c4countdown

Matt Morrison wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:I'm not really planning to read the logs in full, it's just useful to figure out how people use it and streamline it for that.

I think 95% of my use is "damn I didn't get a pencil for that, let me Lexplore the other one I had and see if I would have got a pencil for that... I would have? Fuck."

EXACTLY this. Happens all the fucking time and a little bit inside of me dies every time.

Might be a daft question but I've often wondered: if for example the selection is HGAORANPT and the first vowel in the next round is E, someone might say "Oh, if I'd picked a final vowel in the last round we'd have had ORPHANAGE", as would be the case on TV. But is that necessarily true on apterous? Like, is there a pre-determined order of letters, or does the random letter generation depend on things that might have changed from one round to the next?

Hope that made any sense.

Innis Carson wrote:Might be a daft question but I've often wondered: if for example the selection is HGAORANPT and the first vowel in the next round is E, someone might say "Oh, if I'd picked a final vowel in the last round we'd have had ORPHANAGE", as would be the case on TV. But is that necessarily true on apterous? Like, is there a pre-determined order of letters, or does the random letter generation depend on things that might have changed from one round to the next?

Hope that made any sense.

I've often thought the same thing so it made perfect sense to me. I wouldn't take too much solace in that though.

Innis Carson wrote:Might be a daft question but I've often wondered: if for example the selection is HGAORANPT and the first vowel in the next round is E, someone might say "Oh, if I'd picked a final vowel in the last round we'd have had ORPHANAGE", as would be the case on TV. But is that necessarily true on apterous? Like, is there a pre-determined order of letters, or does the random letter generation depend on things that might have changed from one round to the next?

Hope that made any sense.

Yep, it generates a pile of tiles at the beginning and then picks from the top. For games with a lot of letters rounds, the piles get refilled somewhere around Round 13.

I actually did a cool thing with this which I might upload at some point, thanks for reminding me.

Charlie: a few of us climbing the Mountain have been wondering why there seem to be more 8/10 (topaz) difficulty conundrums than any other difficulty. Lesley even took a small sample of 400 conundrums from her Ascension games and counted >20% of 8/10 difficulty. These were her full results:

Difficulty ---> %age
1 -> 10 /
2 -> 10.58 /
3 -> 7.94 /
4 -> 7.94 /
5 -> 6.47
6 -> 8.52 /
7 -> 7.35 /
8 -> 20.29 /
9 -> 9.41 /
10 -> 11.47

I'm not mathematically minded enough to work out the %age uncertainty in those figures (for a sample of 400 out of 9060 conundrums) but I'd suggest the high %age of topaz conundrums is statistically significant. Could you enlighten us please, we're curious?!

Matt Bayfield wrote:Charlie: a few of us climbing the Mountain have been wondering why there seem to be more 8/10 (topaz) difficulty conundrums than any other difficulty. Lesley even took a small sample of 400 conundrums from her Ascension games and counted >20% of 8/10 difficulty. These were her full results:

Difficulty ---> %age
1 -> 10 /
2 -> 10.58 /
3 -> 7.94 /
4 -> 7.94 /
5 -> 6.47
6 -> 8.52 /
7 -> 7.35 /
8 -> 20.29 /
9 -> 9.41 /
10 -> 11.47

I'm not mathematically minded enough to work out the %age uncertainty in those figures (for a sample of 400 out of 9060 conundrums) but I'd suggest the high %age of topaz conundrums is statistically significant. Could you enlighten us please, we're curious?!

(Nit: Can't be a sample of 400, since there's no way to get 10.58% (etc) out of 400 data items.) If I'm reading my spreadsheet correctly, this is an unexpected result under the assumption of equal numbers of conundrums in each category. On the other hand, that is a freakishly large assumption to make, and I don't think Charlie's ever claimed that to my knowledge.

You're right, I don't think Charlie's ever mentioned anything about how many conundrums are in each difficulty category. But one way to divide them would be to rank each conundrum by difficulty (based on, perhaps, %age of correct solves) then stick the easiest 10% in difficulty 1, and so on. Alternatively, there may be a set range of %age of solves for each difficulty level, in which case you could have any sort of distribution between the difficulty levels.

