NationStates News

by Max Barry
Sat, 12 Nov 2005

It seems like only yesterday NationStates was helplessly gurgling in its cot, blowing bubbles and spitting up on itself. Nowadays it walks, holds opinions, and frequently expresses them with its extensive vocabulary of as many as several dozen words. Yes, NationStates is three years old today! And still cute as a button.

In celebration--or, possibly, by sheer coincidence--I am pleased to announce that NationStates is hunting for a new admin. Not that there's anything wrong with our current admin; no, no, those fine people are doing a bang-up job, and are drunk far less often than is rumored. But we can do more with more admins, and so we've decided to see if we can get some.

If you've got some free time, a few ideas, and a hankering to make NationStates better, we'd love you to apply!

by SalusaSecondus
Sun, 06 Nov 2005

One of the most common complaints that I've seen about UN resolutions is that they're spelled poorly. Well, that's all fixed now. Now you can Spell Check your proposals before you submit them. We'll be slowly rolling this feature out to other parts of the site as we update them. A quick thank you to Don't Poke Badgers Inc. for releasing this code to the world.

by Max Barry
Wed, 02 Nov 2005

It's just a little thing, but: our URL is smaller! No longer are our links be cluttered up with "/cgi-bin/index.cgi"s. And if you want to show someone else your nation, the link is much neater: simply http://www.nationstates.net/yournation. Check out the very bottom of your nation's home page for the exact link.

Some players may notice that their autologin stopped working. If this has happened to you, re-set it by going to your nation's "Settings" page, checking that "Log in automatically?" is set to "Yes," and clicking "Update Settings." If you can't remember your nation's password, enter via the old, longer URL first. (This is a temporary fix, so make sure to "Update Settings" once you're in. And maybe change your password to something memorable while you're at it.)

by SalusaSecondus
Fri, 26 Aug 2005

Yes, folks, it happened again. We filled up our hard disk. Apparently our fixes from the first time around didn't quite work. So, what's the situation? We ran out of space and the game tried (valiantly) to go on by making more space, by wiping out your accounts. Clearly it had its priorities messed up. Fortunately, a backup completed shortly before the game crashed. (Personally, I suspect that the backup caused the game to crash.) This means that I think that we lost just a few hours of data. I don't know how much yet. I'll get around to figuring that out after the game is fixed.

Our current status is "inconsistent". This means that the game is a tad confused about what's going on. So, until this is fixed, I've disabled new accounts. If you created an account between the last backup and the crash, your account is gone. Sorry. There are other problems that we'll be dealing with over the next week, but the game should be back to normal for most of you within a day.

Oh, yeah. I'm writing new code to keep this from ever happening again.

by SalusaSecondus
Sat, 06 Aug 2005

For all those who missed it or forever wish to remember this day in their life, we now have a prettified log of the chat. It's all there except for parts/joins/modes. (No, I'm not feeling creative enough to compose a new news entry for this.)

by SalusaSecondus
Wed, 11 May 2005

Now, I realize that the purpose of this page is to advertise news related to NationStates, but I'm going to hijack it for an entry (sorry Max).

As some of you may know, I'm graduating from university this year with a degree in computer science. This leaves me in the interesting position of "What's next?" Basically my options were grad-school or work. The thought of another four years of schooling (after the previous 17) was enough to make me shudder in horror. So, I guess that the real would was my only option. This means that I need to earn enough to keep from starving (a roof over my head wouldn't be bad either). I sent out applications, got some information back (including from GCHQ, interestingly enough as I'm not a UK citizen) and did a couple of interviews. And now ... I'm ecstatic to announce ... I'm being hired by Amazon.com!

Now, I'm sure that many of you are wondering what this means for NationStates. Well, I won't have the time during working hours to address anything but the most serious concerns. We are working, though, to improve overall stability so that this isn't an issue. It also means that I'm not going to be starving to death. So, I will still be alive (at least) to continue work. Finally, it means that my timezone will be changing from New York (EST) to Seattle (PST). Yup, I'm moving to Seattle. First time on the West Coast. It should be good.

I would like to thank, Max, NationStates, and all of the players. I've loved what I've done here, and without it I would never have gotten the job.

by Max Barry
Tue, 26 Apr 2005

Today our server ran out of disk space. Some servers, confronted with this situation, would collapse in a screaming heap, but not ours. Oh no! Instead it sucked it up and kept on running. Of course, it couldn't save anything, so almost every nation and region it touched got deleted or corrupted, but still, you have to admire its spirit.

Here's what happened: we realized (a) that terrible, terrible things were happening to the game, (b) this was because we'd run out of disk space, and (c) yes, we really should have caught this earlier. Fortunately, we had a complete backup from earlier in the day, so we took down the game and began restoring.

Here's what this means: if you did anything in the 20 hours before the game went down, it's been undone. Legislation passed, telegrams sent, endorsements granted or regional movement: none of it really happened.

Nations deleted in the last 20 hours will be back. (Although if they were deleted by mods, you can bet they'll be re-deleted pretty quick.) Nations created in the last 20 hours have vanished. You can re-create them, but unfortunately I suspect we'll run into some forum account wackiness, because the forum itself is not being reset. If you have problems, please see the Known Problems page.

Sorry for this, and thanks for your patience.

by Max Barry
Fri, 01 Apr 2005

There was no April Fool's joke. You did not see anything. Move along.

by Max Barry
Wed, 09 Mar 2005

Sorry about the delay in releasing old nation names -- we've run into a few forum issues there. Hopefully we'll get back on track soon.

In the meantime, you might want to check out this CBC article on the site we all know and love.

by SalusaSecondus
Wed, 02 Feb 2005

I've made a few changes to the game code (as many of you may have noticed) and I should probably point them out.

• Tons of security changes (you won't notice most of them)
• The Getting Help Page can now submit Regional Snapshot IF YOU ARE LOGGED IN. Please use these sparingly as they flood our task list.
• Additions to nsCode (the formatting tags for the factbook entries).
  • [color=????]text[/color] — Any color supported by HTML (including hex) will work. (ex: [color=red]foobar[/color] = foobar)
  • [thread=????]link[/thread] — First, for some reason this one isn't working yet, we're still figuring it out, but what it will do is allow you to link directly from factbook entries to threads in our forums. Every thread has a unique number (which you can see in the url). If you insert it into the tag, you'll get a link to it. (ex1: [thread=275323]link[/thread] = link, ex2: [thread=275323] = http://www.nationstates.net/forum.cgi?topic=275323).