2016 MFP Grand Tour Challenge - Vuelta Now Up and Rolling...
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Happened again, July 14th activity https://www.strava.com/activities/641054733 not picked up by CycLeagues and I finished that ride at 1330 hrs PST. Does the site not like me anymore???0
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You know I don't know why I bother when people complain so bl&0dy quickly, this is a free sodding service, seriously I'm just setting off for a long weekends riding and I get these really annoying comments, it's a beta process FFS!!!!!
Not happy!!!!0 -
The above activity finally posted to the league and tour spreadsheet. Is it now going to take 6/7 hours for my data to post? I check this everyday, started having problems on the 13th.0
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anaconda469 wrote: »The above activity finally posted to the league and tour spreadsheet. Is it now going to take 6/7 hours for my data to post? I check this everyday, started having problems on the 13th.
Quite frankly use the door, idiotic comments about a free system set up for a community are not welcome and neither are you, thanks for being a royal pain in the *kitten* and putting me in the worse mood before setting off for a tour!0 -
anaconda469 wrote: »The above activity finally posted to the league and tour spreadsheet. Is it now going to take 6/7 hours for my data to post? I check this everyday, started having problems on the 13th.
Bad mouthing a service that is there to help others and make life easier like you did in your status feed is a dick move, and you Susan are a dick, sling you hook, just wish I was near a PC so I could kick your *kitten* off the Strava and MFP groups.
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anaconda469 wrote: »Happened again, July 14th activity https://www.strava.com/activities/641054733 not picked up by CycLeagues and I finished that ride at 1330 hrs PST. Does the site not like me anymore???anaconda469 wrote: »The above activity finally posted to the league and tour spreadsheet. Is it now going to take 6/7 hours for my data to post? I check this everyday, started having problems on the 13th.
can I just ask for a little patience here everyone...
first of all, this is, as Jason says, a free service - the CycLeagues system has been written from the ground up by Jason, he's paying for the hosting of the service out of his own pocket, certainly more than we pay a month for a premium Strava account...
Second - the whole process is not quite as simple as just "book your ride in on Strava and it magically appears", at least to those of us who have some access "under the hood"
First of all, there's a process that checks Strava on a very regular basis - just "looks to see if there's been an update by anyone who's a member of the CycLeagues group". If it sees an update, then this triggers a routine to pull over that ride into the Cycleagues Database.
Second, once in the database, theres more manipulation done - so the ride can be allocated against various different challenges - so, only rides by the riders on the TdF challenge are allocated to that "pool", and are spit out into a text file that the google spreadsheet works on.
Once in that TXT file, the google spreadsheet goes to work - Google keep their terms of service a little vague, but say that links to external files are refreshed approximately once per hour, though they reserve the right to vary that frequency, especially if the update is an intensive one (it's to stop people using a Google sheet as a once-per-minute stock ticker or suchlike...)
And finally, once the raw data is in the spreadsheet, it passes out into the summary, leaderboard and all the other pages. HOWEVER, all the formatting, checking of consecutive rides for the "ride every day of the tour" bit, sorting of the leaderboard into the various jerseys and allocating points for the combined - well - that relies on manual intervention from me - and if I'm not in front of a computer, then it won't get done.
the problem we've had is that the very first stage - the "paging Strava" process is hosted at the moment on a server that occasionally "hangs/falls over" - this server is at Jasons place of work, not at a paid server farm, so, basically only he can give the system the "nudge" it needs - I believe this was done for simplicity in the first instance, because of the "beta test" nature of the whole system - I know that I've discussed it with him, and getting it onto a server that's more robust IS something that's definitely "on the list", but will require more time, a few re-writes, and (I'm guessing here, but it's normally the case) more expenditure to upgrade the server hosting to an account that can support the additional bandwidth of the "paging" and also that will allow "real time" processes to be launched on the server.
