Page banners and other things of interest. by HAKEN

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

I'm posting this over at http://beta.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=27&tid=45804 Click the link on fff.net 1.0 to see what happened over at 2.0.

Over at fff.net 2.0, clicking on URLs doesn't take you anywhere. You have to cut and paste the URL into the browser.

In member profile, bring back the list of "recent posts" so I can remember who I insulted recently.

Allow lower case letters in the "username" of the member profile. I know fff.net 1.0 displayed the username in uppercase on the frontpage, but my name is all lower case two. With all caps, TWO implies that it is 3 initials, like CIA. I should have named myself 2 , not two.

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010 4:38 PM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

I just did a build that fixes the link issue. Will work on the other things tonight.

BTW, I have to thank you. It was the right decision to load a different banner with each page--they look great!

Oh, one more thing. Can you try changing your avatar on the 2.0 side? I want to test something out with it.

Thanks,
Haken

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010 5:24 PM

PHOENIXROSE

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.

I just tried uploading an avatar (as opposed to linking one) It gave me this:

Server Error in '/' Application.
Runtime Error
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".

Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.

It gave me a similar thing when I tried to post this from over there, too.

Just because something can't be explained doesn't mean it becomes yours.

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010 6:17 PM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Hmmm...everything I'm posting now is posted from the beta side.

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010 6:51 PM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

There's a bit of a quirk with the avatar upload in Chrome, but otherwise should work fine for the rest. Give it a try.

Thanks,
Haken

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010 7:18 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by HAKEN:
There's a bit of a quirk with the avatar upload in Chrome, but otherwise should work fine for the rest. Give it a try.

Thanks,
Haken

From Firefox or Internet Explorer, within fff.net 2.0, I get an error when updating avatar image.

I can't even post a comment from fff.net 2.0 on this thread.
This comment was posted from fff.net 1.0.

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010 7:24 PM

PHOENIXROSE

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.

I'm running firefox, always have. I disabled my noscript, in case that was somehow causing problems, but I still got the same errors. I also tried in Safari, with no luck.

...Come to think of it, I've had issues with updating my profile, off and on, for a couple years, here. Very rarely had problems posting, though.

...Perhaps the code does not like Macs?

Just because something can't be explained doesn't mean it becomes yours.

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010 7:32 PM

LILI

Doing it backwards. Walking up the downslide.

I am also unable to update my profile on the beta side. Of course, I haven't been able to update my avatar for at least two years (eventually had to open another account to shake the old River avatar) no matter which version I was trying.

If you can see this, I was able to post from beta.

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010 7:57 PM

THEHAPPYTRADER

I tried that on firefox and internet explorer and still got the error message. Oh, and I'm posting this from 2.0.

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010 8:01 PM

PHOENIXROSE

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.

It directs to the error page after "update avatar image."

...Also after "save profile" if I try to just do that.

Just because something can't be explained doesn't mean it becomes yours.

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010 8:05 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

In Internet Explorer & Firefox and fff.net 2.0, I browse for a picture, click "update avatar image", and get an error.

Then I try to report the error from fff.net 2.0 and get an error.

So then I give up and go over to fff.net 1.0 to post this.

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity", where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010 8:29 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Haken wrote, "It was the right decision to load a different banner with each page."

two writes, "Use a simpler algorithm to pick the next banner. I never see even half of the 42 banners. I keep getting the same small subset of banners. Could solve that by rolling all the individual banners into one gigantic gif. What we need is 54 banners - one for every card in a deck plus two jokers."

And the neat part is that I posted this from fff.net 2.0 without an error. How did that happen? And why is there no list of emoticons over at 2.0 ?
The vomit one is very classy. Lots of movement.

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Thursday, October 21, 2010 2:27 AM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Okay, took me a while to figure out what was different between what I was doing and what each of you were doing that would trigger the error. The reason for the error is due to you all having HTML code in some of your profile fields. This is probably also the reason some of you can't post.

I have a temporary fix in place that will allow you to update the avatar on the FFF.NET 2.0 side, unfortunately it'll ruin things for you all on the 1.0 side. So probably not a good idea to use it at this time unless you want to forgo all those HTML hacks that are in your profile.

I should have a more permanent solution up in a day or two that'll likely require you to re-enter what you have for the 2.0 site without the HTML tags while still keeping everything you have for the 1.0 site.

As for the banners, the problem was that the algorithm was too simplistic and therefore did not offer good randomness. I have since switched to a more sophisticated algorithm (Mersenne Twister). We'll see how that works out for our needs.

Anyway, more to come.

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Thursday, October 21, 2010 2:35 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Changed my Avatar without an error message and posted this response on fff.net 2.0 Now if we can get that list of emoticons added. . .

[quote=Haken]As for the banners, the problem was that the algorithm was too simplistic and therefore did not offer good randomness. I have since switched to a more sophisticated algorithm (Mersenne Twister). We'll see how that works out for our needs.

It's not fixed, yet. I'm still seeing repeats after only 9 banners. The dining table of Serenity keeps reappearing too often.

