c4countdown

The Daily Duel bold is a bit messed up - the names in bold are all the people with 18 entries this month, when 19 is the max.

Michael Wallace wrote:The Daily Duel bold is a bit messed up - the names in bold are all the people with 18 entries this month, when 19 is the max.

Prize for the fiftieth person to report this bug?

Ian Volante wrote:

Michael Wallace wrote:The Daily Duel bold is a bit messed up - the names in bold are all the people with 18 entries this month, when 19 is the max.

Prize for the fiftieth person to report this bug?

I know it's tedious, but it is useful for people to report recurring problems because my usual (highly professional) approach to fixing them is 1) fiddle around a bit 2) wait til next month 3) see if it worked. And I usually forget stage 3.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Ian Volante wrote:

Michael Wallace wrote:The Daily Duel bold is a bit messed up - the names in bold are all the people with 18 entries this month, when 19 is the max.

Prize for the fiftieth person to report this bug?

I know it's tedious, but it is useful for people to report recurring problems because my usual (highly professional) approach to fixing them is 1) fiddle around a bit 2) wait til next month 3) see if it worked. And I usually forget stage 3.

Fairy nuff, you're a busy man after all!

I just saw this in the Happenings on the homepage: "Scott Phillips commented on The Duellist's game with him. 41 minutes ago." (This is at approx. 12.08am). I got the message: "This game is part of today's Daily Duel, you'll have to wait til tomorrow to view it." Presumably this is because I haven't yet done today's duel, but it stopped me from seeing that game from yesterday.

Adam Gillard wrote:I just saw this in the Happenings on the homepage: "Scott Phillips commented on The Duellist's game with him. 41 minutes ago." (This is at approx. 12.08am). I got the message: "This game is part of today's Daily Duel, you'll have to wait til tomorrow to view it." Presumably this is because I haven't yet done today's duel, but it stopped me from seeing that game from yesterday.

It's because yesterday's results haven't been processed yet (it takes a while).

Seems silly to post this but you're not on MSN Charlie - today's newly added history should be titled May not April on the homepage.

Matt Morrison wrote:Seems silly to post this but you're not on MSN Charlie - today's newly added history should be titled May not April on the homepage.

I will now sit in the corner for 10 minutes.

The target etc and percentage score was not reported for my last Top Dog game, although appears in the archive.

http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=316364

As awesome as it is to be able to play Apterous in Finnish, it gets a bit frustrating when common words like minä 'I', te 'y'all', talo 'house', sain 'I received', &c. are missing from the dictionary…

Also, inflections – nominative singular AINE 'subject' is in, but nominative plural AINEET^ is not.

I realise, though, that if all inflections were included in the dictionary, it would be prohibitively huge – this is a list of case forms (combined with other suffixes) for a single noun.

Is it a concious change to not sure my duel score relative to the top ten any more? It's not there today, and I'm in 12th at the moment.

Miriam Nussbaum wrote:As awesome as it is to be able to play Apterous in Finnish, it gets a bit frustrating when common words like minä 'I', te 'y'all', talo 'house', sain 'I received', &c. are missing from the dictionary…

Also, inflections – nominative singular AINE 'subject' is in, but nominative plural AINEET^ is not.

I realise, though, that if all inflections were included in the dictionary, it would be prohibitively huge – this is a list of case forms (combined with other suffixes) for a single noun.

I don't speak any Finnish so I just used the first wordlist I could find. If you can find a better one, I'll happily use that.

If you can find a better one, I'll happily use that.

The English wordlist gets modified/updated, right? Could one do the same with the Finnish one to put personal pronouns and things in?

This popped up:

ClientGame1590 [CXPLAY]: net.BlockingLayerInterruptedException: net.BlockingNetworkLayer$FinalObjectExtractedException: Stream ended (final object extracted)

Rhys Benjamin wrote:This popped up:

ClientGame1590 [CXPLAY]: net.BlockingLayerInterruptedException: net.BlockingNetworkLayer$FinalObjectExtractedException: Stream ended (final object extracted)

Did you try it again after the final object was extracted? Presumably that's what was blocking the layer.

Apterous Sponge is really bad at Spoilage.

Hugh Binnie wrote:Apterous Sponge is really bad at Spoilage.

For now, yes! What makes you think this is a bug?

Charlie Reams wrote:

Hugh Binnie wrote:Apterous Sponge is really bad at Spoilage.

For now, yes! What makes you think this is a bug?

I thought Sponge was meant to be like Rex once he'd seen a word.

Hugh Binnie wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:

Hugh Binnie wrote:Apterous Sponge is really bad at Spoilage.

