The Daily Bits

Here’s a little bit of a list of some posts from this year. I’ve selected a post from each month and 5 videos in total so here they are:

Posts

• The Wow Starts Now! – Horrible marketing campaign by Microsoft for Windows Vista. This was the only TV campaign to my knowledge this year and from the looks of it, it didn’t work.
• MacBreak Weekly Ukulele OutTake – Enough said. Listen to the clip.
• I got a mac.
• The Pains of Vista – The comic illustrates the point quite effectively. Vista is painful. 12 months after release and it is still very painful to the point that I have not installed it yet.
• My Collection of Videos – These feature a few videos that I have made. I still havn’t had time to handle the Farming footage but it’s up, just nothing special to it. I’ll probably wait until the next set of 99’s is done
• The RSBandB Goal Signature and Signature Engine Overhaul – This was a major upgrade on RSBandB this year. It allowed for easier creation of goal signatures. The goal sigs are great, thanks to the design work of Mushroom Queen.
• The Formalization of Project Green – Project Green was the goal for raising my Farming to 99. It was a long extensive project but it was never a matter of if… but more so when.
• First Release of RuneWire. – RuneWire will be having another feature release soon. More to come i the new year.
• 99 Farming Achieved – After 2 years, 2 months, and 12 days I finally reached 99 Farming.
• Telescopes Find Signs of an Earth-like planet 20 light years away
• Apple Constantly Came Out With New Mac vs. PC ads.
• And finally… Jagex kills RWIT and The Wilderness

Now some videos in no particular order…

• Ice Wreaks Havoc In Oregon
• The Japanese Car The Germans Wish They Made
• Internet People
• Student’s iPod Touch ad That Is Used By Apple
• Finally… some good old fashion mud slinging towards the Canadian Liberal party EDIT: It appears the Liberal ad was removed. You can see it here at the Conservative Party of Canada website.

That’s all for 2007, I’ll be back tomorrow with some predictions.

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This weekend as some of you may know we upgraded the forums to phpBB3. The new version is a significant improvement over the old clunky forum system. The old system was way out of date and needed to be fixed for a long time. Some features that I am happy about are integrated warning logs, integrated subforums, easy to add bbcode tags, and much more. The mod CP will take some time to get used to but overall it is an improvement. The forums are a lot faster than the old version and the conversion went fairly smoothly. There are a few tiny things that will get smoothed out in the coming days but overall great. Mike also did a speedy job of converting our old theme to work with the new software.

Along with the forum upgrade came PHP5. PHP5 is actually more exciting for me. It will enable us the ability in the future to develop more object oriented php code if we want. It also adds lots of new functions and built in capabilities. So overall the weekend was well spent… along with studying for my remaining 3 finals.

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It has been decided that Brad and I will broadcast episodes 130 and 131 We’ll be doing this via RSBANDB’s team speak server. I invite you to join it by clicking here. The show will take place at 10PM GMT(3PM MST, 2PM PST, 5PM EST) on Thursday December 13.

It will be a listen only opportunity. We may however if possible open the mic later in the post-show if time permits. You can post your questions for this episode here.

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This topic serves as a hub for information on our Christmas schedule including our usual selection of two special episodes. This year we have:
The Clip Show (my favourite annual event)
RSBANDBUpdate! Uncorked

The Schedule:
RSBANDBUpdate! 130 : December 14th (standard show)
RSBANDBUpdate! 131 : December 21st (standard show)
RSBANDBUpdate! 132 : December 24th (Uncorked)
RSBANDBUpdate! 133 : December 31st (Clip show)

Now here is where you come in…

Uncorked

This is a special edition of RSBANDBUpdate! with the RSBANDB admins (Mike, Jeff, Brad, and Myself). This will be an all questions episode. The questions will have good discussional value. Some examples of possible topics could include thoughts on homosexual marriage, the war in Iraq, aid and assistance to developing nations. A question that would be a bad example is “What is your favourite colour?” I think you get the idea…

Please post your questions in this topic.

Clip Show

This is the smattering of fun moments and bloopers from the past 365 days. I have some idea of what will show up, however, we would like your input. If you have clips that you liked please post them using the following format:

Episode Number:
Approximate Time Index:
Description of the Clip:

Please post your clip show ideas in this topic as well.

