The Internet Pinball Serial Number Database or IPSND collects serial numbers of
pinball machines and publishes a database of these on the Internet. Our goal is
to make available a registration of all pinball machines in existence and allow
tools for slicing, dicing and visualization of the data.
Games: 6,703 Serials: 70,919 Visitors: 82,708,037 Members: 5,815 Photos: 46,289 Lat/Lng: 39,511 Masks: 70,919(1,058.02%) Traits: 579 Nudges: 234,713 Backglasses: 1,865
Most Serials: Twilight Zone(1,355) Most Submissions: Dennis Braun(6,171) Most Points: Dennis Braun(45,943) Highest Quality: The Knight(17.00) Most Nudges: pinballservice-nl(30,155)
News Items:
5000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
5000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
CasaSchiller submitted the 70,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
10000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
10000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
Well, Dennis has been scouring the internets for the site for years no and it shows in his submissions. Thanks to all you fine folks that keep the site tidy and full of fresh numbers!!!!
I got an email from a member pointing out a bunch of the remaining Stern serial masks that were missing the optional 'C' on the end so I followed Pete's lead and got the others fixed. I *think* that is all of them but we will keep an eye out.
CasaSchiller submitted the 65,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
Serial number masks for Stern's Avengers, Led Zeppelin and RUSH Pro, Premium and LE have been updated to include the suffix letter "C". Many serialbot "5" scores are now 8s. I hope to update other serial number masks in the near future.
5000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
Charles P submitted the 62,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
I got a chance to fix two bugs that John K. found earlier this month.... First one was that when searching serial numbers, the results were excluding GamePart serials. I fixed this and also added direct links on each serial number to the submission detail page. The second bug was that when submitting GamePart serial numbers, the site was not allowing a user to submit two GamePart serials even if the GameParts were different on that game.
Both of these should be fixed now.. thanks again John!
Per-Åke Olsson submitted the 61,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
Hey everyone... It took about 6 months of paperwork and fees but the IPSND (part of the ISND - Internet Serial Numbers Database) is now officially classified as a US Non-Profit. There were a couple of reasons that I took this direction...
- Hosting costs are greatly reduced for Non-Profits
- Donations are US Tax Deductible (not sure how that might work in other countries?)
- This keeps the IPSND money separate from my own money
- Ideally this makes things easier to transition to a new owner in the next 20 years.
More to come on this topic as the year goes on. Thanks to all that have supported the site in the last 16 years!
Just brought a new SQL Database Server online tonight... had about a 30 minute downtime, apologies! Should be solid now and I will be mucking around a little more but I will try not to break anything.
Got a little upgrade today to a new web server with twice as much memory and twice as many CPUs. Hope that the site runs a little zippier now. I will be monitoring the performance and will see if I need to do anything to continue to tweak the VM. Next step will be migrating the database which will most likely happen the weekend of March 26th.
Dennis Braun submitted the 60,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
I did some data cleansing over the past week and found that over the years there were a good amount of foreign games that had come across from the Internet Pinball Database with mangled names due to the way I was decoding the Unicode in their names. I ran a fix on this so games like game#6812 will now have the appropriate characters (Japanese in this example).
Also, I ran across the fact that there were no serial masks defined for Jersey Jack Guns & Roses games (game#6764, game#6765 and game#6766) so I got those assigned. Kudos to Jersey Jack for giving each game a different serial number prefix so you can tell the specific model by the serial number. That is some smart decision making in my book!
Wanted to put a quick update here for everyone.. thanks to all who have been continuing to participate in the database through 2021 which has been an understandably difficult year for everyone.
This past year certainly has accumulated a good amount of bugs/issues with the site. Some of which I have been able to fix and some are requiring a more in depth change and are still outstanding. When I originally wrote this site 16 years ago, it was fresh and popping and admittedly, it needs some serious rebuilding in many ways. I'm in the process of evaluating how big of an overhaul I want to take on with the site in 2022 and I will be reporting more here in the coming months. For right now, I'm going to solve some of the more problematic issues (flaky emailing is #1 right now, fixing stats is #2 and forcing SSL/HTTPS is #3).
Additionally, I have been hosting this site on a Microsoft Azure VM for the last few years. It runs about $150/month so I will be evaluating a move to a different host.
Another fun update is that I think I have all my ducks in a row to make IPSND a 501(c)3 Non-Profit organization. Upsides are that donations will be tax deductible in 2022, more info coming soon on this.
Best vibes to everyone and here is to an improved 2022 for all! Jess
5000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
Dennis Braun submitted the 59,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
5000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
5000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
10000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
GameTime submitted the 58,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
Thanks for your support everyone. Cheers!
Isochronic Frost submitted the 57,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
Thanks for your support everyone. Cheers!
10000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
Dennis Braun submitted the 56,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
Thanks for your support everyone. Cheers!
Isochronic Frost submitted the 55,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
Isochronic Frost submitted the 54,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
DJ Fogiato submitted the 53,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
Thanks for your support everyone. Cheers!
There was a really badly written query (by me) for the Top Submitters by Submission Count report which was timing out. A quick rewrite got it returning in 2 seconds rather than the 2-minutes which was causing a timeout. Never use subqueries kids... always join. :-)
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 67 games that had meta-data updated ("Trio", 4 Queens, 42nd and Broadway, Ali-Baba, Apocalypse Now, Arlington Park, Basketball, Big Buck Hunter Pro, Big Jack, Big Valley, Brooks & Dunn, Buffalo Bill, Capt. Card, Cue Standard, Dixie, Escape from the Lost World, Expressway, Finance, Fireball Classic, Firecracker, Gin Rummy, Gran Dominó, Gypsy Queen, Happy Days, Hockey, Home Run, Home Run, Hot Shot, Live Wire, Majors, Multiplay, Nosferatu, Official Baseball, Pipe Eye, Pool, Quartette, Rebound, Rola Score, Rugby, Score Board, Sea Ray, Sensation, Show Boat, Shuffle Board, Shuffle King, Skill Ball, Skyrocket, Snappy, Space Rider, Spider-Man™, Spokes, Springtime, St. Moritz Alps, Straights, Thriller, Times Square, Topper, Trail Drive, Troubadour, Turf King, Vacation America, Valkyrie, Vampire, Western, Whoopee, Wild Horse Saloon, World Poker Tour™). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Ace High, Stampede). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 11 games added ("Pin-O-Skill", Alaska, Camilo Pardo, Domino’s Spectacular Pinball Adventure (Limited Edition), Jack Benson, Lucky Luke, Lucky Star, Space Walk, The Jetsons (Regular Edition), The Jetsons (Special Edition), Wild West) and 5 games that had meta-data updated (Black Knight Sword of Rage (Limited Edition), Black Knight Sword of Rage (Premium), Black Knight Sword of Rage (Pro), Domino’s Spectacular Pinball Adventure (Standard Edition), Skill Ball Junior). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Looks like some of my code fell out of date around the Google Maps on the Serial Submission page. That should be fixed now and rolling again. If you were not able to put in a geo location for your submissions in the past few months, you *can* go back and add it by editing your submission (members only, not anonymous submissions)....it will get you one more SerialBot 'quality point' too. Sorry for the interruption, thanks to Basil L. for letting me know about it!
It has been quite a long time (over a year) since we have been able to get updates from the IPDB as far as new games and updating game meta-data. Thanks to Jay and Wolf, we are up and running again... You can check out the IPDB Data Updates Page to see, but this recent sync updated about 900 games and included many new games released in the last year.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 11 games added (1939 Baseball (Free Game Model), 1939 Baseball (Payout Model), Iron Maiden Legacy Of The Beast (Limited Edition), Iron Maiden Legacy Of The Beast (Premium), Iron Maiden Legacy Of The Beast (Pro), Jurassic Park (Limited Edition), Jurassic Park (Premium), Jurassic Park (Pro), Pirates of the Caribbean (Standard Edition), Round, Team One) and 9 games that had meta-data updated (1939 Baseball (Novelty Model), Baseball, Dale Jr., Devil's, Guardians of the Galaxy Limited Edition, Metallica Master of Puppets (Limited Edition), System, X-Men Magneto LE, X-Men Wolverine LE). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Isochronic Frost submitted the 52,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
Thanks for your support everyone. Cheers!
5000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
King of Pinball submitted the 50,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
5000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
10000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
15000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
I finally have an SSL Certificate for the the site which is affordable (free). Thanks to the LetsEncrypt non-profit consortium, you can now use the secure SSL URL of https://www.ipsnd.net to get to the site. I still have some more testing to do with the various web services etc, but after testing is done in the next few weeks, I will switch the site over so by default you are redirected to the SSL site. Just another precaution for secure communication between your browser and the server.
I started having some issues with the Google maps due to a custom mapping control I had been using since 2007... it is so old at this point that it hasn't kept up with some of the changes Google has made. Im in the process of removing that old control, so the maps should be more functional now and I will get it all cleaned up over the next couple weeks.
Isochronic Frost submitted the 49,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
Fun House submitted the 48,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
Thanks for your support everyone. Cheers!
Dennis Braun submitted the 47,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 6 games added (Alien Space, Firefly, Ground Shaker, Sharp's Shooter Three Games In One, TV Flipper, Typhoon) and 8 games that had meta-data updated (Apollo-9, Bally Entry, Bally Entry, Landslide, Request, Special Entry, The Getaway High Speed II, Valiant). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I have had a fairly annoying new user registration bug for about a month now which I believe I finally have squashed. If you have any continued issues, please email me directly via webmaster@ipsnd.net and let me know so I can help you out. Sorry for the hurdles!!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 2 games added (Houdini "Master Mystery", Houdini Master of Mystery) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 10 games added (Copper Mine, Fox and Hound, Long Range Bulls Eye Gallery, Paramount, Penny Play, Teaser, Teaser, The Whip, Thistledowns, Tricks (Junior)) and 3 games that had meta-data updated (Daily Limit, Thistledowns, Tricks (Senior)). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 11 games that had meta-data updated (Centennial, Colossal, Flicker, Golden Harvest, Harvest Moon, Jumbo, Main Street, Match The Dial, Prospector, Six-Sixty-Six, Smack 'Em). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 10 games added (Bally Baseball, Destroyer, Island Queens, Miss America '81, Outer Space, Outer Space (Remote), Sparkz, Stock Market, Tahiti, Wall Street (Spain)) and 15 games that had meta-data updated (Batting Practice, Beauty Queens, Big Inning, Eureka, Four Million B.C., Gold Rush, Gold Rush, Heat Wave, La Vie Parisienne, Loop the Loop, Parade, See Saw, Slap Stick, Venus, Wall Street Special (Spain)). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 8 games added (All Star Baseball, Bank-A-Ball, Egyptian Pin Game, Feitiço, Kick Off, Pirates of the Caribbean Collector’s Edition, Zira, Zombie League All Stars) and 16 games that had meta-data updated (Bigfoot, Black Jack, Black Jack, BMX, Dixieland, Eight Ball Deluxe Limited Edition, Future Spa, High Flyer, Hotdoggin', Malibu Beach, Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man Pinball, Nashville, Speakeasy 4, Spectrum, Supersonic, Tahiti). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 16 games added (AC/DC (LUCI Vault Edition), AC/DC (Premium Vault Edition), Bally Alley, Bally Lane, Crystal Palace, Gulf, King Pin, Mystery Score (Extra Ball Model), Palisades Park, Riverboat Gambler, Sea Nymph, Silver Palace, Son of Fireball, Spirit of '76, Total Nuclear Annihilation, Vedette) and 13 games that had meta-data updated (Avalon, Bang, Bulls Eye Baseball, Come Back, Double Barrel, Miss Spy, Que Bueno, Ripley's Believe It or Not!®, Scrimmage, Spider-Man (Home Edition), The Lord of the Rings, The Machine: Bride of Pin·bot 2.0, Top Hit). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Terry Conn submitted the 45,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 3 games that had meta-data updated (Fiesta, Four Five Six, Gold Ball). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
With all these changes recently I have made a pretty large effort to upgrade many of the backend libraries and utilities. One thing I just did tonight was to remove a directive in the site headers that told the various web browsers to run in 'Internet Explorer 9' mode. I put this in there originally because when IE 10 and IE11 came out, they didn't like some of the Javascript (specifically the image hover+zoom script). I just tested the site in IE11, Chrome 64.0.3282.140 and Edge and they all seemed to work without the 'backwards compatibility' thang turned on. So, Im taking it out, this should let your various browsers work the best they can and hopefully nothing breaks. On that note. Email Me if something is broken for you and let me know your browser and version please. thanks.
All of the charts on the site have been upgraded at this point. The old .jpg based charts while pretty, were not very functional as far as hyperlinking etc and they were also server-based. The new reports use Chart.js and are asynchronous, animated and eventually will have the ability to link to the context you hover on... so users, games, etc. More to come soon!!!
It has been quite a bit harder to find all the bugs associated with switching security platforms but I think I have them all fixed now for the most part. Also, on the Game Pages, the 3 little charts that show the Country, Condition and GamePart PIE charts have been moved over to using chartjs which are more flexible and also interactive. I will be slowly moving all charts over to this platform and then introducing some other cool charts as I get more time. Keep on Keepin On!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 8 games added (Ballista, Guardians of the Galaxy (Premium), Guardians of the Galaxy Limited Edition, Midnight Marauders, Pin Up, Skill Score, Triple X, Won-Der-Bar) and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Swing). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Sorry, I broke nudging tonight after upgrading the login changes. Just got it fixed. Nudge away!!!
Okay, step one of the 2018 starting goals is complete. The backend tables and security on the sites login has been updated. It *should* be transparent and all logins should work us usual. The big difference is that we now store all passwords in a non-reversible hash instead of an encrypted password. What this means is that you can't get your password sent to you anymore because I can't decrypt it and email it to you anymore, what you can do is like most other sites, is that if you forget, you can get a password reset link emailed to the email on your account and you will have the ability to reset the password using that secret link and embedded code.
I will be doing a few more things on this in the background over the coming weeks. Also trying to get the site to be a little snappier on the cloud platform. More on that coming soon!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 16 games added (Apollo Moon Shot Rifle, Bullet Mark, Carnival Rifle, Commando Machine Gun, Commando Machine Gun, Coney Island Rifle, Flying Ducks, Foreign Legion Twin Machine Gun, Fun Land Rifle, Knock Out, M-79 Ambush, Rifle Gallery, Safari Rifle, Shoot Out Rifle, Star Wars (Premium), Super Pinball 91) and 5 games that had meta-data updated (Hee Haw, Ramp Warrior, Rock On, Spirit of 76, Trap Shoot). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
15000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
With the migration up to the Cloud, there are a number of other things that Im planning on spending time on in the coming months... if you have any dire request, email me via the contact page.
1. Rebuilding the entire login system - This will improve the security model so none of the passwords on the site can be reversed decrypted using a site private key. It will mean if you forget your password, I won't email it to you, but rather you will get an email with a password reset link. Whew 21st century stuff right there!
2. Charts - Im going to move away from the old .jpg based charts and graphs and use a Javascript library charting package (probably charts.js). This will make the charts more interactive and will get me away from the old Google Analytic Flash animations that show the maps.
3. Making Game Trait data easier to administer - This is for Jay who does't most of the Trait monitoring and cleanup. We need an easier way for him to add and edit the photos that show the different traits.
Okay, well, fingers crossed, everything is migrated and switched over. Both the SQL Server (which is about 20GB currently) and the web site is now hosted on Microsoft Azure. I have a small monthly credit via work which covers the site at this performance level. It does seem a bit slower but I will see where I sit on my total cost each month and see if I can get things going a bit snappier.. but you know how it goes, CPU cycles = $$$. Still a good step from dealing with my UPS battery issues, my error prone RAID controller, my flaky ISP, etc. :-)
The cloud hosted site is up and running in parallel and I will be switching primary DNS over to the new IP tonight around 10PM USA Mountain Time. I will then put the site hosted at my house in 'Maintenance Mode' with a message. So if you have stale DNS records (it can take up to 24 hours for the whole world to get updated DNS records) you will see the maintenance page until you get new records. I will put instructions on the Maintenance Page how to get to the cloud site directly if you need access. I will post more info here after the switchover on what this means, what the impacts are etc. Either way, I will be able to turn off my home server here in a few days hopefully!! :-)
Merry Christmas to everyone and super shoutouts to the folks who help run the site with me during the year... Rob, Jay and Pete!! Have a great and safe new year... Hopefully I will move the site up to the cloud over the New Years weekend, so we may be down again next weekend. :-)
Since my Adaptec RAID controller in the home VMWARE system has been giving some slight fits lately, Im going to start experimenting with moving the site up to the cloud. I have to do some test migrations of the database (which is 16GB in size - mostly due to images) so it is a beast. The pricepoint I need to run the servers at is fairly modest... 2 CPU's, 16GB of RAM. Once I get some testing done, I will report back.
Found some bad Regex which was causing the clustering algorithm to skip Export serial numbers due to the E prefix on those. Fixed them right up!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 3 games added (Guardians of the Galaxy (Pro), Video Pinball, Zingo) and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Hot Shotz, Rock 'N Roll The Crazy Maze). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
After talking with Jay and Wolf at the IPDB, I found that I was using an incorrect date on Bally games which had both a 'Project Date' and a 'Date of Manufacture' stored in the IPDB, it turns out I was loading the 'Project Date' which was earlier by more than a year sometimes and it was throwing off things in the Manufacturer listings that seemed odd to me. Anyway, a quick code fix and a resync and we should be good to go.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 149 games that had meta-data updated (2 in 1, 50/50, Aces High, Aces Top, Air Aces, Aladdin's Castle, All The Way, Alligator, Amigo, Atlantic City, Bally Hoo, Band Wagon, Bazaar, Beauty Queens, Big Day, Big Show, Black Jack, Blue Ribbon, Bon Voyage, Bongo, Boomerang, Bow and Arrow, Bowl-O, Bullfight, Bus Stop, Camelot, Campus Queen, Capersville, Capt. Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy, Centaur, Champ, Circus, Citation, Continental, Cosmint, Cosmos, Cross Country, Cue-Tease, Delta Queen, Deluxe Fun Cruise, Discotek, Dixieland, Dogies, Dolly Parton, Eight Ball, Eight Ball Deluxe, Elektra, Embryon, Evel Knievel, Evel Knievel, Fathom, Fireball, Fireball II, Flash Gordon, Flicker, Flip Flop, Fore, Freedom, Freedom, Frontier, Fun Cruise, Galahad, Gator, Gold Cup, Gold Rush, Gold Rush, Grand Tour, Hang Glider, Harlem Globetrotters On Tour, Harvest, Hay-Ride, Hi-Deal, Hi-Lo Ace, Hokus Pokus, Hootenanny, Hotdoggin', Jockey Special, Joust, Kick Off, King Rex, King Tut, Kiss, Knockout, Lexington, Little Joe, Loop the Loop, Loop the Loop, Lost World, Mad World, Magic Circle, Mariner, Mata Hari, Mata Hari, Medusa, Melody, MiniZag, Monte Carlo, Monte Carlo, Moon Shot, Mystic, Mystic Gate, Night Rider, Night Rider, Nip-It, Nitro Ground Shaker, Odds & Evens, Old Chicago, On Beam, Op-Pop-Pop, Paragon, Power Play, Quarterback, Ro Go, Rocket III, RockMakers, Rolling Stones, Safari, Sheba, Shoot-A-Line, Six Shooter, Six Sticks, Skateball, Sky Divers, Sky Kings, Slap Stick, Space Invaders, Space Time, Spectrum, Star Trek, Star-Jet, Strikes and Spares, Surfers, The Red Max, The Wiggler, Time Zone, Trio, Trio, Trio, Trophy, Twin Win, Vector, Victory Derby, Victory Special, Viking, Voltan Escapes Cosmic Doom, Wild Wheels, Wizard!, Xenon, Zip-A-Doo). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I spent some time reconciling serial numbers which start with the 'ESM' prefix. Both Silverball Mania and Six Million Dollar Man use this same prefix so it can make game part assignments a little tougher. I found that most Bally PCB's have a datecode on them and in this particular instance I found several pics with a datecode of '11-79' or just plain '80'.... so all of those mystery ESM serial numbers were clearly Silverball Mania serials since Six Million Dollar Man was released in October of 1978.
