Shameless Words from Shameless Geeks

Well… it took a while, but I finally got ShamelessGeeks.com moved to a new server. Hopefully, I can keep this one a little bit more secure than the last one. I’ve already noticed a few changes that will probably help with security quite a bit.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled ranting.

The site has been on a dedicated server for over two years now. Lately, a few script kiddies have taken advantage of the aging OS and hacked in. After a conversation with my ISP, I decided that it was much easier and cheaper to move to a new server with an OS that is new enough to have all of those vulnerabilities covered. Over the next few days, there may be a few burps in access to the server while files are copied and DNS zones are set up.

I could never figure out the way hackers think. The only thing I can do is pity them. It must be terrible to live life as a group of permanently immature kids with tiny winkies.

I’ve just posted a page containing a little bit of my investigations of how to control Athlon CPU frequencies in Linux. The post contains an explanation of just how simply it can be done, as well as working code to prove the point. Check out exactly what can be done with a little bit of code and a little bit of ingenuity in Fun with PowerNow! This is the first of what I hope are a long list of code contributions by myself and others. Let me know what you think.

I’ve finally stopped twiddling the HTML and PHP code on the site. I’ve fixed a few bugs and added a few features over the past few weeks. For those who haven’t been paying much attention, here’s what’s happened:

• Improved fonts (especially for IE)
• No More Tables! all of the columns are done with CSS trickery
• 3D look for blog posts
• The top pipe now adjusts itself to the width of the browser
• The side pipe now adjusts itself to the height of the page. This one was a tough one to fix
• Better compatibility, resulting in a similar look for IE and Firefox

There are only a few little nits left, like IE and Firefox disagreeing on the minimum height of the page. I think I’ll probably leave them alone and concentrate on content for a little while.

I’ve tested things with IE6, Firefox 1.x and Konqueror 3.5.2. If you can add to this list, please do so.

For those who have been waiting for me to fix those pesky little bugs: I think I’m just about there. Thanks for all of your patience while I’ve been kinda halfway finished. The trouble started when I decided to replace a bunch of iframes (very bad) with equivalent floating blocks using CSS (very good). I made a procedural error that caused a bug to be applied to both the current copy and the backup (very very evil nasty bad). What you have been seeing lately is the result of that stupidity. The site now has about the same number of bugs that it usually does, so I’ve removed the Programmer At Work notice.

The silver lining to the cloud is that I finally got off of my considerable duff and got rid of all of those evil frames. As a consequence, you will notice that there is no horizontal slider. It is unlikely that most people will notice, but I’ve also made the page a lot more browser agnostic, meaning that it’s appearance in IE is closer to it’s appearance in Firefox. Not exactly alike, but much closer than they were.

Still to come: additional fixes like a re sizable pipe on the left and some major menu changes. When that’s done… maybe I’ll just start over.

Update:
I also noticed that the page now seems to work with Konqueror, for both of you who still use it. Standards are a good thing!

I’ve decided to put the CoD2 server back online as a public deathmatch server. I may be using it for some web-based server experiments, so use it at your own risk. I also haven’t found any real anti-cheat yet, so be warned that there are a lot of cheaters out there.

Enjoy.

I’ve put up an experimental Counter-Strike: Source game server for those who like the game. I’m toying with the idea of making it part of an hourly game server rental site. This is a follow-on to the experiment last winter of running a CoD2 server, which I terminated because of all of the cheating I saw.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to rent the bandwidth for a few hours a week to help lighten the financial load of the server. I plan on keeping the number of simultaneous games to 3 or less, which should provide all players with a smooth gaming experience.

In the future, you may see announcements for additional games like BF2 and Quake4. I’ll also be putting the CoD2 server back on line, but it will remain private until Infinity Ward does something about the cheaters. If you have a request for any game that has a dedicated Linux server package available, let me know so that I can try to put it online.

Stay tuned for further details.

In case you haven’t noticed (I’m sure you did), ShamelessGeeks has fallen into a deep rut. Posts have been primarily from one person with one viewpoint and very little time to express it. I would like you (yes, you) to help me change that.