Yes, it is an annoyance when a system fails - that it's worked faultlessly for the first 10 days, then falls over 2 days running is a bit of a nuisance - but it's hardly life or death. There's 1 person that can fix things when it goes wrong - he's doing his best, but he's here in the UK, in a different time-zone to well over half the people in the challenge. Oh - and he's away from computers or servers or anything of that nature now until Monday - so if it stops updating, the whole spreadsheet and everything else will stop changing as well - i'll do my best to keep people informed on my newsfeed, and in this thread - but PLEASE, don't *kitten*, whinge, whine, moan complain about it - because theres nothing we can do until Jason gets back to work on monday and kickstarts the server again.
Don't forget, it's free folks, and there's a couple of us giving up masses of our own time (and paying for the privilege of doing so...) to make it happen for all of you.
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oh - and one more thing - before the CycLeagues auto-poster, the spreadsheet was pretty much a once-a-day update... now it's roughly about a hour out of date, and generally tidied twice a day. Without the CycLeagues integration, I seriously doubt that the challenges would continue unless someone else took on the setting up and daily running of them.
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the work you guys do is much appreciated, its got me out more and i am even upping my speed to new levels!4
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Thanks Jason & Mark, both! The convenience of NOT having to switch Strava UOM or break out the calculator to total up multiple rides in a day for a single, manually logged entry is invaluable to me. Once the points/speed element is added in to the equation, then I'll really be over the moon.
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Agreed; this new logging system takes out the nausea of people logging incorrectly/people failing to log at all...
Much better system and this challenge has been much better for it IMHO!
Chapeau chaps; keep up the hard work & don't lett the *kitten*holes get you down
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Okay guys... I've posted this in my "news feed" but I think it's worthy of repeating here...
folks, can we cool things on the name-calling and so forth - I think it's probably a bit of a misunderstanding on one side of things, and possibly a slight over-reaction on the other. Problem is, when there's only one person that can fix the problem, that person rapidly starts to feel persecuted for taking a couple of hours to themselves... I know, I've been there for the past 4 years of running these bloody challenges! For now, lets all just get back to riding, logging on strava, and hoping that the Hamster doesn't fall off it's wheel again...
oh - and while we're on the subject of singing the praises of the wonderful automated system...
I Just checked, and I think that it's possible that the server HAS gone down again. Looking in the MFP Cycling Challenges group on Strava, my ride went through at around 2:00pm today, as did Tom's "Yay, It's Friday", but none of the ones after that seem to be in there... Don't sweat it folks - none of the rides will be missed off, but we'll be without active logging in the spreadsheet until Jason gets a chance to sort the server (which may well be on his return home on Monday)
If It turns out that it's gone into "terminate and catch fire mode" and can't be fixed until monday, I'll try my best to add rides manually, though without a "logging thread" it's possible I'll miss the odd ride, as I'll be simply trawling through the MFP Cycling Challenges groups "recent activity" feed, and adding from there. No promises on how effective I'll be in this - or how far behind the data may get.
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Woahhh Folks - don't freak - the TdF spreadsheet is completely empty at the moment - basically, the "link file" that it uses to pull the data over is not readable - so, pretty much every cell in the sheet is empty. We're riding without any guides for the weekend, until Jason gets home I'm afraid guys. Nothing more that I can do, except urge you to check your team-mates rides on strava, and keep an eye on them there I guess... Norrmal service will be resumed after the rest-day on monday.0
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Woahhh Folks - don't freak - the TdF spreadsheet is completely empty at the moment - basically, the "link file" that it uses to pull the data over is not readable - so, pretty much every cell in the sheet is empty. We're riding without any guides for the weekend, until Jason gets home I'm afraid guys. Nothing more that I can do, except urge you to check your team-mates rides on strava, and keep an eye on them there I guess... Normal service will be resumed after the rest-day on monday.
Well - I got the data back - somehow convinced Google Spreadsheet to go look again, and it found it - but I'm now slightly unhappy with messing with things manually - so I think we'll still wait for a fix on the rest day, Monday.