Fun House submitted the 44,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
I had a RAID Controller issue (I thought) but it seems that something went wrong with my other datastore in VMWARE so I ended up just doing a fresh install of VMWARE 6.5 and got rid of a bunch of old disks. Either way, site is back, no data lost... so all good. Fingers crossed! Thanks Y'all.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 4 games added (Joker, Vegas, Wonder Woman, Wrath of Olympus) and 3 games that had meta-data updated (Horse Shoes, Miss America Deluxe, Plaball). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Hot Hand) and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Hot Hand). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 17 games added (Arrow, Barnyard, Cannon Lagoon, Captain Nemo, Champs, Dialed In! (Collector’s Edition), Free Gunnery Training Sight, Hi Jack!, Infra-Red Scorer (AA), Lexy Lightspeed Escape From Earth, Lexy Lightspeed Secret Agent Showdown, L'Hirondelle, Planning Device, Repoker, ROCs, The Hobbit Black Arrow Special Edition, Time Trap) and 23 games that had meta-data updated (A.G. Football, America's Most Haunted, Attack From Mars (Remake Limited Edition), Attack From Mars (Remake Special Edition), Batman (66 Super Limited Edition), Derby King, Dialed In! (Limited Edition), Dialed In! (Standard Edition), Lazer Lord, Medieval Madness (Remake Limited Edition), Medieval Madness (Remake Standard Edition), Metallica (Pro LED), Metallica (Pro), Rob Zombie's Spookshow International (Limited Edition), Rob Zombie's Spookshow International (Standard Edition), Roy Clark 'The' Entertainer, Solar Ride, The Hobbit (Standard Edition), The Hobbit Motion Picture Trilogy Limited Edition, The Hobbit Smaug Gold Special Edition, The Wizard of Oz (Standard Edition), The Wizard of Oz 75th Anniversary Edition, The Wizard of Oz Emerald City Limited Edition). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Nugent) and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Nugent). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 1 games that had meta-data updated (IMO Spurt). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 10 games added (Dialed In! (Limited Edition), Dialed In! (Standard Edition), Hula-Hula (Italy), Luna Park, Pop 3000, POP 4000, Star Wars (Pro), Star Wars Limited Edition, The Hobbit (Standard Edition), Trident) and 8 games that had meta-data updated (Friendship "7", Gold Cup, Gold Medal, Heat Wave, Pick-Em, Set Up, Seven Up, Trident). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 3 games added (AC/DC (Pro LED), AC/DC (Pro Vault Edition), Spider-Man (Home Edition)) and 3 games that had meta-data updated (AC/DC (Let There Be Rock Limited Edition), AC/DC Back In Black (Limited Edition), TNT). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 7 games added (Attack From Mars (Remake Limited Edition), Attack From Mars (Remake Special Edition), Bank-A-Ball, Eight Ball Champ, Flash-Baseball, Gipsy, Magic) and 9 games that had meta-data updated (Bubbles, Bubbles (Rolldown), Magic, Medieval Madness (Remake Limited Edition), Medieval Madness (Remake Standard Edition), Muscle Car Cafe, Pari-Mutuel, Triple Action, Vacation America). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 2 games added (Aerosmith (Premium), Skill Derby (Non-replay Model)) and 5 games that had meta-data updated (Aerosmith (Limited Edition), Budget, Full Throttle (Limited Edition), Jungle King, Skill Derby (Replay Model)). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Thanks for your support everyone. Cheers!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 11 games added (Aerosmith (Limited Edition), Alien (Standard Edition), Card King, Console Baseball, Domino’s Spectacular Pinball Adventure (Standard Edition), Golden Arrow, grand theft auto vice city, Hot Bullet, Kung Fu, Robi Joker, The Royal) and 2 games that had meta-data updated (bowling (alle neune), Olde King Cole). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
5000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
Fun House submitted the 42,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 17 games added (Cantabria, Cavalier, Classy Bowler (Prototype), Deuces Wild, Fair Fight, Olympics, Poker Plus, Rally Montecarlo, Rob Zombie's Spookshow International (Limited Edition), Rob Zombie's Spookshow International (Standard Edition), Roll-It, Spinning Wheel, Stock-Cars, Strip Tease, Tic-Tac-Lotto, Torero, Zorro) and 116 games that had meta-data updated ("300", 2001, 4-Belles, Across the Board, Atlas, Big Brave, Big Dick, Big Shot, Blue Note, Brite Star, Bronco, Card Trix, Card Whiz, Challenge Round, Charlie's Angels, Charlie's Angels, Cleopatra, Cleopatra, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Count-Down, Cow Poke, Criss Cross, Criss Cross Pop-Up, Daisy May, Dancing Dolls, Dimension, Dragon, Dragon, El Dorado, Electra-Pool, Eye Of The Tiger, Falstaff, Far Out, Fashion Show, Fast Draw, Fire Queen, Flip a Card, Flipper, Flipper Parade, Flying Carpet, Flying Chariots, Flying Circus, Genie, Gold Star, Golden Arrow, Grand Slam, Hit the Deck, Ice Show, Jacks Open, Jet Spin, Joker Poker, Joker Poker, Jungle Life, King Kool, King Pin, King Rock, Lady Luck, Lightning Ball, Lite-A-Card, Lucky Strike, Mademoiselle, Magnotron, Majestic, Masquerade, Mayfair, Melody Lane, Mibs, Mini Cycle, Mustang, Mystic Marvel, New York, North Star, Now, Outer Space, Paul Bunyan, Picnic, Pinball Pool, Playball, Polo, Pro-Football, Queen of Diamonds, Rocket Ship, Roto Pool, Royal Flush, Score-Board, Sea Belles, Sea Shore, Seabiscuit, Seven Seas, Sheriff, Show Boat, Silver, Sinbad, Sinbad, Sing Along, Skipper, Solar Ride, Space Walk, Stage Coach, Straight Flush, Straight Shooter, Super Circus, Surf Side, Surfer, Sweet Sioux, T.K.O., Team One, Texan, Totem, Travel Agency, Twenty "1", Universe, Volley, Whirl-Wind, World Beauties). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 21 games added (Aerosmith (Pro), Big League, Bowl-A-Line, Bowl-A-Ray, Bowling League, Champion 85, Deluxe Bank-Pool, Electro-Pool, Far-West, Hi-Score Pool, Hooligan Pool, Hoops, Kue Ball, Master Play-Boy, Medieval Madness (Remake Standard Edition), Rotation, Sea Devil, Senior Deluxe Bank-Pool, Shuffle Board, Silver Bullets, Skill Score) and 74 games that had meta-data updated (400, Advance Roll, Arrowhead, Aztec, Band Leader, Bat-A-Score, Big Round-Up, Black Dragon, Black Gold, Bone Head, Broncho, Canasta, Colorama, De Luxe World Series, Domino Bowler, El Rancho, Eleven Belles, Festival, Fightin' Phils, Flying Saucers, Galaxy Ranger, Glider, Gold Nugget, Golden Nugget, Grand Prix, Grand Slam, Hacienda, Harvest Time, Hi-Ball, Hi-Ride, Hi-Score Pool, Hits and Runs, Honey, Hot Tip, Hula-Hula, Hula-Hula, Jockey Special, Jumpin' Jacks, Krazy Komiks, Lite-A-Pair, Little League, Lucky Seven, Lucky Seven, Magic Baseball, Medieval Madness (Remake Limited Edition), Merry Widow, Monza, One-Two-Three, Pee-Wee, Poker Face, Rip Snorter, Road Champion, Rocket, Silver Chest, Six Shooter, South Pacific, Sportsman, Startime, State Fair, Step-Up, Stock Car, Stop and Go, Surf Champ, Taps, Ten Strike, Total Roll, Tour (One Bicycle), Triangle, Tri-Score, Venus, Wampum-Bank, Wang Poo, Whizz, World Cup). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 10 games added (Avengers The Pin™, Baseball, Batman (66 Limited Edition), Batman (66 Premium), Batman (66 Super Limited Edition), Desert Gun, Miami Beach, Serenade, Tornado, Trio) and 8 games that had meta-data updated (Airborne Avenger, Bahama Beach, Brooks & Dunn, Circus Circus, Sport-Parade, Super-7, Superman, Transformers The Pin™). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
It was pretty exciting here in Northern Colorado this morning... windy and icy... with that also was the first time we lost power for an extended period (3 hours) in about 7 years. The site was down most of the day after my VMWARE box finally drained the last power from the UPS batteries.
Dennis Braun submitted the 41,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
10000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 12 games added (1 Million B.C., Bagatelle And Baseball, De Luxe Jungle Gun, De Luxe Shooting Gallery, Festival, Full Throttle (Limited Edition), Haunted House, Jungle Gun, Knockout, Luck Smile, Majestic Moving Target, Pin-Ocle) and 7 games that had meta-data updated (Click, Hi-Lo (Junior), Hi-Lo (Senior), Hit Parade, Sea Side, Skill Race, Skill-Roll). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Thank you all for another great year of serial number submissions... who would have thought that we could have collected 40,000 serial numbers in 10 years!!! (BTW... the site has been up for 10 years too)... Be safe and Cheers to you all!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 7 games added (Ghostbusters (Premium), Shooting Gallery, Super Wall Street, The Hobbit Motion Picture Trilogy Limited Edition, The Pabst Can Crusher, The Pixie Pin Game, Trap Shoot) and 10 games that had meta-data updated (Apache!, Dixieland, Domino One Ball (Large Display), Evil Fight, Mystic Gate, President One Ball, Royal Seven, Sharp Shooter II, The Question Mark, Zira). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
5000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 6 games added (Aqua Gun, Arctic Gun, Cannon Fire (Big), Electric Tournament Pool, Marble Pool, Olympics) and 8 games that had meta-data updated (4 Aces, Aces & Kings, Ball Park, Blow Me Down, Cannon Fire (Standard), Jungle Drums, Spot A Ball, The Fabulous 50's). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Antti Peltonen submitted the 39,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Boomerang) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (War) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 2 games added (Power Pro Pinball, The Hobbit Smaug Gold Special Edition) and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Action (Sr), The Big Lebowski™ Pinball). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Goodwill Industries of Southern California posted a Nip It pinball machine for sale they claim was owned by Henry Winkler. Mr. Winkler's iconic Happy Days character, The Fonz, was known to play a Nip It machine throughout the show's run. So theoretically, you could own Fonzie's personal Nip It! It doesn't look like provenance is offered or if this was one of the actual machines used on Happy Days, but the site says that Mr. Winkler himself donated the machine to be sold. Regardless, a serial number was visible in the photos, and is now a part of the IPSND!
Thanks to IPSND member Lenny Esposito, we have added a new trait to the Gottlieb/Mylstar game Jacks to Open to identify test units that featured an alpha-numeric display. To read more about the test units, head over to the Jacks to Open page on the IPDB.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 6 games added (Game of Thrones (Premium), Ghostbusters (Limited Edition), Ghostbusters (Pro), Home Tango, Spider-Man (Vault Edition), The Big Lebowski™ Pinball) and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Merry-Go-Round, The Wizard of Oz Emerald City Limited Edition). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
5000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Tivoli No. 5) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Thelma submitted the 38,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
I own 3 domains for this site... ipsnd.net, ipsnd.org and ipsnd.com. All of which redirect you to this site. With the increase in domain costs, Im dropping the ipsnd.com domain so that will no longer work after this month. The best domain to use in your browser is http://www.ipsnd.net. Cheers!
5000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
The app has been running a few months now. I have a handful of issues to start digging into. Definitely use your WiFi if you can for the best success on submissions. I will post another announcement once I release a new version. The news within the app also has more info since that is a separate feed from this one. Happy Friday!
10,000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Having Fun) and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Robin Hood). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Fortune, Rider's Surf). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
With the help of our IPSND Admin Rob M., the Android App is tested enough to be official.... aka 'I think it is working now'. You can check it out on the GOOGLE Play IPSND App Page and download it from there. Also, when I publish new versions, you will now get them automatically via the store which will be nice since Im sure there will be more bugs. The app lets you browse existing submissions, plus makes it super easy to submit new serial numbers... like 30 seconds easy.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 1 games that had meta-data updated (24™). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
It seems that when Adobe acquired Aviary for their online photo editor, that the API changed a little and it broke the Photo Editor (hint, if you edit your submission and then click on the 'edit photo' you get access to all kinds of cool cropping, rotation and other image tools that can help your submission photo look a bit nicer).. So, I just finally noticed that and got it fixed tonight.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 5 games added (Game of Thrones (Limited Edition), Le Prima, Riviera Golf, Sky Ride, Unknown) and 33 games that had meta-data updated (4-IN-1 (Pigskin: 2010), 4-IN-1 (Poker), 4-IN-1 (Willy At The Bat), 4-IN-1 (Willy’s Cup), Big Bat, Carnaval, CSI, Dracula, Dragonfist, Flight 2000, Galaxy, Galaxy, Grand Slam, Hot Hand, Hot Race, Hot Shotz, Iron Maiden, Meteor, Meteor, Nudge-It, Pinball, Pinball, Ramp Warrior, Rawhide, Sky Ride, Spain 82, Spider-Man™, Spider-Man™ (Black Suited), Stampede, Stingray, Strike Force, Torneo, Viper). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Because we were getting serial numbers for them.. I added the 6 later model Shuffle Alley games from Williams... IPSND#30000, IPSND#30001, IPSND#30002, IPSND#30003, IPSND#30004 and IPSND#30005. These are not in the IPDB for now, but if they are ever added for any reason, we can merge them up.
Seems like a few robots have figured out how to post garbage serial numbers in order to put crappy website links in the comment text... fun stuff. So..... I had to make a change to the submission pages, this only affects NON-Members (or anyone that doesn't have login) in that, those two pages now have CAPTCHA's at the bottom. So, if you don't have a free account here, then you will have to verify that you are human now and proove you have a brain. Members will not have any differences on the submission pages. Keep it real, Humans!
Thanks to everyone that participates on the site regularly and especially to our fine Admins... Pete, Jay and Rob. Hope you all get an MM, AFM, CV, BBB, WOZ, or something fun and exciting for Xmas. It is stuff like THIS (read the nudge comments at the bottom)... that make this numbers-centric site so freakin' hilarious. Cheers!
I have added a new type of Trait that can be defined for traits that aren't 'pre-defined'... the best way to explain is with an example... IPSND#21 came with a brass plaque that was individually numbered.. so did IPSND#4445 and finally IPSND#3169 had a handwritten number on the ball lift motor . This new trait allows people to submit their numeric plaque/ball-lift numbers with their serial number.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Dracula) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Hula-Hula) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I added a new trait for IPSND#3169 after noticing that of my two Hyperballs, that one had a perfectly flat Acrylic playfield while the other one was curved in the center to make the balls naturally roll towards the edges of the playfield and reduce congestion. So, if you have a Hyperball registered, go check out your game and update the trait data by editing your submission (hint: you get another serialbot point for that data too).
To learn more about game specific properties, click on the 'Game Traits' tab of any game.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Star) and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Faukland, Venus). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 17 games added (Aloha, Capitol, Copacabana Beach, Flipper Pin, Galaxy, Game of Thrones (Pro), North Pole, Nuclear, Rose Winds, Roy Clark Super Picker, Slalom, Spelling Bee, Striker, Sunset Riders, The Happy Musketeers, The Machine: Bride of Pin·bot 2.0, Tropical) and 38 games that had meta-data updated (Atlantis, Bad Cats, Banzai Run, Big Guns, Big Together, Cyclone, Derby, Disco Fever, Earthshaker, F-14 Tomcat, Fantasy, Faukland, Fire! Champagne Edition, First Bolide, Gold Rush, Jackpot, Jai Alai, Jokerz!, K. C. Jones, Lucky Seven, Lucky Seven, Mousin' Around!, Police Force, Pool Sharks, Psichedelico, Road Champion, Rollergames, Sinbad, Space Station, Super Star, Swords of Fury, Taxi, The Brain, The Jungle, Truck Stop, Whirlwind, Wine-Grower, Yukon (Special)). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Larry Le Feuvre submitted the 36,000 serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 7 games added (Casino Golf, Dragon, Football (Improved), Full Throttle (Standard Edition), Gateway, Kicker (Italy), Trophy) and 4 games that had meta-data updated (Galaxy, Longacres, Rollergames, Top Notcher). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I got some feedback recently from one of our members that he wasn't able to upload photos from his IPhone due to the file extension being .jpeg rather than .jpg (which is what I expected). After some quick digging, the site now allows uploading of .jpg and .jpeg files now for submissions. IPhone users rejoice!!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 3 games added (Prima, Skill Score, Video Pinball) and 9 games that had meta-data updated (Beam-Lite 1937, Big Three, Bonus Baseball, Hard Rock, Hercules, Miss Nessie, Strip Tease, Woman-Lib, Wow). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Thanks for your support everyone.
Clive Pedersen submitted the 35,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 4 games added (Buccaneer, Hoss-Feathers, Miss America '45, Racing) and 11 games that had meta-data updated (3 in LINE, Barbarella, Bing Bang Game, Daffy Derby, Grand Slam, Grand Slam, Gridiron, Lone Star Derby, Psychedelic, The Lord of the Rings (Limited Edition), Transformers™ (Pro)). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 8 games added (Commodore, Daffy Derby, KISS (Limited Edition), KISS (Premium), Majorettes (No. 2), Sea Wolf, SSE, Twin-Gain) and 6 games that had meta-data updated (Grand Slam, Karate Fight, Majorettes (No. 1), Royal Crown, World Defender, Yukon). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Looks like we had some Centurylink downtime this morning. Hurray! Sorry for the interruptions and thanks for everyone for checking in when the site was down.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Euro Star) and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Challenger, Gotcha). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Stern's Kiss Pro and Legends of Wrestlemania Limited Edition, as well as Planetary Pinball's Medieval Madness Remake are now available in the IPSND. Go ahead and submit your NIB serial numbers!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 8 games added (All The Way, Bing Bang Game, Buccaneer, KISS (Pro), Mississippi Showboat, Psyche Delic, The Walking Dead (Premium), Wanghe) and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Continental, Yanks). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 5 games added (Argosy, L'Apero, Legends of Wrestlemania (Limited Edition), PROFI Match, The Furious Jazz) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 4 games added (2005 World Car Racing Pinball, Bill's Belott's, Le Cameleon, Medieval Madness (Remake Limited Edition)) and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Defense, Keep 'Em Flying). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 4 games added (Golden Gate (3-game), President One Ball, ScoreGasm Master, Thorobred) and 9 games that had meta-data updated (Alert, Continental Super 7, Golden Gate (4-game), Legionnaire, Pimlico, Record Time, Round Up, Santa Anita, Sky Lark). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 3 games added (Mexican Golf, Profit Sharer, Profit Sharer) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 3 games added (Mini Golf (New York Model), Super Golf Azur 3000, Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons™) and 3 games that had meta-data updated (Bowl A Strike, Figure 8, Ski Club). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 4 games added (High Fliers, Trio, Triumph (Model 2), Vee-A-Lite) and 31 games that had meta-data updated (AC/DC (LUCI Premium), AC/DC (Pro), Arabian Knights, Batman (Standard Model), Catch-N-Match, Good Morning America, Iron Man (Pro Vault Edition), Iron Man Classic, Metallica (Premium Road Case), Metallica (Pro LED), Metallica (Pro), Metallica Master of Puppets (Limited Edition), Mustang (Limited Edition), Mustang (Premium "Boss"), Mustang (Pro), Parlor Table, Sport, Star Trek (Enterprise Limited Edition), Star Trek (Starfleet Pro), Star Trek (Vengeance Premium), The Avengers (Limited Edition), The Avengers (Premium), The Avengers (Pro), The Avengers Hulk (Limited Edition), The Lord of the Rings (Limited Edition), The Walking Dead (Limited Edition), The Walking Dead (Pro), Transformers The Pin™, Transformers™ Autobot Crimson Limited Edition, Transformers™ Decepticon Violet Limited Edition, Triumph (Model 1)). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Thanks for your support everyone.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 6 games added (El Valiente, Feria, Miss Universo (10 Ladies), Miss Universo (5 Ladies), Safari De Luxe, World Champ (Prototype)) and 18 games that had meta-data updated (Apache!, Centaur II, Circus Romance, Cirsa Sport 2000, Eight Ball Deluxe Limited Edition, Feria, Flicker, Flying Champ, Gold Ball, Golf Play, Gun Club, Liberty, Marble Queen, Miss Universo (3 Ladies), Safari, Tenis, Three Musketeers, Torpedo!!). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (The Wizard of Oz 75th Anniversary Edition) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Dive Bomber). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 5 games added (Baby, Bera-Ball, Handicap, Luna Park, Sport-Ball-Automat) and 11 games that had meta-data updated (Freddy A Nightmare on Elm Street, Golden Arrow, hairy-SINGERS, Hare-n-Hound, Hi Straight, Hurdy Gurdy, Odisea Paris-Dakar, Rally Girl, TV-Baseball, West Club, Ziel). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 9 games added (Amuzu, Bowling, Carreras de Automoviles, Crystal, Golden Game, L'Etoile, Playtime, Sideral, Wrestlemania (Pro)) and 15 games that had meta-data updated (41-Derby, Armada, Attention, Ballyhoo, Big Time, Boom Town, Can Can, Flying Colors, Hi-Stepper, Jockey Club, Leap-Year, Record Time, Roto-Pool, Seven Flashers, Speed Ball). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Hello all! In addition to helping out with some admin duties around here, I also run a pinball blog called Credit Dot Pinball. I had the opportunity to interview our beloved IPSND head honcho Jess Askey last week, and in my humble opinion it is one of the best interviews ever to appear on Credit Dot. Very informative with a specific emphasis on the history of the IPSND! Take a look by following this link. Thanks for your time, and keep submitting those serial numbers!
Im going to be moving my database server over to a new Virtual Windows Server 2008R2 box running SQL Server 2012 today, so the site may pop up and down over the day. Im also going to try and upgrade my ESXi machine from 5.0 to 5.5 today if I have time. That could go south pretty quick so I may put that off until I do some super-due-diligence and get all my backups in order first.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 9 games added (Bacardi Cuba Libre, Mini Cycle, Mr. Doom, Nairobi, New City, Orbit, Tour (One Bicycle), Unknown, Whiz-Bo) and 8 games that had meta-data updated ("Silver Prince", Harley-Davidson® (1st Edition), Pinball-42, Top-Secret, Tour (Two Bicycles), X-Men Magneto LE, X-Men Wolverine LE, Ye-Ye Club). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
It has been a fun week with us getting lots and lots of submissions so thanks for everyone finding all these numbers. A few things have come up on the nudging the past few days so I wanted to put something up here about it and also talk about some upcoming changes. Firstly, be sure to hover over the little 'question mark' if you are a nudger and don't like the serial submisson, there may be notes in there that explain it a little better and us ADMIN's may even put some notes in there. I am going to change the nudge queue form, so that if there is a comment, that it will be visible with the serial number too. Also, please be sure to NOT submit game parts as games, even if you see the part is from a Flash by it's ROM's or something, that unfortunately doesn't guarantee that the serial number was actually from a Flash at the factory. Don't worry about the points and anyway, one of us ADMIN's will probably remove the game association anyway. More to come on that topic in the future!! Thanks everyone!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 2 games added ('DECA-BILL', Tura De Luxe) and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Bouteille Bill). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Rob uploaded the 1500th backglass image over the weekend.... Gay Time by Bally. We have most of the mainstream American and European games done and are just working backwards into the more obscure stuff now. We are prioritizing by games that already have submissions to fill in the remaining ones, but those get more and more challenging to find decent flyer images that can be used.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 11 games added (BICAR, Continental, Continental One Ball, Continental Super 7, Deadville One Ball, Les Deux As, Meteor, Miss Nevada, Rodeo (1 card), Round The World, Winning Shot) and 6 games that had meta-data updated (Big-Bertha (Senior), Dennis Lillee's Howzat!, Hy-Roll, Le Rex Boule, Rodeo (3 card), Twin Bill). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Hope that your 2014 was pretty decent and that 2015 is better... a couple updates for the new year...
- New Font for site: I liked Trebuchet and all, but I saw this new one and it actually seemed easier to read and was pretty snazzy looking too. Let me know if you have an opinion on it.
- We are up to 1410 Backglasses thanks to Rob's constant work.. everyone owes Rob a beer if you see him.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Cosmic Princess). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
With the immense help of Rod McLarge (aka Rob M.), we now have about 750 backglass (the 1400 I had posted earlier was our two-size thumbnail count) images on the site. I think that this is really going to help people correctly identify the correct game as there are lots of instances where a game is both EM and SS and even multiple editions (recent Stern's, Bally home vs arcade, Fireball's, etc). Since the backglass really is the thing that humans perceive when looking to identify a particular game, I hope this will help. Plus it makes the site look a little snazzier! More to come...
