Tavern on the Meta

we put the guy who did the april fools unicorns ( blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/03/reminder-its-april-1st ) in charge of the easter eggs, which is like putting Michael Jordan in charge of, y'know, BASKETBALL

Aiden Bell

@JeffAtwood Prepare for chat-noise as people try [status-unicorn] and various things

Jeff Atwood

status-easter-egged

radp

I'm surprised [status-foo] wasn't abused to removal

Jeff Atwood

that is meta's easter egg

Easter egg (media)

A virtual Easter egg is an intentional hidden message, in-joke or feature in an object such as a movie, book, CD, DVD, computer program, web page or video game. The term was coined—according to Warren Robinett—by Atari after they were pointed to the secret message left by Robinett in the game Adventure. It draws a parallel with the custom of the Easter egg hunt observed in many Western nations as well as the last Russian imperial family's tradition of giving elaborately jeweled egg-shaped creations by Carl Fabergé which contained hidden surprises. This practice is similar in some respects...

Peter Ajtai

@YiJiang - nice

How on earth did this question get 2 upvotes when posted as an answer? ==> stackoverflow.com/questions/3896148/character-limit-jquery/…

Jeff Atwood

8:17 AM

I'll give you a hint. Super User Chat might sometimes feel that "it looks like you're writing a letter."

beyond that I can say no more

Aiden Bell

Ah @JeffAtwood , why must you attempt to steal more time from the clutches of my short, insignificant lifetime

radp

@AidenBell It looks like you're trying to get things done. Would you like some help with that?

Aiden Bell

@radp - No! Leave me alone SO, you never help, you make things worse rocks back and forth in corner

Jeff Atwood

Aiden Bell

The procrastification is too much!

radp

8:21 AM

Right click → Animate

Jeff Atwood

hey radp thank you very much for...

17

Q: Adapt close dialog UI for upcoming avalanche of StackExchange 2.0 graduates

As an attempt to partially address this issue, it is fair to consider that once migration paths open up to StackExchange 2.0 sites, the close dialog is going to get ugly as each site would get its option control and explanatory text: Here's what I was thinking about to improve the situation: ...

also, whenever I am looking for your stuff, I always want to put in "badp"

I don't know why, and I've done it many times

radp

er, badp is my username on non-MSO sites. :)

Jeff Atwood

AHA

radp

my shenanigans were carefully hidden in the accounts tab.

Jeff Atwood

that really screwed me over the other day when I was looking for that post -- just FYI

radp

8:22 AM

sorry -- so is it going to be implemented?

Jeff Atwood

see, and people think our "one name change every 30 days" rule is draconian and meaningless

THERE ARE REASONS PEOPLE

REAL REASONS

radp

yeah, especially when you can name change at will

with enough sites

how much is it now, 25 name changes per month?

Jeff Atwood

that's annoying enough that it has stopped most of it though

radp

nope, 30 name changes per month.

Peter Ajtai

radp

8:24 AM

ctrl-alt-del

Peter Ajtai

The best one though is the one with the anniversary letter reminder, couldn't find it though.

radp

kind of related.

waffles

That stay on bottom link in mobile chat should be renamed "make chat really annoying on the iPhone" :)

Jeff Atwood

@waffles is working on the new enhanced close dialog with better migration-to-arbitrary sites support @radp (starting monday in Australia time)

waffles

Except for that chat is surprisingly usable

radp

8:28 AM

@waffles it's worse with opera mobile :) in full screen mode, the link is mostly covered by the show toolbar button. When the chat isn't staying at the bottom that is, then it's off screen.

Jeff Atwood

f**k Opera

2

that is all I have to say about that

radp

The alternative is Nokia's inbuilt browser

I'll have Opera over that anyday, tyvm

Jeff Atwood

if there are no other options than Opera, one should choose a noble death instead

everyone dies.. but not everyone truly lives @radp

waffles

Im going to live forever (link removed)

Jeff Atwood

that's always the plan

waffles

8:33 AM

Possibly wil arnets best performance Excuse the spelling

While I'm playing with the close dialog I should add a "not fair" it's totally unfair that person got that much rep

Jeff Atwood

I enabled the chat house ad for meta.so -- Marc fixed the IP whitelist. it's only on question pages though

waffles

I like the new ads

Smell like possibly pizza is ready. Later :)

radp

I guess it's probably time to add site screenshots to this

2

Jeff Atwood

very cool

send it to robert@stackoverflow.com once it's in shareable state

radp

are the contents somewhat correct?

Jeff Atwood

8:44 AM

of course

radp

Okay, then it's time to reboot to Windows.

