003-06:00

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

2009-01-06T09:40:00.003-06:00

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

2009-01-04T13:22:00.015-06:00

Some statistics for WordSplay from 2008:

Month	Players
Month	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

2009-01-02T19:34:00.003-06:00

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.

Beatnix Gone

2008-07-27T16:48:00.003-05:00

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

2008-05-19T08:58:00.002-05:00

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

2008-03-10T13:16:00.009-05:00

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

2008-03-07T15:02:00.005-06:00

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

2008-02-27T17:53:00.003-06:00

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

2008-02-06T19:51:00.000-06:00

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

2008-01-31T23:00:00.000-06:00

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

2008-01-31T09:42:00.000-06:00

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

2008-01-28T13:17:00.000-06:00

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

Get Safari on Mac working again (Safari on Windows works fine).
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

2008-01-27T14:01:00.000-06:00

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...

2008-01-24T17:12:00.000-06:00

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

2008-01-20T02:21:00.000-06:00

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!

2008-01-14T14:38:00.000-06:00

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.

Law-career-related checklist

2007-11-02T00:08:00.000-05:00

Pass MPRE: Check.

Pass Texas Bar Exam: Check.

Start law career:

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

2007-10-24T00:20:00.000-05:00

This past Sunday, I took my younger (14) son down to Austin to check out the Maker Faire. We had a fantastic time. We started off by watching the life-sized mouse trap game. Wandering idly past many craft booths, we got to the fabrication/rapid prototyping/automated machining area. It was mind-boggling! I haven't kept up with developments in this area, and I was blown away by the open-source multi-material rapid prototyping kits, 3D printers, CNC Routers, self-copying 3D printers, and astonishing laser engraving systems. At the laser engraver's booth we got a little Aztec calendar "printed" at 600 dpi in three dimensions from a solid sheet of balsa wood.

Next, we visited several areas where you could get hands-on and make T-shirts, circuit boards, kites, and other neat stuff. We dropped off some clothes at the Swap-O-Rama-Rama, but never came back to make our own customized duds from other peoples' donations. We played with jets of air, watched a "robo-thespian", oohed and aahed at the pyrotechnics of the Ring of Fire, and drooled over the display of Estes rockets. An enthusiastic rep told me all about building my own street-legal car, which my son agreed would be a great project for the next two years if we just had a spare $10,000 lying around. We saw evil robotic pumpkins, including a pumpkin Dalek. We saw mousetrap-powered toy vehicles. We admired dirty car art.

Taking a break from cool technology, we moved on to Cyclecide. This was a fenced-off area with pedal-powered sort-of-carnival-rides and weird, wonderful mutant bikes. We ended up spending over an hour riding around and having an absolute blast - my favorite was the 4-foot tall bike, and my son enjoyed providing taxi service with a bike that had two comfy chairs attached to it. Thoroughly sun- and wind-burned, we finally tore ourselves away to eat and drink.

There were amazing decorated cars, and an arena full of robotics. The Robot Group was out in force. Some of the robots were excruciatingly cute. Frankly, I was somewhat dazed by this point. Finally, we watched the Diet Coke and Mentos fountain demonstration, applauded vigorously, and headed off to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner.

Feature Progress / TODO List / Open Thread

2007-10-17T17:08:00.000-05:00

This post is linked from the sidebar, so that it remains accessible for a long time. It has three purposes related to game features: keep you updated on which I am working on now, show you all of the suggestions, and provide a single place for new suggestions and discussion.

Evan is currently working on: Ensuring that everyone is able to play.

TODO List (will do, eventually) (no particular order yet)

Interface options: "Classic", compact, large fonts
Team-relative list of words found/not found/only I found
Facebook application
Google gadget
Alternate scoring options: "no errors" bonus; only unique (or <=X%) count; 1 point per word; unique bonus; only N+ letter words
Extended score display: # of words guessed, # of valid words, percentages found
Clean up word list
"Private" games
Other languages (German, Italian, and Norwegian have been requested)
Statistics / rankings / hall of fame
Snapshots / game history.

Suggestion List (may do, if enough people support)

Audible end-of-round clicks (option)
Allow players to attach personal info to their name (location, IM, email, etc)
Casual games: 5+ minute rounds, longer intervals
Allow "Qu" cube to be treated as just "Q" (option)
Alternate word lists (Scrabble, simplified, etc) selectable by player
Press a key to submit the guess but not erase it, so it can be extended/edited.

