A quick(ish) update on the past week of work at the collective (I'm in a writing mood rather than coding on a sunday :)
* Casey has been staying up late and creating more robust way to ensure CS code stays in good shape by providing a way to have another set of eyeballs on the code before pushing it on the live site, along with improving the code distribution system and kicked the ass on some major irritating bugs (Atlanta, anyone ;) as well as many minor ones. And staying on top of his emails in many many CS organizational issues (hereonafter mentioned as Leadership stuff :)
* Chris has been moderating Volunteer agreement group and coordinating our efforts (as well as being approachable for some feedback) to keep the ball rolling (Chris says he's been working on awesomeness!), plus the leadership stuff
* Jim has been busy with the backstage stuff of verifications and member services along with the leadership stuff
* Weston left Tuesday morning and we all miss him... the coding guidelines are now in good shape thanks to him :)
* Maija came by for a couple of days to see us all in action, attach faces to emails and profiles, and we hope to see her back in action after her trip is over!
* Walter has been working on a day job (how he does it, I don't know, with people coding all around him at all hours!) but has been active in providing us feedback on more efficient methods for working with the database (which I personally think is excellent as the occasional reminders and more education for application developers would help to ensure site stays up during the busy summer travel months)
* I've been busy with coding the ambassador applications software for the ambassador management team, so more flags can be distributed faster than is possible under the current system (note: I'm just helping them by creating the tool, not involved in the process myself). After an in-house "go for it" I started a brainstorm about providing secondary addresses on the site (a genuinely awaited feature that just hasn't been implemented yet) - more to come soon after some technical solution options are discussed within the tech team. I've also kept an eye on the groups as usual and helped out a bit here and there. And attempting to act as (sometimes) reasonable "community voice" within the house....
* Duke is not one of the coders but has been very gracious in allowing our presence at his house. He's working for some video tutorials for CS - yay for that :) along with ensuring good vibes in the house
* Tiina has been an excellent hostess for us all, making sure we're all well fed with the (infamous) Finnish salmiakki, reindeer meat, smashed potatoes, and dragging us out of the house every once in a while :)
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Monday, July 9, 2007
Moikka!
(Moikka = Hi in Finnish!)
Hmmm.. not quite sure what to say so I'm just going to say it :)
I arrived to CSC Rotterdam today, after quite a few weeks on the road, meeting excellent folks on 3 continents and almost without having to resort to a hostel (in fact, a month in the US I didn't even need to have a backup plan due to meeting many of my long-time online CS connections). This, if anything was a motivation-booster to keep working on the site to the best of my abilities despite not always seeing face to face with how some things have been handled.
Enough about the fun stuff, I did come here for a reason after all - some projects I will most probably be working on for the next few weeks:
(DISCLAIMER: these are the initial thoughts, subject to change due to re-priorization at some point)
* On-site software for ambassador applications (should make it much faster to go through and approve the applications, yay!)
* Secondary address for folks who are verified and have a second home, or live more nomadic lives. This is necessary for at least Nomadic Ambassadors who are SUPPOSED to be on the road most of the time, and will need more localized support for handling their tasks, and a good to have for anyone on an extended trip with intermittent periods of sticking by in one place
(I should know, been there, done that, and would like to remain Finnish even though wandering somewhere far off :)
* Upgrading tools for people who greet new members
* More information about who's who in developers' group
* Misc tiny bits on the site that need coding
* Misc bug fixes
Hmmm.. not quite sure what to say so I'm just going to say it :)
I arrived to CSC Rotterdam today, after quite a few weeks on the road, meeting excellent folks on 3 continents and almost without having to resort to a hostel (in fact, a month in the US I didn't even need to have a backup plan due to meeting many of my long-time online CS connections). This, if anything was a motivation-booster to keep working on the site to the best of my abilities despite not always seeing face to face with how some things have been handled.
Enough about the fun stuff, I did come here for a reason after all - some projects I will most probably be working on for the next few weeks:
(DISCLAIMER: these are the initial thoughts, subject to change due to re-priorization at some point)
* On-site software for ambassador applications (should make it much faster to go through and approve the applications, yay!)
* Secondary address for folks who are verified and have a second home, or live more nomadic lives. This is necessary for at least Nomadic Ambassadors who are SUPPOSED to be on the road most of the time, and will need more localized support for handling their tasks, and a good to have for anyone on an extended trip with intermittent periods of sticking by in one place
(I should know, been there, done that, and would like to remain Finnish even though wandering somewhere far off :)
* Upgrading tools for people who greet new members
* More information about who's who in developers' group
* Misc tiny bits on the site that need coding
* Misc bug fixes
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Long time, no see
Hey all,
sorry for keeping you in the dark for such a long time. I will try to update a little more often, since I feel really bad about slacking :(
So, what has been going on in the past week?
Naz: He finished the new groups look and we released it. The release process has not been as flawless as we would liked it to have been, but this just showed us that we really need to work on it :) The layout itself has improved a lot, and in the last few days Naz also reintroduced the chronological view that was not released earlier. He is currently working on reintroducing all the other features that went MIA during the first release, so stay tuned while they reappear.
