IPSND RSS News Feed

Whew!!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:21:00 GMT

Hey everyone... sorry about the downtime... I had a hard drive fail on my brand new (2 weeks old) database server and oddly, since it was raid, took a lot more time to get fixed than normal. I thought I was going to have to fall back to a database copy from 2 weeks ago, but I managed to get everything back to normal now.

Happy Holidays!!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 22:05:00 GMT

Merry Xmas and Happy Holidays to all 2297 members and other pinheads out there. Thanks for supporting the site and the hobby. Be safe and see you next year. 23, 295 submissions and counting.

Site Outage...

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 02:11:00 GMT

The site was down for about a day and a half due to some database issues. The database grew and used up my drive space so I had to give it a little more allocation. Seems to be feeling better now.

Logo Contest!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 04:20:00 GMT

It is time... time for my mediocre photoshop logo to improve, however I just can't do it. I need your help. If you fancy yourself a pinball aficionado AND someone with graphical skills, send in your logos for the month of November and I will post them into a survey where everyone can vote on their favorites. You will get credit of course on the 'About' page and your work will be on display to everyone and something to be proud of. Logos bring demz! Email logos to webmaster@ipsnd.net.

Submit/Edit Interfaces Improved

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 05:26:00 GMT

I put in some new functionality on the serial number submission pages and the member edit for that fixed an issue with the Google Map and also took care of some weird things happening if you put in information in a specific order. Basically, I made the photos and location sections work via AJAX which makes it a little more user friendly. Also, another thing that always annoyed me (and slowed the site down), is that the user stats in the login box now loads asynchronously and should always be accurate on your current nudges remaining.

Several Bugs Fixed...

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 04:07:00 GMT

Since I was stuck in bed for a few days after knee surgery, I responded to about 15 emails that I had sitting in my inbox and also fixed a few items that had been broken for a while. Nothing super big except I will say, some pages should look better in Internet Explorer now. Thanks.

A note on photos...

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 06:02:00 GMT

I just wanted to remind everyone that photos can be a touchy subject on the internet with copyright etc. Over the years, many photos from the IPDB have made their way into the serial number database which is useful, however, sometimes the owners of those photos don't appreciate the heisting of the image without their permission so please don't post images that are not yours to share. I want to operate the IPSND with as much transparency as possible so Im going to implement a few 'reminders' on the submission pages and also make it easier for copyright owners to request images be removed from the site if they feel strongly about it. Some existing IPDB image will also be removed based upon some feedback I have received. However, with ~5000 images in the database you all have done some amazing work documenting serials... thanks!

Downtime on Sunday...

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 16:37:00 GMT

It has been a crazy summer, Im getting all my pinball machines back (including two which have been down at New Belgium Brewing for the past year). I have also been working on my server infrastructure here a little. I finally have ESXi set up and will be transferring all my servers into their new virtual environment on Sunday night. Not sure this will do much for performance of the site right now, but it will help my sanity (and my backups). Im going to put the IPSND into maintenance mode sometime on Sunday night until the transfer is complete. Apologies for the interruption!

Complete Genius!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 23:36:00 GMT

Okay, this is sort of a no-brainer when you really think about it, but Wes M. beat everyone to the punch in showing his ingenuity and quick wit by submitting a serial photo that included a paper rubbing of the serial above the actual serial. As we all know, those impression serials can be much easier to read in person rather than via a photo and Wes' method helps take away any ambiguity I think. Check out his photo here... http://www.ipsnd.net/details.aspx?id=20953. Thanks Wes!

Server Down this Weekend...

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:14:00 GMT

I had some issues with my NIC on my webserver this weekend so the site was down Saturday and Sunday. Im going to look into virtualizing all my servers this month to solve several issues so we will see how that improves things. Also, on a side note, I change my Internet Speeds in the past couple of weeks which increased my upload limit from 1Mbit to 5Mbit so site speed should be a bit snappier. Thanks to everyone who has given me donations recently as I am applying this directly to a new server!!

Zaccaria Gen II Serial Masks Defined

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 23:57:00 GMT

After talking to Marco A. about the Zaccaria games and their various serial number formats. He pointed me to Federico's Italian Owners List Site which has a nice collection of serials that can help me get the masks defined for these games. I have the Gen II games defined and will continue working on the earlier games over this weekend.

Submissions by Year

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 03:33:00 GMT

I queried this out of curiosity and everything is lookin good...

2006 - 1046 Submissions (doesn't include IPP serials)
2007 - 1528 Submissions
2008 - 3223 Submissions
2009 - 2849 Submissions
2010 - 3277 Submissions
2011 - 500 (as of Feb 13th)

Keep em coming!!!

