November 28th, 2008 / 1 Comment » / by Travis Cunningham
Here’s my new desktop:
(Click to Enlarge)
Here is the tutorial on how to make your desktop like that: Customize your Own…. I like it, but it does take up some CPU to take all those stats on the system.
November 27th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
The development of kerPlunk was halted for a short period recently because I’ve been busy with friends and parties and other things and I have not had time to work on the project much. kerPlunk will be a full featured Instant Messaging program when it is completed (Well a major build at least, we will still update it) and will including internet meeting features as well as a few other minor things. Basically it is our own protocol of instant messaging just like AIM or Yahoo.
I would like to receive some feedback from IM users and internet meeting users as to what features they wish their existing program would add, because I would be willing to integrate user requested features within kerPlunk. If you request it, I’ll work on it. So leave a comment on a feature request or something you think the instant messaging program should have.
Some ideas (Things not on our to-do list… yet):
Folder Sharing - A custom folder(s) in which you can sync/share files between 2 or more people in addition to sharing single files.
Screen Sharing - The idea describes itself.
Realtime Music Sharing - Listen to music with your friends, even if the file isn’t on their computer.
Theatr - Watch a movie with your friends.
IM and Voice Logging on Website - If you want to hear a conversation whether via instant messaging or voice on a computer without the kerPlunk software, you can visit the control panel on the kerPlunk website and play back a conversation or read it. Voice to text could be added so you could read voice conversations directly from the site.
Type-Board - Kind of like a whiteboard in which you can right things on, but you can type things. This allows you to share computer code with other people as well as notes or other things. You can also simultaneously edit documents and other paperwork.
What else?
October 27th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
I need some help coding kerPlunk (as it is only a side project for me) to make it better. The more volunteers I get, the better the chance that the program will be open source. If you would like to help out with the project (and you have some C# programming knowledge), contact me and I’ll give you some source code to work with.
Hopefully this project will be a more common program as more and more people start to use it. I also need help converting the code to C++ as well as to Linux and Mac. You might even get a staff listing if you do such a good job with the program.
If you were wondering what kerPlunk was, you can find it here: http://zotagsearch.com/kp/
Interested? Contact me on the right hand panel.
Edit: I will pay anyone $75 via Paypal to anyone who can compile it in C++ and/or get it working cross platform.
October 27th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
Well I can’t use networking in Windows anymore because I pretty much screwed it up. Thats what happens when you mess with the drivers. Anyways I’m going to have a fresh start with this pc… Have a lot of installing to do and I have to move my files back to it once I’m done with that, plus music and… well it wont be fun.
I tried switching to Ubuntu, but I can’t get used to it as a main environment. And plus, Windows supports everything. I measure my computer by how much I can get done on it, not how good the os is (yah dont talk me into mac).
Wish me luck, and hope I dont lose any files. I have lots of projects to work on!!!
October 21st, 2008 / 2 Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
I am not quite sure if I am correct or not, but I would like to provide a response to an earlier blog post (Google runs Apache and Cpanel). Many people have been in disbelief or have thought I was making up a story about what I had experienced first hand. I would like to show you why I wrote that other blog post and how that is perfectly reasonable. Google has such a great team of people monitoring requests to the server, they could have fixed it within seconds of me testing this. I will post the screen shots of the responses (which you can check by doing this whole thing yourself) because I do not want to host an nginx server.
When you connect to an Nginx proxy, it sends a “host” request header to the server. When you set the web server in the conf to a website, such as zotagsearch.com, it is requesting “localhost” from the web server (apache or any other server) instead of zotagsearch.com. Look at the configuration below in the Nginx testing to see that in effect. This means if your web server has a host set to zotagsearch.com, then a request for http://localhost/ would return an invalid response because there is no directory set to this. Look at this configuration below to understand:
Apache Virtual Hosts:
<VirtualHost zotagsearch.com:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@zotagsearch.com
DocumentRoot /htdocs/pathtofiles
ServerName zotagsearch.com
ServerAlias www.zotagsearch.com
ErrorLog @rel_logfiledir@/dummy-host.example.com-error_log
CustomLog @rel_logfiledir@/dummy-host.example.com-access_log common
</VirtualHost>
If it got a request for http://localhost/, Apache would be like “dude i dont have any files to server to ya, sorry”.
Test one (on http://thelastnight.us/, a friend of mine):
My Nginx Configuration File:
location / {
proxy_pass http://thelastnight.us/;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header Server “testresponses”;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
client_max_body_size 10m;
client_body_buffer_size 128k;
proxy_connect_timeout 99999;
proxy_send_timeout 99999;
proxy_read_timeout 99999;
proxy_buffer_size 4k;
proxy_buffers 4 32k;
proxy_busy_buffers_size 64k;
proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k;
}
Response screen shot:
TheLastNight.us Nginx Proxy Response
Bluehost has a configured response for invalid requests to the server. Google could have easily not set this property.
Test two (on http://theplanet.com/):
My Nginx Configuration File:
location / {
proxy_pass http://theplanet.com/;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header Server “testresponses”;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
client_max_body_size 10m;
client_body_buffer_size 128k;
proxy_connect_timeout 99999;
proxy_send_timeout 99999;
proxy_read_timeout 99999;
proxy_buffer_size 4k;
proxy_buffers 4 32k;
proxy_busy_buffers_size 64k;
proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k;
}
Response screen shot:
The Response from theplanet.com
The response from the server was invalid because nothing was set at that address. As you can see, the web server was requested http://localhost/.
