Hehe, ye, I read “Chris leaving Sun” and I was in a hurry (and shell-shocked :)) that I didn’t realize it was “the other Chris at sun” 
“At the moment” something happening? Got NDAs for JGO even?
Great that JGO still has a very dedicated person behind it!
Thanks to everyone here at JGO as well. This site has been part of my life for almost a decade and I think that we have built a great core community here and an increasingly valuable resource for all to use. This also explains why it takes some time to get changes implemented
Again, thanks to all for your continued support. I appreciate it more than you know.
Cheers!
what I thought, but riven said no…
ChrisM: nice claim to fame :-*
offtopic…
Actually, the fading nickname in the avatar is much better, but I put it in the sig because hardly anybody saw it.
Perhaps it attempts to track differences in the JGO database and sees who made a post at what time, or sommat.
People just assume that I have access to stuff! I wish! Cookies, the database… that would mean either the browser is flawed, or the server. It’s not like that at all. Just use your imagination, and you can do the same. If we’d all get together and believe in eachother, then we … ah! enough crap 
I’d just use the IP address of the request and match it up with the logged IPs of recent posts…
Cas
You don’t need access to the database, the referrer url, request IP and request time should be enough I think. That way it wouldn’t need special mod powers (like viewing IPs).
When I first saw it, I tried it with a different browser that I’d never logged onto JGO with, saw that it had the same result, so assumed it was probably IP based. I also did a wget from a shared bluehost box, and got something back that didn’t seem to be a valid image; I guess the script gives up when it sees an IP it doesn’t recognise.
Also, I do remember noticing the fading avatar one, too… just didn’t think about it that much for some reason. When I saw the other one, I felt like confirming that I wasn’t having an acid flashback…
Ah what a loss, Chris Campbell was half the brains behind java2d. At least we’ve still got Dmitri T (please don’t leave!). Chris and Ken Russell added much more than what they were paid for sure, what a pity that Sun has lost them.
Thanks Chris Melissinos for making JGO a huge success. I never knew that the maintenance was such a one-man-band, thanks for keeping it going. Here I am on holiday about to meet people through this forum, that’s pretty cool 8)
By the way, we could all use the gaming sub-forum on the Sun forums (http://forums.sun.com/forum.jspa?forumID=406), but people don’t. Is it because it’s swarming with n00bs who spoil the forum content with their obvious questions? Or does it just look too bad to use? I was stuffing around on those forums for about 2yrs before I found this place. JGO’s topics don’t turn up on google for some reason.
@Offtopic
Are you a fan of the show, or was it just appropriate?
I can identify you without you posting, ever.
I’m a casual fan The “Computer says No” scenes are hilarious.
I was a regular participant in the JDCF for about 5 years but eventually got fed up with the mismanagement. I have now lost my account anyway, apparently because one of the several million (at least) people with the same name as me was added to one of the US terrorist watch lists. If you think Sun doesn’t care about the client, you should see how little they care about people who do their tech support for free.
Doh!
Cas
hmm never knew you could do that…
but what if more than one person is viewing the thing iwth you… wouldnt it then show both names :P. or am I missing something here.
[quote]but what if more than one person is viewing the thing iwth you… wouldnt it then show both names . or am I missing something here.
[/quote]
Already been explained before…
http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php/topic,21630.msg178166.html#msg178166
ho I can see it, very nice Riven
All I can say is that I didn’t even know about that page…
Ok, I made some silly testings. JGO links give a referer header and thats about all another site see from “us”. See below how referer might look. But I think does not give any meaninful data about the active user.
http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php/topic,8664.msg75099.html
So I went to a main page and there it is, look at the end of page it has a Users Online sorted by an activity timestamp section. That’s where Riven’s avatar steals a name. Maybe avatar generator then remembers who is who by an IP address knowing to return a same generated gif. I did not see cookies travelling to Riven’s avatar site to identify my avatar session.
edit:
This link lists an activity by names and topic, combine that to a referer header and accuracy is good.
http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php?action=who