Let's all go on Safari

2007-10-16T18:45:00.000-05:00

The show-stopping Safari bugs are dead. The Beta is now OS X-safe.

I learned two valuable lessons about Safari:

window.console.log() is a nifty way to trace your code's progress, and it works with both FireBug and Safari . . . sort of. Pass it anything more than a simple string, such as objects that FireBug will cheerfully use to augment your console log, and Safari will fall over dead.
If your web site has only one frame in its frameset, don't put "noresize" on that frame. Safari apparently takes that to mean "for every page after the first that I load in this frame, don't show it until the user clicks somewhere." Who knew?

4AM Destruction

2007-10-16T11:35:00.000-05:00

A quick tip for programmers working on web applications:

Do not commit code changes at 4 in the blessed AM.
No matter how much you think it will help.
Even if you sometimes operate under the name "4AM Productions"

Bad things will happen, and you will set yourself up for a day of really lousy technology karma when you get up in the morning six hours later.

Why do I mention this? No particular reason. On an unrelated note, my forehead is sore and I seem to have damaged the surface of my desk somehow.

News that isn't

2007-10-14T21:52:00.000-05:00

As you have surely noticed already if you are a WEBoggle fan, I started another pledge drive and used it to announce the beta of the new version of the game. As with the last pledge drive, many of you have stepped up to support me and the game, including quite a few of you who startled me with your generosity last time.

Lots of you have been banging on the beta and giving me great feedback. Several nasty teething issues have been discovered and dealt with - the scoring bug in IE is dead! Note to myself and to other JavaScript programmers: beware of subscripting strings using "x[i]" notation - IE chokes on it, and prefers "x.charAt(i)", despite all the other browsers dealing with it just fine.

One show-stopper bug remains: I have multiple reports of the game taking Safari down hard. Once I've dealt with that, I can move on to the great suggestions I've received, such as preference options for "Classic" interface mode and large fonts mode. I'll have guessed words go into the list in reverse order (most recent guess at the start of the list) and include invalid guesses in the list (along with the reason for invalidity). I'll improve the interface. I'll add an account page for changing email/password, managing sub-accounts, and Deluxe game settings.

Then I'll be ready to take it out of beta and really get going on Deluxe features, including better and more flexible game board customization, more options such as allowing invalid words to be typed, audible round-end alerts, alternate scoring rules, "private" games, and more.

Mind the Gap

2007-10-11T12:46:00.000-05:00

You can probably tell that I'm not a "natural" blogger. I hesitate to post unless I've got "real news" of some kind, and this tendency runs counter to a major purpose of this blog: to give you a feel for how things are going behind the scenes. So, I apologize for the long hiatus and resolve to do better.

WEBoggle news: My complete rewrite of the game engine is ready for beta testing. It seems to me to be stable and largely bug-free, but we won't know for sure until y'all give it a try. The rewrite had two goals, each of which has been met: reduce the load on the server, and give the client more power and flexibility. The interface is still rather plain and ugly, but makes more sense - there is a sidebar from which you can reach all of the important parts of the game. I've adopted a free JavaScript library that allows me to do nifty interface tricks, and that is more thoroughly debugged than my home-brewed stuff. Preferences are now permanently saved, even if you play on a different computer. There are new options: click-to-pick instead of click-to-rotate, and turning off highlighting of letters. Team scores indicate how many members the team has. There is a new "unified" word result list available, which is used in the new default layout. Your guesses are scored instantly, without waiting for the server (but if the connection to the server fails, a guess can be "lost", so that your score is reduced in the last round scorelist). Each player in the scorelist has a menu (click on the name) from which you can "ban" that player from your sight. Use it to get rid of those rude folks who use racist or otherwise offensive names.

Finally, the bad news, or at least news that you may not like: the name is changing, and the new game requires you to give me your email address. The beta is at http://www.wordsplay.net, so-called because that was the least-lame name I could come up with that is (A) available as a domain name, and (B) not close enough to "Boggle" to leave any chance of legal complications. It requires you to choose a password and "activate" it by verifying an email address before you can play. Please understand that I made the decision to do this only after a great deal of thought, and I have tried to make it as easy as possible to get started playing. But there are too many advantages: it enables many features that depend upon server-side storage, such as permanent preferences, ban lists, and statistics; it helps with the development and maintenance of Deluxe accounts; and it allows me to ban abusive players. I promise not to abuse your email address or share it with anyone else. I hope that most of you will embrace the new.

