c4countdown

I just encountered a temporary bug and Charlie, you know about this because we were playing a game. I think our connection fizzled. Why would that happen if things appear to go normally afterwards?

I got off to a good start in our game unfortunately, but the good news is I was able to play against Jim Bentley. I did my best with him too.

Normally if you restart Apterous, any game you've been in the middle of comes up as 'Adjourned' but if you have to restart it while the game is in the 'challenges' section, it disappears. For example, I restarted Apterous during a game against James Hurrell a couple of days ago, clicked 'Resume' when it reloaded, but my computer then froze, the game was gone when I came back into Apterous, more annoying for him as he'd been up by about 20 points with 3 rounds left. Is there any way to rectify this?

Whenever I play on my computer, I can not play because if I play a game, I can start it OK, but when the time is up in the first round, it just crashes and fails to move onto the next screen. Also, when I click off the site, the game crashes. Why is this?

Anyone else having problems today? I can log on, but the game room has been consistently freezing (apologies to those who I have been forced to log out on...) - and there's no chat, either.

looks like it you and me both, Oliver

Oh that's the same as me, that's what I was saying in the other thread, at least I'm not the only one then.

Same here, last two daily duels I played have crashed and it won't let me resume. Also was trying to do a Numbers attack game with Prune, screen keeps going blank and crashing. Anyway keep up the good work, it's a great site.

ps. you can also remove my adjourned duels and game with Prune if it helps, no rounds were completed anyway.

Same here. Seems like other people aren't having problems though, judging from the list of today's games. Maybe members of THE CLIQUE have been secretly given Apterous Gold accounts .

Also, my housemate signed up for Apterous the other day but can't log in. He's using a Mac OS X Leopard. It gets to the point where it says "attempt 1 of 3" but then stays there forever.

Is Apterous working right now?

http://www.pacdudegames.com/fail/

Bad luck!

(And take that, Brucie!)

Charlie, I actually played a game against a human being tonight , and I was winning . On round 14 when I had declared the target, the game froze and I was unable to input my answer. I closed the window and Lisa challenged me again. While the challenge was still up, I refreshed apterous and when I came back the game had disappeared! I'm gutted because I could have beaten a human! I knew there was a reason I only practice with Prune!

I think Apterous is down again. I didn't get to play yesterday's duel for this reason, any chance it will roll over to today? If not, ah well. Tis just a game.

Once more...

Is Apterous working right now?

http://www.pacdudegames.com/fail/

Bad luck!

(And take that, Brucie!)

Thanks for getting Apterous up and running again Charlie. I didn't realise how addicted I'd become until I had to go a whole day without!

Great, Charlie!

Getting random requests for games... from myself.

Matt Morrison wrote:Getting random requests for games... from myself.

I'd guess from the format that those aren't random, they're requests you sent to someone else which somehow got redirected to you. Which probably means they're caused by the same network/whatever issue that's causing all of your other problems.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote:Getting random requests for games... from myself.

I'd guess from the format that those aren't random, they're requests you sent to someone else which somehow got redirected to you. Which probably means they're caused by the same network/whatever issue that's causing all of your other problems.

Yup, same diagnosis here. Not that it really helps, being the first and only time this has happened.

Matt Morrison wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote:Getting random requests for games... from myself.

I'd guess from the format that those aren't random, they're requests you sent to someone else which somehow got redirected to you. Which probably means they're caused by the same network/whatever issue that's causing all of your other problems.

Yup, same diagnosis here. Not that it really helps, being the first and only time this has happened.

I wouldn't worry about it, I don't think this is due to a fault at your end, I think it's just a natural occurence. At least it has happened to me several times: If you select another player, the focus is on that person's profile. However when someone leaves the room, focus automatically switches back to your own profile, if you see what I mean. So choose an opponent and click Custom Game. If someone then leaves the room before you've chosen which custom game you want, the focus switches back to your profile. If you then select, say, a Speedgoat, you will have challenged yourself, and it will of course appear twice in 'your challenges'. (Once for the challenger, once for the challengee). Declining one invitation automatically gets rid of the other. It's not really a fault, just a curiosity.

Oliver Garner wrote:Whenever I play on my computer, I can not play because if I play a game, I can start it OK, but when the time is up in the first round, it just crashes and fails to move onto the next screen. Also, when I click off the site, the game crashes. Why is this?