Woo Hoo!!!! 20,000 Serials!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 05:31:00 GMT

Not sure what it exactly means but 20,000 sounds like a lot at least. The 20,000th serial was submitted by Bob Romeo today for Time Fantasy... ah, so close to my heart (Time Fantasy, not Bob... Sorry Bob). Thanks to everyone that supports the site and keeps it lively. We will just keep chuggin' away at these things!! :-)

Stern/Sega Serial Fixes

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 06:00:00 GMT

We had a handful of Stern/Sega submissions that were prefixed with an 'E', seemingly meaning that it was an 'Export Game'. The problem was that the game definition in the database only had one serial number mask defined which did not give the option of the E. It seems many of the games that went to Canada or Europe and had serials submitted had the E dropped in the submission. This problem came to light because of a recent submission by Marco Albus for Viper Night Drivin' in which he dropped the E since it was saying that by including it, the submission didn't match any masks. Luckily some of the nudgers were debating the accuracy of the submission and I caught it. I added 'Export Game' masks for all Sega/Stern games so this will not be a problem any more. I also changed Marco's submission (thanks Marco, I still own you an email too) to include the E and went through and tried to find all other submissions that had a photo to verify they should have had an E and changed those. So... great job being strict on the nudging everyone, plus if you ever see 'problems' like this, let me know via email and I will gladly try and get things put in proper order for sanity. Cheers!

Nudge adjustment (nudge?)

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 03:47:00 GMT

Based upon some feedback I received from Jim Smith, I changed the way the nudge queue looks on the screen. His suggestion was to move the comment field up above the voting buttons since it wasn't apparent that you had to put a comment in *before* clicking the thumbs-up or thumbs-down buttons. So, I think he makes a great point, so it has been moved. Additionally, I changed the way that the 'My Nudges' page works under your profile... not only does this list all the nudges you have completed but it also allows you to see what your nudge was and what everyone else has nudged. In addition, you can also *delete* your nudges if you want to change anything about your first attempt. I think this should help out everyone on the nudging front... thanks Jim!

Updated FAQ

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 05:03:00 GMT

I added a few new questions and answers to the FAQ based upon the fact that the nudging feature isn't very well explained on the site anywhere. I also added some answers to some other questions concerning submitting serial numbers multiple times (as the same person). John V posed an interesting question about re-submitting a serial again rather that editing it in the case of selling a game. What I did was allow duplicate serial number submissions by the same person as long as it is more than 90 days after the first submission. I don't think people are going to abuse this loophole and try to rack up tons of points on the same serial, but please don't try as I run reports to monitor that sort of stuff anyway. :-)

Bugs vs. Features

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 06:32:00 GMT

Well, Im pretty sure that the concept of members having my personal nudges listed under theirs on the MyIPSND nudge page was fairly interesting, John V. pointed out that it might not be. I fixed that issue tonight so you can actually see your own nudges. I still need to add some more fields so you can see your nudge along with the final vote for comparison.

Also, I added 'Social Media' links on the homepage and the game pages. Mostly for fun since my day job incorporates lots of social media. I was sort of wondering if we can dis-prove the perception that pinball collectors are anti-social!!?? Let the experiment begin!

ipsnd.net vs www.ipsnd.net - Both of these URL's work, but I added some code so everyone will be gently nudged to using www.ipsnd.net. Having both URL's available was really making the social media links work poorly, so now the fully qualified name is where you will end up automagically even if you type in the short version.

5 Million Visitors!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 06:29:00 GMT

We crossed the 5 mil mark this past week. Pretty cool considering the site runs on a crappy old computer that I paid $300 for about 6 years ago and I did this in my free time. Thanks for everyone that participates on the site.. we will be coming to 20K serials here pretty soon... maybe that requires a pinball party at my house when it happens! :-)

Bulk Import Complete

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 05:45:00 GMT

I just imported over 500 serials from our esteemed friend Daina P. who had gathered these numbers from his repair jobs over the last 10 years. Remember, if you have lots of serials to import, I can help make it a little less painful. I should probably write a little Droid application to make submitting pics easier ehh? Better put that one on the development queue.

Game Traits 'Enhanced'

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 03:59:00 GMT

Due to a flurry of Game Trait submissions by Jay Stafford and a great discussion on how to accurately describe some of them, I have added the ability for users to upload a photo with each new Game Trait defined. After trying to describe a trait for Capt. Fantastic, using words only, it became clear that a picture can truly be 1000 words. Keep watch for some more development around this idea in the next few weeks. Thanks Jay!

Updated new submission rss feed

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 04:49:00 GMT

The original feed only showed the top 25 feeds. After using this for awhile, it was a little annoying actually since somedays there are quite a few submissions and I was missing them in the feed and had to go back to the statistics page to see the rest. Anyway, I changed the list to show the last 100 submissions instead based upon that reasoning. Plus, since some nudgers are now using this feature, you can also adjust the feed URL to only show submissions with photos (http://www.ipsnd.net/submissions.rss?photos=1). I will be adding some more functionality to all the feeds over the coming weeks that allow better versatility on getting what you want to see. If you have any specific suggestions, let me know. thanks.

