Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

reader50 · May 27, 2002, 11:59 PM

The Team site has not been updated as often as it could be, other than regular stats. While Team MacNN is made possible by many people, the site and stats code are currently the efforts of one person.

Regrettably, my time no longer seems to allow 14-24 hours per week to go into the site. Maybe it's just a hot lazy summer, or perhaps the call of the paycheck. Whatever the real cause, site updates must continue, and they say sharing is good.

I'll continue to handle the stats, including future upgrades, which will likely come a bit slower than they might have. Perhaps even kick in some page content here or there, and will likely edit up more team sigs from time to time. That leaves:

News updates. Besides regular Milestones tables (which I will email), most of our news either turns up in the Forum first, or is site-related. Eventually it should be made possible for multiple people to web-post news, but for now it has to be edited into the page files.</li>
Answer the Team email box. Scott and myself handle that jointly today, answering or forwarding as needed. The spam does not need to be answered, though it may be forwarded to a person of your choice.</li>
Page content. A number of resource pages are missing, others need updated info. For example, SETI and RC5 Optimization pages are present, but have no instructions on running in nohup mode, or the use of scripts.</li>
Page layout. We have been getting pushed lately to adopt the same page layout as MacNN News, and leaving the tabs to avoid that may no longer be an option. Someone will either get to fight to keep our own layout, or do the conversion work.</li>

Some reasonable skill with HTML will be needed, I learned HTML while building the current site. I use BBEdit Lite and do the entire work in HTML after seeing what the GUI editors did to the source code, but that is only a personal preference. A few glitches are best fixed in the source code rather than an editor, but DreamWeaver or GoLive could handle most of it. The free Netscape/Mozilla/Omni editors will not handle it, those would not know what to do with the PHP tags, or how to assemble the pages from the source files.

Some knowledge of PHP would also be helpful, though that mostly applies to the stats code. Everything dynamic that we do is in PHP, but outside of the stats code, there are not too many embedded PHP calls. There are quite a few include calls, the pages are assembled from smaller source files.

Since access to the MacNN server will be required, only one person should be added at this time. We have not cleared this with the higher-ups yet, but it needs to happen, so it will happen. I'll tidy up a few small things over the next week before turning it over, and will try to coach whoever volunteers through how the page files work.

Anyone interested? Oh yes, we don't pay squat. But this is your big chance at fame and glory.

doggkruse · May 28, 2002, 01:08 AM

I would be interested I think... I was the webmaster for a large swim-team a few years ago but I haven't done much since. They also payed squat. I also have quite a bit of free time to re-learn stuff this summer because It is a drought year here in colorado and I work at a marina.. Or at least I did before the water dropped thirty feet (You now can barely see water from the marina). Damn Denver water board calling their water rights... Anyways back on topic.. It might take me a few weeks to get back into coding html, etc but I believe I could get the job done. If you need to e-mail me personally try either gkruse@asu.edu or kruse@flatirons.org
Geoff

cdhostage · May 28, 2002, 06:22 AM

I'd do it except that I'm working 70 hours a week this summer. God, I love overtime pay

Besides, I'm not techno-literate enough to be able to help people set up their DC stuff.

SkiBikeSki · May 28, 2002, 03:13 PM

I'd be glad to help out with all that stuff. I could work on anything, but if I'm gonna work on web pages, it's gonna be done with Claris HomePage 3.0. But I am currently learning the details of HTML and should be able to do a decent job.

Arkham_c · May 28, 2002, 08:47 PM

I don't have a ton of free time, but I know a lot about a lot of things, and I could be persuaded to help. I worked for 2 years at CNN.com as a developer. I've been doing HTML since Mosaic 0.8 and programming for over a decade. I've been around UNIX since 1992 and have done a little PHP as well.

I couldn't put in more than an hour or two a day but if that suites you, I'd be willing to assist in a non-news capacity (instructions, stats, etc).

Scotttheking · May 28, 2002, 09:39 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Arkham_c:
I don't have a ton of free time, but I know a lot about a lot of things, and I could be persuaded to help. I worked for 2 years at CNN.com as a developer. I've been doing HTML since Mosaic 0.8 and programming for over a decade. I've been around UNIX since 1992 and have done a little PHP as well.

