technology – Page 17

Peekaboom!

This game is so much fun: Peekaboom!

You are paired up with a random other player. For each round, one of you is a “peeker” and the other is “booming”. The boomer has a photograph in front of them and a word that associates with it (e.g. “balls”, “men”, “cooking”, “elephant”). They can click on parts of the picture to expose them to the peeker. The peeker has to guess what the thing depicted is. If the peeker gets it right, both players get points. The less of the picture was exposed, the more points the two get.

As the peeker makes guesses, the boomer can rate them as “hot” or “cold”, giving feedback to the peeker. The boomer can also pass limited clues in the form of “noun”, “related noun”, “verb”, etc. to the peeker. The players are against the clock to score as many points as possible before time runs out.

The really clever thing about this fun little online game is that it is being used as artificial intelligence research to teach computer algorithms how to spot the “important” parts of a picture: the bits that can be used to determine what the picture is of.

Give it a go, and contribute towards some AI research while you’re at it…

Microsoft SQL Server Versus FTP

This is a geeky post. You have been warned.

Microsoft SQL Server is one of those funky advanced database management systems that supports replication. One of even fewer that supports merge replication – where data edited and updated at two separate databases can be merged on a schedule and the changes reproduced at both ends, and any conflicts (for example, two different operators on different sites changing the same record in different ways) can be brought to the attention of an operator. This is very good.

Sadly, it’s not terribly well thought-out as far as anonymous internet replication is concerned. You see, it works wonderfully if the replicating servers are on the same Windows domain, but that isn’t always possible.

We’ve got a set-up where a client’s database engages in merge replication with a separate database on our web server. As the two servers are on different Windows domains, and because of restrictions in the firewall configuration, we’ve set up Microsoft SQL Server 2000 to perform the replication over the FTP protocol. Therein lies our first problem.

There is a bug in Microsoft SQL Server 2000 that prevents anonymous internet merge replication from working over FTP… unless you install Service Pack 3 or above… What the fuck? It took until the third service pack before they fixed this?

In any case, having fixed this, another problem rears it’s ugly head. Back in the dark ages (well, 1985), when FTP was first invented, we didn’t have firewalls. Not anything like the ones we do now, anyway. And so it made perfect sense for various technical reasons to make the FTP protocol work as follows:

Client connects to Server
Client: Hi there, Server.
Server: Hi there, Client.
Client: Can you send me file XYZZY, please?
Server: Sure can. Where to?
Client: Send it to my IP address, 1.2.3.4, on port 1026.
Server: It’s on it’s way…

When the internet suddenly became a nasty place, full of firewalls and NAT and proxy servers and restrictions, this didn’t work any more, because many clients wouldn’t accept incoming connections – they would say “send me it on port 1026”, for example, and would then refuse to listen on port 1026 (or a computer between them and the server would refuse for them). So we invented “passive FTP“, and renamed the old version “active FTP“, retrospectively. Passive FTP works like this.

Client connects to Server
Client: Hi there, Server.
Server: Hi there, Client.
Client: I’m a passive FTP client, by the way.
Server: That’s fine with me, so long as you aren’t also homosexual.
Client: Can you send me file XYZZY, please?
Server: Sure can. Because you’re passive, I’ll need you to connect to my IP address, 5.6.7.8, on port 1098.
Client: Am doing that now.
Server: It’s on it’s way…

And that works through even the most stubborn firewalls and all sorts of other restrictions. Wonderful.

For some reason known only to Microsoft, Microsoft SQL Server will not use passive FTP. And our client has a restrictive firewall. How Microsoft could have neglected to write into their program this most simple and fundamental bit of the FTP protocol is beyond me (Internet Explorer and several other Microsoft programs support passive FTP flawlessly).

Grr.

Abnib v2.2

Abnib now supports “feed hiding” of the “community” feeds (RockMonkey, Troma Night, Gallery). Just click the “hide feed” link at the bottom of a post of the type you don’t want to see. This feature by demand of Jon.

In other news, Blue Dragon is proving somewhat popular, with 7 registered players (plus me, but I don’t play on account of the fact that sysops who play their own games tend to do well, even if they’re not cheating, and get accused of cheating regardless of how well they do), and a couple more about to sign up. If you’ve not given it a go yet, there’s still time to get in and cause some damage before the “top players” pull too far out of reach… and if you are playing, you’ll see that a few new areas just became available to you…

Legend Of The… Blue Dragon

Following up my thoughts earlier about old-school online games, I did some investigation into what became of fab old games like Legend Of The Red Dragon. It turns out that there was an effort to revive this particular one as a web-based game called “Legend Of The Green Dragon”. Well; as it was open-source I took a copy and adapted it with heaps of suitable “Aberisms”. It’s Abniberific.

Click here to play Dan’s “Legend Of The Blue Dragon”

Feedback appreciated. Usual address.

Additional: In answer to a much-anticipated question – when playing Blue Dragon, you’ll only have so-many turns in which to do things each “day”. However, there are two Blue Dragon “days” in each “real world” day: midnight in Blue Dragon will be occuring at (about) midnight and mid-day (GMT) each day, and between those times you have all the turns you need to do things in the game world.