I'm particularly interested in the large number of difficulty 8 conundrums as it seems to be a recent change to the difficulty rankings. Up until recently, I regularly played conundrum attacks and seemed to be getting a pretty even mix of difficulties 1 through 9 (which are the only 9 difficulties I'm eligible for at my rating, except in Duels/Tie-breakers/Ascension).

Um, yeah, re: the math, I guess you'd expect all the %ages to end in a multiple of 0.25 if 400 conundrums were surveyed. Maybe I've got wrong the number of Con Attacks that Lesley used.

I've been attempting star 30 of the Riddler's Route for months now. I've come close a handful of times, until a few days ago, when the difficulty seemed to increase. With these difficulty levels, I think it will now be impossible for me.

Astutely observed. The system is at Matt suggests (we order then and then bucket them into deciles), but conundrums with inadequate data for ranking are automatically put into bucket 8. This is basically an arbitrary decision. Putting them in 10 meant they never came up in normal games, putting them in 1 (as I used to do) seemed a bit mean. So now they live in 8. The number of these anomalies should gradually decrease over time.

Edwin Mead wrote:I've been attempting star 30 of the Riddler's Route for months now. I've come close a handful of times, until a few days ago, when the difficulty seemed to increase. With these difficulty levels, I think it will now be impossible for me.

Nothing's changed, just unlucky by the sound of it.

Matt Bayfield wrote:Maybe I've got wrong the number of Con Attacks that Lesley used.

Lols. I did say it was about 20 games - having now counted them it was actually 17. I was going to expand the data set but it's academic now anyway since we know why. Thanks for that Charlie.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Edwin Mead wrote:I've been attempting star 30 of the Riddler's Route for months now. I've come close a handful of times, until a few days ago, when the difficulty seemed to increase. With these difficulty levels, I think it will now be impossible for me.

Nothing's changed, just unlucky by the sound of it.

In that case, I'm glad I've been unlucky and will stick with it.

Charlie - It's always slightly bothered me that you introduced ostracons mid-week (very very slightly slightly), but never bothered enough to mention it until this:

the apterous homepage wrote:News: Don't forget to vote in Game of the Week in the next few hours; only thirteen people have a perfect ostracon record!

I have one less than everyone else because I voted in that very week BEFORE you gave everyone a reason to vote! i.e. I give way more of a fuck about GOTW than all the cheeky shallow fucks who only do it for an ostracon. Award them retrospectively for that week, go on. Please. Or don't rub it in. One or t'other!

Also in the new Duel survey - the question about "which languages would you be willing to partake in" is mandatory, even if you say "Never" to "how often in other languages?". Love you.. xx

Matt Morrison wrote:Award them retrospectively for that week, go on.

Will do.

Also in the new Duel survey - the question about "which languages would you be willing to partake in" is mandatory, even if you say "Never" to "how often in other languages?". Love you.. xx

Fixed.

Double thanks on those two Charlie, and continuing my mission to thank you for what you deserve thanking for, the "is on for a high score" aptochat feature is fucking cool. I can't wait to see it come into play for something other than one of Kirk's many Ascension CAs though!

Matt Morrison wrote:Double thanks on those two Charlie, and continuing my mission to thank you for what you deserve thanking for, the "is on for a high score" aptochat feature is fucking cool. I can't wait to see it come into play for something other than one of Kirk's many Ascension CAs though!

Ahhhh - was that your idea? Nice one. It came up earlier as Karen broke the Spanish 9 high score. I think the best thing about that is it distinguishes those events from other chat items, so even if you'd rather not have someone spectate it facilitates congratulating them

It's all Charlie that one. I don't just say thanks for the things I suggest!

Matt Morrison wrote:Double thanks on those two Charlie, and continuing my mission to thank you for what you deserve thanking for, the "is on for a high score" aptochat feature is fucking cool. I can't wait to see it come into play for something other than one of Kirk's many Ascension CAs though!

You should've been on last night then, it came in for one of Chris Davies's.

Matt Morrison wrote:It's all Charlie that one. I don't just say thanks for the things I suggest!