I guess that I never properly expressed the community-oriented nature of this site. It is supposed to be about Geeks posting and submitting stories of Geek interest, with other Geeks tossing in opinions on the topic. Ideally, it would have the technical posts of an Ars Technica, the reviews of a Tom’s Hardware or Firing Squad, and the front page blog of a Slashdot.

In the case of ShamelessGeeks, I wanted all of these features to be user supported and contributed, without any fees or obligations. The big difference is that this site is a moderated community site, and I’ll even help a little with article formatting and grammar. The moderation keeps the filthy-mouthed ranters from soiling the content, and the grammar assistance makes things easier to read.

BTW… I love a good rant. As long as you don’t go overboard and say something that can get me sued, have at it! I also love to see smartass comments. Give me all of those that you have!

If you would like to submit an article or a review, use the brushed-aluminum buttons on the far left of the site. If you would like to post any news articles, just sign up for the blog using the blog menu (directly to the right of the brushed-aluminum buttons). If you would like to comment on an article, just add your comment. The email address required by the comment script isn’t checked, so use a fake one if you wish to remain anonymous.

I’m currently trying to recruit new contributors for this site. If you have anything that you want to say, here is your chance. There is no pay, there are only a few rules, and you probably won’t become famous here… but the roar of the virtual crowd can be it’s own reward

– COJones

Just thought you’d like to know… this is the 1000th post to Shamelessgeeks.com. That’s not bad for a couple of guys making occasional posts for 1.5 years. Now, If I could only talk a few more of you into making regular posts.

I’ve been a little remiss about converting reviews into permanent posts, I spent a little time trying to rectify that situation today. If you check out the Fiction page, you’ll find that I posted Shinnite’s anime review. If you check out the gamers page, you’ll find out that I’ve added no less than 5 reviews, including a couple of humorous ones. Let me know if you see anything else that deserves a permanent place of honor.

Update:

Forgot to mention my DRM article. You can find it on the Shameless page.

I finally got around to putting up a game server. If you are in the mood for Call of Duty 2, check out ShamelessGeeksCoD2. As of right now, it’s an extremely simple public deathmatch server, but that will likely change soon. If you get a chance to play, please drop a comment here letting me know how your experience was… good or bad.

Well… After a brief but animated exchange with CafePress, I managed to get them to start carrying my tee shirt design again. I have to admit it. My design was a little edgy. I guess I can see why they were a little reluctant to risk taking on the legal army of the largest company in the world.

If you want to see what all of the fuss was about, or if you are just curious to see what Tux looks like in a diaper, check out the ShamelessGeeks store at CafePress.

In order to recoup some of the expense of running this server, I decided to look into the concept of an online store. You know the kind of thing… a little place to sell tee shirts and stuff at a small profit.

I decided to send an original geek humor design in to a site that specializes in tee shirts, coffee mugs, etc. and let them handle all of the other details for me. If you would like to check out what Tux looks like in a diaper, go to the ShamelessGeeks online Store and see for yourself.

I expect to be adding new items every few weeks, so check back often to see what I’m up to.

Update:
CafePress has apparently deemed my little picture to be to scary for them. I’ve appealed to them, but they have nothing to say so far. Until they come to their senses, I’ve removed the link to them. Meanwhile, I’ll look for someone who doesn’t mind a little bit of parody on their shirts.

I’m done with the initial coding of a comment tracking script for permanent posts. I wanted to stay true to the concept of keeping PHP out of the permanent pages to keep them compatible with search engine spiders, so the only thing you’ll notice is a “Comments” button at the bottom of the submission. This links to a PHP script that allows you to read all previous comments as well as adding your own.

I have only added the capability to the submissions linked to on the “Gamers” and “Shameless” pages. Check it out when you get the chance. If things work out, I’ll polish up the page formatting some, then add the comments to all of the submissions.

