IPSND RSS News Feed

All the charts you ever wanted...

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 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.

Photo's of Serial Numbers Supported

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

We will call this a BETA test for now, but you can now attach photo's to your serial number submissions that show the serial number explicitly. This will potentially solve so may problems over time as we get more and more submissions and error's gradually pile up. This is only the first step in a bigger picture solution but it is pretty cool to see them for now. You can either upload a photo from your local PC or specify a web URL for the photo. The image is stored in our local IPSND database so it is archived along with the submission. Submissions that have an attached photo are 'starred' in the serial number listings.

Serial Bot Updates

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

The Serial Bot has been improved to not only categorize submissions into various 'status' levels but it now assigns a point value to each submission that ranges from 1-5. This value basically shows how accurate a submission is based on several factors. More details can be found on the Serial Bot Page and this functionality will be getting more improvements in the weeks to come.

Sorting Bug Fixed

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

There was a bug in the serial number sorting algorithm that appeared to effect games that had alpha characters in them (Early Bally Electronics most notably). This has now been fixed so that they are again sorted in numeric order.

Submitters vs. Members

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

In several tables that list submitters, there is now a 'member' icon that appears similar to the way an icon appears if a person has given a donation. Clicking this icon will take you to the member profile page that shows some summary info about the member, a link to their website and a listing of their submissions. It is fairly similar to the regular submitter page, however I will continue to develop this page and probably not develop the submitter page beyond the basics.

Become a Member

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

You can now register on the IPSND if you are here regularly and would like a little more power over your information and ease of use. The big advantage is that you can now edit your submissions to a certain degree if you want to correct them or update them. Registration is free and we of course do not share any information.

IPP Serial Status Change

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

When I started this database, I imported all the known serials that had be registered with the old Internet Pinball Project as the basis. That was about 7500 serial numbers (3/4 of where we are now at 10,000 serials). I changed the 'Status' of these serials to 'Unvalidated' since they technically have not been validated. I also wanted these submissions to have a 'lower' value than submission by people that have personall submitted games and verified them through the email link. This doesn't really change much except you now see much more 'blue' in the serial number listings.

Statistics Drilldown

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I updated the Statistics Page with a feature that allows you to view entire datasets instead of just the top 25 or 50 rows which I commonly limited the stats to in the past. This allows you to drill down into the data if you really want to and also do full exports of the data instead of having just the top.

Movin' on Up!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

The site is now running ASP.NET 3.5 under IIS. Im not technically using any of the fancy 3.5 features yet (except one simple LINQ OrderBy function but Im working on it.

Community Defined Fields

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I sat down the other night and did a search for 'prototype' on RGP to come up with threads discussing odd features of games (generally due to someone posting that they had a 'prototype'). What came of this was that I added game custom properties to about a dozen games this week. Two examples are... Cleopatra and Sinbad: SheetMetal vs. Plywood cabinets. Bally's Wizard!: two different playfield arch artwork styles. I really encourage everyone to add more custom properties for games that you collect or are interested in... it really starts making the serial number submissions a little more interesting than doing simple existance tracking. More info on the Community Defined Fields page. You can see examples on the Games with the most Community Defined Fields statistics page.

Site Data Layer Updated

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I have given the site's Data Abstraction Layer a major overhaul and deployed it this evening. It was about a two week process but the changes should optimize the communication between the web server and the SQL server which should give better speed to the site overall.

Site Downtime

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

It never fails, every time I leave town, I have power problems in Laramie and a server goes down. This time it was the SQL server due to the old UPS battery. I will get a new battery ordered this week so things should at least improve in the future. Im also not going to be out of the country for a full week anytime soon either.

Ray Tops the Chart!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I think that Dan has held the title of 'Top Submitter' for over a year now but today Ray Johnson made a dash into the front. Nothing like a healthy rivalry between my favorite submitters to get all these lovely serial numbers! Nice job Mr. J.

Production Database Online

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

The original SQL database server is now back online. The site should be back to being somewhat fast now. Im in the process of migrating all databases over to the new server and things should be pretty stable from here on out. I apologize for the interruptions this past week!!

Site Slowness

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I am running the site of my backup database server this weekend while I build a new SQL box. Until I get switched back over, the site will be running a bit slower and may experience intermittent timeouts as a single proc machine doesn't do too well with both IIS and MS-SQL. :-) Someday I will move this beasty over to MySQL.

