Discussion: Happy Birthday, Attackpoint!

Sometime in the last few hours, the raw seniority score for Attackpoint User #1 clicked over to 20.0. In other words, it's been 20 years since ken brought the website to life. I think at the time it was running on a computer in his undergraduate student digs. BorisGr came on 48 days later, and by 25 days after that, the first ten users were on board (not including test accounts and whatnot). If I correctly remember a conversation that I had with Ken at some point, he wanted to make an orienteering website, and he had two criteria: it needed to consist of content provided by others, and it had to be cool. I think he succeeded in both regards. Thanks, Ken, for providing what is certainly my favorite social media platform, which is both a repository for my training information and a fine, focused communication medium.

(And in case anybody doesn't realize it, Attackpoint is about four years older than Facebook.)

I'm waiting for the 577 users ahead of me to close their accounts so I can claim top spot on the Seniority list.

Congratulations, Ken. It certainly is a fine orienteering social media site.

While I was an early AP adaptor (user # <50), I didn't join Facebook until 10 years later.

I remember an email from Kenny to me, I guess around this time of year in 2000. "Hey coach, I have this website up and I'm trying to get people to sign up, OK?"

Attackpoint has transformed my life.

Thank you Ken! I love attackpoint and so useful. Easily my most checked social media platform.

Thank you ken! From #69, and the first British user (maybe)

It is truly a wonderful site -- a gathering place for like-minded people, a place to get advice and sarcasm, and at least for me a repository of memories, a journal of sorts, that I've referred to repeatedly to document what happened when.
Thanks to Ken and his vision! -- #36

Twenty years, wow! Thanks Ken for your most excellent creation!

Thanks, and this was a good reminder for me to donate to AP. Looking back, many of my major life milestones have occured in the time I've been on AP. Here's to another 20years!!

Congratulations!
I’m relatively new to orienteering, via adventure racing, and wholeheartedly thank Ken and attack point. This forum have been invaluable. Its members/posters as well as its search feature and depository of orienteering information are critically important. Here’s to many more successful years.

A wonderful wonderful creation. And regarding tRicky waiting for the 577 ahead of him to disappear, I hope my AP log won't disappear just because I do. :-)

How many remember this early look?

Wonderful! I am addicted

Yup, I remember that look. Got here shortly after PG did. #67

Every other fringe sport has, at best, a FB group. We have our own *custom* platform. Clearly operating at another level.

Shall we take up a collection to get a native app built? Check out the “GCN” iOS app for what it could evolve into....

#14
While not as prolific as some at posting or remembering to update my log, I greatly appreciate the community and services here. Thanks, Ken!

Everybody: +1!

Congratulations, Ken and thank you *so* much for providing us with this gathering place and all the people who might never have become our friends if we hadn't met here. I've had a great time racing and travelling with Attackpointers I'd barely spent any time with in real life before. I love the conversations that ensue when I hear someone say, "Hi Bash!" - especially if I don't recognize them.

This is my journal - a repository of training information and the people, places, fun and memories that go along with training. I've learned so much here; there are a lot of smart, wonderful, funny, interesting, creative, kind people on AP. On that note, thanks to all of you in the Attackpoint community for making this such a great place to hang out.

#157 (latecomer!)

my discussion number is quite high so I'll add something here in hopes of lowering my overall ranking. #11 says thanks.

Marvelous site. Thanks. #29

Thank you, Ken! Very glad AP came along around the same timeframe that other discussion forum had to shut down.

Great idea to start this thread, JJ.

Thank you, Ken - I had no idea what I was getting into when I was ordered (yes, ordered) to establish an AP account. Turns out that was a pretty darned good order. Glad to be a small part of something awesome. #178

Thanks all, it continues to be a pleasure.

Twenty years, I wish I found it earlier!

I agree with igor. Very good.

I'm a late adopter (only in my 10th year) but it's a great tool. I also wish I'd started earlier. It's interesting how my training has gradually moved from running to cycling over those years as my body has aged. Thanks a lot Ken. I've finally got round to donating. Should have done that earlier also...

A great tool to find my O-maps (shelved chronologically) plus so many other great features. So good I’ve entered previous training back to 1998 and will hopefully find my 1997 training diary at some stage.

If it happened before 2000 then it doesn't exist.

#90. Many thanks, Ken!

If I were tRicky, I'd be concentrating on getting back my #1 status in Discussion.

#214 and have never been on that other social media site.

I've never been #1 in discussion so I can't get back there.

You're amazing, Ken! Thanks for creating this forum and these helpful tools. #944.

#18?!?

How did someone who is most-decidedly NOT an early adopter achieve that??

Thanks from Switzerland, #65 :-)

I followed this site for many years before I registered. :-(
According to my profile page that happened just 7.3 years ago.

Since finally, people with more than two digits to their uid are speaking up, I will too: 6.4 years ago, Attackpoint was the site that convinced me to take my training data online. Thanks, Ken!

pure dead brilliant

and what's more, it is a nice environment
Thanks Ken
and thanks everyone else

Thanks from us. AP has brought information, intelligence, humour, friendship, wisdom, stimulating discussion, a "diary" of sorts, a platform for whinging and an arena for praise. Could not have done better.
And for my AP friends - you know which descriptor is assigned to you. Yes you do!

13.3 years of addiction later and I still have no better way to waste time when I am supposed to be at work. Strava, shmarva.

I joined AttackPoint 18 years ago (#76) - just two weeks after my daughter (AdventureGirl! on AP - #173) had a life saving bone marrow transplant (with me as the perfect match donor). The orienteering community has always been one of general friendliness and support and AP allowed me to link to the orienteering inspiration, motivation and support through both the local and international communities at that difficult time. Thank you all.