Unfortunately, Naz left the collective on friday. We begged him to stay and it was really hard for him to go. I would hereby like to thank him so much for all the incredible work he has done for us, and the good times we had with him in our group!
Weston: now officially dubbed "Bug MasterBlaster 5000" by Jim, Weston has continued to solve a whole bunch of bugs. He is also taking the lead in professionalising our processes as he has soem good professional experience with these kinds of things. I think we're going to have to physically force him to stay here soon :(
Casey: Was working on getting the sysadmin team ready so he could actually go to switzerland for the weekend. Except for some minor glitches that would have happened otherwise as well, we made it through the weekend thanks to our amazing sysadmins Diederik and Nico! Furthermore, Casey has been fixing some bugs and of course he is always busy with his regular cs-work being an admin and a founder and all.
He went to Switzerland to see his girlfriend this weekend and is now back with us with refreshed energy, so we are preparing to see him work 22 hours a day again ;)
Jim: while working on more verifications stuff and admin thingies, Jim and me cleaned out the mantis together. We're about halfway through by now, and are hoping to finish "the big sweep" by the end of the week.
Chris has also been solving some bugs as well as managing the tech team and communicating with the leadership team. He has also been working on creating some long term goal docs and some other stuff.
I myself have been extremely busy with work again, and all the time I have left goes to cleaning out mantis :)
So much for this update, whoever is reading this!
sorry for keeping you in the dark for such a long time. I will try to update a little more often, since I feel really bad about slacking :(
So, what has been going on in the past week?
Naz: He finished the new groups look and we released it. The release process has not been as flawless as we would liked it to have been, but this just showed us that we really need to work on it :) The layout itself has improved a lot, and in the last few days Naz also reintroduced the chronological view that was not released earlier. He is currently working on reintroducing all the other features that went MIA during the first release, so stay tuned while they reappear.
Unfortunately, Naz left the collective on friday. We begged him to stay and it was really hard for him to go. I would hereby like to thank him so much for all the incredible work he has done for us, and the good times we had with him in our group!
Weston: now officially dubbed "Bug MasterBlaster 5000" by Jim, Weston has continued to solve a whole bunch of bugs. He is also taking the lead in professionalising our processes as he has soem good professional experience with these kinds of things. I think we're going to have to physically force him to stay here soon :(
Casey: Was working on getting the sysadmin team ready so he could actually go to switzerland for the weekend. Except for some minor glitches that would have happened otherwise as well, we made it through the weekend thanks to our amazing sysadmins Diederik and Nico! Furthermore, Casey has been fixing some bugs and of course he is always busy with his regular cs-work being an admin and a founder and all.
He went to Switzerland to see his girlfriend this weekend and is now back with us with refreshed energy, so we are preparing to see him work 22 hours a day again ;)
Jim: while working on more verifications stuff and admin thingies, Jim and me cleaned out the mantis together. We're about halfway through by now, and are hoping to finish "the big sweep" by the end of the week.
Chris has also been solving some bugs as well as managing the tech team and communicating with the leadership team. He has also been working on creating some long term goal docs and some other stuff.
I myself have been extremely busy with work again, and all the time I have left goes to cleaning out mantis :)
So much for this update, whoever is reading this!
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Another day in the life of RCSC
Hello all,
since you are all enjoying the (not so) daily updates so much judging from the whopping amount of 7 comments, here's another one to let you know what's up.
Chris was taken out to dinner by Gerard tonight, and the rest of us stayed in and watched a movie. Right now the night session is starting (thank god for power drinks :) ) and since I'm not working tomorrow, I can finally stay up and get some stuff done as well.
More later!
since you are all enjoying the (not so) daily updates so much judging from the whopping amount of 7 comments, here's another one to let you know what's up.
- Jim has been working on his usual verifications and admin stuff, and also has been busy drafting various policies.
- Our aussie developer Naz has been working on the new groups functionality and performance improvements for them.
- Weston has been fixing various bugs, writing up a first draft of coding standards and going around like crazy coding stuff (more in the New Feature Playground)
- Casey was working on his usual leadership stuff, some sysadmin things and new features like the spelling checker and documenting the existing code.
- Chris was also working on his LT stuff besides working on the new groups design.
Chris was taken out to dinner by Gerard tonight, and the rest of us stayed in and watched a movie. Right now the night session is starting (thank god for power drinks :) ) and since I'm not working tomorrow, I can finally stay up and get some stuff done as well.
More later!
Sunday, June 24, 2007
72 hour Geek-a-thon
How many computers does a geek use if a geek could use computers?
- Casey arrived Wednesday and immediately got to work on:
-- coding several updates to the site:
-- Birthdays are now captured
-- A Google Map feature that allows users to specify their location is in beta
-- fixed bug related to password retrieval
-- started a CentOS 5 install on 7 servers
-- helped install a load balancer for www3, 4 and 5
-- worked getting Naz up to speed on CS code - Chris worked on building the tech team by writing up the "Tech Priorities" for the next 3 months, increasing membership in China, brainstorming improved groups communication and sliding scale verification updates.