I couldn't put in more than an hour or two a day but if that suites you, I'd be willing to assist in a non-news capacity (instructions, stats, etc).<hr /></blockquote>You got the job, as the team programmer for helper apps

(if you want. if you don't, that's ok)

reader50 will handle choosing the web person though, not me.

reader50 · May 29, 2002, 01:54 AM

I plan to leave the offer open for a few days at least, many members do not check the Forum every day, especially during/after a holiday.

malson · May 30, 2002, 01:32 PM

I could certainly help out here. My plans for the summer are pretty sparse other than planning a wedding {shut up scott!} and going to school. I know my html and have moderate experience in php. Obvious stuff like SSI and such are no problem but don't expect me to whip up some new code on the spot for something

I do my coding with TextEdit if you can believe that. I do have DreamWeaver and FireWorks, though I very rarely fire them up (Classic, blah...) Anyway, let me know if you need any more info. <img border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" title="" src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" />

Scotttheking · May 30, 2002, 02:20 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by malson:
I could certainly help out here. My plans for the summer are pretty sparse other than planning a wedding {shut up scott!} <hr /></blockquote>

reader50 · May 30, 2002, 10:56 PM

Update.

We have been handed a web-submit publisher from another MacNN site, and I'll need to adapt it to our pages. This should give us easy news updates, and pave the way for the benchmarks page too.

I'm going to tackle the conversion, and try to get everything working before handing the site pages to anyone else. It's always nice to leave a clean house.

Not sure how long this will take, I'll poke into it this weekend.

SkiBikeSki · May 31, 2002, 03:32 PM

I'd be happy to moderate what news gets submitted, and what benchmarks get submitted, and anything else... And I can now write up the missing install/optimization/hiding pages.

I'd love to help with the code, but that's just not practical right now, but in a year or so...

reader50 · Jun 7, 2002, 11:41 PM

Update

The web publisher we were given seems unsuitable, so I'm going to build our own.

Currently, I have the MySQL server installed on my box, and have about finished defining the data types for stats and news. A ton of new fields have been thrown in, with an eye towards stats and site upgrades. Yes, this includes fields needed for Unified Personals, along with a host of other minor fixes and new features.

Next step is to build test code, see about tying some of our current code into the new backend.

It now looks like we will go after the #7 upgrade first (convert backend to database-driven). This will make web-submit a lot easier, and pave the way for many site and stats upgrades, especially hourly updates.

My free time has gone up somewhat recently, so I'm going to do the conversions and get a good many new features/pages working. For the moment, I redid our header to more closely match the other tabbed MacNN sites, this should be enough to keep them off our backs for a time.

Anyway, I'll keep handling everything on the site for a while longer, until the backend conversions are settled down and the new pages working. It's hard to say how long that will be, several weeks certainly.

SkiBikeSki, if you or anyone else is interested, there are those missing Optimization and Hiding pages.
I'd suggest starting with the SETI or RC5 pages, and add in missing entries like running in nohup, or using scripts. The MDC3 utility would fall in the Basic section, for those that do not want to tweak the individual optimizations.
Once the missing tricks are in, clone the page and convert instruction to Folding/dFold specific. That way each project has comparable resources. Note: Resource pages for Ubero are risky to do now because the next client may be very different.

Thanks to everyone for their replies, we will certainly spread out the site work more in the future. I'll try to post news here as we get closer to the new features, and closer to letting more people in on the fun.

reader50 · Jun 15, 2002, 10:32 PM

Update

I'm using dFold as the test case for the new stats codebase. The data types are defined, and our team data successfully parses into the new database. So far so good.
I'm tinkering up the member matching code now (tricky), followed by some additional processing passes (easy). Once those are done, we are most of the way to having the backend engine complete.
Reworking the front end page code to display the new data will be fairly easy, including juiced up Personals, and hourly updates.

doggkruse, SkiBikeSki, malson, would you care to take a look at our page files? I can't really hand the site pages over yet, at least half of them are going to change for the new stats (stats pages), or the web publisher (news pages, benchmarks). But you could certainly look over what we have now, and see if it's something you can work with.

