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I understand your frustration. Here's my perspective:
I volunteered my time for a period of about a year to re-develop the
IRTC site since nobody else was stepping up to the plate. If I was
going to rewrite the site software, it would at least be in a language
which I like and understand well. That's why I chose Smalltalk. If
anyone else volunteers to take over the project and rewrite the code,
you can use any language you wish.
The project became more complicated when Chris Cason expressed the
desire to make the pages bookmarkable and google-indexable. The site was
developed in Seaside which normally puts session keys into the URLS.
Making the pages bookmarkable changed this policy and made the coding
harder. It also meant that users browsing the site without logging in
used a new session for every page hit.
After finally making the site live and struggling to correct problems
amidst much complaining from the community, we got the software stable
except for one nagging problem. The web sessions are always set to
time-out. In order to give people enough time to submit images without
timing out, we had to increase the timeout to 30 minutes. But, to allow
the site to be navigable without logging in and to be bookmarkable,
every page view created a new session. The combination of these two
factors meant that lots of hits by users who weren't logged in would
create lots of sessions and eat up lots of memory. The application was
chewing up too much memory and was causing problems with the server.
I'm now super busy with several contracts at once and have no time to
volunteer any more to the IRTC. On top of that, the number of
submissions had dropped to about 6 per competition which meant that
every submission won something (which is kind of meaningless). We felt
that the lack of interest and the memory issue was too much to keep the
application running.
Now, if anyone out there wants to take it over, be my guest. I can make
all of the Smalltalk code available to you if you wish. You can also
re-write it in PHP or any other language you like. I just can't spend
more time on it because I'm already too busy working on other stuff.
I tried, folks, but the rewards were too small, the effort was too high,
and the complaints from people not satisfied with the efforts we put in
were too annoying.
I'd be happy to help anyone take over, but my volunteer time on this
project is done.
David Buck
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It's a real drag losing the IRTC into the void again, but thanks for that
explanation, David. I, for one, completely understand where you're coming from.
Hats off to you for all the hard work you put into it!
-------------------------------------------------
www.McGregorFineArt.com
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On 05/03/2011 6:30 PM, Robert McGregor wrote:
> It's a real drag losing the IRTC into the void again, but thanks for that
> explanation, David. I, for one, completely understand where you're coming from.
>
> Hats off to you for all the hard work you put into it!
>
Hear, hear.
--
Regards
Stephen
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Le 05/03/2011 18:35, David Buck a écrit :
> I understand your frustration. Here's my perspective:
Thank you so much for these insights.
My message was intentionally rude, and I sincerely apologise
if I hurted you. I understand well that finding time to do such
work is hard, that's also why I've been quiet these years.
Edouard, in a reply to me, said that maybe he could do something
for the existing software. Let's try.
As a backup hypothesis, I volunteer to build a new site, with
the help of other volunteers. Here's the plan :
- right now (or ASAP), display a page announcing that something
is being done, and launch a new round, ending May 31 (that's
almost 3 months, might help get more competitors),
topic is "How will I explain this to Dad ?".
- before the end of March, set up the ability to browse old rounds
- before the end of April, set up the ability to submit an entry
(so sumbissions can start 1 month before deadline)
- before the end of May, set up a voting system, test-driven by voting
for the last round that hasn't been voted
- once all is okay, vote for the new round
All this using plain MySQL-PHP structure (no framework). This requires
working knowledge of MySQL, PHP, HTML, CSS. But someone just familiar
with HTML and CSS could provide great help.
If 3 people are joining, that's perfectly doable, IMO.
Anyone wanting to jump in ?
Fabien.
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David Buck <dav### [at] simberon com> wrote:
First off, thank-you for the effort you put in - you recreated the site when
there was nothing, and it sparked a new round of artwork from the community.
> I volunteered my time for a period of about a year to re-develop the
> IRTC site since nobody else was stepping up to the plate. If I was
> going to rewrite the site software, it would at least be in a language
> which I like and understand well. That's why I chose Smalltalk. If
> anyone else volunteers to take over the project and rewrite the code,
> you can use any language you wish.
>
> The project became more complicated when Chris Cason expressed the
> desire to make the pages bookmarkable and google-indexable. The site was
> developed in Seaside which normally puts session keys into the URLS.
> Making the pages bookmarkable changed this policy and made the coding
> harder. It also meant that users browsing the site without logging in
> used a new session for every page hit.