Test three (on http://webhostingdiscussion.com/):
My Nginx Configuration File:
location / {
proxy_pass http://webhostingdiscussion.com;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header Server “testresponses”;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
client_max_body_size 10m;
client_body_buffer_size 128k;
proxy_connect_timeout 99999;
proxy_send_timeout 99999;
proxy_read_timeout 99999;
proxy_buffer_size 4k;
proxy_buffers 4 32k;
proxy_busy_buffers_size 64k;
proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k;
}
Response screen shot:
WebHostingDiscussion.com Nginx Response
If you go to http://webhostingdiscussion.com/, you will get a website about web hosting discussion.
Test four (on http://robinsblog.com/):
My Nginx Configuration File:
location / {
proxy_pass http://robinsblog.com;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header Server “testresponses”;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
client_max_body_size 10m;
client_body_buffer_size 128k;
proxy_connect_timeout 99999;
proxy_send_timeout 99999;
proxy_read_timeout 99999;
proxy_buffer_size 4k;
proxy_buffers 4 32k;
proxy_busy_buffers_size 64k;
proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k;
}
Response: I received a response for a listing of files, such as phpinfo, mysqlinfo, and other files stored in a directory on the server. These are files available to the server admin. He does not know that these tools are in public to see. I do not want to post this screen shot so the server does not get exploited.
In conclusion, my findings are provable on other web servers with not so large teams to fix errors as quick as Google. I have no reason to make up something like that, as I was just showing my findings.
I have yet to find a web server running cpanel (due to lack of time i want to spend on this) with an invalid response. Try a few web servers in your nginx configuration and you will understand how I got this response. If you search long enough, you will find a web server that has an invalid response because there is no host to http://localhost/.
September 30th, 2008 / 2 Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
In this tutorial you will learn how to learn more information about the people who visit your site and store it all in a text file. The log file is located at “log.txt”.
Here’s the entire script:
<? $file = "log.txt"; // lets sniff the user $ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']; $browser = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']; $time = date("F d, Y H:i:s", time()); $referrer = $_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"]; $userinfo = "IP >> $ip | Browser >> $browser | Time >> $time | Referrer >> $referrer \n"; // this is the format how it will record stuff // write to the file now $fp = fopen("$file", "a"); fwrite($fp, $userinfo); fclose($fp); ?>
September 11th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
It started off as a P2P program that would just send simple data packets from one client to another, but has turned into a voice chat program. It works great when you need it because it has simple code, so it is pretty reliable.
It uses UDP ports 4000 and 4005 to transfer data, so thats the only downside to the program because you will have to open up your firewall. In a release coming up, you will not need to forward ports on your firewall.
Right now (Sept. 11, 08), the program is still in beta, which means it will have many other features, but we have not added them to the program… yet. Future additions will include a buddy list, higher quality voice, group chat, and a few more ideas.
Here’s a screenshot of the release on Sept 11, 08:
You can check out the program here: kerPlunk Voice Chat
September 2nd, 2008 / No Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
Google just released a really cool browser called “Chrome” which combines the AppleWebKit with some of Firefox’s code. Many people have been waiting for a web browser from Google and here it is.
Just released today, I would have to say I’m impressed with some of the features and how simple the browser actually is. You could almost say its a *fun* browser because there is not so much clutter everywhere and you still get the features you still want in a browser.
Speed. It uses the Apple Web Kit, which is the open source framework in which you can create a web browser from. It also includes a few Firefox features. Its faster than Safari or Firefox 3. Every individual task you do on Chrome uses multi-threading to get the task done faster (This includes plugins, tabs, settings, and other features of the program). If you right click on the title bar, you can access a “task manager” which allows you to end certain process’s of tasks that are not responding or you don’t want to run anymore. Here’s a picture of the task manager below:
Google Chrome Task Manager
Google Chrome also has DNS prefetching so your browser doesn’t have to go looking for the IP address of the server for everything you click. Chrome automatically looks at other links on the page and performs the DNS query while you browse.
Simplicity. Thats how Google wanted to create the browser, “Just like the homepage,” and thats how it turned out. You can get to the things you want and hide them when you aren’t using them. If you were wondering about the statusbar, it has a really unique one that pops up from the bottom of the screen when you hover over a link or click on one. Here’s an image of the statusbar:
Google Chrome Status Bar
Developer Tools. If you have ever seen the developer tools for Safari, then you have seen the developer tools for Chrome. Both Safari and Chrome have somewhat the same tools and it also has the same *looks* so don’t worry if you liked how pretty Safari was. Hopefully in the future they will provide more tools.
What it needs:
August 30th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
I’ve been real interested in some of Google’s new features lately, including Android, the first open source phone.
And since it is open source, you can download the SDK for free, and you can develope your own programs for it for free, unlike the iPhone in which you have to pay a fee. I really think this has a great future, and a lot of advanced computer users will use the Google phone because it runs Linux.
Hopefully it will be released soon, because I’ll get one.
Read on Engadget
August 22nd, 2008 / No Comments » / by Travis Cunningham
I created 4 shutdown/startup sounds for my computer on my midi keyboard, and I decided I would post them on here. Here’s the public folder for the sounds:
My name is Travis Cunningham, I'm 14 years old, and I am a web developer from Indiana. Here's a little more about me: About Me. Feel free to contact me below.
AIM: creaturemn6
Email: travis.cunningham94@gmail.com
Twitter: Follow Me (travisc94)
Public Dir: /public
I write these posts for your pleasure and for showing other people my developments and progress with this website. So enjoy!