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decided on a compromise - I'll enter the distance, but leave out the times and ascents (so I don't have to open every individual ride for the data - and, so I get a divide by zero error message in the speed columns so I can see where I need to change the formulae back after auto-update is resumed.0
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The good news: managed to get in a weekend ride, this time without being threatened with divorce proceedings.
The less-good news: got rear-ended by a car when I stopped at a zebra crossing and had to curtail the ride.
I'm uninjured (got a bit of an achey back, but I think that just from riding rather than the impact), and bike appears to only be superficially damaged, but it's back in the shop to be checked over, and I probably won't get it back until Tuesday, which is rest day, so no miles until Wednesday - sorry Team Pie0 -
Just glad you & the bike came out ok 35dollars. Look forward to your rtn Wed.0
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Sheez, at least nothing's broke body wise, driving without due care and attention is a serious offence, hope you reported them or they will do worse to some other poor cyclist
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Regarding the member I referred to earlier in this thread, yes I may have stated her as a d..., but she bloomin well deserved it, over reaction, not from where I'm standing.
As far as the Strava challenges league & CycLeagues goes shes certainly not welcome, slagging off a system that I've put my time, effort and money into with no consideration apart from her own impatience is not something I'll accept from anyone, I've said the background fetch has a tendency to drop any time it feels like it time and time again, this is a well known issue, I made this clear to her the first time it went down, she was well aware but still chose to not only complain but bad mouth the system, this shows nothing but a serious lack of consideration for those who have stuck a heap of time into a system which is there to help a small group of people motivate, you may judge my reaction to chuck her out of the Strava group and CycLeagues a knee-jerk over reaction but from where I'm standing it is not, I'd make the same decision time and time again whoever behaved in that manor, if this was a professional system where we were charging then you have to pander to these kind of people but it's not, it's an unfinished small community project where those involved have spent there own spare time trying to do something that is useful to others, it's in its infancy, teething problems and big issue will occur, constructive criticism is welcome, stamping feet and behaving like a child is not.
A project like this needs support and ideas to be built up, I know we have 30+ members who like and use the system and I'm not one for letting people down if I can help it, I'd like to improve it and perhaps turn it into something better but that won't happen if we have people like *her named above* behave the way they do, you just think 'why am I bothering', call time and spend time it on something more rewarding.
So for anyone wondering why I got worked up I hope this explains why, it just so happens that I was setting off for a three day holiday cycling tour up Yorkshire at the time so the timing was not good to say the least.1 -
Jason - I respect your decision - I have to say, I didn't see the comments, so can't judge on that score - but you're entirely within your rights to remove ANYONE from your FREE service at any time, for whatever reason you see fit. Though I would argue that perhaps, in fairness to the persons team-mates, any removal be made at the end of the challenge rather than mid-stream... of course, again, I didn't see the comments, so can't honestly say what I'd have done in the same situation - |I've "got previous" for throwing people out mid-challenge myself, I know...
I know that without the CycLeagues routines, in one form or another, these challenges simply WOULD NOT BE RUNNING THIS YEAR. After my episode during the Vuelta last year (for the newbies, I had a very close call with a Blocked Artery, and very nearly died...), I pretty much decided that 2015 would be the last year I'd sit and spend hours of my own time manually entering everyones rides, as the stress of getting everything in, and correct, and in a timely fashion was killing my actual enjoyment of the events themselves.
So, I'm really grateful that we managed to collaborate on the system we have now - it's saved these challenges for this year, and I'd hate to see them go - I'd also hate to see the project dropped by you because of a perception of "under appreciation" - it's not the case - certainly for my part, I'm massively indebted to you for the development of the system. If you were to drop the system, I think I'd very probably have to start and get back into coding myself over the winter and roll my own version - though it wouldn't be half as interesting as yours, more likely just a "back end" to the existing spreadsheet...
