Posted by Richard White Mon, 05 Mar 2007 07:56:00 GMT
While it took a bit longer than expected, everything has been fully moved over to the new server and is online. My apologies to everyone who had to track their time by pen and paper this evening; your sacrifice will be rewarded with a more responsive SlimTimer.
Posted by Richard White Thu, 01 Mar 2007 06:10:00 GMT
As some of you may have noticed, SlimTimer has been a tad less responsive than usual the last couple days topping out last Friday by being downright comatose for a couple hours. After much sleuthing around the server logs I’ve determined that SlimTimer was part a victim of it’s own success (with traffic up significantly since the new year) but moreso fell victim to inefficiencies at the database level: unoptimized queries and unhelpful database settings.
I’ve already moved to correct those database settings which should fix the bulk of the problems. I’m also bringing in some people to optimize those queries and this Sunday (3/4) SlimTimer will be down for a good chunk of the afternoon (PST) while it’s moved to a bigger server.
A number of your have expressed concern about the long-term viability of SlimTimer and even offered donations. I appreciate the sentiment, but your current donations of patience have been more than enough. We’ve got big things planned for SlimTimer, which I’ll hopefully get to announce soon, and it’s not going anywhere but up. It will be a smoother ride from here on out.
Posted by Richard White Tue, 13 Feb 2007 04:01:00 GMT
Before we get to the part where I spill the beans on the big plans I have for SlimTimer, I need something from you first.
If you login to SlimTimer, and you’re a regular user*, you’ll be prompted to fill out a survey that asks for information about how you use SlimTimer, who you are and what other online tools you use. It would be great if everyone could fill this survey out as it will have a direct bearing on where the site goes from here. The survey is only for regular users of SlimTimer so if you don’t see the popup or the link just keep using SlimTimer and you’ll get your chance to be heard.
Privacy Disclosure: Your individual survey information will be kept private but I may do a blog post on the aggregate data (ex: X% of SlimTimer users use BaseCamp).
* A regular user is defined as someone who’s logged more than 5 hours in the last 10 days but created their account over 10 days ago
Posted by Richard White Sun, 11 Feb 2007 19:53:00 GMT
After a bit of a hiatus, I’ve released a number of long awaited improvements:
... and stay tuned for information on some some big news about some upcoming major additions to SlimTimer.
It’s good to be back.
Posted by Richard White Tue, 17 Oct 2006 18:27:00 GMT
With all the server issues from last week resolved, I quietly pushed out the SlimTimer API on Sunday. From the site itself:
With the SLIMTIMER API developers can write rich desktop or web applications that integrate seamlessly with SLIMTIMER. The API is RESTful and fluent in XML, YAML and JSON.
The Public API allows secure access to SLIMTIMER user data for syncing with external applications. We also have a Trusted API for those companies and individuals interested in a tighter integration with the SLIMTIMER platform including importing your existing users into SLIMTIMER and branded versions of the timer client.
To obtain and api key and get started simply signup for a SLIMTIMER account and click on the API link after you login.
I look forward to seeing what inventive apps and integrations are created and certainly let me know if you’ve built something based on the API.
I’m also tinkering with the idea of a contest, with prizes, to get the creative juices going. What do you think, would you be interested in a programming contest?.
Finally, don’t hesitate to ask for help or for extra functionality via either on the SlimTimer developers forum or by emailing me directly. Enjoy!
Posted by Richard White Wed, 11 Oct 2006 12:50:00 GMT
I wanted to take a moment apologize to anyone who used SlimTimer in the last 12 hours and encountered slow reponse times and the 500 errors. The good news is that it seems to be fixed now (you never want to anger the gremlins by proclaiming that you’ve conquered them) and the site should actually be faster because of the solution.
I attempted to roll out a silent release so people could beta test the API, but the server was none too pleased and started thrashing about. No biggie I thought, I’ll just do a quick rollback and debug these issues elsewhere. That too did not go so well and left me with a server that would last an average of 5 minutes before I’d have to restart it (the fastcgi dispatchers, not the whole actual box) and no way to fix other than on the live site.
I did my best to try and fix the problem while also keeping the server up at least every other 5 minutes (to pick up SlimTimer submissions). The solution? Swapping out Lighttpd/fcgi for Lighttpd/Mongrel.
Update 10.12.2006:
So it turns out my Mongrel solution turned out to be a false positive as the server went back down a couple hours after this post. I did finally manage to track down the real culprit: bad data in some user sessions.
The positive upshot of all this is I became acutely aware of some performance issues in the system. I’ve sped up most of the views and reports by 150% or more on my local development version. I’ll push those improvements out in the next release, which will be whenever I get up the nerve to touch the server again. :)
Update 10.12.2006
Seems that performance issues were also part of the problem mix as they reared their ugly heads again during peak hour (11-1 MDT). I went ahead and hot fixed some of the SQL queries (referenced previously) which should help. I’m also investigating whether it’s a configuration issue or a lack of server resources. I’ve temporarily changed the client update rate to 10 minutes from 3 (this is how often the client updates the server).
Update 10.17.2006
Pushed out a new version on Sunday(10.15) that optimized some more SQL queries and fixed two memory leaks. Things seem to be running well now as I haven’t seen a server load over 1.0 which is good considering Monday is the busiest day. Thanks for your patience during all of this.
Posted by Richard White Thu, 21 Sep 2006 21:39:00 GMT
I took a break from building the SlimTimer API to add some much needed features to reporting:
Now, back to the API. Enjoy!
Posted by Richard White Fri, 08 Sep 2006 17:06:00 GMT
You can now run reports where you choose the rows and columns from users, tasks, tags and time. Also added is an Audit Report that shows you time spent per task broken out by comments.
Update next: API.
Posted by Richard White Fri, 18 Aug 2006 12:55:00 GMT
Just wanted to give everyone an update on the near term direction of SlimTimer development. The following is an ordered list of what I’ll be working on next.
Thanks for your support.
Posted by Richard White Tue, 08 Aug 2006 08:01:19 GMT
Just picked up Scoble’s post about his Off the Grid Campout going on right now about 3 hours east of here near Yellowstone. A geek event in Montana is just too good to pass up, so I just finished packing up all my gear (laptop and fresh SlimTimer database dump included) and will depart after about 4 hours of sleep. Hopefully noone will even notice I’m gone :)
Richard White is an interaction/UI designer and a founder of UserVoice who lives in San Francisco.
Hire me for your UI design gigs!