Now this is where it gets confusing. I was going to like that, but then it seemed weird to like your comment for something he did, so I've compromised and gone for a random one of his. Erm. Right. All good, anyway

Lesley Hines wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote:It's all Charlie that one. I don't just say thanks for the things I suggest!

Now this is where it gets confusing. I was going to like that, but then it seemed weird to like your comment for something he did, so I've compromised and gone for a random one of his. Erm. Right. All good, anyway

Brown noser.

Matt Morrison wrote:Double thanks on those two Charlie, and continuing my mission to thank you for what you deserve thanking for, the "is on for a high score" aptochat feature is fucking cool. I can't wait to see it come into play for something other than one of Kirk's many Ascension CAs though!

Haha, you're welcome. The real credit belongs to Joe Denniss. He was on for a high score a few days ago, just needing the conundrum, and announced it in chat. A couple of people started spectating and a bunch of people were waiting for the result to come up in chat, and when he nailed it there was much whooping and congratulations. It was a nice moment and I thought there was no reason it couldn't be automated. Also I uploaded it without an announcement because I thought it'd be a cool surprise for people when it appeared.

1) How much of this is serendipity and how much is good plans coming together, but the letters-disappearing-during-extra-time has the added benefit of you being able to tell whether you started typing your last-second spot in time (if the letters stay up, you didn't), which is a Good Thing.

B) Because I had nothing else to do for five minutes, I programmed my calculator to do the Elo win-expectancy formula thing for two ratings. It doesn't give the same answer as the eye of apterous. Is that using some other formula? If so, is there any chance we could have it so I could program that into my calculator instead?

iii) As heretical as it sounds, some days I don't really want to do the Duel (like today's 15s Hypergoat). Is there a possibility you could enable the "decline challenge" button for the duel?

Andrew Feist wrote:B) Because I had nothing else to do for five minutes, I programmed my calculator to do the Elo win-expectancy formula thing for two ratings. It doesn't give the same answer as the eye of apterous. Is that using some other formula? If so, is there any chance we could have it so I could program that into my calculator instead?

Indeed it's not, it's using some slightly-dubious curve fitting thing for which I blame Raccoon entirely. For a rating differential of X points, the EoA % will be

100 / ( 1 + exp( -0.04815 - 0.006744 * X ) )

with clamps at 1% and 99% (so that people don't get too sad). I've thought occasionally but about trying to improve this but the consensus appears to be that no-one notices or cares about EoA.

iii) As heretical as it sounds, some days I don't really want to do the Duel (like today's 15s Hypergoat). Is there a possibility you could enable the "decline challenge" button for the duel?

Yes.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Andrew Feist wrote:B) Because I had nothing else to do for five minutes, I programmed my calculator to do the Elo win-expectancy formula thing for two ratings. It doesn't give the same answer as the eye of apterous. Is that using some other formula? If so, is there any chance we could have it so I could program that into my calculator instead?

Indeed it's not, it's using some slightly-dubious curve fitting thing for which I blame Raccoon entirely. For a rating differential of X points, the EoA % will be

100 / ( 1 + exp( -0.04815 - 0.006744 * X ) )

with clamps at 1% and 99% (so that people don't get too sad). I've thought occasionally but about trying to improve this but the consensus appears to be that no-one notices or cares about EoA.

Hooray another five minutes gone. Thanks. (If it makes you feel better, I've been trying to collect the set of all the sayings, although this is hampered by the fact that I don't write them down or anything.)

Charlie Reams wrote:

iii) As heretical as it sounds, some days I don't really want to do the Duel (like today's 15s Hypergoat). Is there a possibility you could enable the "decline challenge" button for the duel?

Yes.

Super smashing great.

Charlie Reams wrote:Indeed it's not, it's using some slightly-dubious curve fitting thing for which I blame Raccoon entirely. For a rating differential of X points, the EoA % will be

100 / ( 1 + exp( -0.04815 - 0.006744 * X ) )

with clamps at 1% and 99% (so that people don't get too sad).

Oh shit son, you told them the Secret Formula. They'll never let you work for KFC now.

