UCOSP Spring 2012/Standups/20 Apr

<Amgine> Heyla sheac!
<sheac> Amgine: Hi! Sorry I'm late. My IRC client refused to connect. I'm talking to you via browser
<dlemieux_phone> Cool :-)
<dlemieux_phone> We haveny started so you'rr all good
<sheac> dlemieux_phone: phew! :)
<sheac> So Patrick isn't able to make it, but have we heard from Tony?
<sheac> Amgine: dlemieux_phone ^
<dlemieux_phone> Nope. Haven't heard
<sheac> dlemieux_phone: ok. give him another few minutes then, I guess?
<Amgine> bah. Just in case you're unaware, the WMF ssl servers are down.
<Amgine> Tony was here 30 minutes ago, but fell off the irc.
<sheac> Amgine: interesting... Aliens?
<Amgine> sheac: dunno. They had an issue which led to a massive restart, and the servers fell down again.
<dlemieux_phone> Yikes. Glad i'm not looking after that :P
<Amgine> there's a bit of panic, but mostly among users. 
<Amgine> RoanKattouw> HTTPS is down across the entire Wikimedia cluster
<Amgine> <RoanKattouw> It briefly looked like things were coming back up, but it looks like that was a fluke, it's all gone back down now
<sheac> I heard a funny quote about being a sysadmin:
<sheac> "Bring the server back up in five minutes and you're a moron. Bring it up after five hours and you're a miracle-worker."
<Amgine> <grins> Yah. One of the hosts I'm working with lost their 6x9s because one person accidentally rebooted the wrong machine.
<Amgine> It will take 5 years to recover that 6x9s rating for a rather tiny mistake.
<sheac> Amgine: dang... what's a 6x9?
<Amgine> 99.9999% uptime
<Amgine> right now they are 99.999%
<sheac> ohhhhhhhh
<Amgine> Six nines is pretty much the gold standard. Literally you can charge about 10% more if you have it.
<dlemieux_phone> Really? That's neat
<sheac> how long does it take to go from six nines to seven nines?
<Amgine> I think a century of no downtime.
<sheac> fifty years, I guess?
<Amgine> anyhoo. Shall we start?
<sheac> i'm keen. Let's do it.
<Amgine> Go ahead then?
<sheac> Sure thing
<sheac> This'll be the shortest of all:
<sheac> In the time since we met Tuesday, I've had an exam and a presentation, and my only "work" was demanding that I show an alternative error page. Resultingly, I'm only partway to accomplishing that.
<sheac> I have no blockers.
<sheac> But I'm looking forward to seeing what kinds of cool stuff I might get to do as a result of the API switch.
<Amgine> Heh. Cool. dlemieux_phone: can you do standups from the phone/vehicle?
<sheac> Done.
<dlemieux_phone> Oh yeah!
<dlemieux_phone> Okay so patrick and i had abug we were commenting on. About the SEND intents being able to handle all casings of a word and trying to make it more robust.
<dlemieux_phone> I haven't found an easy way to check if the page exists yet, but that definitely doesn't mean  it can't be done.
<dlemieux_phone> One thing of concern however is that i leave for florida on sunday for a week. And we are reaching the end of the term.
<Amgine> dlemieux_phone: I can do it vie api. What bug is this under?
<dlemieux_phone> So i can keep looking but the testing/release window isn't very big
<dlemieux_phone> It should have the word "capitalized" in it
<dlemieux_phone> I can check my email for the bug nimber
<Amgine> Okay, I will find it and comment with the api cantrip.
<sheac> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35958
<sheac> I think that's it?
<Amgine> End of term is pretty much here, obviously, but this project will continue. We have talked about a summer push, unfreezing features for a while to get the API version, and creating an iOS version.
<Amgine> That will be all-volunteer time - not directly part of UCOSP.
<dlemieux_phone> Oh that sounds great! (the extended time)
<dlemieux_phone> And thanks for the api link. The goal is just to make the feature more robust
<Amgine> I should say we submitted our recommendations and reviews, so you should be getting/gotten them.
<Amgine> I will get an API cantrip together today. I also just learned about some extensions to API that are part of the mobile frontend. I am researching whether these will still be available when we move to the API version.
<sheac> Amgine: I've gotten mine. I could offer some feedback-back if you're at all interested.
<Amgine> I am *very* interested, but could you e-mail it?
<Amgine> I'll need to forward it on.
<sheac> Amgine: Absolutely.
<dlemieux_phone> (That's it for my standup)
<Amgine> Great dlemieux_phone!
<Amgine> For me, well, I was going to mention I found these API extensions for MF... and I may be going to the Berlin hackathon the first week of June. If anyone is interested in attending that, there is still time to apply, and there is still funding available to help people with travel/hostel costs.
<Amgine> Let me get the link...
<Amgine> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Berlin_Hackathon_2012
<sheac> That sounds pretty rad, indeed! Do you know what you'll be working on?
<Amgine> There are several excellent classes which will be happening as part of the event.
<Amgine> sheac: I have some Wiki farm work I hope to be expanding on, plus the cli installer, and I have several extensions to work on.
* YuviPanda has quit (Quit: Computer has gone to sleep.)
<Amgine> But I will be sitting in on everything mobile-related.
<Amgine> Lua scripting is another thing I need to start reading up on: there will be thousands of templates in need of updating.
<sheac> Thanks for letting us know about that. For myself, it might not be very good timing as it's a week after I already requested some time off from work, but man... Berlin... subsidized...!
<Amgine> heh. I understand there's a 'beer hacking' group being planned.
<dlemieux_phone> Sweet haha
<Amgine> Nothing else from me. I think we need to talk about summer, but probably on Tuesday?
<dlemieux_phone> In June I will be living in Seattle. I guess thats a lot closer to you two!
<Amgine> Yep! I usually get down there a couple times each summer. I have a boat that always needs equipment.
<sheac> dlemieux_phone: Awesome! Working for Amazon or MS?
<Amgine> Redmond?
<dlemieux_phone> My girlfriend is on inyernship at MS so i'll have some holidays out there.
<sheac> baller! 
<dlemieux_phone> I will be in florida for the next meeting. But i might be able to atyend. Amgine I can keep you updated with whether i can attend or email you my stand up if need be.
<Amgine> <nods> That would be great. Start thinking about what we want to do over the summer, maybe look at what is necessary to code the iOS version.
<Amgine> Sheac: will you have time to be involved this summer?
<sheac> Amgine: Your point above is actually related to the feedback-back. I think we should have a really good idea of what needs to be done. I'm on-board for the summer if we can manage to get that a little better sorted out.
<Amgine> <nods>
<sheac> Ideally, I'd like spend more time doing things and less time trying to find something to do - or pretending that it needs doing.
<Amgine> <nods> One thing the WMF team have to train themselves to do is - as soon as anything is an issue - create a bug for it.
<Amgine> Once you start the bug, then you address it in standard problem statement -> test -> solution fashion.
<Amgine> We didn't do a very good job of getting lots and lots of bugs flowing.