Database Maintenance

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

The site was down Saturday night due to some 'unexpected' server maintenance. Bottom line, don't promote your SQL server to a domain controller and then demote it. Bad Idea!

More Stats

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I added a new statistic on the statistics page that displays a breakdown of serial number submissions by Manufacturer. Also, on the stat pages that show IP addresses, clicking on the IP will take you to the whois record.

10,000 Submissions!!!!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

Dan Gutchess submitted the 10,000th serial number into the database today. Thanks to everyone who has been contributing and keep the serial numbers coming. Dan wins a free IPSND T-Shirt as soon as I get them made. ;-)

New Analytics Chart

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

There is a new Google Analyic chart in the rotation, this one is similar to the breakdown by city but instead does the breakdown by country and color codes the various levels of visitorship. Similar to the city chart, it has fancy floating info panels for each country.

Analytics Updated

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I have included the newest version of the Google Analytics geomap in the stats to the right. Basic functionality is the same but it definely looks prettier and loads a little faster. I will be working on this some more to get different aspects of analytics showing here on the front page.

Countermeasure Statistics

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

Just to keep track of those pesky IP address that use bots to auto-submit web links into our sacred database, there are now two new stats on the Statisics Page that allow you to see what IP's are currently banned and a listing of all IP's aggregated by count that have been banned in the past.

Countermeasures Deployed

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

In my passionate attempt to keep the site free from bot porn and viagra submissions I have deployed a few new countermeasures to prevent the bots from filling the database with crap data. I put these in place in lieu of using the 'captcha' verification images as those images were causing a few people submission grief. So, if any IP address submits porn links or lame-o data, that IP will now be banned for 48 hours from the site. Huray!!

Search by IPDB/IPSND Id

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

If you know exactly which game you are looking for, you can quickly type in the ipdbid with a pound symbol in front, so, for example... #1976 will take you directly to Robocop and #311 will take you to Black Knight 2000

Validation Images Removed

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

The validation images (captcha) were removed from both the sumission page and the parts submission page due to continued problems with some people's browsers. I had added them to prevent bots from posting invalid serial numbers but I will look into other measures for preventing that from happening.

Verification Summary

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

When you click on the verification link that the site emails after every submission, that resulting page will now display all the serial numbers that were marked as verified. It wasn't very apparent in the past but even if you had submitted 25 serials, clicking any single one of the verification links would mark all 25 submissions as 'Verified'. That meant that you didn't have to click every single email that was sent to you in a single batch (defined by session which is equal to 30 minutes in this case).

Game Part Graph

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I added a new front page graph that shows a pie chart of the distribution of all game part submissions on the site. I may change this to be only the last 90 days as I want the front page charts to sort of constantly morph based on time and the way it looks now, most part submissions might be CPU or display PCB's. We will see what happens with the data before I change anything tho.

New Game Part Statistic

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

There is a new statistic that shows games with most number of submitted game parts on the statistics page.

Game Part Types

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

When submitting a game part, there is now a drop down that lets you define what type of part it is (CPU, Driver, Display, etc). When viewing the game part listings under each game, you can then see this information.

Game Parts Expanded

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I have added a new tab to the game details page that explicitly lists all game parts that have been calculated to belong to that specific game. Some game part serials can be associated with a specific model simply by the structure of the serial number and others cannot. As I manually find these game part serials, I will assign them to a game and they will start showing up in the 'Game Part' lists. The concept is not quite complete but you can read more about it under any game detail 'Game Parts' tab.

Under-the-Hood Upgrade

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I upgraded my entire Data Abstraction layer to full .NET 2.0 compliant code that takes advantage of nullable types and gives me an easy way to audit all database changes. While this doesn't technically effect the site, it will probably introduce a few bugs. I have already fixed about 4 issues tonight after watching the exception log, so if you do have any problems, bear with me and I will get them fixed asap.

Game Part Submission Bug Fixed

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

There was an issue with the GamePart submission page that was causing some issues accepting submissions, this was due to some old code that tried to prevent duplicate submissions caused by double-clicking the submit button. A big thanks to John Duchi for helping to troubleshoot the problem.

