What's up with InSim? - Page 4

shorty943 · 11-27-2007, 02:58 AM

Error code 18.

It happened at AULRO the other day.
Site sysop, the site owner himself, was doing an update and some maintenance on the server. Had a brain fade and pressed the wrong button.

Error code 18.

Greg · 11-27-2007, 04:56 PM

I'll bite. What is Error Code 18?

shorty943 · 11-27-2007, 10:31 PM

How far are the screen, keyboard and mouse from our brain?

Greg · 11-28-2007, 12:38 AM

Oh, about 18 inches.

Miros1 · 11-28-2007, 01:17 AM

Like "nut loose in operator's chair"?

Zirconia Wolf · 11-28-2007, 10:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Miros1

Like "nut loose in operator's chair"?

Yes, but "Error Code 18" sounds way more computer geeky!

FredsG · 12-19-2007, 03:53 PM

...The plug-in performed an illegal operation - you are strongly advised to restart Firefox. All I ever get about 20 minutes into scouring Insimadult. Every other site works fine.??????? Shorty? Miros? Greg? any suggestions?

Miros1 · 12-19-2007, 05:10 PM

InSim and InSimAdult are both vBulletin based, like this board and the PearlSims board. Does InSim do it too? Maybe it's the ads... if you get all the 3rd party stuff turned off, that might help...

FredsG · 12-19-2007, 07:26 PM

Well, just spent close to an hour on Insim, and nothing happened, but within 10 minutes on Adult, that message comes up. You had me clear 3rd party stuff quite some time ago, that option is clear on IE Tools, but that option isn't so clear on Firefox Tools. Never really mentions 3rd party stuff at all that i can see....although with both of them being available will one over-ride the other? ACH i don't know....

shorty943 · 12-19-2007, 09:54 PM

Firefox, all I do is click tools; options; content tab; set to block pop-up windows, with no exceptions.

It sounds like a buggy Firefox plug-in. Point Firefox at itself.
That is, go to www.mozilla.org and re-download your 3rd party plug-ins.
Or, go to the SeaMonkey page, at Mozilla http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ , and download that and try it.
It's quite good actually.

Hey ZW, the one I hate is at boot time.

"Keyboard error-press F1 to continue".

Miros1 · 12-19-2007, 10:40 PM

Lol, my puter just beeps incessantly for that error.

Shorty, she needs to kill 3rd party stuff of all kinds, not just popups.

FredsG · 12-19-2007, 11:13 PM

Do I have third-party plug-ins? What are they? Did they come along for the ride without me knowing it the first time I downloaded, since I haven't put anything called a plug-in on my computer knowingly? Will try looking at that pop-up stuff mentioned...Thanks all for the help,,,

Miros1 · 12-19-2007, 11:26 PM

Example of a plug-in: Adobe Flash. You didn't make it, the author of the website you're visiting didn't make it, the company that produced your browser didn't make it, so it's a 3rd party plugin.

As I've said before, I run with 3rd party plugins turned off, and only turn them on for specific sites. You wouldn't believe how fast some pages load when all the elaborate Flash stuff just doesn't happen!

FredsG · 12-19-2007, 11:34 PM

Talk to me like I'm about 3 and I might figure this out yet...so I can control these plug-ins through the Tools, or do I have to do a search on my hard-drive and shut them down manually...I saw no options on Firefox for this, but there are options on IE which I don't use anymore...Just came back from logging into IE and found the list of Plug-ins...most seem to be from MicroSoft, but there was a flash-Player on there from Adobe...so I shut it down, but from the scanning of most that stuff, how much is necessary for web-surfing?

Greg · 12-20-2007, 12:20 AM

I have a theory about what happens on Insim sometimes. First, the database processor gets overwhelmed and loading a web page times out. Then IE caches the failed login and gets stuck in some place where it won't even try to reload the page.

Often it starts working again if I just quit IE and start it up again. Sometimes not, though. If it doesn't come back after restarting IE, I figure it must be that Insim is really jugged up. Its database might have become corrupted (it happens, especially with a mysql database) and could be in the process of automatically repairing its own data tables.

The root cause of the problem is that that Insim often has more traffic than its database server can handle with the way the web pages are configured. The only solution I know of is to visit at off-peak times.

Sun Sims has the same basic vBulletin setup but its database use isn't nearly a great per page, and (more important) the traffic here isn't even a vague shadow of what Insim gets.

I noted some amusing statistics about Insimadult (message #989 in Anja Book 2)...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greg

Anybody in the mood for some absolutely worthless statistics?

I was just updating my log of all the chapters and side notes in Anja's story (with hopes of one day making an index to this opus) and noticed that the data for the index provides enough information to calculate some amusing statistics on Insimadult as a whole.

