GeekShed IRC Network
Twitter in your channel
Jan 18th
GeekShed provides a twitter bot, aptly named “Twitter”, to provide you with a twitter feed in your channel. It’s very easy to use and doesn’t require that you give over your twitter login. Remember, GeekShed will never ask you for your Twitter login! To use it, follow these simple steps:
All of the commands below need to be done in a PM (private message) with the bot (Twitter).
!register fred asecretpassword
!pin fred asecretpassword 5984934
If this is successful, the bot will tell you so.
!addchan fred asecretpassword #fred
You can do this command again to add your twitter feed to more channels.
If you have any issues with this, please let us know in #help.
All of the commands below need to be done in a PM (private message) with the bot (Twitter).
Register with the bot
Send a PM to the IRC user “Twitter” with the !register command. The syntax of this is: !register <username> <password>. Username and password are the credentials you will use to log into the bot in future. An example of this is:!register fred asecretpassword
Allow the bot to read your twitter feed
When you register, you will be presented with a URL that you must go to and log into your twitter account. Click the “Allow” button and you will be given a PIN code. Now return back to the bot and use the !pin command to tell the bot what your PIN number is. The syntax of this is: !pin <usernam> <password> <pin>. An example of this is:!pin fred asecretpassword 5984934
If this is successful, the bot will tell you so.
Add your channel(s)
You can add up to 10 channels to the bot. You must be an op in a channel in order to add the bot to it. To make the bot announce your tweets in a channel, you need to use the !addchan command. This will make the bot join that channel if it’s not already in there. The syntax of this command is: !addchan <username> <password> <channel>. An example of this is:!addchan fred asecretpassword #fred
You can do this command again to add your twitter feed to more channels.
Tweet and wait
Due to the limitations of Twitter’s API, the bot looks for new tweets every 60 seconds. Within 60 seconds of you tweeting, your tweet will show up in all of the channels you have added.Other commands
You can delete your account and remove the bot from a channel using other commands in the bot. PM the bot “!help” to see these commands.If you have any issues with this, please let us know in #help.
New Staff Member -tengrrl
Jul 2nd
We would like to announce the addition of a new staff member to our team.
Today, we have asked tengrrl to join our network staff, and she has gratefully accepted. We are very lucky to have another experienced person on the team.
There is a lot to learn, and we are confident she will master this with time. Please welcome tengrrl to our staff and congratulate her on her new position.
Today, we have asked tengrrl to join our network staff, and she has gratefully accepted. We are very lucky to have another experienced person on the team.
There is a lot to learn, and we are confident she will master this with time. Please welcome tengrrl to our staff and congratulate her on her new position.
The past 8 months
Jun 21st
GeekShed is now near enough 8 months old. Those of you who have been with us from the start may remember the document outlining why the majority of the staff and servers were splitting away from WyldRyde and starting a-fresh on GeekShed. Those of you who don’t remember can find the document in PDF format. Since that happened, an awful lot has gone on. GeekShed has grown by nearly 50% and is still growing. We have recently surpassed the peak user count that we saw when we were part of WyldRyde. The SearchIRC graphs below show this:
The above user counts include network bots – WyldRyde has approx 125 and GeekShed 110. GeekShed is currently (at time of writing) ranked the 60th biggest IRC network of 1,012 listed on SearchIRC. This is great!
Our Twitter channel has also been a great success. We have tweeted as regularly as we can – updating you on what’s new with GeekShed and how we’re getting along. We have recently passed the WyldRyde twitter channel in number of followers and we get approximately 70 mentions in an average week. The majority of these are positive, and we have tried to help, the best we can, those people who are posting negative messages due to encountering problems.
Our new YouTube channel is also doing great. We have a decent number of subscribers and are always gaining more. What we really need is for users to make videos that they think might help other users such that we can add more useful information to the channel. Most of the GeekShed staff use mIRC, and any client tutorials that can be made by users of other clients would be most appreciated. Come see us in #help if you have an idea.
We have also recently become directly involved in the development of our services package, Anope. We have worked with the Anope development team and committed bug fixes and new features to the 1.8 (stable) branch to help improve our services and help the wider Anope community. A number of new services modules have also been developed to make your experience better. These include the channel ban appeal module and associated web page, a module to automatically identify you if you ghost or recover a nickname, and a few other modules to increase the security and reliability of services.
We have implemented a BNC service and associated web management panel to provide bouncers designed for users who cannot always stay connected to GeekShed but would like to keep track of channel and private messages whilst they’re disconnected. This service also helps those users who have multiple computers, for example home and work computers as well as a laptop, and would like to connect to their IRC session from any location.
Updates and improvements have been made to the inherently badly written code of UnrealIRCD to make GeekShed’s IRCD more reliable and less resource intensive. Although unavoidable netsplits still occur, we have seen a decrease in buggy and crashy IRCD processes.
