Nick Moline's Blog

2011 on Nick.pro

2012-01-11T00:24:10Z

Even though my blog is self hosted, I like many wordpress users use wordpress.com stats from the Jetpack plugin.

This year, the great people at WordPress.com decided to create some really great looking Annual Reports for blogs using wordpress.com stats.

In 2011 I wrote only 12 posts, which is really pathetic, but nowhere near as bad as 2010 where I posted a whopping 3 posts. I resolve in 2012 to write more often.

My most popular post of the year? Pottermore Cheats: Earning more house points through failure then success in potion making where I outlined the flaws evident in the Potions system on Pottermore, which have since been fixed as I mentioned in my second most popular post of the year.

Check out Jetpack.me’s full 2011 year in blogging on nick.pro report.

The Geek’s Night Before Christmas

2011-12-25T05:34:32Z

Last night I was trying to think about where to put my stocking, and when it dawned on me to put it on the shelf above the TV, it inspired me to write this parody. I hope you enjoy it.

Twas the Night before Christmas, and in the Geek’s House
The only thing stirring was the Geek’s mouse

The stocking was hung by the Plasma with care,
In hopes that UPS soon would be there;

He was busy coding, no time for bed
Visions of source code, danced through his head

Wearing a thinkgeek t-shirt, and a Tux cap,
He tracked Santa Claus on the Google Earth App

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
He clicked straight to Twitter to research the matter.

News site and blog he clicked like a flash,
When nothing he found, to the front door he dashed.

When, what to his wondering eyes should appear
but a big brown truck, it was finally here!

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
A UPS man, did you think St. Nick?

More rapid than eagles, his charges they came,
The Geek whistled, and shouted, and called them by name

From Amazon, eBay, ThinkGeek and Zappos,
Great gifts bought online, he wondered who sent those.

The man brought them out and stacked them up high
So many presents, they reached to the sky.

He had a broad face, and a little round belly
That shook when he laugh’d, like a bowl full of jelly

When finally done with stacking straight as a line
he brought out a clipboard and pen and said, “Sign”

Then placing one finger aside of his nose,
The man gave a nod and into the truck he rose

He turned his key, and drove down the lane
The geek looked down at brown packages plain

He opened the first, and smiled when inside
An iPod from his mother, wrapping paper did hide

The second he found, was a Blu-Ray from a friend
Such generosity, his heart it did mend

Boxes and boxes, each one he did ope’.
Each tech gift he found him with joy and hope

My story is done, to me it did Psych
A Geeky Christmas to all, if you enjoyed it click

No related posts.

Thank you Veterans

2011-11-12T06:24:21Z

This Veteran’s Day, I would like to honor family members who have served this country.

I would like to honor my Father, Richard V. Moline III, who served this country in the US Navy before I was born.

I would like to honor my Sister in Law, Betina Garcia, who currently serves this country as an Army Corporal.

I would like to honor the memory my Uncle, James Carr, who like my father, also served in the U.S. Navy.

I would like to honor the memory of wife’s Grandfather, Therman Branning, who served in World War 2, including as a member of the U.S. Army Cleanup Crew after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I would like to honor my Uncle Herman Jones, who recently returned from Iraq where he was a member of the team training Iraqi Police Officers

I also would like to honor my friends who have served this country,

I would like to honor John Savage, who I worked with at GetOnTheAir, who served as an Army Ranger in Iraq.

I honor my old school friend Josh Brown who I know currently serves this country, though I don’t know with which branch of the military.

I know there are many more to honor who have served or are serving, and I’m very sorry if I forgot you in this post. I am very proud of everyone who has served this country. God bless all of you.

Thank you to everyone who served in the U.S. Military, not just those I’ve listed here, but every single man and woman who has put on a uniform. I owe my safety and security in this country to the sacrifice you’ve given to us.

No related posts.