Anja's story has been running for 9,801 hours (408 days), from chapter 1 to the latest episode in chapter 202.
In that time, Insimadult had a total of 94,330 posts, for an average of 9.6 posts per hour. That's 231 posts per day.
Anja's story (Book 1 and Book 2 combined) accounted for 2.6% of that total.

Now that we all know that, if anyone can think of a way in which those statistics might be of any significance to anyone, please let me know!

To add to that: The download threads get between 200 and 1000 page views per post... say an average of 500. So at 10 posts per hour, that means the adult site is getting 5000 page views per hour, times 20 messages per page, times about 20 database queries per message... that comes out to an average of 550 database queries per second!

*Gleep!* No wonder it gets weird once in a while! The poor thing is exhausted!

There's really not a lot that Kathy could do to alleviate the problem. She could tweak the board a little it to cut down on database useage (thus messing up some features that the fans are used to) but really the only permanent solution would be a fantastically more expensive dedicated database server, maybe even running an Oracle database. I don't think any site but TSR could hope to afford a rig like that.

FredsG · 12-20-2007, 01:38 AM

Yes, an amazing Story you're telling over there...just caught up to the final page today...Mmmppphhh....interesting, cliff-hanging, waiting...saw your stats over there today and chuckled...I found your need to do that quite adorable...I usually visit Adult between midnight and 5a.m.- I don't sleep much, if ever, but I didn't realize that even that late at night the activity would be that great. I usually check the signed-in log when I first get there to see how many people are active, and usually there's fewer than 100. That's why I am confused...the only other significant thing that changed right before this started happening is that I moved to HighSpeedCable 2MEG...My eyes can't keep up with how fast this thing moves compared to dial-up...

Greg · 12-20-2007, 05:01 AM

Yeah, it doesn't make sense that the board would be getting saturated late at night. This calls for a whole new theory.

Oh, the thing about those statistics came from wanting to be able to build an index of Anja's whole story, similar to the one that's at the beginning of the Tales of Happy Valley. To a great deal, that's self-defense--I often want to refer back to earlier stuff and with each new chapter, it becomes more difficult to find things. It's also something of a trophy. I enjoy looking at the grand shoping list of chapters that are in the story and thinking back through all the adventures those chapter titles represent.

The statistical big came from noticing that by noting down the number of a post and the date it was posted (necessary to be able to link directly to the post), I was also recording data that made it possible to see how many posts Insimadult as a whole was getting at any time since the story started. That provided some statistics that, while amusing, appeared to be totally worthless!

And then, whaddayknow! I finally found some use for the data! Ya never know, ya know!

FredsG · 12-20-2007, 05:42 AM

A true writer by Heart, and a Scientist by nature...Hmmm, interesting combination...well, anyway, I enjoyed it also, it's good to know that I'm not the only one digging beneath the proverbial surface of it all...sometimes I feel a bit whacked when everyone rolls their eyes at my picking things to the bone, they say I take the fun and Mystery out of life, to me...that IS the fun and Mystery!!! Go figure...BTW...Now I'm getting on Adult through IE just fine, except it keeps telling me it wants a plug-in I'm denying it....Geez, should we all be that Neglected...

Greg · 12-20-2007, 05:56 AM

Of course, now I had to see if I could think of something even sillier to do with this stack of data, and here it is!

Number of Posts per Hour on Insimadult
Late October 2006 to Mid December 2007

Now I just know that no one would have lasted another day without this bit of arcane knowledge!

There is something interesting to be seen here, though. During the five years that we ran SimsHost with its honking great server burning the bandwidth, we noticed that there was a consistent lull in August and September that tended to bottom out as the kids went back to school. We had even noticed that phenomenon in the years before when we were hosting the some very busy sites on Moon Sims--it showed up in the amount of traffic on the Yahoo groups--but this is the first time I've seen a graph that actually shows it.

We might surmise that there were other driving factors on Insimadult because the chattiness of the sims fans pretty much tanked when the porn ads appeared. I had a feeling that traffic had picked up after they were removed and, sure enough, we can see that that is true. Whether there is really a cause-and-effect relationship is anybody's guess.

The recent resurgence of posts might reflect a lot of factors. While Warlokk has slowed down in his production of new body shapes, BlooM has really picked up in creating new stuff, especially alpha meshes. At the same time, the traffic in the stories section seems to have increased by a tremendous degree, largely owning to an (apparent) invasion of thread-bumping sock puppets. That's yet another oddity of human behavior thats fun to watch.

Whatever the cause, there's something all sims webmasters can learn from this. If you notice a major lull in traffic in the late Summer, don't panic! The fans will be back when they're done doing whatever it is that sims fans do every year at that time.