Seaside code is a thing of beauty, but, honestly, I've never bought into the URL
scheme (or the "breaks the back button" justification). I was looking at
AIDA/Web recently, and I like it's model and URL scheme much better, but you
lose the html abstraction and mature jquery etc libraries that Seaside
provides...
> After finally making the site live and struggling to correct problems
> amidst much complaining from the community, we got the software stable
> except for one nagging problem. The web sessions are always set to
> time-out. In order to give people enough time to submit images without
> timing out, we had to increase the timeout to 30 minutes. But, to allow
> the site to be navigable without logging in and to be bookmarkable,
> every page view created a new session. The combination of these two
> factors meant that lots of hits by users who weren't logged in would
> create lots of sessions and eat up lots of memory. The application was
> chewing up too much memory and was causing problems with the server.
So that's the place to concentrate on - I can take a look at that at least.
> I'm now super busy with several contracts at once and have no time to
> volunteer any more to the IRTC.
I completely understand. I've got some spare time right now, but it won't
necessarily last!
> Now, if anyone out there wants to take it over, be my guest. I can make
> all of the Smalltalk code available to you if you wish.
Can you mail me a fileout or Monticello snapshot? I'm using Pharo here.
> I tried, folks, but the rewards were too small, the effort was too high,
> and the complaints from people not satisfied with the efforts we put in
> were too annoying.
That's OK - I have a high tolerance for complaints, and if I am going to put the
time in, I'll post with progress, and be as upfront as I can about when I have
no time on it.
> David Buck
Cheers,
Edouard.
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On Sat, 05 Mar 2011 18:42:37 +0000, Stephen wrote:
> On 05/03/2011 6:30 PM, Robert McGregor wrote:
>> It's a real drag losing the IRTC into the void again, but thanks for
>> that explanation, David. I, for one, completely understand where you're
>> coming from.
>>
>> Hats off to you for all the hard work you put into it!
>>
> Hear, hear.
Yes, indeed!
Jim
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On Sat, 05 Mar 2011 19:47:17 +0100, Fabien wrote:
> My message was intentionally rude
And that is why you are in fact a jackass. The only way you know to
raise an issue is to piss people off.
There is absolutely nothing that pisses me off more than people who think
a community OWES them something, and when the community doesn't provide
for those who feel so entitled, they are rude (intentionally or not) in
order to get attention.
That is the purest definition of trolling.
Jim
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 05 Mar 2011 19:47:17 +0100, Fabien wrote:
>
>> My message was intentionally rude
>
> And that is why you are in fact a jackass. The only way you know to
> raise an issue is to piss people off.
>
> There is absolutely nothing that pisses me off more than people who thi
nk
> a community OWES them something, and when the community doesn't provide
> for those who feel so entitled, they are rude (intentionally or not) in
> order to get attention.
>
> That is the purest definition of trolling.
>
> Jim
*plonk*
--
mailto:jeb### [at] freefr
http://jeberger.free.fr
Jabber: jeb### [at] jabberfr
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On Sun, 06 Mar 2011 08:04:20 +0100, Jérôme M. Berger wrote:
>> Jim
> *plonk*
That's supposed to make me feel badly about calling out someone who's
acting poorly? Sorry, no dice.
It's one thing to say "hey, this is broken" in a polite way (as Christian
did), and I can respect that approach. But for Fabien to come in here
and act the way he did and not to expect anyone to slap him for behaving
poorly, sorry, that's not how it works.
(And yes, I do realise that you're calling *me* a troll by 'plonking' me
- and I honestly have never understood why some people feel it's
necessary to say that. I've tried it, and felt stupid when I did it.)
Jim
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"Edouard" <pov### [at] edouardinfo> wrote:
> David Buck <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote:
>
> > I volunteered my time for a period of about a year to re-develop the
> > IRTC site since nobody else was stepping up to the plate. If I was
> > going to rewrite the site software, it would at least be in a language
> > which I like and understand well. That's why I chose Smalltalk. If
> > anyone else volunteers to take over the project and rewrite the code,
> > you can use any language you wish.
David has emailed me, and is going to set me up with the development environment
for website. Once I've got it I'll take a look at how it works, and specifically
investigate the session code to see if we can remove the problem that was
causing the issues.
A public bug tracker might also be a good idea.
Cheers,
Edouard.