New RSS Feed

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 05:55:00 GMT

I just created a new RSS feed that shows the latest submissions on the site. I did this so that with my handy Windows 7 sidebar, I can subscribe to the feed and see what is going on pretty easily from work or where-ever. I also thought it would be handy for those 'super-nudgers' that keep watch for submissions with nudge-ready photos. The info is on the RSS Page and the direct link to the new RSS channel is http://ipsnd.net/submissions.rss

Network Migration Completed Strikes Back!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 05:42:00 GMT

Looks like Qwest didn't quite have things set up correctly as my static IP started changing on me. Some of you may have been unable to reach the site over the course of the past 2 days. They fixed my account and I have just updated DNS again to the new hopefully static IP address. Things should smooth out in the next 24 hours. They also informed me that my 40Mb/s line is only set up for 12Mb/s so I will see if I can get that put back where it should be tomorrow. Since my connection is VDSL2 rather than ATM, I should have upload speeds around 10Mb/s (which is download speeds for you)... that is 10x faster than I had in Laramie.

Network Migration Completed!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 01:45:00 GMT

If you are reading this, then the migration of the site from Laramie, WY to Fort Collins, CO has been successful. I am now running on a Qwest VDSL2 connection with a theoretical speed of 40Mbits/second down (up for you) and 20Mbits/second up (down for you). That is a pretty hefty improvement over what I had up in Laramie with ATM DSL so we will see how it goes. If you notice that the sites is better (or worse!), drop me a line and let me know.... Im curious to see if this connection is actually any better. Thanks... jess

Submission Page Updates

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 07:27:00 GMT

I added a little new logic to the serial number submission page that dynamically checks the serial number against any defined serial number masks in the database. If the submission doesn't match, you get a little more information right up front rather that not knowing until after you submit the serial. I also fixed some dumb typos on the Game Part submission page and added some links to the reasoning behind not associating game parts with a specific game.

A couple milestones...

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Thu, 27 May 2010 01:43:00 GMT

Looks like while I wasn't paying attention, that we crossed the 17,000 serial mark and also 4 Million Visitors on May 15th. I have been working on a few new charts that show the trendlines for both of these metrics since the site started, they are unusually constant which I didn't really expect to see. I should get them up here in the next few weeks into the regular statistic charts.

Whew, that was a long one...

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 08 May 2010 15:01:00 GMT

We had a pretty massive wind storm here on Thursday night and lost power for about 8 hours. My database server didn't come back up after that little downtime incident (looks like the motherboard is the issue), so I had to transfer to the database over to a different machine and get everything configured. Things will run this way for a few weeks and then Im planning to move to a virtual environment which will make servers a little more manageable (I think!). Everything *should* be up and running now. Let me know if you run into any issues. Thanks.

See you at the Showdown!!!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 05:08:00 GMT

Don't forget to swing by the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown from Friday-Sunday this weekend in Golden, CO. Dan and Holly put on a great show and there are lots of unique games slated to show up this year!!!! I will be giving a presentation on the Internet Pinball Serial Number Database on Saturday @ 4PM to go over features and get feedback from all you!!!

Account Bug Fix

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:05:00 GMT

Fixed a small issue where accounts that were locked out due to too many invalid passwords couldn't be re-enabled via the automated system of emails. I also had a fairly entertaining postfix mail server issue on April 15th due to ClamAV disabling their daemon if the version was too old. That is the problem with Linux, it works so well that you never really have to touch the box.... who knew it had been on and functional for 3 years without a reboot!!!

Small GUI Update and a Bug Fix

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 04:50:00 GMT

The statistical charts that show on the right have classically been .jpgs for maximum compatibility. Being that Google Analytics is showing that over 95% of you have Flash installed, I changed them into .swf format now. The one nice thing this give is that the data points can now have a URL associated with them. So for instance, most of the bar charts are now clickable on the bar and will take you to the page for that member or game. I will keep trying to enhance these little graphs more in the future too.

Also, I fixed an issue with the Affiliate pages that was causing an odd error on sites that linked to the 'real time IPSND data grids'. If anyone is still having any issues, send me an email and I will take a deeper look.

IE Fixes

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 07:07:00 GMT

I fixed some issues with the login form (upper right corner) that was preventing IE 7 + 8 users from being able to just hit the 'Return' key for logging in. The old form always seemed to work for Firefox users but for IE 7 + 8, you would have to explicitly click on the login button. Either way, this should now be fixed so you IE users shouldn't be as confused anymore. :-)

New Site Security Roles Defined

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:06:00 GMT

It has become apparent over the last year that some users would really like to help participate in the site in various areas. I didn't have a lot of security driven functionality outside of one superuser (me) and then members having access to their own info. I have created three new security roles and assigned some users into those groups based upon conversations I have had. The two new roles are 'Mask Moderator' which allows a user to create, edit and delete any serial number mask in the database. The next one is a 'Serial Snooper' and this role allows the user to edit and/or delete any serial submission in the IPSND. The final one is a typical 'Administrator' and allows the user to do user maintenance, assign roles and run Synchronizations with the Internet Pinball Database. If you are interested in learning about these roles and their responsibilities drop me an email.

Development Tasks added

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:19:00 GMT

I added a new main menu item called 'Development Tasks' that shows the current queue of stuff that I am trying to work on and what I am planning on working on in the near or not-so-near future. The idea is that members can submit topics here and if they cut the mustard, they will go onto the development list. There have been some great topics coming up about deeper questions on how the IPSND should interpret and collect data and hopefully those lead to more insight and more development on my end.

