[Sw-l] Issues with SignPuddle

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
October 17, 2024

Dear SW List members,
We are so fortunate to know Steve Slevinski, who is working full-time at the University of Iowa, with an intense and busy schedule. His work at the University of Iowa has nothing to do with SignWriting. His job Monday-Friday, working long hours, is to work with images of the brain:

Steve at University of Iowa
https://neuroimaging.uiowa.edu/people/steve-slevinski

In 2020, I was no longer able to run our non-profit organization, and so I closed the non-profit, which meant that Steve started working at the University of Iowa. I never expected Steve to work on the weekends on SignWriting, but we were all blessed that Steve chose to do that, and so we have still been working with SignWriting, even though I retired.

I cannot express my gratitude enough to Steve, for keeping all this going for SignWriting on the weekends. Thank you, Steve, for your generosity to help us use SignWriting all these years. Your donation of time and energy on the weekends is amazing and we know how fortunate we are that you have time to devote to the hard issues of constantly changing servers and technical support issues.

And I hope people interested in helping Steve continue to do tech support for SignWriting, will join him on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/signwriting

Thank you again, Steve, for all you are doing everyday -

Valerie Sutton
sutton at signwriting.org

---------------------

> On Oct 17, 2024, at 7:11 AM, Steve Slevinski <slevin at signpuddle.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi SignWriting list,
> 
> Recently there have been three issue with SignPuddle running on the legacy server.
> 
> Issue 1: the legacy server needs to be rebooted several times a year.  When this happens, the entire SignBank.org site will not be accessible.
> 
> Issue 2: recently, the legacy server ran out of disk space.  When this happened, it was impossible to log into SignPuddle.  This issue has been resolve and will not reoccur.
> 
> Issue 3: trying to save a sign results in a page that never loads and causes other related problems.  This issue is caused by several people trying to save a sign at the same time.  In theory, the system should handle them one at a time so that everything is saved appropriately.  The wait for saving should only be for a short time.  Unfortunately, this isn't working properly and has gotten worse in the last week or so.  I'm not entirely sure what's causing the issue.  I will investigate further this weekend and try to implement a fix.
> 
> BTW, if you encounter problems saving a sign, please DO NOT REFRESH the page.  You will create multiple copies of your sign entry and you will lock the dictionary until I can manually fix it.  Some of the dictionaries are large and saving takes time.
> 
> Unfortunately, I have limited time to work on SignWriting and I'm not able to provide the tools and services that you deserve.  I have a plan for the future, but it will take time to get there.  I do not plan to make changes to SignPuddle 2 beyond emergency fixes.  I will keep the system running, but there will be issues and I appreciate your patience.
> 
> In 2020, we closed the non-profit supporting SignWriting.  I tried to raise enough money to continue full-time work with SignWriting but I could only raise a few hundred dollars a month via Patreon. This is enough to cover the server costs and registrations, but it could not pay for my time.
> * https://www.patreon.com/signwriting
> 
> In 2020, I started working at the University of Iowa.  The work is intense and requires most of my mental energy.
> * https://neuroimaging.uiowa.edu/people/steve-slevinski
> 
> Regards,
> -Steve
> _______________________________________________
> Sw-l mailing list
> Sw-l at listserv.linguistlist.org
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sw-l