Yi Jiang

@radp I thought the criteria for voting up answers is that it's helpful for you, not just the OP

Well maybe both

@radp Closing isn't just for bad questions... it's also for dupes and questions that belong elsewhere

Which doesn't make those bad questions

radp

Noted, agreed

Do you think I spend too much time on the rep part?

Hmm, the gaming logo will be a problem to upscale

The central part needs no interpolation at all, the rest probably does...

oh, it looks fine with no interpolation at all, surprisingly.

Yi Jiang

9:00 AM

@radp See if you can get the vector version form Jin

radp

no need -- with no interpolation it looks fine. I was doubtful about the glowing bits.

radp

9:14 AM

Hmm, adding screenies and keeping the presentation in 42 slides may be more challenging than I thought.

Yi Jiang

@radp Should try to balance out the timing a bit. The "very good answer" slide can definitely do with a bit more time

radp

As the comment says, I'm not using slide timing yet. I just gave each slide 4 seconds

(add 1 per transition.)

The timing will be upon the narrator to give.

the idea isn't however to stop upon each slide

@YiJiang those few slides can be summarized as "the more helpful you are, (next) and the more details you give, (next) the better your answer is (next) and the more votes it receives! (next) So let's talk about voting."

radp

9:31 AM

hrm, comments are designed for clarification, humour and?

(I'm looking for something to put above humour obviously)

Yi Jiang

@radp Tangentially relevant information that may help but doesn't actually answer the question

radp

that'd be clarification?

Yi Jiang

@radp Clarification helps people understand the question

You can say something like "That HTML is invalid", though that won't directly answer the question

radp

okay, so I have:

If what you write is:
• a request for clarification,
• a footnote to an answer or question, or
• humour
it is a comment

Sounds good?

radp

9:56 AM

Hah, I just had a run with Reharse timing. Total run time: 1' 14"

Yi Jiang

@radp Just curious, where are you going to put that once it's done?

radp

Probably simply youtube.

Yi Jiang

10:58 AM

Cool! It's back up!

Tim

Hoorah!

Now, who can we blame..

Yi Jiang

/blame SO TEAM! for unexpected unexpected downtime

Mark C

Interesting, I haven't actually tried this out before.

Tim

@YiJiang That, or @AidenBell snapped and unleashed a wave of fury on the SE network.

Hello @MarkC, @Pekka

Mark C

@Tim Hi Tim. The real question is, what are we all doing here at this hour? (Like the stuff up there at 3AM)

Yi Jiang

11:04 AM

@MarkC What timezone are you in?

Mark C

@Yi Jiang: Central, haha.

This is quite an interface! Is this also original?

Tim

@MarkC We're a widely-distributed crowd. I also hardly sleep.

Yi Jiang

@MarkC It's 7pm Saturday on GMT +8 here ;)

Mark C

@YiJiang Yes, but those comments at 3 were by people (at least Jeff) in the US.

Interesting, I'm having a look at the rooms feature now.

radp

11:28 AM

okay, so here's draft 5

►

I added close captioning of what the narrator should say :)

Tim

@radp Is it meant to go quite that fast? :P

radp

@Tim yep! It's timed to the "speaking".

You know, short internet attention spans.

Tim

@radp Ah, yes, heh. Actually everything shifting around so quickly does have its own kind of "game" feel to it.

Yi Jiang

@radp Well yeah, but it's far to fast to even read what it's saying

radp

I was doubtful I could cram the SO formula in less than 3 mins...

Yi Jiang

11:31 AM

Why not just don't do narration, and let the user control his/her own pace?

radp

that's not something youtube lets you do...

Yi Jiang

@radp If there's no narration, then I can just hit the pause button if I need to read through everything clearly

There's also a typo on the "click the tick" slide

radp

The actual slide or the "close caption"?

Yi Jiang

"If you thik an answer"

radp

Fixed in draft 6

Tim

11:34 AM

Actual slide

Yi Jiang

Woah... far too fast, I can't even see the flag button graphics before the next slide pushes in

Of course, it may just be that I'm trying to read the captions and the slides at the same time

But it still feels like it's going to fast

radp

@YiJiang yeah, that's a problem too :)

I can speed up the transition so that content gets more time

Tim

@YiJiang Yeah, I gave up trying to read the slides under the assumption that you'd normally listen to the narration and not try reading...but then it seems weird to have all of that text.

radp

@Tim Not everybody has sound :)

Yi Jiang

It's unfortunate that there really aren't any good slide sharing sites out there right now

radp

11:38 AM

if I drop the transition from 1.0 sec to 0.5 sec, I can give each slide 0.5 secs extra!!

