coan.net: Auto vacation works well, and I suspect most don't really care if they lose a few games. Otherwise it's setting up the possibility if the site goes down again for a few days we who are not having a national holiday to have to wait yonks.

Jules: No, you misunderstood - I'm not asking for holidays to be placed back on the site - what I was saying was because of the site being down, there is a good possibility that players did not get a chance to catch up their games, or set vacation days to cover the days they will be gone since the site was down - and that in the US, there is a big holiday which many leave town. (one of the biggest travel weeks of the year in the US) So I'm not asking for holidays to be added back to the site, I just want to make sure that no one times out on games because of the site being down. The site being down should not be a reason anyone should lose a game in my opinion.

Better BK is turned to normal again. Phew.

So glad this place is back!!

AbigailII: Not all. Some of them have been saved. But not the most recent ones, of course.

Fencer: Redundancy has crashed too.

And all your daily backups as well? ;-)

Fencer: You ( & Liquid, I assume)got it up and running faster than I thought too! Thank you!

coan.net: Then you'll get everyone wanting their countries national holidays added. I thought that idea was dropped??

coan.net: Well, actually, it should not be too hard to make such a tool. Maybe tomorrow. I need some sleep too.

Fencer: Well I just worry about some people who had planned a vacation. My plan was to catch up on all my games, and then get my few remaining vacation days set just right to cover me until I got back. (And if I did leave, with the site down - I would have been behind with hopefully my auto-vacations saving me)

What you need is a tool to "reset time on all games" - so if something like this happens, before the time-out is lifed, all game times are set at the max. (So if it is a 5-day move game, the game is set to 5 days (for whoever turn it is waiting for), then time-outs turned back on). (Same with Fisher clock game)

I guess we can see what others think - but this week is a very busy travel week in the US, so I can see many not being on until early next week.

coan.net: Well, it's set to restart timeouts after 48 hours now, but if you think it's necessary, I can change it to, uh, 200 hours? The only problem is that ponds are stopped too, so people might object that they cannot play next rounds until next week.

Fencer - Thanksgiving holiday is this week in the US, and many people may be on vacation already (I was planning to be out of town starting today until next Monday, but those plans feel through)

But if they did, I would be in trouble with my games and such.

Since there might be many already on vacation for the holiday, since the site was down for awhile - any chance to keep time-out's off until next week (Tuesday, 27th would be good)

I can just see a lot of people in trouble if the time-outs are turned on too soon.

Ohh... something you don't see often: "Yesterday's most active player: (0 moves)"

thanks!!!! i was afraid it would be much longer ! !

rod03801: I think you are right. You know, I programmed the Fischer's Clock system more than a year ago, so I am not sure about all details of its BrainKing implementation.

Fencer: Hmm.. I just moved on one. Before the move it said I had negative 2 or 3 days. After the move, it says I have 1 day and 15 hours. So, maybe it won't be much of an issue?

rod03801: Unless I change their timeout times manually.

Fencer: lol .. thats what i call risc calculation :)
(hmm probably another term in english ;))

I am curious how this affects Fischer Clock games? Obviously, they have not timed out right now. However, any of them that were my turn when the site went down, now have a negative amount of hours in the "bank". (Though they had PLENTY when the site went down, as I am really good at keeping up with those now that I have DSL!!! ) When the time outs are turned back on, will these instantly time out when they come back to me?

Hrqls: Redundancy has crashed too.

Fencer: you had a real harddisk crash ? had to recover the data from it ?
dont have any redundancy ? (however it is spelled)

rod03801: Don't ask how much I had to pay for the data restoration.

rod03801: yep i think you are correct :)

Brainking is back!!!

And unless I'm missing something it doesn't look like any data was lost?

pauloaguia: No, incorrect implementations are to be corrected.

Fencer: Does that include currently incorrect implementations of games?

Dolittle: because the current interviewee chooses the next one from the list of most voted ones.
Someone suggested that current interviewees select the next one and I went along for a while. But then I started thinking that I could risk making interviews for the same group a friends for a very long time... and it's easier to collect questions for people that others are curious about than it is for people who could be known by only a few.
This way the community decides who they want to see interviewed and the current interviewee still has a word to say. And, if for nothing else, it helps to have a list of people to choose from in case the current interviewee can't make a choice for him/herself.

Sorry if this looks like it's being made up as I go long but I haven't been in the job for that long... and so I'm really making some things up as I go along

pauloaguia: Why should we send in our nomination for the next interviewee if the current interviewee chooses the next one?

Fencer: I find fair enough that no game rules are changed unless there are pretty strong reasons to. But what procedure do you suggest for proving practically that a game can be improved ? "I've tried it with a friend and it was so much better" doesn't sound that convincing.

Good point.

joshi tm: No changes to any game will be made until it is proven that it would be better than the original model. Practically proven.

Dear Fencer, would you like to read these board: http://brainking.nl/nl/Board?bc=6 where we are trying to solve the Cheversi advantage?

rabbitoid: BrainKing.com (pauloaguia, 2007-10-25 09:43:34)
I don't know what's keeping Fencer from puting it online, you'll have to ask him. But knowing how little he likes to work on side subjects, I'm sure he'll come up with something soon to get rid of that last step in the interviews process. Either that or he's waiting to have a ton of interviews to be published all at once

pauloaguia: Thats all i could think of, just wanted to find out (thought maybe a bug lol)

Can not have one of my Teams vanishing

MadMonkey: maybe because it already has enough players to enter? I think (but not sure) that it only shows teams that don't have enough players yet

rabbitoid: maybe I gave a wrong answer

rabbitoid: It says above that vikings answers have gone to Fencer and waiting to be put online

pauloaguia: what ever happened to the Vikings interview?

