| Subcribe via RSS

Search Google’s Index from 2001

October 9th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Linkification, WWW

In honor of their 10th birthday, Google has added an archive of their index from 2001. You can check it out here.

Try searching for Windows Vista. I also noticed in 2001, this existed (look at the first result). And I thought my name was original.

Rescue Files from Dead Macs

September 26th, 2008 | 3 Comments | Posted in Articles, Computers

Last month, my 3 year old Mac finally kicked the bucket. The Starting Mac OS X screen would appear and the progress bar would reach the end, but the computer would not go any further. 2 months before I had first become aware of the hard drive problem, and backed up all the important stuff onto CD-RWs, but of course after it died I thought of some more stuff I needed. So here’s a quick way of getting your files off.

Stuff You Need:

  • Another computer (PC or Mac)
  • A network that both computers can be connected to

Now, let’s get started!

  1. First, make sure the computer is connected to your network.
  2. Start it up, while holding Cmd+S.
  3. You should reach a command line. Type the following (it will start an SSH server, which we will use to retrieve the files).
    /usr/sbin/sshd
  4. One more step to get it ready: The computer is not fully started up yet, so the ethernet interface is not yet available (if you type ifconfig, the only interface listed is loopback). Type
    sh /etc/rc
  5. It will now proceed with the startup process. Once you get an error line (mine was some disk read errors followed by “coreservicesd crashed”), you can now try to retrieve your files.
  6. The SFTP  (SSH FTP) program used in this tutorial is FileZilla, although any such program will work. Download and launch it.
  7. Choose Site Manager from the File menu.
  8. Click New Site.
  9. Settings:

    Host: your Mac’s IP address (check your router manual, for a Linksys router it is 192.168.1.1xx)

    Server type: SFTP

    Logon type: Normal

    User: your username

    Password: your password

  10. Click Connect.
  11. If all goes well, you can now access your files as on an FTP server.

Hope this helps!

Tags:

Bypass Annoying Forum Post Viewing Restrictions (”Limited Guest Viewing” vBulletin Plugin)

September 21st, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Uncategorized

Sometimes you may get a message like this while browsing a forum.

Hey there!

It appears that you’ve exceeded the maximum number of posts you can view, but wait, there’s a simple solution. To unlock the forum and continue viewing messages, all you need to do is sign up for a free account. The entire process takes just a few minutes so create your account now and view as many threads as you like!

Already a member? Login at the top of this page to stop seeing this message.

If you’re not likely to post, there’s no reason to register. There’s no reason either for forum admins to force members to register that aren’t going to post, so I don’t know why any sensible admin would do this (or anyone would make an extension to do this!). The solution is quite simple. All you have to do is block cookies from the site. In Firefox, go to Tools>Options>Privacy>Cookies>Exceptions, type in the domain name, and click Block. That’s it! If you have already exceeded the limit, delete your cookies from the domain. Enjoy restriction-free browing! Make sure you unblock the domain if you ever want to register.

Tags: , , ,

I’m Worth $5,161.10

September 19th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Linkification, Site News, WWW

I googled my own site and this showed up. Not very accurate, because they say I get 10 times as many page views per day as I actually do, and I don’t even have any ands to make revenue on ($7.07 per day… I wish, but all the ad providers require you to be 18, which I’m not). Wikipedia is said to make $412,503 per day on ads, but they don’t have any ads, and are nonprofit. As I said this site does not provide very accurate results, but it might be worth checking out if you’re in need of an ego-booster.

Update: I clicked the “update the results” button on the site and it increased to $7,095. 0_0

Why I’m Not Buying Spore…

September 16th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Computers, Rants

I first read about Spore in 2006. 2 years later, the game finally comes out. I go to Amazon to check the reviews on the day it comes out, planning to go to walmart and buy it that afternoon.

Here is a quote from the reviews page.

See those older 5-star reviews from 2006 (two years before the game was released)? Well, they had a reason to be excited. Spore was supposed to be a revolutionary experience, combining multiple genres while concentrating on evolution and genetics.

