Crunchy Cheetos Are Better Than Puffy Cheetos

I'm on my way back from a whirlwind week in the Netherlands. I'll try to post a little about those adventures at some point, but I have a lot of e-mail and messages to catch up on. I tried to keep up since I did have regular Internet access, but it never seemed like it was enough time to catch up with everything.

I'm at the airport in Philly now, waiting for a flight to Seattle, catching up on message boards. Which seem to be focused on rock stashing, another LbNA vs. AQ debate (which I thank everyone for keeping civil, even if no new ground is being turned up), and wassa's surprise theme (he didn't even give ME any warning about that one!--I had to read the about page to figure out what was going on myself!)

But my favorite post so far is the Cheetos post--which is better, crunchy or puffy? Anyone with a sophisticated pallet such as myself knows that the crunchy Cheetos are better. I'll even stand on a trash can and say that if it helps me be heard better. Crunchy is best! =) Why would you just want to eat air?

Amanda will deny it--she's a puffy girl--but she also thinks Jack In the Box is "low class" which kind of ruins her credibility in my book. =)

As for rock stashing, I don't plan to support it. Granted, things like virtuals, postals, and such aren't real letterboxes, but at least they still have stamps involved. Frankly, it sounds like something wassamatta_u would have made up (never trust a man that wears giant boxers--that's what my mom always warned against!), except that I can see the IP addresses and they didn't match.

I planted three boxes while in the Netherlands. Hope some of you get a chance to find some of them! (Especially the Pancakes with Windmills box. That place is like walking through a living fairy tale!)

Trials and Errors

Last night was a pretty rotten night. It all started with that "backup" problem I mentioned earlier. I won't get into the technical details (I promise!), but to make a long story short, I needed to update some of the software on the server to make the backups with the new hosting provider work properly.

It didn't go well.....

I hate updating this stuff. It's not really stuff I know much about. If I still worked at Intel, I'd have someone else install it for me who knows what they're doing. =) I can generally update MY code easily enough. I know how it works, what it needs, yadda, yadda, yadda. Updating stuff like the operating system, web server, database server.... The stuff nightmares are made from. Ask Amanda. Apparently, I was even talking in my sleep about it a couple of night ago, much to her annoyance. =)

It's been a couple of years since I've had to update some of the server's software. Things still aren't completely back up and running normally. (Try going to ryansatotalgoober.com if you want proof of that.) So I'll be taking AQ down for probably several hours trying to pound out the rest of the issues this update has caused. Sorry for the inconvenience.

In completely unrelated news, while waiting for the midnight hour last night to take AQ down, I played around with some stats just to see what I could do. Check out your My Statistics page, near the bottom. (This page is for premium members only.) Near the bottom, if you have at least five finds recorded on AQ, will be displayed the total number of miles you've traveled to get all your finds.

It's not a perfect number, and there is some "fudging" involved to account for finds of mystery boxes or finds of unlisted boxes, but it should be a relatively accurate (if not precise) account for the number of miles you had to travel to get all of the boxes you've found.

Me? Well, I've traveled about 292,070 miles to nab all my finds. Amanda, the flight attendent, has pulled in over 800,000 miles of traveling. It's rather database intensive to run the numbers for every single member on Atlas Quest, but I'd say there's a better than average chance that Amanda holds the record for most miles traveled. If you have more, I'd be very curious to know it. =)

I should also point out, my list of finds isn't actually complete. I never did get around to recording the boxes I found while thru-hiking last year. The miles traveled also doesn't account for the traveling you've done to plant boxes or attend events. (Perhaps future updates!)

But it's still a fun number to look at. =)

Apparently, I've been a bad, bad boy....

Some of you might have heard me eluding to problems with atlasquest.org. What is atlasquest.org, you ask? It's a domain name I own but generally haven't had much use for. I bought it with the theory that I'd rather own it and not need it, than to want it and later find out I couldn't have it.

If you do go to the website atlasquest.org, you'll see that it is indeed a real, honest-to-goodness website. It's not very useful for anything, but it does serve one important use for me: backups. Each night, Atlas Quest dumps the database into files. Backups are extremely important for anything important because computers aren't perfect. Hard drives crash, things happen.

