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Tidings of DOoM
Watch this page for news about
MarlDOoM
and
PoslDOoM.
John Chew
(poslfit)
poslfit@gmail.com
2005-06-13: MarlDOoM at the CNSC
I resurrected MarlDOoM for game annotators to use at the recent
Canadian
Scrabble Championships,
and have left it up largely unattended at poslfit.homeip.net port 7777.
Feel free to use it (I've e-mailed JamesAC to ask if he can send me a
copy of ACBot) and let me know if there are problems.
2002-03-25: new server IP
MD has moved to a new server with a new IP address. If you're connecting
to it by name at www.math.utoronto.ca, you may need to wait a couple of
hours for the address change to propagate. If you're connecting to it
by numerical IP address, it's now at 128.100.68.6.
2002-03-01: got lag?
If you're having trouble with lag connecting to www at port 7777, please
switch to port 7776!
2001-06-25: 'penalty' command added
In response to several requests from MarlDOoM players, I've added a new
command to the generic crossword game board code. If you type 'penalty'
at any time during a game, you'll have five points deducted from your
score. If you would like to deduct a different number, say 7, type
'penalty 7'. If you have any problems with this new command, please
send me e-mail.
2001-03-14: brauer decommissioned
brauer.math.utoronto.ca has been decommissioned and MD has moved
to www.math.utoronto.ca port 7777.
2000-05-07: synge decommissioned
synge.math.utoronto.ca has been decommissioned a little earlier
than expected, and I am still looking for a replacement host for
PD. I will make another announcement here when I have found one.
2000-03-07: Port 7776 added
MarlDOoM and PoslDOoM now accept connections at port 7776 as well as
7777. The extra port was added because of connectivity problems from
some sites (in particular those used by James Cherry's bots) to the old
port, but there should be no reason for anyone who can connect to port
7777 to change to the new port. Code changes affected the lowest level
module of the server, necessitating reboots. Please e-mail me if any
weirdnesses ensue.
2000-01-01: OSW4 adopted
Effective 00:00:00 UTC at 2000-01-01, we have adopted OSW4 for both
OSW and SOWPODS games.
1999-11-11: OSW/SOWPODS long words
I have added a limited number of long Chambers words to the online osw
and sowpods commands, and will add others upon specific request.
(Feel free to e-mail me lists of your favorites.)
1999-08-10: cgdoom@onelist.com
I've set up a mailing list for DOoM-related announcements at
onelist.com, so that the next time both MD and PD are down
and my main e-mail service is unavailable, I'll still be able
to tell people when service will resume. You can subscribe
by clicking here.
1999-08-07: Recent service outages
Sorry the recent troubles with MD and PD. Some were due to the
upgrading of the math department's file server; more recently
the U of T's backbone network has had more trouble than usual.
For information about the U of T's network status (when the U of T's
connection is up), please see
UTCNS's web page.
1999-08-05: NSA Ratings Updated
Player NSA ratings (as shown in 'who2') have been updated for the
first time in ages, based on the current NSA ratings list. I will
try to get this process automated soon.
1999-06-14: ODS3 Installed
The French dictionary, formerly known as ODS94, has been upgraded
and now calls itself ODS3. Use 'ods mot' to look up words in it.
1999-04-12: Ratings sped up
I've rewritten a small part of the ratings system so that instead of
causing 17 seconds lag followed by 66 seconds lag with each update,
the ratings daemon now causes 17 seconds followed by 6 seconds.
1999-04-03: Ratings revised
Okay, I'm satisfied that it looks stable enough to test. As of now,
RD should come and fetch ratings whenever a rated games on either MD
or PD. Please e-mail me if this doesn't seem to be running correctly.
1999-04-02: Ratings revised
I've rewritten a large portion of the ratings system, and updated the
ratings on MD and PD as of just now. For the time being, ratings will
be updated only manually on both machines, but as soon as I'm sure
they're running reasonably smoothly, I'll get them to run whenever
a rated game ends on either machine.
1998-11-11: MarlDOoM may be up
I had some trouble getting MD up at its new machine, I think because
of a Perl version problem. I believe it's working now, but need people
to try it out to make sure.
1998-11-06: MarlDOoM moving today
MarlDOoM will be moved to brauer.math.utoronto.ca port 7777 later
today. Before I reinstall it, I will be deleting all unclaimed
accounts more than six months old, and all accounts which have
remained unused for more than two years. (For statistics weenies,
this amounts to 3485 of the 4709 accounts on the server.)