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Le 6/03/2011 20:30, Edouard a écrit :
>
> David has emailed me, and is going to set me up with the development environment
> for website. Once I've got it I'll take a look at how it works, and specifically
> investigate the session code to see if we can remove the problem that was
> causing the issues.
Great.
FWIW, I have a thought about these "sessions" problems.
Most parts of the IRTC site (round galleries, results,
homepage) doesn't need sessions, they can be "REST-ful",
and thus being bookmarkable and google-indexable without
further complication.
Submitting and voting, which should count for a small
part of pageviews (and thus memory usage), are the ones
which needs sessions. (and don't need to be bookmarked or
indexed)
From what has already been said, session management through
URL appears to be a fundamental feature of Seaside.
What about keeping the existing Seaside code for submitting
and voting, and rewrite results, viewing and homepage using
another RESTful framework ?
BTW, I've just seen this on Wikipedia :
<<Compared to other web development frameworks, unspecified old version
of Seaside is memory intensive. A single session could accumulate
several hundred kilobytes of RAM. A later release of Seaside (2.8)
significantly reduces this footprint (e.g. a formerly typical 200 KB
footprint becomes 50 KB).>>
Fabien.
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Am 05.03.2011 19:47, schrieb Fabien:
> My message was intentionally rude, and I sincerely apologise
> if I hurted you.
People getting hurt is what's to be /expected/ from intentionally rude
messages.
Still waiting for an apology to the other people you hurt along the way.
> As a backup hypothesis, I volunteer to build a new site, with
> the help of other volunteers. Here's the plan :
> - right now (or ASAP), display a page announcing that something
> is being done, and launch a new round, ending May 31 (that's
> almost 3 months, might help get more competitors),
> topic is "How will I explain this to Dad ?".
> - before the end of March, set up the ability to browse old rounds
> - before the end of April, set up the ability to submit an entry
> (so sumbissions can start 1 month before deadline)
> - before the end of May, set up a voting system, test-driven by voting
> for the last round that hasn't been voted
> - once all is okay, vote for the new round
Now *that* is a message some three notches more constructive, but...
> If 3 people are joining, that's perfectly doable, IMO.
... making your offer depend on others weakens it quite a lot again. If
you count on /reliable/ support from others, it won't fly, as
interruptions due to real-life issues are always a factor to be reckoned
with. Either it's "I'll be doing this, either way - anyone willing to
help me is happily invited", or I'd expect efforts to be doomed right
from the start.
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Am 06.03.2011 20:30, schrieb Edouard:
> A public bug tracker might also be a good idea.
Maybe we can use the POV-Ray flyspray bugtracker for that? It does
support multiple projects after all, and is already up and running. I
guess you'd need to contact Chris for that to get the necessary
administrative access.
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Le 7/03/2011 07:24, clipka a écrit :
> ... making your offer depend on others weakens it quite a lot again. If you count on
/reliable/ support from others, it
> won't fly, as interruptions due to real-life issues are always a factor to be
reckoned with. Either it's "I'll be doing
> this, either way - anyone willing to help me is happily invited", or I'd expect
efforts to be doomed right from the start.
Asking other people to join is, precisely, a security in case of real-life
taking away precious time. I'm sure I can set something up alone in a few days,
but, if I go from 100% reliable to 80%, having 3 people able to offer 20%
reliability might fill the gap. Your formulation ("I'll be doing this..."),
though less formal, could do the trick, too.
Anyway, Edouard is taking a look at the existing stuff, so I won't interfere
right now with a "new site" hypothesis. I'll be doing it as some kind of
exercise, and will quietly tell about it once I've got something usable.
Fabien.
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clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Am 05.03.2011 19:47, schrieb Fabien:
>
> > My message was intentionally rude, and I sincerely apologise
> > if I hurted you.
>
> People getting hurt is what's to be /expected/ from intentionally rude
> messages.
>
> Still waiting for an apology to the other people you hurt along the way.
So, still no apology for the others, eh?
Optimistic take: maybe Fabien meant to type "My message was UNintentionally
rude..." and just doesn't realize.
-------------------------------------------------
www.McGregorFineArt.com
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On Mon, 07 Mar 2011 09:25:23 -0500, Robert McGregor wrote:
> Optimistic take: maybe Fabien meant to type "My message was
> UNintentionally rude..." and just doesn't realize.