What Is A Door And Why Do I Care

Geeky post with little value to most people: ignore if you don’t want to learn a little about the history of the BBS, “Doors”, and the subculture around them. This post is written for folks like Ruth, who seemed interested, and others, who seemed possibly-interested.

Before about 1994, even the few of us who had been on the internet hadn’t had much exposure to the (young, at the time) world wide web, but for a decade or more before then, there stood a great remnant of what had come before. And for years to come, still, when internet access was still something for which you paid both monthly and for your call time, and probably to a “local” rather than a “national” ISP, there was another option for getting your “fix” of cyberspace.

That fix was the network of independent bulletin board systems (BBSs) that existed across pretty much every Western country. The US was full of them – pretty much every small town had a young geek somewhere with a spare computer in his parents’ basement. And here in the UK, small BBSs flourished as their members logged on and off and passed files around over now long-dead protocols.

BBSs were small, usually-local, centralised computers with one or more modems (or even acoustic couplers – primitive modems that connected to existing telephone handsets using little rubber suction cups and “spoke” analogue signals to one another across the telephone lines), often operated by hobbyists. To connect to one, you would need to know it’s phone number, and lists of these could be found wherever geeks talked. You’d simply configure your dialler software to “connect” to the specified number, and, a few pips and squeaks later, you were in. A short registration process would give you access to message board, file trading facilities (ah; all that – ah; all that porn), live chat (on the bigger, multi-line boards), and sometimes even internet access – e-mail, newsgroups, etc. Later, some of the more successful BBSs would become ISPs, and some of these maintained a BBS, too, that provided software that you could use to connect to their systems. BBSs had all the benefits of the internet at the time – albeit with a smaller user base – but frequently also had a distinct local feel and a “community” sense of belonging.

Another feature that became quite popular on BBSs were the so-called door games. These were pieces of software installed onto the BBS server computer – usually games – which could be interacted with by the BBS server software through one of several standardised interfaces (e.g. Fossil, DOOR32). It’s almost certain that the writer of Wargames had seen door games in action before he wrote his “Global Thermonuclear War” game into the film script. A majority of these games – like the one in Wargames – allowed a single player to play against the computer, online, with perhaps a shared, centralised scoreboard that all players can access. Later door games allowed a degree of interactivity, sometimes even “live” interactivity, between the players who were playing the game simultaneously.

When I ran Dice BBS (from my bedroom at my mum’s house), I had a selection of door games running on it, selected for their inter-player interactivity: P:TEOS (space trading sim), Legend Of The Red Dragon and it’s underrated sequel (all from Robinson Technologies, who still write computer games to this day), and a MOO (an object-oriented MUD [multiplayer text-based adventure] often with an emphasis on social interaction [like a MUSH]). Later, after Dice BBS’s closure (the internet had become too ubiquitous; too cool; there was no need for it any more), I hacked Legend Of The Red Dragon 2 to pieces and wrote a Pascal front-end to allow it to be played in a protected network environment, developed L2:PC, and deployed it to the Preston College network, where it became so popular that several players rarely did anything else, and one person was even thrown off their course, their grades suffered so badly.

Nowadays, door games are a bit of a forgotten breed. The MUDs and the MUSHes grew up into the MMORPGs of today (think “World Of Warcraft”, “Everquest”, “Ultima Online”, “Puzzle Pirates”). The need for the other games to be played in a centralised manner was negated by high-speed internet links and modern, multiplayer games. But there are still special places where BBSs run (usually adapted in such a way that you can reach them using the telnet protocol, over the internet), and there will always be a home for them in the hearts of those of us that lived aboard them.

Thanks for listening to a bit of nostalgia.

An Interview With Gary McKinnon

There’s a stunning interview you can listen to on BBC World Service with Gary McKinnon, the Briton who hacked into US military and research computers in order to hunt for evidence of UFO activity. In the interview he talks about how he did it, what he found, and how he was caught, as well as his feelings over the fact that he may be extradited to the US for up to a 70 year prison sentence for something which, in the UK, he couldn’t get more than four years. It’s well worth listening to. You’ll want a copy of Real Alternative installed (like Real Player, except good).

This Looks Promising

Hmm… my blog works. On it’s new host.

This looks promising.

More when I have it.

No2ID: The Musical!

An introduction to ID cards for fans of Gilbert & Sullivan.

Robotic Bins And Benches

Singing Benches Let Loose In City, writes the BBC. Just plain weird, say I.

KnightmareWikiGame

My upcoming RockMonkey WikiGame is set to impress, I hope: I’m aiming for the most adventurous WikiGame ever created. There’s a screenshot available of the kind of thing I’ve got working so far. Probably a few weeks from completion, though.

Big.McLargeHuge Lives

Nobody on Earth, not even Gareth, knows or understands what happened to cause the server problems on Big.McLargeHuge yesterday, but, as usual, everybody’s blaming me. My apologies to everybody who was inconvenienced by the problems. It’s amazing how much damage can be caused by a MySQL server going down… almost all the sites on McLargeHuge are database-powered, not to mention the DNS server (the death of which caused problems accessing a certain other server I run [I’ve put in a few backup systems to help with this kind of thing in future]) and the mail server (which caused a ripple effect of delaying e-mails across the network)…

In any case; despite having no idea what caused the fault in the first place, steps are being taken to ensure that so much damage can not be caused again. Those who need to know know who to ask. Thanks to Gareth for all his help.

