tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-310543692024-03-07T00:41:05.526-08:00Atlas QuestWhere letterboxing is Fun!Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.comBlogger343125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-8706895089366958812024-02-19T02:02:00.000-08:002024-02-19T02:02:44.674-08:00The Sun and Moon Tango!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhut5prHhlz2nDemVOhRnFezFGauXLzAMwgXUfT_sMJSCVLkgCDFptL2LWoPXKnlzLc6Oy0o2SDzI5I_OEqmdqs3jG8c-F7_SIhGZ1mEcOinuqWdEjU29wLGfiYJJ1Iodg9u1B4uhjhTiDmrfm5gaDbcNbN_PweTQRvghpuEaQtWRpGpi-a14v2mA/s1024/sun-and-moon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhut5prHhlz2nDemVOhRnFezFGauXLzAMwgXUfT_sMJSCVLkgCDFptL2LWoPXKnlzLc6Oy0o2SDzI5I_OEqmdqs3jG8c-F7_SIhGZ1mEcOinuqWdEjU29wLGfiYJJ1Iodg9u1B4uhjhTiDmrfm5gaDbcNbN_PweTQRvghpuEaQtWRpGpi-a14v2mA/s320/sun-and-moon.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>It's that time of year again.... eclipse time! On April 8th, a solar eclipse will cross through North America, cutting through Mexico and entering the United States in Texas, sweeping through the country out toward Maine and even a tiny little bit in Canada.<p></p><p>And it's not just any solar eclipse, but this is the much more rare and far more spectacular <i>total</i> solar eclipse! It is, perhaps, the most most amazing and heavenly natural phenomenon you'll ever see! If you don't believe me, ask someone who witnessed the last one in the United States back in 2017. (I have a hunch that a large number of people who saw the 2017 eclipse might make a special point of checking out this year's eclipse!)</p><p>During totality, on that narrow line where the moon completely covers the surface of the moon, it is safe to view the eclipse with absolutely no eye protected at all. Depending on your exact location, the amount of time you can watch without eye protection is about 4 1/2 minutes <i>or less</i>. The closer to Mexico you are, the longer totality will last. But the couple of hours leading up to totality and the couple of hours after totality, when it is only a partial eclipse, you'll need eye protection, and these eclipse glasses can get the job done.</p><p>And we've got officially-sanctioned eclipse glasses for sale in the <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/marketplace/aq/" target="_blank">AQ Marketplace</a>! <br /></p><p>It's well worth making a special trip to see this eclipse if you've never stood in the path of totality before. It's really one of those experiences that everyone should experience at least once your life, and the next total solar eclipse will not happen in the United States for another TWENTY YEARS! Even then it barely grazes the country near North Dakota. (Although one year after that, on August 12, 2045, we'll get a <i>good</i> total solar eclipse that will span from coast-to-coast. Disney, I'm sure, is already planning major festivities in Orlando for the event!) But regardless, it'll be a <i>long</i> wait to see another total solar eclipse in our proverbial backyards, so now's the time to experience it!</p><p>If you saw the annular eclipse last October and thought, "It was interesting, but not <i>that</i> cool," totality is a <i>totally</i> different experience! It's night and day different! An annular eclipse is still quite interesting and fun to watch (I did!), but don't think for a second that you got 99% of the experience of totality. You got maybe 5% of the experience! Maybe less. Heck, there were people around us during the annular eclipse who didn't even seem to realize that an eclipse was going on but I can assure you--<i>nobody</i> overlooks a total solar eclipse! </p><p>Although you can only see totality from a very narrow strip of area cutting through America, a partial eclipse will still be visible from the entire contiguous United States, so the eclipse glasses can still be useful for pretty much everyone. It won't be the eye-popping amazing experience of totality, but if you'd like to watch some of the eclipse anyhow.... you'll need eye protection, and we've got it. =)</p><p>Assuming I don't sell out of the eclipse glasses before then, I'll stop selling them on AQ about a week before the eclipse so (hopefully) all orders have a chance to make it to their destinations before the main event. So they'll only be available in the AQ marketplace for just over a month.... but I'd urge you to order as early as possible. If your order doesn't arrive as quickly as expected, I can still send out a replacement order in time for the eclipse. If you order only a week before the event and the order gets lost in the mail.... it might be too late to get a new order in time!</p><p>Be ready for that moment when the sun and moon dance the tango! Order your <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/marketplace/aq/" target="_blank">eclipse glasses</a> today!<br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMumC4bkj2VxFmlU_jGfnMIZP8H-RHW4eSn-ZrtB1zMFHf1TPAz0mKpWcMf3TkM__BAtuqAZfQq0RT7tI4xwbIWL4KldmP2lDeLURum-7u2ooCdgzLZdAe1rvkcSO0XeUMZJkc5a8rG8lU3xG40r1ZCYIYAjqbAJ3ca7ztblXUWv-dy_YLGv_NwA/s1024/sun-and-moon-salsa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMumC4bkj2VxFmlU_jGfnMIZP8H-RHW4eSn-ZrtB1zMFHf1TPAz0mKpWcMf3TkM__BAtuqAZfQq0RT7tI4xwbIWL4KldmP2lDeLURum-7u2ooCdgzLZdAe1rvkcSO0XeUMZJkc5a8rG8lU3xG40r1ZCYIYAjqbAJ3ca7ztblXUWv-dy_YLGv_NwA/s320/sun-and-moon-salsa.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Okay, I'll have to admit, I had AI generate an image of the sun and moon dancing the salsa to get this image.... but the first image was the AI's take on dancing the tango! AI is fun.... =)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table></div><p></p><br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-10796652119242274412024-02-15T03:41:00.000-08:002024-02-15T03:41:11.908-08:00GPS End Points<p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/15/20/152099.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="300" src="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/15/20/152099.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Wishing you had a GPS right about now, eh?<br />Photo submitted by <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=152099" target="_blank">Dawnkey</a>.</i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>If you log into Atlas Quest and check out one of your boxes, you might notice this new attribute that AQ will record called the "GPS End Point". There is one for every traditional box on AQ. Or rather, it's available for every traditional box on AQ.</p><p>Don't worry, I'm not turning into this hobby into a geocache hybrid! You still have to follow whatever clues the owner of the box provides.</p><p>But it did occur to me that it might be handy to record the <i>precise</i> GPS coordinates of where your letterboxes are located. </p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>If the landmarks in your clues become impossible to follow (for instance, a forest fire swept through the area or a trail was re-routed), there would still be a way to find and check up on the box.</li><li>If someone looks for your box but doesn't find it, they could send you the precise GPS coordinates of where they looked and you can check if they were actually looking in the right place.</li><li>If the worst should happen and you pass away, it would allow anyone who adopted your box to check up on it even if the clues were difficult or impossible to follow.</li><li>You might forget precisely where you planted the box and have trouble finding it later because the landmarks have changed. <br /></li></ul><p>Basically, it's kind of a "backup" for your clues, and might make it easier to figure out if someone was actually looking in the correct place for your box if there was otherwise some uncertainty in the matter.</p><p>The only people who can see these coordinates are the owner and planters of the letterbox--not the people who are looking for it. Even the carvers of the stamps for the box can't see the coordinates--just those with "admin powers" over the box.</p><p>And adding coordinates is completely optional in any case. Obviously, there's no way AQ can go back and retroactively add coordinates to the hundreds of thousands of boxes that have been listed over the years and most of you likely have never kept track of this information either. (I know I haven't, although there are a couple of boxes I have planted where that information would definitely be useful right now!)</p><p>So if you notice information on your boxes about the "GPS end point", it'll be empty by default. You can edit the box and add it if you want--and know the coordinates of the actual location of the letterbox.</p><p>The coordinate is attached to individual boxes in a series since, obviously, different boxes will have different coordinates--even those in the same series. (At least that's how boxes <i>should</i> be listed, although I do know that people list boxes incorrectly all the time for a variety of reasons. I'll fix those when I come across them, but if you have two stamps with the same GPS coordinates, they should be counted as one box in a series!)</p><p>Anyhow, I hope some of you find this helpful! =)</p><p>Happy trails!</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/15/21/152101.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="328" data-original-width="400" src="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/15/21/152101.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Crisis averted! Dawnkey and 4EyesMcGee find their treasure!<br />Photo submitted by <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=152101" target="_blank">Dawnkey</a><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-41358042608771418412024-02-11T02:16:00.000-08:002024-02-11T02:16:53.746-08:00Bored With AI<p>So I just updated the <i>I... Am... Soooo... Bored...</i> widget yet again. That wasn't the plan. I was done. It was finished. Until... I blogged about it. One of the endearing quirks about the widget is the random phrase about "maybe your boredom vanish like something on a something day".</p><p>That little "feature" was a result of AI. I was chatting with the Bing chatbot, asking for suggestions for things to do if I'm bored. I was looking for ideas to add to the widget, and it fired off a host of suggestions from "looking for an invisible cow" to "going for a walk." After the list of suggestions, though, it signed off with: "May your boredom vanish like a ninja in a misty forest!" or something like that, which I thought was wonderful and hilarious. So I grabbed that and added it to the end of the widget as a "sign off." I also decided to spice it up even more by adding "on a moonless night" to the line.</p><p>May your boredom vanish like a ninja in a misty forest on a moonless night!</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiSEPLdS5ag92lhTykMZisGaOVTrGV6kFthLZOQ6WKL-afH9TT5JoT1gBBN4krFuZS32Q9MRhJLoqvS7so3TFZp_kmppjMkS-a8UhBD9jbAWVCKQgb6FMNzAMqoRod2pAVml0PkHvHcVkk7bnP2wVekdfNQ1vaFuefHPog9S2qGQvNlaSbny09oBQ" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiSEPLdS5ag92lhTykMZisGaOVTrGV6kFthLZOQ6WKL-afH9TT5JoT1gBBN4krFuZS32Q9MRhJLoqvS7so3TFZp_kmppjMkS-a8UhBD9jbAWVCKQgb6FMNzAMqoRod2pAVml0PkHvHcVkk7bnP2wVekdfNQ1vaFuefHPog9S2qGQvNlaSbny09oBQ=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="color: #666666;">May your boredom vanish like a ninja in a misty forest on a moonless night!</i></td></tr></tbody></table> </p><p>How can you not love a quote like that? I still needed to work on the main functionality, but I wanted to come back to that and maybe add a few other lines to make it interesting. Pick a random sign-off from several choices.</p><p>I invited Wassa into my idea for this widget early, and gave him a sneak peak into its development, and he said that he loved the line about the ninja, but thought there should be more of them, picked at random. Great minds, right? =) He said he'd think about it and give me a few more options.</p><p>Oh, Wassa.... You don't need to hurt yourself thinking about it.... This, I knew, was the kind of stuff where AI shined. So I went back to the chatbot and asked it to create <i>one hundred</i> alternative lines that were fun and silly in the style of "May your boredom vanish like a ninja in a misty forest on a moonless night" and got back a lot of surprisingly good answers.</p><p>I shared the resulting list with Wassa, and he seemed a little disappointed that AI might put him out of a job. "No," I consoled him, "it will just make you faster and more effective...."</p><p>Not all of the results were great. Some were kind of lame. Others made no sense at all. Some had grammatical errors. Some I could tweak to make them even better. But it gave a solid starting point for me to work with.</p><p>After going through them all, throwing out the bad ones and fixing others, I was left with a list of 70 alternatives. Then I worked them into the widget. It was great. Wassa loved it too.</p><p>I also used AI to create the image of the sloth that goes with the widget. I wanted to use a sloth because they always look so slow and bored, and it seemed like just the kind of animal that would love a boring widget. There was nothing particularly interesting about the image, though--just a sloth in a tree. I didn't even tell AI that I wanted a three-toed sloth (but that was what I was secretly hoping for.)</p><p>Anyhow, when it came time to announce the launch of the widget, I typed up the blog post (the previous post in this blog), and I wanted to sign off with the original silly sign-off from the widget: <i>May your boredom vanish like a ninja in a misty forest on a moonless night!</i></p><p>And that was going to be it.... but then I felt like I needed one last image to use at the end of the post. I was going to find some random letterboxing photo to use, but then I thought an image of an actual ninja entering a misty forest on a moonless night would be even better! But I'd never find an image like that online to use. Except.... I bet AI could create such an image!!!</p><p>So I went back to the Bing chatbot and asked it to create such an image. In keeping with the sloth logo for the widget, I told it to make the ninja a sloth dressed as a ninja. Why not? Shoot for the moon, right? It could be hilarious! =)<br /></p><p>The images it returned were gorgeous and hilarious. I loved them! They did have one small problem with them, however. They all had a full moon in the background. It would give me four images from my prompt, and every one of them had a full moon in the background. No, chatbot! Bad chatbot! "NO MOON" I told it!</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhRUfXwhLWOlvbxNMZ8KImK4Jd8WoYctJrIzu53wHDMhgwTFUG1V3z9mIUcyR3n8td3ntCZ2XGy-RXwOVgdljQ60FNLmyVsq4ABuJyJAcinAF2h9lJaawwlCUqo2q65ZiQqiz2sX0HdTPDHNTFESH6NiCi6j8Oz2WpzetxW3YFYFlHm-pyR-C0IeQ" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhRUfXwhLWOlvbxNMZ8KImK4Jd8WoYctJrIzu53wHDMhgwTFUG1V3z9mIUcyR3n8td3ntCZ2XGy-RXwOVgdljQ60FNLmyVsq4ABuJyJAcinAF2h9lJaawwlCUqo2q65ZiQqiz2sX0HdTPDHNTFESH6NiCi6j8Oz2WpzetxW3YFYFlHm-pyR-C0IeQ=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">For the life of me, I could not get the AI <br />to create images without a moon in the background!<br /></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p>And it replied how sorry it was that it misunderstood me, but that it was glad we could work through the misunderstanding and gave me four more images of a ninja entering a misty forest. But again, the moon was in every single image. Argh!!!</p><p>AI is amazingly talented and stupid at the same time. The quote clearly says it's a moonless night. I can't have a moon in the photo!</p><p>I tried a few other ways to entice the AI to remove the moon, but I couldn't seem to make it understand. I tried a "new moon" and a "dark sky with stars", but nothing worked. The AI kept adding in a stupid moon.<br /></p><p>But finally! It returned an image with a moon, but this time, the moon was against a clear background of the sky rather than through the complex branches of a forest and I thought, <i>that would be easy to digitally edit out</i>. And that's what I finally did. </p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiRQOlV9FnAYJKrNdKiSet3hEiorARWs6dO1mB3qeRFYjULRh_afDHWb9Qr8YeiPJfFpvNk0R8mW4wQbx95uEFdk4UZp2TcOM32Bau1DB46c0aTKX6S2fVmt5R1Xdqy3onUlnrUJXes0JoI52BhlMjIvtJI8-ql57-VFthzF9kSTOVWMgJDYsQirA" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiRQOlV9FnAYJKrNdKiSet3hEiorARWs6dO1mB3qeRFYjULRh_afDHWb9Qr8YeiPJfFpvNk0R8mW4wQbx95uEFdk4UZp2TcOM32Bau1DB46c0aTKX6S2fVmt5R1Xdqy3onUlnrUJXes0JoI52BhlMjIvtJI8-ql57-VFthzF9kSTOVWMgJDYsQirA=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">When AI gave me this image, it still included the moon. But it wasn't covered with trees like all the others and I knew I could edit the moon out of this one. Finally! Success!<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p><p>I loved the final image. A sloth, dressed as a ninja, entering a misty forest on a moonless night. That would never have happened without the help of AI.</p><p>I loved it so much, in fact, I thought it would be awesome if I had AI create images for <i>all</i> of the 70 quotes that were available, and displayed the images along with the quotes directly in the widget. No, no... I had more important things I needed to work on. I couldn't create 70 images to go with the quotes. I didn't have time for that.</p><p>I resisted for all about two hours before finally caving in and starting to create images based on the quotes. </p><p>Some of them were very fast and easy. One of my favorites, a penguin sliding down a snowy hill on a sunny day, generated an amazing image right out of the starting gate. The AI nailed that perfectly on my very first prompt. I didn't have to edit the image at all either.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiYEM7Mpi00bwQttXfwVtxZvkWUobN8mFbjFnR4LI21Alf49wMGTn5s0WtBExt7xtub1iA6nRrlwVPQoNltq4VGpXLOFzcKTDc3Js5WqNVo9bBp51bY3AjZOlvM74-SGivGSOArYZjT5cMREEl_jfaZWOMt6NIBPfPW-IXtgzya_SMeAoHLncwTzA" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiYEM7Mpi00bwQttXfwVtxZvkWUobN8mFbjFnR4LI21Alf49wMGTn5s0WtBExt7xtub1iA6nRrlwVPQoNltq4VGpXLOFzcKTDc3Js5WqNVo9bBp51bY3AjZOlvM74-SGivGSOArYZjT5cMREEl_jfaZWOMt6NIBPfPW-IXtgzya_SMeAoHLncwTzA=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">AI nailed it on my very first prompt!<br /></td></tr></tbody></table></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br /><p></p><p>Other prompts were a bit more problematic....</p><p>The AI was very difficult to work with whenever the image tended to be "darker". For instance, I needed an image of a dead body at the bottom of a mine shaft filled with noxious gases, but the AI was adamant about not creating images with dead bodies in them. ("Come on, I told it, it doesn't even have to be lifelike!" It failed to see the humor or irony in that statement.)</p><p>So then I tried to "trick" it into creating something kind of like a dead body. It had no problem creating people in a mine shaft with noxious fumes--but they were rescuers with air tanks on their backs. So I tried asking the AI to do the same image, but make it look like one of the rescuers had slipped and fell, and instead of being a rescuer, could he be a rescuee? </p><p>I never did get a great image out of that, but I finally got something that at least "kindof" worked. There was one obvious flaw where there was a boot coming out of his sleeve where his hand was supposed to be, but I kind of found that funny and decided to leave it in. At least anyone looking carefully at the image would know it was an AI generated image!</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjKn64Xe_5GHSPbO-90gmqoMCTjouTXNqkV9krR2xqYdTZQFypsNl3K_NmwXZmA77Ops3cZ6qblDofiXBmsQXyAuKiXhrCVGmgmp4Z4rKFKVdKsRAiK65IClB6PW-IskZJV0OVARrverLBBdzOgkXOs7bcsd8ksjsczcpVN0wR0VAr-E2uJqgA2AQ" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjKn64Xe_5GHSPbO-90gmqoMCTjouTXNqkV9krR2xqYdTZQFypsNl3K_NmwXZmA77Ops3cZ6qblDofiXBmsQXyAuKiXhrCVGmgmp4Z4rKFKVdKsRAiK65IClB6PW-IskZJV0OVARrverLBBdzOgkXOs7bcsd8ksjsczcpVN0wR0VAr-E2uJqgA2AQ=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Can you spot the obvious AI flaw in this image? =)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p>I knew the quote about boredom washing away like a bloodstain on a murder weapon was going to be a difficult pill for the AI to swallow even before I typed in the first prompt, so I started thinking about how to get something close to what I was thinking without saying it in so many words. Finally I tried prompting it to create a knife covered with "cranberry" stains being washed off in a sink. And... .well, they're definitely cranberries in the AI-generated image, but if you squint and don't look too closely, it could possibly look like clumpy lumps of blood. Good enough! And I moved on.... =)</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjLQ-X9lj7pc9dj5AD4kQv3xz1NNMrnq642DdNCMh8QbQgOVRUKj3awIoLU-hFdNcV1T1xE6KqsUiutN3hPVx3dfOxT6weE-as8paPmpS5E5OW8OsxaqjKmPUNbvHWOkD-De0K8i3r4E6i1D0hM1d8XnerpcZ21AS8Zxc9tPK8DksQLuSR9DK0yyA" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjLQ-X9lj7pc9dj5AD4kQv3xz1NNMrnq642DdNCMh8QbQgOVRUKj3awIoLU-hFdNcV1T1xE6KqsUiutN3hPVx3dfOxT6weE-as8paPmpS5E5OW8OsxaqjKmPUNbvHWOkD-De0K8i3r4E6i1D0hM1d8XnerpcZ21AS8Zxc9tPK8DksQLuSR9DK0yyA=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cranberries... blood... they're basically the same thing, right? =)<br />It's a pretty disturbing image either way!<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />I had trouble with the line about discarding a card from a losing poker hand. The AI didn't seem to discriminate against gambling, but rather, it was the cards themselves. Every image it generated always had an ace of spades being discarded--which doesn't <i>look</i> like a bad card! Finally I explicitly told it to change the card to a five of hearts. What can you do with a five of hearts? But it turns out, AI has trouble counting. The card was a 5, but only included 4 hearts on it. *sigh* But there was a big blank space between then, so I knew I could copy one of the other hearts and copy and paste a 5th heart into that empty space. Problem solved. On to the next quote!