Jules: I don't think people have the expectation that he should drop everything and answer each question individually. The problem is that he mostly gives no information at all or as seen in my case earlier (Keep Trying) he gives totally inane responses that are so unhelpful they become frustrating.

If he posted a short succinct explanation that probably took him 30 seconds to compose and post then most people would be ok and he wouldn't have to deal with the so called "constant annoying complaints". And if there was the occasional complaint after his post I am sure others who had already read his explanation would update those who missed it therefore leaving him available to do what he needs to do.

Andersp: ?? Oh it did go down, but I just went and did other things. It ain't like the big crash a while back when nine months of playing got lost.

joshi tm: Yes.

aaru: Today is BETTER.
Thank You

Fencer: Owkay, the site now works properly again? Thanks. Finnaly played half of my moves in short time without any stange evil screen of overload.

TarantinoFan: Hardly slow here not even when people have been complaining, and if it is there is always the option of doing something else.

I think it's the expectation that Fencer should drop everything just to answer questions to which the answer is obvious and the indignation of peeps who don't get the reply.

.. He's trying to fix things, if he keeps having to answer every time someone posts it'll delay the fixing. Quite frankly I'd rather have him sort out the problems.

Hrqls: The site has been pretty good apart from yesterday. Some minor glitches but nothing fatal or end of the world

TarantinoFan: Fencer, such a bad bad boy

Hrqls: Well my feeling is that so many people post the notice in the hope that many voices will be heard because lately it feels like no-one is being heard. The service for the site over the past few weeks has been absolutely terrible and people don't know from one day to the next if they are going to be able to access the site or not.

And as for insults and attacks and non-destructive messages then you best aim your comments at one of the worst offenders. Someone comes in to offer a little positive feedback and he still can't resist a dig in response.

I say again. Pot calling the kettle black!

TarantinoFan: its annoying that the site isnt accessable ... its not annoying when its mention on a board and brought to fencers attention ... it doesnt have to be brought to his attention by everyone though .. one or 2 posts mentioning it would be enough ..

if worded as if to mention it to him, you might get a response, if worded with an attack/insult/.. in the post as well .. then its likely to be ignored or sarcastically answered

i think its always best to post a building non-destructive message, that way there will be a faster response and better response as well

usually the site can be accessed perfectly by me, but not this weekend (i was away for 4 days, came back on sunday, and the connection to the site was a mess) .. this was caused by a failing harddisk though which shouldnt happen too often :)

Jules: Well I am still trying to work out which one's are the annoying complaints and which aren't. Recently all the complaints have been the same. Site crash follows crash follows slow load after no load. They are all exactly the same. So why is it annoying when one person says it and yet not annoying when another says exactly the same thing. And why get so indignant and sarcastic with people when all they want is a valid explanation???

Jules:
im just that we have a fast site again yeahhhh

TarantinoFan: Maybe if people just stopped with the digs in the first place Fencer wouldn't need to reply to them.

Oh yes, he doesn't need to.

Bernice: But he still couldn't resist a veiled dig could he. Pot calling the kettle black if you ask me.

Fencer: whoopee, an explanation......thanks

gogul: Thanks. For those, who want to discuss normal things without negative emotions, there was a hardware failure on one of the hard disks and since the replacement and data restoration is not an easy process (especially on weekends), BrainKing has been temporarily moved to the backup server which is, of course, much slower and more overloaded. But everything is switched back to the former configuration now.

Have not been online about 6 days, and now ... the performance is fast! Much faster as it was!

And by the way. I had to access the site thru brainking.cz to post this message because brainking.com is not responding again!!!

Fencer: This response is exactly why people on here get frustrated with you and as you put it "constantly post annoying complaints"

There is no explanation as to why it is not working and no hint of when it will be working again. "Keep Trying" is not generally considered an appropriate response to a valid question. We pay you the money you asked for as a fair price for a working game site and it constantly breaks down. If it were a car it would be called a "LEMON" and returned to the dealer quick smart and a refund demanded. However it is not a car and it can't be returned. All we can do is ask that it be made to work properly in a timely fashion. And when that request is constantly ignored, people get frustrated.

coan-net: Thanks, got it.

Ok, the negative time limits appeared again. Had BrainKing's clock stopped again? When will it be ticking again?

TarantinoFan: take no notice of Fencer.....he is becoming well known for his ignorance and arrogance......I also havent been able to access the blog site, but then I live happy in the knowledge that I probably won't have to spend anymore money to access this place, unless there are vast improvements.

Coan.net's suggestions sound like a damned good idea.

coan.net: That's, of course, a good idea, and it is definitely planned to be added. However, it's not a change which could be implemented in 5 minutes while doing important system changes, so it could be done later. But it won't be forgotten.

The BrainKing is slow.
VERY SLOW!!!

Fencer, awhile back I suggested to make a “basic” game page that should help speed up page load, and I would like to suggest it again. This is a game site, and the majority of the time – I like to concentrate on the game and not about all the “extra” junk (which is a nice addition – but not needed most of the time.)

Basic game page:

Main Page (link back to main page)
Game name (link to game rules) (don’t need separate wording)
Opponent name (link to profile)
Points (backgammon and such)
Score / Match (backgammon and such)
Captured pieces (chess, checkers and such)
Game Board
Captured pieces (chess, checkers and such)
Points (backgammon and such)
Submit / Draw / Resign – along with input box for in-game chat & notes

That is all. (I might be missing something since some games have different information - but there is A LOT of information that is not needed to play the game that can be removed.)

