Please, If you read any article on my blog read this one.
If you want to keep your Facebook data to yourself, and keep what YouTube videos and Google searches you have watched and done private? Your not alone. I'm pretty sure everyone on the internet wants to keep their own information private from anyone they can. But now that CISPA has passed, the governments don't need a warrant to see any of this information, and no warning of them doing so.
I don't want to get into details, because I know I will end up starting a big rant about how the Internet was invented and what it was intended for.
Anyways, since CISPA was passed, the internet has been brewing up a storm. Anonymous and reddit users are furious. And the IDL and many other Internet censory sites. Which lead to another Internet blackout.
This blackout will take place on the 22nd of this month (April, 2013) and last 24 hours. Most sites are already planning a back up plan to keep the sites visitors away from the content to show what it would be like if the Internet was censored as much as it will be if CISPA passes. If you cannot stand this as much as me, and the rest of the Internet surfers do, please do some simple Google searches about the topic of CISPA. Find as many petition sites as you can and sign them, we need as many people as we can! The reason I am not supplying a simple link to go sign, is because you should look around for yourself, and see the posts in between the petitions, showing how CISPA will ruin our privacy!
Please support us! We need to stop CISPA!!!!
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to comment them below and I will answer them as best I can.
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Thursday, 18 April 2013
Tuesday, 16 April 2013
We Would Like to Apologize To The Families and Friends of The Victims of The Boston Marathon Attack
I'm sorry for not creating a post about this, and sorry for talking in first person, as I don't per usual. But it needs to happen for this post. The reason for not creating a post about it is because I would not want to get into detail, because it is deeply disturbing, and don't think I could write about it without putting me into a dark mood. But anyways, I will continue on what I would like to say.
I am truly and deeply sorry for the grief and pain that the victims, and the victims family and friends, are going through and/or went through. I hope you the best in the future, and I hope everything goes well in the coming days as the news teams and investigators get more news about what happened. Keep your head up, everything will get better. You have support of all over the world! If you don't believe me, look at this post. The attack happened in the United States. This post and most of the future posts are based in Canada, as well as the MadChatr offices. The news came on about 1 hour after the event to the far west of Canada. That truly should speak for itself, since the news station is Canadian based, and rarely covers United States stories. I am also deeply sorry for the people that were close to the deceased. This event is the most revolting thing I have heard about for an act of terrorism. The suspect/ bomber had no reason to harm this event. It was about fun and happiness and running. People screaming, laughing, and having a good time, they had NO reason to go through this and kill innocent people.
As I said, I will not go into details about the event. If you would like to learn more, you can click here for a link to a news story covering the details.
I hope we find out what happened on this dark day, and again my condolences, if you need to talk to someone, or need more information, or just have something to say. Leave a comment, and I will reply as needed.
Saturday, 13 April 2013
Google's Hilarious April Fools Jokes Revealed
We all know that Google has a hilarious past for April fools jokes and scaring people out of their wits with some of them. A great example of this was this years April Fools, when they made a quite convincing video about YouTube closing down, which we will explain more later. The other 3 (major) April fools jokes were:
GMail Blue:
Probably the the most simple joke they did this year, but the most traditional and relating to April fools:
Google made a very serious video (in the beginning) that they were going to "revamp" GMail. By this they mean... Well... Making everything blue. No more other colours of GMail, besides to tint of blue. The video is quite convincing to the non-jokester portion of the population, but all in all, it's pretty funny. Here's a link to the page for GMail Blue.
Google Nose:
Probably the most funny in my opinion, really in the April Fools spirit. Welcome to Google Nose...
Google was saying that they are adding a whole new feature to their search function, as well as a new app for all the handheld devices. It was said that the app could "smell" things and search for them on Google. With their huge nose-base! I think this is the most funny joke, but not the biggest, which brings us to the most major April Fools joke Google has pulled this year.
YouTube's Picking The Winner Joke:
As you may have heard by probably everyone you know that uses the computer, YouTube "is closing".
Yes, it honestly made us all laugh listening to the whiny people complaining about YouTube closing, as well as a few of them freaking out. And one thing before we continue, some people still think YouTube will close, and those people are wrong. The video was posted on April 1st, and inside the video, it said that YouTube is closing at midnight tonight... And it is now April 12th when writing this article. YouTube is not going anywhere, especially when Google makes almost half of their money from YouTube.