This topic will remain as a sticky and become globalized one week prior to the first recording.

October 31. I have always loved this day and still do. Last year I got my laughs by sending Creepy one of those screamer videos. His reaction was this:

Today we (Mike and I) were determined to have an impact of the same magnitude or bigger. Let me say… we succeeded. Basically what would happen is if you had over 1000 posts or were selected you got a nice little treat (or trick if you were on the receiving end). The treat would entail you being greeted with a nice scream a certain time interval after loading the page.

Apparently Creepy wet himself. See more reactions on this page.

All in all, WE win again. Just wait until next year

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As I’m sure some of you know the Bits & Bytes Sandbox is one of the most active areas on the forums. When it was originally created it was made for an area where you could get your spamming urges out or test a signature. Last night two topics, “Battle of the Site Owners” and “Battle of the Moderators v1.1” were created. These topics are pointless and but create an unnecessary feeling of competition among staff members. Every member on the staff was hired because we felt they would do an adequate job at modding the forums. So in short what I’m saying is that everyone’s equally “the best,” even though some people may have favourites. These topics are no longer going to be allowed at rsbandb.

There’s a few more things I want to address…

First off my reply in the site owner section.

You guys do realize that you could all be hung for treason or have your fingers clipped off. Anyways if this is about me not letting you into the RuneWire beta test Billy, I picked people based on RSBandB activity and RS activity on the highscores. Don’t worry though everyone will have a chance eventually. Expect more beta testers to be chosen around Wednesday.

For those of you wondering as to why I don’t talk to anyone outside the core staff groups at rsbandb it’s because well… sometimes I don’t need 50 odd people messaging me on msn. I tried that when we first started the site, lets just say the huge mass convos with 50+ people don’t sit well with me.

If you’ve tried to add me on msn and I didn’t add you it’s not because I hate you it’s just because I like keeping my MSN list small to minimize interruptions and maximize productivity. In fact I encourage any member here to message me on the forum systems, clan chat, or our chat here if you see me and have a problem or want to ask a question. I do try to reply to all my PM’s.

I see that in the time writing this, this topic has spawned battle of the moderators… That one should be interesting!

I felt it necessary to post it here since some of you may have tried on the odd occasion to add me to msn.

Finally point number three.

This one sorta relates to some things that go on in the sandbox and rsbandb in general. The moderating staff always has reasons for what we do. No one is ever warned or banned without reason. So when you hear horror stories of people getting banned or warned for obscure reasons, just remember that no one knows the real reason behind these except the mod staff. So in a nutshell, take what you hear about warnings and bans with a grain of salt.

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Well last night we released RuneWire. Beta testers are being accepted. I’m not going to post much more.. you can check out MQ’s longer describing entry.

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Today I am pleased to announce that two major pieces of work at rsbandb have been completed. As you have probably gathered from the title, I am referring to the new goal signatures and an updated signature engine. Most of you won’t notice a difference with the signature engine aside from the fact that signatures update daily once again! The goalsigs however have been completely reworked.

The old goalsig system was over two years old and was hard to add designs to it or make graphical changes. This new system allows us to add new designs more easily and offer a diverse amount of signature styles. We have been gifted with 3 new design styles by Mushroom Queen. These styles are modern, rustic, and minimalistic. We’ve also kept around the classic grunge brushed backgrounds. Thanks MQ for providing these to us!

As I mentioned above the new signature system is finally updating again. With the new system the signatures will update at least once every 24-36 hours. You can however force an update on your goalsig or regular signature by simply coming back to rsbandb and re-creating the signature by using the respective form.

In closing I’d like to thank everyone who helped beta test the system and those who helped with the development. Most notably Mike for cleaning up the old signature creation pages and upgrading the stat grabber that we use, as well as Mushroom Queen for creating the many many backgrounds the new goalsigs use. Also expect to see a few more standard sig designs coming in the next week or so.

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It’s been so long since I posted here I figured it’s about time. I’ve been working on some confidential RSBANDB projects. You can expect to see them sometime within the next week or so. I don’t like making predictions but I really think they’ll be coming around that time.

I havn’t farmed in over a week… I think it’s time to play some catch up.

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I’m just bringing some awareness to the fact that RSBANDB’s amazing race is happening this weekend! We still need teams to sign up so be sure to read the post and sign up on this topic.