Fast forward two years and here we have the finished product, ready to be installed on our hard drives.

First of all, the game incorporates a draconian DRM system that requires you to activate over the internet, and limits you to a grand total of 3 activations. If you reach that limit, then you’ll have to call EA in order to add one extra activation. That’s not as simple as it sounds, since when you reach that point EA will assume that you, the paying customer, are a filthy pirating thief. You will need to provide proof of purchase, reasons why the limit was reached, etc, etc (it has all happened before with another recent EA product, Mass Effect). EA, of course, is not obligated to grant you that extra activation or even provide that service. In a couple of years they might very well even shut down the general activation servers, because “it’s not financially feasible” to keep them running. What you will be left with is a nice, colorful $50 coaster. And you will be required to pay for another copy/license if you want to continue playing.

This basically means that you are actually RENTING the game, instead of owning it. The game WILL stop to function in the future. That’s inevitable, because even if EA keeps the activation servers going, there IS going to be a time when EA will simply cease to exist because of financial issues or federal laws (like most businesses eventually do).

Second, the game was dumbed down to oblivion. Evolution doesn’t even matter anymore. For example, you can add as many legs to a creature as you want, but the multi-legged creature won’t be any faster than a single-legged one with higher leg stats. This gameplay element makes “creating” your creatures entirely pointless (cosmetic only, because everything is based on stats), and brings you about the same amount of excitement as dressing up a plastic doll.

There are many more reviews in that style. Out of 2,413 reviews, 2,163 give the game 1 star, making the average 1.5 stars. I used to think that having to have the CD in the drive was bad (and I tricked most games that did that by making a disk image). This is much worse. I don’t want to pay $50 for a game that will stop working and make me whine on the phone after 3 upgrades to my computer (I plan on upgrading this one a lot) or when EA goes out of business and pulls the plug on the activation servers. Also, the internet at my house is unreliable, and when the internet is out I either work on programming or play games (don’t play games anymore, new PC is Windows, old was Mac, old games don’t work anymore) so I wouldn’t want it to require an internet connection every time I run it. I’m also not waiting to pay for expansion packs containing features that should have been there in the first place.

The DRM has also completely failed, the game was being pirated 5 days before its release. It is also quickly becoming the most pirated game of all time–gamers would rather get the illegal version than pay for a rental.

Sorry Maxis, but EA ruined your game.

Tags:

Geeky License Plates

August 25th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Computers, Linkification

Geeky License Plates

I am getting one of those when I get a car!

Improve Your Wordpress with Plugins

August 23rd, 2008 | 1 Comment | Posted in Articles, WWW

WordPress (WP) is great as is, but did you know that you could improve it? Plugins add more to the functionality to your blog. The official plugin directory has a lot, but I will focus on my favorites.

All In One SEO Pack

Blogs are useless unless they have some readers. If you write articles, you should try to optimize them for search engines. This extension has many options, such as changing the home page title and description and changing the format of the titles of various pages.

Google Syntax Highlighter

If you run a coding blog, you need a plugin like this. This one uses JavaScript to highlight code in many different languages. You can see it in use on this site.

NextGEN Gallery

This is a plugin for you artists/photographers. It displays a gallery of images on a page you specify, and contains many admin features such as uploading from a zip file, albums, and roles, so people other than the main admin can modify the gallery.

ShareThis

Social media sites are among the best ways to get a lot of traffic (assuming your server can handle it!). This plugin adds a button to the bottom of each post. Click it, and the users can submit the post to sites like Digg or StumbleUpon, email it, or post it on their own blogs.

WP-SpamFree

Spam is very annoying for blog owners. It adds lots of junk to the moderation queue, and spams your inbox if you have notifications enabled. This extension uses multiple tests to verify that the commenter is human, and does not require an account on another website.

And now you know 5 more methods of making your blog better. Happy blogging!

Tags:

16 Ways to Waste Time on the Internet

August 23rd, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Articles, Computers, Linkification, WWW

After a long day of web programming, why not relax for a while? These sites will help with that.