Note, you will need Apache and PHP working on your system for a local copy of the site to work. The default PHP install with OS X should be good enough for this purpose. I use a beefed up PHP install on my system because of the stats requirements.

[ 06-16-2002, 12:10 AM: Message edited by: reader50 ]

SkiBikeSki · Jun 17, 2002, 01:23 AM

I'd love to take a look at them, cause I'm learning PHP over the summer. I just hope you don't do too much stuff I haven't learned yet.
I am also in the process of beefing up my PHP installation. I'm using the directions on that site the PHP.net links to, instead of providing their own directions.

malson · Jun 17, 2002, 02:41 AM

Reader, I can work with most anything you throw out there. I took a quick look at some of the pages and everything seems to be pretty straight forward. Gives me an excuse to set up a testing and development environment on my machine. Maybe this next weekend...hmmm...

reader50 · Jun 18, 2002, 12:36 AM

SkiBikeSki, malson, you have mail.

web-publisher update: The publisher we were offered looks to be ok after all, but it's hardwired to the original site. After the new stats modules are working, I'll know enough SQL to port it for our own use. This will likely cut a week or two off the time before more people can post news.

Stats update: The new membermatch module is written and somewhat optimized, but not yet tested. There will be bugs. It's currently 700 lines of code, with logging not fully implemented yet, and a couple minor features still to go. mySQL is turning out to be pretty easy.

reader50 · Jun 21, 2002, 10:55 PM

Stats update

The match module and the next two processing modules are written. They still need testing and debugging, but those four are the minimum required to power the stats database. I'll be testing tomorrow, and building the first experimental pages once the bugs are worked out.

With the exception of the data parser (which pulls the project web pages), and the stats page modules (which format the data for our members), all the processing and management modules have been written to be project-independent. The core modules will work with any project, just add the custom parser and page modules. So once the core stuff is working, the new stats should spread quickly to each project.

Not all features are implemented just yet. Agent support is present, but not working (no Agent data on dFold), also Unified Personals are planned in, but those modules are not written yet either. Nor the utilities to import our existing stats history.

The really good news? The new code does not care how often it runs, the once-per-day limitation is gone. We'll be able to run them as often as Scott's server and net connection allow.

Scotttheking · Jun 22, 2002, 06:44 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by reader50:
The really good news? The new code does not care how often it runs, the once-per-day limitation is gone. We'll be able to run them as often as Scott's server and net connection allow.<hr /></blockquote>Hmm.
Well yesterday/weekly/monthly are probably not going to run more often

, but we can add a new page for production so far today, which would reset at the time yesterday runs, and that page would show how much you've done since the last yesterday update, and how much it predicts you will do for the rest of today

ranks could update every hour, but I don't know if that's overkill or not.
The crown jewel will be the personal stats, whenever they are done, and those will probably update from the server every 15-30 mins

(BTW, anyone want to buy me a nice dual athlon system and upgrade my internet connection

)

reader50 · Jun 24, 2002, 04:09 PM

Stats update

The new core code runs now without error messages. And the output data files finally look right. It is somewhat slower than our current code, but it tracks over twice as much data, and can run as often as we like. If it's not fast enough for our needs, Scott can buy a faster server. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

Next step is to pull multiple teams, and build some test pages to actually show the results. Stay tuned.

Scotttheking · Jun 24, 2002, 08:10 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by reader50:
If it's not fast enough for our needs, Scott can buy a faster server.<hr /></blockquote>

[ 06-24-2002, 09:13 PM: Message edited by: Scotttheking ]

reader50 · Jun 26, 2002, 01:56 AM

The new code base was just running too slowly, and the mysql update queries were the bottleneck. I rewrote the code modules to process in PHP and do block overwrites to the database, this produced a 15-20x speedup.

We will have plenty of CPU left over. Scott's server upgrade money is safe.