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Thursday, October 21, 2010 9:26 AM

THEHAPPYTRADER

Sweet I got an avatar now. It made the words in my little bio look funny, but if I took out ( )'s, contractions and the like it looked fine. Also, I'm posting from 2.0.

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Thursday, October 21, 2010 2:38 PM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Quote:
It's not fixed, yet. I'm still seeing repeats after only 9 banners. The dining table of Serenity keeps reappearing too often.

That's the normal distribution and the more frequent appearing ones are probably the mean. There's really no way to get around that except for the site to keep track of the ones you've seen and not repeat any until all the banners have been viewed. It's not that difficult to implement, but seems like a waste of resources since the index value will have to be stored as a cookie on the browser end or as a value in the database on the server end.

I have a couple of other things I can try. One is time based where I take the second that the page loads and MOD it with the number of banners, but I'm sure over time, we'll end up with the same normal distribution problem. Just can't really get away from it when we go the random route.

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Thursday, October 21, 2010 3:27 PM

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Interfacing with Safari and Snow Leopard seem a bit iffy. I get the notifications, but when I click on the link, it doesn't log me in, but rather gives me a runtime error.

Seems to work fine with Firefox and Chrome, though. [/shrug]

The modern definition of "socialist" is anyone who's winning an argument against a tea-bagger.

AURaptor's Greatest Hits:

Friday, September 24, 2010
I hate Obama's America. You're damn right about that.

Friday, May 28, 2010 - 18:26 To President Obama:
Mr. President, you're a god damn, mother fucking liar.
Fuck you, you cock sucking community activist piece of shit.
... go fuck yourself, Mr. President.

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Thursday, October 21, 2010 3:29 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THEHAPPYTRADER:
Sweet I got an avatar now. It made the words in my little bio look funny, but if I took out ( )'s, contractions and the like it looked fine. Also, I'm posting from 2.0.

No, you don't. The avatar, I mean. Unless your avatar is supposed to be a small blue box with a question mark in it, in which case you have a shiny new avatar!

The modern definition of "socialist" is anyone who's winning an argument against a tea-bagger.

AURaptor's Greatest Hits:

Friday, September 24, 2010
I hate Obama's America. You're damn right about that.

Friday, May 28, 2010 - 18:26 To President Obama:
Mr. President, you're a god damn, mother fucking liar.
Fuck you, you cock sucking community activist piece of shit.
... go fuck yourself, Mr. President.

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Thursday, October 21, 2010 3:48 PM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Kwicko wrote:

Quote:
o, you don't. The avatar, I mean. Unless your avatar is supposed to be a small blue box with a question mark in it, in which case you have a shiny new avatar!

You have to look at it on the beta site. We're working through some bugs with it.

http://beta.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=27&tid=45804

Haken

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Thursday, October 21, 2010 3:51 PM

Sweet.

By the way, did you just tweak something in response to my remarks about Safari and notifications, because it just started working again.

I'm running the latest Snow Leopard and Safari updates, and the notifications and links HAVE worked recently, but just quit the last four or five days or so, but just started working again.

The modern definition of "socialist" is anyone who's winning an argument against a tea-bagger.

AURaptor's Greatest Hits:

Friday, September 24, 2010
I hate Obama's America. You're damn right about that.

Friday, May 28, 2010 - 18:26 To President Obama:
Mr. President, you're a god damn, mother fucking liar.
Fuck you, you cock sucking community activist piece of shit.
... go fuck yourself, Mr. President.

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Thursday, October 21, 2010 4:56 PM

Nope, not working again.

Quote:
ADODB.Recordset error '800a0cc1'

Item cannot be found in the collection corresponding to the requested name or ordinal.

/mthread.asp, line 118

The modern definition of "socialist" is anyone who's winning an argument against a tea-bagger.

AURaptor's Greatest Hits:

Friday, September 24, 2010
I hate Obama's America. You're damn right about that.

Friday, May 28, 2010 - 18:26 To President Obama:
Mr. President, you're a god damn, mother fucking liar.
Fuck you, you cock sucking community activist piece of shit.
... go fuck yourself, Mr. President.

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Thursday, October 21, 2010 4:58 PM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Kwicko wrote:

Quote:
By the way, did you just tweak something in response to my remarks about Safari and notifications, because it just started working again.

If you're referring to the beta side, then yeah. I've been doing daily builds to fix things.

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Thursday, October 21, 2010 5:34 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

[quote=Haken] That's the normal distribution and the more frequent appearing ones are probably the mean. There's really no way to get around that except for the site to keep track of the ones you've seen and not repeat any until all the banners have been viewed. It's not that difficult to implement, but seems like a waste of resources since the index value will have to be stored as a cookie on the browser end or as a value in the database on the server end.
I have a couple of other things I can try. One is time based where I take the second that the page loads and MOD it with the number of banners, but I'm sure over time, we'll end up with the same normal distribution problem. Just can't really get away from it when we go the random route.

