Vaati wrote:One question: If you get the parcel, and you actually win the contents, if it goes past it's "automatically passed" expiration date, what happens? Does it get passed, awarding the next person the contents until they are claimed?
Yes it goes live every Monday for a chance to be won. Rules in first post of this thread.
If you miss it when you are passed it, then after a certain time it will automatically be passed to someone else who is active and logged in. The automated passes by the bot do not count towards pass count - so if it was a winning parcel when you go it, it will still be a winning parcel when the bot sends it to a random person.
Hope that helps!
Yes the two weeks prior to this week Monday madness did not run as I was on annual leave! Apologies for that, but things should be back running smoothly now :-)
I'm still kind of confused on how this parcel thing works...
1. what is n equal to in "2^n"?
2. What happens to the Monday madness parcel when it becomes Tuesday? Does it vanish?
Sorry for all the questions, but (since I'm really hesitant about forking over $100+ for a board that I don't know very much about) I am fairly interested in this. :)
Each time the parcel is passed from one user to another it counts as a pass.
You can win the contents of the parcel every 2^n passes (eg powers of 2).
So say the parcel is on pass 15, the next person it is passed to will be a winner ie the 16th pass. At this point the receiver has a chance to claim the prize inside and then send it on. If it is not claimed it is automatically passed to someone at random who is active and signed in - so by being signed in you have a higher chance of being passed the parcel. Automated passes do not count towards the pass count so once it becomes a winning parcel it is passed around until someone claims the prize. Once the prize is claimed, a new prize goes in the parcel and the passing continues. Using the example above the next winning pass will be at 32. Etc. At which point something new will again be put in the parcel.
Clearly it gets harder to win the longer a given parcel has been in circulation, but this is also usually reflected by the prize put in the parcel if it has been in circulation a while.
So the above is how the XCore parcel works.
We also have the Monday madness parcel - which is works in the same way but only appears on Mondays - so passing and winning can only take place then. Thus you have 2 chances if of being passed the parcel if you are online on Mondays currently!
We also chuck in a few special parcels that have limited life time etc to ensure not all parcels become large powers of 2 - otherwise it would get boring and a prize would be won once a year - but you have to be on the look out for these as they will come and go. I will usually post a twitter announcement if I am feeling generous and this usually results in a passing frenzy! You may also want to check out our IRC channel as a lot of discussion goes on there when things like this happen.
Finally we have 3rd party sponsored parcels - like the recent one by Saleae who gave away one of their amazing logic analysers. These are typically not "ongoing" and have a fixed number of prizes in them and thus the first power of 2 you can win on initially may be higher to start - chosen by the company who is sponsoring it eg 128.
So, the faster people pass the parcel, the faster prizes will be won.
On the note of winning kits, there are also a few other ways like reaching 512 activity points (check your user profile to see how many you have) and then post in the thread on the forum when you reach this. The first 25 people who reach 512 activity points also win a kit, so you can win just for being a good honest user of the site by learning about XMOS, helping others out, starting interesting groups/discussions etc (we check for spammy posts/content upon a claim of reaching 512 points so just be genuine and it will be rewarded!).
Hope that helps!
Jason
UPDATE: I forgot to say, you only know if you have the parcel currently when you are signed in and visiting a page that is not on the forum/wiki. Eg anywhere on the Home page, projects, groups, user profiles pages. I plan to extend this to work on forum/wiki later but this is a work in progress.
I just got the saleae logic analyzer in the mail. It did take a while but they ware so nice to even hand out a 100 buck sparkfun coupon to make the wait worth while.
The analyzer is sweet, pretty cool to be able to record many minutes of high activity at the max sample rate.
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I haven't seen the monday madness parcel lately... Is it because people are winning it before I log on and see it, or was it even in existence last monday and today?
No, it is my fault as I was away yesterday (went to the FOSDEM conference over the weekend). I really need to automate it, but have not had a spare moment to do so just yet. It is on my to-do list though.
Vaati wrote:I haven't seen the monday madness parcel lately... Is it because people are winning it before I log on and see it, or was it even in existence last monday and today?
Idem for today ... seems the MONDAY parcel has not been setup !
As for the normal parcel, I think that it takes too much time to change hands because most of the time, users are not online and thus it takes 24 hours to change hands. I think that a nice thing would be to not let users pass the parcel to someone unless he is online! This will let the parcel travel more quickly! if it's too quick, maybe we could add the constraint of not being able to receive the parcel (even if we are online) more than 2 or 3 times per day! This will be the only occasion for the parcel to take 24h to change hands.
