Monday, June 8, 2009

Allowing guest posting

Allowing guests to post on you site can be a great thing in
theory but in practice, not so much. If everyone behaved
like adults and thought before they hit submit things would
work out just fine.

However, too many people seem to think that being allowed
to post comments anonymously gives them the right to be
incredibly rude and to bluntly show their butts in public.

I’ve tried several times to allow guests to post and every time
it has basically blown up in my face. Spammers and spam bots,
wannabe trolls and people that just generally want to give you
a headache seem to gravitate toward any forum, shoutbox, or
chat room that allows them the perceived cloak of anonymity
that guest posting creates.

If you have a particularly thick skin and don’t mind the extra
work guest posting might work out for you but I would strongly
recommend taking the time to give it careful thought before
you allow it on your site. After all, if people think they can get
away with leaving trash all over your site your job will go from
webmaster to garbage man, and just remember pickup day is
everyday.

Midnight madness… or ( the I am bored out f my skull entry)

Is it physically possible to be bored out of your skull?

:unsure:

I’m not sure but I just looked over and waved at myself.

:blink:

So I’ll assume it is possible…

Or sumpin’… :loco:

At any rate…

I’ve gone all this time and not posted much of anything lately
and decided it was time to get off my butt and make some effort
at being remotely entertaining, as opposed to being remotely
viewed. :unsure:

In a way I kinda fibbed about not posting anything, I have been
working on a little idea I had about updating the XOOPS modules
I have made so people using higher resolution monitors could play
the games with greater ease. Most game sites still have their
games set to 640 x 480 which is kinda tiny on newer computers
and would probably look like pure crap on the newer wide screen
jobs. I’ve still got an old fashioned CRT type monitor and run
it at 800 x 600 as a general rule. So I had the idea to start
adding higher resolution versions of the existing modules.
800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 to be exact. I checked them on my
computer’s highest resolution and they looked just dandy. :D

I’m still working on more of them but it is fairly slow going for
me still. i.e. I get tired fairly easy thanks to the lovely side
effects of chemo… :sick: no barfing or anything radically
gross just tired and losing hair. (All I need now is a bag of
cherry suckers, if you don’t get it ask someone over 35 to tell
you about Kojak.)

If you want to take a peek at the higher res games just click the
XOOPS Module Development link on the left menu. ;)

Go on, you know ya wanna…

What?

Aww, shut yer face! You’d be pushing it too if you got the idea
at three in the morning too. :neener:

It occurred to me that I missed posting any site news last 25th.

Oh, well. Feces occurs. I doubt that it matters all that much
since I didn’t really do anything major last month anyway.

Right now I still have lots of ideas bouncing around that I
haven’t had the time or energy to implement or even really play
with, in no particular order…

Update the games in the game room using my higher resolution
games idea from XMD.

Take the time to strip out all the Google Ad code that is taking
up space around the site.

*bitch* *grumble* *complain* *wax sorely pissed*

I’ve been playing with the idea of opening a dedicated arcade
site using XOOPS as it’s base but haven’t decided if it would
be worth the investment of time and money yet. After all, I’d
have to buy a new domain name for it and hosting separate from
The Bastion and I am just not sure if I am up to fooling with
such a project just yet. That and I don’t have nearly enough
game modules made yet to make it worth the effort…

Which, of course, means I just talked myself into it… :lmao:

*Shadows runs in a tight circle screaming and yelling like his
hair caught fire and his ass is catching* :frantic:

Oh, what the Hell, While I have got the idea in my head I may
as well lay out a few ideas for it in advance (If nothing else
someone might read this and “steal” the idea, so I may as well
give them a decent framework, right? LMAO)

Proposed XOOPS based arcade lay out and general “floor plan”…

Forum
Integrated Flashchat
Site News
User Submitted Videos via CVD’s excellent Video Tube module
Links to other game sites (Hey, why not, right?!?)
And of course…
The Games! :woohoo:

The full gory details TBA… ;)

Anything else? :dunno: That would depend on how well it is
received in general.

When do I propose to do this? Damned if I know.. :rofl:

Will it have ads? Probably but only one or two small text
style block ads like I am using at The Bastion now. Most sites
overkill on the ads IMHO.

Have I lost what little mind I had?

Probably.

MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

*COUGH*

*GHAK*

Euuuwwwww….

I don’t remember eating that… :ohshit:

Errr…

Gotta go…

bye now. :AAAA:


Shadow’s utterly random two a.m. rambling blog entry

It’s a funny thing, normally I am not one much for making random
blog entries with no topic to start with. I guess I am breaking
tradition here.

