How would you bring users back?

I’ve got this other website with several thousand registered users.  This morning I wondered – how many of these users are really active users and how many registered and then abandoned their account.  I was kind of shocked to discover that for one of my target demographics, only about 20% of those registered users visited the site in the last 180 days.

What I need to do is bring those users back.  Do you have any suggestions?

Proud Parenting Moment

This isn’t my absolute proudest parenting moment, but it is way up there.  Thursday we bought a bunch of small rolls, suitable for small sandwiches, from the grocery store.  Friday night I was talking about how delicious they are and how suitable they are for small sandwiches.  At which point my daughter tells me she’s going to eat them all leaving none for me.  I say some fatherly thing about sharing or somesuch.

Her response was… “These aren’t the rolls you’re looking for.”

As she waved two fingers at me.1

  1. Because of our reaction – which was a fit of hysterical laughter, she proceeded to repeat this continuously for several more minutes. [↩]

Who is tracking you? Collusion plugin for FireFox

If you want to see something that is simultaneously disturbing and ego-inflating, check out the Collusion plugin for FireFox. 1 A friend of mine e-mailed me the link to the LifeHacker post discussing it.  If you want to cut to the chase, the link to the Collusion plugin is right here.  After web surfing and blogging for about an hour, the little web it’s drawn so far is a little scary.

 

  1. In a perverse way, it is slightly ego-inflating because I’m clearly so very important to ALL these companies! [↩]

Restarting a Stalled DrawBot Drawing

Over the last two days or so I’ve drawn the largest picture yet with my DrawBot.  I started it on Friday night and, with numerous pauses and other misadventures, finished it this morning.  The drawing is roughly 12″ x 18″ or so. 1  With no apparent rhyme or reason the drawing would pause numerous times.  I would estimate about 25 or so.  Also, the pen had a difficult time towards the end.  I believe this was in part due to the angle of the pen on the drawing surface and the quantity of the ink left.  As of this morning I was still using version 1.1.2, but I’m installing version 1.1.4 right now. 2

Here are some additional thoughts:

  • In an earlier post I had mentioned I was having stalling problems while drawing.  Sandy asked whether I was able to change serial ports to a different one and back again.  The answer is “sort of.”
  • When there’s a stall, here’s what I do:
    1. Click “SETUP->SERIAL PORT…“
    2. Click on some other serial port other than the one I’ve been using
    3. Disconnect and then immediately reconnect the USB cable from the computer
    4. Click on the original serial port I had been using
    5. As soon as the Drawbot reestablishes a connection with the Polargraph controller software, it starts drawing right where it left off
  • I used to export a copy of the existing queue before doing all of this, and while it is still a very good idea, it doesn’t seem necessary.
  • This exact process has worked several times in a row without a problem.  Interestingly, step number 3 above3 is critical.  If I exclude this step the program crashes.
  • For this drawing I used a Pilot Precise Rolling Ball V5, extra fine tip, black.  I had used a red pen of the same make for a prior drawing and it worked reasonably well.
  • I’m in the process of designing a new pen gondola.  I think something that can angle the pen downwards would help the pen apply ink to the page.
  • Interestingly, I noticed after about 80% of the drawing was done the pen had a little bit of paper fuzz on it.  Once I removed this, the pen seemed to work a lot better.
  • The pen stopped drawing completely after about 85% of the drawing over all.  This was a bit disappointing.  However, since I was drawing from the top right to the bottom left and the version of the Polargraph controller I was using allows you to specify which area to start from, I just restarted the same drawing from the bottom right corner and ended up with a very satisfactory result.

In other words, it’s a nice day to start again.

Default Series Title
  1. I rolled it up and gave it to a friend before I thought to take a photogram [↩]
  2. One of Sandy’s latest posts suggests there’s a 1.1.5 available, but I couldn’t find it. [↩]
  3. The disconnect and reconnection of the USB cable from the computer [↩]

WordPress plugin – OCD Plugin Stats

OCD Plugin Stats WordPress plugin screenshot
OCD Plugin Stats WordPress plugin screenshot

I’ve just published another WordPress plugin called OCD Plugin Stats.  This isn’t a plugin that would really interest most people.  If you’re a WordPress plugin developer and like seeing the stats for your plugins, OCD Plugin Stats will let you monitor all the stats for all of your plugins in one convenient location in your WordPress dashboard.

Unless you publish your own plugins, I can’t imagine anyone would be terribly interested in such a thing.  My reason for making this plugin was that (a) I found it useful, so perhaps others would too and (b) I wanted to learn how to create a WordPress dashboard widget.
Default Series Title

WordPress Plugin: Easy CC License

[ezcc]

I’ve written a new WordPress plugin!  It uses the Creative Commons API to grab the appropriate license based on your license choices.  While there’s still room to improve the plugin, I’m pretty happy with the way it’s turned out.  I’ve made a conscious effort to use best plugin programming practices – and learned a lot in the process. 1

You can download this Creative Commons WordPress plugin here!

Default Series Title
  1. Most of the plugin’s functions are wrapped in a class and includes a deactivation function. [↩]

Plugin Considerations

When designing/writing software, or I suppose any kind of engineering for that matter, there is always a tension between features and complexity.  I really want this Simple Series WordPress plugin to be simple and easy to use.  But, as I use it more and more I find there are some possible features that I wouldn’t mind having.

