Improbable Island Message of the Day (MoTD)

OOC Chatrooms will be emptied soon, Cobblestone Cottage is working again (for now), happy anniversary EDIT: covid and ads
Admin CavemanJoe2023-01-26 20:09:48 [Permalink]
Hey folks, in an effort to better organize the chat code for the upcoming improvements, most out-of-character chatrooms will have their internal IDs changed some time in the next couple of weeks.

This means when the new, less-buggy, better-on-mobile chat system goes online, chat will expire early in OOC areas. So please save any chat you want to save!

Improvements to the new chat include swifter chat refreshes, real-time Distraction notifications, less data and CPU usage (on mobile this means a lower data bill and longer battery life, and lower emissions for everyone), and a nicer mobile interface. I'm also fixing some annoying long-standing bugs, and taking out the final relics of our horrendous 2010's-era chat system which some Island longtimers still laugh/shudder about.

Speaking of horrible old code, I got Cobblestone Cottage working more reliably last week. In case you didn't know, this is our World Community Grid interaction thing, which gives you Cobblestones (which you can use for, at the moment, Mementos) and Supporter Points for letting researchers use your CPU when you're not using it. So far, Improbable Island players have donated almost four thousand years' worth of CPU runtime to mapping cancer markers, improving rainfall forecasts, analysing potential new HIV treatments and a shitton of other cool projects.

Of course, to reward players with Supporter Points and Cobblestones for donating their unused CPU cycles to science, a fifteen-year-old website has to talk to an eighteen-year-old website, and if you're wondering what's involved there then picture the code equivalent of two creaking great-great-grandpas sitting in armchairs shouting WHAT at each other while holding up ear trumpets the wrong way round, and you might understand why Cobblestone Cottage has historically been, to put it charitably, kinda glitchy. The new updates make the World-Community-Grid-to-Improbable-Island communication process more resilient and gives better error messages when something goes wrong, so at least you'll know what setting to fix in your World Community Grid profile.

Wait, did I say a fifteen-year-old website? YES I DID, WE TURNED FIFTEEN THIS WEEKEND, and I didn't have my shit together enough to do something special for it (folk in banter will remember me going "Oh shit I thought I had another year"). So we'll call February our "official" celebration month, just like when we "officially" turned ten in February 2018 because I didn't have my shit together enough to do something special on 2018-01-21.

EDIT & UPDATE 2023-01-26: After dodging it for three years, my daughter caught COVID, so development is gonna be halted for at least a week or two. We'll probably postpone the 15-year celebration and push back the new chat release to later on in February. Oh also there's a banner ad on the New Day page now - we're not earning anything from these, I just think personal hobby websites are cool and felt nostalgic for the non-corporate Internet and thought hey maybe we can help bring it back. If you've got a site you want advertised for free, no catch, click the explanatory link below the ad.

Have fun!

~CMJ
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