Jimmy Gough wrote:

Oliver Garner wrote:Whenever I play on my computer, I can not play because if I play a game, I can start it OK, but when the time is up in the first round, it just crashes and fails to move onto the next screen. Also, when I click off the site, the game crashes. Why is this?

Same here, you can delete my game with Daniel as it had not started, also my game with Prune (was just practising my numbers).

Leave my game with Andrew up though please, maybe we can resume this later, he is currently destroying me

Jojo Apollo wrote:

Jimmy Gough wrote:

Oliver Garner wrote:Whenever I play on my computer, I can not play because if I play a game, I can start it OK, but when the time is up in the first round, it just crashes and fails to move onto the next screen. Also, when I click off the site, the game crashes. Why is this?

Same here, you can delete my game with Daniel as it had not started, also my game with Prune (was just practising my numbers).

Leave my game with Andrew up though please, maybe we can resume this later, he is currently destroying me

I'm also having this problem again

Apterous has been absolutely fine up till today, but earlier on, it randomly crashed in the middle of a game. When I log on again, it seems fine, since it logged me in and loaded the game quickly on the first try (Though it seems almost too quickly) but there is nothing in the chat box when I log in, like "Paul entered the room," and no reminders of games happening like "x beat y with a score of 128-0". The problem is, as well as this, a couple of seconds after I turn on and try to start a game, when I move my mouse, it only moves in jolts, and can't click on anything, meaning that I can't challenge anyone to a game, meaning that I cannot really do anything. My computer is fine, as is my internet connection, as is my mouse, however I suspect it is not to do with apterous itself (Wasn't sure where to post it, so I posted it in here (problems with games etc)) but to do with java. The problem is, I cannot see how it is to do with java since I do and have had before my problems with the game, the most up to date version of java. Can anyone explain these strange happenings, or can suggest a different or earlier version of java which does work, or know where I am going wrong?

Thanks, Paul

Paul Erdunast wrote: "x beat y with a score of 128-0"

Oh, you saw that game with Kirk did you

Hi I don't know (yet) where the problem is but every time I try to load a game it freezes IE. It doesn't help I've only joined today (tho' I'm very excited ) and I also upgraded to IE8 today. I can't see any of the conversation on the board and so far haven't been able to play a single game I've upgraded Java and rebooted. In Mozilla I can browse the site and enter the forum but still can't play...

Please help - I'm very keen to play and am being thwarted at every turn at the moment!

Thanks

Lesley

Yep, Java's having a thrombie this evening. Boo.

It's not just me then? Thank goodness for that! I had all sorts of plans to roll the machine back (still rumbling - currently mixed feelings about IE8) but I'll leave it till tomorrow and then try again. I hope I haven't upset anyone by offering them a game and then disappearing, so apologies if that's happened

Thanks Lesley

The server ran out of disk space this evening, that's probably the cause of all your problems. Try again now.

Working beautifully for me now thanks. Shame I can't blame the machine for my performance

Thanks Charlie- It's working perfectly well for me too

Is apterous down?

Because when I click on it it just says ' could not establish database connection '.

Eoin Monaghan wrote:Is apterous down?

Because when I click on it it just says ' could not establish database connection '.

I'd assume so - I'm getting the same.

I'll check, right now.

Yes, Apterous is working.

After my earlier duel crashed, after I went on again after lockdown I was gifted the unique opportunity of re-doing my earlier duel-I had got to 14 rounds.

I was on a max game before I quit because it was cheating and so now if anyone else gets this opportunity please do the right thing.

Innis told me to report it as a bug.





btw kai told me to go on.

Eoin Monaghan wrote: Innis told me to report it as a bug.

It's not a bug, I saw that your duel crashed earlier so I gave you another shot. I do this quite a bit. It's easy enough for me to check that people don't change their answers to rounds they've already seen, and if they do then I won't extend this privilege to them again.

Once again, is Apterous working right now?

http://www.pacdudegames.com/fail

Bad luck!

(And take that, Brucie!)

I can't log back in (and it's a shame as Paul & I were neck & neck!)
It's telling me connection timed out for Java...

I'm not sure if it's working now- just randomly stopped in the middle of my game with Lesley and now I can't log on "java.net.ConnectException:Connection refused: connect"

Any way I can get round this?

likewise

Yes, it's not working.

It's now up

Thank you, Paul!

