CodeWalrus

CodeWalrus Website => Site Discussion => Site News & Announcements => Topic started by: Yuki on March 04, 2015, 03:43:47 AM

Title: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Yuki on March 04, 2015, 03:43:47 AM
Well, that was quick. As we said, we had some staff departures today:

- aeTIos lacks the time to do any admining, he therefore resigns;
- Streetwalrus don't have any time either, he takes a hiatus and may come back to the position at a later date.

So we're now in severe understaffing, as a result, we decided to close the site and made a closing post (http://codewalr.us/292). However, as we decided the fate of the website, we concluded the best course of action would actually to leave it open for as long as I can afford hosting it... So it is my pleasure to welcome you back to CodeWalrus, but it's not without some changes:

- Juju is appointed Supreme Overlord of CodeWalrus (er, wait, that sound's a little scary... Let's just say I'm the head honcho here). I takeover the website and I'll pay for it with my economies and the free credits I have left in my account. If you feel generous enough to help, I take Paypal and credit over here (http://juju2143.ca/donate) :P

On the goal of the site, CodeWalrus gives programmers, artists, hardware and software hackers and the like a fun hangout to discuss together between geeks of projects in progress or just whatever, not just about TI, but yeah pretty much everything. The same rules applies under what's left of the administration, so nothing illegal, although I advise crossposting your projects on our friends at Omnimaga (http://omnimaga.org/) and Cemetech (http://cemetech.net/).

So, welcome back on CodeWalrus!
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Unicorn on March 04, 2015, 04:51:38 AM
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!!
Thats great! :D
I realy like the environment here, an the people. I am really glad that CodeWalrus will stay for the time being.
So, the way to keep this cite open is to donate for server hosting? If you guys get more staff will it stay open indefinitly? (or more than a year?)
Time to change my sig again...
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 04, 2015, 05:00:12 AM
To be honest one reason why we lack a donation section was because the site was new and its future uncertain as a result. I don't want people to donate for a site that is not 100% guaranteed to remain open in long terms. This is why instead I just provided my music as alternative for donations. However, I have quit the music industry and terminated my Reverbnation digital distribution subscription a few hours ago (I already terminated three of my four music albums last Summer, but I kept the most profitable one on iTunes until now), so my music will be free from now on (it will still be possible to donate while downloading it but money will no longer go to the site unless I decide to donate myself in the future)
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Yuki on March 04, 2015, 05:08:37 AM
Well, it's not this expensive and I can pay it from my pockets for the time being. And it's already paid for the next 5 months or so, so that's not a problem right now.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Duke "Tape" Eiyeron on March 04, 2015, 05:32:18 AM
*Ahem* Patreon?

Edit : Well, you stressed me quite a lot, I must say
(-_(//)); Oh well I had a strange yet fun last night so it made up for the fear you induced into me.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Snektron on March 04, 2015, 06:47:26 AM
Yay! :D

Also i got some codes for some server hoster (123systems)
: 50% and 40% for life :) so a $60/yr server suddenly costs about €30, which is quite nice (-_(//));
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Duke "Tape" Eiyeron on March 04, 2015, 06:53:56 AM
(-_(//)); I'm offering my services as hoster. I'm going to use something like Dockr to make it independant but I don't really know about the performances.

I have a 4-core VPS (around 2Ghz, it's a virtual thing) with 160GB of SSD and 4GB RAM.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 04, 2015, 07:00:15 AM
Considering the good reputation that DigitalOcean got I think the ideal scenario would be to keep the site there and if hosting payments becomes an issue then people can donate or juju can opt out of the backup features which is an extra $2 a month. But of course if anyone is guaranteed a long-term free host with good uptime that can run a website with WalrusIRC simultaneously then that could do the job. The current account has 30 GB of diskspace, a single core processor and 1 GB of RAM.