Tim

@radp Right, but I had assumed you were ignoring that, otherwise I'd rather focus more on slowing things down so people can read. :P

(narration or otherwise)

radp

eh, it's not like the text makes great examples or the such.

anyway, it'll be to the narrator's own timing that the slides will advance I guess.

I just want to have something faster paced than ubuntu's 10 min tutorial.

Yi Jiang

The questions examples esp.

I mean, I actually want to read them!

And you won't let me, before moving on :(

radp

The question example needs lenghtening

The rad question is just a title

That's a bad message.

Should do the same fading out stuff I do for the rad answer.

anyway, bbl lunch.

Tim

I think the fast pace concept isn't terrible, just that there's a point at which all that motion becomes far too distracting, then even though it's short enough to keep most people's interest, it's too busy for them to actually absorb anything useful.

That being said, I think it's coming along very nicely, just needs some tweaking here and there. Good job. :)

user151055

11:45 AM

SO down?

user151055

SO down?

Tim

Yes

Yi Jiang

16

Q: Downtime alert.

Practically all SE sites I tried, except Meta, are failing to load for me, with the exception of MSO. Additionally, all chats are offline and MSO's visit chat acknowledges this by not advertising any room. #StackOverflow is down - ISP power issues - we will be back up soon Geoff Dag...

support downtime

user151055

How long should it take?

Tim

shrugs

radp

11:51 AM

@Tim Actually I need to lengthen it somewhat

It's dropped from 42 slides to 38! Unacceptable.

Tim

@radp Hahah :P

Yi Jiang

I don't know why, but Qalculate won't do integrate(ln x+3) for me

radp

ln(x) + 3 or ln(x + 3)?

Tim

Heh, the sight of half the room dropping out of chat was amusing.

Yi Jiang

Or integrate(ln (x+3)) for that matter

radp

11:56 AM

I think it's infinity if you include 3 in the integration

if I remember calculus well enough

or were you just looking for the primitive function?

Yi Jiang

@Jorn Why do you have Zeus's image from AOM as your profile image? :p

@Tim Why? What happened?

@radp Erm... it's math homework (looks around embarrassingly)

radp

oh, no problem.

Tim

@YiJiang All of their profile images jumped off at the same time, like a wave of discarded users

waffles

12:30 PM

Rebuild full-text catalog In progress ...

Tim

Yay progress

waffles

this spinner is tiring ... it give me no progress ... just spins

Tim

The little green SQL Server spinner that gives you no indication of whether a process will take five minutes or ten days?

radp

@waffles thewebsiteisdown.com/sales_demo.html

Yi Jiang

Qalculate keeps giving me integrate( ln(x + 3) ) = integrate( ln(x + 3) )

Grrrr....

radp

12:41 PM

<.<

Tim

MATLAB said int(ln(x+3)) = ln(x+3) * (x+3) - x - 3, but my brain isn't being maths-friendly at the moment, so I can't check if that makes sense.

Yi Jiang

@radp Yes I know that, it's just that I'm trying to use Qalculate... for erm... something

And I think I've got the syntax wrong or something

How can I get it to give me the indefinite integral?

radp

fires up Oracle™ VM© Virtualbox®

@YiJiang I'm installing Qalculate, in the meantime you may try asking on SE

Yi Jiang

12:58 PM

Creating an account on SuperUser. Not entirely sure if it's the right place, but heck

waffles

SHE IS BACK

2

Tim

@waffles Peace and sanity has been restored to the world!

Certain annoyances still exist, but such is life. :P

waffles

SHE IS STILL BROKEN

Tim

Don't make me revoke my star...

Heh, what's broken?

Diago

1:15 PM

Does anyone think my last comment here was too harsh?

-4

A: What is this SO offline page all about?

SO mods are trying too hard to make it look 'geeky'.

Tim

@Diago Nah, I don't find it to be all that harsh.

radp

...who upvoted OTZ's comment?!

It's plain flamebait

it's off topic

Lasse V. Karlsen

How long is a ban for bad questions in effect?

Diago

@LasseVKarlsen AFAIK you have to contact the team and prove that you will get better, and then the IP ban will be lifted. The ban's are IP based, although in his case the suspension was done by a moderator. IP Ban's do not suspend the user itself, only block questions from his IP.

Lasse V. Karlsen

Hmm, IP ban?

radp

1:26 PM

wow, is it that harsh?

Diago

@LasseVKarlsen Also he doesn't have an email in his profile. I am not an SO mod but without an email it is not possible to inform someone why they get suspended.