Skin Updates

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:45:00 GMT

I deployed new code today that has the newest version of Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX this morning. So, some of the grids look a little different at this point. My goal is to soon give members the ability to choose their skin in the member preferences which would allow members to customize the way the IPSND looks for them. The 'big picture' goal is to take this to the point where even the background images can be selected by category... so for example, a member might select 'EM Games' as their preference on backgrounds, and so they would only get older EM games showing for their random backgrounds.

Silverlight Experimentation

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:53:00 GMT

I am starting to experiment wtih Silverlight as there are several areas where some client side processing might work better and to be honest with you, I don't like Javascript. :-) Right now, the top logo is built with Silverlight and so in order to see the logo at all, you will need Silverlight installed. I will be working on fixing the logo to be 'Non-Silverlight' compatible this week again. So... what does this fancy new Silverlight logo do for you? Well... not much. However, you if you rotate your mouse wheel upwards when hovering over the logo, you can cycle through some random colors. The color you leave it on, is the color that it should remain on the entire site forever (I think), so pick a nice color and enjoy. I will get the default color set back to the Yellow that it used to be rather than the ugly red that is currently there!!!!!

10,000 Nudges

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:39:00 GMT

We have had a total of 10,000 nudges in just under 1 year since I added the Nudging feature. It has been interesting to see how the submissions started getting photo's attached more often now that nudging can directly affect the scoring of a submission. We will see how the new commenting feature works for nudging over the coming year. Just to mark a milestone the current leading member of nudges is 'King of Pinball' who currently has 925 nudges.

Nudge Comments Added...

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 07:01:00 GMT

One more quick feature for the evening before I start to do 'real' work. I added the ability for members to add a comment to their nudges in the main nudge queue. You can also see all the other nudges that exist with their score and comment for comparison purposes before you vote. I added this because on some of the more controversial nudging threads, I really couldn't see why some people voted a certain way. Even tho it is optional, maybe this will allow members to 'vent' along with their vote! Have fun!

Bug Fixed in Submission Form plus Nudge Counter improved

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:39:00 GMT

I fixed a bug in the submission edit form that was changing the submission type (Full Game, Body Only, Head Only or Game Part) when you would edit any GamePart. The bug was changing the type from a Part submission to a 'Body Only' submission. John Vorwerk noticed this issue on his submissions... thanks John. Another change I made today was with the Nudges Remaining counter in the member stats box. This number was updating every 15 minutes just like the rest of the stats and was a bit misleading especially if you were in the process of nudging a bunch of serials and the box still said you had X number of nudges remaining. Im working on getting the entire stats engine to be realtime rather than batch processes every 15 minutes. The process is time consuming just because the counters require queries that span about 15 tables and as the site grows, these tables only get bigger and hence take longer to execute.

Statistics Fixed

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 23:20:00 GMT

When I deployed that last 'upgrade' several of the other statistics pages broke due to a ViewState issue. I have fixed the issue and the stats should all be feeling much better now. More stats to come soon!! Keep watch!

Manufacturer Listing Bug Fixed...

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:47:00 GMT

Looks like the page showing games lists by manufacturer had a bug in it that excluded games without any serial submissions. This came to light due to a question from Jay Stafford about Alvin G. and Company serial numbers and their formats. For these games being fairly new, we definitely don't seem to have many serials registered so far. Out of the 12 games manufactured, there are only serials for 5 of those games. If you have any Alvin G. games, please register the serials so we can start to understand the formats for these games. One item of distinction is that these games sometimes have both a 'serial number' and a 'cabinet number', please register the 'serial number'!

Statistics Update

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:49:00 GMT

I just added two new statistics to the stats page that show top submitters by total points and top members by most nudges. I am in the process of overhauling the stats page and the engine behind the statistics to make it more accurate. There is actually a bug in the statistics engine that a few of you have pointed out to me and I have known about it, but just didn't have the time to get it fixed. Since Basil LeBlanc is now moving up the charts so strongly, I should get it fixed as it will not give him credit for several rankings. In the past, it only affected me since I had so many points, so I didn't mind. :-)

Site Downtime

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 06:00:00 GMT

The site was down today for 4-5 hours while I played around with some hardware issues. I thought I would improve the server a bit today by adding some more memory and it all fell apart from there.... after reboot, none of my network interfaces existed and they just wouldn't come back. I threw in a temporary one and it worked fine, so we are running on auxilliary NIC right now. I should be able to get this resolved today still. My apologies for any interruptions if you get booted from the site. Thanks for the patience.

3,000,000 Visitors!!!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 22:54:00 GMT

Looks like we crossed the 3 million visitor mark earlier today. Thanks everyone for your support, the serials are pouring in at a faster rate than ever before!!

IPDB Synchronization

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 05:53:00 GMT

I just finished a fairly large database synchronization with the IPDB that included about 600 database updates. I try and synchronize with those guys every now and again to keep my database up to date with all the great info they collect. Overall, the IPSND gets the game name, manufacturer, manufactured date, mpu type, game type, abbreviations, production run and associated flags. Without the excellent quality and data normalization of the IPDB, this entire process would be much more difficult. Thanks again guys!