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 16 games added (Big Ben (Italy), Bumper, Competición Penalty, Dracula Girl, Hot Rocker, Miss Disco (2 card), Miss Disco (7 card), Panther Roulette™, Panther Roulette™ II, Pinball Roulette™, Pinball Roulette™ (Gold Panther), Pinball Roulette™ (Silver Panther), Rock Star, Saloon, The Walking Dead (Limited Edition), Yukon) and 26 games that had meta-data updated (1942 Bowling Alley, Anti-Aircraft, Archery, Combat, Come Back, Easy Pickin', Fan Dancer, Grand Prix, Ice-Frolics, Major League Baseball, Megaaton, Nine Bells, Over-The-Top, Parade Leader, Peacherino, Pleasure Island, Red Heads of 1942, Sailorettes, Scandals of '42, Sixty Grand, Starlight, Sweethearts, Triple Play, Tropic, TV-Baseball, Yukon (Special)). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I have updated the site so that available backglass images will now show on the Game Page, Search Results, Manufacturer game listings and also the game listings by MPU. I will be slowly churning through the process of adding images as best I can. Big thanks to Rob M. for helping with the process too!
Im starting simple, but in the search results for games, there will now be a backglass image shown for each game. This is something that has been in the Android Mobile app for quite awhile but I figured I would move them over to the main site because it will help submitters get the correct game more often. I only have about 350 backglass images so far and I will slowly be adding more. If anyone has an archive of backglass images, I will need both a 100x100 and a 300x300 version for each game. Contact me if you want to help make thumbnails. Cheers!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 13 games added ("Le Paris", Charm, Colors, Deluxe Relay, ERBU-BALL, Hit or Miss, King Pin, Lucky Joker, Pleasure Island, Shoot at the Moon with Mar-Ball, Trans-Atlantic, Ultimate Golf Ball Frenzy, Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons™) and 11 games that had meta-data updated (Ben Hur, Bing-A-Roll, Bonanza, Handicap, Hot Cha!, Relay (Junior), Stage Coach, Star Galaxy, The Waldorf, Tom Tom, Wing Lite). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Felix submitted the 32,000 serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Metallica (Pro LED)) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 24 games added (America's Most Haunted, Ator, Battle of the Gods, California, Comando, Crazy Race, Fighter, Flipp Shoot, Flipper Bingo, Golf, Iron Man (Pro Vault Edition), Pinball Champ, Red Baron, Rock 2502, Rolls Ball, Ro-S-Co, Space Queen, Starette, Super Shot, The Ace, The Fonz Pinball, The Walking Dead (Pro), UFO Electronic Pinball, Wreck'n Ball) and 7 games that had meta-data updated (Hay-Ride, Hi-Ball, Mach 2.0 Two, Majors - 1941, Smack 'Em, Spacelab, Tagada). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 3 games added (Billiard Practice, Les Étoiles, New Orlean's) and 10 games that had meta-data updated (3-Ring Circus, American Beauty, Baby In The Hole, Big Three, Break, Casba, Foreign Colors, Marines At Play (2nd Edition), Sure Shot, Victorious 1943). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Thanks for your support everyone.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 7 games added (Capitole, Granada, Magic-Dixieland, mini-prix, Monte Carlo (Cylinder Backbox Model), Royal Jumping, Stripping Funny (2-Table Model)) and 17 games that had meta-data updated (1·2·3..., 5th Inning, 7-Up, Baseball, Baseball, Big Three, Dingbat, Five & Ten, Follies of '45, Golden Comet Ball, Marines At Play (1st Edition), Marines At Play (2nd Edition), Metallica (Premium Monsters), Monte Carlo (Mirrored Backbox Model), Motordrome, Stripping Funny (1-Table Model), White Shark). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Red 'N' Go) and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Red 'N' Go). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
5000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
...can be submitted to me (Pistol Pete). I usually respond within a day or two.
I'll answer questions about mismatches, formats, etc. If your serial number doesn't match a mask, or if no mask is defined, let me know and I'll be happy to update the serialbot as necessary.
Thanks for your submissions and support!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 3 games added (Gold Rush, Surfers, Trio) and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Io Moon). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 7 games added (5th Inning, Mustang (Limited Edition), Mustang (Premium "Boss"), Pinball-42, Pinball-42, The Avengers (Premium), The Best Space Time) and 16 games that had meta-data updated (Bulls Eye Baseball, Cue-Tease, De Luxe World Series, Double Crown, Dr. Dude And His Excellent Ray, Green Pastures, Jockey Club, Jockey Special, Kentucky, Madison Square Gardens, Monopolee, Mr. Doom, The Avengers (Limited Edition), The Avengers Hulk (Limited Edition), The Champion Pub, The Wizard of Oz Emerald City Limited Edition). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Im going to move up to a new RAID storage controller today and off my 8+year old non-RAID drives. Im doing this *before* I leave town so the server is less likey to go down over my upcoming holiday. Fingers crossed! thanks. Jess
Steven Saril submitted the 31,000 serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 25 games added (All-American Automatic Base Ball Game, Apero Ball, Arrows, Carombolette Table, Charleston Turbo, Continental, Fan Dance, Golden Continental Laser 2, High Score Rollett, Hot Spot, La Comete, l'arlequin, Magic Baseball, Miss Bonus 2, Miss Florida, Miss Super Bonus, Pamco Palooka (Junior), Pro-Score, Super Sport, The All-American Baseball Game, Unknown, Unknown, Wall Street Special (Spain), Whirl-It, World Series) and 18 games that had meta-data updated (Beam-Lite, Can Can, Cleopatra, Concorde, Deluxe World Series, Dew-Wa-Ditty, Golden Continental Laser, Jay-Ball, King of Diamonds, Magic Continental Bounty, Mandalay, Miss Bonus, Miss World, Pamco Palooka (Senior), Star Trek (Enterprise Limited Edition), The Games, Tropic Fun, Verspiel Dein Wasser nicht!). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Jess asked back in April for nudgers to take a more critical look before clicking thumbs up. I am asking again.
The same picture, submitted under two different game names (both
incorrect), was voted thumbs up under both games, even though the
picture showed a slightly different cabinet stamp compared to the text
entered for the serial number.
The numbers submitted and its accompanying photograph must match. The photograph must be clear enough that you can read the number without influence from looking at the text entry. The serial number entry should be for one game only for a head or cabinet.
All of these conditions must be met for a thumbs up vote.
Thanks!
Hey all you nudgers! Just a reminder to really scrutinize those photos going through when you nudge them. We have had a couple fly through nudging with all up votes when the serial number was wrong. Remember to put on your critical thinking cap when nudging. I typically attempt to figure out the serial number by looking at the photo *before* seeing the submitted number and then I see if they match. thanks!!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 2 games added (Combination Recreation Board, Mustang (Pro)) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 22 games added (Bingo Continental One Ball Euro, Brooklyn, Coney Island, Dauphin, Daytona, Domino One Ball (Large Display), Domino Roulette, Golden Gate (4-game), Golden Gate Euro, Magic Circus, Magic Continental Bounty, Magic House, Magic Screen, Master View (Pyramids Legend), New Dixieland 2000, One Ball Bonus Multiplier, One Ball Conti, Penalty One Ball Euro, Pyramids Legend, Super-Ball, Triple Joker, Up 'n Down One Ball) and 3 games that had meta-data updated (Domino One Ball, Olé South, Party Games). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Last Lap (Alternate Version)) and 6 games that had meta-data updated (Fightin' Phils, Metallica Master of Puppets (Limited Edition), Nemesis, Right or Else, Signal (Sr), Star Trek (Vengeance Premium)). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 5 games added (AC/DC (LUCI Premium), Cocktail Tray Bagatelle, Hard Rock, Pass-Time, Pearls Of East) and 14 games that had meta-data updated (Ali Baba, Carnival, Explorer, Harem Cat, Hawaiian Beauty, Hi Boy, Mikoshi, Monte Rosa, O'Boy, Sapporo, Space Shuttle, Surfing, Winner, Winner). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Rich Rowan submitted the 30,000 serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
I wouldn't put this here except that Harold Ramis created or was involved in so many films that I hold in severely high regard. Keep laughing everyone!!! Cheers to you Mr. Ramis!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 9 games added (Cannon Ball, New Big Race, Orgie, Pick the Winner, Pokereno, Royal Ball, The World Series, Trou de Souris, Ultra Attack) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Thanks for your support everyone.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Star Trek (Vengeance Premium)) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 11 games added (Doughboy De Luxe Senior, Doughboy Deluxe Jackpot Table, Elektro-Bomber (Brillant Type 1), Elektro-Bomber (Brillant Type 2), Elektro-Bomber (Type C), French Can Can, New York, Plaball, Star Trek (Enterprise Limited Edition), Wizard Jackpot, Zarza) and 19 games that had meta-data updated (Baseball Pool, Bingo Whirl, Bulls-Eye Drop Ball (Upright Model), Center Field, Conquistador, Elektro-Bomber (Type B), Fast Draw, Nags, Playboy, Puddin' Head, Sharpshooter, Sportsman Roll, Sporty, Star Trek (Starfleet Pro), Star Trek: The Next Generation, Swing Time, The Tango Game, Thoro-Bred, Viper Night Drivin'). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Hey you techy people out there... Since I have released the mobile app, I personally found that it makes submitting serial numbers massively easier (auto GeoLocation, Bar Code Scanner for those WMS/Bally serial labels, built in camera, etc). However, many of the top submitters on the IPSND don't have smartphones. In this day and age, we are obviously on two year tracks for our phones.... so, when you upgrade, don't throw away or give back your older smartphone, send them to me! What I will do is give them out to our top IPSND submitters to help their cause. Keep in mind, we can use stuff that is severely old... like Motorola Droids or Pre-IPhone-3 phones. Stuff like Androids running v3 (Honeycomb, release Feb 2011) or higher or IPhone 3S, 4 or 4s' are still good. Whatdaya think? Email me if you have a source for recycled phones!! Thank you.
The site is now running on a new 4-core, 16GB Virtual Server under ASP.NET 4.5. That should solve the issues with any login problems under IE 11 now. Here over the next week, I will continue to tweak the server to get better performance and also monitor things. If you run into any issues on the site or have any general feedback, shoot me an email. Thanks.
There are some issues with Internet Explorer 11 which ships with Windows 8. I am going to have to deploy a newer web server in order to properly deal with the newest browser which I am in the process of doing tonight. There may be some intermittent outages during the evening. Stay tuned!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 4 games added (Rola, Skill Ball (Combination Pin and Pool Table), Skill Ball (Junior), Walk 'N The Ball) and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Skill Ball (Senior)). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Pistol Pete submitted the 3,000 game serial mask today. That means that as of today, 52.47 % of the games in the database have a mask defined.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Star Trek (Starfleet Pro)) and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Skill Ball (Senior)). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 3 games added (Galaxy Play 2, Skill Ball Junior, Sky Line) and 11 games that had meta-data updated (Big Top, Camel Caravan, Canasta, Floating Power, Grand Award, Hits and Runs, Mardi Gras, Mercury, Screwball, Three Feathers, Trade Winds). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Marco Albus submitted the 29,000 serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
BETA Versions are on the Downloads page
I freshened up the logo a bit in prep for releasing the mobile app. I also finally moved to Google Maps API v3 which was important since Google was finally going to shut off the v2 API later this month. :-0
Had some odd photo issues today where some images where not rendering in the preview and nudge sections. It looks like the site was getting a good amount of evening traffic and the last photos uploaded were all pretty high resolution (3200x3000 px). This was causing the server to run out of memory due to a variety of 'image' processing functions that I do on the fly to resize and put on a watermark. Since my server is pretty old (Windows Server 2003) I think it is just a little bit underpowered these days. I applied a few tweaks to try and help out, so keep your fingers crossed. Anyone have a source of cheap server hosting? :-)
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 1 games that had meta-data updated (High Ace). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 2 games added (Boomerang, Parlor Bagatelle (Two Bell)) and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Ski-Doo 23). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I have been working pretty hard the last 6 weeks on a mobile app for the site. Obviously, it will be targeted at members that want to submit serial numbers really quickly and easily as the primary function. Im adding a couple other little goodies to the site which will be a consequence of the mobile app, but Im not giving those secrets away quite yet.
Either way, for you techies, Im using Phonegap and Phonegap Build so I will be targeting I*devices, Androids and Windows Phones to start. I don't have an Apple Dev license ($99 for that... jerks) yet but I have an Android dev account and to be honest, I don't think I need anything special for the Windows phone.
If you have an Android or Windows Phone and submit at least 1 serial number a week, shoot me an email (webmaster@ipsnd.net) and let me know if you want to help get things running. Once things are tested, I will push the builds into the public stores, Im sure that will be at least 4 weeks however.
Please double-check your submissions. Many submissions are being associated with an improper game. Some leading examples were found in the current production run of Metallica. Eight entries were placed under a one-off custom game entry for a re-themed game. Other examples are for Eight Ball Deluxe, where there were several different production runs, each with their own unique range of serial numbers, and Captain Fantastic and Fireball where there were Novelty-only home versions. If you have difficulty deciding where your game serial number belongs you can always refer to the photos at the Internet Pinball Database at http://www.IPBD.org to help determine the proper game listing. Jess, Jay and I can also provide assistance via email. Thanks and keep submitting those numbers!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 5 games added (Bally Derby, Metallica (Premium Monsters), Metallica (Premium Road Case), Metallica (Pro), Rambler) and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Duette Deluxe, Spot Pool). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
So you have all seen that blue bar on the side of the IPSND asking you to take the survey... well it has been up there for like 9 months now, so I figured I would give you the results as of now.
52% of you use IPhones while 43% use Android and 5% use Windows phones.
I was curious because I wanted to see if there was an overwhelming unbalance, but it fits most global data. Who Knew? Anyway, it is valuable to see this because I have started working on the IPSND Mobile App this past week. It is based upon Phonegap and I will be using the Phonegap Build service so I should be releasing versions for all 3 platforms mentioned above when it is done (Im not guessing on that date quite yet tho).
The app will do some basics for now...
1. Submissions
2. Nudging
3. Viewing serial number lists
That last one will be interesting on the small screen so things will start pretty basic for now. Obviously, the value in having the app would be for easy submissions of new serials since phones have those fancy cameras on them!
More info in the coming weeks...
Jay @ IPDB pointed out a few bugs around the serial number edit page for members. There was an issue where if you deleted your existing image, it wouldn't allow you to upload a new one unless you reloaded the edit page. Additionally, if you deleted your existing photo,the nudge close date was not being cleared so if you re-uploaded, there wouldn't be any nudges, but the nudging would be closed still. In light of that last bug, I did a query for serials that where nudge closed but didn't have any actual nudges and found zero, so luckily that bug didn't seem to have abandoned many submissions! Cheers!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Flying Saucers, Gridiron). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 10 games added (Batting Practice, bowling (alle neune), Concorde, Cueball, El Gran Chaparral, ERBU-RENNEN, Mint, Roller Catch, Unknown, Unknown) and 11 games that had meta-data updated (Box Score, Elvis® Gold (Limited Edition), ERBU BALL, ERBU-BALL, Fair Grounds, Home Run, Jungle, Maverick The Movie, Nippy, Old Gold, Viking). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Well.. go figure, I leave town for 2+ weeks and my database server decided to forget all it's allowed firewall rules as soon as I left. What that means is that it refused to talk to any other server trying to communicate with it... like the web server and my remote desktop connection attempts. So... we were down for awhile. Sorry for the inconvenience.. I hope you didn't find any other hobbies in the interim... thanks for being patient! Jess
It happened today... cheers! This technically counts bot visits too so it is a bit skewed, if there were that many pin collectors, we might be able to populate Delaware!
Petteri Kaakinen submitted the 28,000 serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
If you are having issues using Internet Explorer 10 and using the hover/zoom on the photos, your browser may be stuck in a non-compatible rendering mode (sounds fun doesn't it!). I made a change to the site, but you might have the information cached in your browser. You can try Clearing Your Cache. If you still are having issues, let me know!!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Elvis® Gold (Limited Edition)) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Metallica Master of Puppets (Limited Edition)) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
5000 nudges and counting... Congratulations!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 23 games added (4-IN-1 (Pigskin: 2010), 4-IN-1 (Poker), 4-IN-1 (Willy At The Bat), 4-IN-1 (Willy’s Cup), Aquarius, Baseball, Bat-A-Ball, Big Inning (Chicago Model), Black Magic, Criterium 75, Disney TRON Legacy (3rd Edition), Disney TRON Legacy (4th Edition), Double-Shuffle, Energie IV, Pinboard, Pittsburgh Penguins, Shooting Star (Junior), SlugFest (Second Model), SlugFest (Third Model), Space Game (1 card), Space Game (7 card), Vemco Special, Vemco Special) and 21 games that had meta-data updated (1963 A. L. Twins, Bagatelle Table, Big Inning (New York Model), Dingbat, Disney TRON Legacy, Disney TRON Legacy (Limited Edition), Flying Aces, Hyperball, Junior League Bat-A-Ball, Kontest Bomber, Match Race, Nine Ball, Over 18 Under, Poker Game, Shooting Star (Standard), SlugFest (First Model), Summer Time, Super Special, Super Zeus, Target Roll, Thunderball). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 14 games added (1942 Bowling Alley, 42nd and Broadway, Bagatelle Table, Billard "SYP", Black Beauty Game, Casino Royal, Cherry Reel Football Board, Derby, Fun Spot '61, Fun Spot '62, Moto Cross, Ricochet, Roll-A-Line, Treasure) and 34 games that had meta-data updated (Archery, Barrel O’ Fun, Barrel O’ Fun ‘61, Barrel O’ Fun ‘62, Broadway, Classy Bowler, Combat, Continental Cafe, Crystal-Ball, Easy Pickin', Fan Dancer, Fun-Spot, Lightning Ball, Lite-A-Line, Nine Bells, Over-The-Top, Parade Leader, Peacherino, Red Heads of 1942, Ricochet, Sailorettes, Scandals of '42, Score-Board, Sixty Grand, Starlight, Sweethearts, The Rambler, The Wizard of Oz Emerald City Limited Edition, Triple Play, Tropic, V.1, Wizard Ball Game, World Champ, Yanks). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Lite-A-Line) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Shoot-A-Line '63). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 2 games added (The Wizard of Oz (Standard Edition), The Wizard of Oz Emerald City Limited Edition) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
It was great to see many of you at the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown this past weekend. Many of us have never met in person so it was good to put faces with names and talk about the site and what you think is the most useful path forward. I got great info from both Jay Stafford and Basil LeBlanc on some issues and a big amount of interest in the IPSND mobile app. Im not going to promise a date but I will start working on the app soon!
Thanks to Dan and Holly for a great showdown as usual. The new venue was rockin and I even got to beat Dan Gutchess on his own Firepower which was smokin fast!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 19 games added („Rodello”, Automatic Poker Das, Blink-Feuer, Bouteille Bill, Bulls-Eye Drop Ball (Upright Model), Escalera de Color, Flipper, Golf Ball, Hollywood Derby, Les 10 Cases, Marbo, Mini-Baseball, Royal Bilbill, Royal-Bilbill, Silver Flash, Space Game (1 card), Special Marble (Horseshoe Board), Special Marble (No Horseshoe), Zentri Bomber) and 7 games that had meta-data updated (Big Daddy, Continental, Diamond Jim, Homestretch, Make or Break, Sea Island, Space Game (7 card)). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Antti Peltonen submitted the 27,000 serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 13 games added (Aloha, Ascot, Continental 2000, Dingbat, Gypsy, Jungle Drum, Lai-Lani, Le Roulis, Sea Nymph, Siremar, The Card, The Perfect Skittle-Alley, Unknown) and 5 games that had meta-data updated (Beauty, Coronation, Electric Road, Shanghai, Whirl-Wind). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 13 games added (Caravan Gold, Carnaval, Criterium 2000, El Toro Shoot the Bull, La Tour de Paris, Le Passe Partout, Lortium, Mississippi, Mus, Old Gold, Prosperity, Space Woman, Venus 5) and 12 games that had meta-data updated (Buccaneer, Buttons and Bows, Criterium 2000, D. Quijote, Dragonette, Grandstand, Grandstand, L'Hexagone, Mythology, Odd Ball, Peachy, Topper). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 1 games that had meta-data updated (007-Flipper). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (The Avengers Hulk (Limited Edition)) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Thanks for your support everyone.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 20 games added (1ª División, Auto Stop, D. Quijote, Jake Mate, Marte, Master Stroke, Mr. Evil, Pin, Playing For Keeps, Sea Scare, Six Balls, Sky Jump, Stella, The Avengers (Limited Edition), The Avengers (Pro), The Godfather, The Pitcher's Battle, Torneo, Tour (Two Bicycles), Underwater) and 10 games that had meta-data updated (Baby Sharpshooter, Big Sakem, Card King, Competición, Irons and Woods, James Cameron’s Avatar (Limited Edition), Lady Sharpshooter, Unknown, Victory Derby, X-Men (Pro)). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
As a first step, there is now an image editor under the submission editor that members have. It allows you to tweak your base uploaded image in several ways. Zoom, Crop, Sharpen, Brightness, Contrast etc. These are nice because you can preview each as you slide the values around and get something that shows off the serial number the best. I will be working on adding it to the main submission pages next so you can do the edits right away rather than having to go back in and edit them. Let me know if you run into any problems with it.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 7 games added (Dardos, Kansas, King Pin, Roller Coaster, Transformers The Pin™, Tura-Ball De Luxe, Unknown) and 9 games that had meta-data updated (1937 World Series, Comet, Fortune, Gold Mine, Mega Golf Ball Frenzy, PIN·BOT, Speed-Ball, Thunderbolt, Tura-Ball). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Dragster Flipp Flop) and 7 games that had meta-data updated (Dragster, Harley-Davidson, Kings of the Turf (First Model), Kings of the Turf (Light-Up Model), Kings of the Turf (Payout Model), Kings of the Turf (Second Model), Stop and Sock). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I just added some alerts to member MyIPSND pages that notify you when you have submissions either with missing trait data (perhaps the trait was defined after you submitted the serial) or has been Nudged downwards for some reason. These alerts now link you to a list of those serials so you can update them if you wish. I will be adding more functionality to this soon that will allow you to hide alerts if you don't want to see them or if some submissions you just don't have the info for.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 16 games added (Bingo-Cards, Continental One Ball, Dancing Dolls (Prototype), Esmeralda Ball, Flip a Card, Hy-Roll, KAY-JOR No.132, LICA, National Football 1950, Provence Golf Azur, Royal Golf Azur 2000, Spider Ball, Star FLIPP, Super Flipper DeLuxe, Superior Pool, Zunt Table) and 22 games that had meta-data updated (Al Capone, Ana Bond, Big Inning, Big Round-Up, Bikini, Black Hole, Bomber, Bouncer, Cavaleiro Negro, Cosmic, Cosmodrome, Flip a Card, Hawkman, Hot Ball, Lite-A-Line, Mars, New Canasta, Old Hilltop, Orange County Choppers, Sexy Girl (Delux), Star FLIPP evasion, Vagabond). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 16 games added (Alien Warrior, Arizona, Black Hole, Charlie's Angels, Competición, Disco Dancing, Dragon, Force, King Kong, Martian Queen, Moderna, Phoenix City, Space Poker, Time Machine, Trick Shooter, Viking King) and 11 games that had meta-data updated (Electric Baffle Ball, New York, Original Flipper, San Francisco, Select-A-Card, Shock, Snake Machine, The Rolling Stones, The Rolling Stones (Limited Edition), Transformers™ (Pro), Transformers™ Limited Edition ("Combo")). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
If you use the site and have a smartphone, I would be interested in your feedback on a mobile app. I have been creating one but I figured that before I got too deep, that I should ask you guys your opinion first... novel really. :-) http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/65VNXD7
Im going through and auditing games with serial numbers that don't match the defined masks using this stat table. I do this about once a year to either adjust any already defined serial masks for the games so that submissions with photos are all correct. If there are serials that don't match and they are blatantly different from other submissions, then I will make a judgement call on them... if they came from the old Internet Pinball Project, they will most likely be deleted since there is a lot of garbage data that came in, but it just wasn't verifiable in any way at the time. If the submissions don't match and they came from a person, then I look to see if it is blatantly wrong... like a part number, or a zip code or a phone number from the game. Believe it or not, those DO get submitted sometimes. Anyway, Im also making new mask definitions so that people that submitted rare serials will start to get a little more points for those submissions now that there is a matching mask. Happy Friday! Go drink a beer!