Site Downtime

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

The site was down for 4 days this past week due to me being out of town and Laramie losing power for more than 20 minutes. Since my UPS' can only deal with that much power outage, the servers were down until I got back into town. All should be good now however and Im going to start saving for a bigger UPS. :-)

Bally German Games

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I went through and defined a custom game property for the dozen or so Bally games that came in both English and German versions. Maybe we can start to see a trend in the serial numbers now.

Web-Bot Countermeasures

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later but the web bots have officially found us and are attempting to submit all kinds of crappy information including URL's of malicious web sites. So, you will find that some submission forms will require image validation (also known as captcha images) to prevent me from getting a mailbox full of 'Improperly formed submission' errors every day.

Search Results Expanded

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

When searching for games the results now return a column that specifiies the number of submissions on record for that game, this is helpful for games that might have been made for home use orfor games licensed to other manufacturers. Overall, it allows you to see the potentially most popular or common game amongst all the results.

Manufacturer Stat Charts Added

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I added the standard 3 charts for viewing submissions by Country, Condition and GamePart to the manufacturer pages. An example can be see at the Stern Electronics Manufacturer Page. I also added a column that summarizes the number of submissions for that game in the table.

Serial Bot Updates

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

There are now 5 different 'status' levels that a serial number can have defined by the Serial Bot. They are now a little more defined and include a status for games that don't yet have a serial mask defined.

New Serials Flagged

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

When viewing game serial number lists, if any serials have been submitted in the last 90 days, they are now flagged with a small 'new' icon. This lets you see the activity on specific games you might be watching.

New Logo

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

After some playing around with photoshop, I think I have improved the logo a bit for full browsers. Mobile users still have the same old 'compact & flat' version but it works better on limited bandwidth.

Speed Improvements

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I'm starting to experiment with ASP.NET caching and have also been working on optimizing my database trips from the web application. This should help improve page load times in the future.

Submission Page Errors

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

There was a problem with the submission page today due to a change I made in the code that displays example serial numbers. I have things fixed now so all should be back to normal.

More Pretty Tabs

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I added pretty icons to the tabs within the game detail page. Also, there is a new tab that explains any known serial number format for a specific game... an example would be Sample Game serials and Production Game serials. Read the previous news item for more info.

Serial Definitions

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I broke the serial masks into a seperate table that now allows me to track multiple formats using regular expressions. This allows the database to have different masks for Sample vs. Production games for example. I was having issues with making a single regular expression that covered all the different known formats since in addition to the literal format, the actual numeric range was often constrained as well. For example, 80's Gottlieb games had sample games that were typically prefixed with an 'S' and started in the one thousands; Production games did not have the 'S' but also started in the two (or greater) thousands. Hence... a serial number of 'S02438' would not be a valid serial number based on this information.

Serial Validation Mode

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

Now that we are on the virge of collecting 10,000 serials, I am starting to fully audit the database with validation masks. These masks allow me to flag serial numbers that look suspect according the best known information on the format of a specific game serial number and the range of known serials. To go along with this, I have created a new Statistics category called 'Quality Control'. There is one available statistic right now that lists the games with the most suspect serial numbers.

Better Functionality

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

The GamePart submisson form now remembers your default values for 6 months using any prior submission, just the way the main submission form works.

Defining Serial Masks

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I have just added serial number mask definitions for about 1000 games. What this gives me is a method to start determining if submitted serial numbers are in an expected format. I previously only had about 1000 serial masks defined, but we are now at a total of 1880 games out of ~5000 defined. After doing this, I now have about 200 existing serial number submissions that are showing up as 'possibly innacurate'. So, I will start cleaning those up this week.

New Database Server

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I have purchased a new server for SQL 2005 and am running Windows 2003 64-bit Edition along with SQL 2005 64-bit. It might be slight overkill but I wanted to support AMD and since their new Athlon's are all 64-bit, I figured I would give it a go. All my drivers were good and the machine is up and running. You should see substantial improvements on the page load times now. I will be working on optimizing indexes and server cache info over the next month to get things as snappy as possible.

New Tab on Game Detail Page

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I added a new tab on the game detail page that is called 'Find your Serial Number' which basically is a blog style interface for posting tips on finding serial numbers for the *manufacturer*. Posts to this are global to the manufacturer so they aren't necessarily game specific.