1998-11-01: New home for MarlDOoM
MarlDOoM will be moved to brauer.math.utoronto.ca port 7777 as soon
as I have the time to copy everything over, and no later than this
coming Friday, November 6th, in any case.
The new machine should be somewhat faster, but since it is colocated
with PoslDOoM's machine (synge.math.utoronto.ca), there will be less
connectivity redundancy when large parts of the Internet (or small
parts near the U of T) fail. Thanks to the colocation, ratings updates
should take place in future more or less instantaneously on both servers.
Heartfelt thanks to Ray Seyfarth and Marlene Milkent of USM for hosting
MarlDOoM for many years, to Chad Wilson (formerly of Miami U.) for
hosting the original WisDOoM, and to Emile Leblanc and the math department
at the University of Toronto for generously offering a new home for
MarlDOoM.
If you would like to host a server yourself, please contact me privately
at poslfit@gmail.com.
All it takes is a commitment of a 24-hour connection to the Internet for
a period of at least one year.
1998-10-02: Hurricane ended, new home sought
MarlDOoM is back up in the wake of Hurricane Georges, and did not
suffer any damage. I have been informed however that its machine
will be retired soon, and am looking for a replacement. If you'd
like to volunteer one, please send me e-mail.
1998-09-25: Hurricane watch
MarlDOoM may be unavailable for a few days on relatively short notice,
if Hurricane Georges should continue on its course directly toward
eel.st.usm.edu.
1998-08-16: ratings updated
Ratings have been updated again.
They're still being done manually.
1998-08-10: MD up
The problem wasn't serious, and was fixable from here. Phew.
1998-08-07: MD down again
MarlDOoM is down again, I'm not sure why. Marlene,
who keeps an eye on it locally, is away at the NSC in Chicago, so we
won't be able to investigate what's going on until she gets back.
1998-07-02: ratings updated
Ratings have been updated again, to include games played up to some
time on the afternoon of July 1st. They're still being done manually.
1998-07-01: ratings updated
Ratings have been updated again. They're still being done manually.
Games played between June 21st and July 1st haven't been copied yet.
Happy Canada Day!
1998-06-08: ratings updated
Ratings have been updated, and will be updated manually at irregular
intervals, until I can get the automated software rewritten.
1998-04-28: eel.st.usm.edu back online
eel.st.usm.edu is back online temporarily and with limited software, and
I am looking for a new home for MarlDOoM in the not too distant future.
Ratings are not yet being updated.
1998-04-17: eel.st.usm.edu offline
eel.st.usm.edu, the machine that hosts MarlDOoM, was vandalised over the
net this week, and has been taken offline indefinitely. Please watch
this space for further details.
1998-03-02: TWL98 Installation
At midnight server time (CST for MD, EST for PD), the new TWL98 lexicon will
be installed, taking effect immediately and affecting any games in play.
For further information about the lexicon, see the NSA Dictionary Committee's
home page.
1998-02-05: Long line disconnection - solved?
Ray Seyfarth has rebooted eel, which appears to have fixed MarlDOoM's
problem. It disturbs me to think of what might have caused the problem
in the first place. Please e-mail me if the trouble recurs.
1998-02-01: Long line disconnection and ratings
I'm still waiting for eel to be rebooted, which I hope will be sometime
soon. The Ratings Daemon can't cope with the long line problem, so I
just ran about a week's worth of ratings manually. Unfortunately, for
possibly related reasons, I can't copy the information back to MarlDOoM,
so it's currently only available on PoslDOoM. For the time being, if
you need to know what your rating was effective 21:30 EST today, you
can connect to PD at synge.math.utoronto.ca port 7777 and use the
'rating' and 'rated' commands as a connector.
1998-01-27: Long line disconnection
I've been told that the problem is confined to eel's local network
(or to the rest of the net, depending on which way you look at it),
to which no changes have recently been made. Ray Seyfarth is going
to try rebooting eel sometime this week, we hope that this fixes
the problem.
1998-01-26: Long line disconnection
As of about noon today server time, entering a line of sixty-two or
more characters disconnects you from the server. The simple workaround
is of course not to type lines of more than sixty-one characters.
("Doctor, it hurts when I do this....")
I believe the reason for this is security changes to USM's campus
router, and have inquired as to whether this is so and what there
is that we can do about it.