On the grids that have paging enabled, it was always a PITA if you had paged a few times and then followed a link to somewhere else on the site. If you hit your 'back' button to go back to the grid, it would go back to the first page and you would have to remember where you were and page back up to where you originally were. I added functionality for most paged grids so that if you come back to the page, it should put you back on the same page where you left it. Schweeeeet!
Im not sure when, but the image rotating in the submission editor wasn't working, well technically it was working, but it wasn't saving. That is fixed now. Also fixed a problem with Nudge comments being too long caused an overflow in the database, comments are now limited to 500 characters... yes, we are 3.57 times better than Twitter. There was an issue on the nudge queue where the little 'info' icon I added was empty when hovering and that should be better now too. Happy Monday!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 16 games added (Acapulco, Campidoglio, Croce D'Oro, Diamond Flipper, Diamond Flipper Di Lusso, Flipperino, Goalee, Golden Flipper, Kill Shot, Mistral, Montana Baby USA, Palm Beach Club, Palm Beach DeLuxe, Paragon, Super Flipper, Worlds Fair) and 60 games that had meta-data updated (Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, All American, Back to the Future, Ball Park, Baseball, Batman, Bermuda Roll Down, Black Belt, Buckaroo, Cadet, Checkpoint, Commodore, Dux, Evolution, Glamor, Golden Continental Laser, Guns N' Roses, Home Run 1940, Hook, Jai-Alai.., Jurassic Park, Kilroy, Laser War, Last Action Hero, Lethal Weapon 3, Lucky, Lucky, Mad, Marbelo, Maverick The Movie, Miami, Monday Night Football, Nags, O'Boy, Ocean Park, Ocean Park, Paddock, Phantom of the Opera, Playboy 35th Anniversary, Reviera, Robocop, Sally, Sea-Isle, Secret Service, Show Boat, Spellbound, Sport-Parade, Sports, Sports, Star Trek, Star Wars, Tales from the Crypt, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons, The Who's Tommy Pinball Wizard, Time Machine, Torpedo Alley, Trophy, Turf Queen, WWF Royal Rumble). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Im going to be spending a little more time focused on the Game Traits management so I added a new stat chart showing who has been submitting traits in recent history. Thanks to both Jay St@fford and Pistol Pete for helping me get traits defined for the vast number of games with funny nuances throughout their production run.
I added 'forward' and 'back' arrow buttons to the latest photo uploads chart so it is easy to go through recent photo submissions. I found myself having to look at the statistics table to review recent submissions, so this makes it a little easier and obviously more visual.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Jolly Roger) and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Happy-Go-Lucky, Scram). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Poster Girl) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Arc En Ciel Bebe, Jolly). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I added the new clustering graphics to the game trait listing on the game grids. I also updated the way the data is loaded so it loads asynchronously just like the main serial number listing. It actually seems to load much quicker now. In addition, I added the 'Country' field to the trait listings because I had a feeling that some trends were country bound. As an example, take a look at KISS, it seems that all the plastic playfields except for one have been found outside of the USA.... interesting no?
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 1 games that had meta-data updated ("8 Ball"). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 4 games added ("Lucky Boy", Bingo Vacation, Jubilee, Sweepstakes) and 5 games that had meta-data updated (Bird Man, Black Knight Limited Edition, Border-Town, Calif. Express, Cracker Jack). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I made a substantial change to the way that the game serial listings load that will make them faster as the number of serial numbers get larger. For Doozie's like Twilight Zone which currently has 659 serial numbers, the page was taking up to 20 seconds to load while the server churned on all the data. I made the loads happen in chunks asynchronously so things are a bit zippier. I will be working on the Game Traits listing next to add the clustering graphics and also update the loading method. Cheers!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Baby Billard) and 4 games that had meta-data updated (4X4, De Luxe Baseball 1953, Polo, The Arrow). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Believe it or not, these 3 GeoMaps that have been on the site since 2007 where some old but nice looking Flash based maps that I heisted from Google Analytics way back when and hacked into the IPSND. Google released public doman GeoMap controls recently so I converted over to those now. They look the same, but you don't need a weird archiac version of the Shoockwave player to view them anymore.
As with all things, there were some oddities with the new game serial number grids. Serials that didn't match a serial mask were all being grouped together into one group and serials with multiple submissions had one of those submission missing in the expando section. Also, in hopes of following in Pistol Pete's footsteps, I added about 400 more serial masks this week. The masks help the new clustering engine work better when serial numbers have Letters or other formatting oddites.
I completely re-wrote the grid that displays the main list of serial numbers for any particular game. The biggest change is that there is a graphical representation of how the SerialBot clusters serial sequences for production calculations. It should make the concept a little more clear and my hopes are to update the grids on the other tabs next. One aspect Im particularly interested in trying is to map game trait values to clusters to see if a particular trait value correlates to a particular cluster in a production run or if the trait values are outside consecutive clusters.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 2 games added (Far Out, Light King) and 3 games that had meta-data updated (1940 Rebound, AC/DC (Pro), Acey Ducy). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I finally got a Google translate drop down on the site... good thing since they deprecated translate last year, lets see how long it lasts. PS - It is all the way down in the footer, but that was the best place I could find for it layout-wise. Hope that helps some of you out there!
I just added a new snippet of information to each game specific listing in the summary area which is called 'Coverage' (hence the Total Serial Coverage headline). I have been working on this over the past couple months to start doing a little deeper interpretation of the serial data. Im not going to go into it completely but there is a handy little 'help icon' next to the section that describes what it does and how it works. In a nutshell, it basically lets the SerialBot make an educated guess on the range of serial numbers submitted and really helps us understand a potential production run, even if there are skips and gaps in the serial number sequence. This whole process is a step towards making another layer of the site that allows a graphical representation of the serial numbers and their associated properties etc. Please give me your thoughts!
EDIT: I just added extended explanations of this to the FAQ.
We had some downtime as I had to switch IP addresses from my ISP on Monday... it seems the DNS took a bit to get through to everyone and I didn't have the old IP routed to the new location. If you are having troubles seeing the site.... well then... you aren't reading this... but tell your friends that can't see the site to clear their DNS cache or reboot their computer. :-)
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 40 games added (Ambassador De Luxe Jr., Ambassador De Luxe Sr., Basket, Carrousel, Circus, Circus 10, Circus 388, Continental Circus, Dixieland, Eldorado, Feria, Glocken-Tivoli, Golden Gate 388, Golf Play, Hole Whack, Jokers & Ladders One Ball, Jumping Jack, Le grand Carrousel, Magic Tombola, Millenium, Miss Reno, Mondial, Olé South, One Ball Circus, Party Games, Penalty One Ball, Penalty Une Bille, Piccadilly, Provence Daytona, Sprint, Star Continental 2000, Star New Turbo 2000, Super Circus, Texas, Tiro's, Titan Bingo, Top Card, Trinacria, Union Pacific) and 5 games that had meta-data updated (Ambassador (Standard), Disney TRON Legacy, Las Vegas, Skill Cards, Wishing Well). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Thanks for your support everyone. That number includes bots and is just a counter of active sessions on the site. According to Google, we have had about 264,294 actual people visit the site in that time and that breaks down to 170,824 unique visitors over the past 6+ years. Our average visit per day was about 40 people until the IPDB started linking to us in June 2008, after that, that average visits per day jumped up to 109 and our average visits per day this past week was 198.
I have grander plans for the 'Last Photo Submitted' chart, so it is now a permanant resident at the top of the 3 charts shown on the homepage. The NEXT/PREV only effect the 2nd/3rd charts now. When I get a little more time, I will make the last photo chart a slider where you can scroll through the submitted photos in order.
On top of those changes, I made some 'updates' to structure of the site by removing some really old HTML tags and structures that were holdovers from when tables ruled the internet along with BR and HR. Also, the ZOOM window is now on the photo chart and it has been fixed in IE9 Browsers to put the zoom window in the correct place under the cursor.
After a good discussion with member Bif, he brought up the need for members to be able to skip past nudging of serial numbers if for some reason you just don't want to mess with it... maybe you can't decide, maybe you want to see what someone else thinks first, maybe you just want to pass and move on to others in your queue. Well, I think I have it implemented now and I tested it pretty quickly and it seems to work, so try it out and let me know if you run into any issues. Enjoy!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 2 games added (Barbarella, Gran Dominó) and 1 games that had meta-data updated (1X2). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Antti Peltonen submitted the 25,000th serial number today. Thanks for everyone's support... Keep the serial numbers coming!
I just rolled out some big changes on the site... hope they make things better, if you have issues, email me.
- The serial bot scoring range got an update... since various members have been busy adding game traits to many games, any submission that gives information on the submitted traits, now get an additional point for each trait. That makes the max point value for submissions dynamic... so if a game has two traits defined, and you make a submission that gives data for both traits, you get an additional +2 points. This also makes the 'Highest Quality' chart a little more interesting. I may tweak this a little depending on how it pans out in the big picture, stay tuned and enjoy your new points.
- The Serial Bot scoring graphics have been revamped, they are clearer and hopfully easier to read by being a little crisper, plus they are transparent so they don't have an ugly block behind them.
- I moved several of the site styles up to CSS3 which should make the pages load a little quicker. If your pages look funny now, please upgrade to the latest version of your preferred browser (IE9+ suggested).
Because of the changes, it looks like John Vorwerk jumped over 10K points... congrats John!!!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 8 games added (Can Can, Carnival Pinball Game, Kuwait, Music-Hall, Op Art, Rompeolas, Tahiti, Whoopee Game) and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Still Crazy, The Pinball Circus). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Spin Out) and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Block-A-Shot, Still Crazy). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Fixed a few bugs that had been around awhile. The one that is probably the most impactful is for those of you that print off the serial number certificates. On some manufacturers which had very long 'official' names, that name would run off the right side of the page. I made short names for manufacturers so this would not happen. Print away!
I also had a bug where you could nudge serials even if they were closed, I won't go into the details on how to do that tho. :-)
Pistol Pete has been helping out a bunch on the site by going through and critiquing many games to define and refine serial masks for the different games. If you don't know what serial masks are and how they help the database, here is a quick summary.
The serial mask defines one or many different formats for a serial number specific to a game. This tells the SerialBot if the submitted serials are the expected format, and shows example serial numbers on the submission page to help you all understand the best way to submit your serial numbers.
Just so you can start to see the amount of work that Pistol Pete has been doing, I also created a new statistic table that shows recently defined serial number masks.
Thanks Pete!
Even if you have an 8 for a serialbot score, please revisit your submissions from time to time. As more information on games becomes available there may be new traits you can add to a game's log.
There are also some submissions where there is an obvious typo in the entered serial number yet the photo was summarily given a thumbs up. The result is a serial number that, though close to the photo, does not match.
Nudgers: Please don't look only at the serial number, but at the background to be sure the photo is of the named game. If you're not sure, check IPDB.org for additional photographs. Sometimes a submission for one game can have a photo from another by mistake.
Submitters: It happens. Late at night, distracted, whatever. The number you typed, well, it's one digit short but still passes the serial number mask. Maybe the number is from game "A" but the photo is for game "B". Please check your submission after it's uploaded. If you're registered you can make your own corrections. If you're not registered then email the webmaster who can correct the serial number on your behalf.
To all: Thanks for your efforts!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (New-Yorker) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 5 games added (Big Eagle, Circus, Tagada, The Crocodile Hunter Outback Adventure, Zoo Park MariSali) and 3 games that had meta-data updated (Sunshine, Super Orbit, Super Score). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Our 'Nudge Masters' play an important role on the site. They make sure that photos match the submissions and put that critical eye on everything. They keep the data clean, which makes the data more valuable. One thing that is fun to see are the submissions where there is a nudge war, it only takes a swing of +/- 3 nudges to close out a nudge, but there have been photos where the balance stayed even up through 25 nudges with heated debates on the accuracy of the submission photo. I made up a handy little query that shows the most contentious nudges in celebration of our esteemed QC masters.
I added another stat chart showing submissions in the last 90 days by serial bot score. It currently shows some terrific numbers mostly due to Antti's awesome run of submissions all with photos and geolocations. Im going to start turning my focus to getting more serial masks defined in the coming months since only 38% have masks defined currently. I will also go through and make game part auto-assign masks for all the Data East games as I have noticed that there are lots of game parts belonging to those Data East games. Of course, for specific manufacturers (Williams most notably excluded), the PCB serial numbers can be identified to a specific game by a 'game model' prefix or suffix.
I added two new charts into the rotation which show some information on serial submissions and how many have extra information like a Photo and/or GeoLocation data... it is definitely getting more common to get both of those pieces of info with newer submissions. The other chart shows submissions which contain trait data. As the traits grow, we are collecting more and more production oddity data which allows us to understand minor differences in a game through the production run.
I fixed a bug on the Manufacturers page which was causing game counts to not show. While I was fixing it, I added a few new columns showing serial counts, production date, production run as well, this is now a pretty nice summary and all columns are sortable if you want to see the data differently. In addition, I added some more details on the specific Manufacturer pages linked off that page, a little more info on each manufacturer now too.
It is pretty common for me to get questions about why game part submissions don't let you specify the game (if you want to know more read the FAQ). In the past I sort of manually went through the game part submissions to see if they happened to be for a game that had the game explicitly defined in the serial number (generally a prefix number, see here for more info and examples). Well, I made a little routine that runs after every game part submission that looks to see if the submitted serial number matches one of these well known serial formats and it gets assigned automatically. This will do two things for y'all...
- It will get your part submissions showing up in the game listing ASAP.
- It will get you another point from the SerialBot.
I will keep monitoring this new 'feature' to make sure it doesn't go awry, but I think it should work out okay. Upon first run tonight, it assigned about 300 game part serial submissions a matching game.
Looks like a few things were acting funny in IE9. Most notably the Zoom window on the serial number submissions and the Nudge Queue were pretty much unusable. I fixed these today and I have been working on several new stats now that the database is about to cross 25,000 serials!!! Thanks for the participation!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 20 games added (Badger Horseshoe, Batting, Bill-Hop-Lux, Bord-Golf, Golden Turf, Magik Carpet, Mills Softball, Party, Pete's Penny Ante, Phase II, Rio Rita, Rock 'N Roll The Crazy Maze, Rolo-Polo, Skating, Slap Shot, Spelling-Bee, Sport Ball, Star Explorer, Ukon Trol Black Diamond, Waghter's Parlor Base Ball) and 24 games that had meta-data updated (1957 Baseball, 1957 Baseball Deluxe, Bell-Ball, Crosswords, Cybernaut, Disney TRON Legacy (Limited Edition), Fifth Inning, Harvest, Hearts and Spades, High-Low, King of Diamonds, Maisie, Meeting, Movie Masters, Paradise, Play-Boy, Sr., Red Line Fever, Satin Doll, Space Ship, SpongeBob SquarePants Soccer Shot Pinball, Star Explorer, Still Crazy, Wonder Wizard™ CB Charlie, Wonder Wizard™ Demolition Derby). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 3 games added (AC/DC (Let There Be Rock Limited Edition), AC/DC (Premium), AC/DC Back In Black (Limited Edition)) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 38 games added (AC/DC (Pro), Advance Pool, Apolo 2001, Bank Shot, Baseball Pool, Birdland, Cash and Carry, Columbia, Conquistador, Costa Brava, Figure 8, Lucky Strike, Martin-Martine, Metropolis, Metropolis, Miss Bowling Golden, Monte Carlo (Mirrored Backbox Model), Oxford, Papillon, Penalty 2, Pool Alley, S. João, Sinbad, Six Day Bike Race, Sol do Algarve, Star Battle, Surf Champ, Transformers™ Autobot Crimson Limited Edition, Transformers™ Decepticon Violet Limited Edition, Transformers™ Limited Edition ("Combo"), Unknown, Unknown, Unknown, Unknown, Volcan, Wer Bezahlt Die Runde?, Whip-It, Whoopee Ball) and 13 games that had meta-data updated (Harvest Moon, Lucky Star, Mike Bossy The Scoring Machine, Regates, Short-Sox, Sports, Star Trek, Still Crazy, Strat-O-Liner, Sudden Withdrawal, The Rolling Stones (Limited Edition), Trinidad, Turn Table). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
It's that time of year again, time for the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown... in south Denver from April 27-29th, 2012. Dan and Holly organize a great show and there are so many great games brought by collectors in the area. Keep watch on their website for updates, and start practicing for the tournaments.
Hey everyone... sorry about the downtime... I had a hard drive fail on my brand new (2 weeks old) database server and oddly, since it was raid, took a lot more time to get fixed than normal. I thought I was going to have to fall back to a database copy from 2 weeks ago, but I managed to get everything back to normal now.
Merry Xmas and Happy Holidays to all 2297 members and other pinheads out there. Thanks for supporting the site and the hobby. Be safe and see you next year. 23, 295 submissions and counting.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 34 games added (45-Derby, Astrologic, Automat, Bongor, Close Encounters, Cosmic Venus, Cowboy Eight Ball 2, Disney TRON Legacy (Limited Edition), Dona Elvira, Electric Poker, Figure 8, Figure Eight, Flip Skill, Haunted Hotel, Kings of the Road, Lone Eagle, Naruto, Quarterback, Robin Hood, Rudy Durand's TILT, Screech, Shamrock, SkillShot, Solar Ride, Sudden Withdrawal, Tasty Samba, The Rolling Stones (Limited Edition), The Walkaway, Transformers™ (Pro), Udo Lindenberg, Unknown, Whiz-Bowler, Zipper) and 37 games that had meta-data updated (Amazon Hunt, Argosy, Basketball, Ben Hur, Big-Bertha (Junior), Blue Ribbon, Captain Kidd, Car Hop, Centaur, Combination, Double Feature, Exposition, Eye Of The Tiger, Fifty Grand, Flicker, Fun Park, Gemini, Gridiron, Hot & Cold, Hot Tip, Jockey Club, Karate Fight, Klondike, Mini Pool, Peppy, Screech, Shamrock, Skill Parade, Skill-Roll, Super Duo, Tasty Samba, The 4 Horsemen, Torneo, Torpedo!!, Trade Winds, Whirlaway, Wizard Blocks™). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The site was down for about a day and a half due to some database issues. The database grew and used up my drive space so I had to give it a little more allocation. Seems to be feeling better now.
It is time... time for my mediocre photoshop logo to improve, however I just can't do it. I need your help. If you fancy yourself a pinball aficionado AND someone with graphical skills, send in your logos for the month of November and I will post them into a survey where everyone can vote on their favorites. You will get credit of course on the 'About' page and your work will be on display to everyone and something to be proud of. Logos bring demz! Email logos to webmaster@ipsnd.net.
I put in some new functionality on the serial number submission pages and the member edit for that fixed an issue with the Google Map and also took care of some weird things happening if you put in information in a specific order. Basically, I made the photos and location sections work via AJAX which makes it a little more user friendly. Also, another thing that always annoyed me (and slowed the site down), is that the user stats in the login box now loads asynchronously and should always be accurate on your current nudges remaining.
Since I was stuck in bed for a few days after knee surgery, I responded to about 15 emails that I had sitting in my inbox and also fixed a few items that had been broken for a while. Nothing super big except I will say, some pages should look better in Internet Explorer now. Thanks.
