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Top 50 Posters Extrapolated, July 2018
- Thread starter chown33
- Start date
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Better break out the slide rule? Also didn’t Janeway bring Voyager home?
Ah, yes, very well noted.
Yes she did. But she wasn’t posting on MacRumors while she did it.
But she was - to my astonishment and delight - spotted in my local wine merchant's (during a literary festival) a few years ago. Delighted, - (he loves the ST world, we have had chats about this) he greeted her by name and rank, and she grinned.
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"Quarterly" makes it seem planned. It was more a serendipitous event.
I was working on the scripts, and two of the numbers involved are DAYS_PREV1 (number of days since previous stats capture) and DAYS_NEXT (number of days to next semi-annual capture). I saw they were converging, and the exact mid-point date was 03 Octother 2018. So I kept the captured data from that day, and continued working on the scripts to automate the production of this breathtaking panoply of thoroughly engaging tables. When those scripts were sufficiently tested, I used the new master script to process the data from 03 Oct, then I edited up the files with all the supporting verbiage (Remarks don't write themselves), and made the posts.
One of the advantages of having nearly everything automated (i.e. scripted) is it becomes so much simpler to collect the data and produce the tables. The actual data collection was automated for the 03 July capture; there's no way I was going to do that manually for 500+ users. Still, it took some last-minute hammering and tweaking to make sure it worked. I then spent the rest of the day at the beach.
Turning the captured data into tables took roughly 1500 lines of assorted bash scripts, awk scripts, and several hours of tweaking and copy/pasting command-lines into a Terminal.app window. If I'd spent the time in July to make it completely automated, it would have been closer to August before I got things posted. Even so, I had some bugs, so I ended up making corrections to the first tables I posted.
Now, however, there's about 1300 lines of bash & awk scripts, with effectively nothing done manually at all. After I've captured a new file of user data, here's what it now takes to produce all the tables:
Code:
bash 03c_all_tables_bash.txt 2018-10-08There are some additional improvements I'm considering, and maybe some other things I could do with the data, but those will have to wait a bit. One thing I'd like to do is more graphing, but I want it automated (along with some other constraints), so I'm still pondering the best approach to take on that front.
Doctor Q, Doctor Q!!!!! Mrs Doctor Q is probably going to have your head for this one!!! Tsk, tsk......
Well, since I seem to have arrived into the conversation now, I'll just add that for me, my post count isn't a big thing -- don't even know what it is right now, actually -- I simply post when I have something I think is relevant and/or interesting to say in a given thread or an image to add in a photography-related thread and that's about it. I think this is a habit long ingrained after participating in various Usenet groups and other places in the early days where it was important not to waste other people's time or in that still-pretty-much infancy period of the internet, more importantly, bandwidth. This approach is also coming from my later experiences as a moderator or admin in a couple of different forums where we were always mindful of members trying to noticeably increase their post count, usually with really meaningless, trivial and brief posts, in order to achieve some particular goal (most often it seemed to be highly-desired access to another area of the forum). Also, of course, blitzing a forum with a lot of posts is a sign of a spammer, too, and obviously, we were always on the lookout for that kind of behavior as well. Clearly there are differences between a spammer and a member who is either consciously or unconsciously accelerating a post count. Spammers get swatted, smacked down and eradicated promptly, as well they should be!
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Groan.
Lame and yes, somewhat tedious.
That is brilliant. I can't say I comprehend how you have done it, but I think it is still brilliant.
Yes, whenever I spot spammers, they are reported, pretty much immediately.
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I do the same as well. Hate spammers.
Agreed.
Actually, I hate the fact of spammers, what they do, how they do it and why they do it.
Before I switched to an Apple computer a decade ago, I used to be inundated with spam, and that was in spite of having installed the most robust anti-spam software which I could find (which I had paid for - this was not the feeble freebies available at the time).
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Thanks for reporting the spam you spot.
This site gets a lot of spam for purported health-related sites. We not only delete the spam and ban the spam accounts as promptly as possible, but we often put the sitename on the profanity list so new spammer accounts can't reference the site to try to generate clicks. For example, type "viral supplements . com" without the spaces and it comes out ********************.