The_Equivocator · Jun 26, 2002, 09:03 AM

Wow, Reader, these updates are great news. As if we didn't already have the best stats pages... now, there's no contest.

reader50 · Jun 27, 2002, 10:33 PM

Stats update

Assorted issues have been cleaned up, and the core modules now run smoothly for whatever team they are pointed at. The same modules will track all teams, they will just track us more often than them.

Right now I'm working on the data output, so far it is putting out all the Current / Yesterday data files. Weekly and longer are still to go. The table printing function has been rewritten to give more flexibility, for example, we could start listing tied members with tied rank numbers, though this would disagree with the project listings.

The "Yesterday" figures are going to change to a rolling "Past 24 hours", since they will update as often as the Current listing. The new stats impose no extra processing penalty for updating Daily / Weekly as often as Current, so we'll take advantage. Monthly / Yearly will remain on a daily update schedule.

An interesting side note concerning the new stats modules, I deliberately designed them to be team-independent, and am doing the same with the data output modules. Remember when KWSN dropped by with 30M units? Apparently to let us see how many units we were missing, and we were supposed to follow the units back. Well, we take pride in having the best stats around, and I plan to use them for recruiting. Now and then, we can turn on full stats services for another team ... for a day or a week. A teaser. Let them see just how much they are missing, and if they want those stats full time, they know what team to join.

Still no idea when the new stuff will actually be up, I'm still at output files rather than test pages. But it's looking good.

reader50 · Jul 1, 2002, 12:44 AM

Stats update

Found some more bugs to fix, and a couple minor database definition changes. All output files are being generated now, though I am not happy with the quality of the graphs yet. Ranks will be another layer on top of the team stats, while Personals will be driven mostly on demand from the site pages.

The modules I have now could almost be put on Scott's server and trusted to run unattended. Though it would be kind of useless without the front end site pages to actually see the stats.

I have some work coming up this week in the real world, still, we should start testing the basic stats sometime this week on the server.

Edit: Here is the current status of the update list from the poll:
<ol type="1">[*]Create missing Optimization / Hiding pages on Ubero, Folding, dFold. (Postponed. Whoever we get for the general site work will likely handle this.)</li>[*]Add Genome stats & pages ahead of the Mac client. (Cancelled. No Mac client.)</li>[*]Rewrite Personals module. Would fix several minor glitches (inaccurate rates until you have been here a week), and add cool new features like production tables. (Glitches are fixed, but site front end not built.)</li>[*]Beef up duplicate membername resolution on all projects (RC5 not affected). Current stats do not allow duplicates to pass each other. (Done.)</li>[*]Multiple Ranks runs per day on Scott's box, with modified current code. (Cancelled in favor of new code, see below.)</li>[*]Convert our backend into database format, virtually required for stable hourly updates of all stats and Ranks. (Done.)</li>[*]Move all stats, including Ranks, to one-hour update schedule or faster. (Done, the new code supports this.)</li>[*]Add more projects. (Postponed.)</li>[*]Add SkiBikeSki's OS / CPU benchmark page to the site. (Waiting on the web publisher, which is waiting on me to finish the new stats codebase and gain MySQL code experience along the way.)</li>[*]Build web-submit codebase so multiple people can post news updates. (The web publisher will handle this.)</li>[*]Integrate RC5 and SETI proxy data into our stats. (Pending, the new code allows this.)</li>[*]Build Scott's ministats box at the top of the Forum. (Postponed.)</li>[*]Unified Personal stats, your stats from all the projects you participate in on a single page. (Pending. The new code allows this, but most of the remaining work will be on the site-page side.)</li>[*]Rewrite Team Ranks modules to give more data, mainly the Joins / Departs per day from each team, and production tables / graphs for each team. (Pending. The new code supports this.)
</li>[/list=a]

[ 07-01-2002, 02:36 AM: Message edited by: reader50 ]

reader50 · Jul 7, 2002, 02:08 AM

Update

Scott got back, and we did mysql/php stuff on his server for several hours tonight. The new stats code is running on his server now, and the test pages sort of work. There are error messages in page areas that I have not finished yet, not to mention missing pages, so we can't link them up yet. Stay tuned, we'll be back right after these important messages...