My Last Binary Day (probably) #NerdNewYear

2012-01-11T06:36:20Z

Happy Binary Day

So in addition to being Veteran’s Day, today, November 11, 2011, happens to be the last “Binary Day” I am ever likely to live through. There have been 36 so-called “Binary Days” in the last 11 years (9 each in 2000, 2001, 2010 and 2011), where all the days of the date (except the century) consist of only the digits 0 and 1. As a computer programmer, I can’t help but be tickled by days that appear to be in binary.

Today however, the 6 digit binary calendar hits its max at 11/11/11 and so there will not be another binary day (at all) until January 1, 2100 (which could be represented as 01/01/100 for that extra binary digit goodness). As this is over 88 years away, if I manage to live to it, I will be 117 years old, which isn’t very likely.

I say that makes this day worth remembering. Some are calling it #NerdNewYear (the hash tag makes it extra nerdy), in Redwood City, there’s a big block party currently counting down the seconds till 11/11/11 11:11:11 pm. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to the party tonight, but I wish all my fellow Hackers and other Nerds a great time at the party.

Happy Binary Day Everyone, Enjoy it, it will probably be your last.

No related posts.

On the Difficulty of Pottermore House Cup Competitions

2011-09-18T22:03:20Z

My last 2 posts were both about cheats on earning and keeping House Points on Pottermore.com. Continuing that series, I thought I would write a little bit on task based point competitions.

“Now, as I understand it, the house cup here needs awarding, and the points stand thus…”

4th Place	Hufflepuff	39,932 points
3rd Place	Gryffindor	42,056 points
2nd Place	Ravenclaw	44,985 points
1st Place	Slytherin	45,004 points

The first problem with the house point championship is in just a month we are dealing with point values in the tens of thousands, when in the books the house cup championship is only in the hundreds after an entire year. Granted, there’s just under 400,000 “students” on Pottermore, and at best estimates, Hogwarts has at most a thousand (according to a Scholastic Chat with J.K. Rowling in 2000), and more realistically approximately 280 students (based mathematically on the assumption of more or less 10 students per year per house, based on the 40 students in Harry’s Year). But even with the enormous population growth at Hogwarts since 1998 (I guess the wizarding world is producing a lot more magical children now that the Dark Lord is gone, if there are 400,000 students at Hogwarts), house points at Hogwarts are far more likely to normalize out at far lower levels then 40k in a month.

“now that’s interesting…. So where shall I put you.”

Gryffindor	96,959	24.996%
Ravenclaw	97,283	25.079%
Hufflepuff	97,417	25.114%
Slytherin	96,240	24.810%
Total	387,899

Pottermore is surprisingly balanced actually for the houses actually, considering house selection is supposedly based only on the results of the Hat Quiz, and not on how full the houses are. I am surprised that the number of students are more or less equal. 97,417 members in the most populous house (Hufflepuff) and 96,240 in the least populous house (surprisingly, to me anyway, Slytherin house), a difference of only 1,177 people, or just 0.3% of the total. The houses have more or less the same number of people.

Interesting to note that the house with the most students actually has the lowest number of points, and the house with the fewest students is currently winning. I think this has something to do with the fact that Catastrophically failing at brewing potions (which annoying sometimes happens even if you follow all of the instructions to the letter) loses you 5 house points, while the easiest potion successfully brewing can only earn 3 house points. Couple with that the fact that the cheat I mentioned a couple weeks ago no longer works for earning house points quickly, and I would expect to see the number of house points actually even out or even start dropping as more people fail then succeed.

“Yes, Yes, well done, Slytherin,” said Dumbledore. “However, recent events must be taken into account.”

I have a great deal of sympathy for the team developing Pottermore as they attempt to keep the house cup fair. I have some experience at doing the same thing in that I have developed a similar House Cup championship for the HogwartsLive.com text based Role Playing Game. On HL, I, like I imagine TH_NK, found it very difficult to come up with an algorithm that more or less gives every house an equal shot at winning the house cup.

The difficulty I found was in creating a system that rewards activity, but is not prone to “gaming the system” which is hard when points are generated automatically.

The staff of HL debated back and forth on if automated house points should work and how they should work for a long time, many believe that house points should only be given and taken by the staff, others think that staff should be unable to give or take house points as that is unfair to people who don’t chat.