Be sure you ask the person you want to partner up with first

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I got a new sig made by MQ. It’s quite good if I do say so myself…

Thanks MQ

Jeff has put together a map on frappr, Frappr is a website in which you can put a pin on a flash map. Works well for communities. Here’s the rsbandb one:

Sign!

Bib User won!

I’ll get to posting flashy friday for this week soon. However rsbandb is back now. We had some hardware and software problems with the new server, they are fixed now. If you are reading this and wondering why we got a new server, I’ll explain that now.

We have split off from RuneHQ. RuneHQ was hosting us and letting us use guides for the past 6 months. They are still allowed to use the calculators. We’ve removed the guides because we feel we can give you guys (users) more active part in this site. We will be creating new guides and collecting items and monsters etc… So this is where everyone can help if they choose to. Plagarism will not be tolerated.

All in all, rsbandb is back to full power. You can read the full entry here.

Now to flashy friday. This week’s flashy friday is a re-enactment of “War of the Worlds” with bunnies. Its all in 30 seconds too. Almost better than that movie they put out this summer. View it here. << Offsite link

Happy friday
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Hello everyone, you may know Pika69 another admin on rsbandb.com forums. Also my co-host on RSBANDBUpdate!, here is his latest flash work featured on flashy friday. View it here.

Also we need questions for this week’s episode of RSBANDBUpdate! You can be ellidgable to win a box of “stuff” from my bank if you send in an audio question to us. You can send it to either one of us on msn or let us know via pm on rsbandb. You can send your questions here.

Our contact details:
Pika: View Profile
Shane: View Profile
or… questions[at]rsbandb[dot]com email address.

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Yep, today episode 4 is out. I’ve also set up a mini site for it. Go see it here.

Enjoy

I forgot to post this yesterday when I put the show up but here are the details of RSBANDBUpdate! episode #2.

-Tiaras
-Rune Crafting Changes
-Rune shop changes
-Castle Wars Changes
-Thieving Behaviors
-Fiberoptic internet
-Internet Teleportation
-Answers to your questions.
-What are we doing on runescape?

Get it here.

We have released episode number 1 of RSBANDBUpdate! In this week’s edition you can hear pika and I talk about farming and what it could be like, answer some important questions regarding crocodiles, canons and more. There was also some interesting tech news.

Get it here

Also, now everyone can download my movie I made. The movie takes place in the game that Mike and I play quite often. So get Extreme Ways here

That’s all for today,
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Yesterday we held the rsbandb drop party. The party was a huge success at both the p2p and f2p locations. Everything was dropped and people were overall happy with their loot. There was a large amount of people there, definately larger than 100.

We do not know if there will be another rsbandb drop party in the future. Thanks to everyone who donated and made this possible. It was a great community event. If you wish to take a look at the thread you can find it on the forums herehere.

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Today we released 3 new sig designs and our auto-updater is back up and running. This is by far good news for rsbandb.

Anyways with the addition of the new magic spells today, does it make you inclined to raise your magic? It is certainly going to be an interesting aspect to pk’ing in f2p now. I am only slightly inclined to raise it. Some aren’t at all and some totally are. Just thought i’d post about this.

Thats all for today,
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As some of you may know Rune HQ has closed its doors. This was an action that has affected us all. Rune HQ was a great site. Anyways, I’d just like to take the time to welcome anyone coming here from Rune HQ to use our forums and such.

I’m still making natures to high alch all those long bows from last week and we are going to be doing some good site stuff this weekend so keep watching.

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Well the first month of the new year has passed and the results for rsbandb have been excellent. A good ammount of growth. The main www.rsbandb.com had over 48 000 unique visitors in this month alone. It has been a good experience.

We also have the new signature line up with the “Slayer” skill on it up. There are 4 designs.

There is no news today, just merely an update in consolodated form of how the website is doing.

But I do have a Sniglet for you today:
Aquadextrous - adj. Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off with your toes.

That’s all for now.

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The newest skill was added yesterday which is slaying. I have yet to determine the point of it and whether or not you can make money from it. With this happening we are needing to redesign all our signatures. We plan to have these signatures up within good time. We also have added a slayer calculator which has monsters that for which we have found out the levels and experience. If you have a monstor that you wish to send info in for please go to this url: http://www.rsbandb.com/index.php?page=feedback and use the form to send your data in. I will be keeping everyone updated as we make progress on getting the site’s calculators and signatures ready to handle the new skill.

