JCCC3 Tech Post-mortem (Twitt-arrrr, Cruise Monkey)
While there were issues out of our control (Apple making using the wifi without Internet difficult) and ones with no ready solution (overloading the access points in the theater and game room), what did you encounter that could have worked better?
For a start I'd like PMs to work better in Twitt-arrrr, and perhaps a way to turn off threading. Any other suggestions?
For a start I'd like PMs to work better in Twitt-arrrr, and perhaps a way to turn off threading. Any other suggestions?
Comments
I suspect that much of the congestion was Apple devices trying to use the exceedingly wasteful and chatty "Bonjour" protocol, even if their owners were not using the Internet. We might want to look into setting up our own, more robust routers -- preferably ones that block and kill Bonjour -- in areas where most of the communication is just with Twit-Arr and Cruise Monkey.
I would like to look into adding extra access points in the conference center and maybe on the stage. There are network jacks in the conference center so that should be easy, stage is unknown.
CruiseMonkey was mostly fantastic. I only have some nitpicky suggestions: combined schedule viewer, a means of navigating the schedules by day, and some sort of icon to indicate "Hey, I'm not connected to the server and using offline data".
I think for next year we either need to roll our own Twitter clone. The code for StatusNet is so obtuse that I think trying to make it do what we want will be much harder than starting from scratch. In the next month or so I am gonna start working on something simple and build up based on whatever functionality we think we need. I am not saying we definitely need to use the thing I will build, but it will be there as an option depending on what everyone thinks.
And to be clear, I was thrilled to have Twitt-arrrr this year. I would certainly be lost without it.
The problem with posts falling off the front page is a problem inherent to microblogging, not just StatusNet. Like Twitter, if a lot is happening all at once, things fall out of view very quickly and it is up to the reader to be aware of this and read as far into the stream as they deem necessary. Microblogging is not meant to be a way to ensure that all information can be tracked and read. Web forums are a better format for that, where you can track read and unread threads.
Some of the technical issues that I encountered were:
* saw some HTML errors when trying to read the "G" section of the user directory
* got some error dialog popups when trying to create an Event on my Android
* PMs (obviously) are needed, or some other 1:1 / 1:few messaging (such as email/calendaring)
* inconsistent Wi-Fi options on Apple devices (as mentioned by @origamislayer)
I would love to have Exchange available for the general population. Many of the features we would like to have for Twitt-arrr (notifications, PMs, reminders for events, etc) are all part of Exchange. It would also help keep some of the stuff intended for a limited audience off of Twitt-arrr, and prevent it from pushing more general notices off the front page.
A few times I noticed that Twitt-arrrr seemed quite slow and when I ssh'ed into server, I saw that the load was exceeding 1.0. There are some inefficiencies that we can probably eliminate, such as
* installing a PHP accelerator
* configuring squid to not cache
* serve up proper thumbnails
Those three things alone would probably be sufficient performance improvements.
One of the things that negatively affected most people though was the lack of detailed instructions available for people from the outset. This was more of a logistical issue than a technical one. On JCCC2, all required details were hammered out before hand so that documentation with the correct IP address could be printed out in time for onboard registration. This year those details weren't set until we got on the ship. The good news is that once we did, we got DNS and we got an extra static IP and then were able to include this info in the Sea Monkey newsletter (which despite the occasional typo or misprint, was a huge benefit).
So while most post-mortems (especially technical ones) tend to focus on the negative, I would like to point out that I thought this year's Twitt-arrr was a resounding success. Compared to last year, I saw far more people using it. I had several excellent IRL interactions that couldn't have taken place without it. Even if nothing changed for JCCC4, I think it is still a useful tool to make available.
Initially I was using mustard, but without threading it was impossible to keep up with the conversations. The technical problems I remember having with the browser version were : 1. It would throw an error when trying to RSVP to an event and 2. When I switched to desktop view to change settings then tried to go back to mobile view it seemed to get stuck in desktop view. That could be some issue on my phone, I didn't worry about it to much.
If we could get it so the conversations were threaded but collapsed by default like on twitter then I think twit-arr would be close enough to perfect for me.
My primary frustration with Mustard was that it didn't save my place. With Plume, I can save my place and catch up on what I missed very easily.
@mikesphar The laptop was running from spinning platters, although the virtual machine running Twit-arr did have a dedicated drive. I could have given it another processor, but I didn't hear about the load issue until the last day.
I also hope we can do Exchange for the entire Monkey population in the future. It would solve a lot of problems in terms of being able to do customized calendars and real 1:1 or 1:few communications. The client interaction is heavily optimized for mobile clients, so load on the wifi should be easily less than what we are seeing for Twit-Arrr.
Twitt Arr worked much better than last year. If we code our own, we should think about a functional spec first.
What the status.net gives us seems to a flat forum in a twitter stream, so things scroll off quickly.
Do we want a structured forum like this one? A simple twitter stream? Both?
I think a forumish thing would possibly serve our needs better. Maybe a forum with a shoutbox? That would allow better threading and avoiding of getting topics that need groups of people to see it from getting lost, then a shoutbox would allow the people to just yell how awesome everything is
I would like to un-thread Twitt-arrrr to make it more Twitter-like and easier to read. Notifications (and maybe a good client for everyone) would make me very happy as well.
I find it hard to believe though that people won't want to come out of their cabins anyway, even if there is a forum
My Motorola Droid (original - yes i'm cheap) could NOT stay connected to Twitt-arrr. It would connect, load about half the page, then get tired and stop. My laptop never had any issue even though they were right next to each other in the room. I have no idea why the phone had such problems
I assume it's an age thing.
Also, I was never able to get Cruise Monkey to load. It would fail every time I attempted to open it. Again, I assume it's the age of my phone/operating system that is the problem.
Just a heads up to people. I don't expect anyone to support ancient phones like mine.
What's more, our cabin had neither a Wi-Fi signal nor a wired Ethernet jack.
I found that my best option was to flee to an area where there was Wi-Fi but not too many monkeys. The Crown Viking Lounge was a good spot.
On HAL, there really was only one subnet and one DHCP pool for the entire ship, and so when the DHCP pool was exhausted I "borrowed" an unused IP outside the pool.
This didn't work on RCI, because the subnets in different locations contained different addresses and the APs were set up as routers, not bridges. So, I couldn't set my Wi-Fi adapter to one address and leave it that way.
When I moved to an area where there were fewer monkeys, I was able to get an address from the local pool and everything worked. Alas, this meant leaving the group when I had an emergency to attend to at home. I did my best to minimize the number of times I had to do this.