Just going through the upcoming Team Tournaments and noticed something.
Normally when looking at a sign up page (where we sign the Teams), it shows all Teams entered so far and also Team that are open to join.
I just looked at the Halma 10x10 one, BUT can not see the Madhouse Team in either list.
We already have the 4 players needed, but as it has not been entered yet, should it not show on the 'Open Teams to join' list

pauloaguia:

pauloaguia:   

pauloaguia:

I'll be sending Pbarb her interview later today. So you can stop sending questions for her now.
A big "Thank you" to all who sent their questions so far, it turned up to be quite a lot bigger than it was just last week. I'm sure PBarb will appreciate all the questions, I know I like how it turned out.


And now it's time to announce the next nominee.


The guy you should be very courious to know even more about.

Someone well known to these boards and to the site.

The reason why I'm probably going to have my MessageBox floaded with questions in the next few weeks.

The person who will get an interview as a Christmas present (all questions to be sent until December 23rd, please)


[Oh, in the meantime don't forget you can cast a vote for the next person to be interviewed at anytime - the next person to be interviewed will be selected from the ones with more votes - all the votes cast so far are still valid and will move on to the other interviews]

[Oh, and about the questions - don't leave it to the last minute. If you want questions to have your name start sending them now. I've had to turn down quite a few questions these past few days because people kept asking the same things over and over again, so whoever comes first (or has the best version of a question) will be the one the question is authored to.]


So, back on toppic:


By popular demand (and PBarb's decision), the next person to be interviewed will be:


... brace yourselves...




MadMonkey ! !


So, start sending me messages with suggestions for other persons to be interviewed and questions for MadMonkey 's interview.
You have until December 23rd to send questions for this interview but you can start sending them now

coan.net: Unfair?? People aren't chained to a team once they join it. If they want to go to another one, when there are more, they can easily do it. I think it would be a big pain in the neck to have them all deleted, to be started over. And needless. (And possibly difficult to re-get those people, especially since there wouldn't be any record of who already (willingly) joined.)

So, I hope that DOESN'T happen! You may as well say "Stop it! Don't be doing this now!" When there really is no good reason to do that.

redfrog: Not everyone can make the team - first they have to know about it - which includes reading this board, which there are many that do not - plus there are others who possible don't understand how to mess with the URL of a page. So to make it sound like "well since I heard about it - everyone must have heard about it" does not really work.

Plus I'm not arguing about it - I was just adding my input that I hope Fencer clears it out before it is officially put out... that is all. What people want to do is of course up to them, I was just adding my suggestion on what I would like to see done.

I think anyone who wants to make one of these random teams can do it now - so thats not really unfair - are we all so upset because we think the rules of the classic school yard pick are being messed with? Are we afraid we will only be left with losers to play on our teams? Im pretty sure the people joining up on these random teams did so out of choice - not because they were picked out of a lineup and had no choice but to comply - isnt that they way all teams are formed? Everyone can make this team if they want to - and everyone can pick what team they want to be on - geeeezzz - why all the drama?

Hrqls:Well hopefully when a random team is added, Fencer will just erase all current ones to make it fair to all fellowships in the chance to get people to join theirs - without having a few fellowship get a big head start in getting players to join - and in turn putting other fellowships at a disadvantage to get players to join their team.

some people (including me) asked for random teams as it seemed a nice addition to the team of single game types .. this would make it possible to create team tournaments in which the teams would play random games .. fun! ;)

it was suggested this to fencer only a few weeks ago .. so i was positively amazed that it was in the progress of being implemented already .. its great when a site owner listens to suggestions from its members and implements some of them
(some of my suggestions havent been implemented, its up to fencer to decide what would be a nice addition :))

madmonkey found the random teams by accident and shared it on this board .. which is a nice thing to do .. that way the random team isnt only accessable for a few members, but every fellowship can create his random team
(go to a team of your fellowship and in the url change the number of the team to 255 .. you can see which number when you compare the urls of 2 teams of the same fellowships) .. i joined a random team as well .. after i read madmonkeys post (in which he explained how to do it)

the random teams are still in the progress of being created though and isnt completely active yet .. thats why fencer probably didnt announce it in public yet

any member is free to explore the site .. and it would be nice if (s)he finds anything (s)he would post it on a board (if its a bug it would be best to post it in the bug tracker) if its something which can be abues dont post it on a public board though but send in a pm .. if its something nice (like this random teams .. which gives a little insight in the future :)) .. post it here (or somewhere else)

i think its great that this site is still developing and new things are being added

It's still not a huge interview but I think I have enough questions for Bubbles Pbarb2 . Anybody still wanting to contribute, please send me your questions during this weekend...

I'll be announcing the next person next week.

This issue seems to me to have been blown a tad out of proportion.

I saw Mad Monkey's post to do with it and thought it an interesting idea. With his help I set up one team in each of my fellowships to see if the members wanted them. Judging from the way people have joined the teams it appeals to quite a few.