Etherpunk

So, I started testing Drupal again to see if it is up to a level that I want.
My mistake was that I didn't list what I wanted ahead of time... so I'll do that now:

1.) Manage technical content that I learn / create
2.) Manage blogs
3.) Media library. I want to catalog all my movies and books. I don't know why either. I also want to catalog my images that I find on the net and have made.
4.) I want strict access control over all of the above.

1, 2, and 4 are easily found in Drupal. Taxnomoy Access Control lite appears to be what I want for access control, hopefully. I fear upgrading from security bugs though once I've installed something like that. I also need to be very anal about the custom modules I put in here, because they too must obey the TAC rules. Item 3 may conflict with item 4. I *love* the Gallery2 software, I just wonder if I can manage that with item 4.

Basically, my goal is to have *all* my content in a single system. I don't want 6 different logins. I don't want different subdrectories that are hidden and restricted based on .htaccess.

Other features I wouldn't mind seeing: stat tracking for personal items such as finance and nutrition from foods I intake. One could then easily fill in a certain amount of vitamins, minerals, and other information (calorie, fat, etc) per day and see if you aren't getting certain things via the cron module.
Would be nice to have an XML formatted file I could import from my PDA to Drupal and have it monitor my checking account and such. Hell, while I'm at it -- I want it to remind me to pay bills based on a recurring date -or- a certain amount of time (e.g. every 30 days). Item 4 of my first list would need to be able to restrict this info as well.

Let me re-iterate, I want a single application to take care of everything for me. Drupal is expandable enough to do this, but I don't think the last 25% is done. I could do it myself, but I would have to re-learn the core module information needed as well as the TACl requirements. That just seems like a lot of work, but maybe it's worth it.

Update (2007.02.15):

Basically I want one app to take care of all the needless thinking I need to do in life. I want to focus on something else one day with a computer telling me "you are low on vitamin c, you should consider having an apple" because it seems the last fruit I ate was an orange and it knows I get bored of oranged pretty quickly fruit (not really, but I'm just saying).

Wireshark can be used for tracking packets across a network. It's almost required for tracing weird stuff. == Warning == Ok, first things first: http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/openbsd/2004-11/2180.html The important thing to read:

 FB: ethereal was removed from the ports tree because "the ethereal team does
 not care about security, as new protocols get added, and nothing gets done
 about the many more holes that exist." I hope that this is not the beginning
 of a hunting season to remove software because it's [insecure. That] will end
 with a system that's secure because [it] can't do anything. I'm wrong, right?
 
 Peter Valchev: You are in part correct. 

There is more to it than that, but basically Ethereal is something that can potentially make your machine vulnerable. I suggest installing this on a Windows machine or something that you don't mind getting beaten into a pulp. While it is unlikely (is it really safe to say that?) it will happen, it _is_ something to be concerned about. Personally, I decided not to put it on a server, so it goes on my Windows XP Pro laptop. == What's in a name? == Due to copyright / trademark reasons, the writers of Ethereal decided to change the name of the software to Wireshark. Very little mention of this is made on the original Ethereal website. From the wireshark.org website:

 Same developers, same code, different name. The Ethereal network protocol analyzer has changed its name to Wireshark.

== Getting Wireshark == You can get Wireshark from: http://www.wireshark.org/download.html == Examples == Some examples to come here soon!

If you haven't joined UtopiaPimp, you might want to consider it.
If you'd like to get access to our kingdom's Utopiapimp account, this is what you need to do. If you've never used the pimp before, post in the forums asking to get your province code messaged to you, then go here and register yourself. At the bottom, when it asks for a province code, use the code they've given you.

If you've used the site before, or are currently using it with another kingdom, you can go here and use the province code below to join our kingdom account.

When I first logged into it, it took my about a month to actually *use* it and understand it. I feared / hated it. Now I love it and can't live without it. It's helps me (when I was monarch and also when I wasn't monarch) make decisions on if we have a chance at war or not becuase it helps with some math stuff.

UtopiaPimp allows you to request ops on provinces (including enemy provinces) by clicking on one of the squares.

CB = Crystal Ball (Magic)
SoS = Spy on Science (Theivary)
SoM = Spy on Military (Theivary)
Survery = Survery (Theivary)

To update the kingdom page, copy and paste the desired kingdom's page into UtopiaPimp. Don't forget to get your enemies KD too.