Photo's Photo's Everywhere!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:31:00 GMT

Just an update on the serial number photos... since this feature was rolled out in Feb 2008, we have collected over 1000 photos of serial submissions. That is about 1 in 4 submissions that have an attached photo. This is pretty damn nice and I appreciate all you that are taking the extra effort to get that camera into sometimes difficult positions and lighting situations to grab that high quality photo. In addition, our average nudge balance is 2 positives for every 1 negative nudge so that means the photo quality is also edging much better than it is worse. I thought these numbers were interesting enough to share with everyone... thanks all... keep the photos coming!

Site Downtime

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:56:00 GMT

We had a power outage here in Laramie once again while out of town for the week... for some reason my router didn't reboot properly when power came back up so the site was down for the last day... my aplogies. All should be well now.

Edits of Game Traits

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 16 May 2009 16:48:00 GMT

Pete Knoll requested that the member submission editor form allow members to update their custom game traits (for example... Playfield Plastics Artwork Style on BK2k). I finally got a little bit of time to take care of this so the edit form now has a section for updating and/or removing these fields. This should be nice as submissions that were entered prior to the trait being defined can now go back and update their trait. Thanks Pete!

Member Password Changes

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 05:59:00 GMT

I received an email from Heinz Ostlund this week asking how he could change his IPSND member password, as I was logging into the site to get the direct link to the 'change password' page, I discovered that there wasn't a 'change password' page... hmmmmm. I really thought I had done that, but low-and-behold, I apparently had not. So, for all of you members that have silently dealt with this lacking feature for so long (and Heinz too), I just got one put out there. It is accessible under the 'MyIPSND' link in the account summary box in the upper right of the screen.

More Google Maps

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:09:00 GMT

There is a new tab on each game detail page now simply called 'Map' which will show a very pretty Google Map of all submissions that had a GeoLocation entered. It is pretty basic now but it does look pretty cool. This ties into the new statistic I added a few days ago showing games with most Geolocations submitted. Currently there are 517 distinct games and 1100 locations which using current totals is about 10% of the games and about 7% of the total submissions. Keep those GeoLocations coming in!!

Image Tools 'Fixed'

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:45:00 GMT

Based upon a conversation with Pete Knoll last week about the quality of the uploaded images, it was deemed that the ipsnd image processor was affecting the quality of images even under the magnification tool. I reworked this code so that under magnification, the image shown will be exactly as the uploaded photo was without any degradation effects from processing. I think Pete made a good point in seeing this issue and hopefully it will affect nudges in a positive way. Thanks Pete!!

New Statistic Added

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:43:00 GMT

There is a new statistic showing games listed by number of submissions with a geolocation. You can see the stat on the Statistics Page to get an idea of games with the most Lattitude/Longitude data available. This feature is the first in a slew of related features I will be rolling out this week.... keep watch for more info.

Earth Hour Downtime

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:42:00 GMT

We will be down on Saturday March 28th for one hour from 8:30-9:30PM Mountain Standard Time (GMT -7:00) in order to participate in Earth Hour. Please take the time to participate in this global event whereever you live!! As long as my servers come back up after cooling down we should be up and running pretty quick afterwards, if Im not back up, then the capacitors on my motherboards have probably dried up to the point of too much AC ripple!!

Nudge Adjustments

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 17:56:00 GMT

Now that the nudging has been running a while I have been looking a the data and it has been pretty nice so far. Members are doing a terrific job of weeding out the bad photos by consistently nudging them down. In some instances submitters have re-submitted a new clearer photo in order to reset the bad nudges their bad nudges and start fresh. One thing that I have noticed however is that on those submissions that are quite clear and close, that the nudging was very one-sided and it was getting silly to allow people to keep nudging since it was clear that the photo was accurate. So, I have implemented a new rule on nudging... if a serial has received more than 5 nudges and the sum of those nudges is more than 4 or less than -4, then the nudge will automatically close. This should keep things a little cleaner from a storage standpoint. We will see how it goes, Im guessing the nudge rules will still be changing in the future. If you have any questions or suggestions, drop me an email.

System 1 Updates

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 04:33:00 GMT

I went through and cleaned up the serial masks for all the Gottlieb System One games in order to better classify them and due to lots of submissions by 'Roller Disco Rocks'. The System 1 games have fairly straighforward serial formats but since it is clear that sample games start at 1000 and production games always start at numbers greater than 2000, it is very possible to define very strict masks for these games. Additionally, since the game PCB's contain the serial number *plus* the Game ROM Letter as a suffix, these serials can also be defined quite nicely.

A little downtime

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:16:00 GMT

Seems like my ISP had some issues last night and we were down from midnight until 11AM MST (-7:00 GMT). In this process I also discovered that I am still reliant on the Qwest DSLAM so I will work on changing that so I go directly to my ISP's DSLAM which will help with troubleshooting in the future. Hat's off to Visionary Communications who is my ISP and always takes very good care of me.