Affiliate Update

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I added a new Stats section with a listing of all the current affilate sites, ordered by ranking. GameArchive is the only current affilate so Im hoping to get at least one other site to try out the new feature sometime soon. Come on Webmasters!!!! Also, I added a new feature to the Affilate serial submission process based on a comment by Jesse at Pinball Magic. What happens is that when a new serial is sumbitted via the Affilate include, upon submission, you are now taken back to the Affiliate site to make the process much more streamlined so that submitters don't end up leaving the affiliate's site.

2 New Statistics

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

There are two new stats on the Statistics Page that show games with the most current Community Defined fields and then a list of games that have the most community defined field values submitted.

Community Defined Field Results

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I modified the way the Community Defined Field data is displayed in the second tab of a game's details to show only serials with registered information. This makes the data much easier to read. Since many community defined fields have been defined after-the-fact, the resulting data was pretty sparse generally and involved lots of scrolling. This will also make pages load a tad bit faster.

Added Statisic Rankings

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

On most of the Statistics pages, there is a new column called rank that shows the appropriate row number. This makes it easier to see that statistical rank, an example as of right now... 'joust' is the 7th most popular search.

Include Live IPSND Data in your own web site!!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

This is a 'feature' that I have been working on for quite a few months now. Due to the really flexible nature, it took awhile but I think it is finally release-able. You can get substantially more info by clicking on the Become an Affiliate link at the top of the page but the basic jist is that now people that have 'owners list' pages, can actually stop trying to maintain static lists of serial numbers that they get submitted via emai and instead simply 'include' data directly from the IPSND using a really simple line of HTML that is similar to the way Google Analytics works.

Community Defined Field Datagrids

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

For games that have Community Defined Fields, there is now a basic data grid underneath the graphs that were previously not there (see Star Gazer for an example). The grid is basic and generally sparse right now but it is a little more useful than the graphs which showed totals but no distribution data. I also fixed a bug in the graphing code that was skewing totals for each property so the grid and graphs numbers now make sense together.

Owner Tracking Added

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I have added a new field to the serial number database that tracks if the submitter is the 'current owner' of a game or not. This came to my attention from games appearing at shows like the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown where non-owners may submit a serial number of a game that was on display. The reason I wanted to distinguish the difference was simply so that I could make a report filter to only show registrations by owners etc. All the existing registrations are marked as 'non-owner' submissions for now.

Showdown Lowdown

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

A big thank you to Dan and Holly for organizing the Rocky Mountain Pnball Showdown again this year. I had a great time and got to hang out and chat with everyone I haven't seen in awhile. The show had a great variety of games and I was happy to see a nice lineup of Bally's including a Xenon and Medusa. I have a list of about 100 serial numbers that I collected there so I will work on inputting them to the DB this week. See you next year!!

Server Upgrades/Fixes

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

It seems like I have had a failing stick of memory in my server that was making it *extremely* flakey this past month. It is now removed and running stable again. I also upgraded the database server to SQL 2005 from SQL 2000 so we will see if that gives any performance improvements.

See you at the Showdown!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

For everyone in the Rocky Mountain Region, don't forgot to come over to the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showndown from April 27th-29th in Jefferson County, Colorado (just west of Denver). There will be over 100 games set on free play along with a Pinball Tournament and guest speakers. I have volunteered to do the 'Pinball Shopping 101' session and will be bringing my Williams Cosmic Gunfight and Warlok to the show. The Pinball Showdown website is at http://www.pinballshowdown.com.

Search Improvements

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

The game search algorithm has been improved a little by ignoring 'special characters' in game names like hyphens, colons, asterisks, etc. This was a request from Dan G. because when typing in 'Pinbot' you would not get any matches due to the official game name being 'PIN*BOT'.

I also have made search tokens logically AND'ed together so that searches like 'time line' dont return 150 matches but only game names that have substrings of both terms somewhere in the official name or game abbreviation.

Frequently Asked Questions Added

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

Since there seemed to be many common questions about serial numbers and the database, I made up a little FAQ that attempts to give some feedback and guidance. Hopefully they help answer some of *your* big questions in life.

Fixed Timeout Issue

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

There were some issues with some of the statistics pages that would cause them to time out. This was because I was tracking hits in the DB from the IIS log and the table was enormous. I moved away from logging IIS traffic in the database and have stored hit values for each game in the database.