</p><p>The line about a tourist being lost in a big city without a map was surprisingly difficult to generate as well because the AI kept adding tourists WITH a map. "NO MAP!" I would tell it, but then it would generate four more images, all of them with a lost-looking tourist looking at a map. Nothing I said seemed to get rid of that map.</p><p>Then I hit upon the idea of what if I could get the AI to turn the map into something else. So I added the note about the lost tourist holding a "wildlife guide", and that finally worked. Finally got an image of a lost tourist that wasn't holding a map anymore--and a wildlife guide wasn't going to includes maps for the big city, so that wasn't going to help him!</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj6BH2S4hsUoPUFzXVityLp0oNN-bc78g4PDKQADxk_-w_ZY3oJHMmGBYj3XGTgSUU6VZJKuNPbLVa1CRmHLeKPReXgU7HUJGM_zcqF690bJ2fuNWsMG8uS_88jB9sgdI2mRSrAQkxuJY6RtWOalW75fEwoN2GHSLZT78O9OrjWPzuBGTValSUdPw" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj6BH2S4hsUoPUFzXVityLp0oNN-bc78g4PDKQADxk_-w_ZY3oJHMmGBYj3XGTgSUU6VZJKuNPbLVa1CRmHLeKPReXgU7HUJGM_zcqF690bJ2fuNWsMG8uS_88jB9sgdI2mRSrAQkxuJY6RtWOalW75fEwoN2GHSLZT78O9OrjWPzuBGTValSUdPw=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yeah, you aren't going to find the Chrysler Building with that wildlife guide, buddy! (I'm also amused at how AI spells everything with random letters whenever text should go somewhere.)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Another problematic line was the one about a match burning in a fireplace of an apartment complex that was on fire. "This is a bit disturbing," the AI replied. "Is this for safety reasons or are you thinking about arson." *sigh* "No, I am not an arsonist," I tried to assure it. I really hope the authorities aren't monitoring my Internet usage. This would be a difficult one to explain!<br /></p><p>I eventually gave up trying to create an apartment complex that was on fire--I didn't seem to get anywhere with that line of requests--and focused on the match in the fireplace part of the line, which the AI was happy to create.</p><p>Having a muscle relaxing on a massage chair on the beach, for some odd reason, was something that the AI was not willing to create. Massage chairs and a beach it was fine with, but a muscle--apparently--was a step too far. I thought about trying to digitally edit the image to add a muscle to an empty massage chair on a beach, but I wasn't even really sure what a free-standing muscle should look like. A steak?</p><p>Then I wondered what would happen if I changed "muscle" to "mussel", and the AI had no problem with that. Sure, it could create an image of a mussel in a massage chair on a beach. And the image was hilariously wonderful! So I changed the quote to match the new photo. That was the only line where I edited the line to match the photo rather than the photo to match the line.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgZrL2XYmB0P__i9xl1nPz_lsG5HXx9cCVfqud5gnnrdJ5MabspCj7SVX3Blscgu8lOoSwmzyiIe2yMJPJis1Ns8S1N1CPykb868pm_shbNhYq71z6Gkjsqa0DvZQ5dRh6whQmYT9x56UxgnGtIKraSINC-g-DpWR0hoGjn6z6Q6uzx7jYLzGnfRA" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgZrL2XYmB0P__i9xl1nPz_lsG5HXx9cCVfqud5gnnrdJ5MabspCj7SVX3Blscgu8lOoSwmzyiIe2yMJPJis1Ns8S1N1CPykb868pm_shbNhYq71z6Gkjsqa0DvZQ5dRh6whQmYT9x56UxgnGtIKraSINC-g-DpWR0hoGjn6z6Q6uzx7jYLzGnfRA=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A mussel, relaxing on a massage chair on a tropical beach. =)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />There were a couple of quotes about boredom disappearing like a sinking ship, but the AI was dead set against making images of any ships actually in the process of sinking. I eventually settled on some ships in stormy weather that "could" sink if the image were a video that could play. =)</p><p>Annoyingly, however, the chatbot would say that it had no problem creating an image of a sinking ship, but then only provide images of non-sinking ships! "No, that's not what I asked for," I insisted. It didn't help.</p><p>The chatbot might have had a problem with creating images of sinking ships, but it clearly has no love for snowmen soaking in a hot spring. It gave me an image of that without any fuss at all.</p><p>Another quote I had problems with was a broken glass of wine on a cobblestone street during an earthquake. The cobblestone street and the earthquake weren't issues, but the <i>broken</i> glass of wine was a challenge. AI kept wanting to create unbroken glasses, and the rare time I got it to create broken glasses, it looked horrible--as if it didn't know how to draw broken glass. I finally gave up and just accepted an unbroken glass, but at least it was tilted over on its side and the wine was spilling out.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhuf_CGSDlPsYjEia2QFtMh75xON1FtWkUtpvHRnEy6HZwK9Lw3OvNmMigT5ntLR6C9JFqWdIcU_5OvOLJePJyi-3La32C3ms5GCkB17OF-A_Q5nKZcyuUSLqSm8AtMRSzoVZLDcAzzJv2HkOvc27PWW9kVvYeSqXPnnUxp4Lg-xZ_zS6ZpX_AcVQ" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhuf_CGSDlPsYjEia2QFtMh75xON1FtWkUtpvHRnEy6HZwK9Lw3OvNmMigT5ntLR6C9JFqWdIcU_5OvOLJePJyi-3La32C3ms5GCkB17OF-A_Q5nKZcyuUSLqSm8AtMRSzoVZLDcAzzJv2HkOvc27PWW9kVvYeSqXPnnUxp4Lg-xZ_zS6ZpX_AcVQ=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rest assure, in case of an earthquake, wine glasses are actually indestructible! The wine might spill out, but the glass won't break!<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />The last image I had a lot of trouble was the zombie that was decapitated and bludgeoned to death. I knew this was going to be a difficult one before I even typed in the first prompt. I decided to skip with trying to have it decapitated and bludgeoned to death knowing the AI wouldn't do either of those things, but maybe a dead zombie laying on the ground was sufficient. Depending on the image I got, maybe I could even digitally remove the head or deform it into something that looked bludgeoned.</p><p>I just couldn't make it work, though. Even getting the AI to generate a zombie was often difficult--but it seemed to help if I asked for it to be a "cartoon zombie". ("It doesn't have to look <i>real!"</i>) I tried getting the AI to create an image of a zombie "laying down for a nap"--anything that might look like a dead zombie--but to no avail. I couldn't make anything work.</p><p>Finally I just took a cartoon-ish zombie with no background at all and rotated the image sideways, then had AI generate a background of a forest with a cartoon style. (I wanted the background to fit the cartoon-look of the zombie.) Then plopped the zombie onto it in my image editor. It looks horrible and is perhaps the least satisfying image of them since it looks so horribly photoshopped.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEji4czA6h4FNhM8ct53126m08JBIa-3kGvJwOnz2XKoQzKIt7XmyW_gaGzfIJ3yoCOWb9l-jSlRMYuVI8xOfXuON3hgh_Tww3OeQnHadbTyh58a12aCVAymW5bI9h6liOuk2hhr4UCmGd_VVoehRAOuwhqrgXcS1PmkM6Ld8XdEaPnlFHPVtZ0Lmg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEji4czA6h4FNhM8ct53126m08JBIa-3kGvJwOnz2XKoQzKIt7XmyW_gaGzfIJ3yoCOWb9l-jSlRMYuVI8xOfXuON3hgh_Tww3OeQnHadbTyh58a12aCVAymW5bI9h6liOuk2hhr4UCmGd_VVoehRAOuwhqrgXcS1PmkM6Ld8XdEaPnlFHPVtZ0Lmg=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Arguably the worst of the AI-generated images (two AI-generated images in this case) that I decided to use anyhow.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />There were a few quotes that I just couldn't create anything that was remotely funny or interesting: like Richard Nixon resigning in disgrace. For the life of me, the AI would not create any sort of image resembling Richard Nixon. It didn't matter if it looked like a cartoon or not. I tried describing Richard Nixon's appearance rather than use his name directly, but the images just didn't look enough like Richard Nixon to work. I finally gave up and decided it wasn't that funny of a line anyhow and threw it out completely.</p><p>There was one other line that I added about "May your boredom be extinguished like the fire on your nipples after a prank-gone-wrong!" and I was pretty sure the AI was not going to create an image for me of two nipples that were on fire, but fortunately, I had my own image for that. That was the only line I didn't use AI to create an image. =)</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgQ2d-Dv8r_0LLilrZuYwVgHVBAdu5YZ3UvYD5Og9z3J_a2I8yZFFbYn8R2e1RuTaCyoT2k_SMdP4Z3oj2RXQXS03phRGxxNLfoT7PAfss85HwF-ojeWeAC_vKq5TqKJcuRQo7PGs-oE0dez5moGjriQBS5eiI0a1RtbNqdyDI5Htrpg8Ge15FJAQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="405" data-original-width="303" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgQ2d-Dv8r_0LLilrZuYwVgHVBAdu5YZ3UvYD5Og9z3J_a2I8yZFFbYn8R2e1RuTaCyoT2k_SMdP4Z3oj2RXQXS03phRGxxNLfoT7PAfss85HwF-ojeWeAC_vKq5TqKJcuRQo7PGs-oE0dez5moGjriQBS5eiI0a1RtbNqdyDI5Htrpg8Ge15FJAQ" width="180" /></a></div> <p></p><p>Anyhow... after getting images for all the funny quotes, I updated the code to use them and uploaded them to the live site, and now you can see them all if you refresh the widget enough. If you dare....</p><p>You might think that this widget was a total waste of my time, and perhaps you're right. But I have to admit, I found it very useful learning how to harness the power of AI to help create it. AI influenced <i>so much</i> of this widget! It helped with the suggestions for things to do if you're bored. It created the spinning wheel. It helped create the amusing lines about your boredom vanishing like a ninja in a misty forest on a moonless night--then helped create the images to describe those lines!</p><p>AI had its limitations, for sure, but it was an enormously educational experience for me. =)<br /></p><p>If you want to see the rest of the AI-generated images.... you'll just have to install the widget and refresh it a whole bunch of times! Happy trails!<br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-50888487181635181902024-02-10T00:40:00.000-08:002024-02-10T00:41:26.028-08:00Bored? Want to waste a little time?<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjUt9fOdZOJ7H0HqKZHxc-6ldOGHyqASU7VaurCevYuzkjetK0ZLccibBXtle-QzRGI9jJ2jhijjq_DGVHf9adY85OvQQvawzE6FYCcU6gFL-EsS2sPB0AAxO7KNrgQvIrVVy1zOrigWhIdpqQTLdF2KecRIHmjXKsug5LuqKxb2iCCGqB7URvNQw" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="435" data-original-width="512" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjUt9fOdZOJ7H0HqKZHxc-6ldOGHyqASU7VaurCevYuzkjetK0ZLccibBXtle-QzRGI9jJ2jhijjq_DGVHf9adY85OvQQvawzE6FYCcU6gFL-EsS2sPB0AAxO7KNrgQvIrVVy1zOrigWhIdpqQTLdF2KecRIHmjXKsug5LuqKxb2iCCGqB7URvNQw=w400-h340" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i style="color: #666666;">"I am soooo bored, I might take a nap."</i></span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />I know what you're thinking.... how can anyone be bored with all those letterboxes left to be found? And you make a good point, but it <i>still happens!</i> Maybe it's late at night and your eyes are blurry from carving by the dim light with a magnifying class. But somehow, someway, you wind up bored with nothing to do.<p></p><p>AQ has the solution! Yes, there's a new widget called the <i>I... Am... Soooo.... Bored...</i> widget, and it'll suggest random things that you can do!</p><p>They might be silly, they might be difficult, they might be expensive or otherwise impractical, but these aren't things you <i>have</i> to do--just suggestions for things you <i>might</i> want to do. And if you don't like a suggestion, just spin the wheel and check out a different one!</p><p>For instance, here's a few suggestions you might get:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Type your full name with your nose.</li><li>uʍop ǝpᴉsdn pɐǝɹ oʇ uɹɐǝ˥</li><li>Write a note of appreciation to someone</li><li>Or, perhaps my favorite: Go for a walk <br /></li></ul><p>If that isn't convincing you, it'll also mention that Wassa has been helping with testing and suggestions, so the widget is officially Wassa approved with such ringing endorsements as "I'm kinda loving this stupid little project" and "I find it oddly compelling, overall." With endorsements like that, how can you say no?! <br /></p><p>It will be a premium member perk because really, it's not needed. Like, at all.... For anyone. Just a little fun that <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/marketplace/subscribe/" target="_blank">premium members</a> help make possible.</p><p>Ready to check out the latest and greatest widget ever? Go to the <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/mypage/widgets/add.php" target="_blank">Add Widgets</a> section of My Page and find the Bored widget. You won't be disappointed! (But if you are, just do some of the activities it suggests and you'll forget all about being disappointed.)</p><p>May your boredom vanish like a ninja into a misty forest on a moonless night!</p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj5p2eqgVtKiUFf7zI1V2jj9y-sb8X74nNw2w_9-91sX4vJC_I6TL0xpO4SD6gKV47lQRZzPFByJn6NWVnd7excwMznSJ_sBqEIZ_2-iLgwAtxUB04nikm0Ew50QzGyi22BA9dbYcsdDqtJDgsfEUxkLEJtjUYaEoOAY348PwbRDjFQO5gSoOqv_A" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj5p2eqgVtKiUFf7zI1V2jj9y-sb8X74nNw2w_9-91sX4vJC_I6TL0xpO4SD6gKV47lQRZzPFByJn6NWVnd7excwMznSJ_sBqEIZ_2-iLgwAtxUB04nikm0Ew50QzGyi22BA9dbYcsdDqtJDgsfEUxkLEJtjUYaEoOAY348PwbRDjFQO5gSoOqv_A=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i style="color: #666666;">"You can't see me..."</i><br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /><p></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-69190217083187045952024-01-18T02:43:00.000-08:002024-01-18T02:43:24.499-08:00The JavaScript Update<p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/15/22/152231.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="300" src="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/15/22/152231.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pokey Joe, <br />photo submitted <br />by <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=152231" target="_blank">Happy Hyper Hikers</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br />So I took AQ down for another Big Update. And, of course, some of you might ask.... what changed?</p><p>For the most part... not much. That was the plan too. =)</p><p>Long story short.... you can move widgets on My Page and sort people in trackers or boxes in a series with your smartphone now! Woo-who! =)</p><p>For the long version of the story, keep reading.... ;o)<br /></p><p>Last year, I got an email from Google saying that the Google Maps on AQ will stop working. Definitely and definitively. They'll just stop working sometime in May at the very latest, and the reason has to do with a decision I made about 20 years ago. (Twenty years?!)</p><p>You see, I've never really known much JavaScript (or JS for short), and when I needed JavaScript to do a few tasks, I started using a JS library known as Prototype.</p><p>It's cool. It allowed me to create stuff like My Page--which uses all sorts of features that are enabled with Prototype. Opening and closing widgets, moving them around, etc.</p><p>BUT--apparently, Prototype is going to break Google Maps.</p><p>And at first I thought, "No problem. I'll just update to the latest version of Prototype. I'm sure whatever it is causing the problem is going to be fixed. After all, everybody wants Google Maps to keep working, right?"</p><p>And it had probably been about a decade since I've updated it. Why bother when it keeps working so well?</p><p>But when I went to look it up, I discovered that the JS library had not been updated at all for nearly a decade! The project, apparently, is all but dead. I can't just version my way out of this problem.</p><p>And somehow, I figured a number of you guys might be upset if I just let Google Maps stop working.</p><p>Soo..... Hmm..... I could try updating Prototype myself, but that's way beyond my capabilities.<br /></p><p>There's another JS library known as jQuery. I didn't use jQuery originally because when AQ started, it didn't exist. It had, however, taken the world by storm and is by far the most used JS library out there. I think over 50% of websites actually use it. Maybe I should switch to using that?</p><p>Ugh, but then I'd have to learn all the nitty gritty details about how that works. What if this kind of problem shows up again in another 20 years?</p><p>There was another option, though.... why don't I just create my own mini-JavaScript library? There are a number of advantages in just ditching the established libraries. Mine would be much smaller (and therefore faster to load and run). I wouldn't have to add all the stuff that needs to be there for millions of people to use. I just need the stuff that *I* need to use! And if I use my own code, I can update it as often and whenever I needed. And I'll understand exactly how all it works.</p><p>But this meant.... I really needed to learn JavaScript in a fair amount of depth.</p><p>So I studied and learned.</p><p>On my development machine, I started updating small things--like the "here" button on location-based searches. Then progressively worked up to larger and more complex tasks.</p><p>One of the last things I dived into was drag-and-drop. I knew that would be complex, and the height of complexity would be My Page. I shuttered just thinking about how I would make My Page work so well without a library to do the heavy lifting. *shudder*</p><p>It's taken a month or two, but I finally got a working version up.</p><p>And... it's even better than before! I've <i>improved</i> it!</p><p>The vast majority of the JS that I used before--you shouldn't see any differences at all. Most of the changes are meant to be under-the-hood and out of sight. </p><p>But after recreating the drag-and-drop functionality--a huge milestone in my book!--I wondered if I could improve it by making it work for smartphones. It's a little annoying that you can't move stuff when you're on a smartphone, right? It annoys me too! To be fair, Prototype was created before smartphones were a thing. There's a reason smartphones weren't really supported--they simply didn't exist when the technology I used was created.<br /></p><p>But it seemed like something I could add, so I started working on it....</p><p> And... well, I just couldn't make it work properly with a touch-screen device. Stuff happened, but I just couldn't make a smooth drag-and-drop motion with a touch-screen device. ARGH!!!!</p><p>Part of the reason was that the touch screen is meant for scrolling pages, and the motion to move the page sometimes interfered with the motion to move the object.</p><p>But I wasn't going to give up that easily. Nope. I had another idea. Instead of a drag-and-drop, what if I let someone tap the item they want to move, then tap where they want the item to go? So I added some event handlers and....</p><p>...it worked! I could move items around with a touch-screen! Then I figured that I could also do the same for mouse clicks, so I started working on that and realized I could combine both with a simple onClick handler. Tap on, tap off. So simple! Works on desktops and smartphones. The drag-and-drop isn't even really needed at all, although it doesn't interfere with anything so it makes sense to leave it alone for those people who are used to drag-and-dropping. That will still work.</p><p>Another thing that's advanced dramatically over the last 20 years is accessibility, and the sorting or moving of items still had a major accessibility problem. You couldn't move anything with a keyboard. Someone using a screen reader, for instance, and was completely dependent on the use of a keyboard, would still never be able to sort items. And with all my newfound knowledge, I didn't think it would be very difficult to add keyboard support for sorting as well.</p><p>So then I did that.</p><p>Oh, there were definitely difficulties along the way, but I worked through them and sorting can now be done with a mouse, touch screen or keyboard. They all work! The actual drag-and-drop still only works with a mouse, but maybe someday I'll figure out what went wrong and get it working with a touch screen too. Now that I'm using my own code rather than a JS library, I can edit it or make future tweaks as needed whenever I want. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/15/31/153185.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="300" src="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/15/31/153185.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo submitted by <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=153185" target="_blank">Wronghat</a>.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-21031041621404886772023-10-02T00:43:00.004-07:002023-10-02T00:46:59.885-07:00Last week for eclipse glasses!<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/10/76/109076.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="239" height="300" src="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/10/76/109076.jpg" width="239" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This photos shows the last <br />annular eclipse in the <br />United States, <br />taken by <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=109076" target="_blank">Thunderbird</a> in 2012.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>If you plan to watch the <a href="https://eclipse2024.org/2023eclipse/eclipse_cities/statemap.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">solar eclipse on October 14th</a>, this is your last week to order eclipse glasses on Atlas Quest! If you're anywhere near the centerline of the eclipse, it'll be pretty awesome. Even if you aren't especially close to the centerline, most of the contiguous United States will still see over 50% of the sun's surface covered by the moon. And <i>everywhere</i> within the contiguous United States will experience some sort of partial eclipse., but at no point during the eclipse will it be safe to watch with unprotected eyes.<p></p><p>Be prepared! Order your eclipse glasses today from the <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/marketplace/aq/" target="_blank">AQ Marketplace</a>! Additionally, it's a two for one deal for many of you because there will be a <i>total</i> solar eclipse running through the United States next April and you can reuse the eclipse glasses for that next exclipse as well. It'll be an experience of a lifetime!