It's that time of year again, where I try to take many a dollar from everyone!  The annual Linode payment is coming due at the first of September.  That may seem like a while away at the moment, but if I have to switch back to a monthly payment plan, I have to tell them at least a month ahead of time.  So that gives us all of July to realize whether we can raise $250 again before it's due.

It's the same drill as last year, pretty much.  Paying for the Linode annually gives us a 50% disk space bonus.  If we switch back to monthly payments, we lose it.  Tis that simple.  If you're a regular member, you're likely well aware of just how much space that features like 4get require, as well as the other fun things we have around this joint.  We're definitely taking advantage of the disk space bonus.

Going back to monthly is of course an option if it's absolutely required, but that will mean a significant chop out of some of the services which have a sweet tooth for megabytes.  Many a thing would have to be deleted.  And it's not that the money wouldn't still be needed monthly too, just not in a huge chunk like this.  So if at all possible, it just seems advantageous to continue the annual payment plan.

Since we still have a month to go, we, well, still have a month to go.  Even if you don't have the money for a donation at the moment, you can still pledge however much you plan/think you'll be able to send later, so that we'll know if we're going to reach our goal before the decision to switch plans has to be made.  I have Paypal (check the bottom of the FAQ page for the link), but snail mail will work too if anyone needs it.  Just ask for the address.  Whatever anyone can afford to contribute would be greatly appreciated, no matter how small. 

If I could pay the whole thing, I'd do it without hesitation, since I like this place and the folks perdy well.  But since I can't, I can at least make everyone aware of the options.  I'm certainly no fan of asking for money, especially when I know times are tight for many folks.  And I know that not everyone can donate.  But after being pleasantly surprised with last year's results, I have a feeling that we can pull this off again this year. 

Just think of all the junk we can fill 4get with over 365 more days..!

Reply 0 comments

It's time for another reboot, since the awesome people at Linode have given us yet another free disk space increase.  I'm going to do it in about 15 minutes, which is 11PM Eastern on Sunday.  That doesn't actually give people much time to actually see this post, I suppose.  But if you see it tomorrow, then you'll know all is well~!


UPDATE:  40 minutes later, everything's good to go.  Lots of free space now, since Linode continues to be awesome.

P.S.  By the way, we were rocking 313 days of uptime before this reboot.  I think that was a record.  We'll never make it an entire year though because Linode always gives us something new and awesome that I have to reboot for.

Reply 0 comments

It's been a long time coming, but Draco has finally reached level 100 before everyone else in iRPG.  So everyone is now reset back to level 0, with any items collected and total play time still intact. 

From now on, we'll probably reset at level 60 instead, since that won't take nearly as long to reach.  It's been over a year since the last reset, in fact. 

So yeah, congrats to Draco!

Reply 1 comments

We had a tips & tricks section ages ago, but I deleted it when consolidating the boards due to limited posts.  But now I realize lately that there's been things I've wanted to post with no real category specifically for them, so the board was wisen fwalm its gwave etc.

After Yutz seemed interested in the notion of searching Wikipedia from his address bar, I figured I would post info on search keywords, since most of the major browsers seem to support it these days.  Search keywords, for lack of really a better term for it, is where you can type a letter or word into your address bar, followed by a search phrase, and it will then automatically go to that site searching under that phrase.  It saves you the step of waiting for the website itself to load before you can do a search.  Examples are like "g pants" to search Google, or "imdb Die Hard" for IMDB, "w brids" for Wikipedia, etc.  First I will give instructions on how to set them for each browser, then I will give a list of search addresses you might want to add.

---

Opera
Opera makes this easiest, and actually has a few built-in when you get it.  Go to Tools, Preferences, then the Search tab.  When creating a new one, "Name" is simply what shows up in the list of keywords.  "Keyword" is what you'll type in your address bar to use it, and "Address" is the custom URL which will specify how to use your keyword with that site (a list of them will be at the bottom of this post).  The other options, like for "Use POST", are usually not necessary.  You can however check either of the checkboxes below if you want to use that search engine as the default and/or on the speed dial page.

Firefox
Firefox is not quite as straightforward, but it's easy once you realize how to do it.  Go into your bookmarks manager, and then find a folder that's probably called Quick Searches.  If you don't have one, you can create it, or with whatever related name you want (or don't even make a folder if you prefer, doesn't matter).  Create a new bookmark, call it whatever, but for "Location", use one of the special search URLs I'll list below.  Set the "Keyword" to whatever you want to use in the address bar to search this site with. 

Internet Explorer
NOTE:  These instructions are for XP.  There may be a way built-in to do this in Vista and/or Windows 7 for all I know.  Until I or somebody can either confirm that, or can confirm that the XP method works fine under Vista, then consider yourself warned.

This one isn't so immediately simple.  You can either dick around in the registry, or you can go get the TweakUI PowerToy from Microsoft.  Here's a direct download link if you'd rather.  TweakUI is pretty neat anyway.  But yeah, once you install and run it, go to the Internet Explorer section, then Search.  To add new ones, click Create, add in your keyword that you plan to use in the address bar to search with, and then put in the search address (based on ones I'll list below). 

Chrome / Safari
I think you're out of luck if you use one of these.