Community Defined Field Charts

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

There are now some basic pie charts on the game serial pages that summarize the collected data for the community defined fields. I have changed the interface to have tabs across the top so that I can store more info here in the future. Also, I will be adding a data grid that displays the community defined field info in a table below the charts similar to the main serial number registration table.

Williams Video Games Added

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I came to the realization this weekend that the serial numbers that Williams used for their video games are in the same sequence of serial numbers that they used for their pinball machines. This actually addresses some concerns of mine on the big gaps in their pinball serial numbers since there were large seqences of numbers missing during the 1982 era when pinball was waning and video games were still popular. Because of this interdependency, I have added the 12 video games that Williams manufactured in the early 80's. Please tell all your video game collector friends to register their serials if possible.

Community Defined Fields

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

Okay, I think this new feature is pretty neat. You may now add additional properties to a game so that when people register a serial, they are asked for some more game specific info. A really good example is with Jungle Lord... there are two different cabinet colors that were produced from the factory... RED and BLUE, by using the Community Defined Fields, I was able to submit the property and define the different allowed values that submitters may choose. Now, we can track game specific production properties to serial ranges to better figure out when these 'features' existed in the production run. Several other examples are... Captain Fantastic... Starred Backglass or not, Twilight Zone... 3rd Magnet. For those of you that are really into specific games, I challenge you to get some good community defined fields submitted so we can track these trends as early as possible. It took me about two weeks to get it up and running so please test it out and give me any feedback you might have on how to improve it.

RSS Feeds

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I created two RSS channels that are described on the RSS Feeds Page. Im not sure where these will go but I thought it would be interesting to be able to see the IPSND announcements available on my Slim Devices Squeezebox in my living room. This is also my cheap way of providing a semi 'web service' interface to the data. Please let me know if you would like to see anything else with the RSS feeds.

New Stat Chart

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I added a new chart in the front page chart rotation that shows top submitters in the last 90 days. I'm trying to come up with charts that change regularly so there is always something interesting to see and you will become hopelessly addicted to visiting the site and submitting serial numbers.

Game MPU Statistics Added

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

If a game is electronic and has a known MPU (Master Processing Unit) board, there is a link under that game to the MPU details page. The MPU detail page lists all games using that MPU and the aggregate stats associated with it. Header columns on data tables are clickable and allow sorting. Most tables are like this but I will work to make this more consistent across the site.

Statistics Graphs

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

In addition to the Google Analytics map that normally appears on the right side of the main page, there are now a few more charts you can view that show the following data... Submissions per day in the last 90 days, a breakdown of all submissions by country, pinball machine models produced by year and total pinball machine production by year. I will add more as I get time. Enjoy.

Game Serial Graphs

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I added 3 pie charts to the game serial pages that show distributions of registrations based on Country, Game Condition and the Game Part. This is still a work in progress and I have to pretty up the layout a bit but they are interesting to see as an alternative to browsing the entire registration table in raw format. I will be experiementing more with the Dundas charting tools and also trying to figure out a way to pay for them over the next few months. If you have any suggestions on what may be useful to visualize, drop me an email.

Serial Number Blog

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

There is a new link in the top navigation header called 'Serial Number Blog' that is a revamp of the old static page describing how to find serial numbers for the various manufacturers. The page is now formatted more like a blog with each manufacturer having posts from collectors that can comment on where and how to accurately find serial numbers on games by that manufacturer. I have initially populated the blog with the info that Bill Ung had written for the original Internet Pinball Project and added a couple of my own. There are lots of manufacturers to go and Im sure more info on the manufacturers that are already posted so please add as many useful comments as possible.

Easier Submitting

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

If you have submitted lots of serials, you probably have thought it was a bit repetitive to constantly have to re-type your name, email, website and country. I have added cookies to the site so that if your browser allows them, these fields will be remembered from the last submission you entered. The cookies are valid for 6 months and will keep your 'default' values stored in your computer. I don't use cookies for any tracking code so you won't have to worry about me slamming your machine with tons of sweet chewy delights.

Learn your flags!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

Countries are now shown as the appropriate flag graphic in the serial tables. Hovering will let you know what country it is if you don't know all 240 by heart. Looks a little flashier.