</p><p>As a side note, Amanda and I plan to watch this eclipse from somewhere in New Mexico, so if you're interested in joining us, keep your eyes posted. We haven't really nailed down <i>exactly</i> where we'll watch it from as of yet, but we thought it might be interesting to head down somewhere near Roswell. Maybe look for some extraterrestrials while watching an event from out of this world. =) And it might be that the weather dictates precisely where we end up, but if you're nearby and possibly want to drop in to visit your favorite turtle and Nancy Drew sleuth, be sure to sign up for <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/showinfo.php?eventId=4842" target="_blank">Extraterrestrial Adventures</a>.</p><p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/10/77/109177.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="300" height="225" src="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/10/77/109177.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Experience the magic and awe of an annual eclipse!<br />Photo provided by <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=109177" target="_blank">2heartsare1</a> from our 2012 annular eclipse event.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-48577756932351436972023-09-20T02:46:00.001-07:002023-09-20T02:46:29.360-07:00Major Announcement! And totally not click-bait!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>So.... since the Last Big Update, you might be wondering what I've been up to. Mostly still working on speeding up slow queries. That Last Big Update largely fixed the worst of the issues, but that didn't mean there wasn't still room for improvement and I've continued to improve.<p></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhELOXNusA1AY4uwLhi-O4KLvEMfkSEmUbM9pjyJGG0Gh7fEx-IB8Cr6Gkq9YK-amcpu1_lmbpCFZ3Gc1_bPbt5nKecekrwRvZx2w9Dzu6SgDsNcgafsptX72gYY64hzworkpVDQVrt5DwAvxAoIJLaHRtkf5RZyLrXvXe0f_s3w4SIUlkS3kZ6fw" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="1000" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhELOXNusA1AY4uwLhi-O4KLvEMfkSEmUbM9pjyJGG0Gh7fEx-IB8Cr6Gkq9YK-amcpu1_lmbpCFZ3Gc1_bPbt5nKecekrwRvZx2w9Dzu6SgDsNcgafsptX72gYY64hzworkpVDQVrt5DwAvxAoIJLaHRtkf5RZyLrXvXe0f_s3w4SIUlkS3kZ6fw=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I wish I could play the Jaws music here. The major announcement<br /><i>is</i> ominous, but good in the long run! Photo provided by <br /><a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=162053" target="_blank">Silver Eagle</a> while snorkeling with whale sharks in the Maldives.<br />(I am SO totally jealous too!)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>The new and improved code I wrote for Atlas Quest has been simply awesome. I'm very, very happy with how it's been performing, and once AQ seemed to be running well, I copied it over to <a href="https://www.letterboxing.org/" target="_blank">LbNA </a>where I fixed up some other slow-ish queries. Those weren't as problematic since not as many people use that website and the queries are a lot simpler anyhow, but since all my websites run on the same server, keeping things running fast on other databases will also help the AQ database run faster and better as well.</p><p>Then I copied the new query code over to <a href="https://www.walking4fun.com/" target="_blank">Walking 4 Fun</a> and repeated the process, improving the slower queries that I identified. The busiest page on W4F, the "My Walk" page, I'm happy to report, used to take--on average--about 1 to 2 seconds to run all of the queries needed to generate that page, and it's now down to about 35 ms. I just opened the page for myself and all of the queries--combined--took precisely 38 ms to run. Or, in other words, 0.038 seconds. Massive improvements!</p><p>And like I said before, that does help the AQ database run better as well. If you happened to run a search just as someone else was trying to look up their daily steps on Walking 4 Fun, your query might have run a second or two slower if the database was bogged down handling these other queries. So fixing these types of things are really good for <i>all</i> the databases on the system.<br /></p><p>And then I've been hopping on and off each of the three major websites that use the database each day, looking for additional other queries that can be optimized. Some of the optimizations might not even seem like they're worth the effort. One query I improved a couple of days ago on LbNA now runs <i>ten times faster!</i> Which sounds impressive, until you realize that it originally took 0.20 seconds to run and now it takes 0.02 seconds to run. It is ten times faster, but it was already pretty fast to begin with.</p><p>But still, I've been making these kinds of "modest" improvements for weeks--months even, if you include the tweaks I made before the Last Big Update, and collectively, it starts to add up. A query that runs 1/10th of a second faster 10,000 times per day means the database doesn't spend 1000 seconds (about 16 minutes) every day running that query anymore.</p><p>And occasionally, I still stumbled onto an elephant of an improvement. Someone runs a search with weird parameters that take 20 seconds to run and I can tweak the query to make it run in less than a second. For <i>that</i> person, they'll see a dramatic improvement if they ever run that search again, and for everyone else, their queries won't be hung for 20 seconds while dealing with that other one. I'm not finding many of these kinds of improvements anymore, but it's always satisfying when I do. =)</p><p>But the database is still suffering from one issue that all the speed improvements in the world won't fix which is... a lack of memory. The database runs on a server with a mere 10GB of memory and the databases it uses are quite a bit larger than that. There's sometimes trouble getting all of the indexes to fit into internal memory--which helps queries run fast--and there's not really any way for me to optimize that. Basically, it sometimes needs to look up an index from the disk, which is slow. It's kind of like the difference between looking up a term in an index of a book or having the index memorized and being able to skip the process of actually looking it up because it's already in your head. </p><p>And the next big improvement for the database is.... a bigger server! Specifically, a server with more RAM. So I started looking into upgrading the server. Originally I thought I'd just upgrade to a bigger VPS which is relatively painless and easy, but it turns out if I upgrade to a <i>dedicated server</i>, I'd actually get even more RAM, more disk space and at a lower cost than keeping it as part of a VPS!</p><p>So.... within the next week or so, I plan to move AQ (and LbNA, and W4F, and all of my other websites) to a fancy, new dedicated server.</p><p>Unfortunately, this will require a relatively significant period of downtime. The IP address of the websites will be changing, so there's also the whole issue of IP address propagation as well. Even if the new server is up and running fine, you might have trouble accessing it until the new IP address gets to your computer. For most people, this usually updates within a few hours, but some people in the past have had systems that took a week or longer before picking up the new IP address. It's not something I have a lot of control over either.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhBpjNPUj8aBXgANsTDeXTIdXp6H3Dv_n36ohJUyjJ4KmaV0ok85BN7pcSEeE5pkRcHDVwl6fc_JNTJ4Eoj-UHfaTaM52TM79Tq9PT4nJs0UI_Sey1Z8T71qFrdAFwX3iIovGHm9Wtt6IrWxaa4yltpHKlIaIQz2Ir44rWfCSFKGFqRWwCD2u-msw" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="748" data-original-width="1000" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhBpjNPUj8aBXgANsTDeXTIdXp6H3Dv_n36ohJUyjJ4KmaV0ok85BN7pcSEeE5pkRcHDVwl6fc_JNTJ4Eoj-UHfaTaM52TM79Tq9PT4nJs0UI_Sey1Z8T71qFrdAFwX3iIovGHm9Wtt6IrWxaa4yltpHKlIaIQz2Ir44rWfCSFKGFqRWwCD2u-msw=w640-h478" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Will it be worth it, asks <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=152129" target="_blank">Wise Wanderer</a>? I think so. *nodding* =)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />The support team where I host the server reports the migration will take "24 to 48 hours"--that's the period of time that AQ (and LbNA) will be off limits to everyone. Once the migration is complete, the websites should be available within a few hours after that. Technically, the old servers will keep running during the migration, but any new letterboxes that are listed, messages posted, AQ mail sent, etc. won't be copied to the new server. It'll just appear like they were deleted.</p><p>I'm going to try seeing if I can just prevent people from logging in. If you can't log in, you can't really add any data to the database that won't get copied to the new server. This way, at least you can still run searches and look up publicly available boxes and message boards, even if you can't see the restricted ones that you would otherwise qualify for. I'm not actually sure how simple this will be since I never really designed AQ to keep running with the login options turned off. If it starts becoming too complicated, I might just choose to put up the "Under Construction" theme and make the entire website unavailable until the migration is complete.</p><p>But in any case, this will put both AQ and LbNA (and W4F for those of you who use it) out of commission for at least a day or two. Looking at the stats on AQ, mid-week (Tuesday through Thursday) is the least busy time for the website, so I'll probably try doing the update starting Tuesday of next week, and it should be available again by Thursday.</p><p>That's my tentative plan. It could change. When AQ and LbNA are down, I'll post updates to the AQ Facebook page at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AtlasQuest">https://www.facebook.com/AtlasQuest</a> so make sure you're subscribed there if you want updates.</p><p>Even after the transfer is complete, there will likely be times when I need to restart the database server. With more memory, I'll have to update the database configuration options and I'll watch to see how it performs for a day or so, make some tweaks, restart the server, and repeat. So there will likely be some hiccups for the first week after the update as I fine-tune the configuration settings. Once it's all done, however, I hope AQ (and LbNA) run better than ever! =)</p><p>The new dedicated server I'm eying, btw, has 16GB of RAM--which almost doubles the available amount of memory for the database to use. It also comes with a <i>lot</i> more disk space as well, so I plan to stop AQ from deleting the high-resolution photos from the photo albums. At least until disk space becomes more problematic again. Do not expect that the high-resolution photos will <i>always</i> be stored forever, though. This new server has about 3-4 times more disk space available and I don't really have 3-4 times more data to store, so I'll just allow the high-resolution photos to linger longer than before.</p><p>And thanks to all of you <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/marketplace/subscribe/" target="_blank">premium members</a> (and LbNA donors) who pay for all these expenses! I actually started the premium memberships when AQ was on a shared server, fearful that I'd have to move to a dedicated server and I didn't have the money to afford one. Turned out, I never did upgrade to a dedicated server once I learned about the existence of VPSes (Virtual Private Servers), which basically <i>acts</i> like a dedicated server but is actually hosted on a server that shares resources with other websites and accounts. (And theoretically, one of those running a particularly slow query could cause other sites like AQ to be more sluggish as well, but I have no idea what the other websites are or how well they run.) The extra money premium memberships generated beyond the cost of the VPS wound up being my income since a VPS was far cheaper to run than a dedicated server.</p><p>I've upgraded the VPS a number of times over the years, increasing the memory and disk space along the way, so it's not nearly as cheap as when I first moved to the VPS, but it feels like this website has really come full circle now that it's more economical to run on a <i>dedicated</i> server than a VPS! At long last, the original reason I started the premium membership--to pay for a dedicated server--is finally coming true. =)</p><p>In completely unrelated news.... you'll still find eclipse glasses in the <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/marketplace/aq/" target="_blank">AQ Marketplace</a>. If you want to watch the eclipse on October 14th, be sure to order them while there's still time! At no point anywhere in will it be safe to directly view the eclipse without eye protection and <i>everyone</i> in the contiguous United States can see it (weather permitting). And every time there's an eclipse, there are always stories about price-gouging by desperate people in the days leading up to the eclipse. Be prepared! (I won't price-gouge you if you wait until the last minute--I just won't sell them at all because I can't be certain that they would arrive to you in time.)<br /></p><p>Happy trails! And sorry in advance if the downtime next week causes you any inconvenience!</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjSKT2BZwu05-jnM3qQBEKuZuRRpAoUoz3V8Azv4Rfdt2lt27XpEiYgIs9uPcYeBi6VuxRxZftzLzu50TdDc6G1k8NfasvlSfORYFkvBnPZ19mYUHd3hkQ0-aG_G-plrtyah_13Dw3LYLVTQblOjDVjpFLwEc1dPQrhxu0_qUY7Kf0AVN6XEYZF8A" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="109" data-original-width="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjSKT2BZwu05-jnM3qQBEKuZuRRpAoUoz3V8Azv4Rfdt2lt27XpEiYgIs9uPcYeBi6VuxRxZftzLzu50TdDc6G1k8NfasvlSfORYFkvBnPZ19mYUHd3hkQ0-aG_G-plrtyah_13Dw3LYLVTQblOjDVjpFLwEc1dPQrhxu0_qUY7Kf0AVN6XEYZF8A=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Make sure you have your eclipse glasses before October 14th!<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-26780984554198488582023-09-09T00:59:00.001-07:002023-09-09T00:59:56.180-07:00Please accept an invasion into your privacy....<p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhQtpiNxZhv0IllVQLjSL55WUq78g5sP-vDJCs2MLunuHfD1X_prk8pqdpbneUjMaVkfhk-asgSEAiFR8mVNBKI0N8tRWqo1qnSzR7LtstpVrTjX6cxfchk9ACb66ma5RSnZhDVEku_3lQvaRTiVoMj0KwsodQzDdgPah5YNZDgZLH0pVGYJLgSDw" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhQtpiNxZhv0IllVQLjSL55WUq78g5sP-vDJCs2MLunuHfD1X_prk8pqdpbneUjMaVkfhk-asgSEAiFR8mVNBKI0N8tRWqo1qnSzR7LtstpVrTjX6cxfchk9ACb66ma5RSnZhDVEku_3lQvaRTiVoMj0KwsodQzDdgPah5YNZDgZLH0pVGYJLgSDw=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Big brother is watching! Or is he...?<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>The title of this post is this very tongue-in-cheek. You might have noticed that AQ will now "sometimes" display a pop-up window like every single other website on the Internet about your privacy settings. For the most part, you can blame Europe for this since those are mostly about following European laws. As an American business primarily doing business with North American consumers, I've generally ignored it. I'm not even entirely sure if it applies to all websites or just for companies of a certain size. (Seems kind of like a waste to go after individuals who happen to be running a small, personal website.)</p><p>However.... I use Google AdSense to display Google ads (at least for you non-premium members out there!), and Google is going to require that websites have these pop-ups to comply with European laws or they'll stop serving ads completely. Thus.... I had them activated through my Google AdSense account.</p><p>You can actually deny consent--that just means Google can't serve ads that they believe are tailored specifically to you. The website will still work, however, even though AQ uses cookies to remember who you are. The consent form is more about "third-party cookies" (or even "second-party cookies"?). In any case, none of it applies to cookies that AQ uses just to remember who you are from page to page.</p><p>If you are a premium member and are set to auto-login whenever you visit the site, I don't think you'll see the consent form at all. It's tied to the Google Ads and premium members don't see Google Ads, so the AdSense code doesn't go into pages for premium members. And if you've clicked the button to auto-login, there won't be a chance for Google Ads to show up before you log into your account. So premium members set to auto-login may never see the consent form. It's new to me too, though, so maybe I'm wrong about that. <i>Google Is Everywhere. </i>They're probably watching you read this post right now. (They own Blogger, which is what this blog uses.) Maybe using a Chrome browser (brought to you by Google) will cause that consent form to pop up? I don't really know.</p><p>It might even be possible that the consent form pops up after already clicking through several pages on AQ since there are not Google Ads on every page. If you go to the main AQ home page at https://www.atlasquest.com -- where there are no Google Ads -- you could run a search for letterboxes then get the pop-up consent because the search results have a Google Ad at the bottom of the page. It won't necessarily pop up on the first page you see on AQ because of that.</p><p>I've also enabled these consent forms for all my other websites that display Google Ads such as <a href="https://www.walking4fun.com/" target="_blank">Walking 4 Fun</a> and <a href="https://www.thesodacanstove.com/" target="_blank">The Soda Can Stove</a> . <a href="https://letterboxing.org/">Letterboxing.org</a> doesn't use Google Ads so it'll be spared the consent form annoyance for the time being. (I don't have any plans to add Google Ads to that website, but who knows how privacy laws in the future will develop and even though I don't <i>plan</i> to add Google Ads to letterboxing.org, I'm not making any promises that it'll never happen. That website does need to at least pay for itself.)<br /></p><p>But in any case, nothing on AQ has really changed because of the consent form. Nothing in the privacy policy has changed, I'm not out selling your email address, or sharing private information in your AQ account to Google or anything. It's all about just making sure the Google Ads will continue to work for non-premium members. Gotta keep the lights on somehow! I'd just as soon prefer <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/marketplace/subscribe/" target="_blank">premium memberships</a> than messing with advertisements, but for those who can't afford a premium membership or prefer not to for some reason, Google ads are the alternative way to help support Atlas Quest financially.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj9u_kOGxnAkdtXuYRbuTxbARgA2HcQRSODdbFhNa6a1Ss8LcdvCGWZU_d3m4GrcdIHfczOlzr3cOIea7oWGxxpjV6DWkYOS2-tm495P65I19ju5P9zlwDd8MvjJ47a5r2zexm-42bEzeRJE6K3gKkzbfxrcacmu_5PEivnDNchI9iwBA4TQF8seA" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj9u_kOGxnAkdtXuYRbuTxbARgA2HcQRSODdbFhNa6a1Ss8LcdvCGWZU_d3m4GrcdIHfczOlzr3cOIea7oWGxxpjV6DWkYOS2-tm495P65I19ju5P9zlwDd8MvjJ47a5r2zexm-42bEzeRJE6K3gKkzbfxrcacmu_5PEivnDNchI9iwBA4TQF8seA" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the unsung perks of premium membership.... more privacy for you! =)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-37800083755763014532023-09-01T01:16:00.000-07:002023-09-01T01:16:34.289-07:00Click bait here! You won't believe what happens next!<p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/10/76/109076.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="239" src="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/10/76/109076.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo taken by <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=109076" target="_blank">Thunderbird</a> for <br />the 2012 annular eclipse<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>As some of you might know, there is a looming crisis. An solar eclipse is headed to America. It's expected to hit the shores United States on October 14th, and nobody will be spared from its wrath. Well, perhaps those in Alaska or Hawaii... but for everyone else.... Millions of people around the country will start looking at the sky--even looking directly at the sun. Without proper eye protection, this can lead to permanent blindness and even death. Well, okay, maybe not death, but I said this was click-bait, so I have to exaggerate and make false claims. But permanent blindness is certainly possible. You may have noticed--the sun is pretty bright.</p><p>This is not just any average eclipse, either. No..... This will be an annular eclipse. The proverbial Ring of Fire. The moon, alas, will be too small to completely cover the moon so this isn't technically a <i>total</i> solar eclipse--however the moon will cross directly over the middle of the sun so at its peak, you'll see a ring of fire completely surrounding the moon.</p><p>While the eclipse will be visible (weather permitting) to everyone in the contiguous United States, not everyone will be able to see the ring of fire. You'll need to be on a thin line, maybe a 100 miles wide, that slashes across the western United States in order to see that particular phenomena. It'll run through Oregon, touch the corners of California and Idaho, dive deep into Nevada and Utah, clip the corners of Arizona and Colorado before cutting through the heart of New Mexico and deep into Texas. It'll continue onward, running through Central and South America, but I'm assuming that there won't be many people from those areas reading this blog.<br /></p><p>Outside of that thin line, every location within the contiguous United States will see some sort of partial eclipse. Most of the country can see at least 50% of the sun covered.