More Nudge Data

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:42:00 GMT

At the request of Mark Gibson, I have added two new ways for you to view stats about nudges that have happened. The first is a simple table in the Stats Page that shows up to 250 of the most recent nudges. The second is a section at the bottom of the detail page for any submission. If there has been a photo uploaded, then of course the SerialBot score box on the right shows the summed totals of all the nudges, but now, down below, there is a grid that actually shows all the nudges.. the date, who nudged and the nudge direction. In theory, these should always add up to the nudge total shown at the top of the form even tho they are being calculated in two completely seperate ways. :-)

SerialBot Scoring Adjusted

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 05:27:00 GMT

Now that the nudging feature has been rolled out and based upon some stats, I have modified the algorithim for calculating SerialBot scores and adjusted the 'Physically Viewed' property to only gain the submission +1 point instead of +2 points. After looking at submissions, it was apparent that while physically viewing a serial might give some advantage to accuracy, it might also not as people are just as hasty on reading actual serial numbers off games and might even pay less attention and give less scrutiny to the number than reading a number off a photo. So, for now, I have changed this. Everyone's scores will reflect this change immediately and you can see the average pretty much dropped by 1 point.

Member Nudge Queue

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 23:56:00 GMT

There is a new page (accessible in the login box for members) that gives a really easy to use interface to members in order to quickly move through all the photos that a user has not yet nudged. Since I want to make nudging as easy as possible, this should really help. Remember, members get an additional point for each nudge so it is really simple to gain lots of points simply by reviewing the submitted photos to see if they match the submitted serial number.

We put the NUDGE back in pinball!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 05:14:00 GMT

There is a new feature on the site for members that I just deployed. I call it 'Nudging' and it basically means that members can vote on photos that have been uploaded with other people's submissions, if they feel the photo accurately shows the serial number and is correct, they can 'nudge' the SerialBot score up by one point. If the photo is innacurate or does not show the serial number clearly, then they can 'nudge' it down a point. Any number of members can 'nudge' any serial but the total points that can be gained or lost is currently limited to 3. We will see how it goes. Im still working on all the scoring algorithims so things may be a little out of whack for a couple days till I catch the bugs.

Site Speed Updates

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 02:09:00 GMT

I have been added background worker processes to the website to do things like generating the quickstats at the top of the page as well as the user stats that display when a member is logged in. Unfortunately, these worker process were taking up huge amounts of memory and bogging down the CPU when they ran and conglomerated all the data. Either way, I spent some time this week learning about threading and additionally using exclude fields in LLBLGen. After some improvements the aggregation processes now run substantially faster and with much memory consumption. This should make the site snappy like it used to be and maybe even faster since the quickstats don't run on each page load now.

FAQ Updated

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 06:56:00 GMT

I added 4 new answers to the Frequently Asked Questions that dealt with some of the newer features and some member questions that I received alot. If you have other questions, feel free to email me.

2 Million Visitors!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 04:53:00 GMT

Thanks for everyone's support over the last few years... the site has really come along and we are getting great traffic. Special thanks to the Internet Pinball Database as they refer so many pinheads this way!!!!

Member Edits Overhauled

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 16:13:00 GMT

I completely overhauled the interface that members use to edit their submissions. The old way used inline forms and that was becoming slow and clunky. I moved the edits to it's own page which allows members to edit all aspects of their submissions including photos and Lat/Lng locations.

Another New Stat

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 04:13:00 GMT

I put anther stat in the chart rotation that shows members with the most serialbot points. I thought this was fairly interesting because although 'pinballeric' currently has the most submissions by quite a bit, he doesn't have a huge lead over #2 Dan Gutchess as far as total points. This is because the serial numbers that Eric gave me (from the Pinball Price Guide) don't have any photos and were not physically viewed so that dropped the points per submission that Eric had. Dan you only need like 350 more points to catch up to Eric now!!!!

Stats Updated

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:33:00 GMT

The Most Recent Submissions statistic works more like the rest of the grids now in that it shows icons next to the serial number if there is a photo and/or and Lat/Lng submitted. This makes it easy to see in that list which items might be interesting to look at. I will be removing the stat page that lists submissions with Photo's since that stat is now easily seen via this page change.

Submission Details

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:45:00 GMT

I changed the way the 'details' about submissions are viewed. I had about 3 different pages that all had something to do with showing summary information on a single submission plus most of the details were shown in-line with the sumission grids. The grids were getting slow as games started to get 200+ serials and they were just sorta clunky. I made the details link go to a new page now that gives all the submission specific info along with the submitted Lattitude/Longitide and the photo if available. This page also shows the history of a serial number in case there were other submissions in the past. Hopefully this should make things work a bit cleaner. I will be working on making the 'edit' process easier for members next. Stay tuned!

Site Maintenance

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:31:00 GMT

I had to install a new router today and reconfigure my firewall so the site was down a couple of hours today. All seems to be running fine now. I will keep watch for any issues. If you get any strange errors, please let me know. Thanks.

Americans... Go Vote!!!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Don't let this tuesday go by without voting!!! It is your right and privilege, don't squander it. Get your ass out there!!!

