Late this evening I looked into our logs a little bit. How in the heck could over 250 people be taking the Challenge at 4:14 AM!?
We have an email notification feature that notifies the administers (us) when a user submits an answer, and what their IP address is (no other identifying information).
So, I did a little more digging.
Come to find out, the Pi Day Challenge has spread across the World. Here’s some random selections! I am not making this up!
- Argentina
- Berlin
- Hawaii
- Sydney
- Turkey
- France
- San Sebastian, Spain
- Madrid, Spain
- Russian Federation
Thank You Pi Day Challengers from across the Globe!
If this keeps up, we’re going to kill the server again!
-Alex
Hello Pi Day Challenge Fans!
WOW! We’ve almost hit the 1,000 mark for Facebook users taking the 2010 Challenge.
If you have a moment, we would love a review. Tell us what you think! Simply go to http://www.facebook.com/pidaychallenge and click on “Reviews” at the top.
Happy Pi Day!
-Team Pi Day Challenge
We are happy to see that Google designed a beautiful Doodle for Pi Day!
We were on the first page this morning – before the server went down – hopefully we appear back on the first page sometime today!
“Scale later” … we couldn’t agree more
We could have wasted hours on end optimizing our site… but instead we focused on building better puzzles.
Scaling problems are good problems. Today we had a good problem. Luckily it all happened around lunchtime – so hopefully you all took a break and are refreshed and ready to continue the challenge!
At approximately 12:30 EST, we had over 1500 guests and 700 Facebook users taking the challenge. And then… it happened. We used up all of the memory on our server, and down we went.
Thanks to Slicehost… we were able to “resize” our server in under 2 hours. This may seem like a no-brainer feature… but it’s actually pretty genius. Slicehost has a web interface – you can click two buttons and resize your server instantaneously.
Slicehost also has killer support. You can tell that their team really cares and loves what they do. Thanks to Ben & Tim from Slicehost for chatting with me and giving me some ideas to optimize once we get back online!
Now – let’s see if 4GB can handle Pi Day 2010!
Hi All!
Wow! What a great response! So far there are about 400 people on Facebook who have started the Pi Day Challenge!
Two announcements:
- Hints
Hints are coming on Pi Day!
- Invite Friends
The invite friends feature was broken – it’s all set now. Please take a minute to invite some of your friends!’
Thanks!
We know that hundreds of teachers use the Pi Day Challenge as an extra credit assignment.
This year we created usernames via Facebook. We are seeing a great response – however, the drawback is the inability for teachers to check student progress.
Today, we are solving that problem. Starting tomorrow, you will be able to search for anyone who is taking the Pi Day Challenge – even if your network blocks access to Facebook. This means that you will be able to look up a student by their name and see their current level, Facebook picture, and name.
So – feel free to assign the Challenge as an extra credit assignment.
If you have any questions, let us know!
Challenge 2010 is on!
This year’s Pi Day Challenge has officially started!
This year, we’re using Facebook - make sure to invite your friends!
Good Luck!
We launched the first public Pi Day Challenge in 2009, and since then we have learned that many teachers are using it as a lesson plan, workshop, or extra credit assignment.
Our goal with the Pi Day Challenge is to engage students, and make mathematics and logic fun.
We would love to hear about your usage of the Pi Day Challenge – how do you use the Pi Day Challenge?