I just wanted to remind everyone that photos can be a touchy subject on the internet with copyright etc. Over the years, many photos from the IPDB have made their way into the serial number database which is useful, however, sometimes the owners of those photos don't appreciate the heisting of the image without their permission so please don't post images that are not yours to share. I want to operate the IPSND with as much transparency as possible so Im going to implement a few 'reminders' on the submission pages and also make it easier for copyright owners to request images be removed from the site if they feel strongly about it. Some existing IPDB image will also be removed based upon some feedback I have received. However, with ~5000 images in the database you all have done some amazing work documenting serials... thanks!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 11 games added ($1,000,000 Pool, All-Star Basketball Game, Amazon Hunt, Clown-N-Up, Hyde Park, Jockey Club, Shuffle Ball, Sun-Ray, Surf Champ, Texan, Totem) and 13 games that had meta-data updated (All-Star Basketball Game (with bell), Bally Booster, Batting Practice, Hyde Park, James Cameron’s Avatar (Limited Edition), Lucky Double, Melody Lane, Pippin, Rapid Transit, Shuffle Ball, Star Lite, Surf Champ, Texan). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
It has been a crazy summer, Im getting all my pinball machines back (including two which have been down at New Belgium Brewing for the past year). I have also been working on my server infrastructure here a little. I finally have ESXi set up and will be transferring all my servers into their new virtual environment on Sunday night. Not sure this will do much for performance of the site right now, but it will help my sanity (and my backups). Im going to put the IPSND into maintenance mode sometime on Sunday night until the transfer is complete. Apologies for the interruption!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 7 games added (Baby Sharpshooter, Berlin Or Bust, Bing O Reno, Disney TRON Legacy, Modello 900, Piffle Egyptian Horse Shoe Game, The New Hi-Lite) and 17 games that had meta-data updated (Big Chief, Chico Derby, Commandos, Deluxe Fun Cruise, Fast Draw, Flip Out! 1991, Fun Cruise, Gay Cruise, Goal-Kick, Hawaiian Isle, Race-Way, Sharp Shooter, Skate King, Skylab, Spelling Bee, Sports, Super Zeus). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 5 games added (Aristocrat, Hi-Boy, Moon-Hi, Reggio, Zip) and 12 games that had meta-data updated (Base Hit, Cross Roads, Fire Action De Luxe, Heavy Metal Meltdown, James Cameron’s Avatar (Limited Edition), Lucky Shot, Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man Pinball, Pin Wheel, Pretty Baby, Reserve, Tour De France, Travel Round The World). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Okay, this is sort of a no-brainer when you really think about it, but Wes M. beat everyone to the punch in showing his ingenuity and quick wit by submitting a serial photo that included a paper rubbing of the serial above the actual serial. As we all know, those impression serials can be much easier to read in person rather than via a photo and Wes' method helps take away any ambiguity I think. Check out his photo here... http://www.ipsnd.net/details.aspx?id=20953. Thanks Wes!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 4 games added (Deuil James, Jack Rabbit, Le Diamant, Sun's Cruise) and 34 games that had meta-data updated (Ali Baba, Big Together, Bloody China, Carnival, Crazy Clock, Dark Rider, Dino Turbo, Explorer, Fly High, Galaxy, Happy-Go-Lucky, Kiss, La Retata, Lady Death, Magic Eight, Miss World, Nostalgia, Race Stars, Road Racer, Robin Hood, Sapporo, Sluggin' Champ, Southpaw, Space Rider, Space Wars, Stellar Airship, Super Continental, Surfing, Temptation, Trapper, Wild Schütz, Winner, Woman-Lib, World Beauties). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I had some issues with my NIC on my webserver this weekend so the site was down Saturday and Sunday. Im going to look into virtualizing all my servers this month to solve several issues so we will see how that improves things. Also, on a side note, I change my Internet Speeds in the past couple of weeks which increased my upload limit from 1Mbit to 5Mbit so site speed should be a bit snappier. Thanks to everyone who has given me donations recently as I am applying this directly to a new server!!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 9 games added (Bankum, Continental Magic Game, First Bolide, Iron Man Classic, James Cameron’s Avatar (Limited Edition), KnocKnock, Lucky Card, Shuffle Skill, Titan) and 17 games that had meta-data updated (Astro-Flite, Bola-Way, Chamonix, Cosmic Princess, Grand Slam, Home Run 1940, Le Grand 8, L'Hexagone, Palace Guard, Pleasure-Island, Sahara Love, Sexy Girl (Delux), Skill-Shot, Slammer, Spot-Ball, Sub•Marine, U.S.A.). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
After talking to Marco A. about the Zaccaria games and their various serial number formats. He pointed me to Federico's Italian Owners List Site which has a nice collection of serials that can help me get the masks defined for these games. I have the Gen II games defined and will continue working on the earlier games over this weekend.
I queried this out of curiosity and everything is lookin good...
2006 - 1046 Submissions (doesn't include IPP serials)
2007 - 1528 Submissions
2008 - 3223 Submissions
2009 - 2849 Submissions
2010 - 3277 Submissions
2011 - 500 (as of Feb 13th)
Keep em coming!!!
Not sure what it exactly means but 20,000 sounds like a lot at least. The 20,000th serial was submitted by Bob Romeo today for Time Fantasy... ah, so close to my heart (Time Fantasy, not Bob... Sorry Bob). Thanks to everyone that supports the site and keeps it lively. We will just keep chuggin' away at these things!! :-)
We had a handful of Stern/Sega submissions that were prefixed with an 'E', seemingly meaning that it was an 'Export Game'. The problem was that the game definition in the database only had one serial number mask defined which did not give the option of the E. It seems many of the games that went to Canada or Europe and had serials submitted had the E dropped in the submission. This problem came to light because of a recent submission by Marco Albus for Viper Night Drivin' in which he dropped the E since it was saying that by including it, the submission didn't match any masks. Luckily some of the nudgers were debating the accuracy of the submission and I caught it. I added 'Export Game' masks for all Sega/Stern games so this will not be a problem any more. I also changed Marco's submission (thanks Marco, I still own you an email too) to include the E and went through and tried to find all other submissions that had a photo to verify they should have had an E and changed those. So... great job being strict on the nudging everyone, plus if you ever see 'problems' like this, let me know via email and I will gladly try and get things put in proper order for sanity. Cheers!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 3 games added (Ball Game, Signal, Spider-Man™ (Black Suited)) and 14 games that had meta-data updated ("8 Ball", Goin' Nuts, Jubilee, Little Pro, MiniZag, Now, Pamco Races, Phantom, Sensation of 1937, Silver Star, Smarty, Sportsman De Luxe, Tiger Woman, Twin Joker). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Based upon some feedback I received from Jim Smith, I changed the way the nudge queue looks on the screen. His suggestion was to move the comment field up above the voting buttons since it wasn't apparent that you had to put a comment in *before* clicking the thumbs-up or thumbs-down buttons. So, I think he makes a great point, so it has been moved. Additionally, I changed the way that the 'My Nudges' page works under your profile... not only does this list all the nudges you have completed but it also allows you to see what your nudge was and what everyone else has nudged. In addition, you can also *delete* your nudges if you want to change anything about your first attempt. I think this should help out everyone on the nudging front... thanks Jim!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 30 games added (Advance Alley Roll, Arabic Power, Big Indian, Big Sakem, Broadway, Bumper, Dogs Race, Double Score, Dragon, Elektro-Bomber (Type B), Ferry-Boat, Gold Mine, Grand Prix, Looping 6 et 9, Marvel Super Heroes, Parachute, Parlor Bagatelle, Pico Baby Grand, Pico Crown, Pico Imperial, Pirates of the Caribbean At World's End, Star Galaxy, The Best Texas Ranger, The French Connection, Ting-A-Ling, Tire le Bibi, Turnier, Whiz Ball, Whiz Ball Jack Pot, Wonder Wizard™ CB Charlie) and 27 games that had meta-data updated (Beat the Clock, Casanova, Criss Cross, Flash, Gems, Good Morning America, Hot-Rods, James Cameron’s Avatar, Kewpie Doll, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, MiniZag, Neptune, Ocean Park, Ocean Park, Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest, Queen of Hearts, Race Stars, Rose-Bowl, Scuba, Ship Ahoy, Spider-Man™, Star Gazer, Star King, Texas Leaguer, Total Recall, Whiz Ball Jack Pot, Wild Card). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I added a few new questions and answers to the FAQ based upon the fact that the nudging feature isn't very well explained on the site anywhere. I also added some answers to some other questions concerning submitting serial numbers multiple times (as the same person). John V posed an interesting question about re-submitting a serial again rather that editing it in the case of selling a game. What I did was allow duplicate serial number submissions by the same person as long as it is more than 90 days after the first submission. I don't think people are going to abuse this loophole and try to rack up tons of points on the same serial, but please don't try as I run reports to monitor that sort of stuff anyway. :-)
Well, Im pretty sure that the concept of members having my personal nudges listed under theirs on the MyIPSND nudge page was fairly interesting, John V. pointed out that it might not be. I fixed that issue tonight so you can actually see your own nudges. I still need to add some more fields so you can see your nudge along with the final vote for comparison.
Also, I added 'Social Media' links on the homepage and the game pages. Mostly for fun since my day job incorporates lots of social media. I was sort of wondering if we can dis-prove the perception that pinball collectors are anti-social!!?? Let the experiment begin!
ipsnd.net vs www.ipsnd.net - Both of these URL's work, but I added some code so everyone will be gently nudged to using www.ipsnd.net. Having both URL's available was really making the social media links work poorly, so now the fully qualified name is where you will end up automagically even if you type in the short version.
We crossed the 5 mil mark this past week. Pretty cool considering the site runs on a crappy old computer that I paid $300 for about 6 years ago and I did this in my free time. Thanks for everyone that participates on the site.. we will be coming to 20K serials here pretty soon... maybe that requires a pinball party at my house when it happens! :-)
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (James Cameron’s Avatar) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 10 games added (Bagatelle Table, Black Pearl, Doppelt, Flik Flak, Hi Fly, Lightning 38 (New Style), Lightning 44 (First Style), Lightning 44 (New Style), Pinball Tronic, Unknown) and 8 games that had meta-data updated (Crazy Ball, Fire Action, Gork, Lightning 36 (First Style), Meteor, Rancho, Skill-Score, Sure Shot). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I just imported over 500 serials from our esteemed friend Daina P. who had gathered these numbers from his repair jobs over the last 10 years. Remember, if you have lots of serials to import, I can help make it a little less painful. I should probably write a little Droid application to make submitting pics easier ehh? Better put that one on the development queue.
Due to a flurry of Game Trait submissions by Jay Stafford and a great discussion on how to accurately describe some of them, I have added the ability for users to upload a photo with each new Game Trait defined. After trying to describe a trait for Capt. Fantastic, using words only, it became clear that a picture can truly be 1000 words. Keep watch for some more development around this idea in the next few weeks. Thanks Jay!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 22 games added (Best Bet, Bridgeball, Chingy, Counter Knock-Out, Enforcer, Fantastic World, Fraggle Rock, Furie, Grosse Pointe, K.O., K.O., Knock-Out Junior, Knock-Out Senior, Magic Eight, Mustang, Pamco Parlay Junior, Pamco Parlay Senior, Sharp's Shooter - Baseball Bagatelle, Six Star, Soccer Champ, Super Continental, Superior Knockout of '32) and 36 games that had meta-data updated (Algar, Big Buck Hunter Pro, Big Richard, Brillant Torero, Cabaret, Can-Can, Contest, Crescendo, Criss Cross 'A' Lite, Derby, Disco, Frontiersman, Improved Sharp's Shooter - Baseball Bagatelle, Jungle, Lite-League, Mademoiselle, Marble Parade, Martians!, Multiple, Outer Space, Pentacup, Pitch'Em & Bat'Em, Quintette, red Arrow, Sérénade, Shangri'La, Spinball, Star Explorer, Strike, Touch-Off, Twin Hockey, Victory Derby, Viking, Volèe, Wild Wild West). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The original feed only showed the top 25 feeds. After using this for awhile, it was a little annoying actually since somedays there are quite a few submissions and I was missing them in the feed and had to go back to the statistics page to see the rest. Anyway, I changed the list to show the last 100 submissions instead based upon that reasoning. Plus, since some nudgers are now using this feature, you can also adjust the feed URL to only show submissions with photos (http://www.ipsnd.net/submissions.rss?photos=1). I will be adding some more functionality to all the feeds over the coming weeks that allow better versatility on getting what you want to see. If you have any specific suggestions, let me know. thanks.
I just created a new RSS feed that shows the latest submissions on the site. I did this so that with my handy Windows 7 sidebar, I can subscribe to the feed and see what is going on pretty easily from work or where-ever. I also thought it would be handy for those 'super-nudgers' that keep watch for submissions with nudge-ready photos. The info is on the RSS Page and the direct link to the new RSS channel is http://ipsnd.net/submissions.rss
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 10 games added (Aristocrat, Asterix, Batman (Standard Model), Coupe D'Argent, Deluxe Wild Widow, Nerts, Piccadilly Junior, Prosperity Senior, Vend-A-Gift, Wild Widow) and 43 games that had meta-data updated (1776, 2 in 1, Adventure, Agents 777, Ali Baba, Beauty Contest, Big Bang Bar, Big Kick, Blue Ribbon, Bo Bo, Bongo, Captain Hook, Cha-Cha-Cha, Continental Lucky 7, Duette, Golden Gate, Happy Tour, Highways, Hootenanny, Knockout Blow, Mikoshi, Millionaire, Miss Nessie, Monte Carlo, Monte Rosa, Nertz, Pickwick, Playland!, Pleasure Isle, Rockettes, Safari, Sheba, Show Boat, Sky Divers, Sky Lover, Space Shuttle, Spinner, Sweet Sioux, Teacher's Pet, Temptation, The Pinball Circus, Thrill, Tournament). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Looks like Qwest didn't quite have things set up correctly as my static IP started changing on me. Some of you may have been unable to reach the site over the course of the past 2 days. They fixed my account and I have just updated DNS again to the new hopefully static IP address. Things should smooth out in the next 24 hours. They also informed me that my 40Mb/s line is only set up for 12Mb/s so I will see if I can get that put back where it should be tomorrow. Since my connection is VDSL2 rather than ATM, I should have upload speeds around 10Mb/s (which is download speeds for you)... that is 10x faster than I had in Laramie.
If you are reading this, then the migration of the site from Laramie, WY to Fort Collins, CO has been successful. I am now running on a Qwest VDSL2 connection with a theoretical speed of 40Mbits/second down (up for you) and 20Mbits/second up (down for you). That is a pretty hefty improvement over what I had up in Laramie with ATM DSL so we will see how it goes. If you notice that the sites is better (or worse!), drop me a line and let me know.... Im curious to see if this connection is actually any better. Thanks... jess
I added a little new logic to the serial number submission page that dynamically checks the serial number against any defined serial number masks in the database. If the submission doesn't match, you get a little more information right up front rather that not knowing until after you submit the serial. I also fixed some dumb typos on the Game Part submission page and added some links to the reasoning behind not associating game parts with a specific game.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 16 games added (Batting Practice, Black Magic, Break, Broadway, Commandos, Dai Uchuu Ryokou, Galactic Girl, Joker Ball, Mini Flipper 2, Muscle Car Cafe, Saloon, Space Circus, Special Entry 1948, Super Pang, Wild Time) and 86 games that had meta-data updated (1941 Velvet, 301/Bulls Eye, Airborne Avenger, Bank-A-Ball, Big Brave, Big Strike, Black Magic 4, Bolo, Bowling League, Bullfight, Bumper Pool, Calcio "Italia" (2nd series), Card Trix, Catalina, Chinatown, Cow Poke, Crazy Clock, Cross-Line, Darling, Defender, Dino Turbo, Dodge City, Dogies, Duotron, Eight Ball Champ, Elite Guard, Fireball Classic, Flipper Pool, Flying Chariots, Flying Trapeze, Force II, Freedom, Gator, Gaucho, Grand Tour, Hi Dolly, Hi-Diver, Hot Shots, Hurdy Gurdy (Italy), Ice Show, Iron Man, Jumping Jack, Jungle Princess, Kick Off, King Arthur and his Round Table, Lady Luck, Liberty Bell, Lightning, Lucky Hand, Melody, Minstrel Man, Motordome, Mystery Castle, Night Rider, Orbit, Palooka, Pan-American, Pioneer, Pop-A-Card, Road Kings, Rock Star, Rocket Ship, RockMakers, Rodeo, Roll Down, Roto Pool, Roto-Ball, Roxy, Royal Flush, Skyline, Solitaire, Space Orbit, Space Rider, Star Attraction, Star Race, Storm, Super Star, Surfers, The Pennant, Time Line, Travel Time, Triple Action, Twin-Gain, Winner, World Cup, Ziel). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Looks like while I wasn't paying attention, that we crossed the 17,000 serial mark and also 4 Million Visitors on May 15th. I have been working on a few new charts that show the trendlines for both of these metrics since the site started, they are unusually constant which I didn't really expect to see. I should get them up here in the next few weeks into the regular statistic charts.
We had a pretty massive wind storm here on Thursday night and lost power for about 8 hours. My database server didn't come back up after that little downtime incident (looks like the motherboard is the issue), so I had to transfer to the database over to a different machine and get everything configured. Things will run this way for a few weeks and then Im planning to move to a virtual environment which will make servers a little more manageable (I think!). Everything *should* be up and running now. Let me know if you run into any issues. Thanks.
Don't forget to swing by the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown from Friday-Sunday this weekend in Golden, CO. Dan and Holly put on a great show and there are lots of unique games slated to show up this year!!!! I will be giving a presentation on the Internet Pinball Serial Number Database on Saturday @ 4PM to go over features and get feedback from all you!!!
Fixed a small issue where accounts that were locked out due to too many invalid passwords couldn't be re-enabled via the automated system of emails. I also had a fairly entertaining postfix mail server issue on April 15th due to ClamAV disabling their daemon if the version was too old. That is the problem with Linux, it works so well that you never really have to touch the box.... who knew it had been on and functional for 3 years without a reboot!!!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 37 games added (1939 Baseball (Novelty Model), Adventure, Andromeda, Artemis, Back-Shot, Baseball, Big Buck Hunter Pro, BI-JA-Roul, Boston Red Sox, Cheerio, Cherokee Rose, Eldorado, Electro-Ball, Funtime Frankie, Indian Chief, Iron Man, Kasandra, Knockout Blow, Little Monarch, Majors of 50, Marble, Mini Cooper S, M-W Pin, Pee Wee, Pee-Wee, Poker Ball Square, Rebecca, Royal Cards, Royal Crown, Royal Flash, Southpaw, Space Shuttle, The Advance Pin Table, Wine-Grower) and 22 games that had meta-data updated (All Stars, Baseball, Big Parlay, Chico Baseball, Coed, Crossroads, CSI, DeLuxe Baseball, Dynamite, Easter Eggs, Elektra, Eureka, Gold Ball, Gun Men, Jackpot, Major League Baseball, Pla-Rite, Pyramid, Rolls Royce, Royal Pair, Scoop, Team One). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The statistical charts that show on the right have classically been .jpgs for maximum compatibility. Being that Google Analytics is showing that over 95% of you have Flash installed, I changed them into .swf format now. The one nice thing this give is that the data points can now have a URL associated with them. So for instance, most of the bar charts are now clickable on the bar and will take you to the page for that member or game. I will keep trying to enhance these little graphs more in the future too.
Also, I fixed an issue with the Affiliate pages that was causing an odd error on sites that linked to the 'real time IPSND data grids'. If anyone is still having any issues, send me an email and I will take a deeper look.
I fixed some issues with the login form (upper right corner) that was preventing IE 7 + 8 users from being able to just hit the 'Return' key for logging in. The old form always seemed to work for Firefox users but for IE 7 + 8, you would have to explicitly click on the login button. Either way, this should now be fixed so you IE users shouldn't be as confused anymore. :-)
It has become apparent over the last year that some users would really like to help participate in the site in various areas. I didn't have a lot of security driven functionality outside of one superuser (me) and then members having access to their own info. I have created three new security roles and assigned some users into those groups based upon conversations I have had. The two new roles are 'Mask Moderator' which allows a user to create, edit and delete any serial number mask in the database. The next one is a 'Serial Snooper' and this role allows the user to edit and/or delete any serial submission in the IPSND. The final one is a typical 'Administrator' and allows the user to do user maintenance, assign roles and run Synchronizations with the Internet Pinball Database. If you are interested in learning about these roles and their responsibilities drop me an email.
I added a new main menu item called 'Development Tasks' that shows the current queue of stuff that I am trying to work on and what I am planning on working on in the near or not-so-near future. The idea is that members can submit topics here and if they cut the mustard, they will go onto the development list. There have been some great topics coming up about deeper questions on how the IPSND should interpret and collect data and hopefully those lead to more insight and more development on my end.
I deployed new code today that has the newest version of Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX this morning. So, some of the grids look a little different at this point. My goal is to soon give members the ability to choose their skin in the member preferences which would allow members to customize the way the IPSND looks for them. The 'big picture' goal is to take this to the point where even the background images can be selected by category... so for example, a member might select 'EM Games' as their preference on backgrounds, and so they would only get older EM games showing for their random backgrounds.
I am starting to experiment wtih Silverlight as there are several areas where some client side processing might work better and to be honest with you, I don't like Javascript. :-) Right now, the top logo is built with Silverlight and so in order to see the logo at all, you will need Silverlight installed. I will be working on fixing the logo to be 'Non-Silverlight' compatible this week again. So... what does this fancy new Silverlight logo do for you? Well... not much. However, you if you rotate your mouse wheel upwards when hovering over the logo, you can cycle through some random colors. The color you leave it on, is the color that it should remain on the entire site forever (I think), so pick a nice color and enjoy. I will get the default color set back to the Yellow that it used to be rather than the ugly red that is currently there!!!!!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 20 games added (Avalanche, Brownie Pool, Calcio "Italia" (1st series), Challenger, Chorus Gal, Crystal-Ball, De-Lux, Golden Continental Turbo, Golden Florida Turbo, Keno, Las Vegas, Longacres, Major League (Model 40), Major League (Model 44), SpongeBob SquarePants Soccer Shot Pinball, Texas Leaguer, Tropical, U.S.A. Football, Unknown, Wild Texas) and 57 games that had meta-data updated (All-Star Basketball, Beam-Lite 1937, Big Bang Bar, Bullseye, Calcio "Italia" (2nd series), Campus Queen, Centaur, Criss Cross, Critical Mass, Derby Day, Diamond Jack, Diamond Lill, Discotek, Domino, Fashion Show, Fox Hunt, Fun Fair, Gas Attack, Glamor•Girls, Globe Trotter, Grand Prix, Guys Dolls, Harmony, Hi-Lo, Hot Line, Indiana Jones, Jolly Jokers, Jolly Roger, Knock Out, Majorettes, Mustang, Neptune, New Contact, Pipeline, Pistol Poker, Rainbow, Register, Roy Clark 'The' Entertainer, Show Time, Shrek™, Sittin' Pretty, Six Sticks, Sky-Rocket, Solar Fire, Space Odyssey, Spring Fever, Straight Flush, Stripping Funny (1-Table Model), Super Soccer, Sure Shot, T.K.O., Timothy T., Tit For Tat, Tivoli, Triplets, World Series, World Series 1943). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
We have had a total of 10,000 nudges in just under 1 year since I added the Nudging feature. It has been interesting to see how the submissions started getting photo's attached more often now that nudging can directly affect the scoring of a submission. We will see how the new commenting feature works for nudging over the coming year. Just to mark a milestone the current leading member of nudges is 'King of Pinball' who currently has 925 nudges.
One more quick feature for the evening before I start to do 'real' work. I added the ability for members to add a comment to their nudges in the main nudge queue. You can also see all the other nudges that exist with their score and comment for comparison purposes before you vote. I added this because on some of the more controversial nudging threads, I really couldn't see why some people voted a certain way. Even tho it is optional, maybe this will allow members to 'vent' along with their vote! Have fun!
