Eric Martindale

Since you cannot reshare a share, I linked to the article by +Carmelyne Thompson instead. Nice read regarding how we operate in Hangout Academy!
http://hangoutacademy.com

Whoever is curious what we use:
- Gerrit for Code Review
- We use Debian for Staging Server / Production Server
- We have automated builds that it deploys the web app to Staging server
- We follow agile development, we do modified SCRUM every other day.
- We document enough so that if a new member joins, they wont get lost.
- We design, we architect, we develop and iterate!
- We use hangouts for our main communication tool.
- We use Google Apps with Sites / Mail / Calendar integration

The team is beyond awesome, read her post to know the full picture! We love to tinker, we love development, and we love design!

via +Carmelyne Thompson

Since you cannot reshare a share, I linked to the article by +Carmelyne Thompson instead. Nice read regarding how we operate in Hangout Academy!
http://hangoutacademy.com

Whoever is curious what we use:
- Gerrit for Code Review
- We use Debian for Staging Server / Production Server
- We have automated builds that it deploys the web app to Staging server
- We follow agile development, we do modified SCRUM every other day.
- We document enough so that if a new member joins, they wont get lost.
- We design, we architect, we develop and iterate!
- We use hangouts for our main communication tool.
- We use Google Apps with Sites / Mail / Calendar integration

The team is beyond awesome, read her post to know the full picture! We love to tinker, we love development, and we love design!

via +Carmelyne Thompson

So, I bought a new laptop from System76. About damn time, I say.

The specs:

• 15.6" HD+ LED Display @ 1600x900
• ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 Graphics with 512MB GDDR2 Memory
• Core i5-520M Processor ( 32nm, 3MB L3 Cache, 2.40GHz )
• 2 GB - DDR3 1066 MHz (DDR3: zoom zoom. ;])
• 250 GB 5400 RPM SATA II (I considered a bigger hard drive, but I have a NAS at the house and honestly plan on taking advantages of synchronized OSes like ChromeOS in the very near future, so I decided against it)

So far, I'm absolutely lovin' it. The hardware is very clean and Apple-like, with no disgusting third-party stickers plastered all over the thing. There's a System76 logo sticker on the back, which I could easily remove with some isopropyl if I so chose. Part of System76's sales pitch is pre-built Ubuntu boxes (which is what sold me, to be honest), so it came with Ubuntu 10.04, my day-to-day operating system of choice (especially since Backtrack makes things oh-so-awesome.)

I do have some minor complaints:

1. I had a dead pixel on my LCD. They won't replace it unless "there are more than 6 dead pixels. :(
2. As a result of the hinge design, the screen won't fold back more than ~35°. A bit of a pain in specific use scenarios.
3. A lack of one-button volume controls. The volume controls are only available through function keys, sadly. Some buttons on the top right for volume up, down, and mute would make this already awesome laptop perfect.

I don't know how much control System76 has over these hardware-design issues, but fixing them would seal the deal on any of my future purchases. ;)

It's a new currency, designed for the Internet Age, that doesn't depend on any one government, bank, or company. It works the same way everywhere, regardless of what country you're in – allowing for financial freedom in ways not possible with legacy currencies.

I carve pumpkins, too, but I do fairly intricate designs so I use "Funkins" so I can keep them forever...I've done one of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Freddie Krueger...this year I'm thinking of doing V from V for Vendetta...

I'd add that our monetary system is utterly corrupt by design. You work for money, but you do not own what you traded your labor for. There is no capitalism because money printers can dismiss the price system at will from the inside. Price signals are created at the will of the planners and not by the needs of the people.

I'm not so sure I would lay the blame for facebook's "problems" with their development model. Not that I'd argue for their development model because I know little about it or particulars of their changes, but my problems with them stem purely from a design perspective (call it Human Factors if you want).

If #bitcoin had been around earlier, how would things be different? @pmarca says even TCP/IP and BGP would be designed differently. #CJDNS!

RT @martindale: If #bitcoin had been around earlier, how would things be different? @pmarca says even TCP/IP and BGP would be designed dif…

RT @martindale: If #bitcoin had been around earlier, how would things be different? @pmarca says even TCP/IP and BGP would be designed dif…

Might want to check this too. Security generally is under serviced, bad guys are too often ignored in the design process.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0922/From-the-man-who-discovered-Stuxnet-dire-warnings-one-year-later

+Eric Martindale I primarily use it for some hobby AI projects at this point. Since it was designed as the catch-all language for high-reliability systems in the military including thermonuclear devices and airplanes, it seemed like the reasonable choice here :)

There's sadly not much commercial interest in Ada :(

In addition to the expansion of the FLIBE salts when they are heated, the system is at low pressure, so a loss of 'containment' results in a liquid leak at low pressure (2-3x atm pressure), instead of flashing water to steam at high pressures (100x atm pressure).

In this liquid leak, it is spilled into a catch pan that channels it into holding tanks (this is the walkaway safe design). Simply turn it off, walk away, and it is safe. Stab a hole in it and it leaks down and is safe. Remove power, safe.

Here's some cool technical details on why your images can appear differently in different browsers or applications, despite using the same display hardware. Worth the read if you edit photographs!

As it turns out, various applications (and the libraries they use) handle four-channel images differently, some even choosing to discard some of your image data entirely. It looks like even between Photoshop CS4 and CS5, the methods used to handle these layers are different!