There will be colors in the boxes next to the provinces that have had their's posted. Usually CB and SoM are the most common posted, becuase they are used for attacking. The colors indicate the age of the op posted. Green is pretty new, while red is very old. The color fades to red as it gets older, so their are a few shades of red/green.
Their is a list of Kingdoms (like 30:48) that will be our enemies. It will have ops done on them. The Pimp also lists magic effects (negative effects, as listed with all those icons at the bottom) as well as when militaries are done. Posting 'The Paper' allows it to do the math on when their military should be back (however, their are some spells that decrease the amount of time it takes for an army to get back).

You can paste *any* op in the white box at the bottom of your screen and UtopiaPimp will put it where it needs to go. You can also op other people and paste them. It will place them in the 'loners' link in the top right corner.

As an attacker, you may want to sort a warring kingdom by size. So you can attack someone within a given bracket.

Their is a combo box that allows you to sort by a great many things.

To paste your province's information, copy and paste the following pages:

• Throne page
• Science *not science advisor*
• Military Advisor
• Growth Advisor

A calculator for Utopia is something that helps you calculate odds of doing something or percentages. For example, building percentages (so you don't have too many or too little of one thing), it could also help dtermine you chances of success during war.

• [http://utopiatemple.com/angel.php UtopiaAngel] -- The do-it-all tool. To use it, copy your throne page (while UtopiaAngel is running) and you should see UtopiaAngel popup with some information. Now goto Council, and then goto Internel Affairs. Now select everything on the page and copy it. You should see more stuff come up (building percentages) and a window that will allow you to copy+paste a nicely formatted information into your kingdoms forums.
• [http://http://utopiatemple.com All-in-One Formatter] -- If you don't have UtopiaAngel (or can't get it) you can use this formatter. Simple follow the copy instructions like above, but paste them into the top-left window of this webpage.
• [http://www.an0ma1y.com/utopialandplanner.html Online Building Calculator] (requires flash) -- If UtopiaAngel is not available, then you can use this to help you with your building strat.
• [http://www.utopiapimp.com UtopiaPimp] -- Helps your kd communicate with ops/spells/attack better.
• [http://dump.productionkey.com/buildeff.html Building effectiveness table] -- If you don't have UtopiaAngel, then you can use this for calcuating your buildings effectiveness (some races are more (or less) effecient than others). A javascript version exists on that site as well.

• Keep *at least* 1 WPA (wizards per acre) and 1 TPA (thieves per acre). These are for defensive purposes only. It also allows you to cast self spells fairly easily. Higher spells like land lust will be difficult to cast (if not impossible) -- but you aren't a T/M anyways. Having 10% guilds is the bare minimal to keep maintance on your wizards (so you can keep training about as fast as you get land).
• During war times and after a successfull attack, keep some land unbuilt -- incase of a retaliation. This is so they don't take useful land.
• Attacking people about your size is the best. Maybe a little smaller. If you attack someone too big, then you don't have a chance. Too small and the gains are too little -- and ruins the game for the smaller people.
• Use UtopiaAngel to calculate your attacks. Assuming you have a 1 WPA, then you should be able to get a Crystal Ball on the person so you can calcualte *exactly* how much you need to send. It's not a bad idea to send a little extra, incase they have magic on their side.
• To calculate ambush you do a SoM on the one that attacked you. You need to find out which army attacked you and calculate it's defense. You need to have 1% more offense than that to get 50% of your land back.

Some basic things you need to do when you first start:

• Vote for your monarch. Unless it's the start of a round, you probably already have a monarch. Go ahead and vote for her/him by going to 'Relations' and then seeing who is monarch and choosing them.
• Often abbreviations will be used. You can go [[http://forums.utopiatemple.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15676 here]] for a good list of some of them (warning: some of these have profanity in them... be mature and responsible) and alternativly you can go to [[http://www.acronymfinder.com acronymfinder.com]] and type it in there.
• Set military settings
• Build basic buildings according to your strat (which can be found at UtopiaTemple)
• Ask for aide if you need any -- just watch out for your trade balance. If it gets to be too high, it will start to get taxed and will eventually be really expensive (like 90% of the aide sent to you is taxed).

=Summary=
This article is going to be the knowledge I've learned from my peers and myself.

