GeekShed IRC Network
Ban Appeal Module
Apr 14th
Due to the increasing number of people whining about channel bans in other channels, we came up with an easy solution. This was to create the page at http://www.geekshed.net/2010/04/ban-appeals/ and add information of channel’s ban appeal procedures. This page can than be linked to when someone is wondering what they can do about a channel ban.
However, this is a very messy solution and one that would take much time to maintain. Instead, we have come up with a better solution! We have written and loaded a module for Anope which allows anyone with access to ChanServ’s SET command, on a channel, to set a ban appeal procedure for that channel. This will, sometime in the near future, have the data taken from it and placed dynamically in the table you see in the link above. However, for the moment, ban appeal procedure info is shown if you do a “/cs info” command on a channel. For example: /cs info #help. You will see “Ban appeal information: Bans cannot be appealed”.
To set a ban appeal procedure on your channel use the following command:
/CS SET #channel BANINFO your ban info
For example:
/cs set #help baninfo Bans cannot be appealed
To remove the ban appeal procedure from your channel, just emit the procedure. For example:
/cs set #help baninfo
Anyone who requested that an appeal procedure be added to the site has had it automatically ported over into the new module.
Note: When the web page generation is complete EVERY channel with a ban appeal procedure set will be listed. If you don’t want your channel to be listed do not set an appeal procedure!
However, this is a very messy solution and one that would take much time to maintain. Instead, we have come up with a better solution! We have written and loaded a module for Anope which allows anyone with access to ChanServ’s SET command, on a channel, to set a ban appeal procedure for that channel. This will, sometime in the near future, have the data taken from it and placed dynamically in the table you see in the link above. However, for the moment, ban appeal procedure info is shown if you do a “/cs info” command on a channel. For example: /cs info #help. You will see “Ban appeal information: Bans cannot be appealed”.
To set a ban appeal procedure on your channel use the following command:
/CS SET #channel BANINFO your ban info
For example:
/cs set #help baninfo Bans cannot be appealed
To remove the ban appeal procedure from your channel, just emit the procedure. For example:
/cs set #help baninfo
Anyone who requested that an appeal procedure be added to the site has had it automatically ported over into the new module.
Note: When the web page generation is complete EVERY channel with a ban appeal procedure set will be listed. If you don’t want your channel to be listed do not set an appeal procedure!
New Staff Member – CCMike
Feb 21st
There is a concept. This concept is difficult for the author to understand. Some people call it ‘real life’. Sadly, this mischievous beast has gotten in the way once more and our newest staff member, Kyle, has been forced to resign his staff position to pursue further education. This is a great loss to GeekShed and we wish him all the best with his studies.
In an attempt to fill the gaping hole left by Kyle’s resignation, we have asked CCMike to join the GeekShed staff team. He kindly accepted this offer and we are thrilled to have him on the team. CCMike has been on GeekShed and its predecessor for 5+ years and is a great friend to many.
Like any new staff member, Mike has a lot to learn but we are confident that he will take this in his stride.
In an attempt to fill the gaping hole left by Kyle’s resignation, we have asked CCMike to join the GeekShed staff team. He kindly accepted this offer and we are thrilled to have him on the team. CCMike has been on GeekShed and its predecessor for 5+ years and is a great friend to many.
Like any new staff member, Mike has a lot to learn but we are confident that he will take this in his stride.
Flash Client Upgrade
Jan 7th
We have, for quite a while now, offered TFlash as our web based IRC client. This was originally written as a quick replacement for the Java client we used previously. TFlash has, however, stood up to the test of time and has proved to be a very popular client amongst users.
We have now decided that it is time to upgrade TFlash to make it bigger and better. To this end, we contracted Mike Parks (BigRedPimp) of thinkrightgames.com to carry out the work. He is an incredibly experienced Flash developer and has made an exceptional job of the new Flash Client.
Today we have launched this new client and it should now be embedded on all of the sites that had the old Flash client embedded.
Development of the client started in early December and, since then, a team of testers have tirelessly tested it and removed bugs. We thank them for their help. If you do however find a bug, please report it using the address at the top of the new flash client.
BigRedPimp has put in a huge amount of effort with this project and we thank him unreservedly for his time and for doing this project for such a low cost. We are glad to call him a friend of GeekShed.
If you have any questions about the new Flash client, please come and see us in #help on irc.geekshed.net.
You can see the new TFlash at http://www.geekshed.net/chat/
We have now decided that it is time to upgrade TFlash to make it bigger and better. To this end, we contracted Mike Parks (BigRedPimp) of thinkrightgames.com to carry out the work. He is an incredibly experienced Flash developer and has made an exceptional job of the new Flash Client.
Today we have launched this new client and it should now be embedded on all of the sites that had the old Flash client embedded.
Development of the client started in early December and, since then, a team of testers have tirelessly tested it and removed bugs. We thank them for their help. If you do however find a bug, please report it using the address at the top of the new flash client.
BigRedPimp has put in a huge amount of effort with this project and we thank him unreservedly for his time and for doing this project for such a low cost. We are glad to call him a friend of GeekShed.
If you have any questions about the new Flash client, please come and see us in #help on irc.geekshed.net.
You can see the new TFlash at http://www.geekshed.net/chat/
Login Service
Jan 4th
We have, for a while now, had a login service which links to our services database to allow you to login to areas of the site, such as the quote database, using your services login. This has always been an experimental feature however we are now happy that it’s working great and have finalized it. We have applied an SSL certificate to the site to allow your username and password to be encrypted as it passes over the Internet for our auth service to verify.
