Tuesday, February 24, 2009
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.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
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!
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!
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
2008 Fun Facts
Some statistics for WordSplay from 2008:
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.
| 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.
Friday, January 2, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, May 19, 2008
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.
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.
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