Erm not sure if it's a bug but my score of 14 here:http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=41681 didn't register on the high score table.

Jojo Apollo wrote:Erm not sure if it's a bug but my score of 14 here:http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=41681 didn't register on the high score table.

High scores table is updated daily.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Jojo Apollo wrote:Erm not sure if it's a bug but my score of 14 here:http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?game=41681 didn't register on the high score table.

High scores table is updated daily.

Ah righto, cheers Charlie.

Sorry everyone who has been inconvenienced by the stallings on my games (especially Eoin who was on a max game and others who were beating me). I can promise you it's not my competitive edge! The adjourned games aren't on my window however much I would like them to be, but if they are on yours, please challenge- I probably won't be on today- I'll just give my connection to apterous/java/etc a rest (My internet otherwise is and has been absolutely perfect) and I ought to do some homework, but feel free to carry on with those games later.

If this is to do with apterous and not me, or you know how to stop these stallings (They are just after the round has been played), then please tell me!!!

Thanks again, Paul

ok- here is a real problem- when I tried to get onto the apterous homepage (and any other apterous page for that matter), (My internet is perfect for every other site), it just says "Internet explorer cannot display the webpage" after quickly loading, suggesting that the problem may be at apterous's end. Is there any way round this?

Paul

Paul Erdunast wrote:ok- here is a real problem- when I tried to get onto the apterous homepage (and any other apterous page for that matter), (My internet is perfect for every other site), it just says "Internet explorer cannot display the webpage" after quickly loading, suggesting that the problem may be at apterous's end. Is there any way round this?

Yes - wait for the site to come back up.

Great, thanks- it is now up

Very minor bug - the Hyper Numbers Attack from the menu of custom games starts a 45 second rather than 30 second game, so is just classed as Custom in the histories.

JimBentley wrote:Very minor bug - the Hyper Numbers Attack from the menu of custom games starts a 45 second rather than 30 second game, so is just classed as Custom in the histories.

That's not exactly a bug - I've decided that Ben's original idea that Hyper is 45 seconds should stand, for numbers attacks at least. But the rest of the site hasn't been updated to reflect that yet.

Not sure if this is just me, but at the moment when I try to play any classic game I get logged out with an error:

Error in InfoClientHandlerThread: java.io.IOException: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: net.MessageToServer$PlayClassicGame

Simon Myers wrote:Not sure if this is just me, but at the moment when I try to play any classic game I get logged out with an error:

Error in InfoClientHandlerThread: java.io.IOException: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: net.MessageToServer$PlayClassicGame

I was getting this as well, I can only assume that one of the server files got corrupted in transit because I uploaded the same file again and it works fine now. Shrug.

2 things regarding metamaxes:

1. It links to the stemmer but by the looks of things the stemmer no longer exists.

2. In Hypergoatdown, 9 letter metamaxes are noted as 18 points while 12 letters are just 12.

There are no results coming up on the 'Most missed words' pages.

"Auditions are now underway for Series 61 of Countdown".

There is no such word as "underway". From my perspective as a professional proofreader, this bizarre and unnecessary contraction appears to be spreading like a virus and I'm determined to stamp it out wherever I see it. So there.

Phil Reynolds wrote:From my perspective as a professional proofreader, this bizarre and unnecessary contraction appears to be spreading like a virus and I'm determined to stamp it out wherever I see it.

Good luck with that!

Phil Reynolds wrote:"Auditions are now underway for Series 61 of Countdown".

It's still there.

These viral misspellings genuinely puzzle me. I don't recall seeing "underway" anywhere, ever, until about 12 months ago. Now suddenly it's in newspapers, magazines, even high-quality websites devoted to (but in no way affiliated with) the game of Countdown. A magazine publishing company for whom I do a lot of freelance proofreading work even had it in their house style guide for a while until I got them to take it out. How do these things start and why do they spread?

I think that, unlike many two-word phrases that have coalesced into single words over the years (hardtop, lawsuit etc.), the reason "underway" just seems so wrong to me is because it looks like the stress has shifted to the first syllable (cf. underpass, underpants). Which it clearly hasn't.

Phil Reynolds wrote:

Phil Reynolds wrote:"Auditions are now underway for Series 61 of Countdown".

It's still there.

I don't think there's anything wrong with it. Its meaning is unambiguous, even if it isn't an accepted word yet. Clarity is the important thing, and "underway" does just fine in that sentence.