I’m not sure we ever got it right, and I’m not sure Pottermore will ever get it right either, but I sympathize with the team and the enormous task they have. The fact that the house cup is so close overall and has changed hands several times in recent weeks, is a testament to the fact that they are doing their best.

Pottermore Cheats Update: Potions are Better now, but the site still has a way to go

2011-09-14T07:36:46Z

I don’t know if the people from TH_NK read my post about cheating on Pottermore by purposeful failing at potion making, or one of the many other online forums posting about the issue, but a few days after my post went live, they posted on the Pottermore Insider blog that potions are being tweaked.

Today *Sara* Moton commented on my previous post to say that they stopped giving a point for failing. I have logged in tonight to test it and indeed, it is true. TH_NK has fixed this logic flaw, and it’s great.

Owl from Pottermore saying "No point for you!"

Apparently there was another way of cheating with potions that I never tried cause I presumed they wouldn’t base things on system clock. In what some are calling the “time turner” cheat of potion brewing, you can simply set your system clock ahead and return to the potion page, and skip the lengthy waiting/brewing period.

I can’t personally verify that this was true, but it didn’t work for me tonight, so if it was, TH_NK has fixed this as well.

There is another form of cheating with potion making, that is not fully fixed yet. SeekerRose184 talks on her blog about people purposely failing in the catastrophic way in order to purposely lose points. The goal, nothing short of sabotage. While the situation is being made better by apparently adding a bottom cap on personal house points of 0, it is clearly not a fix, and I’m not sure what they can do to stop this sort of sabotage.

Still, it is great to see TH_NK working to make Pottermore a better and cheat free place. In addition to removing the free ride points, they’ve also finally varied the points on potion making so that harder potions are now worth more points.

I am still enjoying the site and am looking forward to seeing the site continue to grow as October approaches, and beyond.

I want to give an extra thanks to Spike and Guest who both let me know in comments on my previous post that there is in fact a way to send a message to the developers other then posting on my blog. It turns out, in the Other section of the Help on Pottermore.com, if you open up the What’s next? FAQ entry, there is a little link titled “Need more help?” If you click this link (sorry it’s a javascript link so I can’t direct link it for you), you are given a small form that allows you to send a message to the developers. Thanks Spike and Guest for letting me know about this.

Pottermore Cheats: Earning more house points through failure then success in potion making

2011-09-14T07:40:00Z

I’m going to preface what I’m going to say below with the statement that I am not putting this post up as an invitation to cheat on pottermore. I would have sent this message privately to the Pottermore developers, however I could find no place on pottermore.com, insider.pottermore.com, @pottermore or pottermore on facebook where I could send a message to the devs. The closest I could find was the Beta Feedback button, which presents a feedback form that lets you rank a page on a scale of how much you like it, but it has no comment field, no way to introduce a comment for the devs.

My hope is that by posting this publicly on my blog, the Pottermore devs will find this post and fix the issue (and perhaps add a method of commenting privately to the devs).

So the problem with Potionmaking in Pottermore is that you can earn far more house points from failure as you can from success, at least in a given time frame.

If you successfully brew a potion, you earn 5 house points, but successfully brewing a potion takes a minimum of 85 minutes (different potions take longer, 80 seems to be the minimum wait time between the 2 steps and even if you are fast your additional time of actually doing the steps will take you an extra 5 minutes). While a potion is brewing for the 80 minutes, you cannot brew any other potions (even if you own multiple cauldrons), you simply have to wait out the 80 minutes and then come back.

If you fail to brew a potion, you earn 1 house point

If you fail to brew a potion, you still earn 1 house point, as soon as you get into the potion making session, wave your wand, you’ll “fail” to make the potion, but will still be awarded 1 house point, but this takes a minute (or less). If you take 85 minutes of doing one “attempt” per minute, you will earn 85 house points, 17 times as many points as you could possibly earn in that same amount of time by brewing the potion correctly.