Several Updates

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 05:54:00 GMT

There are two new 'quickstats' in the page header... Masks which show the number of games that have a valid game serial format mask defined. This is a regular expression that defines what is a good vs. bad serial number for each game. Right now we only have about 34% of the games defined and I will be working on slowly improving that number as more serials show up. If submissions have a photo, it makes defining a mask even easier as the picture never lies. The other quickstat is Traits, these used to be called 'Community Defined Fields' but that was long and boring, they are now called 'Traits', this is a count of the number of traits defined on all games. Additionally, there is a new statistic on the Stat page that shows number of games without a mask defined by the number of submissions, this gives me a really easy way to see games that might have enough serials (generally 3-4) to try and guess on a serial format mask.

Two for the price of one!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:59:00 GMT

Yes, that's right... for a perpetual time, you get two charts on the right side of this screen for the same low low price of the one that used to be there. You will see incredible improvements on your ability to absorb new and informative statistics about the usage of this site along with subconscious needs to submit more serial numbers. Call Now!

Site Downtime...

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 23:55:00 GMT

In my haste to deploy the new 'Lat/Lng' quickstat this morning before I went to work, I accidentally broke most of the site. All should be up and running now.

Calculation Bug Fixed

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 03:33:00 GMT

There was a problem with the query that calculated the top submitters by submission quality that is now fixed. The issue was for people that had photos submitted and was causing those SerialBot points not to be tallied properly. You will now see that our quality of submissions is drifting upwards!!! Thanks everyone!!

Finally, a submission map!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 06:53:00 GMT

There is a new chart in the rotation that shows submissions for the past week. It will of course only show submissions that have a Lat/Lng associated with them, so remember that when you submit. It took me 3 weeks to get the Flash file to display the dots as blue rather than the default Google Analytics Orange color but finally it works. If anyone out there is proficient in Flash Actionscript 1.0 with massive amounts of prototyping, I could use your help. Going from C# to AS1 is not pretty!!! Enjoy!

Maps on Game Parts Page...

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:23:00 GMT

I added the new google map locator to the Game Parts page now too. You may now submit your Lat/Lng with any game part serial submission just like full game serials.

Google Maps Integration

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:43:00 GMT

There is a new section on the game serial submission page that allows you to set the location of the game serial number you are submitting. While there currently is not a way to view this information. I will be working on that over the next few weeks. What I hope to accomplish with this is to see how a game travels over the years as it is bought and sold etc. My next step will be to get this map interface onto the game parts submission page.

Web Server Upgraded

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:00:00 GMT

I have moved the site over to a new web server which is a bit more capable than my old Athlon XP 1900+ and has more memory as well. It was getting to the point where I had to reboot the server every week due to memory leaks (thanks ASP.NET or Windows Server). There were some interuptions this weekend while I did the switchover but I think that all is well now.

New Quickstat Plus Another Chart

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 06:23:00 GMT

There is a new obscure quickstat listed in the header... 'Highest Quality'... this shows the person that has the highest overall average of serial bot scores across all their submissions. You have to have at least 10 submissions to get in this stat as it is easy to have a high score on one submission. I added this to give credit to those submitters that take the time to submit only 'in person' serials and accompany them with a picture (the best way to get a high serialbot score). Also, there is a new chart in the rotation that shows the top 5 highest averages by submitter!!

Bad Servers Documented

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 06:15:00 GMT

I threw another chart into the rotation that displays the number of servers that have been blacklisted by me by day. While this isn't probably the most interesting statistic to everyone, it is good for me to see and also gives you an idea of the number of crappy bots that are out there attempting to inject and expliot my servers on a regular basis. These logs only show the attacks that make it past my Packet Inspection Firewall and generally attempt to post data with flagged keywords such as 'Viagra' :-)

Fully ASP AJAX Implemented

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 04:59:00 GMT

It took me about a month but I have now switched over to Telerik's newest WebControl suite which sits on top of the Microsoft AJAX framework instead of utilizing Telerik's own AJAX framework. What this actually means is that some of the skins look a little more modern and most of the advanced AJAX calls work *much* faster (especially noticeable in the member's MyIPSND edit grid). Overall, this should be a good stepping stone into the future for ASP. Since this was a fairly major overhaul, if you run into any issues, PLEASE send me an email so I can get it fixed up as quickly as possible.

New Chart in Rotation

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 02:58:00 GMT

I added a new chart that shows top referring sites as extracted from Google Analytics. I figured this would help show the benefit this site gets from some of the other popular pinball sites such as The Internet Pinball Database and Pinside.

All the charts you ever wanted...

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 05:21:00 GMT

I am going to start adding a few more charts and also making them available on the Statistics page. For those of you that don't want to cycle through all the front page charts one-by-one, there is now a link in the lower right corner of the charts that allows you to see them all on one page.

Pinball Price Guide Serial Numbers

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 06:34:00 GMT

Special thanks to Eric Kantor who donated all the serial numbers that Steve Young compiled over the years for The Pinball Price Guide. There were over 1100 serial numbers in the spreadsheet that Eric sent me covering Gottlieb and Williams EM games. Since the price guide only tracked high and low serials, you can see that they are often the highest and lowest serial numbers in the submissions. Thanks again Eric!!

