tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10089955807303387282011-04-21T11:34:57.949-07:00This blog was created to record our journey for Rankk.org.Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.comBlogger161100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008995580730338728.post-9399826631050803812009-03-01T07:51:00.000-08:002009-03-02T00:22:53.320-08:00

What has a garden got to do with a challenge site? A lot, haha.I have had that title in mind for quite a while, but hadn't got the inspiration to write anything. I suppose I caught the bug from Kender, who found inspiration to make a Javascript challenge for Rankk.So what about the garden? Ah, certainly not because Rankk looks *beautiful*, though I think it does look quite attractive with the

Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008995580730338728.post-65262941425140839352008-09-06T21:31:00.000-07:002008-09-27T07:34:11.701-07:00

Rankk is approaching two years. With nearly 250 challenges, it's - I venture to say - one of the bigger challenge sites out there. In fact, Rankk has consistently received a high ranking at Wechall, a global challenger tracking site.Not all the challenges were coded by us. About one fifths of that number were ideas or whole challenges contributed by our members.Great thanks to them!The next

Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008995580730338728.post-26743796983872625952008-07-16T07:50:00.000-07:002008-07-16T09:06:12.594-07:00

Two noteworthy episodes happened in the early part of July.horst35 overtook quangntenemy to take the top spot. I had thought that was near impossible, but horst35 had done it, albeit briefly. quangntenemy reclaimed the title a couple of days later. And peace ensues :DThe other was a little hiccup in the short existence of Rankk. The server went down due to a faulty harddisk. It has occasionally

Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008995580730338728.post-91909578200191751022008-06-02T17:14:00.000-07:002008-06-03T00:19:37.121-07:00

First of all, many thanks to Caesum for taking time to do the interview.Caesum is a familiar figure in the challenge community. When players like him appear on a challenge site, people sit up and take notice.And you inevitably get some reactions. One member theorized that he is not solving the Geb challenge because he and I have a pact not to be #1 on each other's site.I also noted this on IRC

Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008995580730338728.post-15980546890271273892008-05-27T23:12:00.000-07:002008-09-07T04:55:40.135-07:00

Recently, the subject of "profitability" came up over a chat betweenmithmith and me. mithmith thought that Rankk was profitable to the tune of USD 100 Adsense revenue per month and therefore quite "rewarding".Wow, if only that were true!First, let me stress that the idea of "making money" wasn't our motivation for Rankk right from the start. We were looking for a bit of fun, excitement and

Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008995580730338728.post-9696955825499323002008-05-09T20:19:00.000-07:002008-05-10T07:24:37.414-07:00

Recently, ozehka asked about what we plan to do so that Rankk will not "explode" because of too many challenges.The timing of the question could not have been more apt, because I have been thinking about that too.First of all, we need to answer the questions whether we plan to keep on adding new challenges and whether there's a maximum number we're targetting at.I haven't discussed these with Bio

Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008995580730338728.post-18542773044957931532008-04-04T21:39:00.000-07:002008-06-23T08:31:10.686-07:00

In the last couple of weeks, we busied ourselves with small improvements here and there. In the early stages, the more urgent task was to create new challenges. But after we crossed the 150 level, the pace of adding new challenges slowed somewhat, not because we grew tired of adding new ones, but because good ideas were drying up. Consequently, we have had more time to focus on Rankk's other

Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008995580730338728.post-40939397140785616112008-02-28T01:22:00.000-08:002008-02-29T18:27:05.968-08:00

Yay! Rankk made it to a PageRank of 4 :)It's definitely a pat on the back for us, in addition to the increasing membership and the kind donations we've received.In case you're wondering what this PR thing is, it's Google’s system for ranking web pages. A page with a higher PR is deemed more important and is more likely to be listed in Google's search results above a page with a lower PR.The PR

Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008995580730338728.post-45454923812861313702008-02-18T06:32:00.000-08:002008-02-24T19:41:29.094-08:00

I should have written this at the start of the new year, but I was bitten by a rare procrastination bug that was hard to fix :PFortunately, the Rat came and ate the bug alive. And so here I am, with a renewed motivation and energy to write about what we wish for in 2008:An average of 5 new members per day. Currently, the average is about 2 per day based on a total of 1035 members and a span of

Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008995580730338728.post-11586818714101891372007-12-15T19:03:00.000-08:002008-03-03T04:55:24.573-08:00

My last entry was October 2, slightly over two months back. Not too bad by my own standard :)In between, we published three interviews by our members. I'm happy we did that, because not only are the interviews an excellent way of introducing some of our best members, they are also permanent records of the members and Rankk's journey. Five or 10 years down the road, I imagine it would be quite

Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008995580730338728.post-25331375763387955852007-11-04T05:06:00.000-08:002007-11-05T07:54:34.526-08:00

This is the final instalment of Rankk's interviews for 2007.We thank Sapr0, who's rankked #2 at the point of writing, for taking part in this interview.Sapr0 shared his thoughts and views freely. He even let on a little about what his girlfriend thinks about his online life.Read on...You've been playing this sort of games for quite a while...tell us about your experience.Well I started with some

Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008995580730338728.post-51503702093640957142007-10-28T08:55:00.000-07:002008-06-02T17:53:16.531-07:00

Thanks to valsa who kindly consented to this interview despite his busy schedule in real life.valsa made the first Geb on 27 Aug 2007. The challenge was uploaded on 13 June 2007.It went through some changes to fine-tune Part 1, and was reloaded on 26 June 2007. Taking that as the starting point, it was cracked some two months later.If you are curious about the first Geb, so am I. So let's hear it

Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008995580730338728.post-32730467661953441552007-10-22T07:45:00.000-07:002007-10-23T10:17:04.932-07:00

First of all, we would like to thank quangntenemy for taking the time to participate in this interview.If you're a Rankk member, quangntenemy needs no introduction. He's the top rankked member, with 153 challenges solved at the time of this interview. Not only has he contributed challenges, he has also been helping with providing feedback and fixing bugs.Speaking for myself, I'm always curious

Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008995580730338728.post-45727749701695720062007-10-02T18:25:00.000-07:002007-10-22T09:03:29.747-07:00

Cyberarmy's Zebulun (www.cyberarmy.com) must have been the mother of all challenge sites. It was started around the year 2000 by Overlord (a.k.a pengo) and had a following of 50000 members. It enjoyed such a phenomenal success that it even got into the news CyberArmy declares war.But partly as a result of its huge success, it was beset with "troubles" leading to its subsequent demise. The site

Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008995580730338728.post-67332577166765810022007-09-09T07:04:00.000-07:002007-09-10T07:27:37.762-07:00

At the point of writing, Rankk's membership just hit 700! When this blog was created, I remember we had about 40 challenges. That number has nearly trebled to 118, with two challenges created by our members, valsa and quangntenemy.During the last six months, several transitional changes were made. At first, you were able to progress one challenge at a time in a strictly linear fashion i.e.

Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1008995580730338728.post-31627849946032677742007-03-06T04:36:00.000-08:002007-03-06T04:37:55.626-08:00

Rankk is about solving challenges, discovering and learning new knowledge. It's a journey, a sacred, personal experience. The site is a reincarnation of The Pyramid, an earlier attempt at assembling a set of challenges for those who enjoy solving problems. The challenges are based on topics ranging from Mathematics to Logic to Puzzle to Programming to Cryptography to Internet Security. They are

Sphinxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16390982813068612092noreply@blogger.com2