For now, yes! What makes you think this is a bug?

I thought Sponge was meant to be like Rex once he'd seen a word.

OIC. Maybe the maximum length is clamped somewhere, I don't remember.

Charlie Reams wrote:OIC. Maybe the maximum length is clamped somewhere, I don't remember.

At any rate, he declared ANTIDIS... in one round then missed it later when it was a max. Also I forgot to mention that I kept getting sponges (not pencils) for the same words. >_>

Maybe there is a clamp on the length of word which Sponge can offer _if and only if_ that word is offered by a player, not by Dictionary Corner? Certainly Sponge appears to have declared UNIVERSALIZABILITIES, which I guess Sponge learned from a Dictionary Corner max. And I certainly can't explain Sponge declaring ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISMS in one round but not in a later round. But Sponge doesn't seem to know PNEUMONOULTRAMICROSCOPICSILICOVOLCANOCONIOSIS yet. I think that's because Sponge has never seen DC declare that word; in every round it's cropped up, it's always been offered by Sponge's human opponent.

So I think that the maximum length of word that Sponge can remember from a player's declaration is clamped at 15 letters, or in other words, Sponge only remembers the first 15 letters of any word which is declared by his opponent (whereas he correctly remembers maxes from Dictionary Corner, without truncation). So rather than declaring "CHLORDIAZEPOXIDE", Sponge is actually declaring "CHLORDIAZEPOXID", which isn't a valid word. So Sponge scores no points and gets a little "x" by his word.

This clamping of words at 15 letters also manifests itself in other ways. For example, after a round is played, only the first 15 letters of a player's declaration are stored in the apterous database; and the 16th and subsequent letters appear to be lost forever (other than the points tally being correctly recorded, and pencils having been gained). So this means that you can't search in Lexplorer for all the occasions someone has declared "ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISMS". A search on the full length words will only show occurrences of that word in Dictionary Corner, where full length of words _is_ preserved. To search for all players' declarations of "ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISMS" you actually have to search Lexplorer for "ANTIDISESTABLIS", the first 15 letters. This would also throw up any other declarations starting with those 15 letters, e.g. any occurrence of someone declaring "ANTIDISESTABLISSFULEVENINGINTAMWORTH", despite that string quite blatantly not (yet) being a valid Apterous word.

And as for that Welsh placename not being a good max in Dutch Spoilage, I think there's another clamp on word length - at 49 letters (or poss 50 letters). I just can't remember what digging I did one day to find that out.

And Hugh, do you mean sponges, not pencils? That would follow, for any word >15 letters you declare, which hasn't also been learned from Dictionary Corner.

Matt Bayfield wrote:Maybe there is a clamp on the length of word which Sponge can offer _if and only if_ that word is offered by a player, not by Dictionary Corner?

I wondered this but Sponge had a chance to learn ANTIDIS... and PNEUMONO... from Dictionary Corner in this game, where Sponge also declared CHLORDIAZEPOXIDE.

And Hugh, do you mean sponges, not pencils? That would follow, for any word >15 letters you declare, which hasn't also been learned from Dictionary Corner.

Sponges indeed.

In Greek, typing letters into the Note box displays the letters but does not recognise them as letters. The only way of inputting words is by clicking on the letters. Is this deliberate?

Kai Laddiman wrote:In Greek, typing letters into the Note box displays the letters but does not recognise them as letters. The only way of inputting words is by clicking on the letters. Is this deliberate?

I'm not sure but it sounds like you're typing Latin characters which happen to look like Greek ones

I can't find (or remember) the umlaut debate, but why was it decided that umlauts can't be expanded into the umalauted vowel + E? For example, LOEWE (lion) is a common German word.

Substitution of an umlauted vowel with the natural vowel +E is only acceptable in German spelling in typefaces where Umlauts are not available. So whilst you will occasionally see spellings like LOEWE in various places, they would be frowned upon in normal German writing. Hence they are not valid in apterous' German lexicon.

Similarly the eszett should not be replaced by "ss" (or indeed "sz") in lower case, except in typefaces where the eszett is not available. In upper case, the eszett is always replaced with "SS", hence the absence of an eszett on apterous.

It has to be said - in the early months of German being on apterous, there were no umlauts in conundrums, and some conundrums used the spellings with the vowel + E (e.g. SCHWAERMT). This was a bit daft, as SCHWAERMT would not have been valid in a Letters round. So Charlie fixed this, and now conundrums contain umlauts and always use the recommended spelling.

Matt Bayfield wrote:Substitution of an umlauted vowel with the natural vowel +E is only acceptable in German spelling in typefaces where Umlauts are not available. So whilst you will occasionally see spellings like LOEWE in various places, they would be frowned upon in normal German writing. Hence they are not valid in apterous' German lexicon.

