Why I Want to Be a Member of IAC

[OliverC]

Okay, first rough bash at this is up there on the site, see the "Play Calendar" link in the Learn Submenu. Please have a play and fill up some slots so we can have a better idea whether this format will work okay. You must be logged into the site to create or edit records, however.

Times and Days
Please remember that when you're look at the Calendar, times will be shown in your own local time (assuming that your Time Zone and Daylight Savings are registered correctly in your Site Profile). When you are creating or editing a record, however, times must be expressed in terms of Universal Co-ordinated Time (UTC), which is not subject to Daylights Savings, and all Time Zones are expressed as an offset from UTC.

For example, Eastern Daylight Time is UTC -4. British Summer Time is UTC +1.

Days not Rolling over or Rolling Back
One disadvantage to this method of displaying records, is that times that cross Midnight will not cause the day to "roll over":

For example if you're in New York and want to set up a time slot of 10pm (EDT) on Thursdays, that's 2am on Friday in UTC terms, because you're 4 hours behind UTC, but there is no easy or elegant method by which I can cause the day to "roll over" to Friday for people who are in Europe, Africa or Asia if you specify Thursday, or for the day to "roll back" to Thursday for people in the USA, South America or Canada if you specify Friday. Some people, therefore, are going to see the "wrong" day if the time is on a different day from you in UTC terms, whatever you do.

This is because we're not dealing with actual dates here, so the normal method of doing date arithmetic that is employed throughout the IAC site will not work here. Sorry about that, but there isn't a huge amount I can do about that without writing a load of code which will slow the page down considerably (and which I don't currently have the time to do).

[kenberg]

Maybe I am doing something wrong [Yep, I was. See the post below) but here is what happened. I figured I would schedule myself from 9-10 AM EDT tomorrow, Monday morning.  So I should enter this as 1-2 PM, right? I did, but it scheduled me for 13:00 to 14 :00. That's 1-2. I thought it was going to take the entered 1PM-2PM and subtract 4 to get 9AM to 10AM for the display.

I gather I am misunderstanding something. Anyway, I was just experimenting and I erased it but in case this helps anyone else I thought I would mention it.

[OliverC]

No that is exactly how it should work, Ken: 9am EDT is 1pm UTC at present.


It would be helpful if a few people would try it (even just show that it's a test record rather than a serious one) and leave the record there even if it appears not to be working correctly for you. I have coded this page in a slightly different way to the way the rest of the site works because, as I said above, the normal way of adjusting the times for everyone doesn't work because there are no actual dates involved and I may have to tweak the code a bit.

[kenberg]

Ah, wait.  I checked and my time zone was not  properly entered. I think it is all fine now. It now says, when I read it,  that I will be online from 9 to 10 tomorrow (Tuesday).  This is meant as an experiment to see how it all works, but I will try to be there.

Before I edited this post, I mentioned that I always allow for the possibility I have done something wrong. Yep, a good idea!

I'll add something for anyone else out there who maybe has not got everything in order. I do two things on BBO. I visit the Forum  (both BBO and IAC), and I log on and play. Neither has required that I think much about some registration details.

If you are here on the Forum, you can click on the upper right "BBO Intermediate/Advanced". This takes you to another page where you will see a login button. The way mine was set, I had to re-login. Apparently I had a different password on this page from my IAC Forum password. At any rate, at this tab you can pull down a menu, get  to your site profile, and make any needed changes.

I have done this, and various problems I was having went away..

There is a tab about Monsterpoints in the Site Profile that I don't yet understand, but that can wait.

Hmm. I notice that at the bottom of my post it gives the time of the last edit. This is 8 hours off from my EDT time. (It says 2:53, the edit was at 10:53).  So something is still off. But the posting worked correctly on the Play Calendar.

I gather I have an IAC profile and a IAC Forum profile and they do not entirely match. I'll work on this.

[OliverC]

The IAC Website is my creation. The database it uses is entirely separate from
The IAC Forums, which is not my creation, but written by a third party, the Simple Machines Forum (SMF), which is why is it vastly more "slick" than the IAC website.


The two do not talk to each other, which is why you have to register separately for the Forum and the Website, but since both are BBO-related, we need you to register on both using your BBO Nickname and whatever password you choose.

[Curls77]

I made a test entry into calendar and it worked well, set for tuesday noon - 1300 utc.
But I did not put any subject or comment in there and edited it. Then I added the "Test only" comment and saved.
Funny is that changed my time, which I did not alter and it became 14-15 hundreds utc.
I edited again, changed times back to initial ones, saved. And it stayed as I wanted it : )

[kenberg]

It makes sense in a way. When you click on edit, it figures (I guess) that you want to edit the time. Whether you do or don't, you apparently have te re-enter it. Not a huge problem.

[bAbsG]

I tried a test on the new calendar site but it didn't work for me.  But then again I could not add myself to the partnership desk when I tried a few months ago.  Everything worked before the new format was introduced, so something on my machine must not be compatible.  Alas.

[kenberg]

I tried a test on the new calendar site but it didn't work for me.  But then again I could not add myself to the partnership desk when I tried a few months ago.  Everything worked before the new format was introduced, so something on my machine must not be compatible.  Alas.

At first that's what I thought, but then I found that my site profile was not set up right. You probably already know about such things but at the login tab you can pull down a menu, open the site profile and edit it. That solved my problems. Even if this doesn't work for you, I thought I would post since it might be the cause of someone else's problem.

[Curls77]

IAC site needs cookies to work well. If we cleaned cookies, it might make it work wrong, ie sort of forget we are there.
Solution is easy. Log in, open your Profile (under Welcome Babs drop box at the top), and exit, with or without any change. It should help. Pls try and let us know

[bAbsG]

Hi Sanya and Ken

Nope - nothing worked.  The site will also not let me log out.  How weird is that?  No worries.

[OliverC]

You can force a log out if you change Automatic Login to "No" first and THEN log out.

[DickHy]

My computer is being temperamental.  When I click on the "Add a Play Slot" button, it simply disappears.  Signing in again (from the drop down menu) brings the button back, but clicking on it again makes it disappear.  I've tried a couple of times but the IT is adamant that I should be frustrated 

[DickHy]

... ah ah , I followed Curls advice and my computer surrendered

[DickHy]

I didn't mean this to turn into a blow-by-blow account, but I've tried to enter a slot 4 times, using either the tick button or the yellow box and arrow button.  However nothing is posted apparently.