So I don't really want to store the backups ON the main Atlas Quest server. If something should happen to that server, not only would the website go down, but the backups for it would be lost as well! Definitely not a satisfactory solution.

So that's where atlasquest.org came into play. I picked a cheap web hosting provider. To make things work, they kind of like to have a domain name to work with. So I "sacrificed" atlasquest.org. That account is hosted on a completely different server, in a completely different state, by a completely different company. And each night, after Atlas Quest backups up the database for the day, it FTPs everything that needs to be backed up to atlasquest.org.

This includes the nightly backups of the database, along with photos that were uploaded during the day--including calendar submissions which get their own special place.

I'm now storing about 6 gigs of data at that location. Which isn't really a whole lot. When I signed up, I was given a disk quota of 10 gigs. I knew I'd outgrow the space eventually, but I figured I still had at least another year or two before I had to worry about it.

Until last week, when the company hosting my account sent me an e-mail saying that it appeared I was using the account to backup data, and accounts were not allowed to be used for that purpose. Actually, they said I could not back up data that was "personal and non-web-related." It came as rather a surprise--I don't remember seeing that clause in the terms of serice when I signed up a couple of years back.

I don't really consider the data "personal" and it's very much "web-related," so I tried talking them into letting it slide. But alas, no, they have standards or something and the terms of service must be complied with. I have to get rid of the data from their servers. I've been a bad boy, and they no longer want me around. =(

So, I'm in the process of setting up a new system for backing up data. Turns out, there's this interesting concept called "cloud computing," and it'll actually cut my backup expenses by about 80%. And there's no limit to the amount of data I can back up, so that won't be a concern. (They will charge more as I use more space, however, but the rates are quite reasonable.)

The new backup location doesn't require me to "use up" a domain name, so atlasquest.org will once again be free for me to use and abuse as I wish. I'll probably move it to the main AQ server and just have it redirect to atlasquest.com. At least until I find something better to do with the domain.....

You realize you folks have uploaded over 60,000 images to Atlas Quest? Some of them have been deleted over the years, of course, but there are a lot of images. Far more than I ever imagined I'd have to worry about less than five years after introducing Atlas Quest. Each image is stored three times--a thumbnail version, a "normal" version, and a "large" version. Most of the large versions I've been deleting from the main AQ server because of space concerns and because most of them are all that important, but the backups still had the original large versions. (For those clues that weren't properly marked as a "photo clue," that's how I was able to retrieve the large versions of the photo.) So with 60,000 images uploaded, times three for each of the three versions of it stored--that's 180,000 images.

I've at the library now (broadband connection--you don't deal with 180,000 images on a dial-up connection!)--and have been here for four hours. So far, I've retrieved 43,200 images. About 10,000 images per hour. At this rate, I'll need 18 hours here to get all of the images off of the backup site. But I'm still being productive. As I take data off the old backup site, I'm working on code to get Atlas Quest set up and working with the new backup location. FTP won't cut this time around. I'm learning how to get and set secure web pages and learning the API the new hosting provider has for storing and retieving files.

Which is all "back of the house" stuff that none of you will even notice. =) That's okay--I don't expect anyone to notice. In this case, if I do my job RIGHT, it means you WON'T notice. The one thing some observant members might notice is that atlasquest.org will no longer be an official stand-alone site like it is now. But it's not a site you'd normally visit anyhow.

But I do find the sheer number of photos I'm having to deal with somewhat astounding. It used to be I could copy them all to my personal computer in mere minutes. When I first started backing up images and the database, it filled perhaps 100M of space. Atlas Quest has come a long way since those humble orgins, and just another example of the tweaks and modifications necessary to keep AQ running smoothly despite the increase in size and usage. =)

Oh, Canada! Oh, Canada!

Do you realize how many hours I spent making maps for the United States? At one point, I could close my eyes and still see the latent images flashing across my brain. I had nightmares. And I'm man enough to admit it--I cried. Okay, maybe I didn't cry, but at times, I wanted to. What did I get myself into?