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Today we’ve put up a new signature design which looks really good. We’ve also put up the guides in which we recieved from Rune HQ in exchange for us letting them use our calculators. Enjoy

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Today is a rather full entry. There is a new Trojan Horse that attacks Windows XP systems. It does not matter if Service Pack 2 is installed. Once it’s installed it gives someone the chance to control the computer remotely. The trojan is distributed in an HTML file. DO NOT open attachments that you are unsure of even if they seem LEGIT!! Read more here.

Yesterday we were having trouble on our website with mass registrations on the forums by someone who felt the need to have some fun. This resulted in our account being suspended. We have instituted further ways to stop this from happening. This is why our site was suspended for a few hours last night.

Finally some good news, Friday’s Flashy Friday. Today is a video called “All your Base..” this is originnally from Planet Tribes which was a major website for Tribes 2 which I still play, however my name shall remain anonymous . Anyways here is the movie. All Your Base Belong to Us

Original URL: http://www.planettribes.com/allyourbase/video3.shtml

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Happy New Year too.

Today I’ll start with Flashy Friday.

Today’s Flashy Friday was donated by an anonymous source. It is a robot’s form of Techno music.
Here is the Techno Robot (257KB)
As you’ll see the link in the movie is, www.homestarrunner.com
Now so you see, it ain’t really that anonymous. I just pitched that out so that you all would think it was a top secret movie written by someone top secret.

We are also having strange things happening on our website. The forums keep getting deleted, neither I or any staff have been deleting them. We suspect it was a hacker that keeps doing it. Today was the first day it was actually replaced. Although be assured we are working with the host to track this person or group of people down.

Last night was also “The Apprentice” finale. As I had predicted in an earlier post it was either that Kevin or Kelly would win. When Kevin was fired, I was sincerely hoping that Kelly would win. He did win, so good for him, he did a good job.

Now for news,
There is a court decision to be made in Canada which may lower the cost of MP3 and other digital music players. The federal court says that levies placed on personal MP3 players are not legal. Canada’s copyright act gives the authority to put a small levie on blank media (CD’s etc…) . This may also encourage people to buy one of these players. If you have been to a store recently you will know that the cost of an iPod or iPod mini is outrageous for someone to pay. $349.99 canadian for an iPod mini, while the new U2 special edition and standard iPod are around $450. Read more from CTV

There you have it a little news, Flashy Friday, some Rsbandb news, and some reality TV news=”The Daily Bits”

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If anyone has noticed there is now snow adorning the pages of our website and this blog. I have added some snow to add a little feeling of the season. Tommorow is Flashy Friday

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First the news, NASA is close to meeting all the new safety requirements which will enable them to take flight again, for thee first time since the columbia disaster. The shuttle should be able to launch by May 2005. That is a little more than two years after the disaster happened. They also have addressed the 10 remaining issues put forth by the investigation board. Read more here

Second, Nvidia has announced that they are working with Sony on the development of the graphics processor of the PlayStation 3. Nvidia also created the graphics processor for the Xbox. Now, I have used Nvidia cards on the computer here, they are good on some games, ATI cards work better on some as well. Both Nvidia and ATI are good companies. Anyways read more here.

Finally, there has been some downtime on rsbandb and this blog today and yesterday. Yesterday was a technical problem which was fixed promptly, todway was a minor DoS on the server we are hosted on. Vizaweb has came through once again in fixing the server problems.

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As some of you may have noticed our site was down yesterday due to server load. We’ve fixed our sigs to work better now. They do not update automatically and everyone will need to re-create their sigs. At least they are still hosted here for you, by us.

Also I was so wrong about my Apprentice guesses. Andy was fired, and after seeing his methods I would not want him running a company…
Now I have to say Kelly or Kevin to win.

I’m just listening to the radio show that I always do on the weekend. I just heard that WinAmp is no longer going to be developed. I just found this out… Maybe we all need to goto iTunes???

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We’ve added a combat calculator to our website. www.rsbandb.com We hope this calculator will prove to be useful to you.

Also, today was a day of thieving which resulting in gaining 3 levels. Level 43 now. 7 to Go.

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