While perusing eWEEK today, I saw an article about the WordPress home page caught in the act of search engine spamming. Please say it isn’t so. This very blog runs on a slightly modified version of WordPress 1.2. I would hate to think that the same organization who wrote a great blog tool has stooped to something that low. These folks have been among the leaders in the fight to eliminate blog spam. Shouldn’t they practice what they preach?

I’d like to give the Wordpress guys a chance to respond, but I really can’t think of an excuse. Telling an online publication that what they did wasn’t “spam” is just an attempt to get away on a technicality.

If the guys can’t come up with a good reason, maybe the OSS blogging community should think about putting WordPress in the hands of someone better, or if necessary, starting a new project.

Color me disappointed.

As some of you already know, I have been considering an offer by an immense software company to buy ShamelessGeeks.com for a substantial sum of money. Some of you also know that this same company gave me an alternative of appearing before a judge to answer for all of the nasty things that have been said about them on this site over the last few weeks. It is with a mixture of regret and avarice that I announce to you now that I have decided to take the money and run.

We have had a really good run since August, with traffic increases of between 30% and 100% in every month of our existence. We’ve managed this by calmly stating facts, without injecting any of those boring old opinions that others try to stick you with. I thank you, our loyal readers, for actually bothering to read what we have to say.

I’m certain that the new owners of “ShamelessGeeksXP” will maintain the same high standards that I have set for this site. I’m certain that they will not try to sway the members of our little group to their cause. I am also certain that they will not make use of any personal information that they find in the user database, despite the fact that they paid a significant amount extra for it.

In closing, I would like to wish all of you a happy life, happy blogging, and a very happy April 1st.

I’ve written a cute little script that auto-magically redirects your browser to the https version of a file whenever you attempt to access a members only page. The main reason for doing this is to perform HTTP auth over a secure socket connection. That way, nobody can sniff your password and try it on other sites that you may or may not subscribe to. The only thing you have to do is accept my self signed certificate when you get a warning.

The pages affected include the submission page, the resume upload page, any members-only resume, etc etc. Accessing one of these will automatically kick you into https mode, securing all data transferred. If you want to leave https mode, just use any one of the buttons on the left-side menu.

I haven’t gotten around to adding the blog to the page authentication scheme, so blog auth remains unchanged.

To get you in the mood for the upcoming Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie you can now play Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy online. It’s one of the greatest games of all time.

I’ve turned comments back on for now. I won’t let bottom-feeding, lawyer-like, nausea-inducing, low-life scum effect my ‘blog any more. I’m going to beat the comment and trackback spammers somehow… Honestly I will.

I’ll leave the comments off in anything older that last week, but I’ll allow for everything else. I encourage everyone to have something to say, as long as they follow the basic rules against bad language and hate speech.

Flamers of the world, IGNITE!

… or rather, multiplying. While posting a tech tip a while back, I began to notice that I might be adding a few too many competing features to the site. It flies in the face of “Do one thing, and do it well". In that spirit, I’ve gone on a domain name shopping spree, and I’ll be dividing up some of the content among the new sites.

The breakdown (so far):

I’ll keep the blog right here, and use it as a clearinghouse for contributions on all of the sites. I’ll also leave the current user contributions here as well. The URL here (of course) is http://www.shamelessgeeks.com and the alias is http://www.shamelessgeek.com.

The employment stuff is certain to go to a new site that is dedicated to tech tips and freeware. The intention with that one is to allow techies to “strut their stuff” online for prospective employers/customers. It would be nice to be able to tie your resume/proposal to a well-written and insightful post, wouldn’t it? I’m leaning toward GeekHall.com for this one.

The third site would be the online store I’ve been hoping to start for months now. Of course, I would have to specialize in geek stuff like high-end hardware, geeky gizmos, and stuff like that. Hopefully, it will help carry the cost of the server, which is getting kinda heavy. This one may end up as GeekPen.com (playpen for geeks, get it?)

Another site may be dedicated to virtual hosting. Setup and maintenance for virtual web stuff is actually easier than I thought it would be. If you don’t believe me, scroll down and check out the 4 new sites I set up with complete DNS and Webalizer support. Did that in a few hours, and most of it was NRE while I learned how to get GoDaddy and Webalizer to do what I wanted them to. I’m offering a $5/m virtual web service for current SG members if they would like to get in on a beta test. Details coming soon.

