User:Aperfectring/Notification

Notification Program

This page is to describe the implementation and testing of the notification program. For discussion, please use the Talk page. Credit goes to Robyn on the original idea.

Current Implementation

The current implementation is based off of the tenths digit of the latitude and longitude for the area(s) notification should be generated for. This is your section ID. Take the tenths digit of the latitude, multiply it by ten, and add the tenths digit of the longitude.

e.g. If your coordinates were 26.026599°, -80.196111° then your "notify me" number would be 01. With 26.324963°, -80.845496° it would be 38.

You can also use this table as a reference. The coordinates for W-30 will all notify the same section ID on the same day, and the coordinates for non-W-30 will notify another (possibly different than W-30) section ID. The table is not intended to be placed on top of a graticule and give a reference for the coordinates. If you have any confusion on how to determine your section IDs, contact me.

	Long	*.9*	*.8*	*.7*	*.6*	*.5*	*.4*	*.3*	*.2*	*.1*	*.0*
Lat
*.9*		99	98	97	96	95	94	93	92	91	90
*.8*		89	88	87	86	85	84	83	82	81	80
*.7*		79	78	77	76	75	74	73	72	71	70
*.6*		69	68	67	66	65	64	63	62	61	60
*.5*		59	58	57	56	55	54	53	52	51	50
*.4*		49	48	47	46	45	44	43	42	41	40
*.3*		39	38	37	36	35	34	33	32	31	30
*.2*		29	28	27	26	25	24	23	22	21	20
*.1*		19	18	17	16	15	14	13	12	11	10
*.0*		09	08	07	06	05	04	03	02	01	00

Testing Effort

Notifications should go out at about 11 AM US Eastern Time (following US observance of Daylight Savings). This means notification should go out about 1.5 hours after the DOW is available.

There was a few day downtime from Nov. 20-22 US time. The system should be back up and going. --aperfectring 05:41, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Rules for participation

All of these rules are not hard and fast laws, but more of I would really appreciate you to follow them.

• Notify me (email or IRC) if you see any notification problems. These include:
  • Getting a whole lot more information in your e-mail than what is listed below.
  • Getting a notification when the coordinates don't match your section ID.
  • Not getting a notification when the coordinates do match your section ID.
  • The coordinates in the e-mail do not match the actual coordinates for the day.
• Make suggestions on improving the system. If there is a quirk of the system which you don't like, let me know!
• Please don't blame me if the coordinates in the notification send you to a non-official location.

How to join the effort

Send an e-mail to the address specified later in this section with the following information:

• Latitude of the grat.
• Longitude of the grat.
• Section ID(s) (described above)
• E-mail address
• Extra notes to include in the notification.

It would be nice, though not necessary, to put it into this format:

26 | 80 | 37 | youraddress@someplace.com | the mall

26 | 81 | * | youraddress@someplace.com | home grat

26 | 79 | 15 16 | youraddress@someplace.com | sister's house

You will get an e-mail about any matches. A Section ID of "*" will match any section for that graticule. You may include any number of Section IDs for a single line. When specifying multiple Section IDs, they must be whitespace delimited (amount or type of space between entries does not matter). It is only possible to put one comment per line, so if you want different sections to have different comments, they must have their own line.

The geohashing notifications e-mail address is those two words with no space @gmail.com.

I have to add all of these entries by hand, so allow for the fact that it may take me a couple days to get your entry in. Also, please ping me on my talk page so that I get some notification in my normal e-mail.

Future Enhancements

How to notify people

• E-Mail - Implemented
• Printout from the program - Implemented
• A template on the wiki

Requests for future enhancements

• Automatic processing of notification request e-mails so Aperfectring doesn't have to code them by hand
  • If a requester puts the request into the preferred format listed above, I only have to copy the request into a text file. The main reason I put a couple of day time on it is that I am not always diligent about checking e-mails. --Aperfectring 03:57, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
• A cool interface (or any interface) to help determine (and submit?) notification requests.
  • Working with Zigdon and his mapping tool would probably be the best approach here. --Aperfectring 03:57, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
• Automatic way to remove notifications once you no longer want them.
• "Only tell me if it's also a Saturday" option.
• Notification for the whole weekend as soon as it becomes available.
• A way to query the system to find out what notification requests you have put out already.
  • I have a way to manually get this info by logging into the account, and checking the sent mail. It also should be trivial enough (when I get to it) to dump the email addresses receiving notifications into a file.

Current work

• I am in the process of getting a more automated way for people to add/remove/change notifications via a wiki page. To prevent posting people's addresses on the wiki page, however, I will probably use a pseudonym (wiki username maybe?) and translate that to an email address. The only manual step, then, would be for a person to e-mail me their address and pseudonym, making much less manual work on my end (HOORAY!). I will continue to support the format I currently have things in, just in case some people have privacy concerns. --aperfectring 02:58, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Source Code

The source code will be provided upon request.

Bug reports

I received a notification with no data today. It read:

Notification for the location 49, -123

These coordinate fall in section: 0

Message: your coordinates

The coordinates are not at 00. --Robyn

I got the same error. I think this may have been caused by the coordinates not being available at the time the notification program ran. My test program, which runs an hour later, picked up the coordinates just fine. I will push the first program back by 30 mins to help prevent this from happening again. A future fix might be to automatically delay sending out any notifications if it detects that the coordinates aren't available yet. --aperfectring 00:48, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Myself, I'd rather get them earlier but very rarely null, than later but almost never null. -Robyn.