=Credits=
Certainly not all of this information is credited to me, so here is the list of contributors or those that have explained a piece of the game to me:

The Great Sir Sepiroth of Mobutu
Sir Massively Average of Legacy of Mediocrity
Sir Numitor of Legacy of Attrition
Sir Rentiak of Legacy of Aggression
Sir John of TitanX
Sir Alex Maxvell of Glairnwedocs Legacy
King Geck XVI the Rogue
Founder Sir Nazadus of Legacy of Tech

Firefox is an exceptionally cool browser. One of it's greatest benefits is the amount of extensions people have written for it. It should be noted that a few bad ones have been seen in the wild, so make sure something asks you to install something and you weren't expecting it -- DON'T.

== Adblock and co. ==

Adblock is an extensions which allows you the abilityt o remove ads. It becomes *really* useful when you use the Filterset.G. It then goes up yet another level of coolness when you use the Filterset.G updater, so it adds new stuff automagically.

They can be found here:

AdBlock
Filterset.G Updater

[[Image:Scrot-with-adblock.png|thumb|200px|left|Firefox w/ Adblock + Filterset.G]]
[[Image:Scrot-without-adblock.png|thumb|200px|none|IE 7]]

== Flashblock ==

I hate it when advertisements use Flash to get my attention or some websites use it as a menu system or some crap like that. I don't like the sounds more than anything.. so this will disable them but place a little play icon in the box so you can single-click it to launch it, should you really want it.
Found here

== IE View ==

IE View places an icon in your FireFox tray that allows your to reload the page using the IE engine.
This extention can be found here

== XRay ==

Allows you to view the sourcecode to web pages WHILE browsing.
It seems to fail when using frames through.
This one can be found: here

== Gmail Notifier ==

If you use a gmail account (if you want one, email me or post and I'll give you one.. I have 100 invites) then this can monitor that account for new email.
Found here

== FasterFox ==

You can manually tweak Firefox via about:config (type it in your address bar and hit enter) or this extension can tweak it for you.
Found here

== Downloadsort ==

If you download many things a day, such as JPG's of comics or something then you might like this extension.
You can feed it a file extension and have it automatically download those files into a certain directory. You can even have dated directories such as comics/2006.02.02 and have it dump it in the 2006.02.02 directory. Rock on.
Found here

== PDF Download ==

Becuase when viewing a PDF inside of Firefox it takes a while to load this prompts you asking if you want to simply download it (and view it in another program) or actually view it in the browser.
PDF Download can be found here

== Link Alert ==

Link alert will give you a small icon when you hover over links and files. For example, when a link points to a PDF file your cursor will have a PDF icon hover next to it.

Link alert can be found here

== Restart Firefox ==

This extension adds a quick and easy method to restart Firefox and keep the same tabs. This is useful when you add new extensions or themes.

Found here

Firefox is an open source browser released under the GNU Public License. It has many advantages over Internet Explorer 6 and still some over Internet Explorer 7. So far their is one huge bug in the sense that it can become a memory hog. The other drawback is it can't do ActiveX or some IE proprietary things. For those reason you should not remove Internet Explorer however use it as little as possible. The next rev is Firefox (3.0) will supposedly pass the Acid2 test (something which few browsers do at the time of this writing) and help reduce member footprints.

== Drawbacks ==

Some times don't work well in Firefox -- this is usually because of the web developer. Most users don't care whose fault it is. Firefox has an extensions that allows you to quickly swap to Internet Explorer. I don't use it that often as few sites I go to have this problem. I'd love to find a list of Internet Explorer only sites. Internet Explorer is very forgiving when it comes to the HTML code of web pages, while other browsers tend not to be. This is good and it's bad. Sometimes Internet Explorer has it's own method of doing things that require special hacks to get around. From personal experience, this is rarely the case with Firefox as it's usually Internet Explorer that deviates from standards -- not Firefox.

== Windows Update ==

IE is still required for Updating your Windows box. Well, Firefox _can_ be used for that but it can be a little complicated and not worth the hassle under most circumstances.

== Themes ==

Firefox has some nifty themes. Unlike Internet Explorer, Firefox can skin (theme) itself without the use of other software. Their are many themes to make your FF lean or pretty and some can be found here (sometimes this site is slow).

== Extensions ==

Where Firefox really shines is it's extensibility. Extensions such as AdBlock and Flashblock make life, at least for me, much better.

To have SQL re-create / re-link the logs run the following query in Query Analyzer (or osql.exe):

sp_change_users_login 'auto_fix', 'SOME_USER'

I've had a few instances where you needed to manually re-create the user in the Enterprise Manager and then re-link them. I've also had a particular experience where I had to delete the databases, delete the user (because that user owned certain objects in that database, we couldn't just delete the user), restore the database, create the user, then run the above script.