So, what to write about tonight?

Bitch about the side effects of chemo? Nah… I doubt I’d be the
first or even the best at that. (Though I may do so anyway later.)
Oh yeah and the wonders of having your hair fall out… :blink:

Gripe that I can’t think about anything worth taking the time to
write a “decent” article on. Nah… I’ve got some material for a
few decent ones stashed away on my hard drive for a later date. ;)
One or two of which might be remotely interesting… or not. :dunno:

I suppose I could call this adding content to the site but I
seriously doubt it could be classed as actual content. LMAO
Filler or fluff maybe… ?

I know, I can make a few comments on the whole Madoff thing..

:woohoo:

I’ll give the guy credit, at least he had the right name to be
a high level white collar criminal. He just didn’t have the brains
to pull it off without getting his goofy ass busted. Speaking of
that part of his anatomy, I’m sure that his new room mate will see
about busting it for him.

Ooooh… Did Shadow just say that?

Yes, he did. :neener: :TSHTF:

As for Madoff’s wife trying to make off with her share of the
loot, she showed the IQ of a brick. Did she really think no one
was watching what she was doing?

Give me a freakin’ break…

Now how about some political commentary? :fear:

Call this a general bitching out to the Neo Con crowd…

Kids, STFU about Obama. The man has been in office all of two
months. That is nowhere enough time for anyone to have had a
chance to do anything good or bad. So please, stow it until he
has had a year first. As for all the ones pissing and whining
about him getting ready to take away our guns, give it a rest
people. Our last president did more to erode our rights with
the U.S.A. PATRIOT ACT and his other crap than all the anti gun
laws passed in the last thirty years. Not to mention making the
US about a popular as Germany was in Poland during WW 2 to a good
chunk of the world.

There is something that is remotely site related that I have got
to crow about a little though… In recent months I have been
watching the traffic reports fairly close and am proud to say that
we are getting an average of anywhere from 60 to 120 visitors a day
now. Pretty freakin’ cool as far as I am concerned. :D I will admit
that I am still a little pissed at Google screwing me out of what
I earned with their ugly ads but I can deal with it. I just need
to take the time some day to remove all the ad code that is still
scattered around the site… Mostly in all those HMTL pages I made.

Like, all 150 or so of them. :unsure:

It is never easy… :faint:

This weekend I have been doing a bit of writing around the site
updating sections that I haven’t had time to add anything to.
Mostly just explaining why I haven’t added anything new lately.
Why? Because I hate for people to think I have just quit adding
stuff without rhyme or reason and people that look at XMD rarely
look around the “main” site…

I updated the archive this afternoon and will probably add this
entry later today if I feel up to it. The funny thing about the
archive is that I have had two different people send me email
through Gmail trying to get me to add links to either their site
with no backlink or to add it to some new blog directory. I’m like,
Uhh, guys, it’s a frakkin’ archive, not the original blog. As for
someone wanting a link to their business site without a backlink…
No. If you want a link like that, contact me and I’ll give you
a link in the weblinks directory. The archive only gets links from
my friend’s sites or other sites I am working on myself.

Ok, I’ve warmed up to this entry now… lol

A few weeks ago at xoops.org one of the Mods sent me a PM letting
me know that they couldn’t accept anymore of my Philosophy of
Liberty modules because a handful of whiners on their forum had
decided that they weren’t “real” XOOPS modules. I was like, Sure,
whatever. Then the poor fellow made the mistake of sending me a
link to the thread there… I’m afraid my sarcasm was utterly lost
on them from the first post. The really hilarious part is that
after I started posting the general opinion shifted toward the
fact that all of the modules I had been submitting, the game
modules in particular, were both appreciated and wanted by most
users. This is the same thread where one of the whiners had the
nads to refer to my modules as “just cheap sh#t”

The thread in question…

Why do I mention it now? Simple, I keep an eye on links to The
Bastion. And a lot of the people that have downloaded my modules
have been kind enough to leave my links intact. The funny things
is that for modules that are “just cheap sh#t” seem quite popular.
One site I saw recently was using seven of them in fact.

Yes, someone downloaded and is using 7 of the game modules I made
on their site!

:ura1:

Oh yeah, and that “just cheap shit” crack still pisses me off.

:pissed:

I’m just now sitting here trying to think of something to make for
a late night/Way early morning snack. And am drawing a blank.

:AAAA:

Ok, I’m going to hit “publish’ and find some food.