<br /></p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuNqH8AOexfgd3fWQCYN_7IE_699X9-y8RB-HI6-g2BrN8pNZL5_iHv2i7jQ4pcKXjnUMVscnC7BRqxqYslGo-y2UwWS0db4nZXZOcV6jvP4bXA-XDNINpySrnEj6DPmwlq3IddDWIqkzKtxgHGy849ePvF4fS2gqArvkcn6lDyDBwuZQQXNvepA/s1000/162682lg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="629" data-original-width="1000" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuNqH8AOexfgd3fWQCYN_7IE_699X9-y8RB-HI6-g2BrN8pNZL5_iHv2i7jQ4pcKXjnUMVscnC7BRqxqYslGo-y2UwWS0db4nZXZOcV6jvP4bXA-XDNINpySrnEj6DPmwlq3IddDWIqkzKtxgHGy849ePvF4fS2gqArvkcn6lDyDBwuZQQXNvepA/w640-h402/162682lg.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With these stylish shades, you can safely watch the solar eclipse happening on October 14th.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table> </p><p>Do you want to watch this marvelous dance of celestial worlds? Then buy your eclipse shades from the <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/marketplace/aq/" target="_blank">AQ Marketplace</a> now! With these fashionable eclipse glasses, you can safely watch the eclipse directly, perhaps while out letterboxing at the same time. They filter out 100% of the harmful ultraviolet, 100% of the harmful infrared, and 99.999% of intense visible light. They're sold in sets of 3--perfect to share with a friend or two. Or maybe your family. It's up to you! Or sell any extras for a fat profit to your enemies and/or co-workers. </p><p>Come the day of the eclipse, there will probably be plenty of people desperate to acquire these glasses after procrastinating until it was too late and price-gouging is rampant. Don't let this happen to you! Another reason not to procrastinate.... they'll only be in the AQ marketplace while supplies last. Once we run out, that'll probably be the last of them since it's unlikely I could reorder another batch before the eclipse. (I'll also take them out of the AQ Marketplace about a week before the eclipse if any are left so nobody can order them at the last minute. The post office takes time!)<br /></p><p>Want to learn more about the upcoming eclipse? Check out NASA's page about <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eclipses/2023/oct-14-annular/overview/">October 14, 2023, Solar Eclipse</a>. Or check out this <a href="https://eclipse2024.org/2023eclipse/eclipse_cities/statemap.html" target="_blank">eclipse simulator</a>.<br /></p><p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/10/16/109016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="269" data-original-width="300" src="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/10/16/109016.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo of previous satisfied customers from the 2012 annular eclipse--even if they aren't actually wearing their eclipse glasses in the photo! But they have them! Photo by <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-album.php?albumId=3311" target="_blank">Makita</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-42394242939195543862023-08-31T02:08:00.004-07:002023-08-31T02:08:36.767-07:00More restrictions! MUHAHAHaHahahahaha!!!!!<p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgDQ8T4-cFHJiKfB3aLlX16hmn3fj6t3OJjrZHwQzPpjGca__R_c7M8z97UzfubfVcigKnXehBio8J7QTSqpUp4XvFmofPbmVDihTFo28MkK_qAeqRhnd-apHFpJxAjF3Bc3tUJy2XW5qZAfX9TAFzapS26etHxoAjq1TZqpfP3vEcw_7fogitcGw" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgDQ8T4-cFHJiKfB3aLlX16hmn3fj6t3OJjrZHwQzPpjGca__R_c7M8z97UzfubfVcigKnXehBio8J7QTSqpUp4XvFmofPbmVDihTFo28MkK_qAeqRhnd-apHFpJxAjF3Bc3tUJy2XW5qZAfX9TAFzapS26etHxoAjq1TZqpfP3vEcw_7fogitcGw=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #999999; font-size: x-small;">Please confirm your identity....</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>For some of you using the website yesterday, you might have noticed a sudden surge of "unauthorized" boxes. That was a bug that I accidentally introduced while updating code for the <i>real</i> improvement.... which is a new type of restriction!</p><p>Because if there's one thing everyone wants, it's more restricted boxes. =)</p><p>Well, okay, that might not be exactly true.... however, <i>planters</i> tend to like more options for restricting boxes, and I've added a new one! The first new restriction that's been added in <i>years!</i></p><p>It is now possible to restrict boxes to just those people who are signed up for a specific event! If you add or edit a box, in the restrictions section, you'll now see an option for a "parent event" restriction. If you set it, only people who are confirmed signups for the specified event will see your box in the search results. (Assuming of course, they meet any other restrictions you might have added to the box.)</p><p>This is a great option for those who are planting temporary boxes that are available just at the event. No reason to bother everyone else on the website with boxes they can't find. It's not required that you restrict temporary boxes for events, but it's an option.</p><p>But that's not all! Nooo.... I went crazy and added the same restriction option for events and trackers as well!</p><p>You might be thinking... why in the world would you want to restrict an event to people attending an event? That makes no sense at all, right? WRONG!</p><p>What if, for instance, there are sub-events for the main event? Or pre- or post- events before or after the main show? And maybe those sub-events are only for those who are signed up for the main event. Now you can restrict them to only those with confirmed signups for the main event!</p><p>AQ will even allow you to restrict an event to people signed up for that same event.... you might think there's a recursive problem here. How can people sign up for an event that they are restricted from because they aren't signed up for it? In that case, it might be that the owner of the event wants to add people manually after they've been approved. (Perhaps they paid whatever fee was involved, or it's a WOM event.) You can't add yourself to the event, but as soon as an admin or the owner of the event does, you'll automatically be able to see the event listing.</p><p>And even trackers can be limited to those who are signed up for specific events. Honestly, I'm not really sure of a good use case for this scenario, but it was relatively easy to add simply by reusing the code I wrote for boxes and events. Perhaps someone is going to create an LTC tracker for use at an event, though, and now they can limit access to the tracker to those who are signed up for said event.</p><p>In any case, enjoy! I'm sure you'll think of all sorts of new ways to use the restrictions that I never even thought of! =)<br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-56468154646464046492023-06-12T02:50:00.001-07:002023-06-12T02:50:20.163-07:00Another database woes update....<p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhM95JPE-xY2u9P4NHtE7lVvglKVwGq1hfvM2Mt-p5A2NIr-kVI3_roPg2FKfMwuh6SowY_btmeapb8PQkzTRyZTBj_ugYUgiRrUM5Xkba4uet-xz4BktyDFfdz3_eVQ2d464H1Lac3ogcSpS2AZnYbx7CN8WCU4JxC3T3d11O3zSkwUw8VSVI" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="841" data-original-width="828" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhM95JPE-xY2u9P4NHtE7lVvglKVwGq1hfvM2Mt-p5A2NIr-kVI3_roPg2FKfMwuh6SowY_btmeapb8PQkzTRyZTBj_ugYUgiRrUM5Xkba4uet-xz4BktyDFfdz3_eVQ2d464H1Lac3ogcSpS2AZnYbx7CN8WCU4JxC3T3d11O3zSkwUw8VSVI=w394-h400" width="394" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo provided by <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=151933" target="_blank">Essex Explorers</a><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Yes, I continue working on the problem. Yes, it still is a problem. Opening logbooks for premium members has definitely caused a lot of slow queries which I haven't been able to put in adequate hacks for, which is why logbooks are still closed to non-premium members. (I'm half tempted to close them again for premium members, but since it doesn't seem to actually be crashing the database, I'm leaving it open.)</p><p>Today, I reached another major milestone in my Next Big Update--which is primarily about making database queries faster and more efficient. I've updated the core subsystem that runs searches on my development machine, and it seems to work pretty well over all. Of course, just because it works well on my development machine doesn't guarantee the same on the live website. *knock on wood*</p><p>But this is a huge milestone, and completely rewrites how AQ queries the database when you run a search. In some ways, the queries are simpler. In other ways, they're actually more complex. I use a lot more subqueries now, breaking big queries into smaller ones that are easier for the database to execute, but then the subqueries get merged together which adds complexity.</p><p>But most of you probably aren't interested in those sorts of nitty gritty details. Y'all want to know.... when will everything be back to normal?!</p><p>And... I'm still not sure. I <i>just</i> finished getting the core search queries done, but I still need to create unit tests and thoroughly kick the tires to make sure it all works as expected. And there are "mini-searches" scattered all over AQ that need to be updated all over the place. For example, a lot of the widgets on My Page are just the results of regular searches that can be performed manually, so all of those will need to be updated (and subsequently tested). Heck, even the logbooks are basically just specialized searches. All that code is connected.</p><p>So there's still a <i>lot</i> of work to be done... .but progress continues and at this point, I feel optimistic that I might be able to install a permanent fix and update AQ in... another month? Well, okay, a month might be optimistic, but theoretically possible. Two months might be more realistic.<br /></p><p>Yeah, I know, like I said... there's still so much for me to test, fix, and make sure the update goes as smoothly as possible. I was reluctant to even give estimates before because I really couldn't even fathom how long this might take, but now that the core code has been updated and seems to work reasonably well, I feel like I have a much better insight into how long it'll take me to properly test and fix the new code and integrate it into the rest of AQ.</p><p><br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-56911433994138823082023-06-03T09:22:00.002-07:002023-06-03T09:22:49.398-07:00Limited logbooks available!<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgJ_hgOrz6Rn2lh01cO76mBR1ySYshrCYzS3xWaHEvUdb81m-Oc5vNoOfCH33MfuuAY4Q9AEme5nysLbCbe1tHO_wp5VUjS1ydZ3im0KdzV7K9E0Kh-pdNEcPYZllH7sgEKr2UBt6SNPOCbz9YlRmhC4Z6L-Kt3ASNh1-773M2vf-039A-HBbs" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgJ_hgOrz6Rn2lh01cO76mBR1ySYshrCYzS3xWaHEvUdb81m-Oc5vNoOfCH33MfuuAY4Q9AEme5nysLbCbe1tHO_wp5VUjS1ydZ3im0KdzV7K9E0Kh-pdNEcPYZllH7sgEKr2UBt6SNPOCbz9YlRmhC4Z6L-Kt3ASNh1-773M2vf-039A-HBbs=w300-h400" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo provided <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=152087" target="_blank">by Angel Winks</a><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p>I've been adding hacks to get the queries running faster and faster and.... they seem to be doing pretty well. So I've opened logbooks up for premium members. I'm still a bit worried how logbooks will handle, so for the time being, I'm limiting them to premium members and see how it goes. I'll hack those queries as needed, and eventually open the logbooks up for everyone again.</p><p>My database work isn't done, however. These updates to keep things running are <i>ugly</i> hacks, and I'm still working on a more long-term solution for the complex queries. I'm ripping out thousands of lines of old code and replacing them with fresh code, and it just takes time. When this next update is ready, it'll likely have bugs and problems that will need some ironing out, and without the ugly hacks in place, some of the queries might turn out to be unacceptably slow and I'll have to do more tweaks to the code.</p><p>So I'm not done with this issue by a long shot, but I also didn't want to keep the logbooks down any longer than was absolutely necessary. Thus... the hacks. I'll keep monitoring for problem queries and adding additional hacks as needed until the permanent fix is in place, but now that logbooks are back up, I feel less up against wall trying to get this all sorted out. Maybe I'll take a day off and relax. This snafu has been... well, not pleasant.<br /></p><p>Sorry again for all the recent issues. Slow-loading pages, logbooks inaccessible, etc. But progress continues to be made! In the long run, it's a much needed upgrade for AQ, but in the short-term, it's been painful, and I'm sorry about that. </p><p>If you're wondering about the photos on the blog, there's a photo album on AQ called <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-album.php?albumId=4978" target="_blank">Letterboxing Photos for AQ</a>. I've been grabbing them from there. Feel free to submit your own photos and maybe someday they'll be featured on AQ (or the AQ blog).<br /></p><p><br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-4245330722567507032023-05-27T11:41:00.000-07:002023-05-27T11:41:04.618-07:00Database Updates<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Are We There Yet" height="300" src="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/15/21/152154lg.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo provided by <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=152154" target="_blank">Baqash</a><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p>As some of you might have noticed, I took AQ down for a bit today to do a <i>massive</i> update of the code. You won't see any changes--at least you shouldn't see any changes--because these were all "under the hood" updates. As I mentioned before, the database has been having trouble executing some of the queries efficiently, and the problem <i>I've</i> been having is that the piece of code I used for creating queries wasn't really designed for nitty-gritty details like telling the database precisely the order that tables should be joined or how best to execute certain queries. In the past, the database was generally pretty good at figuring out that stuff on its own without much help from me. Now.... it needs a little extra help, but the code hadn't been designed for that sort of thing.</p><p>So this update helps fix that problem. I completely replaced the code that put together queries, and it has a lot of options I can throw at it to suggest better ways of joining tables together. I can use subqueries, which I couldn't do before. I can change the type of join and force two specific tables to link together. I can throw parenthesis into the queries where needed. I can force the database to use certain indexes or ignore others as needed. (Well, technically, the old code could do that particular trick as well, but not as slickly or reliably as the updated code.)<br /></p><p>All-in-all, it's a much more flexible piece of code that will allow me to fine-tune super complex queries like never before.</p><p>However, one thing it doesn't actually do is fix any slow queries. For a couple of reasons, really, but mainly because running a slow query from the live site doesn't necessarily show up when I run it on my development machine or vice-versa. The live site has traffic from lots of people at once which can cause locks and issues that won't show up on my development machine. Not to mention that hundreds of people using the live site will generate queries that cause problems that I could never hope to think of trying on my test machine.</p><p>So this update is just a stepping stone to faster, better queries. Now that it's running on the live site, I can monitor for problem queries and take the actual query and figure out where it's having trouble and figure out how I can modify it to work better--and the underlying code can be modified as needed to tweak the queries.</p><p> Anyhow.... long story short.... progress is being made, but I'm not done yet. </p><p>This, however, was a <i>massive</i> update that changed the very fundamental process of creating database queries, and it undoubtedly could have broken stuff. Please be patient--I'll try to fix any problems that crop up as quickly as possible. </p><p>Thanks for being so patient!</p><p><br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-86964068486816834862023-05-22T03:58:00.003-07:002023-05-22T04:21:08.415-07:00Inaccessible logbooks<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjd3P50ktYbFekR3UnhEbmR6nA4lS2pDDlMMgqtWt2mrS2aFpXKwPasq4GglUDMbzCbbzBvhnsh4eOtlXgzL6Q_ieNtmPKl9XeDfdGe5fsDqyLWf9eKK6jpjEeKe8jdzbRi8wUyxXEIYApafSxAxcoCtFWJ5CAobb6iZpucd78JPwbgX9MS_5w" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="971" data-original-width="1000" height="388" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjd3P50ktYbFekR3UnhEbmR6nA4lS2pDDlMMgqtWt2mrS2aFpXKwPasq4GglUDMbzCbbzBvhnsh4eOtlXgzL6Q_ieNtmPKl9XeDfdGe5fsDqyLWf9eKK6jpjEeKe8jdzbRi8wUyxXEIYApafSxAxcoCtFWJ5CAobb6iZpucd78JPwbgX9MS_5w=w400-h388" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo provided by <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=152254" target="_blank">Thunderbird</a>.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Yes, I know logbooks are still inaccessible. Yes, I'm still working on it. This issue with the slow queries has been an <i>enormous</i> headache for me. I lose sleep over it. I've been making progress, but it's been far slower than I had ever imagined. Basically, AQ broke the database. The size and complicity has overwhelmed the database.<p></p><p>But I keep getting emails and seeing posts about people thinking there's stuff in their logbook that they absolutely must get to and believe that there is no other way of doing it. For the most part, almost everything in your logbook can be accessed by doing an <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/search.php" target="_blank">Advanced Search</a>. From plants, to finds to <i>unpublished</i> plants, adoptions, and event signups.</p><p></p><p>Most of the logbook pages can be generated by searching for yourself as the planter, finder, attempter, carver, etc. Some pages, like donations, are a combination of those. (Search for boxes that you carved but are <i>not </i>the planter for.)</p><p>To see your unpublished boxes, just be sure to click the box for "Show unpublished boxes" under the "Other options" section. You don't even need to add planter information--AQ will only show you your own unpublished boxes anyhow. </p><p>Admins can actually search everyone's unpublished boxes in this manner, however, so we have to include ourselves as the planter if we want to see our own unpublished boxes. But AQ knows that non-admins aren't supposed to see other people's non-published boxes and therefore will only show you the accessible ones--which are just your own. (Sometimes people report a problem with the location or are having trouble listing a box, so this gives admins a way to access the listing and see what's going on.)</p><p>If you need to see a list of your unlisted finds and/or attempts as well as your exchanges, you can find a link to those at the bottom of your profile. There a number of links there to download some of your data: finds, plants, trackers, exchanges, etc. They're in a CSV format so you should be able to import those files into a spreadsheet program and enjoy to your heart's content.<br /></p><p>Anyhow, until logbooks are up and working again, be sure to check the Advanced Search page. It probably has a lot of options that you didn't even realize existed if you haven't used the page much before. It really is the ultimate search tool for letterboxes. *nodding* =)</p><p>And for the few things that aren't available from the Advanced Search page, there are still other places where the data can be accessed. <br /></p><p>Anyhow... back to working on AQ again. Sorry again for the inconvenience! I'm really not asleep at the wheel, though! =)</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-69490885462880834722023-04-01T23:46:00.000-07:002023-04-01T23:46:01.180-07:00AQ Completes Friendly Takeover of LbNA!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/press/2016/logo.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="151" data-original-width="106" height="151" src="https://www.atlasquest.com/press/2016/logo.png" width="106" /></a></div>As most of you guessed, April 1st meant gags and jokes, and that hostile takeover of LbNA and blatant discrimination against LbNA members is... not true. In fact, it wasn't even the first time there was an alleged <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/press/2016/" target="_blank">merger of AQ and LbNA</a>. <p></p><p>Unlike last time, however, this time around--the "merger" part is actually true. Kind of. The sites aren't merging--they'll continue to operate as two distinctly separate websites--but since Choi decided to retire from his day-to-day running of LbNA and nobody else had necessary skills and interest to take over, I've officially taken over that task.</p><p>It was last November or December or so when Choi first informed me that nobody had stepped up to take over, and it was then when he gave me the passwords for the server to download all the code and start going through it. There was a lot I needed to do before moving the site to the AQ server, and a few concerns I needed to deal with before I <i>would </i>move LbNA to share a server with AQ.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The old server ran remarkably old versions of the database and scripting language. So old, in fact, that not even security updates were being provided anymore. So I needed to update LbNA to make sure it could run on the most modern versions of the software. In the case of the database in particular, I couldn't run two separate databases on the same server, and I definitely wasn't going to downgrade AQ's database just to be compatible to LbNA. Nope, LbNA's code had to be upgraded to work properly with the same software that AQ was running on.