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Appreciate the comments Mark, I'm sorry for her team mates but she had to go, her miles will count upto the last import so as not to impact the team retrospectively, however automation wise her rides will no longer be picked up, if you wish you can add her rides in manually but thats your call.
I'm not looking to ditch just because of one bad egg, as long as people want it then it will be there and hopefully be a lot better. I'll gauge interest with how much it's used over Summer/Winter and take it from there, if interest falls short then I can sort you out with a background automation process that you can use Mark as a starter if you wanted it.2 -
Last gerbil wasn't exactly dead but had just gone catatonic .... staring into space and not even reporting an error, very odd and the first time I've seen that, adding it to the scenarios to cover when I add disaster recovery routines, in the meantime a new gerbil has been installed and the current one is off to seek therapy.
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Another sad and horrifying day in for cops in America. There has to be a stop to all the hatred. Does anyone live somewhere I can move where it people aren't so angry?0
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Canbbot, these 3 Israeli cops seem to be popular but not sure you'd want to move there. https://youtube.com/watch?v=0cZ54r3dGSw0
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I'm afraid we have a big issue to contend with, Strava have changed something, meaning it no longer allows polling in the same manor in which it did before, it looks like once you've made the connection to Strava it allows the fetch once, you then have to disconnect and connect again, at least what it looks like currently, leaving my fetch routine running only fetches the first time and then nothing unless I shut the process down and try again making it a manual start and stop process, I can do this a few times in the day at work however I'm away again Friday to Sunday and I may not get round to sorting a workaround by then, I will have a good look though to see what I can do but this doesn't bode well for us, Strava have form for screwing people over which you can read here : http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2013/07/cutting-removing-functionality.html
I'll be doing manual triggered calls Tuesday to Thursday at work, and I may have a workaround for the coming weekend while away however we may be faced with the real possibility that Friday to Sunday will have to be manual logging.
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I've spent a little time on a workaround for this, currently running every 10 mins, let see how it picks up todays rides.
The difference is it does a complete reconnection on everything every 10 mins rather then keeping existing connections, also re-initialises the DB connection so this may well be the solution to all the issues, the downside of course is its every 10 mins instead of every minute.
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I have no complaints with the programming. I really enjoy seeing the challenge. It has gotten me to die a couple more times than I would have. If only the top rider didn't get so many miles. Actually, I am quite impressed you have time to ride so many miles and still volunteer your time for programming. Thank you for your work.2
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I have no complaints with the programming. I really enjoy seeing the challenge. It has gotten me to die a couple more times than I would have. If only the top rider didn't get so many miles. Actually, I am quite impressed you have time to ride so many miles and still volunteer your time for programming. Thank you for your work.
Thanks
, the new process is trucking along nicely, just remember to give it 10 before checking both CycLeagues and the Spreadsheet for any updates, the time delay could work in our favour regarding giving people chance to delete bad activities or duplicates.
Down the line I'll add in a pull from Strava request on the CycLeagues page in case the background process dies from a power cut or the cleaner tripping over the power cables etc.
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Worked too quick with my ride today. By the time I got to cycleagues, both devices had recorded. Thanks to Mark for telling me to go to rides to delete one of them.1
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Yep if your closer to the 10th minute of next polling fetch that'll happen, pleased with how it's worked today, hopefully we will be good from here on in.0
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Found that a new issue occurs with the Strava pull, sometimes when calling to fetch the data it keeps hold of the process so the routine effectively hangs with no timeout, it's a bit like starting a handshake with someone and the other person refusing to let go, I'm calling it the Strava death grip, a new glitch with the Strava API .... who knows .... bah, anyway I have a cunning plan to change from a timed loop to spawning off timed independent working threads, so even if one process hangs another fetch can still be initiated.
I think what I may do is abandon the whole Strava background fetch process and just do a fetch when someone logs in and add a fetch button. The Strava API is just too unreliable to constantly poll.
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