Well, that covers all of the Major April Fools jokes Google had this year. Here are a few more that we won't cover in detail, but they still happened, but they were not that big:
- Google Fiber Bar : Spoof of Google's high speed free Internet, now translated into a "Fiber Bar"
If you know of any more pranks or jokes Google did this year, please comment them, as we will add them to the list.
Looking forward to what Google has planned next year!
GMail Blue:
Probably the the most simple joke they did this year, but the most traditional and relating to April fools:
Google made a very serious video (in the beginning) that they were going to "revamp" GMail. By this they mean... Well... Making everything blue. No more other colours of GMail, besides to tint of blue. The video is quite convincing to the non-jokester portion of the population, but all in all, it's pretty funny. Here's a link to the page for GMail Blue.
Google Nose:
Probably the most funny in my opinion, really in the April Fools spirit. Welcome to Google Nose...
Google was saying that they are adding a whole new feature to their search function, as well as a new app for all the handheld devices. It was said that the app could "smell" things and search for them on Google. With their huge nose-base! I think this is the most funny joke, but not the biggest, which brings us to the most major April Fools joke Google has pulled this year.
YouTube's Picking The Winner Joke:
As you may have heard by probably everyone you know that uses the computer, YouTube "is closing".
Yes, it honestly made us all laugh listening to the whiny people complaining about YouTube closing, as well as a few of them freaking out. And one thing before we continue, some people still think YouTube will close, and those people are wrong. The video was posted on April 1st, and inside the video, it said that YouTube is closing at midnight tonight... And it is now April 12th when writing this article. YouTube is not going anywhere, especially when Google makes almost half of their money from YouTube.
Well, that covers all of the Major April Fools jokes Google had this year. Here are a few more that we won't cover in detail, but they still happened, but they were not that big:
- Google Fiber Bar : Spoof of Google's high speed free Internet, now translated into a "Fiber Bar"
If you know of any more pranks or jokes Google did this year, please comment them, as we will add them to the list.
Looking forward to what Google has planned next year!
Thursday, 11 April 2013
How To Make an Awesome Minecraft Bukkit Plugin
As the "How to make an awesome Minecraft Server" post on the Minecraft forum has gotten a bit more popular, we had some suggestions, and this was one of them.
We will teach you how to make a good Bukkit plugin. Please note that this tutorial only helps you create a good plugin in our eyes, and we have worked with and made dozens of plugins. So our opinion might help you out quite a bit. If you are looking for a list of good plugins to find for a server, and not how to make a plugin well, please stay tuned for a post telling you what the best plugins are for each type of server (Creative, PVP, Economy, Semi Vanilla, Role Playing, Events, and/or Adventure maps).
Now onto the part about learning how to create a good plugin:
First:
Get an idea for what your plugin will do and be about. If your not sure, try searching around a bit. Lots of people in the Minecraft community are looking for a custom/ new plugin for their server. If you want a different idea. Ask me in the comments and I will try to give you a suggestion!
On to the procedure!!!!
*NOTE:* WE ARE NOT SHOWING YOU HOW TO MAKE A PLUGIN. This article is assuming you already know how to make plugins, and work with Java. This is just giving plugin developers some ideas and/ or suggestions for the plugins they already have, or are planning on making.
1. Name your plugin:
Pick a small but original title for your plugin. You want one that catch the eye of server owners, but nothing that sounds like other plugins in the category that your plugin fits. For example, if your making a Server Economy plugin, don't make it sound like iConomy or Boseconomy. Try something that doesn't end with "Conomy" like a lot of other economy plugins do. We do agree that it does make the plugin more self explanatory, but it's no longer very original. Find another way to make it obvious on what it does; but nothing like the others. For example you could use jMoney; j for the first letter of the author of this post's name, and money to keep it away from the other plugins that end with the common "Conomy". If your satisfied with your plugin title, continue onto the next step.
2. Base lining code:
Start writing some of the code for your plugin, just the outline. What we mean by outline is; write the code that can make the plugin work, but nothing more, make it do what you wanted it to do when you got the idea for it. Once you think your finishing up, compile your code and run it on a testing server, and test out all the functions and commands for the plugin, checking for errors inside the console and in game if you specified it in your plugins code.
3. Making your plugin BETTER
Finally we reached the part of the article where we learn how to make the plugin BETTER.
