Yann’s Blog

Looks like Yahoo and Hotmail/Live/Microsoft have synced up their e-mail blacklists. The server eve-central.com uses for outbound messages has been blacklisted by both of these entities. I am trying to get this resolved, but in the mean time, if you need a password reset, please e-mail us directly. We’ll use an alternate outbound mail method to get your password to you.

Edit: It looks like the group of IP addresses at my co-location facility has been listed in the SBL. http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/sbl.lasso?query=SBL80992. Now I am also working with the hosting provider to help clean up this mess. Joy.

Edit 2: Things are in motion to help clean up this mess.

Edit 3: SBL entry closed up, we will see when Yahoo/Hotmail/etc pick this up.

The latest version of Contribtastic is now available. We’re up to alpha3 now.

Fixed in this release:

1. Crash when reading certain NPC standing cache files
2. Possibility of having two upload threads cruising at the same time, leading to duplicate uploads
3. No longer uploads old cache files on first startup or after reseting the configuration

Login functionality is still broken (“by design”).

The download site is still the same: http://dl.stackfoundry.org/contribtastic/. You can also file official bug reports at http://bugs.stackfoundry.org, but comments in the blog or forum are also welcome.

(tl;dr: New uploader with cache reading capability is available as an early alpha release: Download here )

When I was working on libevecache, I was imagining making a quick-turn uploader which used the functionality from the library allowing EVE-Central uploader users to no longer have to hit the magic button.

That was several months ago now. How time flies when everything else is demanding your attention: house stuff, hardware stuff, work stuff, other stuff. I wasn’t even distracted by video games or EVE-Online. My dream of a quick turn uploader clone obviously was just a dream, up until now.

I am releasing Contribtastic 2.0-alpha1, available on the download site as a Windows installer. Contribtastic is a bit different than originally intended (I am reusing the wxPython skeleton from the MarketUploader 1.3, not the pure C++ Qt framework), but this is all to get it out the door quickly: I spent more time downloading and installing the EVE client on my shiny new Windows 7 system than writing code or adapting the new framework to work with libevecache. Go Python go.

There are some known errata:

1. Contribtastic doesn’t always detect the cache folder path correctly
2. The user login functionality is basically totally broken. (Sorry, no credits for uploads yet)
3. Upload suggestions aren’t working
4. 0 item cache files will not be interpreted by the EVE-Central.com parser (a server side issue)
5. Memory usage has not been analyzed
6. Bonking upload now while already scanning for uploads can break things
7. Only tested on Windows 7

This is an alpha version, but please enjoy!

Edit: We should be back up – watch your spam folders though

Yahoo! mail is currently not being accepted from the EVE-Central.com and StackFoundry.com servers (38.113.114.184, 38.113.114.187). We are doing the correct customer support contact magic in order to re-enable delivery with Yahoo!, but cannot give definite timelines.

We would like to remind all EVE-Central.com mail feed users that you should NOT sign up webmail accounts or externally hosted accounts, including rebranded accounts (such as Yahoo or Google for your domain). The mail feed is for live processing on your server, not for batch downloading from another server. The daily CSV dumps are available for this reason.

The old IGB is no longer supported, and we are busily removing all references, hacky workarounds, and alternate styles in the code base which were brought about by its brain dead behavior. However, this means registering on the site will be problematic.

As a workaround, please visit http://eve-central.com/users/ directly to register. We will be implementing the new IGB access methods soon, so you can register from SiSi.

Loyal EVE-Central.com users,

I just migrated the open source beta site to the main site. Along with the improvements comes a new caching framework which should make the API and site much more responsive during peak hours. If you see any anomalous behavior, please leave a comment so I can take a look at it.

Also, as a quick update on Contribtastic (another infamously delayed project), things are moving along. This performance improvement and code migration was required in order to better support the added load expected with the cache reading uploader. Soon you too will have a cache reading uploader. (Here we insert a witty picture along the lines of “Yes, you can’t have a pony”, but Google image search is letting me down).

Have a nice day or evening!

Our open-source beta-site has been getting some updates recently:

1. New alpha trade-finder, which can do route combining and removes some superfluous garabage which can’t be traded.
2. Streamlining some of the layout code to remove IGB dependence (to help us get a better design for the new in game browser
3. New upload methods to work with Contribtastic
4. Small cleanups across the board

There is still work pending on the continuously updated statistics engine (with caching), replacing our very aging market reports system. The exact implementation direction is not yet determined.

If you want to poke at the code, it is also available under the AGPL 3.0 license.

I took some time to learn a bit about computer vision, using OpenCV. The end goal here is to produce a Rock Band playing “robot”, using nothing but a specially modified controller (a AT90USB + bunch of FETs) and a computer with a video capture input.

Below is a video of my first attempt at using OpenCV. It applies several filters to isolate the keys on the racetrack approximately 2 frames ahead of the goal position. The primary heuristic right now is a threshold detect filter after all of the isolation steps. If you watch closely, you can see missed or over-pressed keys, especially when the whole racetrack lights up.

Note that the video output has an overlay color square which announces the software has detected a keypress. The actual gameplay is from another YouTube video – there is no closed loop control yet.

This will take some more tuning to iron out differences, possibly preserving some state from frame to frame. Right now color information is not used, but a separate classifier pipeline and some scoring mechanic might produce better results.

I will publish the git repository with the very-alpha implementation soon.

I have built a new binary of libevecache 0.1.2 for Windows. Included are several important fixes to the CSV export file.

Note that filename globbing (such as using *.cache) is NOT working under cmd.exe in Windows (PowerShell not tested), since Windows does not do filename globbing for commands. As a temporary workaround, use bash

My apologizes for the EVE-Central being down. Minor error on my part – the workers weren’t running under the correct user settings in terms of file handles, so they ran out. Everything should be kosher now.

Contribtastic work is moving in spurts. I’ll get something pushed out soon enough.