View FAQ
What’s this 400 error, exceeded request limit?
You’re getting something like this?
ERROR: 400 error - Exceeded request limit. Response from Twitter:
{"error":"Rate limit exceeded. Clients may not make more than 70
requests per hour.","request":"\/statuses\/user_timeline.json?
_=1200445136765"}
Twitter accounts can send no more than 70 requests to the Twitter API per hour — yes, that’s per account. If you’re seeing this error, that’s what happened. There are a number of possible reasons:
You are running multiple Twitter clients. Are you testing another Twitter client? Using a web service that requires you to log-in to Twitter? It might cause you to exceed the limit without meaning to. (This doesn’t happen with the Twitter website, which bypasses the API entirely)
You really have exceeded the limit. Try raising the Refresh Interval in Preferences. The default is 3 minutes and it’s right up to the edge: 60/3 = 20 refreshes, and you have 3 requests per refresh on the main timeline, which gives you 60 requests per hour. Try making it 5 minutes instead.
Twitter is borked. We’ve seen some behaviors where users get 400 errors right after starting Spaz, or hours after a rate limit block should have expired, and other developers report the same thing. You should contact Twitter support if you are certain it’s not one of the above issues.
One suggestion that has worked for many people is to change your password. This will keep any apps you’ve forgotten about from making API calls, and sometimes seems to have “unstuck” users whose blocks weren’t going away. If you change your password and the problem persists for more than a couple hours, contact Twitter support!
I’m running Vista, and Spaz opens links in IE even though I chose another browser (like Firefox) as my default. How do I fix this?
This is actually a bug in AIR, and Adobe shares a method for solving this in their release notes for AIR 1.0:
To workaround this problem, go to Start > Default Programs > Set Program Access and Computer Defaults, expand Custom, select the radio button next to the application you want to set as the system-wide default browser (for example, Mozilla Firefox) and apply the setting.
Why doesn’t Spaz save my username and password under the AIR Linux alpha?
The AIR Linux alpha does not support the EncryptedLocalStore part of the AIR API, which is what Spaz uses to store your credentials securely. This is a known issue noted by Adobe in their release notes, and will surely be fixed in a future AIR update.
Spaz doesn’t do what I want!
File a new feature request on the Google Code project site for Spaz: http://code.google.com/p/spaz/issues/list. Or, download the source and contribute a patch!
I found a bug! Should I let you know?
Yep, file an issue on the Google Code project site for Spaz: http://code.google.com/p/spaz/issues/list
If you reeealy wants to help, turn on debug mode (located in Preferences, the last tab on the right) and restart. From then on, your Documents/My Documents directory should keep a running log of the mysterious goings-on that go on within Spaz. It’s called spaz-debug.log. If Spaz misbehaves, sending a copy of this arcane file when logging a bug in Google Code should be perty useful to the team.
Oh, and thanks.
Where can I get help with Spaz?
Check the Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/spaz-users. Here, you’ll find other Spaz users, discussions on feature suggestions and helpful hints on problem resolution.
Can I change how Spaz looks?
Sure! If you’re a dab hand at CSS — or even just fairly OK — you can make new Spaz themes. See this theme creation primer.
Can I change the sounds Spaz uses?
Not right now. If you do, you’ll likely experience problems with Spaz startup. For example on Windows, Spaz starts but doesn’t initialise the window. It seems to be an AIR thing; somehow it checks the contents of files it already knows about, like the sounds. A way around this is in the works — or so says @kibitzer.
What’s with the app’s name? It’s really offensive!!
Sorry! I’m aware of the association it has in the UK, but certainly did not have it in mind when I named the app. I might feel differently if it was a commercial application, but changing the name isn’t something I’m interested in doing.
I might consider putting in a pref to disable reporting of the app to Twitter, though, if users were interested in that. You can also download and modify the source code as you wish http://code.google.com/p/spaz.
Spaz sometimes screams at me! What’s that about?
If you send a tweet of exactly 140 characters, Twitter makes a certain sound. The equivalent in Spaz is the “Wilhelm!” noise — the scream. If you don’t like it you should be able to just swap in a new mp3 called “wilhelm.mp3” — but it seems AIR doesn’t let you. And down the road, it’ll be easier to swap in new sounds.
I thought Spaz supported multiple Twitter accounts?
That was a feature of the old version written in REALbasic. It was a “fast user switching” feature that let you choose a user from a dropdown and quickly switch between them. It didn’t let you post once to multiple accounts, and it didn’t let you read messages received by multiple accounts in the same timeline.
It may come back in future versions of Spaz.
Do you let people beta test?
Test versions of Spaz are frequently announced on the spaz-users group. If you want to try out new versions, subscribe to that list.