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Super Challenge bot

Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2017 12:06 pm
by emk
rdearman tells me that the Super Challenge bot has stopped running. (I can't find the thread discussing this, so I'm starting a new thread.)

The Super Challenge bot has two main pieces:

  1. The database storing everybody's progress. This has already been moved to the same server as the new forum, if I understand rdearman correctly.
  2. The actual bot code. This was still living on rdearman's old server, and it sounds like they're messing with him again.
I've just scheduled a chunk of time this Sunday to help get the Super Challenge bot fully migrated to the new server, where it should just continue to run for a good long time. In fact, my two goals for Sunday are: (1) help rdearman migrate the bot, and (2) actually get my kayak in the water for the first time this summer. I've been so busy getting in shape that I haven't had time to do any of the more casual sports that I enjoy. :(

Anyway, one way or another, we do hope to get the bot back online soon.

Re: Super Challenge bot

Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2017 7:44 pm
by MamaPata
emk wrote:. this Sunday to help get the Super Challenge bot fully migrated to the new server, where it should just continue to run for a good long time. In fact, my two goals for Sunday are: (1) help rdearman migrate the bot, and (2) actually get my kayak in the water for the first time this summer. I've been so busy getting in shape that I haven't had time to do any of the more casual sports that I enjoy. :(

Anyway, one way or another, we do hope to get the bot back online soon.


Thanks for updating us - I know everyone is really grateful for the work you guys do! That said, get your kayak in the water! We can wait, the summer might not!

Re: Super Challenge bot

Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2017 10:39 pm
by Mista
Two great goals - good luck with both! :)

Re: Super Challenge bot

Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2017 3:45 pm
by emk
Thank you for the kind words, everybody! rdearman and I have been busily working on the Super Challenge bot this morning, and it's mostly migrated. rdearman is just doing some final tweaking and tuning and he'll announce when it's ready.

For the geeks in the audience, you can find all our work in the superchallengebot and terraform repositories on GitHub. The code running on the site is automatically built from those repositories, and is deployed to the server by clicking on an "Approve" button.

When rdearman is done, he'll let you know how to access the new subdomain name (and we'll set up a redirect from the old site once everything works).

And now, I'm going to go find all my kayak parts because I still have over four hours of kayaking time left and the sun is out. :D Yay!

Re: Super Challenge bot

Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2017 6:47 pm
by rdearman
The SC website has moved to: https://super-challenge.language-learners.org/ and you can tweet your stats now. You must resend anything within last 48 hours.

I have tweeted this also. If you see any problems post here.

Re: Super Challenge bot

Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2017 8:42 pm
by emk
Also, the kayaking got done! But I've apparently forgotten (again) how to roll. And I should take an hour to brush up on my French whitewater vocabulary using this great translation of William Nealy's Kayak.

It's like, I'm an actual grown-up, and if I want to schedule a weekend on one of those stunning rivers in Quebec, I could totally do that with a bit of planning and budgeting. Hmm. Always a good excuse to use my French if I just look for one. :-)

Re: Super Challenge bot

Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2017 10:40 pm
by Serpent
Thank you!
What about the "special" characters? Do you have a backup that we can use to make edits to older tweets?

Re: Super Challenge bot

Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2017 11:19 pm
by emk
Serpent wrote:Thank you!
What about the "special" characters? Do you have a backup that we can use to make edits to older tweets?

I know how to fix the special characters, but it only works right immediately after the initial import (and I did this for an earlier import). The problem is that the original database was configured to use Latin 1, I believe, but it actually held UTF-8 characters encoded as bytes which were stored as if they were Latin-1 characters, causing all sorts of mischief. (The details are somewhere in the commit comments for our phpbb repo if somebody wants to know more.)

But if people have already added new titles that render normally, it's extremely time consuming to only fix the old titles without breaking the new ones.

Could somebody who has a spare moment please find examples of titles which are corrupted, and others which render correctly (if any), so that I can see the extent of the problem? Thank you!

Re: Super Challenge bot

Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 10:46 am
by Serpent
https://super-challenge.language-learne ... serpent849
The Slavic ones were affected the most, but note also how some items have nothing but a language tag left ("sv: ", "es: " - I never actually tweet like that, though in the Spanish example I do remember which book it was)

edit: it does render correctly starting from May 27, but that's only the last half a year of the challenge :cry:
unless there's a connection to the security issues i kinda don't understand why this had to be done so late in the challenge, and couldn't be put off until the next one began :?

Re: Super Challenge bot

Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 6:03 pm
by solanderdog
rdearman wrote:
I have tweeted this also. If you see any problems post here.


It's probably due to my not knowing what I'm doing, but I can't seem to get it to add any books. I added three films, that I watched recently, but every time I try to add a book it tells me, "You don't seem to be studying Tibetan. Register first using the #register tag!" I don't get it.

I tried all sorts of things, including:

@langchallenge I just finished reading a #fr #book with 588 pages.

@langchallenge I just finished reading a book in French with 558 pages. It was called "Soul Breakers" and don't recommend it.

@langchallenge I just finished reading a book with 558 pages. It was called "Soul Breakers" and don't recommend it.

@langchallenge I just read a #book in #french. It was called "Soul Breakers"

It always tells me that I'm not studying Tibetan.