- Duke continued his research to find appropriate costs for Sliding Scale verification.
- Jim continued his work on the current verification system, CUQ updates, and improved meetings brainstorming.
- Naz rewrote the database schema in PostGreSQL, hopefully convincing others that it's not as big of a change as some people believe.
- Weston spent the week finishing some details on the time/date changes and got the Rotterdam Test Server up and running again with a cronjob that automatically updates the CouchSurfing Website running on it from the SVN HEAD revision.
- Walter just tried to stay up to date on all collective related things while he spent the weekend with his "normie"-friends. He also met up with some fellow CS-ers (amongst which Thomas, ex-CS-dev) on Thursday in Antwerp when he was there for work.
The uber geek-a-thon started Friday and didn't end until ..... you won't believe it ... Sunday afternoon!
- Dinner Friday, then tech meeting
- After the tech meeting Diederik, Nicco and Andreas stayed here and had a couple of beers while having a lot of good (read: geeky) discussions about tech stuff related to CS. Diederik finally went home in the early morning, while Nicco and Andreas stayed the night (almost without sleeping)
- On saturday, a lot of hard work was done, after which Nicco and Andreas decided to spend another night :) Finally on Sunday morning Nicco was forced home by a friend he had to meet.
- Wednesday - soccer in the park, an amazing time where we created an experience where everyone would be
- Friday - dinner with the the local sys admins (geekdom begins)
- Saturday - Chris spent the weekend in Amsterdam
- Sunday - Naz, Tiina and Walter spent the day at ParkPop in Den Haag
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Honey, we're home!
So the Lords of the house are back from London (It was awesome! Marillion is a cool band, although their fans are freaks ;) ). We arrived back home just in time to see the techs kick the last strippers out ;)
So, what has been happening around the house? I see Chris has kept you guys up to date. Only thing I have to add is that Aldo came around last Thursday dropping off some stuff and driving the techs around Rotterdam for a while. Aldo rocks!
The tech stuff
So, what has been happening around the house? I see Chris has kept you guys up to date. Only thing I have to add is that Aldo came around last Thursday dropping off some stuff and driving the techs around Rotterdam for a while. Aldo rocks!
The tech stuff
- Weston has finished work on a long wanted feature: personalized date/time formats! Now you can finally adjust your date-time preferences in your profile so us Europeans won't get confused anymore. He also fixed the "update picture caption" bug.
- Jim has been working on verifications stuff some more and has been fixing some other small things besides of course his ongoing admin effort.
- Chris has been doing managerial stuff and continues to work on sliding scale verifications implementation. Also he has been helping Jim with the content side of the verifications.
- Naz has continued to expand his functionality map and is working on documenting existing functionality and what is needed for them from a coding perspective.
- Tiina and me have been working all day and Duke has been working on the sliding scale verification data and his usual admin stuff.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
A few days of rest ... kinda
The Current Situation
Considering we have six people in a space made for .... two, there has been a bit of adjustment to get used to the don't-leave-your-underwear-on-my-bed and did-you-flush-or-just-think-about-flushing? comments. On Thursday, Duke, Tiina and Walter escaped to London, thus allowing Jim, Weston, Naz and Chris some time to get some work done. If anyone has some extra space in Rotterdam, email us please.
So what are we doing?
It's not all work and no play
Chris
Considering we have six people in a space made for .... two, there has been a bit of adjustment to get used to the don't-leave-your-underwear-on-my-bed and did-you-flush-or-just-think-about-flushing? comments. On Thursday, Duke, Tiina and Walter escaped to London, thus allowing Jim, Weston, Naz and Chris some time to get some work done. If anyone has some extra space in Rotterdam, email us please.
So what are we doing?
- Jim has been constantly improving verifications and admin tools.
- Chris is implementing Sliding scale verifications with the help of research from Duke and Casey.
- Weston is continuing his updates to the current way date and time are displayed. He hopes to allow all users to display time in a way that is natural and culturally respectful.
- Naz arrived yesterday(Saturday) and has already created a map of all current site functionality in hopes of better understanding the code, and implementing improvements.
- Walter, Tiina and Duke have been traveling for the weekend to London.
It's not all work and no play
- Tuesday night we went to the weekly Rotterdam meeting. We had a few newcomers like Marjolijn that went ahead and signed up after the meeting.
- Wednesday a big group of us woke up at 9am and headed to Kinderdijk, an area of Netherlands that is full of windmills. Thanks to Femke for showing us around!
- Thursday night, Aldo stopped over and took Jim, Weston and Chris on a little city tour complete with a taste of Heineken, the Gay Palace, a kebab shop and 3 boxes full of food from Aldi. Thanks ALDO we now have fresh bread each day!
- Friday, after a day of programing universal date updates, verification research and tech team coordinating, Jim, Weston and Chris took a quick train to Den Haag and spent the night with Dre and Monique watching live music and dancing.
- Saturday, Weston went to Amsterdam while Jim, Chris, and Naz talked about travel and life.
Chris
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