Charlie Reams wrote:

iii) As heretical as it sounds, some days I don't really want to do the Duel (like today's 15s Hypergoat). Is there a possibility you could enable the "decline challenge" button for the duel?

Yes.

Might want to have a think about this one before implementing it - what if you accidentally decline it?

Simon Myers wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:

iii) As heretical as it sounds, some days I don't really want to do the Duel (like today's 15s Hypergoat). Is there a possibility you could enable the "decline challenge" button for the duel?

Yes.

Might want to have a think about this one before implementing it - what if you accidentally decline it?

I\ll stick in a confirmation box.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Simon Myers wrote:Might want to have a think about this one before implementing it - what if you accidentally decline it?

I\ll stick in a confirmation box.

What if you accidentally confirm it?

Jon Corby wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:

Simon Myers wrote:Might want to have a think about this one before implementing it - what if you accidentally decline it?

I\ll stick in a confirmation box.

What if you accidentally confirm it?

Permission requested to link to this, sir.

Charlie Reams wrote: but the consensus appears to be that no-one notices or cares about EoA.

What consensus? I like it!

I don't think this is a bug, so didn't like to post it under Bug Reports.

The Apterous chat window has been blank for me for several days. As no-one else seems to have mentioned it, it must be a problem at my end. Any suggestions, anyone?

Edwin Mead wrote:I don't think this is a bug, so didn't like to post it under Bug Reports.

The Apterous chat window has been blank for me for several days. As no-one else seems to have mentioned it, it must be a problem at my end. Any suggestions, anyone?

Are you on a Mac?

Charlie Reams wrote:

Edwin Mead wrote:I don't think this is a bug, so didn't like to post it under Bug Reports.

The Apterous chat window has been blank for me for several days. As no-one else seems to have mentioned it, it must be a problem at my end. Any suggestions, anyone?

Are you on a Mac?

No, an ordinary PC. And I haven't fiddled with any settings recently.

Edwin Mead wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:

Edwin Mead wrote:I don't think this is a bug, so didn't like to post it under Bug Reports.

The Apterous chat window has been blank for me for several days. As no-one else seems to have mentioned it, it must be a problem at my end. Any suggestions, anyone?

Are you on a Mac?

No, an ordinary PC. And I haven't fiddled with any settings recently.

I experienced the same thing (on a Mac) last night but assumed it must be an isolated incident since the chatlogs are still busy. But maybe not. If you could be so kind as to PM me your Java console (instructions) from just after you log in, that would probably help.

Mine also has been appearing just a white blank space, I just kept refreshing until it showed up though. I assumed it was a problem with my laptop because it is pretty fucked. I keep getting messages telling me about low memory and sometimes it changes my colour scheme as it can't cope with the one that it is usually in. Think I need a new one.

Ryan Taylor wrote:Mine also has been appearing just a white blank space, I just kept refreshing until it showed up though. I assumed it was a problem with my laptop because it is pretty fucked. I keep getting messages telling me about low memory and sometimes it changes my colour scheme as it can't cope with the one that it is usually in. Think I need a new one.

Maybe it's just that no-one wants to talk to you.

Edwin Mead wrote:I don't think this is a bug, so didn't like to post it under Bug Reports.

The Apterous chat window has been blank for me for several days. As no-one else seems to have mentioned it, it must be a problem at my end. Any suggestions, anyone?

No-one can mention it, due to its nature.

Gavin Chipper wrote:

Edwin Mead wrote:I don't think this is a bug, so didn't like to post it under Bug Reports.

The Apterous chat window has been blank for me for several days. As no-one else seems to have mentioned it, it must be a problem at my end. Any suggestions, anyone?

No-one can mention it, due to its nature.

I guess that means I didn't read it then. What are we talking about?

Charlie Reams wrote: Indeed it's not, it's using some slightly-dubious curve fitting thing for which I blame Raccoon entirely. For a rating differential of X points, the EoA % will be

100 / ( 1 + exp( -0.04815 - 0.006744 * X ) )

with clamps at 1% and 99% (so that people don't get too sad). I've thought occasionally but about trying to improve this but the consensus appears to be that no-one notices or cares about EoA.