#phtotography #photoshop #design #media

Here's some cool technical details on why your images can appear differently in different browsers or applications, despite using the same display hardware. Worth the read if you edit photographs!

As it turns out, various applications (and the libraries they use) handle four-channel images differently, some even choosing to discard some of your image data entirely. It looks like even between Photoshop CS4 and CS5, the methods used to handle these layers are different!

#phtotography #photoshop #design #media

+Darryl Barnes “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

Robert A. Heinlein

After taking a look... it looks beautiful. But I agree with +Neeta Tolani, it's a scrapbook that is looking backwards. It doesn't really help you be social and connect now. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page that +Eric Martindale linked, there is a short video on the "new" FB apps. Now these seem more relevant to helping us connect with others, but, other than maybe being better designed, how's that much different than the apps we already have?

I've been working for an industrial company that's still struggling with the very idea of open-source, so unfortunately there's nothing on github I can point a potential employer at. I guess in theory I ought to be doing something on the side just for that reason, but after writing code all week long, it's not exactly high on the list of priorities in my free time. :-)

100% agree with the sentiment though -- résumés are almost worthless for Software Engineers. Once in a while I can tell that someone's not completely inept, based on the specific way they describe their current/past work on a CV. But even then, it's hardly worth the time it takes to sift through the pile, vs. just bringing people in to talk for a bit.

A few lines of code are worth a thousand words. HR at large companies tends to get bogged down with the specifics of which languages/technologies they know, but that's missing the point entirely. If you can just have someone design a small system in pseudocode that solves some simple problem, the orders-of-magnitude difference in talent between individual programmers becomes obvious.

Hi everyone, so here is my Google+ API Mash-up called Stream+ for Google+

It uses your public stream data and classifies them (automatically categorizes) into topics that you can visually to understand your stream!

Note: You might get a server error because Google+ API limits requests.

Thanks to +Carmelyne Thompson +Eric Martindale +Jake McCuistion who helped me with the design, logo and jQuery!

And to my other friends for emotional support :)
+Christa Laser +Lucas Johnson

Hi everyone, so here is my Google+ API Mash-up called Stream+ for Google+

It uses your public stream data and classifies them (automatically categorizes) into topics that you can visually to understand your stream!

Note: You might get a server error because Google+ API limits requests.

Thanks to +Carmelyne Thompson +Eric Martindale +Jake McCuistion who helped me with the design, logo and jQuery!

And to my other friends for emotional support :)
+Christa Laser +Lucas Johnson

Hi everyone, so here is my Google+ API Mash-up called Stream+ for Google+

It uses your public stream data and classifies them (automatically categorizes) into topics that you can visually to understand your stream!

Note: You might get a server error because Google+ API limits requests.

Thanks to +Carmelyne Thompson +Eric Martindale +Jake McCuistion who helped me with the design, logo and jQuery!

And to my other friends for emotional support :)
+Christa Laser +Lucas Johnson

Hi everyone, so here is my Google+ API Mash-up called Stream+ for Google+

It uses your public stream data and classifies them (automatically categorizes) into topics that you can visually to understand your stream!

Note: You might get a server error because Google+ API limits requests.

Thanks to +Carmelyne Thompson +Eric Martindale +Jake McCuistion who helped me with the design, logo and jQuery!

And to my other friends for emotional support :)
+Christa Laser +Lucas Johnson

+Terrence Lui definitely, i'd love to hear more about your efforts and would love to help brainstorm the recruiting process.

There are people that have a gift of hiring good people. I personally think that a friendly exchange with an individual and a philosophical conversation can go a long way.

Personally, respect is the biggest key for me in a employee/employer relationship. I think upfront and straight forward is the ideal.

What are the key traits you want in an employee? Diversity is key for a team, but you need focused individuals and broad thinking individuals as well.

In my past I have loved the hiring process and offering my recommendation to employers. When I worked for a sporting goods store, I doubled back on my managers suggestion during a final interview and the manager was very unhappy about it. Something was off.

I left the job for an unrelated reason a month later and they hired the guy I turned away against my recommendation. He proceeded to embezzle over 10,000 in merchandise before being caught stealing bats and selling them second hand. The reason it felt wrong.

Mutual respect is key.

I personally would request an email to introduce yourself (if you have more than a handful of applications face to face with every potential is not cost effective)

from that, don't focus 100% on experience. You need a well rounded team, that means old and new perspectives.

Also, don't promote someone to supervisor that is the best designer. Adequately gauge the persons talents and build them in that area. A supervisor does not have to know a thing about who they are supervising. It depends on your desired form of leadership. Some models take the best and have them lead, some take leaders and have them work with the best.

Definitely an interesting read.
Whenever i work at a Diabetes camp, one of the questions i have received from parents is "How do you make sure the remote is controlling the right pump? Currently, Medtronic/Minimed uses a device ID to pair the meter, CGM, or remote to the pump. I believe Johnson & Johnson/Animas One Touch Ping uses a similar method - i would have to ask my brother.
The Insulet Omnipod uses a proximity registration method, which i don't fully understand (I haven't played with it much), but I have a feeling that this pairing method might be vulnerable to an attack, possibly of a man-in-the-middle design.

