Time Wasters Mixed with Complex Programming

I can’t remember how I found this site, but I’ve had it bookmarked for years. Arkitus.com (by Seyed Mohammadali Eslami) looks simple on the outside, but the programming behind it is fairly complex. If you know anything about programming, you’ll have a greater appreciation for the site. The site is split into two separate sections: a blog and a “playground.”

The blog is self explanatory, but the play section is the interesting part. The (currently) 25 pages are each different experiments presented in a playable flash form. A lot of the experiments are simple and show a proof-of-concept or the results of a basic function that can be built upon. However, some of Arkitus’s more interesting experiments are playable and will have you wasting time before you know it.

Some of my favorite experiments / games:

• Ball Collision (#15)
  • Here, the balls realistically bounce of each other and their boundaries. The user can click and hold to grab a ball and move it. The plus and minus on the users keyboard will increase and decrease the size. Apparently increasing the size too much will crash your browser.
• Curtain (#16)
  • I enjoy this one because of how smooth the object recognition (ball) is by the environment (curtain).
• Line (#18)
  • Probably one of the bigger time wasters, this one provides physics, collision detection and user options.
• Angular V1 (#20)
  • Described by its creator as his first real game, this one bears some resemblance to Asteroids. However, instead of a triangle ship shooting large floating rocks, there’s a computers controlled (and a heck of a good one, too) ship shooting back at you!

How to Change File Permissions With Dreamweaver [CHMOD]

After using Dreamweaver for 6 or 7 years, I’ve always thought it was ludicrous that it didn’t include a function to change file permissions! Dreamweaver is a fairly powerful WYSIWYG editor with an equally powerful FTP client built in, how hard could it be to offer a simple context-menu option for changing the file permissions!? Previous web searches turned up forum after forum, page after page of people lamenting the same thing.

But, ALAS! LIGHT!

I finally stumbled upon a help page from hosting company that – in couple lines – solved the mystery.

Once connected via FTP, (pre MX I believe) open the FTP log from the Window menu of the Site Window. In newer versions this can be done with the site menu in the side bar or in “dual pane” mode by going to View then Site FTP Log.

In the command line, type:

chmod ### /path/to/filename

Where ### is the numerical equivalent of the permissions you wish to assign.

Where path/to/filename is the relative path to the filename.

For example, the change permissions of a file named readme.txt location in your root folder should be:

chmod ### ./readme.txt
-or-
chmod ### public/html/readme.txt

The path depends a lot on your server’s or hosting company’s setup.

Once your realize (as I did) that the FTP log allows you to send any FTP commands, you’ll be able to do anything your heart desires. Though, that still doesn’t explain why in heck Macromedia hasn’t provided some kind of GUI solution for file permissions.

Note: The methods described above apply to Linux / Unix server systems.

UPDATE: Thanks to an astute reader, Danny, it was brough to my attention that Dreamweaver 8 and above provides the ability to change file permissions with a GUI interface by right-clicking on the desired file and hitting “Set Permissions.” So, those of you with Dreamweaver version 8 and above (Dreamweaver CS versions) can ignore the instructions in the post unless, of course, you like doing things the hard way!

UPDATE, May 1, 2009: Head over here for an updated post with all the above and below tips for CHMODing the heck out of your files.

SPAM Clogs the Tubes [Akismet Stats]

There’s a lot of controversy going on all over the Internet and the real world over the massive use of peer-to-peer technology (P2P), and it’s legitimate and illegitimate implications. Namely, the massive amount of bandwidth P2P communications consume. Frankly, I believe the ISPs are blaming P2P users for using the available bandwidth on the network (regardless of the fact that those users have paid for a certain level of service) and threatening to charge for overages on ridiculously low monthly bandwidth caps instead of upgrading their networks as they should be doing just as any other company would have to who needs to keep up with demand in order to remain a viable competitor!

I’m sorry, I digress. That discussion is a whole ‘nother week of blog postings dedicated to the topic.

However, my topic today is related. Akismet (a WordPress bloggers best friend against SPAM) keeps detailed stats on the comments it filters. Every comment that is submitted to a blog with Akismet installed gets passed through Akismet and is checked to see if it looks like SPAM. If it passes the test, the comment is allowed to post on the blog. If for some reason a comment is caught that isn’t SPAM or a comment it let through that is SPAM, I can mark it manually, and Akismet will “learn” from its mistake.

Anyway, back to the stats. Listed here, you can see a basic graph outlining the number of HAM comments (legitimate comments) in blue, and the number of SPAM comments in orange. That is a outrageous HAM to SPAM ratio! And that’s only on blogs that Akismet tracks!

My point is… there’s A LOT OF SPAM. I’m sure the bandwidth it takes to transmit all that crap is fairly substantial. There have been studies that try to pinpoint the number, but they all differ. They do, however, agree that it is certainly more taxing than legitimate communications.

The solution? These ISPs should spend more of their resources locking down something that NOBODY likes (SPAM) and less time alienating their customers over crap like DNS-based behavioral tracking and bandwidth caps.

P.S. Akismet is the reason you don’t have sign-up or enter in some CAPTCHA or other human-verification code in order to comment here! So yeah! Give it up for Akismet!

Splogs Suck

This site has only been up for about a week and already a splog, or spam blog, had gotten a hold of it.

Splogs are “fake” blogs whose content is usually entirely stolen from legitimate blogs. In this case, I wrote a post last week that cited Wikipedia and contained a tag for Wikipedia. I believe this is how the splog in question ripped off my content. Splogs I’ve had experience with will re-post information from any blog that shows up in a Technorati or Google Blog Search feed with a particular tag or keyword.

The splog will attempt to get my content indexed in search engines to generate traffic to the splog’s site which is usually inundated with paid advertising links (read: pr0n).

Often, too, the splog will send a pingback to the original blog. Pingbacks (also known as trackbacks) are used to notify a blog that another blog has cited information from a particular post. The pingback will appear as a snippet of the new post in the comments section of the cited post. This a great feature because it allows easy link trading between bloggers with similar interests, and it gives credit to the original author.

The problem with splogs sending pingbacks are now the sucker gets a link in my comments to his/her rip-off of my post. Fortunately, Akismet is catching on to these and will file it as spam before it hits my blog.

There’s nothing I can do about the bastard stealing my content (except to change the content, or play the sucker), really, but the silver lining in spam blog is that I know my site is being searched and indexed!

Splog in question: http://wikipedia.doorwayblogging.info/ (NSFW)