----------
Each data point on the scatter plot represents a post in Anja's story topic that I thought was worth bothering to note down for my hoped-for index. I calculated posts per hour based on the arbitrary period of time of the previous five entries in that log.

These are statistics for the entire BBS. There's nothing you can conclude about the story from this chart other than noting how close together the individual data points are. You can see an obvioius lull in Anja's story during May through July. At that time, I was very actively job-searching with the (successful) goal of getting the job that I really, really wanted.

You could do the same sort of analysis on any BBS that logs the time of a post and numbers each post sequentially by just randomly sampling the data from the board.

FredsG · 12-20-2007, 06:04 AM

OOh, you better quit that, now I just know you have an office and I want to see it!!! I am sooo jealous of the fun you're having!!! ...okay, I was just kidding, now that you've got my eyes and brain swelling with excitment...SHARE MORE...come-on, I know you've got more...

11-27-2007, 04:56 PM	#62
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	I'll bite. What is Error Code 18? __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

11-28-2007, 12:38 AM	#64
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	Oh, about 18 inches. __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

12-19-2007, 03:53 PM	#67
FredsG Banned Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Australia Posts: 64	Illegal Operation In Plug-In ...The plug-in performed an illegal operation - you are strongly advised to restart Firefox. All I ever get about 20 minutes into scouring Insimadult. Every other site works fine.??????? Shorty? Miros? Greg? any suggestions?

12-19-2007, 11:34 PM	#74
FredsG Banned Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Australia Posts: 64	Talk to me like I'm about 3 and I might figure this out yet...so I can control these plug-ins through the Tools, or do I have to do a search on my hard-drive and shut them down manually...I saw no options on Firefox for this, but there are options on IE which I don't use anymore...Just came back from logging into IE and found the list of Plug-ins...most seem to be from MicroSoft, but there was a flash-Player on there from Adobe...so I shut it down, but from the scanning of most that stuff, how much is necessary for web-surfing? Last edited by FredsG : 12-19-2007 at 11:46 PM. Reason: Still learning...

12-20-2007, 05:01 AM	#77
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	Yeah, it doesn't make sense that the board would be getting saturated late at night. This calls for a whole new theory. Oh, the thing about those statistics came from wanting to be able to build an index of Anja's whole story, similar to the one that's at the beginning of the Tales of Happy Valley. To a great deal, that's self-defense--I often want to refer back to earlier stuff and with each new chapter, it becomes more difficult to find things. It's also something of a trophy. I enjoy looking at the grand shoping list of chapters that are in the story and thinking back through all the adventures those chapter titles represent. The statistical big came from noticing that by noting down the number of a post and the date it was posted (necessary to be able to link directly to the post), I was also recording data that made it possible to see how many posts Insimadult as a whole was getting at any time since the story started. That provided some statistics that, while amusing, appeared to be totally worthless! And then, whaddayknow! I finally found some use for the data! Ya never know, ya know! __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

11-27-2007, 02:58 AM	#61
shorty943 Banned Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 805	Error code 18. It happened at AULRO the other day. Site sysop, the site owner himself, was doing an update and some maintenance on the server. Had a brain fade and pressed the wrong button. Error code 18.

11-27-2007, 10:31 PM	#63
shorty943 Banned Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 805	How far are the screen, keyboard and mouse from our brain?

11-28-2007, 01:17 AM	#65
Miros1 Goddess for Life Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: NY State Posts: 3,303	Like "nut loose in operator's chair"?

12-19-2007, 05:10 PM	#68
Miros1 Goddess for Life Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: NY State Posts: 3,303	InSim and InSimAdult are both vBulletin based, like this board and the PearlSims board. Does InSim do it too? Maybe it's the ads... if you get all the 3rd party stuff turned off, that might help...

12-19-2007, 07:26 PM	#69
FredsG Banned Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Australia Posts: 64	Well, just spent close to an hour on Insim, and nothing happened, but within 10 minutes on Adult, that message comes up. You had me clear 3rd party stuff quite some time ago, that option is clear on IE Tools, but that option isn't so clear on Firefox Tools. Never really mentions 3rd party stuff at all that i can see....although with both of them being available will one over-ride the other? ACH i don't know....

12-19-2007, 09:54 PM	#70
shorty943 Banned Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 805	Firefox, all I do is click tools; options; content tab; set to block pop-up windows, with no exceptions. It sounds like a buggy Firefox plug-in. Point Firefox at itself. That is, go to www.mozilla.org and re-download your 3rd party plug-ins. Or, go to the SeaMonkey page, at Mozilla http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ , and download that and try it. It's quite good actually. Hey ZW, the one I hate is at boot time. "Keyboard error-press F1 to continue".