I started working on a Canadian version of the map, but gave up in disgust. Not to mention that I didn't have any decent Canadian maps to work off of. I did throw in a map for Mexico--but only because I didn't break the country down into its individual administrative areas. One map! Which is relatively quick and easy, all things considered.

But Canada had all those provinces... Thirteen of them. Not as bad as the United States, but about thirteen more than I wanted to do. So I set the maps aside for another day.

Along came a day, about a month ago, and I picked up the map project once again. Tonight (this morning--it's 3:10am now here in Seattle as I type this), I finally finished Canada. I'm pretty sick of maps once again. =) Not so bad that I'm having nightmares and still seeing maps when I close my eyes, but ugh, map-making isn't the simple project you might think it is. And boy howdy, I tell you, I have a new-found respect for the work Der Mad Stamper put into the LbNA website! I bet the jerk had an easy to do it, though. Can't imagine he wasted as much time on the project as I did. ;o)

I still harbor dreams of supporting the entire world with maps, one country at a time. Perhaps I'll even finish before kick that great bucket in the sky. =) Yeah, not likely, but what can I say? I like to dream big!

Anyhow, for your mapping pleasure, enjoy Canada!

-- Ryan

PS. There are only six boxes of mini pencils left. If you're interested, it's still not to late! But I doubt they'll last much longer. Now or never! =)

Pencils, pencils, who wants some pencils?

It's been awhile since I ordered the popular AQ mini pencils. Honestly, I haven't had much incentive--I've always given them away for free or sold them at a loss. (And that's when they aren't stolen when they're delivered to the front door, but strangely, those thieves opened the box first and only took half of the 1440 pencils that were in it. I'm still curious what they needed the 720 pencils they did take for...) The more I sold, the more I lost. It's not a very good business to get into.

But for a limited time, I have some pencils for sale once again. Since I'm keeping one box for myself, that leaves a total of 39 boxes (144 pencils per box) available for those who want to order one. When they're gone, I do not plan to reorder anymore (at least not anytime in the immediate future), so if you want them, now's the time to order!

Each pencil says, "Get your next clue at www.atlasquest.com." Boring, yes. Informative--some people might say so. =) The idea being, of course, that they would go within a letterbox so people would see the message when they found the box. Probably intended for people such as geocachers or other would-be mugglers who may not have ever heard of letterboxing. On a practical note, it's not adviseable to put these pencils inside ZipLock bags since it could punch a hole in them. And come on, they're pencils. They don't need to stay dry anyhow.

If you're interested, though, get into the AQ Marketplace and put your order in. They're $10/box (premium members get 10% off--just $9/box), and shipping is $2/box. Now that I'm an officially registered business with the state of Washington, I'll also be collecting sales tax for any orders shipped to any destination within Washington. Sorry about that. (Now don't you guys wish I moved to some other state?)

Speaking of sales tax--I had to update a lot of code to support annoying little state taxes such as sales tax, and there could very well be bugs in the system. Wassa kindly tested out a California shipping address so non-Washington destinations seems to be working well at this point. I'm not sure if the sales tax code could break, though. If it does, don't worry--I'll get it fixed. =)

Happy trails!

My Page 2.0

Did you know, when I first developed Atlas Quest, there was no My Page at all? It didn't take long before I wanted a page to summarize what was going on on the site, mostly for my own. Were there new posts on the message boards? Did anyone add any new letterboxes? Who signed up today? Who updated their profiles? And I started collecting the summaries into what is now known as My Page. I figured if I found it useful, so would everyone else!

The dirty little secret, though, is that the feature was largely a hack. I added and tweaked it over the years, but they were minor things. For a long time, I've wanted to update it so people could customize the page to their own needs. Even I found myself wishing some of the sections weren't in my way, and wishing there was additional information that I felt most people wouldn't be interested in.

Even the information that was displayed, I'd often get request for changes that I would resist for various reasons. Such as listing *all* of one's favorite boards rather than just those that have new messages. (I resisted that one because for those who have hundreds of boards marked as favorites, the list would get quite lengthy and incredibly unhelpful.)

And for years, I've wanted to fix all that and do a proper job of things. And at long last, I have. Premium members have been able to follow its development almost from the day I first started working on it, numerous suggestions from them making it into this final form.