I'm going to assume that formula comes with a footnote that says "The win expectancy for the higher-rated player is computed using this formula; the lower-rated player is assigned a win expectancy of 100 minus the win expectancy of the higher-rated player" since when I'm the lower-rated player I get a value about two points too high, and the two values from the formula add to about 102.

Edit: I mean the player on the left, not the higher-rated player, obviously.

Not sure this is a bug (hopefully it's not) but I've just typed a conundrum answer in and accidentally hit the space bar during the word. Thinking that it would just say "sorry I've misread it" I cursed but when I looked at the screen it just said OUTN U with a space in so I could delete and continue to write OUTNUMBER. If this is purposeful it's excellent as more often than not I accidentally hit space bar when typing a word. Maybe the "page up" key or something could replace the space bar key to say "sorry it's gone" as it's well out the way?

Kirk Bevins wrote:more often than not I accidentally hit space bar when typing a word

Th is mus t ge t qui te in furiat ing.

Possibly my display setting are a bit fucked up, but is the new-look apterous really supposed to look like this?

Haha, looks like that to me as well. I like it, it's got a very geocities feel to it. Can we have a mouse cursor tail thing, and a visitor number counter?

The new navigation bar on the homepage is great. Well done Matt.

Adam Gillard wrote:The new navigation bar on the homepage is great. Well done Matt.

I can't see the link for the daily duel anywhere? Has it gone or am I very drunk?

James Doohan wrote:

Adam Gillard wrote:The new navigation bar on the homepage is great. Well done Matt.

I can't see the link for the daily duel anywhere? Has it gone or am I very drunk?

Indeed! I've got Charli... he just fixed it.

Adam Gillard wrote:The new navigation bar on the homepage is great. Well done Matt.

Thanks Adam. I'm still not totally convinced by colours and things, but I'm a typically Virgo designer, being unconvincedly perfectionist is part of my nature.


Note to all - the site is now back in sexy Calibri font rather than disgusting Times New Roman. If it still looks the same to you, try installing Calibri - I think Microsoft released it for free.

Matt Morrison wrote:Note to all - the site is now back in sexy Calibri font rather than disgusting Times New Roman. If it still looks the same to you, try installing Calibri - I think Microsoft released it for free.

Download and install this to get Calibri on your pre-Windows Vista machine (should already be installed in Vista or Windows 7):
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/d ... laylang=en

It's the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, gives you Calibri. It's main function is to allow you to view Office documents that were made for a more recent version of Office than you have installed, so there's that too.

James Doohan wrote:

Adam Gillard wrote:The new navigation bar on the homepage is great. Well done Matt.

I can't see the link for the daily duel anywhere? Has it gone or am I very drunk?

I think the new navigation is brilliant but is the ratings page missing?

Eoin Monaghan wrote:I think the new navigation is brilliant but is the ratings page missing?

You mean the one with a list of everyone on the whole site? That's defunct now, it's just not scalable when you have a few thousand users. I'll consider replacing it if there's any demand.

The new front page is the sexiest thing I've seen since Maggie Philbin and Carole Fulford got a bit carried away when talking about the Motorola 6502 processor and had an impromptu hot lezzing-up sesh on Tomorrow's World in 1982, while Chris Searle watched. And Calibri is far better than Times New Roman, which I've always hated too. Good work.

Head-to-head has disappeared. Otherwise, awesome toolbar!

Kai Laddiman wrote:Head-to-head has disappeared. Otherwise, awesome toolbar!

Yep, also deliberate. It makes a lot more sense to go there through a user's page, IMO. H2H will be getting overhauled soon anyway, loading the entire list of players twice on every page is ridiculous.

Calibri? I just spaffed on the monitor.

Ian Volante wrote:Calibri? I just spaffed on the monitor.

I like calibri!

Ian Volante wrote:Calibri? I just spaffed on the monitor.

I can not be held responsible for semen-based monitor replacement costs. Charlie can.

Matt Morrison wrote:Charlie

Racist.

The new homepage looks fantastic, great job all

Anyone got a screenshot of the frontpage from around 2009?