I joined AP a few days after Sudden (#75) joined and we have been semi competitively trying to out-train each other these last 18 years. Hans is leading me by an average of 79.8 seconds/day but I'll try to claw that back in the next 18 years. ;-)

Thanks Ken.

How does a person find out what his # is?

Gord, your seniority score on your profile page has that info. You are user #141 and have been on attackpoint for 15.2 years.

It's a little more complicated than that. Gord is user_825. The number that most people have been quoting is where they are on the seniority list, which I think includes only active users, so that number could change (e.g. I know of at least one person who joined early, but has since died, and no longer appears on the seniority list). I'm #10 on the seniority list, but I'm user_22 (I think 2 through 11 were nonexistent people who Ken created test accounts for). It's also possible for accounts to be merged, and I think if you just stop using Attackpoint you'll fall off the seniority list even though your account still exists, and if you come back, you'll reappear.

If you click on your username, the profile page that it takes you to will have your user number in the URL bar.

To be fair, JJ, the number you are suggesting is almost certainly the database id number which will be incremental but can skip numbers for a variety of reasons including test accounts as you've suggested. While that number won't change it is not necessarily any more accurate a number than the seniority ranking.

Agreed.

Thanks Ken from South Africa

Thank you Kenny! It's amazing having an (almost) 20 year record of my life, through the lens of workouts and friendships. It's fun to look back and see the first time my husband's name made it into a training log entry, or my daughter's.

Kudos to Kenny for being so thoughtful in how it's the site is set up. I love that it's about visiting another's training log (marked with a star or a "c"), rather than their updates pushed in front of me. And, that my training log feels like "my place" where my friends are welcome to visit and comment :).

I am quite sure that this site has helped me to maintain valued friendships, that I might have lost when I stopped orienteering regularly (and, in turn, has meant that I've continued to orienteer on occasions when I otherwise might not have).

Thank you!!! Here's to 20 more!

ps - thank you to everyone who contributes so that Kenny can cover the expenses of keeping a site like this up and running! It's really nice to have one place on the internet where the goal isn't "growth" and attention-grabbing ads.

I did not know Ken was from South Africa. Thanks anyway

yurets, I think you'll find it was the country thanking him. Perhaps Ken will be awarded the Presidential Sports Award for services to sport in SA.

tRicky, it could very well happen...I am aware an American once became the Justice Minister in [edited] South Africa .

SA - you mean South Australia? :) Thanks Ken, from (the other) SA!

GRATTIS!

Thank you from New Zealand too! (#532 or #4088 depending on how we're counting this)

Ken, when you kicked this off did you dream of the international reach it would have?

Happy Birthday, AP!

Just a shout out that getting AP premium with a donation is a great way to show appreciation to Kenny. I have found the premium benefits invaluable over the years.

Thank you, Ken! Keep the great work.
I find Attackpoint to be a good motivational tool for training, and best training log ever for me.

What every thoughtful contributor above has said. There is the (1) long-standing, time-honored home page layout; (2) the AP format “metrics”, beginning with “Total”, “Ranking” “Discussion” etc, That these chosen eight metrics, weighed as rank, value, score with bar graph, have passed the test of time (twenty changing tech years) is indeed impressive.

I wonder when Ken was creating all the AP formulae, was he trying these ideas with peers, whenever they might have been - at MIT 20 years ago? Maybe he ran ideas by Ken Sr.? Or of his own choosing. They’ve lasted admirably.

Also, for me, the choice of white and orange print on black background is much more engrossing than black print on white background.

Thank you Ken! I started on here almost exactly 5 years after its debut. About half that time was spent ignorant of orienteering, and the other half learning orienteering but ignorant of Attackpoint. I really enjoy taking the occasional stroll down memory lane by setting the URL to show me a past day, week or month! I've logged training, or at least notes almost every day over that period as the kids have gone from 3-14 years old to 18-29 years old, so there's a lot of interesting (to me) stuff.

And of course I have learned so much about orienteering training, strategy, and skills from all of the contributors!

You seem to think one single person called Ken has developed all of this. I find it difficult believe, see, a father with a busy job having free time and skills to do all this? How plausible that is really? I have for long suspected there is actually two developers behind this, both are mentioned in this thread. There is Ken, of course, but also Kenny. Ken is the person you see in O result lists, but you don't see Kenny there, he does not compete. Many of you have met Ken - even I have - but has anyone ever met Kenny? This "Kenny" is actually a javascript based artificial lifeform. While we lurk here (some seem to do it 24/7) we provide through our browsers computer recourses to this artificial entity. It slowly learned to use them and while our computers kept getting more capable and there was more and more lurkers it finally became self-aware (around 2008 I guess), it began to use name Kenny and started to develop this site further. You may have noticed when there is issues Kenny seem to magically fix them within minutes. That can be explained only by Kenny being an AI, always aware, never sleeping.

Anyway, thank you (both?), you do pretty remarkable job here!

+1 everybody, and LOL Jagge. Ken/Kenny is/are amazing. ...Steve (seniority 20, user_42)

On Ken/Kenny:

The weird sense of duty he has can border on the sociopathic, but it's nice to know that he stands between the forces of darkness and your GPS tracks.

You guys do know that there is an official yearly "Sysadmin Appreciation Day", right?

We all knowm self-aware AI's always tend to try to become better and better and then conquer the world, right? Now look what happenend with AP. Kenny is much smarter than skynet - he did it just like that and no-one even noticed him.

You were talking about self-aware AIs, Jarkko?

Thanks for keeping this project going, Ken. It's amazing to think about how much good this website has done in the overall balance of things.

Best training web site!!!

❤️

Awesome!