Personal news: I am still about three weeks away from getting bar exam results, but I have passed the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam with flying colors. All of my grades are in - I tied for the high A in Practice Court III - so I've officially graduated magna cum laude. My old employer very generously kept me on throughout law school despite the serious effect of my studies on my ability to work; I committed to devoting August to my accumulated tasks, and to wrapping up my work neatly enough that they can replace me. Also, I planned to wind up or simplify a bunch of computer administration that I continue to perform for my family. Also, I planned to work on WEBoggle. Also, I hadn't had any significant amount of time to relax and enjoy life for many many months. Also, I need to find a place to start my legal career. See where I'm going with this? August was insanely busy, and swallowed September as well. It has only been a little over a week since I got most of my plans completed. Now, all that remains is WordSplay (nee WEBoggle) and job hunting. On the bright side, I have read quite a few books for pleasure, seen several very good movies (300, Intolerable Cruelty, Ratattouille), watched some fine television (The Daily Show, Robot Chicken, and now Pushing Daisies), and developed my ping-pong skills.

Quick post-Bar Update

2007-07-28T12:34:00.001-05:00

I am done! I feel good about the test, but won't know until November 2 whether I passed. I hope that we will repeat Baylor's spring 2007 feat of 100% passage. My Mother and best friend are in town. We've just come from my graduation ceremony, which was moving and excellent, and are now going to have steak and Bosque fries at my in-laws' house. Enjoy the weekend, everyone - I certainly will!

Big Week for the Law Geek in Waco

2007-07-21T12:02:00.000-05:00

Just a quick update: Although last-quarter grades aren't out (and may not be for a few weeks yet), and I wasn't seriously worried that I might have failed a class, I now have unofficial word that I'm cleared to graduate next Saturday. This is helpful for concentration, since the bar exam is Tuesday through Thursday, and I'm in serious bar prep mode. This is probably the last anyone will hear from me until Friday.

Late Night Studying

2007-07-13T22:27:00.000-05:00

My final exam for Practice Court III is nine and a half hours away. Three+ hours of Texas and Federal procedure and evidence questions. Yay. Then no more law school finals ever, just the bar exam in another nine days. Wish me luck!

(5:23 pm update) I finished my exam within time limits, and believe I did well. I then took my younger son to see the latest Harry Potter movie, which was good but not as good as Ratatouille. Now I shall rest.

Celebrating Freedom and Capitalism

2007-07-04T13:26:00.000-05:00

Happy July 4th! Two days ago, my Practice Court partner and I reached the culmination of about six weeks worth of work: Big Trial. Sadly, we lost, but the jurors and (more importantly) professors said that both sides put on a good case. We're just glad to be done. Now all that's left is studying for finals and for the bar exam. Oh, and job hunting.

Based on the feedback I've gotten so far, here's the Deluxe plan:

Everyone who has donated will automatically get a Deluxe account, and as new people donate through PayPal they will also automatically get an account. There will be a simple process to register for an account without donating. This will require giving your email address - all accounts will be tied to an email address, but you'll be able to change this email to another at any time.

Each account will be of one of three kinds: "lifetime", "yearly", or "per-game". The account will track your donations, the number of Deluxe games remaining, and the anniversary date for yearly accounts.

New accounts are "per-game", and get 50 free Deluxe games.
Every dollar you donate adds 100 Deluxe games to your account.
You can convert 2400 games into a full year of Deluxe play.
You get a "lifetime" account once you've donated at least $100.
Whenever I add a major new Deluxe feature, I will give every account that has fewer than 50 games left enough games to bring them up to 50, so that everyone can try out the new feature.

Example:

You donated $20: you begin with 2000 (+50 free) games.
You play 25 Deluxe games, leaving you with 2025 remaining.
You decide you want to go yearly.
So you donate $4, bringing your total to 2425 games.
You convert 2400 games into a year of play.
When the year is up, you still have 25 games on account.
You choose to donate another $80.
Your account immediately becomes a lifetime account, because you have now donated a total of $104.

Yearly and lifetime accounts are always in "Deluxe mode". Per-game accounts can turn Deluxe mode" on and off. Playing with Deluxe mode" turned off doesn't reduce your number of games left, and neither does "watching" - keeping the game open without typing in any guesses. So you can sit and watch other people play, or look at your statistics, or adjust your Deluxe preferences, or just wander away and leave the game running, all without affecting your total games remaining. But as soon as you guess a word during a game with "Deluxe mode" on, that game counts.