Pre-Holiday Maintenance

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I have had an issue with my root partition on this box for about a year now in that it was only 10Gig and I was woefully low on space for a long time. I made lots of temporary fixes by moving the swap file and other files to 'accessory' drives but finally found a good tool to move existing partitions to different drives under Windows Server 2003. So now I have a fresh 160gig C partition with lots of space to grow. This will allow me to install Telerik Q3 2006 widgets from the Q1 2006 version Im using now. I will be utiliting ajax more to minimize page loads. Im also going to start playing with Dundas charting tools which I didn't have enough space to install previously. Now I just need to get the backups working again. ;-)

Statistics Exports

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

All of the statistics tables available on the Statistics Page are now easily exportable to either Text CSV, XML or XLS file formats. Once you view a statistics table, look in the upper right hand corner of the table for the export functions. If you would like information on how to automate exports, let me know.

Site Screen Size Increased

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

Based on the data I have been pulling from Google Analytics it looks like only 7% of the visitors to this site have less than 1024x768 screen resolution. So, I have made the main site layout optimized for 1024x768 or larger. There are some tables I have been using that are hardcoded for the smaller screen size so I will be updating those in the next few weeks to take full advantage of the new real estate. Please let me know if you have any problems with formatting or sizing.

New Statistics Table

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I added a new table that shows 'Serial Registrations by Game Manufactured Year'. It also shows the number of games manufactured that year. Plotting it gives interesting results. I will start working on an easy way to graph all statisics here in the new year. Merry Xmas!!

Individual Game Stats

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

Im going to start adding some stats for individual games to the game summary pages. For now, it simply lists the number of serials registered against the total production and gives a percent registered. I will expand this a bit more in the future.

Major 'Under the Hood' improvement

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I had this strange process of making pages post back to themselves the first time a person would visit the site so that I could get the screen resolution of the computer you were browsing on. This allowed me to make the background image fit your screen perfectly. Well, it had some side effects in that I used the URL to send the resolution which made my server loggin completely useless with all the different URL's and it caused everyone to hit a page twice. Through the joys of javascript I have found a better way to do this. It works in both Firefox and IE 7.0 too. Hurray!

Return of the Factoid

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

Yes, all my sites seem to have one... the factoid... well it is challenging for me to come up with interesting facts to put in there. While most were taken from the IPDB, some are truly original or taken from digging through all my old pinball books.

Some CSS Updates

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I have been converting the site to be driven more by CSS instead of classic HTML based layouts so you might see some more 'pretty' things, or you might just see more broken formats due to the browser differences, if you are using IE 7, you are on your own for a bit until I can get it installed on a computer without crashing it. :-)

Trip to the Pinball Hall Of Fame

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I was in Las Vegas this week for a conference and got to spend hours playing pinball at Tim Arnold's Pinball Hall Of Fame. He let me crawl around and collect as many serial numbers as I could. I felt like Sam Harvey but Tim pointed out that since I was using a pocket PC to record the serials, there was no way I could be compared to Sam.

I finally got to play Pinball Circus and plenty of other favorites over the evening. Im slowly getting all the serials from the PHoF into the database.

Analytics Extraction

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

If all went successfully, you should now see a world map to the right of this with the past weeks hits mapped on it. This data is from my Google Analytics urchin tracker, it was an interesting process to get the data and display it here since there is no native API. I will keep playing with it to see if I can publish more data here directly.

Google Analytics Mining

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

Im using Google Analytics to track visitors to my site now. The visitor hits that are currently shown in the header are unique sessions however, they include bots that scan the site and it seems that that number isn't really that accurate in comparison to Analytics. Im in the process of trying to 'extract' data from Analytics to show directly on the site but Analytics does not have an API yet, so it will be an interesting hack.

Added More Stats

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I added a stat view that shows the most popular searches now. I also fixed an issue with the 'Submissions by Month' query that was sorting the months incorrectly.

More Sorting Improvements

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I extended the ability of my SerialComparer class to deal with games that don't explicity have a numeric range mask defined for their serials. What I did was convert the serial number into a Base36 number so that the serial strings would get sorted numerically even if there were Alpha characters in the serial. Leading zero's are trimmed off and non-alphanumeric characters equal zero. Im sure this can be improved further but this really helped and effected 4248 games.