Similarly the eszett should not be replaced by "ss" (or indeed "sz") in lower case, except in typefaces where the eszett is not available. In upper case, the eszett is always replaced with "SS", hence the absence of an eszett on apterous.

It has to be said - in the early months of German being on apterous, there were no umlauts in conundrums, and some conundrums used the spellings with the vowel + E (e.g. SCHWAERMT). This was a bit daft, as SCHWAERMT would not have been valid in a Letters round. So Charlie fixed this, and now conundrums contain umlauts and always use the recommended spelling.

Fair enough, I just find the umlauts really annoying because they're so hard to make words with. Thanks for explaining.

Matt Bayfield wrote:Substitution of an umlauted vowel with the natural vowel +E is only acceptable in German spelling in typefaces where Umlauts are not available. So whilst you will occasionally see spellings like LOEWE in various places, they would be frowned upon in normal German writing. Hence they are not valid in apterous' German lexicon.

Similarly the eszett should not be replaced by "ss" (or indeed "sz") in lower case, except in typefaces where the eszett is not available. In upper case, the eszett is always replaced with "SS", hence the absence of an eszett on apterous.

The first part made total sense, but the second paragraph doesn't really work for me - is apterous really in capitals? I've never thought about it that way, it's just capitals being used to display the words. I dunno, yeah I guess it is in capitals. Funny though, I've just always thought of it as some kind of universal case which isn't really capitals or lower case, it's just 'apterous letters'.

EDIT: In fact, doesn't apterous in French have accents? I'm sure I was taught in French lessons accents are removed from capitals, so that suggests I was right that apterous isn't in caps?

The duel scoring is a bit messed up, unintended consequences of the last fix?

Matt Morrison wrote:... is apterous really in capitals? I've never thought about it that way, it's just capitals being used to display the words. I dunno, yeah I guess it is in capitals. Funny though, I've just always thought of it as some kind of universal case which isn't really capitals or lower case, it's just 'apterous letters'.

EDIT: In fact, doesn't apterous in French have accents? I'm sure I was taught in French lessons accents are removed from capitals, so that suggests I was right that apterous isn't in caps?

Well, I understand your point that as far as most English language gameplay goes, apterous isn't really in either upper or lower case. I tend to think of it in upper case simply because the selections are shown in upper case, and the only time you see a lower case letter in a round is when an invalid word is displayed.

I guess it's just convention that a lot of word games/puzzles (Scrabble, Boggle, crosswords) are traditionally furnished in capital letters.

Incidentally, there are no accents used in French language apterous. This is because French language apterous uses the French Scrabble dictionary, where accents are omitted. Further circumstantial evidence that apterous is in upper case... although considering that words containing capital letters are invalid in English apterous, I don't want to get into a somewhat philosophical debate about this...

Ah ok nice one. No surprise then that I've never played in French, just assumed accents were used. Cheers chap.

Mildly amusing oddity from this evening:

2010-10-02 20:38:20 Your new teaser is MEETPDXE. You have 60 seconds to answer!
...
2010-10-02 20:39:21 Graeme Cole got it too, you have -0.1 seconds left.

Yep. I'm a time traveller. I can do it with conundrums too.

When restarting the clock after an incorrect conundrum, the clock starts from the beginning rather than where you left off.

I only have English ticked in my settings yet I still get "Karen Pearson got a 9 in spanish..." or similar. Also I get shitload of pencils from Gillard in Italian which do my head in. Surely with all foreign languages unticked I shouldn't be getting these?

Kirk Bevins wrote:I only have English ticked in my settings yet I still get "Karen Pearson got a 9 in spanish..." or similar. Also I get shitload of pencils from Gillard in Italian which do my head in. Surely with all foreign languages unticked I shouldn't be getting these?

Yeah I don't like all these foreign pencils in stupid formats. I don't care much about foreign languages at all so don't want to know about pencils in them. Before I have seen someone get a pencil in some language without noticing it was just only a pencil and not bronze and then used the word in an English game. Pretty annoying.

Rhys Benjamin wrote:When restarting the clock after an incorrect conundrum, the clock starts from the beginning rather than where you left off.

1) No it doesn't.
2) You know whose complaints are really low on my priorities?

Probably just my computer then.

since apterous changed to a shiny new exterior i can't log in

tomrowell wrote:since apterous changed to a shiny new exterior i can't log in

Just logged out and back in no worries. Whatever it is will have nothing to do with styling changes, I'm sure of that.

tomrowell wrote:since apterous changed to a shiny new exterior i can't log in

neither can I

Is it just me......?