I also do not see how interfering with the CGM signal could cause any issue - the only integrated CGM/pump combo that is FDA approved for sale in the USA (Minimed 522/722 or 523/723 ("Revel")) does nothing with the CGM information beyond display it on the pump and alert you to changes. Let me reiterate: the US CGM/pump combo does not use CGM data to alter insulin patterns - at this point in time, the FDA simply will not allow it.
Now, assuming the insulin pump is Medtronic's European model, I have been told (by a Medtronic Diabetes sales representative) that the european model features an "auto-off" switch - if the wearer's blood glucose level drops below a certain threshold, the insulin pump will immediately suspend insulin delivery. I do not know the specifics of how this works, if it is all insulin or just the basal levels, but it is a potential vulnerability, but leads to the risk of a high blood sugar (which leads to long-term complications if uncontrolled).

Now the flipside of the auto off, would be an automatic insulin increase. Theoretically, if we wanted a closed-loop insulin delivery system that mimics the natural function of the pancreas, we need to automatically reduce insulin delivery when blood glucose levels are dropping, as well as increase insulin delivery when BG levels are rising. The current technology has its known issues, so I am not sure if the FDA (or any similar agencies worldwide) will even allow this functionality with the available technology, but it is still a valid concern for biomedical programmers.

Of Space, War, and Virtual Reality
+CCP Games has always been on the right track with their most successful project, the single-server, fully persistent world of +EVE Online.  Having launched +DUST 514 as an extension that exists within the same game world, CCP has raised the bar of innovation already, and continues to carve out territory with the announcement of +EVE: Valkyrie.

Valkyrie is a virtual reality game originally designed for +Oculus VR [1].  If you're not familiar with Oculus, they're the makers of the Oculus Rift. The Rift is a 3D display device that you wear like a pair of glasses, and literally move your head to look around the space.  This interaction makes it feel like you are actually in the virtual space, and represents a huge step forward in immersion.

What interests me most about EVE is the fact that it's a truly alternative reality; a simulated universe, of which only one exists, and to which there will never be a sequel or a "version 2".  CCP has committed to simply improve the game over time rather than ever introduce an "EVE 2", building the universe iteratively over the past 10 years.   This means that the time you invest in the alternative reality has a degree of permanence and importance, rather than the transience and fragmentation of other sharded universes.

Let's hope this integrates directly into the EVE Universe, in the capacity of participating in actual fights, and not just "conquer this asteroid field to make it available to EVE players".  Anything less would be a grave disappointment and moreover, a potentially critical business mistake as the two games, EVE Online and Valkyrie, operate in the same space.

Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

[1]: EVE-VR: Fanfest Trailer

Of Space, War, and Virtual Reality
+CCP Games has always been on the right track with their most successful project, the single-server, fully persistent world of +EVE Online.  Having launched +DUST 514 as an extension that exists within the same game world, CCP has raised the bar of innovation already, and continues to carve out territory with the announcement of +EVE: Valkyrie.

Valkyrie is a virtual reality game originally designed for +Oculus VR [1].  If you're not familiar with Oculus, they're the makers of the Oculus Rift. The Rift is a 3D display device that you wear like a pair of glasses, and literally move your head to look around the space.  This interaction makes it feel like you are actually in the virtual space, and represents a huge step forward in immersion.

What interests me most about EVE is the fact that it's a truly alternative reality; a simulated universe, of which only one exists, and to which there will never be a sequel or a "version 2".  CCP has committed to simply improve the game over time rather than ever introduce an "EVE 2", building the universe iteratively over the past 10 years.   This means that the time you invest in the alternative reality has a degree of permanence and importance, rather than the transience and fragmentation of other sharded universes.

Let's hope this integrates directly into the EVE Universe, in the capacity of participating in actual fights, and not just "conquer this asteroid field to make it available to EVE players".  Anything less would be a grave disappointment and moreover, a potentially critical business mistake as the two games, EVE Online and Valkyrie, operate in the same space.

Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

[1]: EVE-VR: Fanfest Trailer

Of Space, War, and Virtual Reality
+CCP Games has always been on the right track with their most successful project, the single-server, fully persistent world of +EVE Online.  Having launched +DUST 514 as an extension that exists within the same game world, CCP has raised the bar of innovation already, and continues to carve out territory with the announcement of +EVE: Valkyrie.

Valkyrie is a virtual reality game originally designed for +Oculus VR [1].  If you're not familiar with Oculus, they're the makers of the Oculus Rift. The Rift is a 3D display device that you wear like a pair of glasses, and literally move your head to look around the space.  This interaction makes it feel like you are actually in the virtual space, and represents a huge step forward in immersion.

What interests me most about EVE is the fact that it's a truly alternative reality; a simulated universe, of which only one exists, and to which there will never be a sequel or a "version 2".  CCP has committed to simply improve the game over time rather than ever introduce an "EVE 2", building the universe iteratively over the past 10 years.   This means that the time you invest in the alternative reality has a degree of permanence and importance, rather than the transience and fragmentation of other sharded universes.

Let's hope this integrates directly into the EVE Universe, in the capacity of participating in actual fights, and not just "conquer this asteroid field to make it available to EVE players".  Anything less would be a grave disappointment and moreover, a potentially critical business mistake as the two games, EVE Online and Valkyrie, operate in the same space.

Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

[1]: EVE-VR: Fanfest Trailer

Of Space, War, and Virtual Reality
+CCP Games has always been on the right track with their most successful project, the single-server, fully persistent world of +EVE Online.  Having launched +DUST 514 as an extension that exists within the same game world, CCP has raised the bar of innovation already, and continues to carve out territory with the announcement of +EVE: Valkyrie.