What we don’t need:

Separate link to game rules (just make the tournament name a link)
Links to discussion boards – along with the need to have it check the database to see if there are any unread messages
Flags & (news) links for either player
Pawn/rook icon
Mailbox next to name (I can click on name to go to profile or just leave an in-game chat)
Player icons – nice, but not needed
Last move by either player
Information about myself – I know who I am, why list it?
Tournament info with link & scroll-over information
Expected BKR change – along with the need to have it check the database for this info
Finished games between players
Time per move
if it is a public game
if it is a rated game
layout change
board size
weekend days change shortcut

Also make it so the submit button will be ABOVE the board (so for large board & small screens, you won’t need to scroll down to hit submit. I have this working using my own .css file, but would be nice to the “basic” board also.)

Then have the addition of 1 more link: “Expanded game page” – which takes you out of “basic” and back to the expanded page if you need some more information which is not included in the basic page.

I see I will have solved my problem of too many games. Around 60 of them have timed out. and I still keep getting connection errors.

I tried to read back the 87 messages, but I can't get those pages to load either.

TarantinoFan: Keep trying. The rest of your would-be-funny sentences is not worth answering until you start to think before posting something foolish.

Fencer, do you feel like your time has been wasted when you spend the effort and energy of writing a blog entry only to find that it can't be accessed????

Oh I'm sorry I forgot you were busy adding little incidentals to the site that no-one really knew they needed but it looks like something has been done so it may quiet the masses.

I would like to know why I haven't been able to access the blog site since 11am this morning. It is now midnight and we are into a new day and I still can't access it to read the suggestions you spoke about earlier. I can't implement the suggestions if I can't even access them!!!!

Fencer:

AbigailII: Liquid says that TTL was set to 1 hour or even less. I can only ask him to check it again, this stuff is not handled by myself.

Fencer: Yes, that's true. ISPs are obliged to keep their DNS lists updated and the only thing we can do for that is to broadcast the up to date information and "ask them" to accept it.

Yeah, but you can make your change the "right" way, or the "wrong" way. DNS records have a TTL (time to live). If I look at the current DNS record for brainking.com, the TTL is one day (which is a typical value). Now, if the TTL of brainking.com was one day before making a change, it means that it may take an day before everyone knows about the change. No ISP would be violating any RFC. The "right way" (that is, decrease the time it takes for everyone to notice) of making a DNS change is to first lower the TTL to a short period (say, 900 seconds), and do this more than a day in advance (a day because that's the old value of the TTL). That tells any name resolver that it should not keep an entry in its cache for more than 15 minutes. Then you make your DNS change, and you can set the TTL to one day again.

Now, obviously, I do not know how the DNS change was made, but judging from the reactions of the board, it seems that for about a day, people had problems with name resolving. Which seems to suggest a change to a record with a TTL of a day was made.

WellyWales: And now?

"Snoopy": Yes! but mine shows the total number of games I have to play, not the total number of games with that person

"Snoopy": Yeah, lukulus has been talking about something like that.

wow nice improvement the number of games against friends online

Pioneer54: Looks like paths to some images are still hard coded in the source. It will be easily fixed.

The captured pieces outside the board are not showing up, although the rest of the displays are normal. But the lack of seeing what is captured is making it difficult to select moves, especially in Loop chess.

Andersp: No, I did not, my friend. I was only discussing with MadMonkey and only people who feel guilty in any way would take that unobtrusive remark as a personal attack. Anyway, it's very interesting and amusing to observe a mentality of certain people, especially their reactions to certain words. Good thing is that normal users can easily recognize who is trying to make problems just for a sake of making problems. It saves a lot of explanations.

Andersp: "certain user here"....I'm one of them...Ive always been told to stand up in what you believe in and be outspoken about same.

TarantinoFanI Still cant get into the "info" page, but then It might only be for those with a big cheque in one hand and a brown nose in the other (so to speak)

TarantinoFan: for sure - I have had issues that have not been addressed yet but still live in hope that they will be soon. It is good to know there are others out there and that I am not alone.

ruby2shoes: so does this put us in the "certain users" category with the inference that we are unintelligent???

TarantinoFan: and so say all of us - brilliantly put!

Isn't this great. He who has the power, posts a blog to let us know what is going on and maybe try to make his paying customers feel a little better about what is being done with their money but no-one can access that explanation because it has gone down too! I know it's there because I can see a tantalizing little bit of it at the top of my main page but I can't access it to see if it really will calm my worries about whether this site is going to be stable and usable for the future. Lately this site really has been like

I'm getting a headache!!!

redfrog: My thoughts exactly!

redfrog: , well hopefully, Google should be ok most the time, thats why i picked it really

Yours is there, i just replied to it lol
The BrainRook and .info sites are still down, well they were 5 mins ago
After you join, you have to wait to post, that way it will only be BrainKing members there, only take couple of ticks though

MadMonkey: I ahave joined and posted twice but cant see where my posts have gone.......still only your 2 post are able to be seen, but there appears to be about 4 members....hasnt anybody else posted?