Grabatron Enhancements

Howdy, folks and assorted woodland creatures. Lately we've been running very thin on new material to run on Friday and Saturday nights, due to things seriously backing up in the Grabatron from lack of participation. Since cappers have no way of knowing when our need for new material is urgent or what we need, I've decided to make a few new enhancements to this feature. In the Grabatron I've added a "Current schedule needs" section at the top of the page that automatically displays what we need (movies, shows, infomercials, etc.) and how badly we need it. If something's in red, it means we're either completely out or don't have enough to last beyond the current week. Messages in white are things we'll need within the next few weeks.


This doesn't mean we need you to send us grabs or seventeen cents a day, it just means somebody needs to pick grabs for things that are already in the Grabatron so that we can run them.

In addition, at the top of the gallery I've added a feature that displays a message if we're running really low on something, color-coded red or white based on urgency. You don't have to memorize any of this, the messages will make it pretty obvious what's going on.


What happens if we run out of something? When it comes time to make the schedule for an upcoming Friday or Saturday night, I either have to Grabatron things myself (which I've done a lot of the last few weeks) or cut the schedule short based on what's available, which I've also done recently for Friday nights. So it's really up to you guys, the more people help in the Grabatron, the better the schedule will be and more new stuff you all get to cap.

I'll do my best to keep the Grabatron stocked with what we're going to need in the future, and I've enhanced the code so that the site will only tell you it needs help if there's actually something in that category in the Grabatron to be picked.

I've also made a nice enhancement to the Grabatron feature itself. In the past, once you picked a grab, there was no way to change your mind. So if you messed up and picked the full allotment of grabs from the first half of the movie, too bad. Actually it was too bad for me since I was the one who had to fix it. Anyway, now when you click on "View Picks" at the top of the grab-picking screen to view all the grabs that have been picked so far, now you can click any grab on that page to move it back to the "unpicked" screen. Use common courtesy here, don't go removing other people's picks just to be a jerk. However, if you're finishing out the picks for a show or movie, and you can improve the set by swapping out a few grabs here or there, even if someone else picked them, I'm fine with that.

I've also added a new feature for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the number of grabs in the Grabatron sets. I generally find we get better end results if I pull a LOT of grabs (for example, I usually pull 5,000 for each movie), since many of the best grabs are fleeting moments that would be missed entirely if we pulled fewer. But I realize this is a lot of grabs to scroll through, and depending on your browser or internet connection, you might even have trouble loading that many images. So I've added two new ways to load fewer grabs if you prefer. One is to right-click the screengrab on the main Grabatron page and choose "View Fewer Grabs." This will load the grab-picking screen with every third grab displayed:


I've also added a link at the top of the grab-picking screen where you can toggle between viewing all the grabs, or only viewing every third grab:



That option makes for a more manageable screen to scroll through. Hopefully that's useful for someone somewhere.

Thanks for your help everyone!

-Jazz