Database Downtime

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:04:00 GMT

Looks like we were down for most of today due to my SQLServer running out of disk space. I apparently need to learn how to clean up my database backups a little better as I ran out of disk space on the SQL box. Luckily SQL 2005 behaves better than SQLServer v7.0 when disk space mysteriously dissapears and everything is up and running again without even a reboot.

Internet Pinball Database Links!!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:37:00 GMT

Thanks to Wolf and Jay at the The Internet Pinball Database who have added matching links on every game in their database to the IPSND game page. This will help keep even more traffic coming our way and should encourage more people to submit their serial numbers. Thanks again guys!!

SerialBot Scoring Explained

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 05:58:00 GMT

You can now click on the SerialBot score for each submission and get a detailed explanation of that score and the color code. As the scoring has gotten a little more complicated, it seems that this information would be useful to submitters or serial number compilers.

Game Part Photos

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:33:00 GMT

You may now submit photos directly in the game part submission form instead of having to go into your MyIPSND submissions to edit the entry. This should make it much easier than before for the couple of you that are submitting game parts with photos on a regular basis.

Email Updates

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Tue, 27 May 2008 01:51:00 GMT

I have changed the way that the site sends emails due to some problems with the way the larger domains (yahoo, hotmail, gmail, etc) configure their mailservers. The update also takes care of getting mail sucessfully sent to a server that uses greylisting as SPAM prevention. As a reminder too, if you become a member, you will not have to verify your serial number submissions via email which will keep your inbox healthier!

Back Online

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 24 May 2008 14:08:00 GMT

Another side effect of the large storms that rolled through the area was that a stream washed out some qwest fiber around the Douglas area. Apparently three OC48's were cut by debris on Thursday afternoon. We are finally back up with internet service on Saturday morning.

Power Outage

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:08:00 GMT

Laramie had some tornado issues this Thursday and our power was out overnight due to those and some heavy snow. I'm bringing the servers back up right now so we should be good to go in a few minutes.

Now linked up with Pinside.com

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 10 May 2008 03:05:00 GMT

After emailing a few times with Robin at pinside.com, we have both agreed to change our sites a little to provide links off each game page to each other. This wasn't quite as easy as linking up to the IPDB but Robin and I figured out a way to make it work. You will now see links to Pinside on most games produced after 1975 on each game page. Thanks Robin!

Member Benefits!!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Fri, 09 May 2008 02:56:00 GMT

I changed the way the site works a little based on feedback at the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown last month. Instead of mailing out verification emails for every submission for everyone, now, they only go out to non-members. So, if you become a member, your submission will automatically be set to a status of 'verified' without needing to deal with checking your email for every submission. Since members already have their identity known, it is safe for us to assume that those submissions have a certain level of integrity.

See you at the Showdown

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:31:00 GMT

I will be doing a pin-chat at the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown next week, the chat will be a tour of the IPSND, how it is built, the database and all the interesting stuff that I can show from the site. You will also learn some advanced usage of the site features.

1,000,000 Visitors

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:25:00 GMT

Well it has been just about 2 years now and we have crossed the million visitor mark. Looking deeper into the stats, most of those visits are by bots it appears but it is a legitimate session count when the visit I suppose. Thanks to everyone that has continued to support the site and keep the submissions coming!!

Added Statistic

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:25:00 GMT

There is a new statistic that lists latest submissions that include a photo. A nice way to browse all the pretty pictures everyone submits!

Game Search Results

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 14:42:00 GMT

I have updated the logic for the search results so that it does two new things. Now, the number of players is also listed in the results to better clarify the games from each other, plus the results are now sorted descending by number of submissions for that game so that the post popular games exist at the top of the list. Since I don' really have a fancy search engine, this should give back more applicable results at the top of the list.

Image Uploads

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 06:42:00 GMT

Members may now upload photos for existing submissions by going to their member profile page and editing the submission. You can also replace existing photo uploads via the same interface. Right now, there is only 1 photo per submission however.

New 'Chart', Sortof

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 02:59:00 GMT

In the area to the right where the charts and the google analytics exist, there is a new item in the rotation that shows the most recent member uploaded photo that has been put into the database. FYI, there are currently 9 different items that rotate in the chart panel on the front page.

Photo Edits

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 17:42:00 GMT

Members can now do some basic editing of uploaded photos, right now there are tools for rotating and flipping images. I will also be monitoring images uploaded by non-members and doing rotations etc to get them presented properly.

Several Bugfixes

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:49:00 GMT

Based on the traffic and feedback from my post on RGP last night, I have fixed several bugs relating to the Emailing issue, login accounts and Activation processes and the Affiliate configuration script. There is also a new 'remember me' checkbox in the login control so you can keep your default email on a computer by computer basis.

Email Fixes

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 07:05:00 GMT

There are some issues with the confirmation email going out to yahoo, gmail and other large ISP's. Im changing the code now but the site will be a bit flaky for the next 10 minutes while I deploy the updates. Thanks for your patience.