I fixed a bug in the submission edit form that was changing the submission type (Full Game, Body Only, Head Only or Game Part) when you would edit any GamePart. The bug was changing the type from a Part submission to a 'Body Only' submission. John Vorwerk noticed this issue on his submissions... thanks John. Another change I made today was with the Nudges Remaining counter in the member stats box. This number was updating every 15 minutes just like the rest of the stats and was a bit misleading especially if you were in the process of nudging a bunch of serials and the box still said you had X number of nudges remaining. Im working on getting the entire stats engine to be realtime rather than batch processes every 15 minutes. The process is time consuming just because the counters require queries that span about 15 tables and as the site grows, these tables only get bigger and hence take longer to execute.
When I deployed that last 'upgrade' several of the other statistics pages broke due to a ViewState issue. I have fixed the issue and the stats should all be feeling much better now. More stats to come soon!! Keep watch!
Looks like the page showing games lists by manufacturer had a bug in it that excluded games without any serial submissions. This came to light due to a question from Jay Stafford about Alvin G. and Company serial numbers and their formats. For these games being fairly new, we definitely don't seem to have many serials registered so far. Out of the 12 games manufactured, there are only serials for 5 of those games. If you have any Alvin G. games, please register the serials so we can start to understand the formats for these games. One item of distinction is that these games sometimes have both a 'serial number' and a 'cabinet number', please register the 'serial number'!
I just added two new statistics to the stats page that show top submitters by total points and top members by most nudges. I am in the process of overhauling the stats page and the engine behind the statistics to make it more accurate. There is actually a bug in the statistics engine that a few of you have pointed out to me and I have known about it, but just didn't have the time to get it fixed. Since Basil LeBlanc is now moving up the charts so strongly, I should get it fixed as it will not give him credit for several rankings. In the past, it only affected me since I had so many points, so I didn't mind. :-)
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 20 games added (4x4, Chamonix, Check Mate, Dancing Dan, Diana, Jane, Jet Surf, Lucky Strike, Merlin's Magic, Montana, Montana De Luxe, Montana De Luxe Baby, Montana V, Palm Beach Turbo, Roman Victory, Spry-Ball, Unknown, Untitled, Volley, Williams Lanes) and 18 games that had meta-data updated (Amazon Hunt III, Barnacle Bill, Big Hit, Bottoms Up, Cosmic Wars, Count-Down, CSI, Dimension, Fleet Jr., Fleet Sr., Harley-Davidson® (3rd Edition), Hell's Queen, Jet Spin, Miss Annabelle, Pin-Up, Spin-A-Card, Striker, Tee'd Off). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The site was down today for 4-5 hours while I played around with some hardware issues. I thought I would improve the server a bit today by adding some more memory and it all fell apart from there.... after reboot, none of my network interfaces existed and they just wouldn't come back. I threw in a temporary one and it worked fine, so we are running on auxilliary NIC right now. I should be able to get this resolved today still. My apologies for any interruptions if you get booted from the site. Thanks for the patience.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 15 games added ("Silver Prince", Ball Pool, Ball Shooter, Ball Shooter Gum Vender, Bottoms Up, B-Skilful, Cash and Carry 600, Dubbs, Eight Ball Champ, Hell's Queen, Rallye', Skate King, Space Orbit!, Spoofus, The Hellacopters) and 15 games that had meta-data updated (Airport, Box Score, Bristol Hills, Dancing Lady, Golden Arrow, Hi-Score, Lariat, Masquerade, Mibs, Roller Coaster, Skipper, Snow Derby, Space Orbit!, Target Alpha, Trade Winds). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 1 games that had meta-data updated (24™). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Looks like we crossed the 3 million visitor mark earlier today. Thanks everyone for your support, the serials are pouring in at a faster rate than ever before!!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 20 games added (007-Flipper, 3 In Line, American Beauty, Auto Roll, Baseball, Circus Romance, Clown, Double Up, Fast Draw, Follies of '45, NBA, Pokerino, Sportsman Roll, Super Triangle, Tally Roll, The Jungle, The Rex, Unknown, Volèe, Zipball) and 126 games that had meta-data updated (15*Pool, 4 Queens, Aladdin's Castle, Al's Garage Band Goes On a World Tour, Amigo, Apollo, Army & Navy, Artists and Models, Baffle-Card, Bally Hoo, Bank-A-Ball, Baseball, Big House, Big Shot, Big Show, Big Top, Bigfoot, Blackwater 100, Bomb The Axis Rats, Bombardier, Bombardier, Boot-A-Ball, Bow and Arrow, Camelot, Carnival, Casablanca, Cinderella, Circus, Crocket, Ding Dong, Double Feature, Double-Feature, Dungeons & Dragons, El Toro, Explorer, Flat-Top, Flicker, Flower's Child, Flying Circus, Follies of '46, Four Stars, Frank Thomas' Big Hurt™, Frisco, G. I. Joe, Galaxie, Galaxy, Gladiators, Glamor•Girls, Gold Strike, Hardbody, Hi-Lo Ace, Hit The Japs, Hokus Pokus, Hollywood, Hurdy Gurdy, Jack 'N Jill, Jubilee, Kismet, Knock Out The Japs, Knockout, Lady Luck, Lady Robin Hood, Lancers, Lite-League, Little Joe, Lucky Strike, Majors of '49, Miss America '44, Miss Belgium Turbo, Monte Carlo, Nugent, Odds & Evens, Oklahoma, On Beam, On Deck, Orbitor 1, Original Flipper, Party Animal, Pat Hand, Play Ball, Polo, Professional Pinball: Challenger I, Professional Pinball: Challenger II, Professional Pinball: Challenger III, Professional Pinball: Challenger IV, Professional Pinball: Challenger V, Re-Play, Rockingham, Sapporo, Sea Raider, Sea Ray, Sink the Japs, Skill-Ball, Sky Dive, Slap-the-Japs, Smack The Japs, Space Time, Stage Door Canteen, Stars, Stingray, Strato-Flite, Super Score, Super-Flite, Supersonic, Surfing, Sweet Add-A-Line, Ten Spot, Ten-Up, The Party Zone, The Six Million Dollar Man, Time Fantasy, Time Zone, Top Hand, Totem, Twin Six, Twin Win, Vampire, Varkon, Warlok, Waterworld, Winner, Wipe Out, World Cup, World Series, World Series 1943, Zip-A-Doo). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I just finished a fairly large database synchronization with the IPDB that included about 600 database updates. I try and synchronize with those guys every now and again to keep my database up to date with all the great info they collect. Overall, the IPSND gets the game name, manufacturer, manufactured date, mpu type, game type, abbreviations, production run and associated flags. Without the excellent quality and data normalization of the IPDB, this entire process would be much more difficult. Thanks again guys!
Just an update on the serial number photos... since this feature was rolled out in Feb 2008, we have collected over 1000 photos of serial submissions. That is about 1 in 4 submissions that have an attached photo. This is pretty damn nice and I appreciate all you that are taking the extra effort to get that camera into sometimes difficult positions and lighting situations to grab that high quality photo. In addition, our average nudge balance is 2 positives for every 1 negative nudge so that means the photo quality is also edging much better than it is worse. I thought these numbers were interesting enough to share with everyone... thanks all... keep the photos coming!
We had a power outage here in Laramie once again while out of town for the week... for some reason my router didn't reboot properly when power came back up so the site was down for the last day... my aplogies. All should be well now.
Pete Knoll requested that the member submission editor form allow members to update their custom game traits (for example... Playfield Plastics Artwork Style on BK2k). I finally got a little bit of time to take care of this so the edit form now has a section for updating and/or removing these fields. This should be nice as submissions that were entered prior to the trait being defined can now go back and update their trait. Thanks Pete!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 12 games added (Deluxe Derby Roll, High Ace, Impact, Lady Luck, Nosferatu, Pickwick, Pickwick (Improved), Play 'N Innin, Star FLIPP evasion, Unknown (“Four Crowns”), Wood's Queen, Wood's Queen) and 32 games that had meta-data updated (A.G. Soccer-Ball, Batman, Beat Time, Big Fair, Boomerang, Brite Star, Centaur II, Cosmic Gunfight, Dolly Parton, Fifty Grand, Hit 'N' Run, Hypnox, Ice Show, Lawman, Lights...Camera...Action!, Magic Circle, Magic City, Marathon, Night Club, Scramble, Seven Seas, Shindig, Skill-Pool, Slap-the-Japs, Snappy, Spot-A-Card, Star Light, Tahiti, Thoro-Bred, Trident, Triple Strike, Wild Wheels). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I received an email from Heinz Ostlund this week asking how he could change his IPSND member password, as I was logging into the site to get the direct link to the 'change password' page, I discovered that there wasn't a 'change password' page... hmmmmm. I really thought I had done that, but low-and-behold, I apparently had not. So, for all of you members that have silently dealt with this lacking feature for so long (and Heinz too), I just got one put out there. It is accessible under the 'MyIPSND' link in the account summary box in the upper right of the screen.
There is a new tab on each game detail page now simply called 'Map' which will show a very pretty Google Map of all submissions that had a GeoLocation entered. It is pretty basic now but it does look pretty cool. This ties into the new statistic I added a few days ago showing games with most Geolocations submitted. Currently there are 517 distinct games and 1100 locations which using current totals is about 10% of the games and about 7% of the total submissions. Keep those GeoLocations coming in!!
Based upon a conversation with Pete Knoll last week about the quality of the uploaded images, it was deemed that the ipsnd image processor was affecting the quality of images even under the magnification tool. I reworked this code so that under magnification, the image shown will be exactly as the uploaded photo was without any degradation effects from processing. I think Pete made a good point in seeing this issue and hopefully it will affect nudges in a positive way. Thanks Pete!!
There is a new statistic showing games listed by number of submissions with a geolocation. You can see the stat on the Statistics Page to get an idea of games with the most Lattitude/Longitude data available. This feature is the first in a slew of related features I will be rolling out this week.... keep watch for more info.
We will be down on Saturday March 28th for one hour from 8:30-9:30PM Mountain Standard Time (GMT -7:00) in order to participate in Earth Hour. Please take the time to participate in this global event whereever you live!! As long as my servers come back up after cooling down we should be up and running pretty quick afterwards, if Im not back up, then the capacitors on my motherboards have probably dried up to the point of too much AC ripple!!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 9 games added (All American Derby, Card King, Cherokis, Kentucky Derby, Lady Savana, Mini Flipper, Tommy, Whirlpool, Whirlpool Jr.) and 56 games that had meta-data updated (4 Square, Andromeda, Baffle Ball Home Game, Bloody China, Bowling Champ, Capersville, College Queens, Dancing Dolls, Dark Rider, Diamond Lady, Double-Shuffle, Eight Ball Deluxe Limited Edition, Eros One, Fire Queen, Fireball II, Flamenco Show, Flip a Card, Flip Flop, Flipper, Fly High, Four Seasons, Fun Land, Gulfstream, Hang Glider, Jacks Open, Kicker, King Kool, Kong Kong, Lady Death, Laguna Beach, Laser Cue, Lovely Lucy, Lucky Card, Magnotron, Mario Andretti, Miss World, Monte Rosa, Pinball Magic, Pink Panther, Post Time, Road Racer, Rocket, Rocket III, Rose Bowl, Shaq Attaq, Sheriff, Southern Belle, Space Wars, Stop 'N' Go, Super Score, Surfer, The Joy Game, Title Fight, Trail Drive, Whir-Pool Jr., Win A Card). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 23 games added (Automatic Whiffle, Banner, Bingo (Improved), Electric Automatic Whiffle Model 34, Galaxy, Hooey-Ball Jr., Improved Whiffle, Jack Pot Pin Game, Jostle, Old Jenny (Whiffle), Pin Boy Bowling, Play Joker, Play Poker, Play The Joker, Runabout (Improved), Showdown, Silent Runabout, Unknown, Very Hot Pants, Whiffle, Whiffle Board Deluxe, Whiffle Delux, Whiffle Game) and 33 games that had meta-data updated (Air Aces, A-MAZE-ING Baseball, Beach Time, Blast Off, Centigrade 37, Cheetah, Comet Ball Junior Table, Cyclone, Four Seasons, Golden Comet Ball, Harbor Lites, Joel Silver, The Pinball, Kew-Pin-Ball, Lucky Strike (Marble), Lucky Strike (Steel Ball), Lucky Twins, Marbelous, Mariner, Moon Shot, Niagara, Pharaoh, PIN·BOT, Play-Boy, Play-Boy, Sr., PlayMates, Sing Along, Slam 'N Jam, Super Bowl, The Death Dealing Adventures of Maxx Badazz Champion Kickboxer, Toledo, Unknown, Whiffle Bagatelle, Whiffle-Zip). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Now that the nudging has been running a while I have been looking a the data and it has been pretty nice so far. Members are doing a terrific job of weeding out the bad photos by consistently nudging them down. In some instances submitters have re-submitted a new clearer photo in order to reset the bad nudges their bad nudges and start fresh. One thing that I have noticed however is that on those submissions that are quite clear and close, that the nudging was very one-sided and it was getting silly to allow people to keep nudging since it was clear that the photo was accurate. So, I have implemented a new rule on nudging... if a serial has received more than 5 nudges and the sum of those nudges is more than 4 or less than -4, then the nudge will automatically close. This should keep things a little cleaner from a storage standpoint. We will see how it goes, Im guessing the nudge rules will still be changing in the future. If you have any questions or suggestions, drop me an email.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 10 games added (A Circus, A Circus, Big-Bertha (Junior), Classic, Horsefeathers, Jiggilo, Jiggilo, Marines At Play (1st Edition), Sportsman, Who's Goofy) and 42 games that had meta-data updated (Air Raid, Bad Girls, Bazaar, Bermuda, Big Day, Big League, Big-Bertha (Senior), Bus Stop, Click, Deadly Weapon, Delta Queen, Disco Fever, Dual-Pool, Eager Beaver, Extra Inning, E-Z Aces, Firepower, Flash, Frontier, Genie, Gold Ball, Gorgar, Heavy Metal Meltdown, Jiggilo, Joust, Jungle Lord, Laser Ball, Oklahoma, Palm Beach, Scorpion, Single Coin, Sky Jump, Speed Test, Spot Bowler, Star Wars, Surf 'n Safari, Time Warp, Titan, Toreador, Vegas, Volcano, Volcano). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I went through and cleaned up the serial masks for all the Gottlieb System One games in order to better classify them and due to lots of submissions by 'Roller Disco Rocks'. The System 1 games have fairly straighforward serial formats but since it is clear that sample games start at 1000 and production games always start at numbers greater than 2000, it is very possible to define very strict masks for these games. Additionally, since the game PCB's contain the serial number *plus* the Game ROM Letter as a suffix, these serials can also be defined quite nicely.
Seems like my ISP had some issues last night and we were down from midnight until 11AM MST (-7:00 GMT). In this process I also discovered that I am still reliant on the Qwest DSLAM so I will work on changing that so I go directly to my ISP's DSLAM which will help with troubleshooting in the future. Hat's off to Visionary Communications who is my ISP and always takes very good care of me.
At the request of Mark Gibson, I have added two new ways for you to view stats about nudges that have happened. The first is a simple table in the Stats Page that shows up to 250 of the most recent nudges. The second is a section at the bottom of the detail page for any submission. If there has been a photo uploaded, then of course the SerialBot score box on the right shows the summed totals of all the nudges, but now, down below, there is a grid that actually shows all the nudges.. the date, who nudged and the nudge direction. In theory, these should always add up to the nudge total shown at the top of the form even tho they are being calculated in two completely seperate ways. :-)
Now that the nudging feature has been rolled out and based upon some stats, I have modified the algorithim for calculating SerialBot scores and adjusted the 'Physically Viewed' property to only gain the submission +1 point instead of +2 points. After looking at submissions, it was apparent that while physically viewing a serial might give some advantage to accuracy, it might also not as people are just as hasty on reading actual serial numbers off games and might even pay less attention and give less scrutiny to the number than reading a number off a photo. So, for now, I have changed this. Everyone's scores will reflect this change immediately and you can see the average pretty much dropped by 1 point.
There is a new page (accessible in the login box for members) that gives a really easy to use interface to members in order to quickly move through all the photos that a user has not yet nudged. Since I want to make nudging as easy as possible, this should really help. Remember, members get an additional point for each nudge so it is really simple to gain lots of points simply by reviewing the submitted photos to see if they match the submitted serial number.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 6 games added (Baffle Ball, Bowling, Hi-Ball, Hi-Ball (Improved), Last Round, Thrills) and 6 games that had meta-data updated (Bronco, Corinthian Twinity, Little Chief, Majors, Miss Belgium Turbo, Nip-It). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
There is a new feature on the site for members that I just deployed. I call it 'Nudging' and it basically means that members can vote on photos that have been uploaded with other people's submissions, if they feel the photo accurately shows the serial number and is correct, they can 'nudge' the SerialBot score up by one point. If the photo is innacurate or does not show the serial number clearly, then they can 'nudge' it down a point. Any number of members can 'nudge' any serial but the total points that can be gained or lost is currently limited to 3. We will see how it goes. Im still working on all the scoring algorithims so things may be a little out of whack for a couple days till I catch the bugs.
I have been added background worker processes to the website to do things like generating the quickstats at the top of the page as well as the user stats that display when a member is logged in. Unfortunately, these worker process were taking up huge amounts of memory and bogging down the CPU when they ran and conglomerated all the data. Either way, I spent some time this week learning about threading and additionally using exclude fields in LLBLGen. After some improvements the aggregation processes now run substantially faster and with much memory consumption. This should make the site snappy like it used to be and maybe even faster since the quickstats don't run on each page load now.
I added 4 new answers to the Frequently Asked Questions that dealt with some of the newer features and some member questions that I received alot. If you have other questions, feel free to email me.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 17 games added (Ballota-Acht, Ballota-Baby, Ballota-Ball, Ballota-Rekord, Bank-A-Ball, Corinthian Twinity, Electric Road, Firestar, Miss Belgium Turbo, Moulin Rouge 2, Olympic Doubles, Parade, Pirates Gold, Race Day, Regates, Vikings, Whirligig) and 22 games that had meta-data updated (Aloha, Bank A Ball, Baseball, Big Star, Bushwack, Capt. Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy, Challenger, Circus Star, Doozie, Dracula, Evel Knievel, Firepower II, Foto Finish, Four Million B.C., Gladiator, Kismet, Liberty Belle, Olympic Sportsman, Ro Go, Smart Set, Tom Tom, Torch). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Thanks for everyone's support over the last few years... the site has really come along and we are getting great traffic. Special thanks to the Internet Pinball Database as they refer so many pinheads this way!!!!
I completely overhauled the interface that members use to edit their submissions. The old way used inline forms and that was becoming slow and clunky. I moved the edits to it's own page which allows members to edit all aspects of their submissions including photos and Lat/Lng locations.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 5 games added (Cuckoo, Jolly Marble, Parlor Bagatelle (Two Star / Three Bell), Unknown, Unknown ("One Bell")) and 33 games that had meta-data updated (Ace High, Aloha, Auto Race, Big Deal, Black Gold, Bowlette, Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy, Caveman, Champ, Cover Girl, Dixieland, Double Action, Easy Aces, Fast Draw, Firecracker, Free Fall, Galaxy Ranger, Joker, New Daily-Races, Quarterback, Road Race, Solar City, Stargate, Star-Jet, Straight Shooter, Super Mario Bros., The Wiggler, Tiger, Time Tunnel, Top Hand, Watch My Line, Wood's Queen, Yacht-Club). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I put anther stat in the chart rotation that shows members with the most serialbot points. I thought this was fairly interesting because although 'pinballeric' currently has the most submissions by quite a bit, he doesn't have a huge lead over #2 Dan Gutchess as far as total points. This is because the serial numbers that Eric gave me (from the Pinball Price Guide) don't have any photos and were not physically viewed so that dropped the points per submission that Eric had. Dan you only need like 350 more points to catch up to Eric now!!!!
The Most Recent Submissions statistic works more like the rest of the grids now in that it shows icons next to the serial number if there is a photo and/or and Lat/Lng submitted. This makes it easy to see in that list which items might be interesting to look at. I will be removing the stat page that lists submissions with Photo's since that stat is now easily seen via this page change.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 23 games that had meta-data updated (Big Top, Combination Rotation, Domino, Gold Rush, Hannibal, Hill Climb, Krull II, Magic, Moon Mine, Pinball Squared, Pipeline, Q*by, Rat Race, Sevens, Snooker, Sub Chase, The Chutes, The Games I, The Incredible Hulk, Tidal Wave, Titan, Tyrannosaurus, Untitled). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I changed the way the 'details' about submissions are viewed. I had about 3 different pages that all had something to do with showing summary information on a single submission plus most of the details were shown in-line with the sumission grids. The grids were getting slow as games started to get 200+ serials and they were just sorta clunky. I made the details link go to a new page now that gives all the submission specific info along with the submitted Lattitude/Longitide and the photo if available. This page also shows the history of a serial number in case there were other submissions in the past. Hopefully this should make things work a bit cleaner. I will be working on making the 'edit' process easier for members next. Stay tuned!
I had to install a new router today and reconfigure my firewall so the site was down a couple of hours today. All seems to be running fine now. I will keep watch for any issues. If you get any strange errors, please let me know. Thanks.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 26 games added (Agate Game, Big Top, Chubbie, Combination Rotation, CSI, Domino, Gold Rush, Hannibal, Hill Climb, Krull II, Magic, Moon Mine, Pinball Squared, Pipeline, Q*by, Rat Race, Sevens, Snooker, Sub Chase, The Chutes, The Games I, The Incredible Hulk, Tidal Wave, Titan, Tyrannosaurus, Untitled) and 23 games that had meta-data updated (Ballerina, Far Out, Genesis, High Hand, Hollywood Heat, Ice Fever, Jacks to Open, Lone Star, Miami, Miami, Panthera, Paul Bunyan, Robo-War, Rocky, Running Horse, Sinbad, Tag-Team Pinball, Temptation, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thumbs Up, Touchdown, TX-Sector). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 22 games that had meta-data updated (Band Wagon, Batman, Black Jack, Black Pyramid, Bone Busters Inc., Buck Rogers, Counterforce, Excalibur, Flag-Ship, Flipper Football, Krull, Old Faithful, Orange County Choppers, OXO, Play Pool, Soccer, Space Walk, Spirit, Surf Side, Texas Ranger, Top Card, Tri Zone). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Don't let this tuesday go by without voting!!! It is your right and privilege, don't squander it. Get your ass out there!!!