We have, by creating an Anope->XML database converter, allowed the site to interact with services. This has allowed us to provide private access areas of the site, such as QDB submissions, accessed using your services login. Integration with our services servers has also allowed us to provide things such as channel and user lists, user statistics and an automatically updating list of bots.
Your generosity has been astounding and we have received an amazing sum of money in donations over the past 8 months. This has enabled us to register as a company, renew the domains and privacy protection for the next 4 years, secure our services login with SSL, obtain attack resistent servers to help rid us of proxies and bots and, most importantly, redesign TFlash. TFlash’s redesign has allowed us to add a load of new features and make it generally easier for you to use and embed into your own site. We know adverts were a major point of dislike for our users when we were part of WyldRyde and your generosity has allowed us to make all of our services totally advert free. All of the staff are volunteers dedicated to making GeekShed a better place for users. Its intent has never been to make money and each and we are extremely grateful for every donation made.
The staff team has been refreshed. Those staff who are no longer active or have expressed that they do not have time for GeekShed have been removed and replaced with new staff members who have more time to spare. We feel that constantly injecting fresh blood into the staff team will help the network develop as new ideas are brought in. Every staff member has worked extremely hard and we are very thankful for all of their efforts.
Our server turnover has been remarkably high. Although we would like a low server turnover, this hasn’t necessarily been a bad thing. We have constantly been adding new servers and removing those which have not performed as expected. We are currently in a state where every server we have has proved to be reliable.
The GeekShed forums are doing well and it has been proved that free software works better than the paid software that was used on WyldRyde at the time of the split. We do not feel that it is necessary to waste donor’s money on unnecessary things.
Our terms of service have been developed over time to strike the best balance we can between network security, user safety, and freedom of action. We feel that they are currently in a state which balances these aspects effectively.
A lot has happened over the past 8 months. None of it could have been possible without the continued support of our users and staff – we are truly thankful to each one of you for sticking by us. Much is planned for the future and we urge you to continue to use our services and encourage your friends to do so also.
Many thanks
The GeekShed Staff
The above user counts include network bots – WyldRyde has approx 125 and GeekShed 110. GeekShed is currently (at time of writing) ranked the 60th biggest IRC network of 1,012 listed on SearchIRC. This is great!
Our Twitter channel has also been a great success. We have tweeted as regularly as we can – updating you on what’s new with GeekShed and how we’re getting along. We have recently passed the WyldRyde twitter channel in number of followers and we get approximately 70 mentions in an average week. The majority of these are positive, and we have tried to help, the best we can, those people who are posting negative messages due to encountering problems.
Our new YouTube channel is also doing great. We have a decent number of subscribers and are always gaining more. What we really need is for users to make videos that they think might help other users such that we can add more useful information to the channel. Most of the GeekShed staff use mIRC, and any client tutorials that can be made by users of other clients would be most appreciated. Come see us in #help if you have an idea.
We have also recently become directly involved in the development of our services package, Anope. We have worked with the Anope development team and committed bug fixes and new features to the 1.8 (stable) branch to help improve our services and help the wider Anope community. A number of new services modules have also been developed to make your experience better. These include the channel ban appeal module and associated web page, a module to automatically identify you if you ghost or recover a nickname, and a few other modules to increase the security and reliability of services.
We have implemented a BNC service and associated web management panel to provide bouncers designed for users who cannot always stay connected to GeekShed but would like to keep track of channel and private messages whilst they’re disconnected. This service also helps those users who have multiple computers, for example home and work computers as well as a laptop, and would like to connect to their IRC session from any location.
Updates and improvements have been made to the inherently badly written code of UnrealIRCD to make GeekShed’s IRCD more reliable and less resource intensive. Although unavoidable netsplits still occur, we have seen a decrease in buggy and crashy IRCD processes.
We have, by creating an Anope->XML database converter, allowed the site to interact with services. This has allowed us to provide private access areas of the site, such as QDB submissions, accessed using your services login. Integration with our services servers has also allowed us to provide things such as channel and user lists, user statistics and an automatically updating list of bots.
Your generosity has been astounding and we have received an amazing sum of money in donations over the past 8 months. This has enabled us to register as a company, renew the domains and privacy protection for the next 4 years, secure our services login with SSL, obtain attack resistent servers to help rid us of proxies and bots and, most importantly, redesign TFlash. TFlash’s redesign has allowed us to add a load of new features and make it generally easier for you to use and embed into your own site. We know adverts were a major point of dislike for our users when we were part of WyldRyde and your generosity has allowed us to make all of our services totally advert free. All of the staff are volunteers dedicated to making GeekShed a better place for users. Its intent has never been to make money and each and we are extremely grateful for every donation made.