</li><li>LbNA had a bad habit of generating those "too many connections" errors on the database. I needed to get to the bottom of that and make sure it got fixed. Not just because I wanted the site to run reliably, but also to insure it wouldn't take down AQ! (As well as other databases that run on the same server such as for <a href="https://www.walking4fun.com/" target="_blank">Walking 4 Fun</a>.) </li><li>I wanted a way to monitor for issues or problems. Over the years, I've developed a multitude of tools to help do this. The code will record errors, warnings and even particularly slow queries that might need my attention. I can easily check how long database queries take to run or the page takes to generate. And I wanted to include those same tools on LbNA. <br /></li><li>I wanted the site to be relatively quick and easy for me to update as needed. Maintainability is important. Every programmer has their own preferred styles and patterns that they use, and I wanted the code for LbNA to better fit my own mental model of how things should work. The more similar--internally, at least--the code worked like AQ, the easier and faster it would be for me to update later.</li><li>And.... I just needed to understand how LbNA worked. I hadn't really used the site in years and there were numerous features and options that I didn't even realize existed much less how they all worked together. Doing a deep dive through the code would enlighten me.</li></ul><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjFc-QaOdXZXXHVHQZDkc9rP4PR-9YC9l6lh5U7AH1upRAKv6KjlGMFZCQ3z9z2sRTlDKOmUgQiogww0_0r2QPWSyFwOgDQR4o2K5FfSXchMTDSWkV6D2vZmYVJXj7LmmL6gxH54u6yBDULlLwNGUpq7E-nxiQxCR0cROMY1l-Le4vKdIF6lf8" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjFc-QaOdXZXXHVHQZDkc9rP4PR-9YC9l6lh5U7AH1upRAKv6KjlGMFZCQ3z9z2sRTlDKOmUgQiogww0_0r2QPWSyFwOgDQR4o2K5FfSXchMTDSWkV6D2vZmYVJXj7LmmL6gxH54u6yBDULlLwNGUpq7E-nxiQxCR0cROMY1l-Le4vKdIF6lf8=s16000" /></a></div><br />Anyhow.... I spent a couple of months working on the site. The site turned out to be quite a bit bigger and more complicated than I had first imagined! A couple of problems I discovered I felt were so serious, I changed it on the live website immediately. Mainly a couple of exceptionally slow queries that could easily crash the database. (Or rather, cause a "too many connections" error because they took so long to process.) The website seemed to run a lot more reliably after that, but I know it still went down at least once after my tweaks. There were other slow queries that I didn't bother to fix because they seemed less critical and I didn't really want to spend a great deal of time fixing up a site that I was almost immediately going to replace with my own code anyhow.<p></p><p>Although I almost completely replaced the code on the backend of things, I tried to leave the front-facing user interface and functionality as unchanged as possible. There was some tweaking that happened. I re-created all the forms to fit the same patterns that I used on AQ--which also happens to be more "accessible" than the old layout used. (I use the term "accessible" in a technical sense--I'm referring to making websites accessible to those with disabilities.) Although I'm not aware of any blind people, for instance, using screen readers on LbNA, there's little reason <i>not</i> to support better access for them. (Accessibility doesn't just refer to blind people, though--it's a catchall term for all sorts of possible disabilities.) The site would still fail any serious accessibility testing that was done to it, but it's vastly improved over previous iterations.<br /></p><p>Once everything seemed in order, I copied a test version of the site to the AQ server for a couple of months of testing. <br /></p><p>Given the tens of thousands of lines of code I added, changed and deleted--I knew there would be a bunch of bugs and there were. I really hadn't had a chance to thoroughly test the code as much as I had wanted to, but Choi wanted to turn the lights off on the old server before it was due to renew for another year so I had somewhat of a deadline to get this done by. Technically, it wouldn't have been the end of the world if I hadn't finished before the deadline. At worst, LbNA would just be "offline" until it was ready to run again. But ideally, it would be better to keep the site running with no downtime, so that's what I was shooting for.</p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiieef7sKierlghrXsTq8TZTXcbKxr63XlgVQrtdW-6dHlmYImkIXRDEbtHsvUm3IxyaBIaVnZDPgrZziB2UuWBzDBPTq9ddIlwuFlwuGGmQOw992S80uYI3sHu3CiK8C4dlBLgzY1ETPnBSSlgMt3w7RpDKBz9N81rDYaHBS8DV-A2MMqfhrw" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiieef7sKierlghrXsTq8TZTXcbKxr63XlgVQrtdW-6dHlmYImkIXRDEbtHsvUm3IxyaBIaVnZDPgrZziB2UuWBzDBPTq9ddIlwuFlwuGGmQOw992S80uYI3sHu3CiK8C4dlBLgzY1ETPnBSSlgMt3w7RpDKBz9N81rDYaHBS8DV-A2MMqfhrw=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Testers were essential!</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Special thanks to MichKathy and TrailMark for their testing. I gave them
early access to the test site so they could update Clue Tracker to work
with the updated site seemlessly, and they found a lot of the bugs that
I really should have caught sooner!<br /></p><p>By mid-February, I was largely ready to officially take the reigns of LbNA. Except.... I had plans to fly off to Africa to climb Kilimanjaro. It seemed like a bad idea to do a major move of the website then immediately fly off where I likely wouldn't be able to get online for two solid weeks. I should wait until after I got back.</p><p>And that's what I did. The day after returning to the United States, I immediately launched the Big Update--for Atlas Quest. That was also ready and waiting until I'd be around for an extended period of time to fix any bugs that certainly would pop up. Two days later, when the Big AQ Update seemed to be doing fairly well and seemed under control, I flipped the proverbial switch (specifically, the nameservers) for LbNA to point to the new server--the AQ server. (If you check, you'll find that LbNA and AQ now share the same IP address.) </p><p>This was a massive update--even bigger than the "Big" AQ Update from two days earlier. But this one.... I had to do in secret because I wanted the "big announcement" to intersect with April Fools Day. So two days after a big update, I was doing <i>another</i> Big Update.</p><p>And the next several days was fixing bugs and issues and stuff, occasionally swinging back to the big AQ update to deal with something there. I'd often spend the morning fixing and tweaking the AQ update, then spend the afternoon and evening fixing and tweaking the LbNA update. It was a remarkably busy and exhausting week for me!</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgmJiIsIDiJkksQNsBGh4nu2vrXc0FHvbElTZ4WitB1ERrfvvkFYPjSWy2tAlFUDvk7tfDNqDViaebURl6vhrnRyuZwUonNHTxTxn48XyOR_a1VKzdY4TaE-SCYSk_70HV2GyzRpEdxbZgOGtrhDmgptBEqKimyx-55kJ3GvCWIzgb5aeFzy3I" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgmJiIsIDiJkksQNsBGh4nu2vrXc0FHvbElTZ4WitB1ERrfvvkFYPjSWy2tAlFUDvk7tfDNqDViaebURl6vhrnRyuZwUonNHTxTxn48XyOR_a1VKzdY4TaE-SCYSk_70HV2GyzRpEdxbZgOGtrhDmgptBEqKimyx-55kJ3GvCWIzgb5aeFzy3I=s16000" /></a></div><br />I also found myself extremely frustrated when I tried to use some administrative functions on my smartphone to check for bugs and delete spammer accounts on LbNA--which was never designed to work well with smartphones. I found myself so annoyed with that, I wound up spending most of a day updating LbNA to make it more mobile-friendly. Like with the accessibility thing, the update doesn't fix all the issues to make the website fully mobile-friendly, but it's a vast improvement over what was available before. Even Google thinks it's a huge improvement. I added letterboxing.org as a website to monitor for issues in their Google Search Console and on March 19th, Google reported just <i>one</i> page that was "mobile friendly"--zero percent of the pages after rounding off to the nearest two decimals. As of March 31st (the last day I currently have statistics for), Google reports almost 6000 mobile-friendly pages and just 92 still listed as "not usable." That not-usable number is going down, however, as Google re-checks previously-checked pages. I expect the number of "not usable" pages will continue to go down--although probably not down to zero. There are still usability issues to deal with--I only attacked the easier, low-hanging fruit in that regard. <br /><p></p><p>Then, once both websites were more-or-less running well and fixing problems wasn't occupying all my time, I started working on the April Fools announcement. Which meant a few gags and jokes for <i>both</i> websites. And... well, y'all saw how that went. I was working on that right up until I launched it less than an hour before midnight (Pacific time). </p><p>Obviously, most of those announcements were jokes. The new crown and dagger icons will be retired, there will be no loyalty oaths to be taken, and pay-per-clue isn't on the table. The LbNA staff hasn't been fired--but there really wasn't any staff to begin with. I even left Choi as an official webmaster on LbNA so he can update passwords, delete spammers, etc. So he's still watching you. ;o)</p><p>So now that you're caught up to the present day, you might be asking yourself exactly what I plan to do with LbNA.</p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiFkcX-XHbQLlyad9fQa-WfNmc3kPNlHfI1ifWafESlnluSnMoPMdvs7MFKJd_UJHZoXVkDW2VJNMgSMFkQUTBr2rwN_Pxw6i74eHQl0bdW5xNMA2zl1jtyk5jaA120dbdNvpik8U0JGoDJC6SfgC-1zVZl-RJWD-HAYAD1-eX0DQ-ymJA68ok" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiFkcX-XHbQLlyad9fQa-WfNmc3kPNlHfI1ifWafESlnluSnMoPMdvs7MFKJd_UJHZoXVkDW2VJNMgSMFkQUTBr2rwN_Pxw6i74eHQl0bdW5xNMA2zl1jtyk5jaA120dbdNvpik8U0JGoDJC6SfgC-1zVZl-RJWD-HAYAD1-eX0DQ-ymJA68ok=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Crystal ball, <br />tell me the future of LbNA</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />And... for the most part, not much. Any big (perhaps controversial) ideas I come up with--I'd put on AQ. I don't really see any reason for me to recreate the wheel on LbNA every time I add a feature to AQ.</p><p>And, in fact, I think one of the core strengths of LbNA--where AQ can't even begin to compete against LbNA--is it's sheer simplicity. LbNA is <i>perfect</i> for people who just don't want a lot of bells and whistles. There aren't rabbit holes to confuse people like postals and LTCs, there aren't "trackers" or message boards to navigate. No marketplaces or online logbooks, no exchanges to track or dozens of icons to understand.</p><p>For many of you, you might consider the lack of those features as blasphemy, but I truly believe that letterboxing should be available to everyone--including those who prefer a more "old-tyme" letterboxing experience. After they develop their proverbial sea legs and dig into the hobby more, Atlas Quest might become more their style. Or perhaps they'll be perfectly happy to stick to the basics and stay away from the complexities of AQ--or maybe find a middle-ground between the two. A website like AQ can scare away the sorts of people who just want a simple, fun little hobby to participate in, and I'm grateful that there's a "safe space" for letterboxers who prefer the simple life.</p><p>So I have no ill-well toward LbNA or its members. Heck, that's where I "grew up" in my own letterboxing journey. Personally, I feel like I outgrew it, but bless all of you who haven't. =)</p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgapWmZvHBBMl057m9LpD0e-tWtdUTcVb4SXehZDeCaU6E--5qUqSVuCGjL92dosvmgNCrtvyNP7IwIARhDmTqhxof_iV7PDHLnWsACGNuVtkpzTGlatjGfIs978NohGbFj2xNOyuX_8lUA9-urhGRt0_oAFSC-M0cacsPYBxIWlo4BHiSkpeA" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgapWmZvHBBMl057m9LpD0e-tWtdUTcVb4SXehZDeCaU6E--5qUqSVuCGjL92dosvmgNCrtvyNP7IwIARhDmTqhxof_iV7PDHLnWsACGNuVtkpzTGlatjGfIs978NohGbFj2xNOyuX_8lUA9-urhGRt0_oAFSC-M0cacsPYBxIWlo4BHiSkpeA=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No blue diamonds for LbNA!</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>As a result, I have no plans to add features or functionality to LbNA. If anything, I'm more inclined to lean harder into its simplicity and remove features that I feel aren't essential or don't get used much. For instance, I removed the rating system already. It was interesting for me to look through the code and see how it worked, but it felt to me like it was added to "keep up with" Atlas Quest. And considering that LbNA doesn't get nearly as many visitors as AQ, I don't think it generated particularly good results anyhow. Ratings work best when a box can get a lot of ratings, but LbNA didn't really have the critical mass for that.<br /></p><p>So... I decided to remove it. And now recording a find is one checkbox shorter and faster. There's one less "thumbs up" icon that people don't have to figure out or understand what its purpose is. Not mention there's the added benefit (for me) that there's less code to maintain and upgrade in the future.</p><p>At some point, I feel like I should really go through the entire website and figure out which features should be discontinued. Does the added complexity for the user make it worth the effort or distract from the more important details? I think back in my early days of letterboxing and what I wished LbNA could do: Run a simple search for boxes near my home that automatically removed all the boxes that I had planted or already found or attempted (and was certain were likely missing). That was all <i>I</i> really wanted the website to do. All the other search options--hike lengths, icons, etc. were fine, but I almost never used them and I certainly didn't <i>need</i> them. I kind of dream of taking LbNA back to its glory days where it might have been simple, but it was easier to understand and figure out how everything worked. I'd like for LbNA to distinguish itself from AQ--not try to copy it.</p><p>An obvious question many of you might have will be if I plan to merge the two websites--or at least merge the two databases that run it so one account can be used on both websites. Recording a find on one account will also record it on the other account automatically. It's tempting, but for now.... no. That would take a horrific amount of time and effort that I'm not ready to commit to, so they'll continue to stay as two completely independent websites. Maybe someday I might add some options to "link" accounts so recording a find or attempt on one site will automatically post it to the other, or recording a plant on one site will automatically post it to the other, etc. But even then, I still imagine it running as two completely separate, independent websites. Just two websites that happen to talk to each other occasionally and share information. I have no plans to rush out to get this sort of thing done immediately, however.</p><p>One feature I might implement sooner rather than later, however, is the ability to hide plants that are hosted on the other website. I actually wanted to create this on AQ since the day I started AQ--a way to <i>not</i> display LbNA boxes in the search results. Not as an "anti-LbNA" option, however, but as a way to make it easier for people to run searches that don't show the same plants on both websites. But I felt certain if I ever tried to implement such a search option, I'd be accused of being "anti-LbNA." Logically, I felt LbNA should have a similar "hide AQ boxes" options for the same reason. And then those who use both websites regularly to search for boxes can get all of the LbNA and AQ boxes with no overlap between the two sites. And it would be trivially easy to implement such a feature since the two websites don't even have to talk to each other to make it work. AQ already knows which clues are hosted on LbNA and LbNA already knows which clues are hosted on AQ.</p><p>Now that I'm running both websites, it seems ridiculous to make such an accusation. And since I'm running LbNA, I can easily make sure a "hide AQ-hosted clues" option is available on LbNA to balance things out. So this feature is one of the most-likely ones to come out of my running LbNA since it seems very useful and helpful--at least for those who use both websites. (Although if absolutely nobody likes the idea or wants it, I certainly wouldn't put any effort into it!)</p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjLQz-Ecw4O8uJeD4JWl1m4ZQ2roofKTcp1Q9_X80knbEcHy_WTA2XQuhTHcJzwX9lYms4gQoydsDjADxV_ncR1CfMxu8wbcSrMdRvIU4MT_V1Jureoqgcek_r7K-VZ3UJl5PeGgps0YTtx3O7KnKt6Om45WOUKBRfYBXlv-4SZ7YQx_0izMTg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjLQz-Ecw4O8uJeD4JWl1m4ZQ2roofKTcp1Q9_X80knbEcHy_WTA2XQuhTHcJzwX9lYms4gQoydsDjADxV_ncR1CfMxu8wbcSrMdRvIU4MT_V1Jureoqgcek_r7K-VZ3UJl5PeGgps0YTtx3O7KnKt6Om45WOUKBRfYBXlv-4SZ7YQx_0izMTg=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Tanzanian flag--just because<br />I have the license to use it and<br />I spent two weeks there recently. =)</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />You'll likely see me continuing to update some of the icons to use the same ones as AQ. There are three reasons for this: </p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>I already paid and purchased a license to legally use those icons, and the license allows me to use them on any and all websites I run so there's no problem with me using them on both sites. </li><li>I'm not entirely sure of where the already-existing icons on LbNA came from or whether they're actually legal (or not) to use. It would really suck if someone came after me because one of their icons was being used without the proper rights. </li><li>And finally, using the same icons on both sites can make it easier and faster for people to figure out how the "other" website works when they are already familiar with some of the icons.<br /></li></ol><p>Anyhow, that's how I imagine the future of LbNA, but I'd be curious to hear what all of you think or how you would re-imagine LbNA. But regardless of how much our opinions intersect (or not), I will do my best to run LbNA like it was my own creation--to care for it, keep it running, and do what I feel is best for LbNA--even if we might not always agree about precisely what that is.</p><p>But in broad, general strokes, I don't really plan to change much of anything. So far, my focus was mostly on the security, reliability and maintainability of LbNA.</p><p>Now that the two websites run on the same server, there will be rare times when both websites go down or become inaccessible if there's an issue with the server, so in that sense, reliability overall will go down. However, when I take down a website for a Big Update--those will be planned ahead of time and will never be happening at the same on both sites. I'd like to make sure at least one of the websites is <i>always</i> running at all times. If that's not the case, there's likely something out of my control going on. For the record, this doesn't necessarily mean there's something bad happening. Sometimes my hosting provider is doing updates on their own equipment and things may be temporarily unavailable--but the server is just fine. Sometimes I'll update software and it requires the entire server to be restarted--and that will make both websites temporarily inaccessible. I'll try to limit those times as much as possible but they are, overall, fairly rare.</p><p>So that's my own vision for LbNA. Feel free to contact me through AQ or LbNA if you wish to express your own thoughts on the topic. </p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgsW_dR42n9eY6WtARhwD9WDCh4GohLtry-I_NfMzwWNMpDm0JSzxXzu-9IWVO19XncYOVduoSTacSX1U1KAOdecIwCdxh2XiNkm3ImPmEeq9xDfJk_x154soK_Uzcscouhno8Td79Bvf9YnehynJz7jSjLwtHJoPN1uL8zQQqQBpJ6U7LKhgo" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgsW_dR42n9eY6WtARhwD9WDCh4GohLtry-I_NfMzwWNMpDm0JSzxXzu-9IWVO19XncYOVduoSTacSX1U1KAOdecIwCdxh2XiNkm3ImPmEeq9xDfJk_x154soK_Uzcscouhno8Td79Bvf9YnehynJz7jSjLwtHJoPN1uL8zQQqQBpJ6U7LKhgo=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Magic 8-Ball, inquiring minds want to know:<br />Will LbNA continue to thrive for years to come?<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">"Without a doubt"</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-11283141000731625502023-03-31T23:17:00.000-07:002023-03-31T23:17:05.256-07:00AQ Completes Hostile Takeover of LbNA!<p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/press/2023/crown/256.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://www.atlasquest.com/press/2023/crown/256.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Your AQ-loyalty will be <br />marked with a crown!<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Yes, it's finally true. I've taken over LbNA. Some of you have noticed the subtle changes happening over on that other site. Suspicious icons that looked awfully similar to those used on AQ. Weird bugs suddenly showing up. There are, in any major coup, kinks to be worked out, and that's been keeping me pretty busy.</p><p>I've also been making some tweaks to AQ as a result of the takeover, which I've <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/press/2023/announcement.php" target="_blank">posted about</a> in more detail there. The main changes you'll see are the new crown and dagger icons by member trailnames to mark AQ-loyalists (the crown) and LbNA loyalists (the dagger). More tweaks will be forthcoming, but that's the main one you'll see for now.</p><p>Suggestions and comments are welcome! And if you don't like any of my changes, I'd normally tell you to just use LbNA instead, but I guess that won't work anymore. So just start geocaching instead!</p><p>Happy trails!</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/press/2023/dagger/256.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://www.atlasquest.com/press/2023/dagger/256.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">LbNA-loyalists will be marked with a backstabbing knife<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p><p> </p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-2431947589014020902023-03-14T20:32:00.001-07:002023-03-14T20:38:23.555-07:00The Next Big Update Has Arrived!<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZDbYDT3n4RubqVdoQ3fAPPqHiuK3p_pjASwJ3motsBjZDCgarjeUPFO27qcYm287_1_eazDLesgdLCu9KImTymjMPXU-rIXDXJcnGfd5Rs44Ilnrt8Zsl35RMt4aZPYT21v4nqw0Ghlg4ATcKg7Ci7CO30HLKf62aOqsLZhRssgKD9sAS3N4/s400/letterboxing.