It requires PHP, though, because the site doesn't work with HHVM.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Duke "Tape" Eiyeron on March 04, 2015, 07:02:05 AM
Haha, it's a Debian VPS. i set up ALL the things there are on Retroactive (except the Murmur server).
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 04, 2015, 07:14:53 AM
In any case, what I suggest would be to set up auto backups off the server in case the host goes down or at least do manual backups of the files every week or so. I do this with the db and files myself in case something wrong was to happen. Technically another admin was supposed to do it but were finally unable to find a computer online 24/7 on which to do so. I am suggesting that because of what happened to Cemetech hosting provider in August 2007, Revsoft in 2011 and more recently Casiopeia (although at least Casiopeia had no data loss)

Ideally juju should probably have access to the CW and WalrusIRC folders too. I would prefer not for myself, except maybe the Sources/, other/ and Themes/* directories in case I update the theme at one point.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: 岩倉 澪 on March 04, 2015, 08:19:07 AM
Was pretty surprised to see this topic since I hadn't seen the other topic first :P

Glad that codewalrus won't be disappearing, I really like the community here and came here rather than omnimaga because some of the community members I remembered and respected well were here, and it is really nice to have a small and friendly place to discuss code/game dev projects. :)

If juju needs help with keeping it up in the future I'd be more than happy to donate to help pay the costs
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: aetios on March 04, 2015, 08:55:43 AM
I'm also more than fine with donating. Maybe I can ask keoni to transfer my money to juju via paypal, because my parents won't let me <_< Isn't the cost about $10/mo?
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: tr1p1ea on March 04, 2015, 10:05:17 AM
I'm more than happy to support the cause ... but yes I would also like to know roughly what the site requires per month to run? And if there are any yearly discounts etc?

Also taking a leaf out of MC's book ... the site has basically fallen off the face of the earth, but its still open. Due to spambots we disabled new user registrations which probably hurt us a bit ... but its still open as a resource and stuff. I am virtually the only semi-active member but its cool.

I personally think that Codewalrus is a great place. It also gives me the motivation to work on my xLIBC BASIC RPG ... or even the Zelda demo :>.

I also love the mascot sprite, especially the eyes hehe :D.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Yuki on March 04, 2015, 12:37:33 PM
Yeah, kinda why I took over instead of closing it as DJ initially wanted, everyone likes this place and our mascot is cute... :P

For the hosting it's $12/month + $10/year, it's not that expensive.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: pimathbrainiac on March 04, 2015, 02:28:54 PM
Good to see the site keep going. I hope this can continue into the future.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 04, 2015, 04:46:35 PM
Quote from: tr1p1ea on March 04, 2015, 10:05:17 AM
I'm more than happy to support the cause ... but yes I would also like to know roughly what the site requires per month to run? And if there are any yearly discounts etc?

Also taking a leaf out of MC's book ... the site has basically fallen off the face of the earth, but its still open. Due to spambots we disabled new user registrations which probably hurt us a bit ... but its still open as a resource and stuff. I am virtually the only semi-active member but its cool.

I personally think that Codewalrus is a great place. It also gives me the motivation to work on my xLIBC BASIC RPG ... or even the Zelda demo :>.

I also love the mascot sprite, especially the eyes hehe :D.
It depends. I don't have full server access so I don't know exactly how many resources it uses. But IIRC about half of the RAM is used on a consistent basis and while disk space usage by the site is low, it adds up pretty fast with backups and other files. Our hosting plan currently runs off credits juju got from school. I still paid him anyway since those credits were not mine, though, until now. He has 5 months left of credits. Normally it costs $12 per month (although it's more like $17 for us due to the low Canadian dollar exchange rate lately) and the domain name will cost about $12 ro renew IIRC. We got 30 GB of disk space, 2 terabytes of transfer, 1 GB of RAM and a single core CPU.