Pretend this is Chinese: << Oh Dear Buddha! >> I wish I had never suggested “random”. Serving banner is definitely a case where NOT to use Mersenne twister pseudorandom numbers. I should have said the simplest thing imaginable: “Serve the banners in order: 1, 2, 3, . . .” If there's only one person clicking very fast “open link in new tab” on fff.net 2.0, there will be no repeats until all the different banners have been served up. And that's good enough for me.

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Thursday, October 21, 2010 8:00 PM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Buddha is wise for a reason. He sees all things in the universe as a whole. Your order is not the same order as that of the rest of the universe. Your 1 is not my 1. My 2 is not your 2. We do not live alone in the universe.

In order for the site to serve up the banner sequentially, it'll have to store that counter somewhere. And that counter applies not just to you, but for everyone that is currently on the site. You may be at 1, but another who hit the site before you could be at 5, and another could be 26. Depending on the number of visitors concurrently on at the same time, managing and incrementing these counters "might" use up a considerable amount of resources.

Your idea sounds good if it was just for a single person, might even work well for a lot more, but FFF.NET, as small as it is, still gets a couple of thousand visitors a day who view thousands of pages. Just something to keep in mind when you think about this stuff.

Maybe if I had the memory and server resources, it might be possible. Meanwhile, I still think the random route might be the way to go. At least with that, in a given span of time, a site visitors will eventually see all the banners.

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Thursday, October 21, 2010 8:20 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

I did not mean many individual counters, each exclusively assigned to a different visitor. That's too many counters to keep track of. I meant one counter serves all visitors. Like monotheism has but one omnipotent God, fireflyfans.net could have one Buddha-counter controlling which banner is served next. Any time that anybody is served a page, Buddha-counter is incremented and the corresponding banner is sent. You only need enough memory for that one counter.

Millions of people could be served by that one counter.

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Thursday, October 21, 2010 8:49 PM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Hmmmm...okay, think about this for a bit. What increments this counter?

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Friday, October 22, 2010 3:19 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Haken: What increments this counter?

I get to be the Fool because I don't know what I'm writing about, but why should I let that stop me?

Increment the counter whenever creating the source of http://beta.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=12&tid=3456 or whatever other page has a banner. (There is only one counter for all pages and all users.) Is the counter greater than the number of banners? If yes, set the counter back to 1.

There is a line in the source, where ## is both the number from the counter and the number of the banner:

I just ran the stupidest possible test by repeated hitting the refresh button for page http://beta.fireflyfans.net/about.aspx I only had to hit refresh twice before the random number generator gave me the same banner again, out of 42 possibilities. Second test: I refresh three times before the random number generator repeats a banner. Third test: I refresh five times before a banner repeats. I don't know that the dumb counter I'm proposing is an improvement. I have suspicions.

For people who just stumbled on this thread -- there is always what was being done last week: the banner changes about every minute, taking better than a half hour to cycle through all 42 banners.

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Friday, October 22, 2010 9:23 AM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

This is actually a really good statistical problem. We have a couple of options here, all of which will end up with a natural distribution of some kind in terms of which banner is viewed.

Here are the options:

A. Random banners for random viewers
A random banner is displayed for a random user who views the page.

B. Random banner for sequential viewer.
A random banner is displayed for a user who views every page.

C. Sequential banners for random viewers.
Every page is assigned a banner sequentially. Not all users will want to view every page.

D. Sequential banner for sequential viewer.
Every page is assigned a banner sequentially, viewers will view every page.

E. Sequential banner assigned to viewer.
Banners are displayed sequentially for the viewer regardless of page.

I think that's it. It was already decided that while E is probably the best option, but it is also the most resource intensive. Option D would be great, but by human nature alone, that's not going to happen since not everyone will view every page.

That leaves us options A, B, and C. Option C, the natural distribution will go to the users. Option B, natural distribution goes to the banner. And Option A, which is what we're doing now, has natural distribution go to both banner and viewer.

So, statistically, I think option A is best because we have overlapping natural distributions and over time, everyone will eventually see all banners. Of course, the same could be said about B and C, but I think option A is probably the quickest because we get a better distribution.

If there is anything we can tweak here, it's probably the randomness. That fancy algorithm I'm using isn't perfectly random. I've been looking at http://www.random.org and may possibly use that to get my numbers, but that seems almost an overkill for what we're attempting to accomplish.

So, I dunno, maybe just watch the banners for a while and see? If overtime you don't see all the banners, then we'll just make changes at that point.

Regardless, this problem was fun to think about.

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Friday, October 22, 2010 9:58 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

As Haken tends more and more toward sophisticated analysis, I slip down the greasy slide into the bottomless pit of crude ideas: a multi-megabyte gif where every banner is rolled into one.
Just to see what a 4 panel looks like: http://www.makeagif.com/YRlnuO
100k of jpg pictures came out as a 660k gif. I was expecting a 100k gif. All your expectations will be met if your expectations are correct.

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Friday, October 22, 2010 10:06 AM