So as of an hour ago e-mails have been flooding in, all saying the same thing: The HUD is broken!
I found the problem and made the fix. Download the updated version here.
And a note to myself: don’t rely on external services when possible. When they change how their system works, my system breaks. That’s what caused this problem.
Since last week’s Poker Copilot update, I’ve had far less support e-mails. Downloads and purchases, on the other hand, are higher than ever.
How did I get the number of support e-mails down? Through a low-tech means. No, I didn’t turn off the support inbox! I added simple text and hyperlinks at critical places in Poker Copilot.
Common support question #1: Why are my tournament total winnings zero? New Answer:
Common support question #2: Can I customise the HUD? New answer:
Common support question #3: How can I add more hand history locations? New answer:
Though simple, the tips took some effort to write. Too much text, and people won’t read the tips. Too little text, and people won’t understand the tips. I need them to be short, no words wasted, yet still able to communicate. What you see in these screenshots is the result of much deliberation.
There’s a new Poker Copilot review at http://pokersoftware.com/.
Hot on the tails of yesterday’s Poker Copilot 1.64 release comes 1.65. This allows users with non-English setups to get the HUD going again. It also fixes an error in one of the dashboard stats.
You can download from http://pokercopilot.com/
Seems today’s release doesn’t work for people running in a non-English speaking locality. Don’t fret, with the help of loyal customer Claudio, I’ve found and fixed the problem, and I’ll be releasing either tomorrow or later tonight.
I’ve spent several days testing this release and I feel it is now ready. For “testing” read “playing long-running tournaments with hundreds and thousands of players but never quite making the cut”.
So what’s new in Poker Copilot 1.64?
My best sales hours are my sleeping hours. That’s because while I sleep in Germany, Americans are in their prime poker playing hours. So I was surprised to turn on the computer this morning to find that I had no sales overnight.
Then I spotted this colorful e-mail from mon.itor.us:
The Poker Copilot website went down at 11:35 pm last night (German time) and was down all night. Bad for sales. Very bad for sales.
I’m glad, however, that with mon.itor.us’s help I spotted the problem as early as possible (without disturbing my sleep!) If you rely on your website for your income, and you are not monitoring it, you could do much worse than using mon.itor.us’s free service.
…is a good cult!
In November I went to the 2-day European Software Conference, aka the “We Love Joel Spolsky” conference. Of the various presentations I attended, two started with a Joel quote projected onto the screen in an attactive serif font in nice big letters. A third contained an “as Joel Spolsky said…” quote midway through. In casual conversations, I would discretely time how minutes passed before Joel was mentioned. It was often single digits.
Today I officially join the cult of Joel by including my own Mr Spolsky quote. As Joel said,
“we, personally, like money, here at Fog Creek, and will accept payment in just about any reasonable form customers would like to pay. Credit card, debit card, check, purchase order, cheques drawn on a foreign bank, small coins taped to an index card and mailed to us, Kruggerands, big stones from Yap, as long as it’s not friggin’ CATTLE we’ll accept it in payment. It’s money. Money is why you do this.”
As Poker Copilot sales increased, I became relucant to accept payment through any means other that my “Order Now” page. Joel’s sentiment above, however, reminds me to check my attitude. Sometimes people e-mail me to say, “I’m not comfortable with your ordering process. I don’t want to use a credit card. I don’t want to have a PayPal account. I don’t want to use a third-party payment processor.” In recent weeks I’ve tried to be more accommodating. I’ve also tried to streamline my “unusual orders” process.
PayPal makes this easy. With PayPal I can bill people without a PayPal account. With PayPal I can even process paper orders.
After all, money is highly motivating.
I downloaded Safari 4 beta on the weekend. I was impressed by Apple’s “Download Safari” web page. A near-perfect balance between the important components:
Hubris: Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance
In Poker Copilot’s custom charts, if you try to add “Hands Played” to the chart, performance becomes abysmal. The whole app freezes up while rendering the graph. The more hands you have, the worse this problem.
I presumed that my code wasn’t the source of the problem. For weeks I displayed overbearing pride and never sought the problem in my own code. Finally I started dissecting the third-party charting component’s source code, where my arrogance told myself the problem must lie.
I was wrong and am somewhat humbled. A stray “i++” in my Java source code was at fault. Expect a fix in the next Poker Copilot update.