Registration Certificates

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

Since the IPSND is my project site to better learn new technologies, I wanted to dynamically generate .pdf documents that contained default content along with data linked content and do that in realtime. Viola! You can now download a fancy schmancy 'IPSND Registration Certificate' (suitable for framing) that has the game details, serial number and submitter info on it. The certificates can be viewed under the 'details' section of an individual serial number.

Mobile Device Tweaks

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I enhanced the page presentation for mobile devices to hopefully squeeze the content into a much smaller area and also to optimize for bandwidth saving. Don't forget to use your pocket PC or Palm device to register those serials when you are out and about.

New Logo

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

Yes, I pulled out my 'creative' hand and made a really simple logo that brightens up the page a bit. Nothing fancy, but it works for now.

Page Improvements

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I previously had a little javascript redirection page that allowed me to detect the screen resolution that you were running so that the background image would fit perfectly to your screen. Well, the javascript was messing up search engines etc and causing all pages to be crawled with no content. So, I fixed that my making my master page a little more intelligent about the current session. Because of the way it worked out, you should get the correct background image resolution no matter which page you enter the site on as well, previously, the detection was only happening on the home page.

Manufacturer List Page

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

There is a new Manufacturer List page that allows you to browse all the manufacturers in the database and also summarizes total games produced. I put this in here for the bots primarily so that there was a direct path to every game entry in the database, but it is also more useful to browse sometime.

Manufacturer Detail Page

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I have added a new page that allows listing of all games by a specific manufacturer. In general, you will see this on every game page, the manufacturer name (if known) is now a hyperlink. Im not exactly sure what use this will be but it seemed useful to have around.

Firefox Search Plug-in Added

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I have created a Firefox Search Plug-in for the IPSND on the Downloads page. It allows you to easily do IPSND searches directly from the firefox search box. Enjoy!

Book 'em Dan-O!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

Not only has Dan Gutchess taken over with most submissions, but he also pointed out a couple of nuances with the search functionality that didn't work quite right under IE. So, I have fixed the issue with pressing enter not properly searching and have added a little extra feature that automatically sets focus to the search boxes on page load. I will do the same with other forms over the following few days to make data entry as easy as possible.

Ray has been topped...

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

Our fearless prior submission leader Ray Johnson has been out-submitted by Bill Ung today. Nice job Bill... Ray, you must have more serials!?

Serial Bot Enhancements

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

The serial bot now attempts to calculate valid serial number ranges for a particular game based on serial number submissions for other games manufactured during the same time period. Williams games were tricky since there could be sample game runs that were interlaced with other games. Im not going to go into severe detail here on how it works but as with everything else, we will let it run awhile and see what the bot can ascertain over time.

Serial Masks

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

For games that have a serial number format mask defined, the submission page will no longer accept serials that do not validate against it. I was getting lots of mistyped serial numbers and instead of me trying to guess what the typo is, I figured it would be best to point out the issue at submission time and have the submitter double check. We will see how this works out.

Serial Bot

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I have created a little routine that meticulously goes through each serial number and looks for any 'oddities' associated with it. For instance, if a game submission has not ever been 'verified' by email then the bot will show a yellow icon and the tooltip will tell you why the bot has marked the serial as suspect. Other reasons why the bot may mark serials as suspect are for serial number formatting issues or serial number ranges that don't make any sense. We will see how this little beasty develops. The serial bot results are viewable on the serial number listing for each game.

Game Serial History

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

There is a column the game serial number lists called 'history' that if present, will link to a page showing that the serial number has multiple submissions. This is useful if a game changes owners over time and another person registers the same game more recently. This little feature allows tracking of a games history over time if you are curious.

Serial Format Info

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

In the process of creating serial number masks, I have made a short summary page about some of the different formats that serial numbers exist amongst the various manufacturers over time. The Serial Number Format page has this text and is also given as a link on games that have a serial mask for them if you are attempting to submit a serial number for that game. The nice part about the mask is that on games that do have a serial mask format rule, I have added a small panel on the submission page that explains this and also gives examples of valid serials for that specific game to help make the submission process as clear as possible while still letting us have some integrity on the submissions.

Serial Sorting Improved

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I have started implementing serial number format masks which allows me to sort game serial numbers properly even if they have special characters in them for the most part. For now I have defined sort masks for all post 1984 Bally/WMS games that have a specific game prefix and optional I and X characters. I will be working on Earlier model Bally games with the 3-Letter prefix next.