Lasse V. Karlsen

So if a colleague of mine starts posting bad questions from work, I can be banned from using SO from my workplace?

2

Diago

@LasseVKarlsen Correct. It's one of the negatives but it happens only in rare cases. Also means you can go beat said colleague up.

radp

There are 10k people at uni using the same proxy IP as I do...

Now I'm scared.

@Diago How the hell am I supposed to know who he is to begin with?!

Diago

@radp It only applies to really bad question being asked. There is a blog post about it I will find now.

@radp Fair point. Can always mail the team and ask :)

radp

1:28 PM

I thought it was an account flag, not an IP ban.

Lasse V. Karlsen

Problem with account flag is that usually this will probably only happen to low-rep users

So it wouldn't cost them much to just ditch the account and make another

Tim

@radp Use Wireshark to snoop on your university's network traffic and track everyone making connections to SO!

Yi Jiang

Well, I've asked the question, but it's only got 3 views

Is it a slow day on SU?

0

Q: How to find integral of logarithmic functions with Qalculate

It's odd, but I must be missing something, but Qalculate! is refusing to give me the indefinite integral of a logarithmic function. The following works: integrate(2x) integrate(lnx) But trying integrate(ln(2x+1)) just gives me back the same equation. Even giving the equation a lower and uppe...

ubuntu math

radp

@YiJ, I've tried fiddling with it

it fails to give all but the most basic primitives

Lasse V. Karlsen

Can you do integrate(ln(f(x)) ?

radp

1:30 PM

for example, no luck with x ln(x)

Yi Jiang

@radp Maybe Qalculate just isn't that powerful? :(

radp

I'm afraid so :/

Tried Maxima/wxMaxima?

The Unhandled Exception

Morning everyone

radp

'noon

Tim

'Ello

radp

1:34 PM

You missed a rep whoring window, @The

The Unhandled Exception

@radp LOL, when was this?

radp

...holy shit I must delete it

The Unhandled Exception

You know how I love those @radp :-)

Sites having isues at the moment...? :-/

radp

18

Q: Downtime alert.

Practically all SE sites I tried, except Meta, are failing to load for me, with the exception of MSO. Additionally, all chats are offline and MSO's visit chat acknowledges this by not advertising any room. Rebuild full-text catalog In progress ... waffles

support downtime

It's too late. I've hit the rep threshold :/

The Unhandled Exception

I thought so

LOL

> StackOverflow.com is still down for me. ServerFault.com won't log me in... and I can't vote on SuperUser. I think I'll go do some chores and come back later today ;-)

radp

1:37 PM

It's all my fault, I should've made that CW

The Unhandled Exception

It's MSO. Rep points there don't "count" ;-)

Put another way: Nice Work! :-)

radp

@TheUnhandledException Why don't they? You get rep by finding bugs, proposing features, etc.

Those are valuable activities <.<

Prasoon Saurav

hello everyone. SO still down , damn!

radp

Sure, it's easy to inflate the score via freehand circles

Tim

Well, people need to freak out in response to SO withdrawal. You provided them a place to do so. :P

radp

1:42 PM

can't this comment be flagged to oblivion?

-6

A: What is this SO offline page all about?

SO mods are trying too hard to make it look 'geeky'.

(a comment to this post, if I have to tell you which one then it shouldn't get flagged)

The Unhandled Exception

@radp I guess I meant, Reputation is far less of a valuable indicator on Meta. Or, not less valuable, just very different. It shows how well you understand the culture of SOFU, as opposed to how knowledgeable you are about a particular dicipline

Diago

@YiJiang Yeah. Weekends normally are.

The Unhandled Exception

What I'm trying to say @radp is, you deserved the rep :-)

radp

not really... all my other questions and answers were proposals and bugs about the system, well all those that didn't backfire spectacularly and I had to ask deleted

Yi Jiang

@Diago Would it be better if I ask on ubuntu.se?

radp

1:45 PM

anyway, that means I have to give back this rep to the community via bounties :P

2

Diago

@YiJiang Even slower. I asked a question there this morning only had 5 views so far. SE is slow over weekends

@radp I can't find the blog post but here is Jeff's official answer:

19

A: Can we prevent some of the low-quality questions from entering our system?

Based on the feedback from this post, we have now implemented a form of screening during the question ask period. Questions from IP addresses or accounts with a history of extremely poor questions will no longer be accepted. This is intended to weed out the worst quality questions. (hint hint, ...

The Unhandled Exception

@radp Yes!