12-19-2007, 10:40 PM	#71
Miros1 Goddess for Life Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: NY State Posts: 3,303	Lol, my puter just beeps incessantly for that error. Shorty, she needs to kill 3rd party stuff of all kinds, not just popups.

12-19-2007, 11:13 PM	#72
FredsG Banned Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Australia Posts: 64	Do I have third-party plug-ins? What are they? Did they come along for the ride without me knowing it the first time I downloaded, since I haven't put anything called a plug-in on my computer knowingly? Will try looking at that pop-up stuff mentioned...Thanks all for the help,,,

12-19-2007, 11:26 PM	#73
Miros1 Goddess for Life Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: NY State Posts: 3,303	Example of a plug-in: Adobe Flash. You didn't make it, the author of the website you're visiting didn't make it, the company that produced your browser didn't make it, so it's a 3rd party plugin. As I've said before, I run with 3rd party plugins turned off, and only turn them on for specific sites. You wouldn't believe how fast some pages load when all the elaborate Flash stuff just doesn't happen!

12-20-2007, 01:38 AM	#76
FredsG Banned Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Australia Posts: 64	Yes, an amazing Story you're telling over there...just caught up to the final page today...Mmmppphhh....interesting, cliff-hanging, waiting...saw your stats over there today and chuckled...I found your need to do that quite adorable...I usually visit Adult between midnight and 5a.m.- I don't sleep much, if ever, but I didn't realize that even that late at night the activity would be that great. I usually check the signed-in log when I first get there to see how many people are active, and usually there's fewer than 100. That's why I am confused...the only other significant thing that changed right before this started happening is that I moved to HighSpeedCable 2MEG...My eyes can't keep up with how fast this thing moves compared to dial-up...

12-20-2007, 05:42 AM	#78
FredsG Banned Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Australia Posts: 64	A true writer by Heart, and a Scientist by nature...Hmmm, interesting combination...well, anyway, I enjoyed it also, it's good to know that I'm not the only one digging beneath the proverbial surface of it all...sometimes I feel a bit whacked when everyone rolls their eyes at my picking things to the bone, they say I take the fun and Mystery out of life, to me...that IS the fun and Mystery!!! Go figure...BTW...Now I'm getting on Adult through IE just fine, except it keeps telling me it wants a plug-in I'm denying it....Geez, should we all be that Neglected...

12-20-2007, 05:56 AM	#79
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	Of course, now I *had* to see if I could think of something even sillier to do with this stack of data, and here it is! Number of Posts per Hour on Insimadult Late October 2006 to Mid December 2007 Now I just *know* that no one would have lasted another day without this bit of arcane knowledge! There is something interesting to be seen here, though. During the five years that we ran SimsHost with its honking great server burning the bandwidth, we noticed that there was a consistent lull in August and September that tended to bottom out as the kids went back to school. We had even noticed that phenomenon in the years before when we were hosting the some very busy sites on Moon Sims--it showed up in the amount of traffic on the Yahoo groups--but this is the first time I've seen a graph that actually shows it. We might surmise that there were other driving factors on Insimadult because the chattiness of the sims fans pretty much tanked when the porn ads appeared. I had a feeling that traffic had picked up after they were removed and, sure enough, we can see that that is true. Whether there is really a cause-and-effect relationship is anybody's guess. The recent resurgence of posts might reflect a lot of factors. While Warlokk has slowed down in his production of new body shapes, BlooM has really picked up in creating new stuff, especially alpha meshes. At the same time, the traffic in the stories section seems to have increased by a tremendous degree, largely owning to an (apparent) invasion of thread-bumping sock puppets. That's yet another oddity of human behavior thats fun to watch. Whatever the cause, there's something all sims webmasters can learn from this. If you notice a major lull in traffic in the late Summer, *don't panic!* The fans will be back when they're done doing whatever it is that sims fans do every year at that time. ---------- Each data point on the scatter plot represents a post in Anja's story topic that I thought was worth bothering to note down for my hoped-for index. I calculated posts per hour based on the arbitrary period of time of the previous five entries in that log. These are statistics for the entire BBS. There's nothing you can conclude about the story from this chart other than noting how close together the individual data points are. You can see an obvioius lull in Anja's story during May through July. At that time, I was very actively job-searching with the (successful) goal of getting the job that I really, really wanted. You could do the same sort of analysis on any BBS that logs the time of a post and numbers each post sequentially by just randomly sampling the data from the board. __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

12-20-2007, 06:04 AM	#80
FredsG Banned Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Australia Posts: 64	OOh, you better quit that, now I just know you have an office and I want to see it!!! I am sooo jealous of the fun you're having!!! ...okay, I was just kidding, now that you've got my eyes and brain swelling with excitment...SHARE MORE...come-on, I know you've got more...