We hope to be able to use this service in the future for lots of cool areas of the site including web based nickname and channel registration.
We hope to be able to use this service in the future for lots of cool areas of the site including web based nickname and channel registration.
Subservient Chris Raises Money for GeekShed and the MDA
Dec 26th
For the past two years, Chris Pirillo has held a fundraiser on New Year’s Eve known as Subservient Chris. Both of those years, all of the money raised went directly to the IRC network to help defray expenses and operating costs. This year, we plan to do things differently.
Cory (Gimpi) Carrier was a member of our IRC network for many, many years. We were all lucky to have called him our friend. Cory struggled with Muscular Dystrophy from the time he was born, and worked tirelessly raising money for the MDA. We sadly lost Cory back on October 1st of this year, due to complications from the H1N1 Flu virus. His loss has left a huge hole in our community, and in our hearts. Therefore, we wanted to find a way to remember and honor him. Chris Pirillo is helping us do just that, because Cory was also a member of his community.
For the fundraiser this year, GeekShed will only be keeping 25% of the donations received. At the end of the night, we will be donating the remaining 75% to the Tuscon, AZ chapter of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, who worked with Cory and his family for so many years. They provided care and support for Cory – and many others – and do a lot of good things for people struggling with this awful disease.
Here’s how the fundraiser works: on New Year’s Eve from 10PM until 1AM Eastern time, Chris will turn himself into the equivalent of the Subservient Chicken. You, the community, can make your donations directly to GeekShed. For a minimum $10.00 donation, you can request something silly for Chris to do live on his stream. As you make the donation, simply put your request for him in the comments section, so that he will know what it is you want him to do.
In the past, Chris has done everything from singing songs like Barbie Girl to putting peanut butter on his face for his puppies to lick off! He’ll do pretty much anything you ask, as long as it’s legal, and not demeaning/disgusting. Please keep in mind that younger people will be watching, and keep your requests appropriate.
Please join us on New Year’s Eve for the fun and laughter. If you are able to make a donation, we would sincerely appreciate it. I know that the people we are working with at the MDA are appreciative, as well as Cory’s family.
Quote Database
Dec 18th
Development of the long awaited quote database has finally completed today. It was halted for an extended period owing to Anope’s old encryption being stranger than a hippie on Halloween. We have converted the majority of the passwords in our database to SHA1 and it is therefore now possible to use the QDB.
Check it out and submit some hilarious quotes of your own at http://www.geekshed.net/qdb/.
If you have any problems, come and see us in #help on irc.geekshed.net.
Check it out and submit some hilarious quotes of your own at http://www.geekshed.net/qdb/.
If you have any problems, come and see us in #help on irc.geekshed.net.
Normal service is resumed
Dec 11th
Due to an over keen data-centre staff member inadvertently taking one of our servers from its rack and formatting it, we have suffered an extended period of downtime for some of our services. These services include RSS topic feeds and User Count badges.
A new server was brought online today and we have restored the information from backups to this server. Normal service is now resumed.
If you notice any problems, let us know in #help on irc.geekshed.net.
Network Wide Bot System
Dec 10th
Those of you with better memory may remember this. Development of this was started before those of us who run GeekShed left WyldRyde. For obvious reasons, development was postponed and has, fairly recently, resumed.
For those of you who don’t remember, here is an overview…
GeekShed is releasing a network wide bot system named ShedServ. This is a modular system, written in Java. It links directly to the GeekShed network and provides services to channel owners. Because the system is so extensible, there is little that it cannot do and we are more than happy to take suggestions for features which you, the channel owners, would like.
At present, the core of the system is written. We also have 2 modules – one for enabling your channel in the system and the other for creating and assigning bots to your channel. The first feature creating module that shall be written is a responder module. This will allow channel owners to add triggers to the bot which will trigger a response, when used in the channel. For example, you will be able to add a !site trigger which says “Our website is http://www.somesite.com/ – Visit us today!”.
Other features for the future are RSS feed parsing, ability to register nicknames from the GeekShed website and many others that I cannot remember right now.
ETA of this system is currently unknown but we hope to have it complete within the next 2 weeks. Once it is released, we are looking for testers. The requirements to become a tester are…
- First a foremost, you MUST understand that this is an experimental system and that you are TESTING it. You must also accept that you may find bugs and exploits in it and that it really isn’t clever to cause havoc, using these. These bugs and exploits should be reported to #help to get them fixed for the stable release.
- Your channel must have a user average of 5+ users.
- You must also tweet or blog about GeekShed, your favourite channels and this blog post.
- You must finally comment on this post to say that you would like to try the system, stating your nickname, your channel and the link to your tweet or blog post.
We look forward to hearing from you and thank you for using GeekShed.
New Server and Staff Member
Dec 5th
Today, GeekShed has welcomed another server to its array and another staff member to its ranks. We are pleased to announce the linking of a new server, based in Kent, England, named Andromus. This server has been donated by Kyle, who, after many years of service to GeekShed has been asked to join our staff team. This is never a decision taken lightly (see can I be an oper on GeekShed for info) and we wholly believe that he will be a great asset to the team. Kyle is based in Australia and has much experience running IRC networks. Feel free to come chat to him in #help on irc.geekshed.net.
Does GeekShed have IPv6 Support?
Nov 18th
As of 17 November, 2009 – We do! This is currently a purely experimental feature but we would greatly appreciate your testing and feedback on it. You can connect to GeekShed’s IPv6 Round Robin at ipv6.geekshed.net.
If you require any help with anything IPv6, come see us in #help.