A.) Making a user configuration file:
Every server owner loves to make the plugins they install trace back to the server. Whether the functions and commands echo with a starting prefix they can customise or the whole echo they can customise, so they can replace it with their own wording, or even language. No server owner likes when a plugin that smears its logo all over the command output or chat output. If you want your plugin to be heard, put a command in the plugin that shows the plugin info, with version number and your name in it. If we install a plugin on our server, and they smear their logo all over it, we usually end up finding a less intrusive plugin. But if your plugin is good, and doesn't have branding, donate buttons, or authors names smothering it; most people will either look into the other plugins you have, or support you in some way. Our official server has an author plugin, which announces when one of our plugins authors join the server, and gives them certain items and permissions when they join the game, including all of the permissions for the plugin they made. (We made this, please don't ask for it). Moving onto more configuration; people want the most options possible in the written configuration file, leave the values or fields set in the config to be a reasonable amount for the average server (for those people that don't want to touch the config). If you don't know exactly what "give people the most options". It means let the end user have the most options to configure the plugin. Back to the example with the Economy plugin; a way you could give your users more option is by letting them edit the server name in the config, so when people do the command to see their balance, it could say at the top of the output "ExampleCraft Economy";. Also, you could make a feature where people can edit the money name. What I mean by that is, people can edit the output instead of "1000 dollars" they could do "1000 ExampleCraft Bucks". I hope that tells you a bit of what I mean. People like their own custom plugins that match their server. And the more options you give the user, the more people you can reach with the plugin
B) Most possible Commands:
Try to add every possible command to the plugin with the code you have made already, some people like simple plugins, but admins like a plugin that they can control in almost every aspect possible in game, no server owners likes logging into their console or editing files instead of typing a few things in In-Game chat, try not to give too many commands, just enough to make the players happy (Very few) and the admins happy (Commands to work the plugin, quite a bit more than player commands.)
C) Permissions
We all know that this may not be the easiest part of the plugin, but it will make a difference if your plugin is good in the eyes of the server owner and the people downloading your plugin, trust us. First make the permissions that would just relate to a OP and Non-Op system, so that people without a permissions plugin can use the plugin flawlessly. Give powerful commands to ops, and give the regular commands to players. Be careful though, some servers don't like players with some commands, so be quite restrictive on what you give players. Secondly, write the permission nodes for those server owners with permissions plugins. From experience, server owner don't like doing a whole lot of permissions, so if your plugin has lots of commands (Insane amounts) and a permission node for each, continue onto the next step. (Optional) Make some permission GROUPS. Not groups as in Admin, Moderator, or Owner. We mean groups like "ExampleCraft.player.help". This will give the server admins the ease of adding multiple permissions. For example: For some of the plugins we have made, we make default group permissions like ExampleCraft.player.help" , ExampleCraft.moderator.help , ExampleCraft.admin.help , ExampleCraft.donator.help. This means that all the permissions that a default player should have, should follow the format of "ExampleCraft.player.PermissionNodeHere , and all the moderator permissions should be "ExampleCraft.moderator.PermissionNodeHere .... etc.
This allows server owners to fine tune the permission to each group by adding them individually by adding for example "ExampleCraft.player.help" or just by giving all the suggested default permissions to the player group by adding the permission "ExampleCraft.player.*". This may seem like a lot for you to do, but it saves the people downloading your plugin and having to do all the permissions, and makes for some love for your plugin :).
4. Publishing your plugin
Post your plugin! Try writing a very detailed and well planned description and help documents about the plugin and try posting the plugin. I don't post to other sites besides BukkitDev because they are the most full featured, and easy to use, and has a huge community behind it, for support. But feel free to post anywhere else you feel you should, since the more you post it, the more people likely to use it. And I say it again, most people lose people because of poor documentation. Write help documents, command lists, permission nodes, and other documents you would need related to the plugin.
5. (Optional) Updating and support
Most plugins that get constant updates and support from the developer team and/ or authors become quite popular, because they can rely on them staying around, and that when they encounter a problem or bug, it will be fixed sooner or later in the future updates.
Well, that seems like it for now. If you know a tip to make your plugin better, please comment it below and I will add it, or if you have questions, you can also comment and respond to it once I get the time.
Thanks for reading!
We will teach you how to make a good Bukkit plugin. Please note that this tutorial only helps you create a good plugin in our eyes, and we have worked with and made dozens of plugins. So our opinion might help you out quite a bit. If you are looking for a list of good plugins to find for a server, and not how to make a plugin well, please stay tuned for a post telling you what the best plugins are for each type of server (Creative, PVP, Economy, Semi Vanilla, Role Playing, Events, and/or Adventure maps).