For example, my DrawBot series is at 43 posts at this moment.  The problem is that each post, no matter how short, now has an entire screen-length’s worth of a list for the series. 1  Now, there are several possible ways to handle this:

  • I suppose when I’m looking to design a UI, the most important things to focus on is what would the user expect to see and happen.  It certainly makes sense for there to be a uniform series list in every post.  But, it seems slightly inelegant to have it that way for every single post when you’re looking at an entire page.
  • I could modify the plugin so that it would only create a list once per page, rather than once per post.  I suppose subsequent instances could then provide a single link to the series list in the initial post.  I think this would be non-intuitive as a person navigated the page.
  • I could modify the plugin so that it only showed the current post plus X posts before and after where X is some arbitrary number I choose.  (Although, I’d probably make it user specifiable).  I’d have to dig into some fancy scmancy CSS to define a different start-number for the HTML ordered list, but this isn’t a huge problem.  Ideally, it would say there are Y prior posts and Z subsequent posts as well.  Then again, it is really helpful (at least to me) to be able to click back up or down through a series list.

Perhaps the optimal result is something in between?

  • On a page consisting of a single post, the entire list should be displayed.
  • On a page consisting of multiple posts, the subsequent lists should be truncated in some meaningful fashion.  Perhaps the last and subsequent X posts, with a little sentence indicating Y more prior posts and Z more subsequent posts.  When you click on the “Y more prior posts” it could take you to the first instance of the series list on that page and when you click on the “Z more subsequent posts” it could take you to the next post listed in the series on the first instance of the series list on that page. 2
  • Sadly, this system would not really change much for the RSS feed readers.
Default Series Title
  1. I can’t even imagine how much text is devoted to just the series list on those DrawBot posts in your RSS feed. [↩]
  2. Um.  This sounded a lot clearer in my head as I typed it than it probably reads. [↩]

DrawBot – Another Successful(ish) Drawing!, and an Update

A summer rose from our garden, drawn by a freakin’ narcoleptic robot
A summer rose from our garden, drawn by a freakin’ narcoleptic robot

The drawings are getting better with a little tinkering.  I’ve designed, printed, and installed new motor spools.  These have a thicker central core, so they should be able to collect more monofilament line with slightly less distortion.  I’ve made a few changes to the setup.  Dialing in the starting area and calibrating the starting home point were pretty important.

I’m still having a little trouble with the robot occasionally stalling out.  Although, now I think it is a symptom of the controller software rather than a problem with the Arduino.  There’s no set time after printing, no set time after running the program, or other noticeable precipitating event which seems to cause this problem.  At some point during a drawing, the controller software just reports the Arduino as being busy. 1  Here’s what I do to correct the problem:

  1. Disconnect the USB cable from the laptop
  2. Click “Queue->Export Queue” and save as a text document
  3. Open the text document and perform the following operation
    1. Select, copy, paste the first line above the first line – so now you see a duplicate.  So, for instance in the image above I had to copy “C05,2700,2370,10,247,END” and paste this above the same line – so that it would look like the robot would be receiving the same command twice.
    2. Edit the line “C05,2700,2370,10,247,END” so that I change the command to start with “C09” and delete the last two numbers and the “END” statement, so that it now looks like, “C09,2700,2370,END”
    3. Save the text document with these changes
  4. Shut down/close the controller software
  5. Restart the controller software
  6. Reconnect the USB cable to the laptop
  7. Click “Setup->Serial Port…” and click on the serial port of choice
  8. Click “Queue->Import Queue” and choose the text document I just edited
  9. Start the queue again!

The reason I suspect this is a controller software and not an Arduino firmware issue is that I don’t have to reset the Arduino at any point – just disconnect the USB, restart the controller software, reconnect the USB, and start the queue again.  I would think that if there were a problem with the Arduino firmware, I would need to reset the board itself.

The lowest you can specify as the “grid size”2 in the Polargraph controller software is “20,” but you can use a smaller value by editing the “polargraph.properties.txt” file.  In the image above I used a grid size of “10” which appears to cover 1/4 the area of the size 20 pixel.  That image probably took about five hours to draw.  I think it looks really nice.  The image above seems to have been distorted by my scanner.  It came out almost perfectly square with a slight warp to the top right corner. 3  You can see some bare spots in the image above – that’s where the pen, for whatever reason, just wasn’t making a mark on the paper.  I suspect it has something to do with that region of the paper being either slightly smoother and/or slightly more depressed than the surrounding regions.  Otherwise, there would be no reason why the next row would have a similar defect nearby.

I’ve noticed the controller software also tends to forget the machine width, page size, and page position.  I’ve updated this, saved it, and uploaded it to the Arduino several times, but it doesn’t seem to stick past a reboot of the software.  Ultimately, these are very minor concerns and really just something to be aware of when I’m printing.  I just about couldn’t be happier with the controlling software.  That piece of software plus the Arduino sketch together have basically made this a nearly effortless project.  Besides a hiccup soldering a circuit board wrong, this entire project went together very quickly and yielded almost immediately gratifying results.

I’ve done several drawings in the last few days.  I’m still having trouble getting a perfectly rectangular and centered result.  I may have to adjust the Y offsets and double-check my machine measurements.  I still also notice a slight upwards warp to a drawing in the top right corner.  But, I’m looking forward to additional experimentation – it’s all part of the adventure!

Last, but certainly not least, I want to make it clear that Sandy Noble’s software for the Polargraph/drawbot is really really great.  That I am having some minor calibration troubles speaks more to my incompetence than Sandy’s excellent program.  So, a great big thank-you to Sandy for his continued hard work on this software!

Default Series Title
  1. Aren’t we all, Arduino?  Aren’t we all? [↩]
  2. What is essentially the pixel size [↩]
  3. This one was commissioned at the request of my daughter and now hangs in her room. [↩]