Category: Computer Stuff

Computer Adventures.

Removing MyBB Copyright

Blake

This notes was posted on DennisTT’s Blog. Please read all MyBB users.

All administrators of MyBB probably know of the MyBB License one way or another. However, it has come to my attention that there are some people who just can’t get their head around one statement in the license. It happens to be this one:

The MyBB Group has several copyright notices and “powered by” lines embedded within the product. You must not remove, alter or hinder the visibility of any of these statements (including but not limited to the copyright notice at the top of files and the copyright/powered by lines found in publicly visible templates).

Is the text too difficult to understand? Personally I think we have made this as clear and as inambiguous as possible. Would you not agree? To me, it is quite easy to understand from this quotation that I am not allowed to remove any copyright notice and “powered by”statements which have been already written into the files distributed in the MyBB package. I don’t see any other way of interpreting it.

Is the license too difficult to find? The license is distributed in the Documentation folder of the full MyBB package. It is also displayed when the forum is installed. By installing a forum, the administrator has to at least see one, if not both instances where the license is displayed during the installation of a forum.

Are you that ashamed of running MyBB? I have seen MyBB forums changing the “powered by” line to other software such as vBulletin. I mean, if you like vBulletin, or IPB, or the other software that much, why not use that instead? Why mask MyBB as another software? Is there something wrong with using MyBB? If so, I’d suggest you voice your feedback on the MyBB Community Forums. We respect all feedback, and we take in your suggestions when we’re developing the next version of MyBB. We want to make MyBB something that you and your users want to use. This isn’t just for our own benefit.

I spent an hour tonight surfing the web looking for violators, and with a simple web search, I was able to find around 40 within the time I spent. And that was only for one search. I’m sure there are hundreds of forums out there who have removed the MyBB copyright and/or “powered by” lines.

To the MyBB forum owners who have removed the copyright and/or “powered by” lines, it isn’t a matter of if your forum will be found, it’s when. We enforce our License to the fullest extent possible, including legal action if required. How would it feel if you spent hours working on something to have it taken by another person who claims it is theirs? Not too happy I’d assume. We aren’t either.

Support us, and we will support you. It’s only two lines with links to the official MyBB homepage at the bottom of your forum. Is that too much to ask really?

If you really despise the copyright lines that much, please consider purchasing the privilege of removing the copyright on one board with a small payment to Chris Boulton. Please contact him for more details about this.

PS: Thanks to everybody (the majority of MyBB administrators) who is adhering to the License and thus supporting us 🙂

Stereo to Mono Adapter

Blake

As most of you know I have a auxiliary amp that is also used as a second sub woofer. I have found lately that I don’t always want to plug my laptop into the 5.1 surround sound and blast the bass and every thing else through the house. So I have made an adapter for anything with a stereo controlled out put to be converter to Mono. (one channel)

Now here are the specs on the amp.

  • 1/4 inch input
  • 100 watts (single Channel)

This is what you going to need.

  • Stereo head phone cable (Left, Right and Ground)
  • 1/4 inch mono plug male
  • 1/4 inch stereo plug female (can be 3.5mm if you want to plug in a CD player or something
  • two 10k resistors
  • solder iron

Okay now I’ll lay out the rest of the process into steps.

Step 1

Cut a length of the head phone cable about 1 foot long. (or how ever long you need to go). Then strip the first jacket of insulation off then you should see one with no insulation, one with red insulation then another with white insulation. You will want to twist the ground (no insulation) together so there tight. Next strip the insulation off the red one then twist it together. Do the same for the white. Then do the other end.

Step 2

We are going to do the easy part first. Take the female stereo end and solder it to one end of the cable. Make sure the ground (no insulation) goes to the ground of the plug. Some are tabs right off the metal case.

Step 3

Next will be the complicating part. Take one of the 10k resistors and solder it to the red lead at the other end of the cable. Next take the second 10k resistor and solder it to the white lead. Then twist the ends of the resistors together. Make sure that before the resistors aren’t touching. I taped myna very well so they wouldn’t touch.

Step 4

Next solder you ground to the out side shield of the 1/4 inch male end of the plug. Then solder your twisted 10k resistors to the tip tab on the plug. Slip the covers over top of them. (or tape them 😛 )

Step 5 (only if you have the equipment)

Get out a voltmeter and set it to Ohms. Next you will want to check the grounds to make sure there not shorting out the audio.