Now onto the part about learning how to create a good plugin:
First:
Get an idea for what your plugin will do and be about. If your not sure, try searching around a bit. Lots of people in the Minecraft community are looking for a custom/ new plugin for their server. If you want a different idea. Ask me in the comments and I will try to give you a suggestion!
On to the procedure!!!!
*NOTE:* WE ARE NOT SHOWING YOU HOW TO MAKE A PLUGIN. This article is assuming you already know how to make plugins, and work with Java. This is just giving plugin developers some ideas and/ or suggestions for the plugins they already have, or are planning on making.
1. Name your plugin:
Pick a small but original title for your plugin. You want one that catch the eye of server owners, but nothing that sounds like other plugins in the category that your plugin fits. For example, if your making a Server Economy plugin, don't make it sound like iConomy or Boseconomy. Try something that doesn't end with "Conomy" like a lot of other economy plugins do. We do agree that it does make the plugin more self explanatory, but it's no longer very original. Find another way to make it obvious on what it does; but nothing like the others. For example you could use jMoney; j for the first letter of the author of this post's name, and money to keep it away from the other plugins that end with the common "Conomy". If your satisfied with your plugin title, continue onto the next step.
2. Base lining code:
Start writing some of the code for your plugin, just the outline. What we mean by outline is; write the code that can make the plugin work, but nothing more, make it do what you wanted it to do when you got the idea for it. Once you think your finishing up, compile your code and run it on a testing server, and test out all the functions and commands for the plugin, checking for errors inside the console and in game if you specified it in your plugins code.
3. Making your plugin BETTER
Finally we reached the part of the article where we learn how to make the plugin BETTER.
A.) Making a user configuration file:
Every server owner loves to make the plugins they install trace back to the server. Whether the functions and commands echo with a starting prefix they can customise or the whole echo they can customise, so they can replace it with their own wording, or even language. No server owner likes when a plugin that smears its logo all over the command output or chat output. If you want your plugin to be heard, put a command in the plugin that shows the plugin info, with version number and your name in it. If we install a plugin on our server, and they smear their logo all over it, we usually end up finding a less intrusive plugin. But if your plugin is good, and doesn't have branding, donate buttons, or authors names smothering it; most people will either look into the other plugins you have, or support you in some way. Our official server has an author plugin, which announces when one of our plugins authors join the server, and gives them certain items and permissions when they join the game, including all of the permissions for the plugin they made. (We made this, please don't ask for it). Moving onto more configuration; people want the most options possible in the written configuration file, leave the values or fields set in the config to be a reasonable amount for the average server (for those people that don't want to touch the config). If you don't know exactly what "give people the most options". It means let the end user have the most options to configure the plugin. Back to the example with the Economy plugin; a way you could give your users more option is by letting them edit the server name in the config, so when people do the command to see their balance, it could say at the top of the output "ExampleCraft Economy";. Also, you could make a feature where people can edit the money name. What I mean by that is, people can edit the output instead of "1000 dollars" they could do "1000 ExampleCraft Bucks". I hope that tells you a bit of what I mean. People like their own custom plugins that match their server. And the more options you give the user, the more people you can reach with the plugin
B) Most possible Commands:
Try to add every possible command to the plugin with the code you have made already, some people like simple plugins, but admins like a plugin that they can control in almost every aspect possible in game, no server owners likes logging into their console or editing files instead of typing a few things in In-Game chat, try not to give too many commands, just enough to make the players happy (Very few) and the admins happy (Commands to work the plugin, quite a bit more than player commands.)
C) Permissions
We all know that this may not be the easiest part of the plugin, but it will make a difference if your plugin is good in the eyes of the server owner and the people downloading your plugin, trust us. First make the permissions that would just relate to a OP and Non-Op system, so that people without a permissions plugin can use the plugin flawlessly. Give powerful commands to ops, and give the regular commands to players. Be careful though, some servers don't like players with some commands, so be quite restrictive on what you give players. Secondly, write the permission nodes for those server owners with permissions plugins. From experience, server owner don't like doing a whole lot of permissions, so if your plugin has lots of commands (Insane amounts) and a permission node for each, continue onto the next step. (Optional) Make some permission GROUPS. Not groups as in Admin, Moderator, or Owner. We mean groups like "ExampleCraft.player.help". This will give the server admins the ease of adding multiple permissions. For example: For some of the plugins we have made, we make default group permissions like ExampleCraft.player.help" , ExampleCraft.moderator.help , ExampleCraft.admin.help , ExampleCraft.donator.help. This means that all the permissions that a default player should have, should follow the format of "ExampleCraft.player.PermissionNodeHere , and all the moderator permissions should be "ExampleCraft.moderator.PermissionNodeHere .... etc.