Each section on My Page is a box I call a "widget." It's a technical term that means, "that thing over there." I like the term better than "box," which on a letterboxing website can get especially confusing anyhow. So each of those sections on My Page are called widgets for our purposes.

You can drag them around and put them in whatever order best suits your needs. Internet Explorer, annoyingly, forces you to drag widgets from the name at the top of the widget, but Firefox properly lets you drag from anywhere in the title bar (minus the buttons, of course, which are used for other purposes). If there's a little picture of a pencil in the title bar, that's the edit button to edit the preferences for that widget. If there's a little question mark in a circle, clicking that will open a help page about the widget. You can also minimize and maximize widgets, or close them completely if you don't want to see it anymore at all.

One of the widgets is the My Page Options widget, which allows you to set preferences for all of My Page including the number of columns to use. By default, you have three columns to play with. If you have small screens or large text, you might find that two columns work better. For those of you with very wide screens, you might try a larger number. When you like your settings, you can close that box and get it out of your way.

You'll also want to take a gander at the widgets that can be added to My Page. I put the "main" widgets on by default, but a lot of those "non-core" widgets (such as newest members, non-traditional boxes, etc.) are opt-in widgets.

Numerous things to add to My Page have been suggested over the years, but I largely avoided them under the protective flag that I felt most people would find such specific information more annoying than annoying. Now that My Page can be customized, I don't feel anywhere near so constrained. =) So I added a couple of widgets that are there for no other reason than I can, such as the This Day In History widget and the Weather widget.

One common request has been a place to write notes to oneself. There's a widget for that now!

I'll probably add additional widgets in the upcoming months, so check for new ones on occasion.

Anyhow, the best way to get familiar with the feature is just to dig in and start using it. It should work properly with all modern browsers. Older browsers could have problems. The page itself should *display* fine, but you might not be able to edit preferences, drag widgets around, and such.

Happy trails!

Premium Member Rates

Just one last warning--if you're thinking about becoming a premium member on Atlas Quest soon, rates will be going up $3/year next month. If you're already a premium member, you won't see any change--as long as you continue to renew your membership, you'll still get the same rate you've always been paying. But for those of you who are thinking about it or planned to sign up soon, you'll save a few bucks if you join before the end of the month! =)

If you prefer to send a personal check--not to worry, just mail it before the end of the month. Even if it arrives late, I'll still honor the old price so long as it's postmarked by the end of the month.

Happy trails!

-- Ryan

No More Abandoned Boxes! =)

I'm rather surprised at the number of people who complain about the abandoned status. Seems like it could be useful information, but people complain that they can't adopt such boxes. They complain that boxes that have been found recently and confirmed to still be in play aren't listed as active. They complain that boxes that are known to be gone and missing don't have a status of retired. Strangely, it seems like few people at all actually *like* the abandoned status--everyone prefers to complain about what the status "should" be.

And I realized--that abandoned status really isn't actually necessary. If you all want recently found boxes to be listed as active, fine. I'll make them active. If you want boxes that are known to be missing, fine. I'll list them as retired. And if the boxes may or may not be there but we aren't sure, I'll list them as unknown.

There are over 2,000 abandoned listings on Atlas Quest, and I have no intention of maintaining them all manually, so I've developed a new nightly task for Atlas Quest. It does some number crunching, checking the list of finds and attempts, and makes a best guess for the status of an abandoned listing, setting the status to either active, unknown, or retired. If there's an abandoned box that you want to make sure the status is active, record a find. If there's an abandoned box that you want to make sure the status is retired, record an attempt on it.

No guarantees that you can force the status to active a specific state, however. AQ considers a number of factors, which I'd rather not make public for three reasons:

One, nobody would ever agree on what factors should be used to determine the status of abandoned box listings.

Two, I'll likely be tweaking the calculations used to improve the results over time. Even if I told you what factors were used, it probably won't stay the same!

And three, the more one knows about how it works, the easier it is to "beat the system"--which I'd rather not have people trying to do to force a specific status.