There are two new 'quickstats' in the page header... Masks which show the number of games that have a valid game serial format mask defined. This is a regular expression that defines what is a good vs. bad serial number for each game. Right now we only have about 34% of the games defined and I will be working on slowly improving that number as more serials show up. If submissions have a photo, it makes defining a mask even easier as the picture never lies. The other quickstat is Traits, these used to be called 'Community Defined Fields' but that was long and boring, they are now called 'Traits', this is a count of the number of traits defined on all games. Additionally, there is a new statistic on the Stat page that shows number of games without a mask defined by the number of submissions, this gives me a really easy way to see games that might have enough serials (generally 3-4) to try and guess on a serial format mask.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Bubbles) and 10 games that had meta-data updated (Barracora, Space Shuttle, Space Train, Spin Out, Spot Pool, Street Fighter II, Super Circus, Super Jumbo, Surf Champ, Target Pool). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 2 games added (Double Shuffle, Shuffle Ball) and 41 games that had meta-data updated (Ali, Alien Star, Balls-A-Poppin, Black Jack, Blackout, Card Whiz, Charlie's Angels, Devil's Dare, El Dorado City of Gold, Expressway, Flight 2000, Fore, Frank Thomas' Big Hurt™, Galaxy, Gondolier, High Speed, Invasion Stratogy, James Bond 007, Jungle Queen, Keep 'Em Flying, King Pin, Lady Luck, Magic, Majestic, Pro Pool, Raven, Rock, Round Up, Royal Flush Deluxe, Sea Belles, Seawitch, Shangri-La, Skill Pool, Sound Stage, Spanish Eyes, Spring Break, U.S.A. Football, Victory, Wild Fyre, World Challenge Soccer, World Fair). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Yes, that's right... for a perpetual time, you get two charts on the right side of this screen for the same low low price of the one that used to be there. You will see incredible improvements on your ability to absorb new and informative statistics about the usage of this site along with subconscious needs to submit more serial numbers. Call Now!
In my haste to deploy the new 'Lat/Lng' quickstat this morning before I went to work, I accidentally broke most of the site. All should be up and running now.
There was a problem with the query that calculated the top submitters by submission quality that is now fixed. The issue was for people that had photos submitted and was causing those SerialBot points not to be tallied properly. You will now see that our quality of submissions is drifting upwards!!! Thanks everyone!!
There is a new chart in the rotation that shows submissions for the past week. It will of course only show submissions that have a Lat/Lng associated with them, so remember that when you submit. It took me 3 weeks to get the Flash file to display the dots as blue rather than the default Google Analytics Orange color but finally it works. If anyone out there is proficient in Flash Actionscript 1.0 with massive amounts of prototyping, I could use your help. Going from C# to AS1 is not pretty!!! Enjoy!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 11 games that had meta-data updated (Alpine Club, Big Game, Bull's Eye, Caribbean Cruise, Global Warfare, Meteor, Pro-Football, Silver, Strange Science, Sunset, Swashbuckler). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I added the new google map locator to the Game Parts page now too. You may now submit your Lat/Lng with any game part serial submission just like full game serials.
There is a new section on the game serial submission page that allows you to set the location of the game serial number you are submitting. While there currently is not a way to view this information. I will be working on that over the next few weeks. What I hope to accomplish with this is to see how a game travels over the years as it is bought and sold etc. My next step will be to get this map interface onto the game parts submission page.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 8 games added (Grand Slam, L'Etoile, Lone Star, Manhattan, Playa, Space Fantasy, The Maple Leaf, UFO) and 15 games that had meta-data updated (Captain Kidd, Freedom, Gigi, Happy Clown, Hi-Ball, Honey, Hot Shot, Liberty, Oh Boy, Picnic, Race Time, Rack 'Em Up!, Sky·Line, Super Spin, Total Roll). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I have moved the site over to a new web server which is a bit more capable than my old Athlon XP 1900+ and has more memory as well. It was getting to the point where I had to reboot the server every week due to memory leaks (thanks ASP.NET or Windows Server). There were some interuptions this weekend while I did the switchover but I think that all is well now.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 4 games added (Beisbol, Mibs, Road Race, Target Pool) and 3 games that had meta-data updated (8 Ball, Bali-Hi, Black Knight). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Olympic Pool) and 4 games that had meta-data updated (Big Valley, Card King, Skyrocket, Spin Wheel). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 3 games that had meta-data updated (Aztec, Hot Hand, Mardi Gras). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
There is a new obscure quickstat listed in the header... 'Highest Quality'... this shows the person that has the highest overall average of serial bot scores across all their submissions. You have to have at least 10 submissions to get in this stat as it is easy to have a high score on one submission. I added this to give credit to those submitters that take the time to submit only 'in person' serials and accompany them with a picture (the best way to get a high serialbot score). Also, there is a new chart in the rotation that shows the top 5 highest averages by submitter!!
I threw another chart into the rotation that displays the number of servers that have been blacklisted by me by day. While this isn't probably the most interesting statistic to everyone, it is good for me to see and also gives you an idea of the number of crappy bots that are out there attempting to inject and expliot my servers on a regular basis. These logs only show the attacks that make it past my Packet Inspection Firewall and generally attempt to post data with flagged keywords such as 'Viagra' :-)
It took me about a month but I have now switched over to Telerik's newest WebControl suite which sits on top of the Microsoft AJAX framework instead of utilizing Telerik's own AJAX framework. What this actually means is that some of the skins look a little more modern and most of the advanced AJAX calls work *much* faster (especially noticeable in the member's MyIPSND edit grid). Overall, this should be a good stepping stone into the future for ASP. Since this was a fairly major overhaul, if you run into any issues, PLEASE send me an email so I can get it fixed up as quickly as possible.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 2 games added (Fishin', Little Pro) and 12 games that had meta-data updated (Big Casino, Black-Jack, Fan-Tas-Tic, Ginger, Gold Star, Gold Wings, Grande Domino, High Seas, Slamdunk, Track Odds, Tramway, Zodiac). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Atlantis, Rescue 911). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 3 games added (Apollo-9, Batman, Surf Champ) and 25 games that had meta-data updated (301/Bulls Eye, Arena, Big Casino, Black Hole, Blue Note, Bounty Hunter, Cross Country, Daffie, Dale Jr., Egg Head, Haunted House, Ice-Revue, King Pin, Kings & Queens, Mars God of War, Medusa, North Star, Olympics, Post Parade, Rack-A-Ball, River Boat, Royal Flush, Surfer, Sweet Hearts, Tropic Isle). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 2 games added (Indiana Jones, Surfer) and 6 games that had meta-data updated (Alien Poker, Amazon Hunt, Amazon Hunt II, Bon Voyage, Papillon, Shrek™). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I added a new chart that shows top referring sites as extracted from Google Analytics. I figured this would help show the benefit this site gets from some of the other popular pinball sites such as The Internet Pinball Database and Pinside.
I am going to start adding a few more charts and also making them available on the Statistics page. For those of you that don't want to cycle through all the front page charts one-by-one, there is now a link in the lower right corner of the charts that allows you to see them all on one page.
Special thanks to Eric Kantor who donated all the serial numbers that Steve Young compiled over the years for The Pinball Price Guide. There were over 1100 serial numbers in the spreadsheet that Eric sent me covering Gottlieb and Williams EM games. Since the price guide only tracked high and low serials, you can see that they are often the highest and lowest serial numbers in the submissions. Thanks again Eric!!
Looks like we were down for most of today due to my SQLServer running out of disk space. I apparently need to learn how to clean up my database backups a little better as I ran out of disk space on the SQL box. Luckily SQL 2005 behaves better than SQLServer v7.0 when disk space mysteriously dissapears and everything is up and running again without even a reboot.
Thanks to Wolf and Jay at the The Internet Pinball Database who have added matching links on every game in their database to the IPSND game page. This will help keep even more traffic coming our way and should encourage more people to submit their serial numbers. Thanks again guys!!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 13 games that had meta-data updated (Humpty Dumpty, Jack·Bot, Joker, Jungle, King Rock, Lucky Strike, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Mayfair, Mini Cycle, Polar Explorer, Poseidon, Q*Bert's Quest, Rat Race). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 8 games that had meta-data updated (Hit-A-Card, Holiday, Lucky Ace, Quicksilver, Sky Kings, Sorcerer, Wild Life, Wild West). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
You can now click on the SerialBot score for each submission and get a detailed explanation of that score and the color code. As the scoring has gotten a little more complicated, it seems that this information would be useful to submitters or serial number compilers.
You may now submit photos directly in the game part submission form instead of having to go into your MyIPSND submissions to edit the entry. This should make it much easier than before for the couple of you that are submitting game parts with photos on a regular basis.
I have changed the way that the site sends emails due to some problems with the way the larger domains (yahoo, hotmail, gmail, etc) configure their mailservers. The update also takes care of getting mail sucessfully sent to a server that uses greylisting as SPAM prevention. As a reminder too, if you become a member, you will not have to verify your serial number submissions via email which will keep your inbox healthier!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 8 games added (Dale Jr., El Tigre, Fascinating, FasTrac, Poko-Lite, Post Parade, Saddle & Turf, Shrek™) and 49 games that had meta-data updated (2001, 3-In-Line, Air Circus, BMX, Cactus Jack's, City Slicker, Corral, Cyclopes, Dealer's Choice, Double-Shuffle, Double-Up, Eight Ball, El Dorado, Electro Black Diamond, Escape from the Lost World, Fantastic Car, Flying Carpet, Grand Lizard, Hoops, Independence Day, Jungle Queen, Mad World, Millionaire, Monte Carlo, Moulin Rouge, Mr. Evil, Night Rider, Old Coney Island!, One-Two-Three, Pentogram, Petaco 2, Power Play, Rock Encore, Rolling Stones, Saddle & Turf, See Saw, Skateball, Space Invaders, Speakeasy 4, Special Force, Spectrum, Super Nova, Supersonic, The Six Million Dollar Man, Vector, Venus, Voltan Escapes Cosmic Doom, Wheel Of Fortune, Xenon). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Oxford St.) and 3 games that had meta-data updated (Mazuma, Mystic, Skooky). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Another side effect of the large storms that rolled through the area was that a stream washed out some qwest fiber around the Douglas area. Apparently three OC48's were cut by debris on Thursday afternoon. We are finally back up with internet service on Saturday morning.
Laramie had some tornado issues this Thursday and our power was out overnight due to those and some heavy snow. I'm bringing the servers back up right now so we should be good to go in a few minutes.
After emailing a few times with Robin at pinside.com, we have both agreed to change our sites a little to provide links off each game page to each other. This wasn't quite as easy as linking up to the IPDB but Robin and I figured out a way to make it work. You will now see links to Pinside on most games produced after 1975 on each game page. Thanks Robin!
I changed the way the site works a little based on feedback at the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown last month. Instead of mailing out verification emails for every submission for everyone, now, they only go out to non-members. So, if you become a member, your submission will automatically be set to a status of 'verified' without needing to deal with checking your email for every submission. Since members already have their identity known, it is safe for us to assume that those submissions have a certain level of integrity.
I will be doing a pin-chat at the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown next week, the chat will be a tour of the IPSND, how it is built, the database and all the interesting stuff that I can show from the site. You will also learn some advanced usage of the site features.
Well it has been just about 2 years now and we have crossed the million visitor mark. Looking deeper into the stats, most of those visits are by bots it appears but it is a legitimate session count when the visit I suppose. Thanks to everyone that has continued to support the site and keep the submissions coming!!
There is a new statistic that lists latest submissions that include a photo. A nice way to browse all the pretty pictures everyone submits!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 2 games added (Green Lights, Green Lights) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
I have updated the logic for the search results so that it does two new things. Now, the number of players is also listed in the results to better clarify the games from each other, plus the results are now sorted descending by number of submissions for that game so that the post popular games exist at the top of the list. Since I don' really have a fancy search engine, this should give back more applicable results at the top of the list.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 3 games added (Hell, Terrific Lake, Top Hand) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 15 games that had meta-data updated (Big Deal, Black & Reed, Bowl-O, Cabaret, Embryon, Flipper Cowboy, Flipper Fair, Flipper Parade, Galahad, Metro, Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man Pinball, Olympic, Rancho, Roy Clark Super Picker, Show Boat). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Members may now upload photos for existing submissions by going to their member profile page and editing the submission. You can also replace existing photo uploads via the same interface. Right now, there is only 1 photo per submission however.
In the area to the right where the charts and the google analytics exist, there is a new item in the rotation that shows the most recent member uploaded photo that has been put into the database. FYI, there are currently 9 different items that rotate in the chart panel on the front page.
Members can now do some basic editing of uploaded photos, right now there are tools for rotating and flipping images. I will also be monitoring images uploaded by non-members and doing rotations etc to get them presented properly.
Based on the traffic and feedback from my post on RGP last night, I have fixed several bugs relating to the Emailing issue, login accounts and Activation processes and the Affiliate configuration script. There is also a new 'remember me' checkbox in the login control so you can keep your default email on a computer by computer basis.
There are some issues with the confirmation email going out to yahoo, gmail and other large ISP's. Im changing the code now but the site will be a bit flaky for the next 10 minutes while I deploy the updates. Thanks for your patience.
We will call this a BETA test for now, but you can now attach photo's to your serial number submissions that show the serial number explicitly. This will potentially solve so may problems over time as we get more and more submissions and error's gradually pile up. This is only the first step in a bigger picture solution but it is pretty cool to see them for now. You can either upload a photo from your local PC or specify a web URL for the photo. The image is stored in our local IPSND database so it is archived along with the submission. Submissions that have an attached photo are 'starred' in the serial number listings.
The Serial Bot has been improved to not only categorize submissions into various 'status' levels but it now assigns a point value to each submission that ranges from 1-5. This value basically shows how accurate a submission is based on several factors. More details can be found on the Serial Bot Page and this functionality will be getting more improvements in the weeks to come.
There was a bug in the serial number sorting algorithm that appeared to effect games that had alpha characters in them (Early Bally Electronics most notably). This has now been fixed so that they are again sorted in numeric order.
In several tables that list submitters, there is now a 'member' icon that appears similar to the way an icon appears if a person has given a donation. Clicking this icon will take you to the member profile page that shows some summary info about the member, a link to their website and a listing of their submissions. It is fairly similar to the regular submitter page, however I will continue to develop this page and probably not develop the submitter page beyond the basics.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Cavalier). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Hop-Scotch) and 4 games that had meta-data updated (Derby Dash, Miami Balls, Swing-Along, The Best Corsair). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Loop the Loop) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 8 games added (24 Heures du Mans, Atari Pinball, Click, Flamenco Show, Good Morning America, Harley-Davidson® (3rd Edition), Hot & Cold, Pipeline) and 5 games that had meta-data updated (Baffle Ball Sr. Home Game, Icarus, Mr. Doom, Torpedo!!, Twin-Gain). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
You can now register on the IPSND if you are here regularly and would like a little more power over your information and ease of use. The big advantage is that you can now edit your submissions to a certain degree if you want to correct them or update them. Registration is free and we of course do not share any information.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 2 games added (KnoKOut, Lucky Strike) and 3 games that had meta-data updated (Hit and Run, Navajo, Sky Show). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 3 games added (Gold Star, Jungle Life, Red White Blue) and 3 games that had meta-data updated (Gigolo, Step Up, The Lost World Jurassic Park). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Super Flipp). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
When I started this database, I imported all the known serials that had be registered with the old Internet Pinball Project as the basis. That was about 7500 serial numbers (3/4 of where we are now at 10,000 serials). I changed the 'Status' of these serials to 'Unvalidated' since they technically have not been validated. I also wanted these submissions to have a 'lower' value than submission by people that have personall submitted games and verified them through the email link. This doesn't really change much except you now see much more 'blue' in the serial number listings.
I updated the Statistics Page with a feature that allows you to view entire datasets instead of just the top 25 or 50 rows which I commonly limited the stats to in the past. This allows you to drill down into the data if you really want to and also do full exports of the data instead of having just the top.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 2 games added (Mythology, Whifflette) and 12 games that had meta-data updated (Arc En Ciel, Arc En Ciel Bebe, Hoosier Baseball, Hot & Cold, Les Flèches, Mars God of War, Petaco 2, Robin Hood, Sky Fly, Star Wars Episode I, Super Nova, Valkyrie). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The site is now running ASP.NET 3.5 under IIS. Im not technically using any of the fancy 3.5 features yet (except one simple LINQ OrderBy function but Im working on it.
I sat down the other night and did a search for 'prototype' on RGP to come up with threads discussing odd features of games (generally due to someone posting that they had a 'prototype'). What came of this was that I added game custom properties to about a dozen games this week. Two examples are... Cleopatra and Sinbad: SheetMetal vs. Plywood cabinets. Bally's Wizard!: two different playfield arch artwork styles. I really encourage everyone to add more custom properties for games that you collect or are interested in... it really starts making the serial number submissions a little more interesting than doing simple existance tracking. More info on the Community Defined Fields page. You can see examples on the Games with the most Community Defined Fields statistics page.
I have given the site's Data Abstraction Layer a major overhaul and deployed it this evening. It was about a two week process but the changes should optimize the communication between the web server and the SQL server which should give better speed to the site overall.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 5 games added (Arc En Ciel, Arc En Ciel Bebe, Meeting, Petaco 2, Sky Fly) and 4 games that had meta-data updated (Coupe D'Argent, Fast Track, Guns N' Roses, Les Flèches). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
It never fails, every time I leave town, I have power problems in Laramie and a server goes down. This time it was the SQL server due to the old UPS battery. I will get a new battery ordered this week so things should at least improve in the future. Im also not going to be out of the country for a full week anytime soon either.
I think that Dan has held the title of 'Top Submitter' for over a year now but today Ray Johnson made a dash into the front. Nothing like a healthy rivalry between my favorite submitters to get all these lovely serial numbers! Nice job Mr. J.
The original SQL database server is now back online. The site should be back to being somewhat fast now. Im in the process of migrating all databases over to the new server and things should be pretty stable from here on out. I apologize for the interruptions this past week!!
I am running the site of my backup database server this weekend while I build a new SQL box. Until I get switched back over, the site will be running a bit slower and may experience intermittent timeouts as a single proc machine doesn't do too well with both IIS and MS-SQL. :-) Someday I will move this beasty over to MySQL.
The site was down Saturday night due to some 'unexpected' server maintenance. Bottom line, don't promote your SQL server to a domain controller and then demote it. Bad Idea!
I added a new statistic on the statistics page that displays a breakdown of serial number submissions by Manufacturer. Also, on the stat pages that show IP addresses, clicking on the IP will take you to the whois record.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Wheel Of Fortune) and 0 games that had meta-data updated . Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Dan Gutchess submitted the 10,000th serial number into the database today. Thanks to everyone who has been contributing and keep the serial numbers coming. Dan wins a free IPSND T-Shirt as soon as I get them made. ;-)
There is a new Google Analyic chart in the rotation, this one is similar to the breakdown by city but instead does the breakdown by country and color codes the various levels of visitorship. Similar to the city chart, it has fancy floating info panels for each country.
I have included the newest version of the Google Analytics geomap in the stats to the right. Basic functionality is the same but it definely looks prettier and loads a little faster. I will be working on this some more to get different aspects of analytics showing here on the front page.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 1 games added (Slugger) and 4 games that had meta-data updated (Dakar, Dark Rider, Hoosier Baseball, Spider-Man™). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
Just to keep track of those pesky IP address that use bots to auto-submit web links into our sacred database, there are now two new stats on the Statisics Page that allow you to see what IP's are currently banned and a listing of all IP's aggregated by count that have been banned in the past.
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 2 games that had meta-data updated (Stellar Airship, WHO dunnit). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
In my passionate attempt to keep the site free from bot porn and viagra submissions I have deployed a few new countermeasures to prevent the bots from filling the database with crap data. I put these in place in lieu of using the 'captcha' verification images as those images were causing a few people submission grief. So, if any IP address submits porn links or lame-o data, that IP will now be banned for 48 hours from the site. Huray!!
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 2 games added (Balito, Pinball Action) and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Pinball Action). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 1 games that had meta-data updated (Folies Bergeres). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
If you know exactly which game you are looking for, you can quickly type in the ipdbid with a pound symbol in front, so, for example... #1976 will take you directly to Robocop and #311 will take you to Black Knight 2000
The Serial-Bot performed a sync with the IPDB.ORG database. There were 0 games added and 2 games that had meta-data updated (PIN·BOT, The Machine: Bride of Pin·bot). Details can be found on the IPDB Updates Report in the Statistics Section
The validation images (captcha) were removed from both the sumission page and the parts submission page due to continued problems with some people's browsers. I had added them to prevent bots from posting invalid serial numbers but I will look into other measures for preventing that from happening.
When you click on the verification link that the site emails after every submission, that resulting page will now display all the serial numbers that were marked as verified. It wasn't very apparent in the past but even if you had submitted 25 serials, clicking any single one of the verification links would mark all 25 submissions as 'Verified'. That meant that you didn't have to click every single email that was sent to you in a single batch (defined by session which is equal to 30 minutes in this case).
I added a new front page graph that shows a pie chart of the distribution of all game part submissions on the site. I may change this to be only the last 90 days as I want the front page charts to sort of constantly morph based on time and the way it looks now, most part submissions might be CPU or display PCB's. We will see what happens with the data before I change anything tho.
There is a new statistic that shows games with most number of submitted game parts on the statistics page.
When submitting a game part, there is now a drop down that lets you define what type of part it is (CPU, Driver, Display, etc). When viewing the game part listings under each game, you can then see this information.
I have added a new tab to the game details page that explicitly lists all game parts that have been calculated to belong to that specific game. Some game part serials can be associated with a specific model simply by the structure of the serial number and others cannot. As I manually find these game part serials, I will assign them to a game and they will start showing up in the 'Game Part' lists. The concept is not quite complete but you can read more about it under any game detail 'Game Parts' tab.
I upgraded my entire Data Abstraction layer to full .NET 2.0 compliant code that takes advantage of nullable types and gives me an easy way to audit all database changes. While this doesn't technically effect the site, it will probably introduce a few bugs. I have already fixed about 4 issues tonight after watching the exception log, so if you do have any problems, bear with me and I will get them fixed asap.
There was an issue with the GamePart submission page that was causing some issues accepting submissions, this was due to some old code that tried to prevent duplicate submissions caused by double-clicking the submit button. A big thanks to John Duchi for helping to troubleshoot the problem.
The site was down for 4 days this past week due to me being out of town and Laramie losing power for more than 20 minutes. Since my UPS' can only deal with that much power outage, the servers were down until I got back into town. All should be good now however and Im going to start saving for a bigger UPS. :-)
I went through and defined a custom game property for the dozen or so Bally games that came in both English and German versions. Maybe we can start to see a trend in the serial numbers now.
Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later but the web bots have officially found us and are attempting to submit all kinds of crappy information including URL's of malicious web sites. So, you will find that some submission forms will require image validation (also known as captcha images) to prevent me from getting a mailbox full of 'Improperly formed submission' errors every day.
When searching for games the results now return a column that specifiies the number of submissions on record for that game, this is helpful for games that might have been made for home use orfor games licensed to other manufacturers. Overall, it allows you to see the potentially most popular or common game amongst all the results.
I added the standard 3 charts for viewing submissions by Country, Condition and GamePart to the manufacturer pages. An example can be see at the Stern Electronics Manufacturer Page. I also added a column that summarizes the number of submissions for that game in the table.
There are now 5 different 'status' levels that a serial number can have defined by the Serial Bot. They are now a little more defined and include a status for games that don't yet have a serial mask defined.
When viewing game serial number lists, if any serials have been submitted in the last 90 days, they are now flagged with a small 'new' icon. This lets you see the activity on specific games you might be watching.
After some playing around with photoshop, I think I have improved the logo a bit for full browsers. Mobile users still have the same old 'compact & flat' version but it works better on limited bandwidth.
I'm starting to experiment with ASP.NET caching and have also been working on optimizing my database trips from the web application. This should help improve page load times in the future.
There was a problem with the submission page today due to a change I made in the code that displays example serial numbers. I have things fixed now so all should be back to normal.
I added pretty icons to the tabs within the game detail page. Also, there is a new tab that explains any known serial number format for a specific game... an example would be Sample Game serials and Production Game serials. Read the previous news item for more info.
I broke the serial masks into a seperate table that now allows me to track multiple formats using regular expressions. This allows the database to have different masks for Sample vs. Production games for example. I was having issues with making a single regular expression that covered all the different known formats since in addition to the literal format, the actual numeric range was often constrained as well. For example, 80's Gottlieb games had sample games that were typically prefixed with an 'S' and started in the one thousands; Production games did not have the 'S' but also started in the two (or greater) thousands. Hence... a serial number of 'S02438' would not be a valid serial number based on this information.
Now that we are on the virge of collecting 10,000 serials, I am starting to fully audit the database with validation masks. These masks allow me to flag serial numbers that look suspect according the best known information on the format of a specific game serial number and the range of known serials. To go along with this, I have created a new Statistics category called 'Quality Control'. There is one available statistic right now that lists the games with the most suspect serial numbers.
The GamePart submisson form now remembers your default values for 6 months using any prior submission, just the way the main submission form works.
I have just added serial number mask definitions for about 1000 games. What this gives me is a method to start determining if submitted serial numbers are in an expected format. I previously only had about 1000 serial masks defined, but we are now at a total of 1880 games out of ~5000 defined. After doing this, I now have about 200 existing serial number submissions that are showing up as 'possibly innacurate'. So, I will start cleaning those up this week.
I have purchased a new server for SQL 2005 and am running Windows 2003 64-bit Edition along with SQL 2005 64-bit. It might be slight overkill but I wanted to support AMD and since their new Athlon's are all 64-bit, I figured I would give it a go. All my drivers were good and the machine is up and running. You should see substantial improvements on the page load times now. I will be working on optimizing indexes and server cache info over the next month to get things as snappy as possible.
I added a new tab on the game detail page that is called 'Find your Serial Number' which basically is a blog style interface for posting tips on finding serial numbers for the *manufacturer*. Posts to this are global to the manufacturer so they aren't necessarily game specific.
I added a new Stats section with a listing of all the current affilate sites, ordered by ranking. GameArchive is the only current affilate so Im hoping to get at least one other site to try out the new feature sometime soon. Come on Webmasters!!!! Also, I added a new feature to the Affilate serial submission process based on a comment by Jesse at Pinball Magic. What happens is that when a new serial is sumbitted via the Affilate include, upon submission, you are now taken back to the Affiliate site to make the process much more streamlined so that submitters don't end up leaving the affiliate's site.
There are two new stats on the Statistics Page that show games with the most current Community Defined fields and then a list of games that have the most community defined field values submitted.
I modified the way the Community Defined Field data is displayed in the second tab of a game's details to show only serials with registered information. This makes the data much easier to read. Since many community defined fields have been defined after-the-fact, the resulting data was pretty sparse generally and involved lots of scrolling. This will also make pages load a tad bit faster.
On most of the Statistics pages, there is a new column called rank that shows the appropriate row number. This makes it easier to see that statistical rank, an example as of right now... 'joust' is the 7th most popular search.
This is a 'feature' that I have been working on for quite a few months now. Due to the really flexible nature, it took awhile but I think it is finally release-able. You can get substantially more info by clicking on the Become an Affiliate link at the top of the page but the basic jist is that now people that have 'owners list' pages, can actually stop trying to maintain static lists of serial numbers that they get submitted via emai and instead simply 'include' data directly from the IPSND using a really simple line of HTML that is similar to the way Google Analytics works.
For games that have Community Defined Fields, there is now a basic data grid underneath the graphs that were previously not there (see Star Gazer for an example). The grid is basic and generally sparse right now but it is a little more useful than the graphs which showed totals but no distribution data. I also fixed a bug in the graphing code that was skewing totals for each property so the grid and graphs numbers now make sense together.
I have added a new field to the serial number database that tracks if the submitter is the 'current owner' of a game or not. This came to my attention from games appearing at shows like the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown where non-owners may submit a serial number of a game that was on display. The reason I wanted to distinguish the difference was simply so that I could make a report filter to only show registrations by owners etc. All the existing registrations are marked as 'non-owner' submissions for now.
A big thank you to Dan and Holly for organizing the Rocky Mountain Pnball Showdown again this year. I had a great time and got to hang out and chat with everyone I haven't seen in awhile. The show had a great variety of games and I was happy to see a nice lineup of Bally's including a Xenon and Medusa. I have a list of about 100 serial numbers that I collected there so I will work on inputting them to the DB this week. See you next year!!
It seems like I have had a failing stick of memory in my server that was making it *extremely* flakey this past month. It is now removed and running stable again. I also upgraded the database server to SQL 2005 from SQL 2000 so we will see if that gives any performance improvements.
For everyone in the Rocky Mountain Region, don't forgot to come over to the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showndown from April 27th-29th in Jefferson County, Colorado (just west of Denver). There will be over 100 games set on free play along with a Pinball Tournament and guest speakers. I have volunteered to do the 'Pinball Shopping 101' session and will be bringing my Williams Cosmic Gunfight and Warlok to the show. The Pinball Showdown website is at http://www.pinballshowdown.com.
The game search algorithm has been improved a little by ignoring 'special characters' in game names like hyphens, colons, asterisks, etc. This was a request from Dan G. because when typing in 'Pinbot' you would not get any matches due to the official game name being 'PIN*BOT'.
I also have made search tokens logically AND'ed together so that searches like 'time line' dont return 150 matches but only game names that have substrings of both terms somewhere in the official name or game abbreviation.
Since there seemed to be many common questions about serial numbers and the database, I made up a little FAQ that attempts to give some feedback and guidance. Hopefully they help answer some of *your* big questions in life.
There were some issues with some of the statistics pages that would cause them to time out. This was because I was tracking hits in the DB from the IIS log and the table was enormous. I moved away from logging IIS traffic in the database and have stored hit values for each game in the database.
There are now some basic pie charts on the game serial pages that summarize the collected data for the community defined fields. I have changed the interface to have tabs across the top so that I can store more info here in the future. Also, I will be adding a data grid that displays the community defined field info in a table below the charts similar to the main serial number registration table.
I came to the realization this weekend that the serial numbers that Williams used for their video games are in the same sequence of serial numbers that they used for their pinball machines. This actually addresses some concerns of mine on the big gaps in their pinball serial numbers since there were large seqences of numbers missing during the 1982 era when pinball was waning and video games were still popular. Because of this interdependency, I have added the 12 video games that Williams manufactured in the early 80's. Please tell all your video game collector friends to register their serials if possible.
Okay, I think this new feature is pretty neat. You may now add additional properties to a game so that when people register a serial, they are asked for some more game specific info. A really good example is with Jungle Lord... there are two different cabinet colors that were produced from the factory... RED and BLUE, by using the Community Defined Fields, I was able to submit the property and define the different allowed values that submitters may choose. Now, we can track game specific production properties to serial ranges to better figure out when these 'features' existed in the production run. Several other examples are... Captain Fantastic... Starred Backglass or not, Twilight Zone... 3rd Magnet. For those of you that are really into specific games, I challenge you to get some good community defined fields submitted so we can track these trends as early as possible. It took me about two weeks to get it up and running so please test it out and give me any feedback you might have on how to improve it.
I created two RSS channels that are described on the RSS Feeds Page. Im not sure where these will go but I thought it would be interesting to be able to see the IPSND announcements available on my Slim Devices Squeezebox in my living room. This is also my cheap way of providing a semi 'web service' interface to the data. Please let me know if you would like to see anything else with the RSS feeds.
I added a new chart in the front page chart rotation that shows top submitters in the last 90 days. I'm trying to come up with charts that change regularly so there is always something interesting to see and you will become hopelessly addicted to visiting the site and submitting serial numbers.
If a game is electronic and has a known MPU (Master Processing Unit) board, there is a link under that game to the MPU details page. The MPU detail page lists all games using that MPU and the aggregate stats associated with it. Header columns on data tables are clickable and allow sorting. Most tables are like this but I will work to make this more consistent across the site.
In addition to the Google Analytics map that normally appears on the right side of the main page, there are now a few more charts you can view that show the following data... Submissions per day in the last 90 days, a breakdown of all submissions by country, pinball machine models produced by year and total pinball machine production by year. I will add more as I get time. Enjoy.
I added 3 pie charts to the game serial pages that show distributions of registrations based on Country, Game Condition and the Game Part. This is still a work in progress and I have to pretty up the layout a bit but they are interesting to see as an alternative to browsing the entire registration table in raw format. I will be experiementing more with the Dundas charting tools and also trying to figure out a way to pay for them over the next few months. If you have any suggestions on what may be useful to visualize, drop me an email.
There is a new link in the top navigation header called 'Serial Number Blog' that is a revamp of the old static page describing how to find serial numbers for the various manufacturers. The page is now formatted more like a blog with each manufacturer having posts from collectors that can comment on where and how to accurately find serial numbers on games by that manufacturer. I have initially populated the blog with the info that Bill Ung had written for the original Internet Pinball Project and added a couple of my own. There are lots of manufacturers to go and Im sure more info on the manufacturers that are already posted so please add as many useful comments as possible.
If you have submitted lots of serials, you probably have thought it was a bit repetitive to constantly have to re-type your name, email, website and country. I have added cookies to the site so that if your browser allows them, these fields will be remembered from the last submission you entered. The cookies are valid for 6 months and will keep your 'default' values stored in your computer. I don't use cookies for any tracking code so you won't have to worry about me slamming your machine with tons of sweet chewy delights.
Countries are now shown as the appropriate flag graphic in the serial tables. Hovering will let you know what country it is if you don't know all 240 by heart. Looks a little flashier. 
I have had an issue with my root partition on this box for about a year now in that it was only 10Gig and I was woefully low on space for a long time. I made lots of temporary fixes by moving the swap file and other files to 'accessory' drives but finally found a good tool to move existing partitions to different drives under Windows Server 2003. So now I have a fresh 160gig C partition with lots of space to grow. This will allow me to install Telerik Q3 2006 widgets from the Q1 2006 version Im using now. I will be utiliting ajax more to minimize page loads. Im also going to start playing with Dundas charting tools which I didn't have enough space to install previously. Now I just need to get the backups working again. ;-)
All of the statistics tables available on the Statistics Page are now easily exportable to either Text CSV, XML or XLS file formats. Once you view a statistics table, look in the upper right hand corner of the table for the export functions. If you would like information on how to automate exports, let me know.
Based on the data I have been pulling from Google Analytics it looks like only 7% of the visitors to this site have less than 1024x768 screen resolution. So, I have made the main site layout optimized for 1024x768 or larger. There are some tables I have been using that are hardcoded for the smaller screen size so I will be updating those in the next few weeks to take full advantage of the new real estate. Please let me know if you have any problems with formatting or sizing.
I added a new table that shows 'Serial Registrations by Game Manufactured Year'. It also shows the number of games manufactured that year. Plotting it gives interesting results. I will start working on an easy way to graph all statisics here in the new year. Merry Xmas!!
Im going to start adding some stats for individual games to the game summary pages. For now, it simply lists the number of serials registered against the total production and gives a percent registered. I will expand this a bit more in the future.
I had this strange process of making pages post back to themselves the first time a person would visit the site so that I could get the screen resolution of the computer you were browsing on. This allowed me to make the background image fit your screen perfectly. Well, it had some side effects in that I used the URL to send the resolution which made my server loggin completely useless with all the different URL's and it caused everyone to hit a page twice. Through the joys of javascript I have found a better way to do this. It works in both Firefox and IE 7.0 too. Hurray!
Yes, all my sites seem to have one... the factoid... well it is challenging for me to come up with interesting facts to put in there. While most were taken from the IPDB, some are truly original or taken from digging through all my old pinball books.
I have been converting the site to be driven more by CSS instead of classic HTML based layouts so you might see some more 'pretty' things, or you might just see more broken formats due to the browser differences, if you are using IE 7, you are on your own for a bit until I can get it installed on a computer without crashing it. :-)
I was in Las Vegas this week for a conference and got to spend hours playing pinball at Tim Arnold's Pinball Hall Of Fame. He let me crawl around and collect as many serial numbers as I could. I felt like Sam Harvey but Tim pointed out that since I was using a pocket PC to record the serials, there was no way I could be compared to Sam.I finally got to play Pinball Circus and plenty of other favorites over the evening. Im slowly getting all the serials from the PHoF into the database.
If all went successfully, you should now see a world map to the right of this with the past weeks hits mapped on it. This data is from my Google Analytics urchin tracker, it was an interesting process to get the data and display it here since there is no native API. I will keep playing with it to see if I can publish more data here directly.
Im using Google Analytics to track visitors to my site now. The visitor hits that are currently shown in the header are unique sessions however, they include bots that scan the site and it seems that that number isn't really that accurate in comparison to Analytics. Im in the process of trying to 'extract' data from Analytics to show directly on the site but Analytics does not have an API yet, so it will be an interesting hack.
I added a stat view that shows the most popular searches now. I also fixed an issue with the 'Submissions by Month' query that was sorting the months incorrectly.
I extended the ability of my SerialComparer class to deal with games that don't explicity have a numeric range mask defined for their serials. What I did was convert the serial number into a Base36 number so that the serial strings would get sorted numerically even if there were Alpha characters in the serial. Leading zero's are trimmed off and non-alphanumeric characters equal zero. Im sure this can be improved further but this really helped and effected 4248 games.
Since the IPSND is my project site to better learn new technologies, I wanted to dynamically generate .pdf documents that contained default content along with data linked content and do that in realtime. Viola! You can now download a fancy schmancy 'IPSND Registration Certificate' (suitable for framing) that has the game details, serial number and submitter info on it. The certificates can be viewed under the 'details' section of an individual serial number.
I enhanced the page presentation for mobile devices to hopefully squeeze the content into a much smaller area and also to optimize for bandwidth saving. Don't forget to use your pocket PC or Palm device to register those serials when you are out and about.
Yes, I pulled out my 'creative' hand and made a really simple logo that brightens up the page a bit. Nothing fancy, but it works for now.
I previously had a little javascript redirection page that allowed me to detect the screen resolution that you were running so that the background image would fit perfectly to your screen. Well, the javascript was messing up search engines etc and causing all pages to be crawled with no content. So, I fixed that my making my master page a little more intelligent about the current session. Because of the way it worked out, you should get the correct background image resolution no matter which page you enter the site on as well, previously, the detection was only happening on the home page.
There is a new Manufacturer List page that allows you to browse all the manufacturers in the database and also summarizes total games produced. I put this in here for the bots primarily so that there was a direct path to every game entry in the database, but it is also more useful to browse sometime.
I have added a new page that allows listing of all games by a specific manufacturer. In general, you will see this on every game page, the manufacturer name (if known) is now a hyperlink. Im not exactly sure what use this will be but it seemed useful to have around.
I have created a Firefox Search Plug-in for the IPSND on the Downloads page. It allows you to easily do IPSND searches directly from the firefox search box. Enjoy!
Not only has Dan Gutchess taken over with most submissions, but he also pointed out a couple of nuances with the search functionality that didn't work quite right under IE. So, I have fixed the issue with pressing enter not properly searching and have added a little extra feature that automatically sets focus to the search boxes on page load. I will do the same with other forms over the following few days to make data entry as easy as possible.
Our fearless prior submission leader Ray Johnson has been out-submitted by Bill Ung today. Nice job Bill... Ray, you must have more serials!?
The serial bot now attempts to calculate valid serial number ranges for a particular game based on serial number submissions for other games manufactured during the same time period. Williams games were tricky since there could be sample game runs that were interlaced with other games. Im not going to go into severe detail here on how it works but as with everything else, we will let it run awhile and see what the bot can ascertain over time.
For games that have a serial number format mask defined, the submission page will no longer accept serials that do not validate against it. I was getting lots of mistyped serial numbers and instead of me trying to guess what the typo is, I figured it would be best to point out the issue at submission time and have the submitter double check. We will see how this works out.
I have created a little routine that meticulously goes through each serial number and looks for any 'oddities' associated with it. For instance, if a game submission has not ever been 'verified' by email then the bot will show a yellow icon and the tooltip will tell you why the bot has marked the serial as suspect. Other reasons why the bot may mark serials as suspect are for serial number formatting issues or serial number ranges that don't make any sense. We will see how this little beasty develops. The serial bot results are viewable on the serial number listing for each game.
There is a column the game serial number lists called 'history' that if present, will link to a page showing that the serial number has multiple submissions. This is useful if a game changes owners over time and another person registers the same game more recently. This little feature allows tracking of a games history over time if you are curious.
In the process of creating serial number masks, I have made a short summary page about some of the different formats that serial numbers exist amongst the various manufacturers over time. The Serial Number Format page has this text and is also given as a link on games that have a serial mask for them if you are attempting to submit a serial number for that game. The nice part about the mask is that on games that do have a serial mask format rule, I have added a small panel on the submission page that explains this and also gives examples of valid serials for that specific game to help make the submission process as clear as possible while still letting us have some integrity on the submissions.
I have started implementing serial number format masks which allows me to sort game serial numbers properly even if they have special characters in them for the most part. For now I have defined sort masks for all post 1984 Bally/WMS games that have a specific game prefix and optional I and X characters. I will be working on Earlier model Bally games with the 3-Letter prefix next.
Qwest had a fiber line cut today so the site was down for about 9 hours. Seems that the cut took out ISP's across all of northern Wyoming and several 911 services as well. Ironically, Im in southern Wyoming. :-)
You may now search for submitter names in order to see the details of submissions by a specific person. The search only looks at the person's name and does not return any email info.
I have started improving the result grids on other pages so you you can link to other data from page to page, for instance, in the statistics pages, the results how have hyperlinks to the various games, owners and serials that they contain. I will be working on improving this slowly over the next month as well.
The main interfaces of the IPSND are PocketPC and PDA friendly so if you have a cell phone with the ability to browse, don't forget you can submit serials while out in the field!! Give me feedback on any improvements that can be made when running a small screen if you want.
I have added a new optional field to the submission form that allows you to specify a Date of Manufacture which is a common item stamped on the front edge of many playfields during the 80's +. I have also added some more verbose explanations of the submision fields on the submission page using some nice little javascripts to give a tooltip effect.
I just finished a fairly large update to the site in that you may now search for serial numbers specifically. Since I wanted the ability to let people look for 'lost' parts from their games, it was important to have this functionality. That way, if you were missing the factory tagged driver board from your 1980 Williams Black Knight game, you could type in your serial, and see if someone has registered that 'spare' part in the database. If so, you have a way of possibly contacting the submitter and making a deal (I am going to add private submitter contacting in a few weeks). So, try it out and let me know if you find any bugs or issues. Have fun.
S
There was an issue that Russ Jensen found with the Database download function, basically, the database delivered did not have any EM games whatsoever due to the fact that they did not have an electronic MPU defined. I have fixed the flattened view of the database that is available through the downloads section so that all games are now included. Thanks Russ!
At the request of Peter Hall and for the purpose of completeness,
you may now submit serial numbers for game parts. It is common to have game PCB's
especially with valid serial number stickers on them, for this reason, the database
now allows multiple serial number registrations per game. This basically expands
the ability of the IPSND to track not only seperate head and cabinet game parts,
but also any other part. Maybe we will hear some success stories of people getting
back an original CPU board to match their cabinet serial number. Another side effect
of this is that since a single serial number can be in the database more than once,
it allows tracking of a specific game serial number over time... so you can see
that Joe Smith owned Jungle Lord 123456 on 1/1/2005 yet that Jane Doe owned that
same game as of 1/1/2006. Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens with
it.
There is a new section 'Downloads' that allows you to get a current copy of the IPSND database in a flattened format. Right now, I only support CSV downloads but it will be trivial to get the other two options (Native XLS and XML) working soon. This was actually a pretty cool exercise because the way the downloads work, the database is emailed to you in .zip format. So, I had to generate the datafile and then .zip it on the fly in memory. It was actually pretty easy in C#. Enjoy!!
I have completed a bulk upload form that allows uploading of multiple serial numbers per game now (up to 20 at a time). I will be working on another form soon that allows uploading of serial number data in a predetermined format so that if you already have serial numbers in electronic format, it should be quite easy to get them into the IPSND by putting them into a simple delimited format and then uploading the file.
I don't have the current list of games from IPDB yet. My list
is from about 3 years ago so I still have to synchronize with them to get
some of the more current games.
I have about 90% of the old Internet Pinball Project imported now. I will continue
to work on getting the rest imported.
If you have corrections, just send me an email for now and I will update the DB
directly.
The site was down last week because of a configuration error I had that I should
have known about but since I was in a
rush, missed it. All should be good now!
I think the site is mostly bug free for now. There isn't really much to cause bugs as the feature list is quite small. You can however add Serial Numbers to the database fairly easily and do a basic search for games by name. There are IPP serial numbers imported into the database for Level 7 games only right now. I received the complete IPP serial number list today from D.P. and will get the old serial numbers imported when I get back from Chicago next week. Thats all for now... if anyone has questions or comments you can email me at webmaster@ipsnd.net
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