Brown's Site down.. Server instructions?

[braingineer]

Hello! I noticed this is dependent on the blocks.cs.brown.edu server, which is currently not operating.

I am going to poke around the code to get it running, but I was wondering if I could get your guidance on the easiest and fastest way to locally host the node server so that I can get it running. And if you could bake that into the readme, that's be awesome. I'd love to see this project become stand-alone and keep Terry's program alive forever.

Thanks!

[braingineer]

Upon poking, I see there is extensive documentation in queue-server.js.

Thanks for answering my request before I asked it!

[tsgouros]

Thanks, I would love to see it replicated somewhere and become stand-alone. I hadn't realized the blocks server was down, but it was a special construct, and it's not clear that there is funding for it (or me) to continue to work on this around here, and that's probably why the server disappeared. But I'd be happy to participate in a group to keep it going.

I'll check in and see why the server was taken down. Let me know if you get it going somewhere else. And I would love to have feedback about documentation holes, and be equally happy to fix them.

Thanks,

-Tom

On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 1:49 AM, Brian McMahan [email protected] wrote:

Upon poking, I see there is extensive documentation in queue-server.js.

Thanks for answering my request before I asked it!

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tsgouros/www-shrdlu/issues/2#issuecomment-87947558.

[tsgouros]

block.cs.brown.edu is running again. It got powered down, and the startup thing didn't work right.

-Tom

On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 8:43 AM, Tom Sgouros [email protected] wrote:

Thanks, I would love to see it replicated somewhere and become stand-alone. I hadn't realized the blocks server was down, but it was a special construct, and it's not clear that there is funding for it (or me) to continue to work on this around here, and that's probably why the server disappeared. But I'd be happy to participate in a group to keep it going.

I'll check in and see why the server was taken down. Let me know if you get it going somewhere else. And I would love to have feedback about documentation holes, and be equally happy to fix them.

Thanks,

-Tom

On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 1:49 AM, Brian McMahan [email protected] wrote:

Upon poking, I see there is extensive documentation in queue-server.js.

Thanks for answering my request before I asked it!

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tsgouros/www-shrdlu/issues/2#issuecomment-87947558.

[braingineer]

Awesome @ block.cs.brown being back up! I was hoping to demo this in a class tomorrow.

Concerning keeping it alive, I think it'd be really cool to package this up as a Docker (super lightweight virtual machine) image. That way, you can spin up the instance without any knowledge of nodejs, etc and host it on a website (digitial ocean is the host I'm thinking of that means this a breeze). You also wouldn't need a load balancer, I think. There's a nice discussion here.

I'm a bit swamped with stuff right now but I'd love to help do that in the nearish future.

[tsgouros]

Hi Brian:

Docker sounds like a cool thing, but I'm working on the theory that the way to maintain something for a long time is to rely on the least common denominator technology. I think part of the reason this code was orphaned in the first place, and then again after 1998 is that they relied on technology that didn't last. It was MacLisp and ITS the first time, and Java graphics the second time. I'm relying on Javascript and node.js, which are no doubt just as evanescent in some ways, but they have a huge installed base out there. If I had the time to port this to CMU Lisp, I would do so, for the same reason.

Anyway, I welcome people who want to contribute in some way, if only by sending me critiques of what I've done, so bring it on. Also, out of curiosity, how did you run across this?

Thanks,

-Tom

On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 11:11 AM, Brian McMahan [email protected] wrote:

Awesome @ block.cs.brown being back up! I was hoping to demo this in a class tomorrow.

Concerning keeping it alive, I think it'd be really cool to package this up as a Docker (super lightweight virtual machine) https://www.docker.com/whatisdocker/ image. That way, you can spin up the instance without any knowledge of nodejs, etc and host it on a website (digitial ocean is the host I'm thinking of that means this a breeze). You also wouldn't need a load balancer, I think. There's a nice discussion here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24928772/docker-how-to-dockerize-and-deploy-multiple-instances-of-a-lamp-application.

I'm a bit swamped with stuff right now but I'd love to help do that in the nearish future.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tsgouros/www-shrdlu/issues/2#issuecomment-88126926.

[braingineer]

Hi Tom,

That makes total sense! Though, I have some faith in Docker, only because it has modularized and centralized such an integral process in the web-development community (especially those in the JS community =P).

Well, I am giving a guest lecture for my adviser's NLP course tomorrow and I'm covering grounded semantics (my dissertation topic). I wanted to start with a SHRDLU demonstration, and being that I stalk github, found your implementation. (basically: "shrdlu" site:github.com).

Best, Brian

[tsgouros]

Added some documentation to queue-server about configuring apache and startup, in case you want to create your own server install.

On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 3:23 PM, Brian McMahan [email protected] wrote:

Hi Tom,

That makes total sense! Though, I have some faith in Docker, only because it has modularized and centralized such an integral process in the web-development community (especially those in the JS community =P).

Well, I am giving a guest lecture for my adviser's NLP course tomorrow and I'm covering grounded semantics (my dissertation topic). I wanted to start with a SHRDLU demonstration, and being that I stalk github, found your implementation. (basically: "shrdlu" site:github.com).

Best, Brian

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/tsgouros/www-shrdlu/issues/2#issuecomment-88217581.