When I first log in to Apterous, the front page looks fine. However, once I've completed the Duel, the Duel leaderboard, the Latest Pencils and TopDog tables overwrite the Happenings column down the right hand side.

If it IS just me, any ideas what I can do to get it to display correctly?

Many thanks.

Karen Pearson wrote:Is it just me......?

When I first log in to Apterous, the front page looks fine. However, once I've completed the Duel, the Duel leaderboard, the Latest Pencils and TopDog tables overwrite the Happenings column down the right hand side.

If it IS just me, any ideas what I can do to get it to display correctly?

Many thanks.

Can't do anything without a screenshot and letting us know which browser you are using.

In Firefox and IE this doesn't happen - also, nothing has changed with the design of the happenings column or the frontpage boxes, and additionally none of the styles change when you have completed the duel, so does seem strange.

MATT MORRISON HAS RUINED APTEROUS FOR EVERYBODY!!!!!!

Ryan Taylor wrote:MATT MORRISON HAS RUINED APTEROUS FOR EVERYBODY!!!!!!

You fucking cock.

Matt Morrison wrote:

Karen Pearson wrote:Is it just me......?

When I first log in to Apterous, the front page looks fine. However, once I've completed the Duel, the Duel leaderboard, the Latest Pencils and TopDog tables overwrite the Happenings column down the right hand side.

If it IS just me, any ideas what I can do to get it to display correctly?

Many thanks.

Can't do anything without a screenshot and letting us know which browser you are using.

In Firefox and IE this doesn't happen - also, nothing has changed with the design of the happenings column or the frontpage boxes, and additionally none of the styles change when you have completed the duel, so does seem strange.

Actually, this happens for me in IE7 at the moment, and has done for at least a week, maybe no more than 2 weeks. The only way I can read the happenings is by shrinking the window. Can't do a screenshot easily on this work computer, but basically, the boxes are too wide, sit above each other and cover half of the happenings.

Duel Leaders, pencils and top dogs are bad, news is fine.

Ian Volante wrote:Actually, this happens for me in IE7 at the moment, and has done for at least a week, maybe no more than 2 weeks. The only way I can read the happenings is by shrinking the window. Can't do a screenshot easily on this work computer, but basically, the boxes are too wide, sit above each other and cover half of the happenings.

Duel Leaders, pencils and top dogs are bad, news is fine.

Thanks for that Ian, much appreciated.

Two insane things here: a) that people are still using an old browser (I'm not going to be annoying and list "using IE" as an insane thing in itself even though you all know it's true!), it's bad for security as well as all the other reasons why you would want to use the latest version of a bit of software, and b) that nobody says anything for two weeks.

I'll try and look into it but hard to imagine the problem without a screenshot, be lovely if you could help when you get home.

Matt Morrison wrote:

Ian Volante wrote:Actually, this happens for me in IE7 at the moment, and has done for at least a week, maybe no more than 2 weeks. The only way I can read the happenings is by shrinking the window. Can't do a screenshot easily on this work computer, but basically, the boxes are too wide, sit above each other and cover half of the happenings.

Duel Leaders, pencils and top dogs are bad, news is fine.

Thanks for that Ian, much appreciated.

Two insane things here: a) that people are still using an old browser (I'm not going to be annoying and list "using IE" as an insane thing in itself even though you all know it's true!), it's bad for security as well as all the other reasons why you would want to use the latest version of a bit of software, and b) that nobody says anything for two weeks.

I'll try and look into it but hard to imagine the problem without a screenshot, be lovely if you could help when you get home.

Mine's the same as Ian's. Hopefully, it is below! (Following the instructions you gave on another thread about how to upload pictures - just to prove your efforts are not wasted)

I had no idea I was still using an old browser. Is there some simple way of being made aware of this?

I didn't say anything because I know how much time Charlie especially and also you spend on stuff and didn't want to appear to be moaning. But we've had connections problems so I've used 2 different laptops as well as my main PC over the weekend and it's the same on all of them.



Hmm! I've previewed it and it's not showing all of it but I think you can see the overlap. If you PM me your email address, I'll send you the file properly.

Thanks so much Karen. Really appreciated.

The way Microsoft lets people use old, unsafe and out-of-date versions of Internet Explorer is well known 'in the business' and completely and utterly insane.
You should have been offered the upgrade to IE8 through Windows Update, but sometimes kooky automatic update settings might not have made it obvious at the time (it's been available since March 19, 2009!).
To get it manually go here - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/intern ... fault.aspx

The problem must have come from when I stopped giving the frontpage boxes a specified width - this was done to vastly improve their appearance and solve problems like when extremely long pencils have been awarded and the table came out of the box or went onto two lines when it shouldn't. As I say, there are no problems in IE8 or Firefox, and I'd be interested to hear from anyone using Chrome or Safari.