Thanks for the support by the way. If you feel like donating you would probably need to ask juju, though. Otherwise you can always support the site via showing off your work and participating in interesting discussions (although I understand that in a few months you will no longer be able to do so)
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Yuki on March 04, 2015, 05:20:46 PM
Well, we can host quite a lot of stuff with half a gigabyte of RAM. But yeah, if anyone want to help feel free to contact me.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Duke "Tape" Eiyeron on March 04, 2015, 06:33:43 PM
Do you need processing power or space, I have some spare.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 04, 2015, 06:45:41 PM
I don't think it will be necessary especially that WalrusIRC seems less demanding on resources. But I guess it would depend if juju decides to add more features.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Duke "Tape" Eiyeron on March 04, 2015, 06:48:59 PM
Keep it in mind : if you help me migrate the site, I'll be glad to host the site for you. (As long as it doesn't make the mumble server stutter)
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: DarkestEx on March 04, 2015, 07:11:40 PM
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on March 04, 2015, 04:46:35 PM
Otherwise you can always support the site via showing off your work and participating in interesting discussions (although I understand that in a few months you will no longer be able to do so)

Look, that is why there are not that much users. Such a site needs time to grow and it has to be stable. A "crysis" like that in the first months might just not happen!
Even now, when DJ Omnimaga told me, that the site won't die, I don't feel like writing here anymore, as it could be gone in a few months. Cemetech is way more stable and I think it is not going to die for the next 5 years. The only way to go is let it die now, or make sure it will be still here in one or two years!

If not, I'll leave. And others will follow. :(

EDIT #1: I really don't want to be rude or anything and I can understand, that problems will always appear on any project that humans start. I won't leave CodeWalrus, but I still don't fully trust it anymore though :(

EDIT #2: Don't get me wrong, I really like this site and I really don't want it to die. It has in some parts more freedom than other calulator specific ones. And your projects get more attention and more people are finding it. I really want to support this site (not financially, but by using and recommending it).

EDIT #3: Lol this is not a problem anymore. But still I get minus karma for it...
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 04, 2015, 07:35:38 PM
I'm sorry you feel this way. I can understand why you feel that way though with what happened yesterday. The issue though is not that it didn't have much users, but rather that most of the ones who joined would leave only a few weeks later, even before yesterday's post. I wish that if people were unhappy about the site that they would let us know why. That's how we can improve and avoid repeating some mistakes.

Have we done something that scared people like Art of Camelot, Mateo, AssemblyBandit, Phyxie and some others away? Was there something missing on the site that made them never come back? Has somebody said negative things about us in our back and people decided to only listen to their side of the story?

We might not get many members (maybe we could just be like Revsoft), but it helps if we know what not to do to avoid scaring people away. So thanks at least for speaking your mind (although I feel that leaving would be a very counter-productive thing to do). There are things we can do to guarantee that this site will remain open.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Snektron on March 04, 2015, 07:48:01 PM
People are nostalgic, if they have a place they feel at home to, like other forums, they won't easily go to a new place and start all over again.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 04, 2015, 07:53:40 PM
I am perfectly fine with that. It's more that if someone actually decides to join this site, posts a lot for three weeks, then suddenly vanish in an instant while still being active elsewhere, then it's possible that we have done something bad. Hence why it's best to know what happened so we won't repeat the same mistake. It could just be a coincidence and maybe I'm too paranoid due to past community experience, though.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Unicorn on March 04, 2015, 07:58:21 PM
Well I definetly won't be leaving unless I leave all other calculator related websites. An idea i have for getting more users is to maybe start up a project that people want on their calculators that is exclusively on CW. We could make a utilities ASM program for the CSE or something like that.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 04, 2015, 08:05:40 PM
I am thinking more of a game. We got Mana Force, SWL and Herocore, but the problem is finding motivation to work on them. Mana Force is also hybrid BASIC, which some people might not be interested much about.