---

Search URLs
These are what you'll put in the address/location parts for your quick searches.  Usually getting one of these means finding the url that the site uses to search for stuff with, and replacing the search term with %s.  The browser then replaces %s with what you type.  For example, if I search Google for "lkdsfjksdf", it shows this in the address bar:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=lkdsfjksdf&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=

Notice "q=lkdsfjksdf", which is the important part.  That's the search query.  Replace that with q=%s, and this url would be good to go for using in a keyword search.  But in this case it can actually be shorted to just "http://www.google.com/search?q=%s".  You'll just have to play around with different sites to find the shortest url if you prefer.

Keep in mind though that some websites might need an url which you won't normally see in the address bar.  Sometimes this can be found by digging through the page source, if you want to go to the trouble.

I'll make a list though of the most popular ones that I use, at least, to save you the trouble (common keywords will be in parenthesis):

• Google (g) = http://www.google.com/search?q=%s
• Wikipedia (w) = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s
• Youtube (y) = http://youtube.com/results?search_query=%s
• IMDB (imdb) = http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=%s
• Dictionary.com (d) = http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/%s
• Ebay (e) = http://redir.opera.com/ebay/?q=%s

If there's one for a particular site that you want and can't figure out how to make, just post the site here and we'll see if I or someone else can figure it out for you.


TIP OVER.

Reply View comments

I finally got around to writing a Fyborg command reference, for anyone who isn't up to date on what all he can do.  It's in no particular order at the moment, but a list is still a list.

Reply 1 comments

Happy New Year 2009!  Any resolutions you'd like to make?

And don't worry, this is Fybertech.  You don't have to actually finish them..!

Reply 1 comments

Have a random internet cat!

Reply 4 comments

You might have noticed that the menu bar along the top of the site is different.  That's because it is!  I finally removed Electris, Defenders of Zentax, and the demo ROMs to Fybertech.net, since they're more of my own personal projects and kind of in the way sitting on the community site here.  Since FyBBS isn't ever up anymore, I removed it too, meaning the whole Games dropdown menu bit the bullet.  Then I noticed that I could just take everything out of the Media dropdown and put them all across the menu bar, so I did.  I kind of liked those dropdowns, but no point in fancy effects when it can be more straightforward.

I've had some ideas for other things, and assuming laziness doesn't attack, you might see a thing or two pop up here and there in other spots.  STAY TUNED.  MAYBE.

Reply 4 comments

I actually had this post typed and thought I clicked submit, but after reopening my browser and finding a blank topic form, I realized apparently not..!

Anyhow, despite assumptions to the contrary (including myself), we easily raised the money for another year of the server.  Not even everyone who could have donated had to, because we had enough.  It's pretty cool to think that folks care enough about the community to donate their hard-earned bucks to keep it and all its features afloat.  So a big thanks to everyone who donated!  I'm sure everyone else around here appreciates it just as much.

And just a bit of newsy news:  I've been working on a kind of Pong/Space Invaders hybrid, which you can check out some early demos of in the forum topic there.  Considering how relatively easy it's been so far, and the progress I've made in such a short time, I might end up with something playable soon..!

Reply 0 comments

As many of you may already know, regular donations are what keep Fybertech afloat.  Boris and Vito in particular have gone out of their way to ensure that things keep trucking along for the last few years, for which I'm sure we're all grateful.  Last year, in fact, Boris decided to splurge and sent an entire year's worth of what he'd normally have donated all at once, and this earned us a 20% increase of disk space through the company that Fybertech's server is hosted at.  That being the fine folks at Linode.

Now normally I wouldn't do this, but the time for ackshun is approaching, so I thought I'd make folks aware of what's pending.  Basically, Boris isn't going to be able to cover an entire year of his usual donations up front this time around.  This doesn't mean that Fybertech is in sudden peril, because both Boris and Vito will surely continue to help out regularly as they've so thankfully done so far.  But what this means for Fybertech is that we have to switch back to monthly payments, which unfortunately means that we have to give up our 20% of extra disk space.

In case you're wondering what good that space is to Fybertech, currently 2.3GB of 4get's 5.4GB of content rests there.  As does all approximately 600MB of 4thread.  It's proven useful for other things as well, like for temporary hosting and storage purposes and such.  And who knows what other user-contributable creation(s) will sprout up in the future that would need such space.  Fybertech says "disk space taste good om nom".  That's a direct quote, too.  I asked it.

Losing the extra disk space won't mean the end of 4get or 4thread, but they're obviously going to get pretty heavily pruned.  I lack the disk space on the backup server to grab those sections of the site when doing regular backups, so those images will pretty much be gawn.  It's not a huge loss, no, but space will be tighter in general.  They'd have had to be pruned eventually anyway, just probably not this drastically.

So, how much exactly is needed to keep things going like they are?  And by when?  Oh, it's just $250.  And it's due September 1st.  Yeah, not a small sum, which is why kudos go to Boris for covering that as well as the .com domain renewal last year which also came due at the same time (and will again this year).  Problem is, to change billing plans back to monthly, I'll probably have to do it around the end of this month so that things will be set by the time the due date rolls around.  So that gives us about two weeks to decide what we want to do here.

I don't like asking folks for money, and still won't ask outright, but I thought I'd point out the situation and see what folks wanted to do.  If the consensus is "who cares", then it's no big deal, I'll do a truffle shuffle with the site contents and we'll work it out.  If keeping the space and everything assocated with it is preferred, then obviously some much appreciated donations would be required.  But it's up to you guys!  Feel free to comment or discuss things here in the topic.  Or if you want to shove greenbacks on me immediately, check the FAQ section for the Paypal link, or PM me I guess for an address if you do snail mail.  No flaming poop on porch though kthx.

Reply 24 comments