This allows server owners to fine tune the permission to each group by adding them individually by adding for example "ExampleCraft.player.help" or just by giving all the suggested default permissions to the player group by adding the permission "ExampleCraft.player.*". This may seem like a lot for you to do, but it saves the people downloading your plugin and having to do all the permissions, and makes for some love for your plugin :).
4. Publishing your plugin
Post your plugin! Try writing a very detailed and well planned description and help documents about the plugin and try posting the plugin. I don't post to other sites besides BukkitDev because they are the most full featured, and easy to use, and has a huge community behind it, for support. But feel free to post anywhere else you feel you should, since the more you post it, the more people likely to use it. And I say it again, most people lose people because of poor documentation. Write help documents, command lists, permission nodes, and other documents you would need related to the plugin.
5. (Optional) Updating and support
Most plugins that get constant updates and support from the developer team and/ or authors become quite popular, because they can rely on them staying around, and that when they encounter a problem or bug, it will be fixed sooner or later in the future updates.
Well, that seems like it for now. If you know a tip to make your plugin better, please comment it below and I will add it, or if you have questions, you can also comment and respond to it once I get the time.
Thanks for reading!
Friday, 5 April 2013
Welcome to my blog! (Late)
Hi everyone! I know this really isn't an intro anymore, since I have posted a few times already. But I would like to formerly add a better introduction to my blog than in my first. My names Jake. Or Jacob, but I really don't care which you call me, ill listen to both, but I do prefer Jake. I am an avid programmer in several languages, and I have a thing for computers with more than one monitor. I also like Minecraft on PC and FPShooters on PS3. I also am interested in hosting, servers, networking, and network security. So expect posts in the field to have a heavy opinion from my side. Other posts will just be a recap if I don't know the topic very well, and I will try my hardest to recap with every detail that is needed, while not forgetting to include anything. It is really not the easiest to recap a story in a shorter post, but include all the details. But I do try my best to keep the posts as frequent as I can, as I am busy and this blog isn't what I focus on. I would love to have this blog as my only place that I can write, but it is simply not as popular as it can be to keep me occupied on this. This is not the only blog I maintain, I have other blogs I post to and they are quite popular, so I keep those updated. Once this blog bypasses those blogs, I will take those posts of the other blogs, and post them here, and keep this blog updated daily.
This blog is mainly focused on tech, but occasionally contains the latest world news and things like that. I try to keep a balance. I hope in the future to blog about basically anything to reach across to a huge range of readers, to keep everyone pleased.
The blog/ my blog started out as just a gaming blog, keeping updates on basically Call of Duty and Minecraft. Then I extended to technology, keeping updates on the latest technology and inventions. Then we started to connect between technology and gaming, bringing in new consoles and gaming accessories, and how to run some cool technology with new games. Then it expanded to more and more games on more and more consoles. Then we expanded to current events. The blog now covers quite a large range of topics and we are always looking for more. I have had many ideas for what I can publish here, but I don't have enough time for it all. Once I start getting into blogging more seriously, and I get into my journalism degree, and actually have the time for all this, I will start blogging more and more often, with bigger and better topics.
So again, and in conclusion, thanks for reading up on my blog, every single one of you make me smile each day when I come onto my blog with new topics and when I write other articles content and edit them. I hope you enjoy my content thus far and in the future! Thanks to all of you for making my blog what it is today!
This blog is mainly focused on tech, but occasionally contains the latest world news and things like that. I try to keep a balance. I hope in the future to blog about basically anything to reach across to a huge range of readers, to keep everyone pleased.
The blog/ my blog started out as just a gaming blog, keeping updates on basically Call of Duty and Minecraft. Then I extended to technology, keeping updates on the latest technology and inventions. Then we started to connect between technology and gaming, bringing in new consoles and gaming accessories, and how to run some cool technology with new games. Then it expanded to more and more games on more and more consoles. Then we expanded to current events. The blog now covers quite a large range of topics and we are always looking for more. I have had many ideas for what I can publish here, but I don't have enough time for it all. Once I start getting into blogging more seriously, and I get into my journalism degree, and actually have the time for all this, I will start blogging more and more often, with bigger and better topics.
So again, and in conclusion, thanks for reading up on my blog, every single one of you make me smile each day when I come onto my blog with new topics and when I write other articles content and edit them. I hope you enjoy my content thus far and in the future! Thanks to all of you for making my blog what it is today!
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