showcase problems
Rita
as you all may know, we have serious problems with the showcase. The
current "weekly wow"- project gives an internal server error, and so
do many of the projects from the showcase.
Unfortunately, we have only one person who is able to fix this
problem.
I think this needs to be changed. But this is easier said than done.
What are our options? I see only two: either other people are getting
to know the existing showcase implementation to be able to resolve
problems, or we use another system.
#1: There is no documentation (as fas as I know), the only way to
learn about the current project is by asking the developer and de-
constructing and analysing the code. This is hard work. But we have
Tim, who is voluntarily helping us whenever he has the time.
#2: A new showcase implementation will not be easy, too. And we also
need people who do the work. Right now, we have no one who is working
on it. We need volunteers.
What is your opinion for a strategy?
Greetings,
Rita
Carlos y Nenny Rabassa
thanks for your message.
Rita, you did the very first thing that had to be done.
I have many questions and very few answers but if we don´t start asking and proposing ideas, most of which might have to be quickly discarded, we will get nowhere.
I have some health and time, not tremendous amounts of either one.
I have some knowledge, some experience maintaining a website and am willing to learn and get up to date.
I have quite a bit of time and effort invested in Etoys that I wouldn´t like to go to waste.
Most of you I believe have more than I do and imagine feel the same way.
The importance of the showcase seems to me to be tremendous and essential.
All the work being done by everyone, leads to the showcase as the finished product.
That´s where we can see the improvements of Etoys and the effect of the new releases materialize.
That's where we can see the enthusiasm growing around the world.
It helps stretching the results of the Squeakfests that imply a lot of work but their effect would quickly evaporate if people don´t stay together after the events are over.
Whatever is written in the forums would make little sense if there is no place to share the examples discussed.
My knowledge of creating and maintaining a website originates back in 1997.
Along the years, while I was active as a real estate broker, I kept improving the site, sometimes myself, sometimes with paid experts, with excellent results.
Since 2006 I rent it to another broker who just uses it to show she has a website.
This means my knowledge froze at that time.
I keep using the same old sistem, Adobe GoLive.
I keep hearing of new ways to create websites that are simpler to learn as long as no fancy features are required.
I believe the most popular is Word Press??
I read something about the possibility of uploading multimedia files when using Word Press.
Sounded like somehow an Etoys project could be incorporated to the site.
Read also something of adding files via email, sounded like what we currently do with the showcase.
Would it be feasible to create from scratch the most basic new system to allow sharing projects?
Then we could just put a link from the website.
I would be happy if all we could do was to share projects, no wow, no ranking, no complications of any kind.
Even classifying the projects, it it creates problems could be something we could live without.
Just a list of projects in a Google page that can be searched with edit => find, could be enough, as long as we can upload projects and others can download and use them.
I have been quite active the last few weeks having dialogues with several forum users about projects proposed by some users and written by others.
It seems that exchange could, if continued become quite active and interesting.
But there has to be a system for all to see the projects being discussed.
The system we currently have is a beauty, a dream come true, but if it doesn't work, is not good at all.
Is there a budget for implementing any new system or improvements or do we have to do everything ourselves as volunteers?
Carlos Rabassa
Carlos y Nenny Rabassa
Can we join them?
Can we imitate them?
It seems the opinion is that there is a use for each one of TurtleArt, Scratch and Etoys that all teachers should consider using all three at one point or another.
Carlos Rabassa
On Sep 29, 2010, at 6:12 AM, Rita wrote:
Timothy Falconer
> Hi everyone,
>
> as you all may know, we have serious problems with the showcase. The
> current "weekly wow"- project gives an internal server error, and so
> do many of the projects from the showcase.
> Unfortunately, we have only one person who is able to fix this
> problem.
The proper way to handle a situation like this is to email suppo...@immuexa.com so that we're all alerted by our pagers immediately and can handle it from wherever we are. I didn't know that this problem had reoccured until this email. Sending to the mailing list, or hoping we'll see it in the tracker, is not the way to do it.
There are many people who help with this, all of them employed by Immuexa. This is part of your service. I am not the only one who can handle it.
The particular problem was the same as last week when Bert sent us a direct email. It reoccurred, likely because someone brought the mistakenly brought the server to CVS trunk. This was my mistake, as I checked in partial code. When I reverted last time, I should have made things more solid, preventing the possibility of this reoccurring.
> I think this needs to be changed. But this is easier said than done.
> What are our options? I see only two: either other people are getting
> to know the existing showcase implementation to be able to resolve
> problems, or we use another system.
>
> #1: There is no documentation (as fas as I know), the only way to
> learn about the current project is by asking the developer and de-
> constructing and analysing the code. This is hard work. But we have
> Tim, who is voluntarily helping us whenever he has the time.
This problem was a case of incomplete code going live before intended. In this case, what was needed was to SSH into the squeakland directory and do a "smrevert" command, which is something that people know to do at Immuexa. We have a "when things are wrong" page on our internal wiki which people use. I could teach someone on your end to do these things, but I would rather you start by following the procedures that all of our other clients use, such as emailing support911, which nearly always yields immediate results.