Valkyrie is a virtual reality game originally designed for +Oculus VR [1].  If you're not familiar with Oculus, they're the makers of the Oculus Rift. The Rift is a 3D display device that you wear like a pair of glasses, and literally move your head to look around the space.  This interaction makes it feel like you are actually in the virtual space, and represents a huge step forward in immersion.

What interests me most about EVE is the fact that it's a truly alternative reality; a simulated universe, of which only one exists, and to which there will never be a sequel or a "version 2".  CCP has committed to simply improve the game over time rather than ever introduce an "EVE 2", building the universe iteratively over the past 10 years.   This means that the time you invest in the alternative reality has a degree of permanence and importance, rather than the transience and fragmentation of other sharded universes.

Let's hope this integrates directly into the EVE Universe, in the capacity of participating in actual fights, and not just "conquer this asteroid field to make it available to EVE players".  Anything less would be a grave disappointment and moreover, a potentially critical business mistake as the two games, EVE Online and Valkyrie, operate in the same space.

Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

[1]: EVE-VR: Fanfest Trailer

After a year and a half working with some of the smartest and most competent engineers I've ever met, it's time for me to part ways with BitPay. I've had the opportunity to be deeply involved in the design, implementation, and deployment of some incredible technologies, but we're turning a page in the story of Bitcoin's rise and it's time to start exploring the new chapter. BitPay continues to paint an incredibly compelling picture as to what the decentralized future looks like – we worked on some incredibly far-reaching and massively impactful ideas, including: - [ChainDB][chaindb], a distributed database backed exclusively by the Bitcoin blockchain. - [Copay][copay], a truly decentralized wallet & identity management platform. - [BitAuth][bitauth], a secure authentication mechanism for peers on the web, using the `k1` curve. - [Impulse][impulse], a method of securing zero-confirmation transactions. - [Foxtrot][foxtrot], a completely encrypted data transmission network. - [Bitcore][bitcore], a library of common software functionality to glue everything together. You might notice a few common themes. Let me point out the two most important. Firstly, that everything here is open source (with the notable exception of ChainDB). Open source, and more importantly [free software][free software], is a very big deal to me. Prior to joining BitPay, I was [open sourcing education][coursefork], [contributing to open source software](https://github.com/martindale), and [speaking on the importance of open source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuYLWdG-lP0). Some of the things I'm most proud of are the things _other_ people built with the things _we_ gave away – _that's_ the real power of open source. Secondly, that everything here is based on Bitcoin, not some alternative blockchain. BitPay was a firm believer in Bitcoin as the exclusive platform that would secure the post-fiat era, and that belief has held strongly with me before and after my departure. Until a more compelling alternative to Bitcoin emerges, One of the other exciting things to come out of BitPay was the emergence of [DECENTRALIZE][decentralize], which we formed last fall with a few of our fellow employees. DECENTRALIZE has become [an acclaimed content source][cointelegraph:decentralize] in the latest resurgence of decentralized thinking, and now it gets to be a much bigger priority for me. Before I joined BitPay, I'd put a lot of work into [Maki][maki], a framework for making full-stack application development significantly easier. Maki took a bit of a back-burner position while I was focusing on my work at BitPay, so I'll be redoubling my efforts to see that vision through. In fact, I think now's as good a time as any to share that vision. To that end, I'm starting a new project named Fabric. I'd like to entirely eliminate centralized servers on the Internet and catalyze the development of an entirely new class of economic actor. More details soon. As we embark on our next journey, let's always remember the carefully selected input used to create [the Genesis Block][genesis]: > The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks [chaindb]: https://bitpay.com/chaindb.pdf [copay]: https://copay.io/ [bitauth]: https://github.com/bitpay/bitauth [impulse]: https://impulse.is/ [foxtrot]: https://github.com/bitpay/foxtrot [bitcore]: https://bitcore.io [decentralize]: https://decentralize.fm [free software]: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html [coursefork]: https://coursefork.org/ [maki]: https://maki.ericmartindale.com/ [cointelegraph:decentralize]: http://cointelegraph.com/news/114496/leaders-in-bitcoin-broadcasting-pandoras-box-is-open-and-theres-no-going-back [genesis]: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block

Hello there, adoring internet-stalkers! (I'm kidding. ~_~) You may have noticed (if you were loyal, that is ;)) that my Feedburner-powered RSS Feed has been lacking in activity lately. There's a reason for that.

Recently, I got rid of WordPress and Sweetcron in favor of a new CMS platform, Chyrp. I had been running Wordpress for a long time, using it to share my thoughts with the general internet populace. However, it had become a bit of a chore to maintain, and it really felt like duplicate work on top of all the other content-generation I was already performing (i.e., forum posts, blog comments, Last.fm "Loved" Tracks, Google Reader shared items, etc.), so I began to look for a way to aggregate this content into a central place.

For a while, FriendFeed served this purpose well, but I didn't like the lack of control I had over the source. Facebook also filled part of this gap (and it still does, to a point), and they've even purchased FriendFeed, but I was looking for something quite a bit more customizable and self-hosted. Through various referrals, I came across Yongfook's Sweetcron project which was a new platform designed specifically for this new thing they called, le gasp, "Lifestreaming".

However, after fighting with Sweetcron and its aggregation methods, particularly its lack of support for various service feed formats; I decided to look into something else. Initial searches landed me upon Tumblr, who had conveniently announced a feature that syncs comments across multiple services (or aggregates). Sadly, I didn't want to get back into a world where all my code was hosted by someone else, and I had no control over it. I kept Sweetcron running on my site under lifestream/, but I continued searching for a better solution.