If my response and clipka's didn't highlight that he said he was
intentionally rude adequately, I'd be quite surprised.
He's certainly had time to clarify and to apologise.
Jim
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"Edouard" <pov### [at] edouardinfo> wrote:
> "Edouard" <pov### [at] edouardinfo> wrote:
>
> > David Buck <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote:
> >
> > > I volunteered my time for a period of about a year to re-develop the
> > > IRTC site since nobody else was stepping up to the plate. If I was
> > > going to rewrite the site software, it would at least be in a language
> > > which I like and understand well. That's why I chose Smalltalk. If
> > > anyone else volunteers to take over the project and rewrite the code,
> > > you can use any language you wish.
>
> David has emailed me, and is going to set me up with the development environment
> for website. Once I've got it I'll take a look at how it works, and specifically
> investigate the session code to see if we can remove the problem that was
> causing the issues.
>
> A public bug tracker might also be a good idea.
>
> Cheers,
> Edouard.
How did it go with this?
As I understood it, it was one function that borked the site. Why not just
remove that function until further notice and launch the rest?
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I have been programming ColdFusion for business applications for 15 years and
would love to take over the IRTC and host the site for free as well. Please
contact me. Most of the sites I programmed are internal business tracking sites.
Other than that I have storefronts for Carlile, BP, Conoco Phillips, and a host
of other major Alaskan companies. In the past I worked on some PovRay graphics
and do love the community. All I would need is a list of services needed for the
site, requirements, etc.. This can be completed in a couple of weeks if not
sooner since this is actually very simple programming to me. Let me know.
David Buck <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote:
> I understand your frustration. Here's my perspective:
>
> I volunteered my time for a period of about a year to re-develop the
> IRTC site since nobody else was stepping up to the plate. If I was
> going to rewrite the site software, it would at least be in a language
> which I like and understand well. That's why I chose Smalltalk. If
> anyone else volunteers to take over the project and rewrite the code,
> you can use any language you wish.
>
> The project became more complicated when Chris Cason expressed the
> desire to make the pages bookmarkable and google-indexable. The site was
> developed in Seaside which normally puts session keys into the URLS.
> Making the pages bookmarkable changed this policy and made the coding
> harder. It also meant that users browsing the site without logging in
> used a new session for every page hit.
>
> After finally making the site live and struggling to correct problems
> amidst much complaining from the community, we got the software stable
> except for one nagging problem. The web sessions are always set to
> time-out. In order to give people enough time to submit images without
> timing out, we had to increase the timeout to 30 minutes. But, to allow
> the site to be navigable without logging in and to be bookmarkable,
> every page view created a new session. The combination of these two
> factors meant that lots of hits by users who weren't logged in would
> create lots of sessions and eat up lots of memory. The application was
> chewing up too much memory and was causing problems with the server.
>
> I'm now super busy with several contracts at once and have no time to
> volunteer any more to the IRTC. On top of that, the number of
> submissions had dropped to about 6 per competition which meant that
> every submission won something (which is kind of meaningless). We felt
> that the lack of interest and the memory issue was too much to keep the
> application running.
>
> Now, if anyone out there wants to take it over, be my guest. I can make
> all of the Smalltalk code available to you if you wish. You can also
> re-write it in PHP or any other language you like. I just can't spend
> more time on it because I'm already too busy working on other stuff.
>
> I tried, folks, but the rewards were too small, the effort was too high,
> and the complaints from people not satisfied with the efforts we put in
> were too annoying.
>
> I'd be happy to help anyone take over, but my volunteer time on this
> project is done.
>
> David Buck
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"Park" <par### [at] hispeedfusecom> wrote:
> I have been programming ColdFusion for business applications for 15 years and
> would love to take over the IRTC and host the site for free as well. Please
> contact me. Most of the sites I programmed are internal business tracking sites.
> Other than that I have storefronts for Carlile, BP, Conoco Phillips, and a host
> of other major Alaskan companies. In the past I worked on some PovRay graphics
> and do love the community. All I would need is a list of services needed for the
> site, requirements, etc.. This can be completed in a couple of weeks if not
> sooner since this is actually very simple programming to me. Let me know.
>
I, for one, would be very happy to see the IRTC make a comeback. Thanks much for
your willingness to help. I do hope something comes of this. Perhaps those in
the POV-Ray community who know more that I do about how to contact former IRTC
admins might graciously help out.