All of the new domains are up and running, but they are almost completely bare. No content at all. If you are curious, they are at:
www.geekshire.com
www.geekhall.com
www.geekpen.com
www.geekton.com

I finally got the jobs and resume service up and running. It still has a few warts to work out and a few features to add, but it is now at a point where it is useful. When I am satisfied that it works reasonably well, I’ll release the source code. There won’t be any intellectual property issues here… every damn line of it is original!

You can now perform the following functions:

• Post a Resume
• Delete a Resume
• Post a Job Listing
• Delete a Job Listing
• Search the Resume Database
• Search the Job Listing Database
• Show All Global Resumes
• Show All Job Listings

You can use the links above to test things out, or go to the permanent home by clicking the Employment button on the main menu.

All job listings also include a link to the company web site, a link to the company job site, and an embedded form that can be used to send an email to the employer.

Posting and deleting require a login (for obvious reasons), as well as searching private resumes. Searching public resumes and job listings is open.

I’ve also kick-started the database with 13 job listings from ICI, with about the same number from Sparta on the way… when I get some sleep. I could use a few more resumes to flesh out the job seekers side of things. Any volunteers?

If you have been wondering why the Shameless Geek has been silent lately, well… now you know.

I’ve added a Linux/OSS category to the blog. Since I add quite a few news items about the Open Source Software community in general, I guess it’s time to add a category.

I’ve just finished the first draft of a Geeks guide to AMD’s Cool’n'Quiet feature. I intend to make this the first in a series of original tech submissions. If anyone has any ideas about what subject I should poke my nose into next, let me know.

I’m currently beefing up some of the features on the site for an upcoming move toward virtual web hosting. You may have already noticed that things like webmail and https have started working. In the future I also hope to add some affiliate links to places that I think will serve geeks well.

I’m currently setting up a few test web sites for loyal friends. Once I have worked the bugs out of the process, I’ll be taking on a limited number of personal web clients. I’ll be providing quite a bit of bandwidth and space for the price, and I intend to keep the number of sites low so that response time will be quick… but I won’t be available 24/7 to hold anyone’s hand. If you are interested, stay tuned for more info, or contact the webmaster for details.

BTW… I don’t intend to make a big profit from this. I just need something to offset the monthly cost of the server.

I’ve added a new site map to help the spiders crawl my IFrame infested pages. While I was at it, I made the map useful to humans. It will probably find a permanent home it the upper left corner of the page. If any of you webmasters out there would like a copy of the PHP script that generates the page, let me know.

Leave it to the scum-of-the-internet to ruin something good. Again. I’ve had to switch to moderated comments because of the rash of spam-ments I’ve gotten from online poker twits. Once again… I’ll remind people that there is no honor among theives. Those who would spam a blog with things that they know should not be there will also rip off anyone dumb enough to follow a link in the spam. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not patronize these criminals. You’ll just promote the spread of these digital diseases.

I’ve added a Security category to the weblog. If you hear of any vulnerabilities in any of the major OS’es or application packages, please post it here. You might alo want to check this category every now and then to see what the recent vulnerabilities have been reported.

I moved some earlier posts from the Tech News and General categories into Security because they fit the new category better.

I’ve upgraded PHP to a version that does not contain the Santy worm vulnerability. I don’t believe that any of the data on the site was ever vulnerable at all, but I decided to err on the side of paranoia. My apologies if you tried to access the site this afternoon and got an apology page.

OK… So it’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s a step forward. After previewing dozens of site search tools and playing with ways to get Google to do my searches for me, I finally decided to cut to the chase and write my own search utility. The 4 hours I spend figuring out how to do it myself was much more useful than the days I spent trying to fit someone else’s app into my page. I ended up with something that is extremely small and brain-dead meaning it was exactly what I wanted.

Check it out if you get the chance: http://www.shamelessgeeks.com/employment/searchresume.shtml.