I then stumbled across Bazooka, which was billed as "the first free PHP tumblelog engine". Thanks to Bazooka developer Evan Walsh, who alerted me to a more up-to-date and current replacement called Chyrp. And I was sold. I immediately spent a few hours converting my existing content from WordPress and SweetCron over to a test installation of Chyrp, and then took the next night changing my site structure and 301'd all my old links to the new URLs.

That's where EricMartindale.com stands today. I've spent a few weeks getting my stream set up the way I want it, and I'm turning the RSS feed back on. Posts should begin flowing into your RSS reader very shortly. Post comments, feedback, and questions here!

Edit 10:13 PM EST: It looks like Feedburner is having some trouble parsing my new RSS content. You can subscribe to my direct feed and it will always work.

Edit 10:58 PM EST: I've fixed the problem and committed the patch to GitHub.

One of the sites I own and run (RolePlayGateway) has a pretty large forum, with several customizations and features that I've added on to the base install of phpBB3. As time went on, we continued upgrading the servers (moving from GoDaddy shared hosting to GoDaddy virtual dedicated servers, then onward to MediaTemple's (gs), and now we're on the second tier of MediaTemple's (dv) hosting) in an effort to keep the hardware moving as fast as possible.

As I'm sure you know, hardware can be pretty expensive! One month, while on MediaTemple's Grid Server, we racked up $600 in CPU time overage charges. (Ow.) Now that we've moved onward to bigger and better packages, we're shelling out just about $100 per month for a rock-solid server solution that can be upgraded seamlessly in the future. But since upgrades can only go so far without being prohibitively expensive, I thought it was time to take a look at some of our coding approaches.

Enter memcache, the distributed database caching solution originally designed by LiveJournal to help them deal with massive databases and large volumes of users. DavidMJ has written some shiny ACM modules to help phpBB3 make use of some caching systems, and a memcache module was among them.

That didn't work so well. It gave about a 50% boost to phpBB3's performance (which was great!), but we were still choking the server, and ended up upgrading to a bigger and more robust package with MediaTemple. So I started looking into more options, and DavidMJ suggested xcache. So I go grab xcache and compile it, then enabled it in php. Bingo! There's a 500% boost in our page compile times, and across most of our pages we're now well under 0.1 second compile times. (With the exception of viewtopic.php, which frequently approaches 2 seconds due to bad coding on my part... this will be fixed soon.)

So now that I've got the thirst for speed, let's take a look at how we're performing. To do this, use the apache benchmarking tool:ab -n 100000 http://www.mydomain.com/my_page This will test the URL you specify 100,000 times, and give you some feedback about how the page performs. You'll end up with something looking like this:

Server Software: Apache/2.2.3 Server Hostname: www.mydomain.com Server Port: 80 Document Path: /my_page Document Length: 0 bytes Concurrency Level: 1 Time taken for tests: 15.30100 seconds Complete requests: 1 Failed requests: 0 Write errors: 0 Non-2xx responses: 1 Total transferred: 715 bytes HTML transferred: 0 bytes Requests per second: 0.07 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 15030.100 [ms] (mean) Time per request: 15030.100 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests) Transfer rate: 0.00 [Kbytes/sec] received Connection Times (ms) min mean[+/-sd] median max Connect: 0 0 0.0 0 0 Processing: 15030 15030 0.0 15030 15030 Waiting: 30 30 0.0 30 30 Total: 15030 15030 0.0 15030 15030

Some tweaks to the default xcache config that I recommend:

Set the number of caches to one per processor on your server! ; set to cpu count (cat /proc/cpuinfo |grep -c processor) xcache.count = 4

This post will be updated as I explore phpBB3 and more server side options. (I wrote part of this post, then stopped writing... and figure I'd publish it a couple days later anyway!)

There's been a lot of active discussion about the state of AOL's directory project, DMOZ. There have been many attempts to unseat the directory project from its position as the most authoritative listing resource, such as the Yahoo Directory. Many of these attempts have fallen by the wayside, as Rand Fiskin points out, but none have remained more controversial than DMOZ. More recently, Chris Crum's post on WebProNews about his lack of respect for DMOZ has stirred up a hornet's nest of DMOZ criticism, including a particular post claiming DMOZ is a waste of time.

I forwarded a lot of this on to Philip Nicolcev, known by username as "frug", who is the editor of several roleplay-oriented categories on DMOZ. He responded to me directly with a highly insightful email, and I was fortunate enough to receive his permission to share its contents.

I've been editing the pbp category at DMOZ for what... 4 years now? About that. This article is a big whiny complaint which misses the mark. They are both correct and sadly mistaken. Yes, dmoz is outdated and yes, it fails because of attitude problems, but not silly allegations of 'corruption' or people who are bitter because they didn't get listed. We don't list everything, I don't list even half of the submissions I get, and anyone who has been an administrator or an editor for a similar type of project knows better than to take these kinds of complaints seriously. One thing they say is definitely correct: Apply once carefully following their rules if you wish and then, as Will suggested, forget about them.

This is exactly the approach that should be modeled for any directory, regardless of its state or condition. When you are submitting a link to a directory, you are being offered the privilege to be listed as a resource by the owners and management of that directory. They are not obligated to list your link, let alone review it in a timely fashion--but this would be genuinely appreciated and would reflect on the directory's position as a "good" resource.

