Messages

1

Help Us Build the Database / Additional/Missing data for entries

December 12, 2008, 09:31:39 PM

I found a few entries without the assortment number and have those.  With two of the entries, I've also included the back-of-the-box-bio as Item Description info.  These are normally in the Item Descriptions as they appear on HTS.com.  I'm not sure what the decision would be as far as including these since there is no such description, but I've included them in case it is decided to put them in the Item Description field.

North America > Animated > Voyager
Skywarp
Product Code/Assortment #:  83719/83463

North America > Universe(2008) > Exclusive
Special Teams Leaders
Product Code/Assortment #:  83840/83793
Item Description: The war between the AUTOBOTS and the DECEPTICONS reaches its most furious point with the creation of the Special Teams.  These highly specialized combat squads bring together a variety of talents into powerful and effective fighting teams, each led by a powerful leader.  Each Special Team commander is a mighty warrior and brilliant leader, tested in the fires of the ancient war, and proven by countless victories.

North America > Universe(2008) > Exclusive
Standoff Beneath the Streets
Product Code/Assortment #:  83842/83794
Item Description: Crashed to the ground and tangled in a mess of thick, steel cables, SPRINGER struggles to reach his weapon before the DECEPTICONS find him.  Unfortunately for him, though, RATBAT saw just where he crashed.  Suddenly, the ground shakes violently, freeing SPRINGER and knocking RATBAT to the ground.  When they both regain their feet, the odds are suddenly even.  The two robots have a tense standoff, even as a larger battle rages around them.


One other thing comes to mind as far as data points.  Should the series (G1, G2, Beast Wars, War Within, etc.) be tagged onto the Universe(2008) entries somewhere in the database? I ask this because the Standoff Beneath the Streets set is labeled as "War Within series" but if you search for War Within, this item will not come up.  The same results would happen for the upcoming Universe(2008) releases of Cheetor, Dinobot, and Inferno.

2

Help Us Build the Database / Re: So what are the photographic submission procedures?

November 29, 2008, 01:59:15 PM

Nice photo! Did you actually take it yourself? If so, by all means keep 'em coming!

Yeah, I took that one.  I submitted it to see if it was up-to-snuff and I should even bother with "Standoff Beneath the Streets" package, since it's not quite as good (getting the right lighting on the figures in that box takes a set-up far more professional than I can afford right now).  Lightening the pics up in The Gimp just made things look faded out, even with all the color re-balancing options available.  Basically I just had to keep re-adjusting the lighting to get the best that I could.

Aside from the "Standoff" pic that I'm going to submit, I kept one other one as a humorous example of "If you see this, you need to do something".  There's a reflection in the box window that looks like a facehugger from the "Alien" movies.

To answer your questions, your photo submission was automatically tagged as "pending", which means it winds up in a list for a moderator to review. For record submissions marked as "pending", they are only initially visible to moderators and to the submitter himself, until they are approved. I could do something similar for photos, but I probably won't bother until someone finds a way to abuse the system.

Okay, good to know.  It sounds like a good system considering what the community is like.

But anyway, your photo has already been approved--thanks again for doing such great work, and please, take more! We're especially interested in parts photos, so if you've got 'em, snap away!

Now that I have a set-up similar to the example in the guide, I'll be getting to those soon.  Taking those pictures will be significantly easier than the package photos, so my only real limitation will be whether or not the TF and accessories are in storage, or currently on display (also being in my collection is a big limiting factor, but that's pretty much a given).

3

Help Us Build the Database / So what are the photographic submission procedures?

November 28, 2008, 09:24:37 PM

I'm wondering due to having uploaded one (box image for Universe 2008 exclusive Special Teams Leaders), and it was just popped into the page.

I was assuming that at least someone had to approve an image before it becomes part of a page.

Don't get me wrong, I tried my best to get a good photo and follow the guidelines, but I still am not positive that it's good enough (packages are a royal pain to get a good photo of compared to figures and pieces).

So, I take it that it is assumed that a member will follow guidelines as best as possible and the image goes up for expediency's sake, followed by it being checked on by staff later?

4

Bugs? On www.shmax.com? Ha ha, you kill me... / [RESOLVED] A few bugs I came across...

November 18, 2008, 06:21:41 PM

I was lured in by the collection GIFs that I've been seeing in people's sigs.  Things appear to be working pretty well now, but as a coder I know that bugs never end until after the code is 'frozen'.  I'll try to put them into categories:

Database query returns

When I added items to my collection, I did it the hard way.  No country, category, or sub-category short-cuts, just the full list of what's not in my collection and worked from there.

1. Listing synchronization problem - when adjusting the the number of results to display per page from '20' to '100', results returned when clicking for the next page were not the next 100 results, but would be from somewhere further in the database.

2. Listing synchronization problem - with results per page at the default '20' setting, clicking on the 'Next' link would return results that were not from the next 20, but somewhere further in the database.  This did not occur the first time that I clicked the 'Next' link with this setting, but did happen further on.  This behavior did not show up when I clicked the page number links (such as being on page 45 and clicking the '46' link).

The two problems may be the same.  I don't recall whether I ever clicked on a page number link when I had the results per page set to '100'.  If I only ever clicked on the 'Next' link then these are most likely the same problem manifesting in a different way for how the back-end is responding to the requests generated for the 'Next' link.

Update knock-out

I was adding entries to my collection when the update for the parts links on the individual entry listings went through yesterday.  I didn't notice it at the time, but that apparently locked me out of database entries at the time.  I added a couple of 100 other items to my collection list and thought it was being saved, since the 'saved' was dynamically popping in each time and it was saying 'Omnus's collection' all the time I was doing it.

I noticed the problem I looked at what was listed in collection.  The number was low and after checking specific entries found all that had been entered past a certain point weren't there.

I logged out, logged back in and re-entered everything and it was fine at that point.

It's definitely a conflicting database issue, but re-creating it so you can figure out a fix (other than post a notification when a sweeping database change is going to happen in the forums) is going to be a pain.

'Your Dynamic Signature' section

The dynamic signature works fine for me, but the static GIF displays nothing.  It just has 0.00%.

It also doesn't allow me to copy anything from either of the textboxes, so testing the GIF by calling it up in another tab was a tad bit annoying.


Well, after dropping that in your lap, I'll see if I happen to have a good enough camera (and more importantly good enough lighting) to contribute anything (which means not popping those Target exclusives I just got from Target.com out of their packaging).

Thanks for the effort of creating an interesting site.