The abandoned status was a fun to try, but seeing as it never seemed especially popular, I'm going to Plan B and having Atlas Quest auto-set the status for abandoned listings.

Happy trails!

Tempest in a Teapot

Some people feel that finds and attempts are terrible things to share. Mostly due to the fact that I lost my temper, I left it up to a vote to determine whether people could opt out of sharing such details about their boxes, and the idea went down in flames.

Time has passed, and I'm feeling much more rational than during those heated moments. A number of months ago, I finally decided that the option should be there. It likely won't be a popular option seeing as how soundly it had been voted down before, but it's the right thing to do. If it bothers you that you may not be able to see recent attempts or finds on a box, or possibly not even be able to see the last found date of a box, don't look for it.

You can even ignore all of the boxes by people who won't provide such information. Go to their profile, click the "Ignore Member" button in the upper-right corner of the page, and tell Atlas Quest to ignore their boxes in your searches in the future.

You can set this option in your Miscellaneous Preferences. The bottom of the first big box of options. You can hide just the attempts on your box, both the attempts and finds on your boxes, or the most draconian option available--hiding attempts, finds, and the last found date on your boxes.

I also have a challenge for you. =) Trying to hide this information from people who don't want others to see it is a tricky little business. It oozes. It leaks. People will still record finds, and they'll want it to show up in their logbooks as finds.

So I've tried to hide the pertinent information about your own boxes that you don't want shared, but I'm not entirely convinced I found every single possible place where it might have oozed out. So I've currently set my own boxes to hide everything--finds, attempts, and the last found date. I'd like to challenge some of you find some of that information. If I did a good job, you won't be able to find any of that information.

Admins--this challenge does not apply to you. There are certain places were restrictions are relaxed for admins, so you might be able to find data that others can't. =) Also, when it comes to showing finds and attempts, anyone who can edit a box can see the entire list of data, so it doesn't count if you find data on a box that I share with you. Carvers, planters, authors, owners, and listers of my boxes don't get fully restricted from the information, so if you want to participate, you need to find data on a box we don't have in common.

Let me know if you find any leaks anywhere so I can plug them up properly. =)

After a week or so, I'll return my box settings so you can see the attempts, finds, and last found dates. (I don't have a problem with that! I'm only changing my settings for testing purposes!)

Happy trails!

Premium Member Rates

Just as an FYI, I'm planning to raise the premium member rates from $35/year to $38/year at the end of the month. This is for NEW premium members--those who are already premium members, so long as you continue to renew, you'll continue getting the same rate you're currently getting. At this point, I plan to raise rates more-or-less at the rate of inflation every year or two. If I have to pay inflated costs for everything, so does everyone else. ;o) It's now been two years since the last increase, so I figure it's about due for another minor increase--and even then, it only applies to new premium members. All ya' old timers keep your old rates. =)

But I did want to give everyone who's not a premium member fair warning about the upcoming increase so you can lock in the current rates while they last. (Truth be told, however, I'd just as soon prefer y'all sign up next month! *wink*)

The 100-year membership is based on your current price for premium membership if you're already a premium member. If you're a premium member, AQ charges your current yearly rate multiplied by 5, so someone paying $30/year, the 100-year membership would cost 30 x 5 = $150. That won't change. You'd still be paying $30/year, and a 100-year membership would still cost $150.

If, however, you aren't a premium member already, AQ basically charges one year for an annual premium membership, then applies your current rate times five so the rates are applied fairly. Right now, that amounts to $210, but with the rate increase, it becomes $38 + ($38 x 5) = $228. If you want to get the 100-year membership can't afford it now, you can "game the system" sort of speak. Sign up for one year now at $35. Then you'll have a year to pay $35 * 5 = $175 for the hundred year membership. (The total cost being $210, or $18 less than waiting until next month to sign up.)

Clear as mud? =) Long story short--if you want to pay the lower rates, you'll want to become a premium THIS MONTH if you aren't a premium member already. If you buy the one-year premium membership, the cost of it will be applied to the 100 year membership if you choose to do that option later--but at the lower rate you've locked in.

And like I've said already, if you're already a premium member, this message does not apply to you. Just ignore me. =)

Happy trails!