Free Games

  • Sodaplay - Contains some different physics games. You can build moving creations out of springs and masses, make a minigame, or draw shapes in different colors and animate them.
  • Phun - You can build 2D things out of parts like boxes, circles, hinges, fixates and springs. When you’re done you can upload it to Phun Box to share it with other people a nd get ratings and comments.
  • iSketch - A game like Pictionary, but played online with people from all over the world. One person draws an object, and other people try to guess what it is. The winner is the person with the most points, which are obtained by drawing good pictures or guessin correctly.
  • Free Evo2 4×4 Evo 2 is a game that originally came out in 2001, but has recently been released as a free download. It has lots of offroad tracks, a career mode, and multiplayer online play. The only catch is that most of the trucks have been removed from the game and replaced with a few custom ones.
  • Falling Sand Game - A collection of online as well as downloadable games. This is sort of difficult to explain, but it’s more interesting than it sounds, especially if you download one of the games and install modifications (in the wxSand, Enigma Sand, and Burning Sand forums.)

Websites

  • StumbleUpon - This is a toolbar integrated with a website. After you sign up, you can tell the site what your interests are. Then you can click the Stumble! button to visit sites related to your interests. After you arrive at a site you can click the I like it or Not for me buttons to affect what sites it shows you in the future. You can also review websites, or add people that you are interested in as a fan to see the sites that they have rated.
  • PyWeek- A contest for games made with the Python language. You can enter your games in the contests, or download games other people have made (there are a lot).
  • Computer Stupidities - Stories about stupid people trying to use computers!

Blogs

Resources

  • HotScripts - Largest collection of scripts in all languages.
  • Dafont.com - Lots of free fonts, in many different categories.
  • Good-Tutorials - Tutorials for just about anything.
  • Zymic - Free hosting, tutorials, and templates.
  • YoungCoders - Help forum for young programmers.
Tags: , ,

A Myth

August 22nd, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Life

We had to write Native American myths in my literature class. Here is mine (I got a 98% on it).

More »

Tags:

Super-Simple Wordpress RSS Syndication For Your Site

August 21st, 2008 | 4 Comments | Posted in Articles, Code, Computers, Linkification, PHP, WWW

If you’re like me you probably have a blog as well as another site. I have found that an effective way to get vistiors to the blog is to link to it from the main site, assuming that that site is more popular. RSS (Really Simple Syndicate) is a way of syndicating your blog to other areas of the web. It is based on XML and generated automatically by Wordpress.

A PHP RSS parser is MagpieRSS. We will be using it in the following tutorial.

  1. Download the most recent version of MagpieRSS from the above website.
  2. Upload the “rss” folder to your web server.
  3. Next we need to make a PHP include file for displaying the posts. Use the following code
    <?php
    require_once('rss/rss_fetch.inc'); //Include the MagpieRSS include file
    $url = 'http://yoursite.com/blog/?feed=rss2'; //Set a variable containing the URL to your blogs RSS feed
    $rss = fetch_rss($url); //Retrieve the posts
    $items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, 5); //Only show the first 5 posts (the second number can be customized to suit your needs)
    $posts = '';
    foreach ($items as $item) { //Loop through the items
    	$href = $item['link'];
    	$cat = $item['category'];
    	$title = $item['title'];
    	$date = $item['pubdate'];
    	$text = $item['content']['encoded'];
    	$text = preg_replace('/<img [^>]+\/?>/', '[image]', $text); //Replace images with [image]
    	$text = preg_replace('/<\/?[^>]+>/', '', $text); //Get rid of HTML
    	$posts .= "<li><a href=$href>$title</a> <em>".substr($text, 0, 100)."</em></li>"; //Print the current post title linked to the page on your blog, and the first 100 chars of the post
    }
    echo $posts;
    ?>
  4. Now you can include that file into your site wherever you want the feed to appear. Enjoy the free traffic!
Tags: , ,