> #2: A new showcase implementation will not be easy, too. And we also
> need people who do the work. Right now, we have no one who is working
> on it. We need volunteers.
>
> What is your opinion for a strategy?
As you discuss options, please consider that I have personally put an enormous amount of time into the showcase (solid months of my life), and that a decision to abandon it would be painful for me personally. I would ask that out of respect to my efforts for the Etoys community in the past you consider this.
Tim
Timothy Falconer
I appreciate your offer to help. Wordpress will not come close to the necessary functionality for the web site. Go Live or any other static publishing system will also not work. There is just too much happening under the hood for these simple systems.
You will need someone that knows how to program (Squeak, Java, Ruby, Python, Perl, etc) to duplicate the current functionality. Beyond the programming, you will also need someone with a sense for visual design, someone who can keep the website looking professional and clear.
Were you to pay for someone to do this, I'd estimate it would likely cost between $10,000 and $50,000 in the United States depending on quality and experience.
Having someone volunteer to create a new one would likely land you in the same situation you are in now, relying upon one person that might not have the time later. At least now you have a company to stand behind the work, with many people working for it, along with an offer for free work and hosting.
Tim
Timothy Falconer
Using them would in my mind submerge Etoys within a sea of unrelated stuff. Also, technically, I don't think they would be open to having Etoys content mixed with their own (it would require a different browser, etc).
Please consider some of the benefits of the Squeakland Showcase over Scratch as well, particularly distributed ranking and approval and easy integration of content throughout the squeakland website, promoting visibility of etoys successes.
Tim
Carlos y Nenny Rabassa
thanks for your comments.
Hope from my long message you read the key line:
> The system we currently have is a beauty, a dream come true, but if it doesn't work, is not good at all.
And you are one of the many people I remembered when I said:
>> I have quite a bit of time and effort invested in Etoys that I wouldn´t like to go to waste.
>>
>> Most of you I believe have more than I do and imagine feel the same way.
One of the many pages I keep looking at Squeakland.org is the Squeakers List.
One more from Uruguay yesterday!
Carlos y Nenny Rabassa
hope you understood my message as one more show of how much I believe the Squeakland.org site is helping.
Carlos
Timothy Falconer
Yoshiki Ohshima
Timothy Falconer wrote:
>
> On Sep 29, 2010, at 6:12 AM, Rita wrote:
>
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > as you all may know, we have serious problems with the showcase. The
> > current "weekly wow"- project gives an internal server error, and so
> > do many of the projects from the showcase.
> > Unfortunately, we have only one person who is able to fix this
> > problem.
>
> The proper way to handle a situation like this is to email suppo...@immuexa.com so that we're all alerted by our pagers immediately and can handle it from wherever we are. I didn't know that this problem had reoccured until this email. Sending to the mailing list, or hoping we'll see it in the tracker, is not the way to do it.
How about setting up the server so that an email to the address is
generated when an exception is unhandled?
-- Yoshiki
Timothy Falconer
I did set up such a monitor tonight. Thanks for the idea.
Tim
Rita
On Sep 29, 3:09 pm, Timothy Falconer <tee...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sep 29, 2010, at 6:12 AM, Rita wrote:
>
> > Hi everyone,
>
> > as you all may know, we have serious problems with the showcase. The
> > current "weekly wow"- project gives an internal server error, and so
> > do many of the projects from the showcase.
> > Unfortunately, we have only one person who is able to fix this
> > problem.
>
Thank you for reminding me. Somehow I had in mind that using the
tracker would be a good idea.
> There are many people who help with this, all of them employed by Immuexa. This is part of your service. I am not the only one who can handle it.
that you are the only one to be able to handle showcase issues.
>
>
> > #1: There is no documentation (as fas as I know), the only way to
> > learn about the current project is by asking the developer and de-
> > constructing and analysing the code. This is hard work. But we have
> > Tim, who is voluntarily helping us whenever he has the time.
>
> This problem was a case of incomplete code going live before intended. In this case, what was needed was to SSH into the squeakland directory and do a "smrevert" command, which is something that people know to do at Immuexa. We have a "when things are wrong" page on our internal wiki which people use. I could teach someone on your end to do these things, but I would rather you start by following the procedures that all of our other clients use, such as emailing support911, which nearly always yields immediate results.
the people at Immuexa.
> > #2: A new showcase implementation will not be easy, too. And we also
> > need people who do the work. Right now, we have no one who is working
> > on it. We need volunteers.
>
> > What is your opinion for a strategy?
>
> As you discuss options, please consider that I have personally put an enormous amount of time into the showcase (solid months of my life), and that a decision to abandon it would be painful for me personally. I would ask that out of respect to my efforts for the Etoys community in the past you consider this.
of course, consider your past and ongoing work, and we really
appreciate it!
But I also want to have an open discussion and see where it goes. To
make any decision from such a discussion is the next step and will not
be made automatically, but well thought through with the Squeakland
board etc.
Thank you for your support,
Rita
>
> Tim