DMOZ is the primary source for Google's Directory, and you must respect the opinion of such a large and successful company. It's obvious that the idea behind an open directory like DMOZ is good, but where they fail is in execution. More on that later.

He continues:

That is what you should do. Apply once and forget about it, don't claim anybody is corrupt because whether you believe my opinion or not, there's no corruption. Nobody cares enough about dmoz anymore for it to be valuable for extortion. Don't be ridiculous. Furthermore if you were to speak to some of the senior editors you'd discover that they are pretty damn uptight, even obsessive. The problems with dmoz are, in my opinion, twofold. First off, you have the dated trashy look of the website which is a relic of the 1990's. It's not user friendly, it doesn't entice anyone to go browsing, and it hasn't adapted or added features that would help people understand the structure of the directory or find what they're looking for. The editor forums still use phpBB2, and you should see the editing panel. You wouldn't believe how dated this stuff is. Frankly it has needed an overhaul for years now.

I largely agree with him. The phpBB team deprecated the phpBB2 branch at the beginning of this year, ending support for the outdated platform. AOL would do well to do a complete overhaul of the site's design now that "Web 2.0" has come and gone (and I could reference posts all day on that) - and AOL has completely missed their opportunity to latch on and ride the wave.

Philip finishes his correspondance with the frightening truth that has been plaguing many post-Web2.0 sites and services:

The second problem, attitude, is partially the cause of the first problem. It's a stagnant atmosphere where nothing gets done and nobody gets listened to. They would rather leave a directory as a cluttered mess of garbage than risk breaking its structure by overhauling it. Fixing my category took me about two years before I had approval to restructure it, and I'm in a small niche category nobody pays much attention to. Since becoming an editor I have deleted about 60% of the outdated links listed. Had I not joined, they'd still be there cluttering things up with linkspam geocities pages from 10 years ago. So yeah, dmoz is failing, but not because of corruption or because some guy didn't get what he wanted. And, honestly, if the author of this article was applying to dmoz just to 'test how fair it was' then I'm glad they rejected him. Somehow they made the right decision because he's wasting their time.

And that's the exact problem - the DMOZ community has completely stagnated, which has resulted in the puddle of goop that the directory has become. In my personal opinion, I think that AOL could do a lot better job at community management (all reputation management aside) by setting up a more rigid structure of responsibility. The editors need to be held responsible for a timely review specified by their superiors, and there needs to be cross-checking of the editor's work by other qualified editors.

Is this another example of AOL's purchases being mismanaged and ultimately being forgotten, such as what many people claim is the case with ex-Nullsoft product WinAmp? Perhaps, but I think that remains to be seen. After all, even our favored Google took a questionable amount of time to convert phone-consolidation service GrandCentral to the new Google Voice after its 2007 acquisition. DMOZ was in fact originally a Netscape project, which then-strong AOL acquired in 1998. Since that acquisition, little has changed.

All said and done, DMOZ needs some love if it's going to survive as anything more than a relic of trust and authority in the Web 2.0 bubble. As Philip points out, it has both good and bad traits and deserves further attention, but it needs to be attention in (and from) the right direction. The questions remain; where has AOL been? What can be done about the editors (or lack thereof)? How can DMOZ be improved?

RPGChat is one of the other large roleplaying forums out there, and they've been around since about May, 2001. Since then, RPGChat has gone through many evolutions, and has expanded rapidly - they started with a forum, grew into a decent sized roleplaying chat, and finally removed the chat and went back to forums.

You'll immediately notice the large number of forums, which for most boards isn't an issue. In today's roleplaying world, RPGChat's index fits right in.

They've got four basic navigation options at the top of the page, which are images instead of text, which isn't very good for SEO. The four menu options are Home, Forums, Chat, and Rules. I gave each of them a shot, but it looks like only the "Home" and "Rules" link work.

I'm going to take a look at their code, because using images for links isn't horrible if you specify the right attributes. Let's have a glance:

<a href="http://forums.rpgchat.com/index.php"> <img src="header/but_home.jpg" border="0"> </a>

Yikes! Not only does the anchor not have a title attribute, but the image doesn't have an alt attribute! Search engines won't be able to understand the context of these links, and the flow of link juice to the two working links won't be very beneficial.

I participated on these forums for a few months as the username Alighieri, for that period, I became the single most active user in their welcome forum. I posted in several other topics, but got pretty frustrated with the limitation on the length of a post (20,000 characters).

When attempting to post a profile for one of my characters, I was immediately snubbed by the limitation. This makes well-researched posts difficult to make, specifically with the citations that must be put in place for accurate references. Ultimately, I was forced to cut out portions of my character's history to fit it into the post.

After posting for a few weeks nonstop in the Welcome Forum, I headed off to the The Arena area, where turn-based fighting is largely popular. I opened a topic with a list of the top turn based fighters, placed into a neat little image and posted right into the topic. It took a few days to get any response at all, (save for a few people who contacted me over AIM) and when I did get a response, I logged in to RPGChat to find that I had been banned for "advertising on multiple occasions", much to my surprise.

However, while my visit was cut short, I met some good friends, and had some great discussions. Unfortunately, the forum does not allow any links to external sites of any kind, and also does not allow signatures, which makes it very difficult to spread the word about the topics you start there. This isn't very good for encouraging member interaction, and makes it very difficult for momentum of any sort to be gained within the community.