How To Sell May Ball Tickets

Every year the Students Union here in Aberystwyth puts on the May Ball, an excuse to dress up and party if ever I saw one, for students. For the last few years this has been held on-campus, in the Arts Centre, Students Union, and the concourse in-between the two. Live music and shows, dancing, and a fairground… and hundreds of students in ball gowns and tuxedos… Since the event had been moved “on campus” there have been less tickets available than ever, and demand grows steadily higher. As a result, students queue for hours to get their tickets.

This year, tickets began to be served at 10am, but the queue was 270 people long by forming by midnight: yes, people were willing to stand, all night, for ten hours, to be first in a queue for May Ball tickets. The Students Union have, of course, monopolised on the situation and will be selling drinks to the people queuing. Hey; let’s charge them twice.

Another recent problem has been that of ticket touting. Tickets sell for under £40, but can be re-sold to those desperate to go for as much as £100. Last year, the Students Union would not allow more than 8 tickets to be bought in a single transaction (and with queues so long, there’s no chance of queuing again), but that still meant that sly touts could easily earn up to £480 for a few hours work. This year, only four tickets can be bought by any single person, but this simply resulted in a longer queue, sooner, and I don’t think it’ll stop touting (if I was going to the May Ball, and therefore needed to queue anyway, I would buy my full allotted four tickets, regardless of how many people I was actually purchasing tickets for… and I know of dozens of others who follow this methodology every year, meaning that even as demand goes up, the touts take an even larger share of the profits).

Thankfully, I’ve been to the May Ball once and I’ll happily get by without ever going again. But I got to thinking, having seen the lunacy in those students who’ve spent all of this morning and all of last night queueing, that this isn’t the best way to be arranging this event…

A Better Way

Here’s how it should be done. All the tickets should be sold online, by the Students Union. If you want to buy tickets, you connect to their web site and fill in the following details:

Your university user name – this ensures that your ticket is ‘reserved’ for you, and that you cannot buy multiple tickets.
The number and type of tickets you want to buy – only two tickets maximum per person.
How you’d like to pay and obtain the tickets: you can pay online (and have them posted to you) or you can collect them from the union building for up to a week afterwards and pay in cash.

An e-mail is sent to your university e-mail address to confirm that it really was you who ordered the tickets (and not somebody ordering in your name). If this is not replied to within 24 hours (as will be explained in the e-mail), the order is cancelled. The tickets (which are posted to you or collected from the union) are printed with “Your Name”, and “Guest of Your Name”, eliminating the risk of touting (assuming that reasonable checks are made by security at the gate – just checking the identity of every fifth person in would act as sufficient deterrent to those who would like to go to the ball using a ticket in somebody else’s name).

The e-mail confirmation also gives people a chance to change their mind: if their friends, who they wanted to go with, were unable to get tickets before they all sold out, for example, they would know about it and be able to cancel their order. But it would also ensure the identity of the purchaser without requiring them to pass their password over the network. Students collecting tickets from the union would have to produce photo ID.

Those tickets remaining unsold after the web server is hammered by requests for tickets (for example, those cancelled or released later) would all be sold in a “second wave” (which would be announced in advance).

It is terribly unfair for the union to make students stand out in the cold and the rain, without sleep, to get tickets to an event; it could even be argued as discriminatory (whereas the University ensures that all students have the capacity and tools to use an internet connection). There would be no queues, no touts, and no unfairness. There would be no fights for the limited amount of cash in the on-campus cashpoints. The union would save money in ticket salespeople and policing the queue. And a system like this could be implemented for them for a sum of money that could be measured in the hundreds, not the thousands, of pounds. Hell; I will quote them for it, if they ask: I’ve already knocked up a prototype. Why not send a message to the May Ball organisers and tell them what a good idea it would be, particularly if it would make the difference to you, personally, about going to the May Ball.

They still won’t listen.

GMail Accounts

People have asked me for GMail invites again, but one of these people’s @aber.ac.uk e-mail address doesn’t seem to be working, says GMail, so here are some “ready to pick up”:

Invite 1 (used)
Invite 2 (used)
Invite 3 (used)
Invite 4 (used)
Invite 5
Invite 6
Invite 7
Invite 8
Invite 9
Invite 10

Get ’em while they’re hot. If one doesn’t work, try another. If they all don’t work, leave a comment (and pull your finger out next time).

Hollywood Pizza And BT Online Billing

If only BT.com online billing provided an XML feed… we could integrate our Hollywood Pizza order call times and lengths into the Troma Night web site.

Probably not a good thing, actually.

DVI-VGA Adapter

Troma Night tonight could really do with a DVI-VGA adapter, like the one pictured to the right. I have two of them, somewhere. If you were part of the tidy-up squad and you remember seeing it, or if you have one that you can lend to me for the evening, it would be much appreciated.