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZDbYDT3n4RubqVdoQ3fAPPqHiuK3p_pjASwJ3motsBjZDCgarjeUPFO27qcYm287_1_eazDLesgdLCu9KImTymjMPXU-rIXDXJcnGfd5Rs44Ilnrt8Zsl35RMt4aZPYT21v4nqw0Ghlg4ATcKg7Ci7CO30HLKf62aOqsLZhRssgKD9sAS3N4/s16000/letterboxing.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">T-Bone and Tic Tac of Happy Hyper Hikers</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Nearly a year in the making, it's finally arrived! I'm not going to list every tiny thing that this update includes, but rather just a broad overview.</p><p>Before I start, however, just a reminder: If there's a page that looks a bit wonky, try clicking Ctrl-F5 (or equivalent) to refresh the page and see if that fixes it. There are changes to the CSS and if your browser is using a cached page, it might not look quite right. <br /></p><p></p><p>The biggest part of the update are event listings. I've pretty much completely rewrote the entire event sub-section. I scoured the message boards and my archived mail looking back over a decade's worth of comments and suggestions dealing with event listings and incorporating as many of them into the update as possible.</p><p>Some of the most noticeable improvements with regards to events include:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Attendees can now list multiple items for the potluck--so if you're bringing multiple items, you can list them all in the proper categories.</li><li>Event admins can now <i>request</i> specific potluck items.</li><li>Attendees who live near an event can list if they have space available to host out-of-area attendees, or those who rent a hotel room or campsite can request "roommates" to help split the costs.</li><li>Timezones are better tracked, so virtual events <i>should</i> list the start and end times for your local time zones automatically. *knock on wood*</li><li>Each event can now be posted to, so if you have a question or comment about the event, you can post it directly to the event page.</li><li>Waitlists have been greatly improved. Once an event is full and people start adding themselves to the waitlist, event organizers can manually promote waitlisted members to a signup status (or demote them if necessary). In fact, you can create an event with just yourself as the only signup and a limit of 1, then everyone who signs up is automatically waitlisted. Which can be useful for events that cost a fee. As fees are paid, you can promote the waitlisted member into a signup. So it is possible to have more people signed up for an event than there is "space" for. Also, once a waitlist is created, people won't automatically be moved into the signup position if space becomes available. Event organizers decide who and when people are moved between the signup list and waitlist. <br /></li><li>You can signup (or waitlist) sub-accounts at the same time as yourself.</li><li>There are now options to "watch" and "ignore" events.</li><li>All types of boxes can now be listed as "boxes at an event" (not to be confused with "event boxes" which is a specific type of box). So event organizers, for instance, can specifically list each traditional box planted at the park--even those that were never planted specifically for the event. Personal travelers, hitchhikers, etc. Anything you bring to the event can be listed as a "box at the event" to make it easier for people to record the finds later.</li><li>You can add events to your calendars. (Google and Apple calendar types, at least.) <br /></li></ul><p>I think that covers most of the changes regarding events. There's a lot of stuff that changed there, however, and this is certainly not a completely list. </p><p>There's another feature somewhat related to events which involves the massive number of notifications people receive for large events. A hundred people finding a hundred boxes and leaving a comment on every one of them would generate ten <i>thousand</i> AQ mail messages. So event and box notifications now are collected for a period of time. Notifications of finds and attempts on boxes, for instance, now go into a waiting queue and everybody who found a specific box/series will have their reports merged into a single AQ mail message. So if you have 100 plants at an event and 100 people recording finding each of them, you'll no longer get 10,000 AQ mail messages--you'll only get 100 at most. (The number of boxes planted rather than the number of boxes planted multiplied by the number of finders.)</p><p>Similarly, the same thing happens with event notifications. Signups, dropoffs, new posts, potluck item changes, etc.... All of the notifications for a specific event will be merged periodically into a single message instead of dozens (or hundreds) of them.</p><p>The primary reason for this change is to make one's AQ mail more manageable, but it also helps ease the database load on AQ as well. The downside, however, is that you will no longer get <i>immediate</i> notifications whenever someone records a find or attempt or there's an update to an event. There's a time delay. The default delay is 12 hours, so if someone records a find on your box at 9:00am, AQ will wait until 9:00pm, check all of the pending notifications to you about that box that have occurred between 9:00am and 9:00pm and send them all as one AQ mail.</p><p>Premium members can shorten this frequency to as little as 5 minutes--still not immediate, but relatively close to it. If you have a <i>lot </i>of boxes or have planted for a <i>large</i> event with hundreds of people, you can increase the length to as long as a month, if I remember correctly. For those hosting large events, it might be worth lengthening the time to reduce the number of AQ mail messages you get--at least during the height of the event--then return it to whatever value you prefer a few days after the event has ended and most people have logged their finds.</p><p>You can adjust this setting in the <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/mypage/prefs/notifications.php" target="_blank">Email & Notification Preferences</a> settings, in the "Notification Timings" section. I suspect many of you aren't going to like this change (I figure it'll likely be the most controversial of the changes), but for those who host especially large events, you'll find it very convenient. If you have a question about finding a box and need an immediate answer, it'll be best to contact the owner directly rather than by recording a find/attempt since direct messages won't be delayed.</p><p>Now off to a completely different sub-system....<br /></p><div><p>For those who use the weather widget, you'll find it too has been completely rewritten. The only reason for this update was that the API I used was set to expire at the end of this month and it was going to stop working. I thought about retiring it completely, but eventually decided to use the <a href="https://www.weather.gov/documentation/services-web-api">National Weather Service API</a> (which is free and doesn't have ridiculously small quotas). The downside, however, is that it only works for the United States, but since most of those who use it live in the United States, hopefully that's not a problem. =) </p><p>Especially with regards to the event and weather sub-systems, a Ctrl-F5 to refresh the CSS might help. Your browser will eventually pick up the new CSS on its own, but forcing a refresh like that will just speed things up. <br /></p><p>All the other changes are relatively minor things. Those are the two sub-systems that I basically rewrote from scratch. Off the top of my head, I don't really remember what else I changed, but you're bound to find some minor tweaks here and there if you look closely. <br /></p><p>If I said anything about a tweak or change being in the "Next Big Update", this was it. It's live now.</p><p>This is an absolutely massive update, and while I have run thousands of tests, there are still likely to be a few bugs that slipped through the cracks. Please be patient as I fix those.</p><p>Thanks again for putting up with me! If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, you know where to find me. =)</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB-pqXhoT_DjuOqSt0s9yW_Au6VxyK7CNgtO1gQVbfZFXmcxuf_hVH-cg8UblMV427u5K-mFYmKwiHT-tQFdNU42boABwJCC93tBb0VGIoc9XFZwUWrPR1UiuR5lMdMZjkQH7yVNw31qM3D6c4oBEr5Gf3i7QWz01-AKb76vjzvBT4HP3NNkg/s400/letterboxing2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB-pqXhoT_DjuOqSt0s9yW_Au6VxyK7CNgtO1gQVbfZFXmcxuf_hVH-cg8UblMV427u5K-mFYmKwiHT-tQFdNU42boABwJCC93tBb0VGIoc9XFZwUWrPR1UiuR5lMdMZjkQH7yVNw31qM3D6c4oBEr5Gf3i7QWz01-AKb76vjzvBT4HP3NNkg/s16000/letterboxing2.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Burning Feet (and Sadie)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p></div>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-80778123939944969712022-05-27T19:18:00.005-07:002022-05-27T19:29:30.025-07:00Premium membership prices<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEht0kH0KqQuZJhnS6L-H6d6yqckCgReMKE91_PC9fS_1MAj13yT6lGpMwk3krokEOC322cN7zAfeT9JNUGr93PaXHIo9rgMpTxoY_kMsZwaaGyvS3Ow1i2vv5CuHBVi2B_KjAHOn9OWNx6MKC4pLBW0BPUGGkonHhLuoGKi84CTjV_vWBUFxWk" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEht0kH0KqQuZJhnS6L-H6d6yqckCgReMKE91_PC9fS_1MAj13yT6lGpMwk3krokEOC322cN7zAfeT9JNUGr93PaXHIo9rgMpTxoY_kMsZwaaGyvS3Ow1i2vv5CuHBVi2B_KjAHOn9OWNx6MKC4pLBW0BPUGGkonHhLuoGKi84CTjV_vWBUFxWk=s16000" /></a></div><br />Just a head's up for any of you who were thinking about buying a premium membership or renewing it soon. It's been over 4 years since I last raised prices and the time has come for me to raise it once again. Inflation is real! And while hardware costs typically fall over time, hosting costs have been rising. (General living expenses have been on the rise as well!) So on June 1st, premium memberships will be $5 higher.<p></p><p>Renewal prices will rise as well, although that's a bit more complicated to explain since I've promised never to raise your rate above what you originally paid for a premium membership as long as you've never allowed your premium membership to expire. So there's a whole range of amounts that people pay for renewals. A lucky few who've been premium members since the very beginning (2004) are still paying just $15/year, and that will continue. If your original purchase price was less than $35/year, your renewal rates won't change. If your original purchase price was at $35/year or higher, the renewal rate will rise to a maximum of $39.95.</p><p>Basically, AQ subtracts $5 from the non-renewal price, and if that amounts falls above your <i>original </i>purchase price, then your original rate <i>is </i>your renewal price. Otherwise, you get a $5 from the current non-renewal rate. Clear as mud?<br /></p><p>Anyway... like I said, the code for the renewals gets a little messy and it's a bit complicated to explain.<br /></p><p>There's another bit of a complication when it comes to renewals.... AQ sends an AQ message a month before your premium membership's expiration date, and AQ will still honor the renewal prices in that message if you received it <i>this</i> month. (At least it <i>should</i> work that way. If you find a bug and it doesn't, do let me know!) So essentially, for of you with expiring premium memberships in June, you won't see the renewal rates increase until July--after your premium membership was scheduled to expire anyhow.</p><p>If your premium membership is set to expire after June, you might still benefit by renewing earlier rather than later. Those of you who have started your premium membership in the last four or five years will see renewal rates increase, but you don't have to wait until the expiration date is right around the corner before renewing. You can renew at any time! Some people will even pay for a couple of years of premium membership at a time just so they don't have to deal with it every year and you're more than welcome to take advantage of that if you'd like.<br /></p><p>In any case, if you were thinking about signing up for a premium membership or want to renewal before rates go up, get your order in before June 1st!<br /></p><p>Actually, technically speaking, AQ is displaying the new prices already--but it's "discounted" to the old prices through June 1st. The "discount" will simply be discontinued on June 1st.</p><p>There's also another benefit for new premium members to signup before the end of the month--you'll never have to pay a renewal rate above your original signup price, so by signing up with the lower rate, you'll also get lower renewal rates in the future as well. <br /><br />Thanks for your support!<br /></p><br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-37462497347324955012022-04-05T09:42:00.001-07:002022-04-05T09:42:21.821-07:00Recording finds and attempts, version 2.0!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh0Q-H7QJTiE5PdpY6yNsM2wb7Dq5Ai4TVu2OvStFqR67sabfnI2cf3ULK0_YkeYRTeVaz09HlhZ1VqBtdtTArcU5U69nl1m_wBNmxmodECAElPo2kICHZwnbQWZppGivySVP423Y35x3kXCBab-n1CrZpz_HixPapPZUUQb92Y5HJc7TEe8Vg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh0Q-H7QJTiE5PdpY6yNsM2wb7Dq5Ai4TVu2OvStFqR67sabfnI2cf3ULK0_YkeYRTeVaz09HlhZ1VqBtdtTArcU5U69nl1m_wBNmxmodECAElPo2kICHZwnbQWZppGivySVP423Y35x3kXCBab-n1CrZpz_HixPapPZUUQb92Y5HJc7TEe8Vg=s16000" /></a></div><br />Well, I finally did it. I updated the sub-system for recording finds and attempts. It's been completely rebuilt from the ground up! <p></p><p>You'll definitely notice some changes with them, but the two most important changes to note are:</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>You can record multiple finds and attempts on the same box! So if you revisit a box after you've first found it, you can record another find on it without removing your previous one! It doesn't matter how often you record a find on it, however--it still counts as only 1 find on your F-count. So please, if you revisit boxes, record the find! Let everyone know the box is still alive and well on subsequent visits!<br /><br />Likewise, you can record multiple attempts on the same box as well. Only the last attempt you record on a box is included in the F-summaries and factors into strike counts and findability and such. Earlier attempts are essentially ignored, but they don't hurt anything either.<br /><br /></li><li>And the other big change is that you can now specify the confidence level of your attempts. So now there are three levels of attempts: high-confidence, mid-confidence and low-confidence attempts. <br /><br />I imagine a high-confidence attempt is basically what everyone has more-or-less been recording to this point, but now there are options if you have a lot (or a little) doubt about your attempt. There's also an option for a "zero-confidence" attempt, although I've started calling those "fake attempts" in my code. I imagine those being used for people who have an urge to record attempts but didn't actually <i>look</i> for the box. They looked at a mystery clue but couldn't figure out the starting point so they think they "attempted" the box kind of thing. Or they started hiking down the trail, but it started to rain so they turned around before reaching the end if it. That type of thing where there was never a real search for the physical box. AQ basically just ignores these, but you're welcome to record them as zero-confidence attempts.<br /></li></ol><p></p><p>There are other details that I'm sure some of you want to know all about. For instance, with all these attempt options, how are strikes counted? How does the F-summary work? </p><p>In a nutshell, a high-confidence attempt counts as one strike as usual. A mid-confidence attempt counts as half a strike, and a low-confidence attempt counts as a 1/4 strike. (But after adding everything together, they will be rounded to the nearest whole number.) So if you use the default strikeout settings on AQ, it would take 3 high-confidence strikes before a box is struck out, 5 mid-confidence strikes or 10 low-confidence strikes. (Zero-confidence attempts, as I said before, are ignored by AQ so they basically count as 0 strikes.)</p><p>F-summaries still use F's and X's to mark finds and attempts, although now the F and X will be capitalized if the finder/attempter is a planter of the box. Those are basically the maintenance visits by someone who should know what they're talking about. Lowercase letters are finds and attempts by non-planters. As for attempts, the letters are sized based on the confidence levels, so high-confidence attempts will have a much bigger X than a low-confidence attempt. The colors also go from "in your face red" to "subtle, low-confidence blue." =)</p><p>There are also minor notes practically not even worth mentioning. For instance, although you can now record multiple finds and attempts on the same box, they can't be on the <i>same day</i>. If you record a find or attempt on a specific box on a specific date, it will overwrite anything else you had previously recorded for that same box on the same date. But really, why would you be recording it more than once for the same day anyhow?! Most likely, something had been entered incorrectly the first time so you're probably just trying to fix the information. <br /></p><p>There are some other relatively minor, cosmetic changes you might see around finds and attempts as well. Mostly to make sure there was space to display multiple finds and attempts (if needed) and mark the <i>type</i> of attempt that was being recorded, but since nobody has had a chance to record multiple finds/attempts on the same box or record different types of attempts, it generally looks the same as before. For now. You'll notice the changes more as y'all start using the new features.<br /></p><p>There are almost certainly going to be bugs that slipped through the cracks and need to be worked out. Please be patient. This was a <i>huge</i> undertaking that required a lot of changes to the code and database, but I'll fix the bugs as quickly as they're found and reported.</p><p>Hope you enjoy the update! If you have any questions or comments, send them along.</p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-89177966593210238712022-04-01T21:13:00.002-07:002022-04-01T21:13:41.003-07:00Lead contamination in the rubber stamp carving kit!<p>I have some bad news to report! Some tests came back and I just found out that my new <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/press/2022/" target="_blank">carving block kit</a> suffers from lead contamination and was denied a license for sale by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. I'll have to find a new manufacturer and see how things go from there.</p><p>Okay, just kidding.... there was never any carving block kit, but I suspect most of you already figured that out almost immediately. It's your annual April Fools joke! I hope you y'all got a good laugh out of it!</p><p>Most of what you saw came from the <a href="https://amzn.to/38mbGKp" target="_blank">Soap Making 101 Kit</a>. Throw in a few things from a visit to the Dollar Tree, a little Photoshopping and presto! Instant carving block kit that does an excellent job of cleaning your hands. I don't think my hands have ever been so clean! =)</p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhVCNogb2UaEbIkgaL26o2eXeqNyGh_laFdS81ktT9jbCeuYnEMAmPXG43dPuAsswOK7jti2OZrvw9il3Z3BIodFn3G2lkfCpyaTgn7BghDcvQdJLgGyWWY3FVmi_HpKYFqSkd-HI-DLjOlxKjURaiMj69_XGn9jpGF_xBY0B62BUqYGXuapuQ" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhVCNogb2UaEbIkgaL26o2eXeqNyGh_laFdS81ktT9jbCeuYnEMAmPXG43dPuAsswOK7jti2OZrvw9il3Z3BIodFn3G2lkfCpyaTgn7BghDcvQdJLgGyWWY3FVmi_HpKYFqSkd-HI-DLjOlxKjURaiMj69_XGn9jpGF_xBY0B62BUqYGXuapuQ=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A bit of my soap carving mess while creating the April Fools joke. I tried playing around with some multi-colored blocks of soap, but I wound up not using any of them for the April Fools Day prank. One of them currently now sits in the shower, however, ready to be used!<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p>But! <i>Technically</i> speaking.... you can carve soap. I've done it. Just ask anyone from the <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/showinfo.php?eventId=4583" target="_blank">Monday carving meetups</a>. So... joke's on you! You really can carve these soap blocks! =P<br /></p><p>But they aren't very good for stamping... If you'd like to carve soap blocks, however, I will recommend <a href="https://amzn.to/3NGBaSK" target="_blank">The Complete Guide to Soap Carving</a> and <a href="https://amzn.to/3jeQ05f" target="_blank">Ultimate Soap Carving</a>. I have both books and both explain how to carve soap, which soaps work best, and all the other nitty-gritty details. If I had to pick <i>one</i> as my favorite, I'd go with the first one. </p><p>Carving soap has a lot in common with carving stamps, except it's more of a 3D object you're creating and you don't have to worry so much about text showing up backwards! (Actually, trying to carve text on soap sounds pretty crazy to begin with, but more power to you if you give it a try!)</p><p>To answer a few additional questions some of you might have had.... the colors falu, australien and zaffre are real color names. I wanted to use names more interesting than red, yellow and blue so did a search for weird and funny color names which landed me on <a href="https://www.color-meanings.com/funny-silly-weird-color-names/" target="_blank">13 Funny, Silly and Weird Color Names You May Never Have Heard Of</a>. You'll find all three of them there. *nodding* I was majorly disappointed that I didn't have a green color when I saw the color named "goose turd green" and, given the scents available, really wanted to work that into the text which I did in a clumsy manner. =) I also particularly liked the "lusty gallant" color name, but couldn't think of a good way to work that into the post. Oh, well. The color "puke" certainly fit the theme as well, but that color name didn't seem "exotic" enough to be fun.</p><p>The soap kit included only one scent: cucumber melon. It's a pleasant scent, but definitely not suitable for a "letterboxer stamp carving block kit." All scents described in the announcement are totally made up, but y'all probably knew that already!