Of course mentioning the site in your readme can also help.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Snektron on March 04, 2015, 08:17:27 PM
@Unicorn i'd love to do some CSE ASM Hacking, since it seems there are not quite as many hacks as on the normal TI84+, but unfortunately i
don't own one :(. I can set up some emu's though, i'll see what i an do. Also, i'll need to find some more resources since for instance WikiTI has about 10% of the bcalls on CSE as it has on normal :/
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: DarkestEx on March 04, 2015, 08:29:13 PM
@DJ Omnimaga Don't worry. I was not scared away. I had to do a lot for school and was just busy otherwise. I wasn't active on any other forum, but I answered PM's where they appeared.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 04, 2015, 08:39:03 PM
Aah right, just making sure. The problem is my communication issues can sometimes lead to things I say being taken negatively by many people, as I explained in my Omni/Cemetech posts, or vice-versa. I even had it happen in real life O.O
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Yuki on March 04, 2015, 09:29:58 PM
I have some project I would post here, I should probably post a topic about it.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: CKH4 on March 04, 2015, 11:24:21 PM
Oh, I'm very glad that this site isn't closing. Its my favorite calc site (because of the color scheme (jk) and that you people are nice). You guys really need a very major project to attract visitors though. Hope you stay open for a long time.

Also your mascot is really cute.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: princetonlion.tibd on March 04, 2015, 11:43:48 PM
we're not closing :D


it was scary to read that closing message yesterday
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 05, 2015, 12:23:17 AM
Quote from: CKH4 on March 04, 2015, 11:24:21 PM
Oh, I'm very glad that this site isn't closing. Its my favorite calc site (because of the color scheme (jk) and that you people are nice). You guys really need a very major project to attract visitors though. Hope you stay open for a long time.

Also your mascot is really cute.
I'm thinking though that before we get very large projects like Axe, TI-Boy and Ndless we might be a few years off, though. I founded Omni in 2001 and its first active forum originates from 2005, with the second one from 2008. It took until 2009 before we finally get something in ASM that would attract big crowds. That would put our first big project somewhere in 2023. That said I think it doesn't matter if the projects we got are mainstream or ASM, though, since we also try to give any good project, even if it's a niche genre like JRPG, some attention.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: TIfanx1999 on March 05, 2015, 12:37:09 AM
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on March 04, 2015, 07:35:38 PM
I'm sorry you feel this way. I can understand why you feel that way though with what happened yesterday. The issue though is not that it didn't have much users, but rather that most of the ones who joined would leave only a few weeks later, even before yesterday's post. I wish that if people were unhappy about the site that they would let us know why. That's how we can improve and avoid repeating some mistakes.

Have we done something that scared people like Art of Camelot, Mateo, AssemblyBandit, Phyxie and some others away? Was there something missing on the site that made them never come back? Has somebody said negative things about us in our back and people decided to only listen to their side of the story?

We might not get many members (maybe we could just be like Revsoft), but it helps if we know what not to do to avoid scaring people away. So thanks at least for speaking your mind (although I feel that leaving would be a very counter-productive thing to do). There are things we can do to guarantee that this site will remain open.

Nah, nothing has scared me off. I just haven't found that much to comment on here, thus I don't post much. That, and a few of the things are cross-posted elsewhere and I don't see much point in posting the same thing in two places. Even though I'm a member in most of the other calc communities, Omnimaga has always been where I'm most active.

That said, I'm glad this place is staying open. It's nice to have an alternative. I don't think it really matters if this place is super active or not. Look at Revsoft for example; they're basically a close knit group of people that share common intrests, and they've been around for 10 years. They don't have a huge user base, or many new members. It's just about sharing the experience. Isn't that what this place was supposed to be about as well? ;)
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 05, 2015, 12:46:41 AM
Ah ok I was worried something happened, either over here or behind the scenes. That said I agree about the projects being available at most places *cough*except maybe Mana Force*cough*, which is somewhat expected I guess since that's exactly what people did way back when MaxCoderz was the leading site (sometimes cross-posting to 4 different forums at a time).
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: CKH4 on March 05, 2015, 01:36:58 AM
Off topic: Art_of_camelot, didn't you leave for a while like a few years ago? ( or am I really confused? )