I'll have a think about how to fix it, but obviously I'd recommend upgrading to IE8 (if you have to, obviously Firefox really) to begin with.

Matt Morrison wrote:I'd be interested to hear from anyone using Chrome or Safari.

Chrome is all good for me

Matt Morrison wrote:Two insane things here: a) that people are still using an old browser want to use the latest version of a bit of software

We recently (earlier this year) upgraded from IE6

Takes a long time to work through all the application integrations, and there are a few major systems that could easily get badly stuffed through such an upgrade.

Matt Morrison wrote:b) that nobody says anything for two weeks.

Crap browser, it was fine in proper viewing tech, so I wasn't too worried

James Doohan wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote:I'd be interested to hear from anyone using Chrome or Safari.

Chrome is all good for me

Great news. Thanks Mr. 'han.

Ian Volante wrote:We recently (earlier this year) upgraded from IE6

Takes a long time to work through all the application integrations, and there are a few major systems that could easily get badly stuffed through such an upgrade.

True, unfortunate stuff. I think the jump to IE8, despite being massive, is actually a lot easier than jumps to previous versions as the so-called 'compatibility mode' (Microsoft must have had great fun ironically laughing at that name) in IE8 is supposed to be very good at mimicking IE7 when it is needed.

Ian Volante wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote:b) that nobody says anything for two weeks.

Crap browser, it was fine in proper viewing tech, so I wasn't too worried

Good stuff. Though if you realise IE7 is crap technology, why haven't you upgraded at home you naughty boy?

Matt Morrison wrote:Good stuff. Though if you realise IE7 is crap technology, why haven't you upgraded at home you naughty boy?

That's a bit of an assumption! I've been using FF for years at home

Ian Volante wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote:Good stuff. Though if you realise IE7 is crap technology, why haven't you upgraded at home you naughty boy?

That's a bit of an assumption! I've been using FF for years at home

Ah right, phew! Completely misunderstood you then - so you've only been having problems with the site when you play through IE7 at work, gotcha. Do some work. Haha.

Thanks Matt. Got it sorted on one laptop now. Will sort out the main PC when the new router arrives tomorrow.

Am a bit concerned about this mention of it messing up other applications. Is there anything I should look out for?
(Apart from the major lag in typing this for some reason!)

Karen Pearson wrote:Am a bit concerned about this mention of it messing up other applications. Is there anything I should look out for?

Absolutely not. Ian was talking about from a business perspective, obviously you have to be ultra cautious when upgrading.
For a home user, there's never any excuse to not be on the latest browser.

And the good news for you is that you won't have to worry about upgrading IE again in the future - IE8 is the last one that supports XP, IE9 which is out soon is Vista- and 7-only.

I don't think telling people to upgrade is really an adequate solution here (although they should). It's not like they're still running IE4. We need to fix this.

Charlie Reams wrote:I don't think telling people to upgrade is really an adequate solution here (although they should). It's not like they're still running IE4. We need to fix this.

I'm pretty sure "I'll have a think about how to fix it" is an admission that we need to fix this. It doesn't mean I shouldn't advise an absolutely essential upgrade.

Matt Morrison wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:I don't think telling people to upgrade is really an adequate solution here (although they should). It's not like they're still running IE4. We need to fix this.

I'm pretty sure "I'll have a think about how to fix it" is an admission that we need to fix this. It doesn't mean I shouldn't advise an absolutely essential upgrade.

Sure. (Have to admit I didn't read all of the above.)

Charlie Reams wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:I don't think telling people to upgrade is really an adequate solution here (although they should). It's not like they're still running IE4. We need to fix this.

I'm pretty sure "I'll have a think about how to fix it" is an admission that we need to fix this. It doesn't mean I shouldn't advise an absolutely essential upgrade.

Sure. (Have to admit I didn't read all of the above.)

And, it did indeed work.

Talking of upgrades, I occasionally get a little box pop up and tell me that there is a Java update available. Am I supposed to implement these?
(I can feel the shoulders slumping and the heads shaking already! )

Karen Pearson wrote:Talking of upgrades, I occasionally get a little box pop up and tell me that there is a Java update available. Am I supposed to implement these?
(I can feel the shoulders slumping and the heads shaking already! )

Yep, definitely. These are usually security updates which means you should install them ASAP. But the critical thing is to keep the browser up-to-date, especially if you like looking at naked ladies on the Internet.