</p><p>The so-called "stiffener" was just vinegar in a spray bottle that I bought at the Dollar Tree. (That is, I bought the spray bottle at the Dollar Tree. The vinegar was already here!)</p><p>The image of the stamps are, in fact, real stamps. They are not, however, hand-carved. I bought them at the Dollar Tree for $1.25. They were thin and clear, and even without any adhesives, stuck surprisingly well to the soaps I made! So I stuck them on the soaps and chopped out the soap to the shape of the stamp. So, yeah. Store-bought stamps, but they looked simple enough that I figured I could pass them off as <i>really</i> good hand-carved stamps! =) And heck! One of them was even a blue diamond! Kind of made it look a bit more legit, I thought.<br /></p><p>Anyhow, hope you all enjoyed yourselves and if you feel like expanding your carving horizons.... consider giving soap carving a try! It really is fun. Although, admittedly, I carve far more rubber stamps than soap creations! But I think muggle-leaning friends and family probably enjoy the soap carvings more than the rubber stamp carvings. =)<br /><br />I'll also point out, if you do give soap-carving a try, you could also try carving wood. Carving soap and carving wood is <i>exactly</i> the same process except the wood is a lot harder to carve and requires sharper knives and takes longer. But, just like with stiffer rubber carving blocks, you can get a lot more detail in a block of wood than a block of soap!<br /></p><p>Oh! Almost forgot.... All those "pre-orders" you entered into the website.... I don't think most of you read the small print: I reserved the right to resell your addresses for fun and profit! Who knows what might show up in your mailboxes now? *diabolical laughter*</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEizSAce2bueGDLz682NKGdb1kpJtiGv8dLSyU8yjaH1FK_x-GtpMRcPR4azI8DfN0DMmByf42mGDmpJFtjIIwPLS_G2XiR2QWCfi-80N7qv8DcXmQvFk2dxAPW8buKeBIWJrFiZi-u5wJpyLr0298uB3oujtVS-k1CBjtCrLSG9iBkvQyAxIk0" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEizSAce2bueGDLz682NKGdb1kpJtiGv8dLSyU8yjaH1FK_x-GtpMRcPR4azI8DfN0DMmByf42mGDmpJFtjIIwPLS_G2XiR2QWCfi-80N7qv8DcXmQvFk2dxAPW8buKeBIWJrFiZi-u5wJpyLr0298uB3oujtVS-k1CBjtCrLSG9iBkvQyAxIk0=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A few of the actual soap carvings that I made: a train, starfish, pirate, seashell, boat and owl! I'm still a beginner soap carver, though. I hope to improve with more practice!<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-47284671357058388882022-03-31T23:48:00.000-07:002022-03-31T23:48:13.648-07:00New! DIY Carving Block Kits!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjZgIdqDUaPfMqD7G4JCoXwV-ljKuhMwAOTuwFpgDcfkICrxzyh44Io5pfmWd6sl_LybfIWrHsjSHvSjWK1BKsWWZDanr66de0HNese6a1OdPwAiFcfbMEexMpUsF6snqobAxKQdQrTKpcNjxzI1rH7eUTG33L5jisGofEwmzZpRhmPjRiGb1Q" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="399" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjZgIdqDUaPfMqD7G4JCoXwV-ljKuhMwAOTuwFpgDcfkICrxzyh44Io5pfmWd6sl_LybfIWrHsjSHvSjWK1BKsWWZDanr66de0HNese6a1OdPwAiFcfbMEexMpUsF6snqobAxKQdQrTKpcNjxzI1rH7eUTG33L5jisGofEwmzZpRhmPjRiGb1Q=s16000" /></a></div><br />So some of you know I've been working on a "secret project" for the last few months, and I'm now ready to share it with the world! I've been developing a DIY carving block kit! You choose the color! You choose the scent! You choose how stiff you want the carving block to be! It's a fun little project for those who like to get crafty and... well, come on! We're letterboxers! Who of us <i>doesn't</i> like to get crafty?!<p></p><p><a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/press/2022/" target="_blank">Read all about it</a> and pre-order now! =)<br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-70560868933469051952022-03-05T23:53:00.003-08:002022-03-05T23:53:13.618-08:00Challenge icons, publishing boxes, and more....<p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhFBCSkEmE5-7u1DQ_la0PjKAjQHzdI1PNYIu799auQRhZ4P3vPEWUd8Q8XfanlLEkEoeHaGJBd79dxcD0YVgfSNKTIh58JgiNbUD3VeQH9FNMEqEocLGrSuJQjJMIHSuuGTQQXTjR7N5OSv4ClmpOIut6UcRdvdIp4S74DXaGdDacuYMOF0J4" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhFBCSkEmE5-7u1DQ_la0PjKAjQHzdI1PNYIu799auQRhZ4P3vPEWUd8Q8XfanlLEkEoeHaGJBd79dxcD0YVgfSNKTIh58JgiNbUD3VeQH9FNMEqEocLGrSuJQjJMIHSuuGTQQXTjR7N5OSv4ClmpOIut6UcRdvdIp4S74DXaGdDacuYMOF0J4=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">If you have at least 500 finds<br />and attempts on challenging<br />boxes, you'll get this icon by<br />your name. (But smaller!)<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />So I just did a <i>major</i> update of Atlas Quest this evening. Quite literally, I've updated hundreds and hundreds of files and thousands and thousands of lines of code. It's a massive, massive update. I'm not sure there's even a file with source code on AQ that wasn't affected in at least some minor way.</p><p>But... you probably won't notice many changes. The vast majority of them are the "under the hood" variety. The last big update I did a month or two ago included an upgrade of PHP from 7.4 to 8.1. Now that AQ is running with the latest version of PHP, I added stricter type-checking all over the place and created a bunch of enumerated data types to represent the enumerated data types that the database uses. It's still an ongoing process--but basically, I updated tons of source code to be easier to update, easier to maintain and easier for other people to read and tweak. That's where the bulk of this update lies, and there's absolutely nothing to see.</p><p>However, allegedly, according to the PHP documentation, this version of PHP runs about 10% faster than the previous version so perhaps you'll see a slight improvement in speed? I don't really notice any difference, but the vast majority of the time, the Internet is the bottleneck, not the speed of the server. So I consider it a "theoretical" improvement. =)</p><p>But there are a couple of minor changes you <i>can</i> see... including "challenge coin" icons by some people's name. It starts as a relatively boring silver coin when you find (or attempt to find) a box listed as "challenging" on AQ. With enough finds and attempts, it'll be upgraded into a gold coin. Then a stack of coins. Then a giant pile of coins. And finally, when you find (or attempt to find) your 100th challenging box, you start getting bills in the mix as well. =)</p><p>AQ has been recording when y'all have been finding or attempting to find challenging boxes for a number of months now, so some people already have such icons. </p><p>If you don't like the icons... well, you can suck it. =) </p><p>Just kidding... You're more than welcome to complain and provide better suggestions. If I like the idea and it's practical, maybe I'll run with it. If I don't think it's an improvement or it's not something that's practical for me to implement, I won't.</p><p>I also completely changed the way unpublished boxes are stored in the database, which led to a few minor changes in the interface. The biggest difference is in your logbook. Now you'll find unpublished boxes as a new "action" rather than a "box type." If you have saved links to that particular page, you'll want to update those.</p><p>The one perk of how this information is stored in the database, however, is that you can now run searches for your unpublished boxes. You'll find the option on the <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/search.php?typeId=1" target="_blank">Advanced Search</a> page as an "other option". A normal search won't include unpublished boxes, but if you check that box, you'll see search results that only include your unpublished boxes (assuming all other search parameters are also met).</p><p>Special perk for admins: You can actually search everyone's unpublished boxes. ;o) This is helpful for us when someone reports a problem with listing a box that hasn't been published yet. We can search for it and take a look at the problem. But that's an admin perk--most of you can only see your <i>own</i> unpublished boxes.</p><p>Those are the two main things I can think of which you'll see have changed. There are probably some other minor modifications that I've long since forgotten about. And given the <i>huge</i> number of lines of code that have been modified, there are almost certainly some bugs that slipped through the cracks. Please be patient as I try to fix them!</p><p>Happy trails! Now get outside and try finding some challenging boxes. =)</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhH2GIW41j-ON4Adrk11MjKgRBEUc3VHDx1RMxaHvuGGF4mKb6FSbjUhZi5u6nmFUuJUGGT0qHYQ9HV2h2ebmB6FcbbhSqKkXGDDQk6-qo17OVujCeum4HNu4R9cty0fKXERj-5Oi7Oqf6NlSnQWH3fMaiZx-F_fQivKHYFJZTNycUx5UoOayA" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhH2GIW41j-ON4Adrk11MjKgRBEUc3VHDx1RMxaHvuGGF4mKb6FSbjUhZi5u6nmFUuJUGGT0qHYQ9HV2h2ebmB6FcbbhSqKkXGDDQk6-qo17OVujCeum4HNu4R9cty0fKXERj-5Oi7Oqf6NlSnQWH3fMaiZx-F_fQivKHYFJZTNycUx5UoOayA=s16000" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This more modest financial fortune <br />goes to those with between 5 and 19 find/attempts <br />on challenging boxes.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /><br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-81528874146984708202021-10-30T09:56:00.001-07:002021-10-30T09:56:52.704-07:00Ashes to ashes, dust to dust....<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia-SjgC8ZyZsckIrktFFzAx4xCbNvV9v-dT6BLAcgaHcXRuBc9xCycW8_At0mu0YYT20rvjacw67DYI9UsCziH5C4wb2-XRJtWs3w3MpwmFPEqrVD8kml3IUY_BRd3O_ln-rs_uQ/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia-SjgC8ZyZsckIrktFFzAx4xCbNvV9v-dT6BLAcgaHcXRuBc9xCycW8_At0mu0YYT20rvjacw67DYI9UsCziH5C4wb2-XRJtWs3w3MpwmFPEqrVD8kml3IUY_BRd3O_ln-rs_uQ/s16000/coffin.png" /></a></div><br />I've got some bad news for everyone: Y'all are going to die. I hope this doesn't come as a huge shock, and I apologize if it is, but it's true. It'll likely even happen to me someday. Happy Halloween! I'm such a ghoul....<p></p><p>But in all seriousness... With that thought in mind, you can now write a letterboxing <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/mypage/account/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">last will and testament</a> to include with your account information. I figure it'll mostly be used for whoever you want to adopt your boxes after the grim reaper visits, but I left the field open-ended so you can write about pretty much anything. You could say that you want certain boxes go to certain people, you could write your own obituary that should be included in your tributes page, or anything else that might be relevant to the letterboxing portion of your life.<br /></p><p>Whatever you write here can only been seen by admins, and when the time comes, we'll check it out and do our best to honor your wishes.</p><p>But I hope you all live long and happy lives and the information in it won't be needed for many, many years to come!</p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-52114364689954810192021-04-02T11:17:00.001-07:002021-04-02T11:17:54.451-07:00The Easiest Boxes Prank....<p>I had an idea early in AQ's history. I no longer remember precisely when the idea first occurred to me, but it was probably within a few years of starting Atlas Quest: A way that AQ could measure your chance of finding a specific letterbox. <br /></p><p>It was a real idea, but I never ran with it. I mentioned it to a few close friends over the years more as a curiosity--the ideas that never happened--but I deliberately never posted about the idea publicly since I was sure it would be controversial and why start a controversy if I had no intention of implementing it?</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif0L6RucA22D1eesBztWfZQMGnQDShb4y-kNa06LtN5YrYbZ_WDYlfBXOp7Lm5T-ff18-DgSocpob1YaG2a8wTj_3QMMWEuwrBiw7CpcwJ0IY5pHhXUqlgKSz2zXvjLRX9nK4a2g/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif0L6RucA22D1eesBztWfZQMGnQDShb4y-kNa06LtN5YrYbZ_WDYlfBXOp7Lm5T-ff18-DgSocpob1YaG2a8wTj_3QMMWEuwrBiw7CpcwJ0IY5pHhXUqlgKSz2zXvjLRX9nK4a2g/s16000/152123.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rozebud and geckospot, shocked by the April Fools prank!<br /></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p>The idea appealed to me greatly on an intellectual level. I was curious how accurate I could make such a feature. Theoretically, it wouldn't be hard to run a statistical analysis on a box and determine how likely a specific person would be to find a given box. Depending on how many variables are checked for, the math can get a little ugly. From an intellectual standpoint, the problem ranked up there with the <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/boards/read.php?threadId=144126&startId=989169" target="_blank">traveling salesman program</a>. I wanted to do it for <i>fun!</i> =)</p><p>But I didn't. And not just because I thought it would be controversial. Anyone who's been on AQ for a bit knows I've pushed on with controversial features if I thought the benefits would outweigh the negatives. (Or, more likely, I didn't think the supposed negatives weren't as bad as people imagined they would be--and always knew I could undo a feature if I turned out to be gloriously wrong.)</p><p>Nope, the reason I never implemented it was that I never thought it would work. Atlas Quest is a small little website, a micro-site in the vastness of the Internet, and it doesn't have a lot of data about boxes. The average box only has a handful of finds, and is lucky to have more than a couple of attempts recorded. How could I accurately determine the "findability" of a box with such a small sample set? Unless hundreds of thousands of people started using AQ on a daily basis, there would probably never be enough data to make the necessary calculations that could be both accurate and reasonably precise.</p><p>So I never implemented it. It was a dead end not even worth trying.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirHGXSZb9apayHXoUguhf5vHYYHl2W8I8gXZvln2wptteSTnmnyU30Vo4GnJKgfrjFsK409LonZbmhGiepDyk8a4ybsKmOyKJWiAEMXAt5Eyi2wHMqf1cuxj8nzs7jp_59hqc_Qw/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirHGXSZb9apayHXoUguhf5vHYYHl2W8I8gXZvln2wptteSTnmnyU30Vo4GnJKgfrjFsK409LonZbmhGiepDyk8a4ybsKmOyKJWiAEMXAt5Eyi2wHMqf1cuxj8nzs7jp_59hqc_Qw/s16000/152256.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo by thunderbird.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> Fast forward to earlier this week, and I needed an April Fools Day joke. I always have a few ideas in mind, and often times, I wind up choosing one based on how much time I have available to implement it. In this case, I had <i>less</i> than a week to throw something together.</p><p>And this old idea I had for a real feature, I felt, had some potential. I could finally implement my idea! Of course, it would never work, but that was okay--it was an April Fools joke, after all. It didn't have to work!</p><p>And a few days ago, I sat down and spent a couple of hours hacking out an algorithm for classifying boxes by "findability." It wasn't a complex algorithm. I just wanted something that, with a passing glace, appeared to be legit. So I used things like the status of the box, how many strikes it had, how long it had been since it was found, etc., to group boxes into easy, average, hard and impossible groups. Box is unavailable or retired? Impossible group! Box was active, planted yesterday and had no strikes? Easy!</p><p>Then I pulled up about a hundred listings to see how well the results turned out. It didn't have to be perfect--just something that didn't look <i>totally</i> random. </p><p>But it turned out <i>perfect</i>. I was absolutely stunned looking through the boxes. Box after box, I mentally calculated where I would have classified it with the information available on AQ database, and my algorithm--box after box--put it in the exact same category. It was a little spooky.</p><p>And not funny. Not funny at all.... This wasn't an April Fool prank anymore. It was a <i>real feature!</i> Crap. The joke was on me!</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgotbUpa5-TAhCDQZY3VPMX5dSvk1R3WIC7edoHE590O4iH75KqHqyR3j16d6DX7Ra-z_nZGjQMCf1vOAF52GurEWtW0E8MW6HmyYzVJqWv93XGSSllMB-qc17cycMRj85gFB1ClQ/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgotbUpa5-TAhCDQZY3VPMX5dSvk1R3WIC7edoHE590O4iH75KqHqyR3j16d6DX7Ra-z_nZGjQMCf1vOAF52GurEWtW0E8MW6HmyYzVJqWv93XGSSllMB-qc17cycMRj85gFB1ClQ/s16000/152103.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The joke was also on Angel Winks<br />when she woke up in the morning, but I'll talk<br />about that later....<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p><p>What to do? What to do?</p><p>Wassa--my right hand advisor for all things April Fools--suggested that I just sabotage the results and randomly throw boxes in various groups.</p><p>But I thought of another way to sabotage the results--make the different groups look and sound more-or-less the same. All of the categories would be some degree of "easy". And that's the road I started heading down.</p><p>There were several layers for this prank I had had in mind, and I wasn't sure I would have them all ready before April Fools, but that was okay. I'd just launch the joke with whatever I had completed. So the first step I did was just list results--calculated on the fly--on the box details page. That had been my proof of concept that went so terribly, terribly wrong.</p><p>The second layer was to show the results on a page of search results--so one could glance through a lot of boxes to identify the easiest finds. This took a lot more work on my part. I needed to calculate the groupings ahead of time and store them in the database to be looked up when needed. It could calculate the groupings for boxes one at a time fast enough, but a search results with hundreds of results... no, that would be too slow. They needed to be calculated ahead of time and stored in the database.</p><p>So I did that, got it all working.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuflZ-AYv-OIHzjdjaruzWPEXzQgk7vjNBDYvrSJdiT5rlVmEu8IMcXRCUkt6qjM32Z5x3zXW4tkvg3iPuCNob2bAXndbrK5P6tcsVFoy1B06Y0n2oBqJPkFnibjXZLxzpkzKLqA/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuflZ-AYv-OIHzjdjaruzWPEXzQgk7vjNBDYvrSJdiT5rlVmEu8IMcXRCUkt6qjM32Z5x3zXW4tkvg3iPuCNob2bAXndbrK5P6tcsVFoy1B06Y0n2oBqJPkFnibjXZLxzpkzKLqA/s16000/152058.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I just love it when things just "work." =)<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo by Travel'n Turtle</span></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p>Powered by the database now, I could add additional layers of "functionality". I could let people run searches based on the box's findability. I could add a widget to calculate the "easiest" box to find within a certain area. </p><p>The data in the database was actually very real, but the results AQ displayed were sometimes a little.... fake? Is that the right word? Yes, I think that's a good description of the situation.</p><p>For instance, the high degree of precision on the box details page (e.g. 99.8352% ±89.84%) were totally made up. I gave a ridiculous number of decimal points with a range so wide that it would be completely worthless. Although I needed to make sure the numbers for "incredibly easy" boxes would be higher than "super easy" boxes, and those would be higher than "very easy" boxes, which would be higher than the mere "easy" boxes. So I subtracted 10% of easiness every time the group went down a level. But the decimal points were pure random.</p><p>The widget to show the easiest box on AQ as well as one's home area was, perhaps, a bit misleading. AQ did divide boxes into 4 categories, but within a category, there was no ranking--so there was no "easiest" box to identify. Instead, I had it pick a box at random from the "incredibly easy" category. Wassa suggested that I modify it a bit and have it pick a box that people have attempted but never found just to mess with them. Excellent idea! Although I added an additional requirement that the box still needed to be active. So I tweaked the "home area" results to do that, which pleased me to no end when people pointed out on the message boards that it was sending them to boxes that they had already tried to find but that they "knew" they were missing. =)</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQLVwQdgoneK0fW_1dlrrczO8FlsBGHlPh4yZZA7CqfATwr7ovjtkS3R6YKh7X3-gVC3Zba4a1cIxrAXMAUtZ8ormy0OahHgfshTQOGMAD9tUvlGB1qkbXbAJJCQul7XaKFPaY6A/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="400" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQLVwQdgoneK0fW_1dlrrczO8FlsBGHlPh4yZZA7CqfATwr7ovjtkS3R6YKh7X3-gVC3Zba4a1cIxrAXMAUtZ8ormy0OahHgfshTQOGMAD9tUvlGB1qkbXbAJJCQul7XaKFPaY6A/" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Memere titled this photo "Late night antics." <br />Late night antics indeed.... =)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p>As far as jokes go, though, it was one of the dumber ones I've created. I really needed to "sell" the joke well, and that's what I spent all evening on March 31st working on: the <a href="https://blog.atlasquest.com/2021/03/the-easiest-boxes-on-atlas-quest.html" target="_blank">Easiest Boxes on Atlas Quest</a> post. I mixed a lot of fiction in with few actual facts, and tried to think of anything funny that I could add.</p><p>That list of factors used in the "complex calculations"... the first three entries in that list were actually real. The rest of them I spent the better part of an hour making up. It didn't matter if the idea was preposterous and impractical to implement even if I wanted to--if it sounded like it could have any effect at all on the chances of someone finding a box, I included it.</p><p>After finishing the text of the post--and there was a lot of text--I wanted some pictures to break it up and make it look pretty. What kind of photos did I have? Screenshots of the feature didn't seem like the right way to go with it. Ah ha! I know! A few months ago, I created a <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-album.php?albumId=4978" target="_blank">special photo album</a> asking for photos that I could use on AQ. I should take a gander at those. That's what I created the album for, after all!