Site Downtime

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

Qwest had a fiber line cut today so the site was down for about 9 hours. Seems that the cut took out ISP's across all of northern Wyoming and several 911 services as well. Ironically, Im in southern Wyoming. :-)

Submitter Search Added

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

You may now search for submitter names in order to see the details of submissions by a specific person. The search only looks at the person's name and does not return any email info.

More Crosslinking

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I have started improving the result grids on other pages so you you can link to other data from page to page, for instance, in the statistics pages, the results how have hyperlinks to the various games, owners and serials that they contain. I will be working on improving this slowly over the next month as well.

PDA Friendly

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

The main interfaces of the IPSND are PocketPC and PDA friendly so if you have a cell phone with the ability to browse, don't forget you can submit serials while out in the field!! Give me feedback on any improvements that can be made when running a small screen if you want.

'Date Of Manufacture' Added

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I have added a new optional field to the submission form that allows you to specify a Date of Manufacture which is a common item stamped on the front edge of many playfields during the 80's +. I have also added some more verbose explanations of the submision fields on the submission page using some nice little javascripts to give a tooltip effect.

Serial Number Search

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I just finished a fairly large update to the site in that you may now search for serial numbers specifically. Since I wanted the ability to let people look for 'lost' parts from their games, it was important to have this functionality. That way, if you were missing the factory tagged driver board from your 1980 Williams Black Knight game, you could type in your serial, and see if someone has registered that 'spare' part in the database. If so, you have a way of possibly contacting the submitter and making a deal (I am going to add private submitter contacting in a few weeks). So, try it out and let me know if you find any bugs or issues. Have fun. S

Download Fix

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

There was an issue that Russ Jensen found with the Database download function, basically, the database delivered did not have any EM games whatsoever due to the fact that they did not have an electronic MPU defined. I have fixed the flattened view of the database that is available through the downloads section so that all games are now included. Thanks Russ!

Serial History and GamePart Expanded

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

At the request of Peter Hall and for the purpose of completeness, you may now submit serial numbers for game parts. It is common to have game PCB's especially with valid serial number stickers on them, for this reason, the database now allows multiple serial number registrations per game. This basically expands the ability of the IPSND to track not only seperate head and cabinet game parts, but also any other part. Maybe we will hear some success stories of people getting back an original CPU board to match their cabinet serial number. Another side effect of this is that since a single serial number can be in the database more than once, it allows tracking of a specific game serial number over time... so you can see that Joe Smith owned Jungle Lord 123456 on 1/1/2005 yet that Jane Doe owned that same game as of 1/1/2006. Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens with it.

DB Download Available

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

There is a new section 'Downloads' that allows you to get a current copy of the IPSND database in a flattened format. Right now, I only support CSV downloads but it will be trivial to get the other two options (Native XLS and XML) working soon. This was actually a pretty cool exercise because the way the downloads work, the database is emailed to you in .zip format. So, I had to generate the datafile and then .zip it on the fly in memory. It was actually pretty easy in C#. Enjoy!!

Bulk Upload Form

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I have completed a bulk upload form that allows uploading of multiple serial numbers per game now (up to 20 at a time). I will be working on another form soon that allows uploading of serial number data in a predetermined format so that if you already have serial numbers in electronic format, it should be quite easy to get them into the IPSND by putting them into a simple delimited format and then uploading the file.

Some Notes...

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I don't have the current list of games from IPDB yet. My list is from about 3 years ago so I still have to synchronize with them to get
some of the more current games.

I have about 90% of the old Internet Pinball Project imported now. I will continue to work on getting the rest imported.

If you have corrections, just send me an email for now and I will update the DB directly.

The site was down last week because of a configuration error I had that I should have known about but since I was in a
rush, missed it. All should be good now!

Site Goes Live!

webmaster@ipsnd.net — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:54:39 GMT

I think the site is mostly bug free for now. There isn't really much to cause bugs as the feature list is quite small. You can however add Serial Numbers to the database fairly easily and do a basic search for games by name. There are IPP serial numbers imported into the database for Level 7 games only right now. I received the complete IPP serial number list today from D.P. and will get the old serial numbers imported when I get back from Chicago next week. Thats all for now... if anyone has questions or comments you can email me at webmaster@ipsnd.net