And just to make this completely clear: everyone will see the same game board. Free players will see both other free players and Deluxe-mode players in the score list, and Deluxe-mode players will see both free players and other Deluxe-mode players in their score list (unless they use a Deluxe feature to "ban" players or to play a private game).

Debating Deluxe Account Aspects

2007-06-30T10:45:00.000-05:00

In response to the many insightful and helpful comments I've received, I'm going take a moment to lay out my basic principles with respect to the game, and the options that arise from those principles.

First, you will always be able to play for free. Always. Deluxe accounts will get extra features that (I hope) will enhance play, make the game more varied, and encourage donations, but people with those accounts will still be playing the same game. There will be no wall, no segregation of the masses from the elite. Right now, there's a temporary hack to improve performance that invisibly divides the game into "arenas". This will go away, for everyone.

Second, I want everyone to have a chance to experience Deluxe features. But I also want to encourage and reward supporters. These goals conflict. Free Deluxe accounts stand at one extreme, with sky-high fees for short account terms at the other. Balance is tricky. The easy part is lifetime accounts for certain extraordinary generous supporters I've mentioned in prior posts.

Now for the options. These aren't alternatives to each other, there more a sort of mix-and-match grab bag of idea. Please give feedback! All dollar amounts have been pulled out of thin air to provoke discussion - I'm not committed to any of them.
(edited to reflect feedback:)

Lifetime accounts for $100
Yearly accounts for $24 (working out to $2/month)
"Calling plan" accounts for $5, giving 30 hours of Deluxe play. Only game time spent playing with Deluxe features turned on would consume the account's hours. Designed for infrequent and cash-strapped players.
Deluxe days: free Deluxe features for all players, for a day, at either random or announced intervals.
Hardship accounts: tell me that you love the game but plead extenuating circumstances (unemployed, law student, held prisoner in a fortune cookie factory, etc). But this has the potential to both eat into what little precious time I can devote to the game and force people to grovel. How can I avoid those drawbacks? Allow non-monetary donations of some sort, such as mailing me a nice bit of original art or a nice letter about how the game changed your life, or writing me in as a presidential candidate in 2008 (just kidding)?
Free trial: Two hours of Deluxe play just for registering an account, then pay-only.

What do you think?

Snail Mail and Development Priorities

2007-06-24T09:45:00.000-05:00

Although I have nothing profound (or even visible) to present to you, I want to keep you up on what's going on in my head. Also, donations by US mail began to arrive last Wednesday; Several people sent cards and/or wrote nice letters to me. If you mailed anything to me, please also send me an email with your real name and city so I can match up email addresses with letters. I need email addresses of donors so I can create accounts for you all when I roll out "Deluxe WEBoggle"; I have them already for all PayPal donors.

My first priority is a set of client-server changes that I've had in mind for quite a while. I've already written a new server, but the client-side is lacking because I was trying to combine the new functional code with a complete re-design of the site. Now, I'm going to back off on the re-design and simply adapt the current client code to work with the new server. This change should allow me to eliminate the "separate arenas" hack that is currently and arbitrarily dividing up players, yet still support several hundred players with ease. It should also completely eliminate "Too Late" words and other Internet bugaboos; Under the new plan, every word you guess within the time limit will be scored, and the only effect of Internet lag (or even complete loss of connection!) should be that other players might not see your full score and all your guesses.

The new code will also pave the way for "Deluxe" features. These will include the ability to "ban" other players (really just hiding them from you), play "private" games (only see players who have typed in the same game name), customize the scoring rules, and keep play statistics. I plan to make these features available to anyone who donates (or already has) by automatically creating "Deluxe WEBoggle" accounts. There will be lifetime accounts for those who have donated truly staggering amounts, yearly accounts for substantial donations, and some other kind for all other donors. The obvious "other kind" is monthly, but I don't feel completely comfortable with requiring monthly donations to keep an account alive. Any suggestions?