Best Regards,
Mike C.
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Park wrote:
> I have been programming ColdFusion for business applications for 15
> years and would love to take over the IRTC and host the site for free
> as well. Please contact me.
Thank you for your offer, I'm sure it is appreciated by the community.
Regarding an official statement, Chris Cason is probably the best person
to contact. It's possible he will read this post, or you could try to
reach him via the pov team contact email given at the end of
http://www.povray.org/povlegal.html
They might prefer not to "give away" the IRTC, though; the last attempt
at resurrection was still hosted on the povray servers as far as I know.
I'm not sure if this would be a problem for you.
> All I would need is a list of services needed for the site,
> requirements, etc.. This can be completed in a couple of weeks if not
> sooner since this is actually very simple programming to me.
I know you have professional experience, but do not underestimate the
project you'd embark upon. If you do, it will only lead to frustration
for everyone involved (again).
First of all, in contrast to a commercial project, it is much harder
to even get a list of requirements. There is no single customer who pays
and decides. You can look back at older threads in this group to find
out about some consensus the community arrived at during earlier
discussion regarding desired IRTC behavior.
People will try to access the site using the most curious combinations
of OS and browser, and you can less easily ignore them because they make
up a sizable proportion of the crowd here ;)
Also, hacking together a working system is only part of the solution.
It should be possible for someone else to administer the site in case
other things pop up in your life with priority (also, to reduce the
dependency on administrator time, a high degree of automation in
the submission and voting process is desirable).
Special requirements that have been specified in the past are the
ability to browse the site without being logged in and to be able
to have (session-independent) bookmarkability / direct URLs.
Otherwise, I suppose you are familiar with the old IRTC and maybe
have seen the intermediate resurrection (you can probably get the
smalltalk code for that from David Buck to get an idea of the
system even though you would likely not be using the code).
Finally, this post is not intended to discourage or deter you. Just
be sure you know what you are in for before committing yourself. I can
only speak for myself but your offer is most welcome, thanks again!
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If someone wants to take on this project and it's approved by the IRTC
administrator, I can extract the data from the last version of the IRTC
that was running in order to provide a history of the IRTC rounds.
Ii can attest that it's a lot of work beyond just the initial development.
David Buck
Christian Froeschlin wrote:
> Park wrote:
>
>> I have been programming ColdFusion for business applications for 15
>> years and would love to take over the IRTC and host the site for free
>> as well. Please contact me.
>
> Thank you for your offer, I'm sure it is appreciated by the community.
> Regarding an official statement, Chris Cason is probably the best person
> to contact. It's possible he will read this post, or you could try to
> reach him via the pov team contact email given at the end of
>
> http://www.povray.org/povlegal.html
>
> They might prefer not to "give away" the IRTC, though; the last attempt
> at resurrection was still hosted on the povray servers as far as I know.
> I'm not sure if this would be a problem for you.
>
>> All I would need is a list of services needed for the site,
>> requirements, etc.. This can be completed in a couple of weeks if not
>> sooner since this is actually very simple programming to me.
>
> I know you have professional experience, but do not underestimate the
> project you'd embark upon. If you do, it will only lead to frustration
> for everyone involved (again).
>
> First of all, in contrast to a commercial project, it is much harder
> to even get a list of requirements. There is no single customer who pays
> and decides. You can look back at older threads in this group to find
> out about some consensus the community arrived at during earlier
> discussion regarding desired IRTC behavior.
>
> People will try to access the site using the most curious combinations
> of OS and browser, and you can less easily ignore them because they make
> up a sizable proportion of the crowd here ;)
>
> Also, hacking together a working system is only part of the solution.
> It should be possible for someone else to administer the site in case
> other things pop up in your life with priority (also, to reduce the
> dependency on administrator time, a high degree of automation in
> the submission and voting process is desirable).
>
> Special requirements that have been specified in the past are the
> ability to browse the site without being logged in and to be able
> to have (session-independent) bookmarkability / direct URLs.
>
> Otherwise, I suppose you are familiar with the old IRTC and maybe
> have seen the intermediate resurrection (you can probably get the
> smalltalk code for that from David Buck to get an idea of the
> system even though you would likely not be using the code).
>
> Finally, this post is not intended to discourage or deter you. Just
> be sure you know what you are in for before committing yourself. I can
> only speak for myself but your offer is most welcome, thanks again!
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