So far, no spammers have made the Top 50!
This site gets a lot of spam for purported health-related sites. We not only delete the spam and ban the spam accounts as promptly as possible, but we often put the sitename on the profanity list so new spammer accounts can't reference the site to try to generate clicks. For example, type "viral supplements . com" without the spaces and it comes out ********************.
So far, no spammers have made the Top 50!
Lost in the post! Probably your local UPS driver is a Windows driver and did it out of spite!So where's my T-shirt and my new Mac?
[doublepost=1539104403][/doublepost]
You sure? That guy in number 13 looks suspicious!
I fear Numbers. I’m more of an excel guy!
Not veryfanboy!
Numbers are wonderful.
In certain contexts, (among them, polling stations, election count centres), I simply love numbers.
chown33 and I like numbers, or we wouldn't have gotten into this measurement game.
There's a wonderful number that you've probably never thought about before. It's the number that's the largest number that's ever been computed, written down, spoken about, referred to, had a formula written for, stored in a computer, etc. There are lots of numbers that have been "considered" in the history of mankind, but it's a finite number of numbers, and therefore there has to be a largest one. Now add one. I just mentioned a number that's never been mentioned before. And you can easily top it!
There's a wonderful number that you've probably never thought about before. It's the number that's the largest number that's ever been computed, written down, spoken about, referred to, had a formula written for, stored in a computer, etc. There are lots of numbers that have been "considered" in the history of mankind, but it's a finite number of numbers, and therefore there has to be a largest one. Now add one. I just mentioned a number that's never been mentioned before. And you can easily top it!
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I wasn't being literal. It was a play on words regarding the app numbers which I've never used as opposed to excel which I use daily.
I prefer numbers to letters as I'm dyslexic.
I remember my amazed and delighted astonishment as a small kid playing counting games with a cousin and my brother, and realising with genuine awe that no matter how large a number is, by adding one, you can make it larger still. And so on. Ad infinitum. The concept of infinity - that were is no largest number (or smallest number, once we worked that one out) was literally mid blowing. And incredibly interesting.
Unfortunately, that delight in playing with numbers - in thrilling to the fun of it all - tends to be knocked out of you - especially if you are female - by the time you get to second level.
Despite a brilliant maths teacher (one of the best in that region of the country, and consulted by the national educational authorities on making maths more accessible for youngsters), it can be a challenge to overcome social conditioning (girls don't do maths).
However, while I studied other areas, I do like (and was good at) numbers and play with them; these days, that facility tends to be used when observing elections.
In fact, these days, I still do the electoral/voting calculations - in polling stations, municipal centres, or in regional watching regional counts and tabulations, and in national count centres, when I am in such places - by hand. Most of the others use calculators - we compare findings - but I enjoy this stuff. And I enjoy writing it out and calculating it by hand.
Welcome back, -aggie-!
What possible excuse could you have for ignoring these forums all year?
Well, actually I was in the hospital for 7 months, in a coma for two months, and almost died several times during my hospital stay. Even after finally getting out of the hospital, it took several months for me to get back to functioning somewhat normally (I couldn't walk for awhile, it was hard to even use my phone, much less use my MBP, etc.).
It's been a rough year, but I've also been blessed with a lot. I've been told it's a miracle I'm alive/
That's really shocking to hear. I'm so glad you made it through the ordeal. It must have been really strange to wake up and be told that months had elapsed since you were last conscious. That happened to another MacRumors member, who woke up to learn that he had been put in an induced coma to save his life.
I'm sure that getting back to MacRumors was the key goal that kept you going!
Seriously, it's experiences like this that make you appreciate just being alive and having people around who care about you. I've heard many people say something similar.
Recovery can take time, but 2019 is bound to be a much better year for you.
I'm sure that getting back to MacRumors was the key goal that kept you going!
Seriously, it's experiences like this that make you appreciate just being alive and having people around who care about you. I've heard many people say something similar.
Recovery can take time, but 2019 is bound to be a much better year for you.
As excuses go that’s probably a legitimate one!
Sorry you had to go through all that and glad you got through it all.