</p><p>The gag, of course, was basically promising that every box you looked for would be "easy," so I focused on the images of people showing successful finds. There were a lot of good candidates, but I ended up choosing two photos from Angel Winks (<a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=151979" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=151978" target="_blank">here</a>). And although I wasn't looking for it, I saw the <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=151890" target="_blank">inky fingers</a> photo by Wise Wanderer and thought that would be a nice change from just people finding boxes.</p><p>And while adding that photo to the post, I got the idea to add a fake testimonial, which tied in nicely with the photo. Perfect! It looked awesome! =)</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Mosaic Butterfly found the missing 'box!" height="400" src="https://www.atlasquest.com/images/gallery/15/19/151994.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="300" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">For those of you who missed Mosaic Butterfly's fake <br />endorsement on AQ's home page, this was the photo I used.<br />I think it said something like "I can't believe it really works!"<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p> </p><p>I was a little concerned that--although they submitted the photos to the photo gallery for use on AQ--perhaps they might not like the idea of it being used with fake testimonials or implying an actual endorsement of the new feature on AQ, so I quickly wrote them AQ mail pulling them in on the joke. By this point, there were only a couple of hours until midnight when the prank would go live. Angel Winks lives a couple of timezones ahead of me--she could already be asleep and not even know I've used her photos until she wakes up in the morning! I crossed my fingers and hoped she'd be okay with it. It wasn't <i>as</i> late for Wise Wanderer, but it was still late. I felt pretty sure that they wouldn't mind my using the photos, but I was ready to remove them if they sent me irate messages in the morning telling them they did not approve of how I used them </p><p>After that was done, I realized that there was no announcement for anyone coming into AQ through the home page. I figured I should add a new section to announce the new feature, then headed back to the photo gallery to look for a photo that would fit well, and this <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-photo.php?photoId=151994" target="_blank">photo </a>hit the jackpot. =) Perfect! It needed another fake testimonial too. After getting that added, I hurriedly send Mosaic Butterfly a message to formally welcome her into the conspiracy as well. =)</p><p>And then.... By the time I was ready to say everything was done, I had about an hour to wait until midnight. So I killed some time watching YouTube videos and counting down the minutes.</p><p>Most of the features were set to automatically start working the second midnight struck, but a few items I had to manually set up. The new widget, for instance, I needed to run a line in the database to make sure it got added to everyone's My Page setup. But I also discovered that the theme was changing randomly! I had put that in to run on April 1st as a placeholder last December thinking I'd create some sort of theme for April Fools, but then I had forgotten to take it out when I ended up not creating a special theme for the day. Drats! So if any of you had been on AQ within a few minutes after midnight, you would have seen the theme change with every page load. If anyone noticed, they didn't post about it--for which I was thankful. =) </p><p>On a related note, that random-theme them was the first April Fools joke I ever played on AQ, and I've used it a few other years the day <i>after </i>April Fools to mark the end of a joke. It wasn't supposed to run at all this year, though.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsIYKjeIf4gaiDv6ES7PrysA0B84sIi4uvrRCOQxTQo7h81H4net9qP34TqVUTWkkR3i53Cn3t2wc3HlrmpQzVsItxVTC65-_iDZ8MJ5qRcDI_mxv2sfnlZSsio1cHSmx5m4jVuQ/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsIYKjeIf4gaiDv6ES7PrysA0B84sIi4uvrRCOQxTQo7h81H4net9qP34TqVUTWkkR3i53Cn3t2wc3HlrmpQzVsItxVTC65-_iDZ8MJ5qRcDI_mxv2sfnlZSsio1cHSmx5m4jVuQ/s16000/151855.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I had to check for gremlins in the night....<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo by Super Hedge Hoggie</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p>I poked around the website, trying all the features making sure they were all working correctly. I found a couple of issues if someone tried to access the new features but weren't logged into an account. Minor bugs in the code that were never found since I didn't create unit tests to check these changes. (I tend not to make unit tests for code that I know will only run for a single day and isn't particularly complicated.) So I spent several more minutes fixing bugs--but so far as I can tell, nobody found them before I was able to fix them.</p><p>After everything was all set and done, I watched a couple of more YouTube videos to kill some more time. I was dead tired but didn't dare to go sleep yet for a couple of reasons: (1) in case somebody discovered a bug, I wanted to fix it and (2) I wanted to see who would comment on the joke first and what they had to say. Lame? Great? Hilarious? Stupid?</p><p>But by 1:30am, I couldn't keep my eyelids open anymore and finally called it a night.</p><p>I slept in particularly late. After being up so late at night, I slept in late too. Time to check up on how the April Fools joke was going over....</p><p>And... it was okay. =) Not great, not bad, but okay.... More or less what I expected out of it.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQznVLH-zPlHK8YQEpB7k_d-FuAL5mM2l121pVxv-gWcimj3_iqN-TajXiDSnby5y_NYdiTI3iD7rceHtINiD_6r1BClRr4SrE1fI0otpNOMr1F914CmqaaLNVGuqGlGajqK0row/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQznVLH-zPlHK8YQEpB7k_d-FuAL5mM2l121pVxv-gWcimj3_iqN-TajXiDSnby5y_NYdiTI3iD7rceHtINiD_6r1BClRr4SrE1fI0otpNOMr1F914CmqaaLNVGuqGlGajqK0row/s16000/151880.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What would everyone be doing while<br />I got some much needed rest? DrCAWatson <br />appeared to keep on boxing....<br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />But there was still one last joke to play.... to announce that this feature is actually <i>real!</i> Not the version that ran on April Fools Day, of course. I deliberately sabotaged those results for that day. But the data in the database was actually pretty good data and I wanted to give it life. Seems like a waste just to throw it away. That hadn't been my intention when I first ran with this joke, but that's what it turned into!</p><p>So I've dismantled the fake widget and fake results. I've rename the categories into their proper descriptions of easy, average, hard and impossible. (To be fair, it's not so much a measure of how <i>difficult</i> the boxes are to find, but more about the likelihood about the chances of finding it. But "findability" seemed like a weird word to describe the feature, but maybe it's a better name for it?) </p><p>And I know there are some people who would prefer not to see this information, so you really can remove the "difficulty" of a box from search results and box listings in your <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/mypage/prefs/boxes.php" target="_blank">letterbox & search preferences</a>. When I announced that on the message boards, it because that was real.<br /></p><p>But I like the feature. Not so much for trying to decide whether I should look for a box or not, but it just gives me a sense of the likelihood of whether the box is there or not which I tend to do anyhow. The status isn't always accurate since listings are often abandoned, attempts aren't always accurate since they can be recorded on boxes that are still in place, and the length of time since the box has last been visited doesn't tell you anything about whether the box is still there or not. There's not really a perfect way to determine the viability of a box--but combining all those discrete pieces of data gives me a ballpark idea of what to expect without having to individually check all the discrete pieces of data manually. I like it. =)</p><p>It's the April Fool's Day prank that lived!</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaWalGBCcSXPS1CLbLefn3yiGrk9K4w34qHhd5Ft1PVhWC6F9CA4GYx7RF7kpokEmsT5TApyhc7k2XP7veoJbxN6nFWaGTOWZFuILnG709tPcxX9WPtFxJa2nDazfDUmtkRahKBg/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="392" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaWalGBCcSXPS1CLbLefn3yiGrk9K4w34qHhd5Ft1PVhWC6F9CA4GYx7RF7kpokEmsT5TApyhc7k2XP7veoJbxN6nFWaGTOWZFuILnG709tPcxX9WPtFxJa2nDazfDUmtkRahKBg/s16000/151932.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm pretty sure that even Essex Explorers's kids like<br />April Fools more than Christmas. (Right?)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p>And I'm going to explain exactly the algorithm AQ uses to determine which difficulty level to assign to a box. By knowing exactly how the algorithm works, you can decide for yourself if the results are something you might find useful. If they aren't, you can ignore the option in your preferences.</p><p>But I can imagine that some people might be upset if their box ends up being categorized as "hard" or "impossible" even though they checked up on the box just yesterday and it's perfectly fine. So knowing how the algorithm works also allows you to better manipulate how your own boxes show up. <br /></p><p>So, here's how the calculations are made. Internally, the categories are stored as easy, average, hard or impossible, so four possible categories.<br /></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>All boxes start as<i> </i><b>easy</b><i>.<br /></i></li><li>If the box has an <i>unknown </i>status, it'll be moved to <b>average</b><i>. </i></li><li>If the box has an <i>unavailable</i> or <i>retired</i> status, it'll be moved to <b>impossible</b>.</li><li>If the box has one strike, it'll be downgraded to <b>average</b>. (If it's already at <i>average </i>or below, it will not be downgraded further.)<br /></li><li>If the box has two or three strikes, it'll be downgraded to <b>hard</b>. (If it's already at <i>hard </i>or <i>impossible</i>, it will not be downgraded further.)</li><li>If the box has not been found for at least one year, it will be downgraded one level--but not down to <i>impossible</i>.</li><li>If the box has not been found for at least five years, it will be downgraded an additional level--but not down to <i>impossible</i>.</li></ol><p>And that's it. You'll find that a box can never be classified as "impossible" unless it has a status of <i>unavailable </i>or <i>retired</i>. That's the only thing that will move the box to the "impossible" category.</p><p>If I had to guess, the most controversial part of the algorithm is that I use the last found date at all to determine if a box is viable, but I figure even if a box IS still there after 5 years, it's okay to mark it as "hard" because after that much time, there's a good chance that significant landmarks could have changed if it's a long hike, and a significant chance it really did go missing if it were in an urban environment. So boxes without a find for at least 5 years will always be labeled as hard.</p><p>But... you also have indirect control over which category your boxes fall into. A maintenance visit, for instance, counts as a "find" as far as AQ is concerned, so you could just record a maintenance visit to remove the "old last found" penalty. Ideally, you'd go out in person to check the box and make sure the clues are up-to-date and fresh, but that's not a requirement. Recording a maintenance visit can also reset the strike count back to 0, which removes the strike penalty as well.</p><p>After that, the only thing left affecting the difficulty of the box is its status--which you, again, have full control over.</p><p>Anyhow, I hope some of you find the feature helpful. Not simply to decide which boxes to look for or giving you a ballpark idea of the likelihood that the box is findable, but even for which boxes of your own that, perhaps, you should check up on.</p><p>And hey! Have you enjoyed the photos on this blog post? Want to, perhaps, see your own photos used someday? Then be sure to submit them to the <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/gallery/view-album.php?albumId=4978" target="_blank">Letterboxing Photos for AQ</a> gallery! That's where I grabbed all these photos from. (That photo album, I think, is the best idea I had all year!)<br /></p><p>Happy trails!</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6E2HMVcexJyt2GOiDbCvW2HvAniNnw-Tup-WPzhA1Fnu22_15PVvprb3iv4JS8_bZL3N6Vf8fsZDZInAgAlp-K9YMAw_gdfxmIXkN2pAqj61gPZB0NRkD2X7oc3t2aAK37PUifw/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6E2HMVcexJyt2GOiDbCvW2HvAniNnw-Tup-WPzhA1Fnu22_15PVvprb3iv4JS8_bZL3N6Vf8fsZDZInAgAlp-K9YMAw_gdfxmIXkN2pAqj61gPZB0NRkD2X7oc3t2aAK37PUifw/s16000/151962.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You might think this is part of an April Fools Day joke, but you'd be wrong.<br />It's just another letterbox adventure for AdventurousAcorn. =)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31054369.post-35061621910990376862021-04-01T20:45:00.002-07:002021-04-01T20:45:18.076-07:00April Fools: A short history<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgICHLcD0JlCeKb0ZzB1sQ1BgaTltgd8X62bfVTyWf25a9iDr7r20ZTBdWFy1N5-CoJ6x-TmOkeGT1Ijsfm3Kvj8-umAMC0VZbPNrNWAV4KRKJCQOM9MIAn2XsKlLSVa_0gCdxHGA/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgICHLcD0JlCeKb0ZzB1sQ1BgaTltgd8X62bfVTyWf25a9iDr7r20ZTBdWFy1N5-CoJ6x-TmOkeGT1Ijsfm3Kvj8-umAMC0VZbPNrNWAV4KRKJCQOM9MIAn2XsKlLSVa_0gCdxHGA/s16000/calendar_1.png" /></a></div>Yes, it is that time of year again, as most of you quickly figured out, and once again, AQ could not go a year without some sort of shenanigans to celebrate the day. It's a yearly tradition that has been happening every year since 2006. That year, it was a small event, where random themes would be used every time you loaded a page. <p></p><p>In 2007, it was another small prank--this time, introducing a <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/press/2007/" target="_blank">slew of new icons</a>. At the time, AQ still felt very new and people were constantly suggesting new icons. I included some of the real suggestions among the fake icons, but some of them were clearly ridiculous. It was meant more as a joke. I didn't think anyone would really believe that I would entertain the idea of adding such a massive number of icons. It would have been so unwieldy! People wouldn't even be able to remember what all of them meant! And a number of the icons were just so absurd. (Dinosaur crossing? Really?) <i>Nobody</i> would really think it was a real feature.</p><p>But many people did.... much to my surprise!</p><p>So the next year, in 2008, I came up with a ridiculous idea... but could sound somewhat plausible. I figured if the previous year's implausible idea fooled people, a plausible idea could fool a <i>lot</i> of people!</p><p>So I pondered the most horrible thing that could happen to letterboxing--the stuff that would give people nightmares if it were true. What if... AQ joined forces with McDonald's to <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/press/2008/" target="_blank">promote letterboxing</a> as a fun and healthy activity for children?</p><p>I'd create a McDonald's-based theme and make a grand announcement. That was it. Relatively simple and easy. I swung the idea by Wassa for his thoughts. Even then, I knew he was a gold mine of ideas when it came to pranks. And he did not approve of the idea <i>at all!</i> "No," he told me, "this is definitely not acceptable. It must be bigger!<i> Much </i>bigger!"</p><p>Then he followed up with: "We can do much better." <br /></p><p>We...? Somehow, I lost control of my own April Fools joke. I didn't have time to work on anything more extensive, but Wassa said not to worry about it--he'd take care of everything. As if that was going to put my unease at rest.... *shaking head*</p><p>I knew a little about what was he was up to. He needed my help to create a system that would automatically create hundreds or even thousands of new McAccounts to sell the illusion that McDonalds was promoting letterboxing and thousands of new members were joining. </p><p>He created the McBoxer alias--supposedly a marketing director at McDonald's headquarters months ahead of time to seed the story, built up McBoxer's bona-fides on the message boards and found willing helpers to record real plants in boxes near McDonald's headquarters. <br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmPdbSt1N9AvU2VKGb5D1C84MUk-bRyewQLntpW3XSr470Lp2k7VAGeegNcyHqacwcW3S4UPkLcOlVgjSqt7nnXHtZNxMvkD0keG7a5nf0Q3ZLS291bBR6Wdt7t1ZAFaDOEjlF1w/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmPdbSt1N9AvU2VKGb5D1C84MUk-bRyewQLntpW3XSr470Lp2k7VAGeegNcyHqacwcW3S4UPkLcOlVgjSqt7nnXHtZNxMvkD0keG7a5nf0Q3ZLS291bBR6Wdt7t1ZAFaDOEjlF1w/s16000/spy.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The only known photo of McBoxer.<br />He does look a little shady....<br />I'm not sure why anyone would have trusted him.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p>He found help to create an entirely new <a href="https://www.atlasquest.com/press/2008/mcboxing/" target="_blank">McLetterboxing</a> website, which I knew about because I bought the domain name and added space on the server for the site--and the site even included an actual letterboxing-themed happy meal. He found I don't know how many people before the Big Day to post to the message boards, saying that they went into McDonald's to see for themselves if the story was true and posting about their (positive) results.</p><p>The amount of hours and preparation that went into this joke was vast. I knew Wassa was a wonderful source of ideas, but I was truly scared at the size of his ideas.</p><p>And then the Big Day arrived. April Fools. I had automated the announcement to post automatically on the home page because I was on a thru-hike and far from civilization. Eventually, I saw some of the posts when another hiker lent me his smart phone to read some of the message boards, but I wouldn't read the entire day's posts until I made it to the next trail town a couple of days later. (To this date, April 1, 2008 still ranks as the busiest day of posting ever on AQ.) But for the most part, I was basically MIA for the Biggest and Most Awesome April Fools prank ever played on AQ.<br /></p><p>I didn't realize it at the time, but Wassa was also missing the fruits of his creation. It was on this date when he picked up his new dog, Lucy, and he spend a good portion of the day just driving to Livermore and back. He was a little disappointed miss the unfolding of his epic creation. But it's a little ironic: I, who initially conceived of the idea and certainly played an important role as well as Wassa that super-charged the idea into letterboxing history, were both missing the actual fireworks.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFgSsDaDL1OsWKsvTaG3WNaVzVXqL7Wt15ALKgmvrlNifpsO2ydsLjPRDaSMCcMS4kBpIOh2qhxbUbYIiyf4f0QTrOcEnLJK_crhX5Xy0_3Is1baOI7hhccTAwSf57giSWMDTSJg/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFgSsDaDL1OsWKsvTaG3WNaVzVXqL7Wt15ALKgmvrlNifpsO2ydsLjPRDaSMCcMS4kBpIOh2qhxbUbYIiyf4f0QTrOcEnLJK_crhX5Xy0_3Is1baOI7hhccTAwSf57giSWMDTSJg/s16000/20210331_143153.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wassa largely missed the unfolding of his greatest<br />AQ prank to pick up this cute little dog, Lucy.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table> </p><p>There have been many more gags and pranks over the years, some better than others, but none of them really matched the epic heights that McBoxer pulled off--and likely never will again. We've batted around ideas for such epic pranks, but now everyone <i>expects</i> there to be shenanigans, and immediately post reminders of the fact. Sometime people even post a day or two early pondering what might be in store for April Fools. We can't really pull anything big off anymore because y'all are watching too closely and too suspicious of us. So the gags now tend to be more amusing in nature. Inside jokes, ridiculous features, or whatever. If some people fall for it--awesome! If absolutely nobody does.... well, I hope they got a laugh out of it anyhow. =)<br /></p><p>Anyhow, Wassa emailed me that Lucy--the dog that entered his life during the Great McLetterboxing prank, had been suffering from health problems and had to be put down yesterday. So Wassa spent part of the afternoon yesterday scrolling through the old McLetterboxing posts, reliving the day he picked up Lucy. And marveled that not only did that joke work <i>so</i> well, but that is was probably improved by not having him around to respond or react as much. So in her own special way, Lucy contributed to the Great McLetterboxing April Fools Day prank. Thanks, Lucy! Rest in peace!</p><p>This post is long enough as it is, so I'll post tomorrow about the details of this year's April Fools prank which has its own interesting and unusual plot twists.... </p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfCpAUYY6Vvo83GK-t0WPeovNK5U3zytZec94qHEF_5WBYGKM58WFFo0K3ihg1UZlkuy9AcpDRjWC-gB0rChJBp4cYHX5Et3DQ7P3nfKeboDbDZsSyxcQZNrOM0Od0p3ahRegMjA/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="373" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfCpAUYY6Vvo83GK-t0WPeovNK5U3zytZec94qHEF_5WBYGKM58WFFo0K3ihg1UZlkuy9AcpDRjWC-gB0rChJBp4cYHX5Et3DQ7P3nfKeboDbDZsSyxcQZNrOM0Od0p3ahRegMjA/s16000/20210331_133931.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thanks for the assist, Lucy! =)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12243706924573005381noreply@blogger.com6