BTW… I’ve been getting a few search string hits on my resume lately. It looks like an online resume is a worthwhile thing if you are in the market for a job. Couldn’t hurt, could it?

I managed to validate all of the pages to either XHTML 1.0 Transitional or XHTML 1.1 Strict. This includes all site pages as well as all current submissions and resumes. I really mean all, too. I even validated the authorization failure page (though I didn’t put the W3C icon on it). If your browser has trouble showing any of the pages… well, don’t blame me, blame the World Wide Web Consortium.

In the near future, I’ll move the W3C icons to someplace a little more appropriate than the prime real estate in the upper left corner of the page. Until them, I have no problem showing off the fact that I took the time to validate all of my pages

Please excuse the silence for the past day or so. It came to my attention that most of the pages on this site were full of spec. violations that can cause indigestion for web crawlers. When I ran the front page against a validator, I was astonished at how many violations and outright errors there were. In the interest of providing a quality web site, I’ve begun a campaign of cleaning up all of the pages to XHTML 1.0 Transitional at a minimum. You’ll be able to tell which pages have passed and which spec. they comply to by the W3C icon: somewhere in the upper left corner of the page. If you click on the icon, it will re-validate the page and display the results for you.

If anyone finds a page that has the W3C icon displayed, but doesn’t pass validation, PLEASE let me know. Wish me luck in this tedious and frustrating endeavor.

I finally got the resume uploader to work the way I want it to. Global resumes are now linked from the employent page, so (hopefully) they will be indexed by the major web crawlers. Resumes uploaded with the local-only option are properly wrapped in an authorization script and kept from the crawlers. This will be a great option when the local resume searcher goes online, but that might be a few days. I have uploaded 2 versions of my resume as examples of how things will turn out. shameless.shtml is an example of a resume uploaded as HTML, and spork.shtml is an example of a resume uploaded as text. For now, HTML and Text are the only 2 formats supported.

I encourage all members to upload a copy of their resume using the employment upload page. What do you have to lose?

If you want to see your resume online, just upload with the global option, then use the link at the bottom of the employment page to browse the list of global member resumes. As an alternative, you could always just type ‘http://www.shamelessgeeks.com/resumes/global/username.shtml’ into your browser’s address bar.

I’ve re-arranged things a little bit to make room for the new categories. Check out some of the new menu items. I’ll be completely reworking the appearance soon to eliminate some of the obvious shortcomings, so please be patient with the features that seem counter-intuitive. I just want to add the resume/job listing and virtual web host features first.

I’ve gotten a reasonable uploader to work. It has found a temporary home on the Fiction page with the fiction submissions. While working on the uploader, I determined that the best way to handle authentication is to do it on an ‘as needed’ basis. The login page now contains links to account creation and lost password pages, but not login. User’s will now be authenticated when they first attempt to use a “members only” page. Currently, the uploader is the only page that requires authentication.

I’ve added a fiction button to the main menu. This points to a page with links to all of our current fiction submissions. I recommend you check them out. They are truly unique.
It looks like I’ll be running out of menu room soon, so I’m toying with some ideas for a new format. The two most viable for a large number of pages is either a collapsible tree view, or a multilayer tab system. Tabs are much easier, but collapsible tree views are much slicker. Any thoughts?

Oops! Found out that it only takes a little bit of stupidity to delete a lot of work. I accidentally nuked all of the submission announcements. Please be patient if you notice that today’s announcements are repeats.

This site is an experiment in shared revenue services. We are currently accepting original, PG or cleaner content for future revenue. The mechanisms for submitting content are not yet ready, but if you would like to get an early start, use the login page to register an account, then email your content to webmaster@deepbytes.com and I’ll be sure to get it online within a day or two.

Welcome to the Shameless Geeks Forum. Feel free to browse around and tell us how we can make this site better. Or… Better yet… register and post your suggestion straight to the forum! We won’t be sharing the login info with anyone. so don’t worry about another spam source. (Besides, you have filters for that don’t you?) Don’t believe me? Check out the ShamelessGeeks privacy policy.