Statistics of Gratitude

2007-06-17T23:10:00.000-05:00

I spent part of this afternoon getting my donor database into shape, making sure that I have everyone, and have marked those who wish to remain anonymous. I now have the raw material for the "Sponsor's Hall of Fame", or whatever I end up calling it. Here are some statistics:

In the past 3 years, 315 of you have donated a total of 372 times.
172 of those 372 donations were made during Pledge Drive Weekend.
Of the 172 of you who donated during PDW, 39 had donated before.
The amount donated during PDW was a bit over 56% of the total donated for all 3 years. In other words, you donated more during those three days than during the entire previous existence of the game!
Over three years, the Johnsons have donated 14 times. Dan, the grad student who found a volunteer programmer to help me, has also donated 7 times. Two people have donated 4 times each, five have donated 3 times each, and about two dozen have donated twice.

Feeling Blessed and Humbled

2007-06-16T20:00:00.000-05:00

As you probably know (or you wouldn't be reading this), I'm the proprietor of the online game WEBoggle. My name is Evan Simpson, and I live in Waco, TX with my wife and four children. Several of the many fine folks who donated during the June 15, 2007 Pledge Drive said that they liked learning more about my background, and one person suggested that I start blogging. This struck me as a good idea, if for no other reason that I can use this blog to tell you all what's happening behind the scenes of the game, and to put up emergency status bulletins if something is going wrong with the server.

First I'm going to repeat here, for posterity, what I added to the Pledge Drive page in its ninth hour:

Wow. I don't have the words. I am humbled by the outpouring (yes, that's the word for it) of support and encouragement. "You all rock" doesn't begin to express how my family and I feel. This morning I just thought that maybe, over the next two weeks, enough people would be willing to send us a few dollars that we could squeak through the end of the month. It has been only nine hours, and the crisis is over. I've spent an hour writing brief thank-you's in reply to PayPal notifications, and I'm not done. If I haven't gotten to you yet, rest assured that I will. The Pledge Drive is officially downgraded from Category "Please Help!" to Category "If you haven't donated before and you enjoy WEBoggle, please do." This weekend I'm going to take a hard look at what I can do here to show my appreciation. And I hope, when I get to the next phase of my life as a lawyer, to be able to pay forward all the generosity that you've shown me.

That said, I'll tell you a bit more about the history and people behind the game. It was created by Logan Ingalls, who wrote the original Perl server and JavaScript client. I was an avid player and also a web programmer, so in mid-2004 when Logan was unable to keep the game running any more, I volunteered to host it on one of my servers. Over the next few months, I rewrote the server in Python, added the 5x5 board, started tinkering with the word list, and added board customization.

In February 2005, I started studying at Baylor Law. Naturally, the game became so popular not much later that the server began to choke on a routine basis. For the next half-year, I tinkered and tweaked. My final news entry was in October of 2005. After that, it was all I could do to keep the game bumping along in my spare time. It needed some serious re-coding, and that went very slowly. I'm not efficient when I write code in scattered hour-long bursts.

Meanwhile, my wife Penney launched Beatnix Coffee House. It has been a huge success, gathering a loyal clientèle and a fantastic group of creative people who run poetry nights, open mic music nights, comedy nights, and art shows. But it isn't yet profitable enough for Penney to pay herself for all her work. Yes, we are nuts: we started a small business at the same time I took a huge pay cut to start school.

Fast forward to June 2007: I am in my final quarter at Baylor. Practice Court (the part of the curriculum that makes Baylor the "boot camp of law schools") is 3/4 done. Next month, I will graduate and take the Texas Bar Exam. I don't yet have a job lined up, and the student loans are about to run out. In particular, thanks to some bad loan disbursement timing, we can't figure out how to pay the bills for the rest of June. My family and Penney's have both chipped in, both financially and to help us with the kids, but they don't have any more to give. And I still need to pay for bar prep materials, or I fear that I won't be able to do my part to uphold Baylor's bar passage rate (100% this February!)

The rest is Pledge Drive history. Over 125 players donated, in less than two days. Now we can put gas in the car, pay the bills, and I can get my study materials. Before this I knew that "lots" of players visit regularly, and the mini-floods of email I would get when there were server problems told me how dedicated (or in the words of many, addicted) many players are. But I never imagined that there were over a hundred great-hearted, loving people playing this game, ready to help out as soon as they saw the pledge link even though the game itself was never at risk. Now I know. I feel blessed and humbled.

I'll take the pledge link down Sunday evening. Someone has suggested that I put it up once a month, just to nudge new players. I may do that. For now, I need to find a way to honor everyone who has already given. Several things are in the works, including a pledge thanks page. I'll let you know more as it happens.

Here are some snapshots for the curious:

Me and My Family