After speaking with someone who had messaged me on AIM prior to my banning, I confirmed my worst fears - RPGChat is a closed community, and is not very open to outside communities or positive interaction with those communities. This is the number one concern mentioned to me about RPGChat and their future, and there is ongoing fear of the community continuing to stagnate without any growth other than direct referral.

I sent a request via the site's contact form, as listed at the bottom every page, which merely opened a new email to their support address, forums@rpgchat.com - I sent a couple questions in my email, and I identified who I was, but I haven't yet received a response. It'd be great if we could get an interview with an admin from RPGChat on the history of the site!

In terms of organic visitors, a search for pages on RPGChat has about 16,200 results. When digging through the pages, I noticed that only 477 pages were in the primary index, with the remainder in the supplemental index. That's scary!

Let's take a look at their search results:

As you can see from the above search, we can confirm that there is some duplicate content problems. However, from what we've seen - most of RPGChat's traffic is a result of direct referral. We can identify with the importance of defensible traffic, but organic traffic is also a high-quality method of driving laser-targeted traffic to your site, and it looks like RPGChat is seriously missing out on this.

RPGChat has a relatively active forum; 63,708 threads, 1,925,709 posts, and 59,352 "active" members. While that's only an average of about 30 posts per thread and only about 32 posts per user, they do have some great quality and style elements in their posts that you simply don't see in many other places in roleplaying forums these days. I think it would be a great move for them to deactivate a lot of their older and inactive members, and send out reminders to these users to come back and join in on the fun.

It also seemed like a consensus that the single best area on RPGChat was the Clans & Guilds forum, which most users simply called "C/G" for short. It looks like most other forums' version of a multiverse, where roleplay is freeform, and most action is player-driven with rules being defined by the status quo.

Lack of availability aside, RPGChat leaves a pretty strong impression, and if you're careful to follow their 500 word list of rules, you can likely make some friends and enjoy some great high-quality roleplay. The administration needs to do some overhauling if they're going to keep the community healthy, but for the time being - RPGChat makes for a great roleplaying destination.

I've been building a lot using Node.js lately. My experience with it has been good, from the ease and simplicity of setting up a realtime die-roller [1] to building an entire education platform [2]. It's a little strange getting your head around the constant callback mentality, but it's otherwise intuitive.

It's good reading some legitimate criticisms of Node.js, though. The author of this post has a point about how using it creates a tightly coupled system, contrary to existing UNIX patterns and presumably creating a maintenance nightmare in the future. I think time will tell, however--especially as parts of the toolchain and deploying solutions mature (I'm looking at you, Joyent!).

Thanks to +James Williams for sharing!

[1] https://github.com/RolePlayGateway/rpg-table
[2] http://www.hangoutacademy.com/

I've been building a lot using Node.js lately. My experience with it has been good, from the ease and simplicity of setting up a realtime die-roller [1] to building an entire education platform [2]. It's a little strange getting your head around the constant callback mentality, but it's otherwise intuitive.

It's good reading some legitimate criticisms of Node.js, though. The author of this post has a point about how using it creates a tightly coupled system, contrary to existing UNIX patterns and presumably creating a maintenance nightmare in the future. I think time will tell, however--especially as parts of the toolchain and deploying solutions mature (I'm looking at you, Joyent!).

Thanks to +James Williams for sharing!

[1] https://github.com/RolePlayGateway/rpg-table
[2] http://www.hangoutacademy.com/

I've been building a lot using Node.js lately. My experience with it has been good, from the ease and simplicity of setting up a realtime die-roller [1] to building an entire education platform [2]. It's a little strange getting your head around the constant callback mentality, but it's otherwise intuitive.

It's good reading some legitimate criticisms of Node.js, though. The author of this post has a point about how using it creates a tightly coupled system, contrary to existing UNIX patterns and presumably creating a maintenance nightmare in the future. I think time will tell, however--especially as parts of the toolchain and deploying solutions mature (I'm looking at you, Joyent!).

Thanks to +James Williams for sharing!

[1] https://github.com/RolePlayGateway/rpg-table
[2] http://www.hangoutacademy.com/

I've been building a lot using Node.js lately. My experience with it has been good, from the ease and simplicity of setting up a realtime die-roller [1] to building an entire education platform [2]. It's a little strange getting your head around the constant callback mentality, but it's otherwise intuitive.

It's good reading some legitimate criticisms of Node.js, though. The author of this post has a point about how using it creates a tightly coupled system, contrary to existing UNIX patterns and presumably creating a maintenance nightmare in the future. I think time will tell, however--especially as parts of the toolchain and deploying solutions mature (I'm looking at you, Joyent!).

Thanks to +James Williams for sharing!

[1] https://github.com/RolePlayGateway/rpg-table
[2] http://www.hangoutacademy.com/

Running a role playing game online presents a large of amount of flexibility in the way you run the game. You no longer need individual sessions where all players are present, and there are a plethora of options as to where you are going to run it - if you want to run it in any one place.

One of the number one questions I receive relates to the medium for online RPGs. There are tons of different ways of communicating online, mainly grouped into a few categories. We have instant messenger, chats, message boards, and emails. There are a few custom services out there, but I'm going to touch on the four that I've mentioned.

On RolePlayGateway, we have a set of roleplaying forums as well as a roleplaying chat. When you're running an RPG, there are a few items you should consider when deciding where you're going to keep everything.