Aiden Bell

howdy all

radp

hmm, the SO movie question is too "young"

Tim

'Ello @AidenBell

Aiden Bell

1:49 PM

@radp - What you mean

radp

@AidenBell questions must be 48 hours old before you can start a bounty on it

Yi Jiang

@AidenBell For a bounty, because he's in a giving mood today ;) Look at the top starred post on the right

radp

@YiJiang I got 190 rep completely undeservedly <.<

Yi Jiang

@radp There there...

radp

also -- if I start a bounty today I won't lose any +10 from comment upvotes!

(right?)

Yi Jiang

1:51 PM

At least this isn't Yossarian saying this to Snowden

The Unhandled Exception

Well I'm off to make some coffee and breakfast while I await SO's return. Catch you guys later!

radp

okay, since I already have Altruist

3

Q: Show reputation change in Recent Activity even if negative

It is confusing to not show the reputation change on your Recent Activity page just because it is negative -- for example, due to casting a large bounty. If nothing is shown, one is led to believe there was no change at all. If today's (or this week's, or even this month's) net result is -68 rep...

feature-request recent-activity

okay, even with the bounty I've hit the limit :/

Yi Jiang

@radp You might have dropped it on one of the weird bugs I encounter on SO that is quite serious but very rare

I mean, this one:

6

Q: Account mixup when viewing questions

Because this is the third time this has happened, I think I should post a question about it. Look at the screenshot above (click on it for the full size version). Basically, O_o. It occurs when I visit a question. It happens incredibly rarely, maybe once every, I dunno, thousand visits to t...

bug user-accounts

It's just...

radp

that screenshot looks ancient

Yi Jiang

I don't know why they don't look at that problem. It's hard to reproduce, yes, but it suggest something very wrong with the sessions system

I don't know. It doesn't happen often enough to investigate properly

radp

1:58 PM

I mean, those are from even before than the StackExchage™ MultiCollider SuperDropdown™!

Yi Jiang

@radp Oh, no that's because of the user style I'm using

radp

@YiJiang You may want to use the default style then

When I look at this bug the screenshots scream "old question!"

Yi Jiang

When they only displayed questions from other sites I found it to be quite useless, so I removed it

radp

Yeah, but the screenshots still scream "ancient" to the rest of us :)

At least add a note or something

Yi Jiang

It's just that it feels weird nobody's responded, because if I can reproduce this more reliably it basically means I compromise other people's accounts!

radp

2:01 PM

Thing is I've never experienced that...

Yi Jiang

Actually, I should try posting an answer when it happens, just to see what will occur

@radp As I would suspect, if not Meta would be full of questions like that

I don't know... it's just too weird

radp

Fixed problem with your question

you had messed up with the link numbering and had [![][2]][3] instead of [![][3]][3]

Yi Jiang

@radp Erm... thanks!

Tim

@radp cough Yi Jiang is not Yi Jing cough ("Yi Jing is using a custom stylesheet") cough

radp

@Tim gah, I couldn't fix that in the same revision by 13 seconds :/

You're so slow! :P

(j/k, tyvm)

Tim

2:11 PM

Damn :P

I am surprised that that question hasn't gotten more attention, hmm.

radp

blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/stack-overflow-outage-2

Aiden Bell

2:42 PM

Anyone in here familiar with HTML standards know if <script> tags can be arbitrarily placed or are required to be in <head>? It passes W3C valid, but doesn't seem right

ChrisF

As far as I know <script> tags can be anywhere - but I could be wrong...

Yi Jiang

@AidenBell Anywhere. In fact, it's usually recommended for them to be placed at the bottom of the body tag, for performance reasons

Aiden Bell

@ChrisF @YiJiang - Cheers :)

I trust you over the w3c lol

ChrisF

I think it's good practise to keep them in one place - traditionally in the head, but increasingly at the bottom as @YiJiang says

Aiden Bell

@ChrisF - Have ill-thought out templates just injecting them left right and center. Don't want to rework them all unless I have to (don't ask)

ChrisF

2:45 PM

sounds like a nightmare

Yi Jiang

@AidenBell Neater to collate them into one place, but whatever works for you I suppose ;)

Aiden Bell

@ChrisF - It all works and is valid through you guys and w3c so it is getting dropped down the priority list lol

ChrisF

Well good luck!

Aiden Bell

;) Cheers @ChrisF

"Stackoverflow.com is still offline because the database, was, well “Suspect” according to SQL server" ... :(

Tim

Hmm...What to work on today...

radp

2:51 PM

5

Q: A heartbeat/status page showing whether SO and other SE network sites are up and running

Current prolonged downtime made me realize that StackExchange needs a page showing real-time status of all network sites similar to Skype Heartbeat or Last.fm Status.