Recent Game Outages

Wow, so it has been 10 years since I last updated this blog. That's a record that I hope remains unbroken.

The game has stopped working a few times recently, one of them so dramatically that the whole site was down for over a day. Thank you to everyone who alerted me to the outages, and I apologize for the amount of time it took for me to fix it.

The minor periodic outages happened when I took too long in between runs of the maintenance script that compresses and moves the data generated by the game out of the way; This caused the storage space to fill up, which causes the game to stop working. In the past few days I've done a deep cleaning and freed up enough space to prevent that problem from arising for years to come.

The major outage was due to a glitch in routine maintenance by my provider, who corrected the problem swiftly as soon as I submitted a trouble ticket. It was nerve wracking because the symptoms of the glitch looked a lot like massive data loss that you might expect from a malicious hack - but it all turned out fine.

Thank you a million times over to the many players who donated money in the aftermath of the outages. Be assured, however, that the game is NOT in any danger due to lack of funds. I am keeping the donation link up on the site only because I think there are people who would like to show their support that way regardless of the underlying need. My main use for donated funds is to "pay it forward" by supporting creative people on Patreon whose work I enjoy.

At the end of 2010, the year of my previous blog entry, I joined Davis Law Firm as their bankruptcy attorney for Waco, Texas. That turned out to be a good fit, though the office was in a bit of a chaotic state when I signed on. It was the first time I had ever been responsible for managing other people, not just working on my own.

I am still in that same Waco office, but at the start of 2018 it went back to being the Law Office of Evan Simpson: I bought the practice from Davis Law Firm. Unlike in 2010, when I was struggling to get started, I now have a staff of four, experience running a small business, and hundreds of clients.

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.

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.

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.

Feature Progress / TODO List / Open Thread

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.
  

Mind the Gap

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.