Forums have the benefit of being static and always available - users can post to forums at any time during the day and be sure that other users (and roleplayers) can see their message. Forums are also very flexible, they allow you to embed images and other multimedia within your posts, allowing you to share any experience with your players. However, it is post based - forums are often not the quickest way to communicate, as it is not a live feed of information like a chat.

Chats, on the other hand, have the benefit of being real time. Games can be run in chat (and instant messenger) on a moment's notice, and work best when all of the players can be available at the same time. Because it is real time, short blip-based sessions such as character conversations and interactions work extraordinarily well with chats. Players can get the chance to interject into other player's actions and statements without the worry of too much time going by. It is for this reason that the longer posts, such as those that exceed a paragraph, are often too large and unwieldy for chats - players end up waiting too long for each post, and will get bored.

Longer posts do very well on forums, where writing an individual post can take half an hour or longer to refine and perfect - just enough time for the players to go look at other games and other topics before they come back and begin formulating their response.

If you're running a game with a detailed and/or complicated storyline or characters, it is always good to post something on a forum for player reference. This lets the players have a place to communicate out of character (OOC) - such as when they won't be able to make a chat session, or when they want to discuss plans for character interaction, growth, or development. Even if your game is already on a forum - it is a good idea to create a place for OOC discussion. For chat-based games - this gives a perfect opportunity for players to jump in at the middle of a game with little trouble, as they simply need to read over the history of the game on the forum, which they can do at any point in time, and less time is needed explaining the game to the player.

Instant messenger works well when dealing with one on one sessions, such as when two characters are the only ones in an interaction or a meeting needs to be private. These interactions can be summarized or written into a cinematic format and then posted to the forum, for other players to enjoy as well. Instant messenger (as well as Private Messages) does very well at asking questions of the other players, which is convenient when you have a question about how they're playing a role or a reference they made in character.

There are also emails - many games aren't run by email anymore, but email is still a very valuable tool. RolePlayGateway like many forums offers you the ability to subscribe to topics. Subscriptions will let you receive an immediate email update whenever someone replies to the thread. This is extraordinarily helpful when there's an RPG with only a few players that can only reply every once in a while, but it requires that people, y'know, actually check their email. RolePlayGateway also has the special ability to instant message you when there's an update to a subscribed thread. All you need is a Jabber account (GMail accounts work, too) and to set up the notifications. We'll send you a message as soon as there's an update.

What methods have you used to manage your online roleplaying games? Are you a fan of forum or chat? Both? What helps you determine where you're going to hold your game? Discuss!

Following suit with the likes of Tim Bray and Eric Meyer, I figured I'd throw together my browser's letter sweep tonight.

• [A]dmin Site. Yeah, I guess I would be visiting the admin panel for this. Quite frequently.
• Mirascape's [B]log. An infrequent haunt of mine, but fairly obvious.
• [C]MON. Cluster Monitor for MySQL Cluster, something I almost always have open.
• Google [D]ocs. This one is painfully obvious, I use Google Docs extensively.
• [E]ricMartindale.com. Okay, that's a gimme. Does this make me egocentric?
• [F]acebook. I'm actually fairly ashamed of this one. Why can't I have a cool F site? sadface
• [G]mail. Three accounts linked using Google's Multiple Sign-in. Open [almost] all day.
• [H]ighcharts JS. A pretty kick-ass Javascript library for generating charts on the clientside.
• [I]nternal Discussion. A site for communication with my team. :)
• [J]Query Mobile Demo, 1.0 alpha 3. I've been spending a lot of time toying with jQuery Mobile, seeing where it's going compared to Sencha Touch.
• [K]r.github.com. Keith Rarick's GitHub redirect. Total ass-kicker.
• [L]inkedIn. Pretty straightforward, between hiring for our team at @Mirascape and the travel to and from various conferences and Meetups lately.
• [M]irascape. The augmented reality platform I'm responsible for.
• [N]oxBot. A nice PHP-powered IRC bot with various plugins. A bit out of date, but very powerful. Been using it for a couple things lately.
• [O]K, QR Me!. A QR Code-generating link shortener I built.
• [P]ostmark. Best Email delivery service I've used. Nice RESTful API, flat rate for emails sent.
• [Q]uora. These guys nail Q&A, and they're doing it pretty well. Check out all their buzz, too. But for some reason, I just don't stick.
• Google [R]eader. “From your 1,040 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 21,549 items, clicked 274 items, starred 853 items, shared 37 items, and emailed 8 items.” -- </stats>
• [S]erver Stats for Mirascape. Powered by Munin, it's how I keep track of the status and metrics of all my servers.
• [T]witter. Not surprising. I love their webapp for my personal use, but own and manage at least five accounts using SplitTweet.
• [U]serVoice. Pretty sweet tool I use for giving the communities I manage a good way to build a consensus on what they desire most. Examples I run: for RolePlayGateway, and EVE UserVoice for EVE Online.
• Google [V]oice. Allows me to use SMS from my computer, read (as opposed to listen to) voicemail. Great tool. If only it supported MMS.
• [W]achovia. One of the places I do banking.
• [X]DA Developers. An indisposable resource for getting rid of carrier-installed crap and running my own choice of software on the hardware I purchased!
• [Y]ouTube. Another big namer. No surprise.
• [Z]ecco. Where I trade most of my public stocks. :)

Surprisingly populist, and there's a lot of Google-owned properties in there. I'm also using Chromium, so I think it prefers the roots of the sites I visit instead of searching through my history for individual pages.