Granted, you will eat through the potion ingredients pretty quickly going about it this way, but if you stick to the “cheap” potions, that is to say the potions that don’t involve expensive ingredients like bezoars, your hundreds of galleons given to you by pottermore will last you for quite a few house points.

I know many other people have figured out this simple realization that you can earn more points through failure then you can from success, but what isn’t clear is if the Pottermore devs are aware of it yet, my hope is that if they aren’t, that this post will clue them in that the potion making process really needs some serious thought. As it is, there is next to no incentive (other then acquiring a vial of potion) to actually going through the lengthy process to create the potion successfully.

Rachel Beckwith’s Amazing Gift

2011-08-19T19:18:43Z

For her 9th birthday, Rachel Beckwith asked people to donate to charity:water rather then give her presents. Sadly when her birthday arrived she was $80 short of her goal of raising just $300 for charity:water.

A month after her birthday she died in a car crash, in the month since her death, donations on her page have reached $1.1 million for bringing water to children in Africa.

Today, August 19th, is World Humanitarian Day 2011, and I found out Rachel’s Story on an article on Mashable of 12 incredible internat activists who made a difference.

I don’t often write pieces about charity here on my blog, because I figure people won’t read them, but Rachel’s story touched my heart. When setting up her donation page she wrote this:

On June 12th 2011, I’m turning 9. I found out that millions of people don’t live to see their 5th birthday. And why? Because they didn’t have access to clean, safe water so I’m celebrating my birthday like never before. I’m asking from everyone I know to donate to my campaign instead of gifts for my birthday. Every penny of the money raised will go directly to fund freshwater projects in developing nations. Even better, every dollar is “proved” when the projects are complete, and photos and GPS coordinates are posted using Google Earth. My goal is to raise $300 by my birthday, June 12, 2011. Please consider helping me.
Thank you so much!!!

As I said, she didn’t reach her goal before her birthday. $300 would have been enough to give clean water to 15 people. After her untimely death she has raised enough to provide clean water to nearly 60,000 people.

Let’s honor the memory of this extraordinary child by helping her raise even more, her $1.1 million will go far, $2 million will go even farther. Visit her donation page to help out.

No related posts.

Saved Chrome Profiles Feature moves to Beta Build

2011-08-12T23:10:00Z

Ever since the Profiles feature was first announced in the canary build I was excited, but it was limited (biggest limitation, these profiles weren’t saved) and the canary build was very unstable at the time. Eventually that early version moved into later builds, but the canary build updated further to allow saving those profiles for later use (making switching between different identities easy).

It would seem that the updated profiles (with the profile icon and saving the profiles for later) have now moved into the beta build, which I use on a day to day basis. I am really excited about this feature as I routinely have to use multiple accounts on various website throughout the day and it’s annoying to constantly have to sign out and sign back in to use it. This is especially true on google.com now that Google Apps for Domains accounts are full fledged google accounts. I have my company email account, my personal email account, and still another shared company account we use for certain things, and switching is quite annoying, especially if I forget which account I’m in.

Want to post to lists in Facebook like you can post to a Circle in Google+? You can!

2011-07-07T18:52:30Z

So I really like Google+ and happily post away to my Google+ Profile. Unfortunately not everybody has access to G+ yet. Facebook still is king of the ring, but I’ve long wanted to do what Google+ does natively, which is to say specify who should see my posts based on groupings.

It turns out, facebook does have this feature, but it only works from the Facebook Website (not from the mobile apps or through the API) and it’s a lot more kludgy to use then it is in Google+. Step 1) Write your post in the normal “What’s on your mind?” box as usual, but don’t click Share yet.

Step 2) Instead of clicking the Share button, click the little lock next to it bringing up a drop down of Privacy options. Select Customize from this dropdown.

Step 3) In the “These people:” drop down, select “Specific People…” and in the text box that pops up, begin typing the name of the facebook list you want to share with.

Step 4) Click on Save Setting, and then click on the Share button and your post will go only to the specific list(s) you selected, just like Google+ (just more time consuming)