1997-01-06: New server software
The changes mentioned below have been implemented
on PoslDOoM (but not yet MarlDOoM) with one difference: if you don't press
return
for two minutes after you initially connect, the server
will time out and tell you what you were supposed to do. I've also made a
cosmetic change to the server: people were complaining that entering a room
full of objects spammed them with object identifiers in square brackets, so
those added details will now only show up if you enter look here
.
I will install the new version of the server on MarlDOoM after it has run
trouble-free on PD for seven days.
1996-12-29: Connection protocol change
I am considering changing the server so that it won't give you the welcome
message until you've entered a line of text. If you're using
tinyfugue
(which I strongly recommend), you probably won't notice any difference,
as tinyfugue will send your password without waiting for a welcome.
If not, then you'll either have to press return
once first
(which some of you with broken telnet programs are already having to do)
or just type your password in before being welcomed.
The change will not take place before January 6th, but may take place on
or soon after that date. If you have a strong case to make against the
implementation of this change, or have questions about how it will
affect you, please
e-mail me.
Technical Note:
This change is necessary in order to upgrade the
HTTP service
offered on MarlDOoM from HTTP/0.9 to HTTP/1.0 or HTTP/1.1,
as the latter protocols require that the first line transmitted depend
on the first line received. I'm considering adding support for these
protocols mainly so that I can offer HTML forms and user authentication.
1996-10-24: Privacy enhancement
Players who have requested that their e-mail addresses and real names be
hidden from public view will no longer have their connecting hosts listed
in who
.
1996-09-08: OSW ratings system up
The OSW ratings system is now up (type rating -osw
).
If you would like your board's certification switched from OSPD/TWL
to OSW, please send me e-mail.
1996-09-01: OSW ratings system starting up
At the request of Kea,
I am starting up a separate ratings system for games played using only
the OSW dictionary. Until I have a reasonable number of rated games,
I will be keeping track of OSW ratings manually; if you would like a
game rated, please arrange for the loser to e-mail me the results,
including who played first and second, what the score was, and the date
(use the date
command) on which the game was finished.
In addition to the default (OSPD) ratings system,
there are currently ratings systems in place for DOPS (OSPD Clabbers -
where it doesn't matter what order you put your tiles down in), SOWPODS
(words are acceptable if they are in either OSPD or OSW) and French (ODS)
games. To make sure that the games you play get rated in the right system,
check the description of your board's certification when you look at it.
1996-07-20: Online ratings lists available
At the suggestion of
Bob Jackman,
the online ratings tables are now available by FTP. They list the same
information as is given online by the rating
command, and
are automatically updated at the same time as the ratings databases on
MarlDOoM at around 05:30, 17:30 and 23:30 Eastern time each day.
The ratings databases are:
1996-07-02: Monthly statistics
Monthly statistics about most active players in each of three ratings systems,
as well as a comparison of the online system with the NSA system, are now
available for the month of June in:
monthly/newest/
1996-06-16: DOoM on the web
Do you have a home page on the web that you'd like to advertise in your
DOoM player description? Would you like to have a URL to a player, a
board or a room? Here's how:
- When you enter a description of an object, HTML tags are only visible
to people connected via HTTP. That is, if you put the line
This is some <b>bold</b> text!
into your description, then players connected via telnet will see just:
This is some bold text!
while players connected via HTTP
will see
This is some bold text!
- URLs to objects (people, boards, rooms) on MarlDOoM are easy to write:
they're just "
http://eel.st.usm.edu:7777/look/
" followed by
the name of the object. Here are some examples:
http://eel.st.usm.edu:7777/look/poslfit
http://eel.st.usm.edu:7777/look/bdp
http://eel.st.usm.edu:7777/look/po
If you need more help with this, please send me e-mail at
poslfit@gmail.com.
1996-05-18: Ratings System Trouble
Verdant
has reported that over the past few days, several rated games have not made
it into the ratings database. Examination of the log shows that this is
due to disk space problems on eel.st.usm.edu, most recently during the
period 14:24 to 23:22 server time (CDT) today. I am looking into the
problem, but don't see an easy fix, or even an easy way to get the ratings
daemon to report the problem.
The ratings daemon currently updates ratings information three times daily,
at 04:30, 16:30 and 22:30 server time. If you notice that a game that you
have played has not made it into the database after the daemon has visited,
please arrange for the loser of the game to
e-mail me
making sure to mention the date and time that the game ended,
who played first and second, and what the final score was.
Sorry for the inconvenience!