On topic: I think that Mateo likes cemetech the most.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Unicorn on March 05, 2015, 02:33:51 AM
CKH4, obviously :P But yeah, this forum is a nice break from the strictness of Cemetech sometimes. I am trying to learn ASM, so I might post about a small project in the future. :)
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 05, 2015, 03:48:19 AM
To be fair, though, this can result into a larger amount of quality programming help discussion, but yeah I can understand that when going from one forum to another the different level of strictness (or laxness, depending of the topic), as well as the different ways of correcting newcomers, can be intimidating. Regardless, I wish you good luck into learning ASM. I do not know if anyone over here checks the site often enough to help, but hopefully someone here or elsewhere can help you if you need any. :)
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Unicorn on March 05, 2015, 05:10:25 AM
If I do decide to do a game in ASM(or axe), could it be something about the codwalrus mascot?
Sorry for pushing this off topic. :P
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 05, 2015, 05:21:17 AM
You are free do do such game. Just make sure to call the mascot Walrii, though, and to not do a game like Assassinate Walrii :P (well you could, although it would be strange that the first game involving Walrii is such game O.O)
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Unicorn on March 05, 2015, 05:26:49 AM
Yes it would. I'm thinking like a Walrii RPG/Frogger type game. If only I could figure out why my Axe movement code is so glitchy...

Ok, back on topic.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 05, 2015, 05:35:53 AM
Make sure to create a topic about it once you are ready to showcase it in action :)

As for the original topic, it seems like from now on it will be juju at the head, somewhat, in terms of privileges he got on the server and stuff, while my staff position will finally become what it was supposed to be from the start (besides, the site is almost complete anyway), but a new group for part time staff who can't really guarantee regular activity was created. Decisions would be taken by the official staff and whoever in the part time team is present at the time of decision taking.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: TIfanx1999 on March 05, 2015, 06:44:23 AM
Quote from: CKH4 on March 05, 2015, 01:36:58 AM
Off topic: Art_of_camelot, didn't you leave for a while like a few years ago? ( or am I really confused? )

On topic: I think that Mateo likes cemetech the most.

I don't think so. I do have times when I'm less active, but I don't think I've really left for an extended period recently.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 05, 2015, 06:36:22 PM
Not to ask too much info, but is it because you have a variable amount of work hours each week? In retail, I know that certain people will work about 10-20 hours per week in January, February and October, then in December or the start of new seasons, they'll peak at 40-60 hours. And same thing with shops where people will do overtime for most of the Summer, only to end up out of work during Winter.

I am asking because I noticed that for certain months of the year you will be very active, only to disappear almost entirely for a few months, usually starting in February or April.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: TIfanx1999 on March 07, 2015, 05:10:22 AM
Nah, my work schedule is pretty consistent, but holidays can get pretty hectic/stressful. That's usually when I step away for a bit. That, or if I'm on vacation.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 07, 2015, 05:15:23 AM
Aah ok, I thought it was more Spring and to a lesser extent Summer since that was when in previous years you usually disappeared.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: TIfanx1999 on March 07, 2015, 05:16:52 AM
Yea, I guess I have had a couple lulls of activity in spring in the past (for whatever reason). Summer is usually when vacations happen. :D
Title: Re: CodeWalrus to reopen its doors
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on March 07, 2015, 05:20:31 AM
Normally for me it's holidays and easter that should be the most hectic, but various variables results into this not always being the case. This January, for example, I was pretty much at the mercy of mother nature on most work shifts (snow + ice salt and sand causes quite a mess so you spend half of the week mopping the floor on top of your already high workload), so when I arrived back home I often crashed into bed right away, completely exhausted, and during Summer, there is often much more work to do besides our usual tasks as a result of vacations (I work at a supermarket and we are required by law to take back empty beer and soda bottles/cans, but when weather is hot and sunny we get about 6 times more of them than usual, and they're often dirty. I even found dead croaches in a 24 pack of empty beer  bottles once O.O). On the other hand, my vacations often fall during Summer, so I miss most of that.