The staff team has been refreshed. Those staff who are no longer active or have expressed that they do not have time for GeekShed have been removed and replaced with new staff members who have more time to spare. We feel that constantly injecting fresh blood into the staff team will help the network develop as new ideas are brought in. Every staff member has worked extremely hard and we are very thankful for all of their efforts.
Our server turnover has been remarkably high. Although we would like a low server turnover, this hasn’t necessarily been a bad thing. We have constantly been adding new servers and removing those which have not performed as expected. We are currently in a state where every server we have has proved to be reliable.
The GeekShed forums are doing well and it has been proved that free software works better than the paid software that was used on WyldRyde at the time of the split. We do not feel that it is necessary to waste donor’s money on unnecessary things.
Our terms of service have been developed over time to strike the best balance we can between network security, user safety, and freedom of action. We feel that they are currently in a state which balances these aspects effectively.
A lot has happened over the past 8 months. None of it could have been possible without the continued support of our users and staff – we are truly thankful to each one of you for sticking by us. Much is planned for the future and we urge you to continue to use our services and encourage your friends to do so also.
Many thanks
The GeekShed Staff
Ban Appeals
Apr 13th
If you are banned from a channel on GeekShed you will find no help in other channels, especially #help. This post lists the ban appeal procedures for various channels on GeekShed. If the channel you were banned from is not listed on this page and you wish to appeal the ban you should PM the person who banned you. If they do not want to hear you out you should accept this and not PM them further.
This table lists the ban appeal procedures for channels:
Search For Channel:
| Channel | Appeal Procedure |
How to add a list of users in your GeekShed IRC channel to your website
Apr 4th
GeekShed now provides a live XML formatted output of users in your channel. This can be parsed and placed on your own website in the form of a list, table, etc.
The XML output can be found at http://www.geekshed.net/usertable.php?chan=. An example of the use of this for #phil is http://www.geekshed.net/usertable.php?chan=phil. To parse this into a table on your website, you can use the following PHP code. All you need do is place the code at the required location on the page and adjust the channel name at the top of the code. Following this, you can adjust the HTML to fit your site’s requirements.
You can also access the away message left by a user who is away using $user->awaymsg inside the foreach loop.
The DTD for the XML can be found at http://www.geekshed.net/xml/userlist.dtd.
As at 08 April 2010 the returned XML now has double escaped entities (e.g. < goes to < and ASCII char 2 goes to ). SimpleXML in the above example will do a single unescape on these such that < goes to < such that it can be used in web pages whilst keeping them valid. If you use it for anything else you will need to be sure to unescape sufficiently to give you the original characters.
If you have any questions about this, ask in #help.
The XML output can be found at http://www.geekshed.net/usertable.php?chan=
<?php
// Edit This
$chan = 'phil';
// Don't edit this
$xml = simplexml_load_file('http://www.geekshed.net/usertable.php?chan='.$chan);
?>
<!-- Edit this HTML to suit your layout -->
<table>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center;"><strong>Nickname</strong></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><strong>Status</strong></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><strong>Clones</strong></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><strong>Active (Not Away)</strong></td>
</tr>
<?php
foreach ($xml->user as $user) {
echo "\t<tr>\n";
echo "\t\t<td style=\"text-align: center;\">{$user->nick}</td>\n";
echo "\t\t<td style=\"text-align: center;\">{$user->status}</td>\n";
echo "\t\t<td style=\"text-align: center;\">{$user->clones}</td>\n";
echo "\t\t<td style=\"text-align: center;\">{$user->away}</td>\n";
echo "\t</tr>\n";
}
?>
</table>
You can also access the away message left by a user who is away using $user->awaymsg inside the foreach loop.
The DTD for the XML can be found at http://www.geekshed.net/xml/userlist.dtd.
As at 08 April 2010 the returned XML now has double escaped entities (e.g. < goes to < and ASCII char 2 goes to ). SimpleXML in the above example will do a single unescape on these such that < goes to < such that it can be used in web pages whilst keeping them valid. If you use it for anything else you will need to be sure to unescape sufficiently to give you the original characters.
If you have any questions about this, ask in #help.
IdleRPG Contest!
Mar 31st
Calling all chatters!
Are you pondering how you could possibly earn a gift card for doing nothing more than just chatting like you already do?
If so, #IdleRPG is for you.
Corey from CoreyRants.com is sponsoring a contest involving our #IdleRPG game and room.
The basis of IdleRPG is to see who can idle the longest in #IdleRPG without parting the channel, quitting the network, changing your nick, or chatting in #IdleRPG.
For your chance to win a gift card, check out CoreyRants.com for the complete details, registration information and rules of the game.
Please Note: The Contest starts April 1st, 2010, and goes until June 1st, 2010
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.