Finally

Now if every thing checks out and you are confident, plug the adapter into your amps Line level input. Next tern the volume down on you devise. (CD player, Laptop, Tape deck, etc.) Remember to use the headphones output so you can control the volume. Then plug the other end into you devise. Now tern on the devise then the amp. Now run away just encase it ignites. 😛 Now insert a CD or whatever your using that as a part where it uses only the left or the right. In this case I used Queens – Fat Bottom Girlss .

That should be it. If you have any problems, feel free to post them on the forum. Here are a few pictures of the final product in use.

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How to Clean your Keyboard… The fast way!

Blake1 Comment

My dad finally toled me to clean the keyboard for the computer. Needles to say there was allot of dust around the keys… and in the keys. I came up with a very good idea to clean all 100 and sum keys.

First I started by popping off all the keys with a screw driver. Simple enough.
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Next was taking out all the screws on the back so the top plate, that held all the keys in place, would come off.

Next, I cleaned the plate with water and some paper towels. I then began to clean the actual keys. After about the fifth key I got tired of cleaning the underneath with cu tips. So I filled the laundry tub up with water and through the all the keys in. I sat there with my hand for a wile trying to circulate them around, after about two minutes of that my arm fell asleep. So then I went into the crawly space for some idea. I came out with a pump that my parents use to pump the water in our pond out front. I through in a little orange soap then put the pump in the water, plugged it in and there we have in circulation.

keyboard2.jpg keyboard3.jpg

I left them for about an hour or so then I grabbed a few of them out of the tub and had a look at the under side. Good as new. No gunk build up, it was like the keyboard was brand new. Next I took out the keys and let them dry. Then a reassembled the keyboard.

To sum up. The easy way, is the best way!

New File & Testing Server

Blake

Well this is actually old news, but thats ok. Windows XP Home finally took a dump on my home server. Lucky for me all the data was on another hard drive (Maxtor 120G no longer available). All the family Photo’s my dad gathered over the last 5 years is still in tacked.

The Server would crash randomly and just lock up. Using it to store your My Documents folder was not a smart idea. Windows would also forget the clock speed of the processor, this usually caused about 99% of the crashes. Also printing to my family’s Epson Stylus Photo R300 printer was very slow process. It took about 2 minutes just for the print job to be processed through the network.

An upgrade to Linux is what the server needed. I was debating weather to install a GUI or no GUI and just keep it strictly command line. After talking with my dad, I thought a small GUI would be a good idea. I spent some time debate to go with ether CentOS or Xubuntu. With many previous experiences with, Ubuntu and Kubuntu, I figured Xubuntu wouldn’t be to difficult, I would be using just the command line anyways.

After about a good hour the new Xubuntu server was up and running. After completing about another thirty minutes of updates, the system was ready for software. I folowed this How To. I picked a Domain Controller setup because our Home Network is growing very fast. It will also allow use to automatically map out the drives. This is good so we can log onto any computer on the network and all of our stuff will be in the same place no mater what computer were on. (Similar to Schools and Cooperat Networks)
In the How To, I skipped the setting the network ip to a Static one. I just set the IP in my routers configuration. I setup just two shared folders. One for all of our program ISO’s and another for the family pictures folder.

The next step was getting all the computer on the network connected. This part was a little more difficult because we are running XP Home on all of out computers. I changed the systems to the correct group and they picked up the server right away. Unfortunately we had to manually map out our drives to our accounts. No big deal, but XP Professional  is going on the next order to Tigerdirect!

Next was setting up the printer. Very simple to follow in the How To. The only thing you have to remember is to add the printer via HTTP in Windows. Other then that it was very simple.

This was very easy to get this type of system up and running and it can be done with just about any computer with a big hard drive.
It’s been about 5 weeks now and the server hasn’t had to go off once. I now have setup the My Documents folder to go right to the server. Next my parents want a computer for there new TV so we can run slide shows for when people come over. A little Cat5, and were good to go!

Linux has re-enterd the building!

Blake

Well I’m into the Linux thing. A few weeks ago, for some odd reason, Windows “Stopped” working on my laptop. So I got out my Kubuntu Linux CD and started the install. Every thing ran well on the live CD but after I had it installed my Wireless Network card stopped working. After spending three hours going through the Ubuntu Forum I finally figured out that the wireless card didn’t have the power on. So I pushed Fn + F3 and away it went. After wards, I was reading some more on the Centrino Duo processors and found out that your can install a 686 kernel Instead of the regular i386. This allowed Kubuntu to use my second processor. Every thing else worked right out of the box. No fancy tweaks.

A week later and this is what it looks like.

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Unfortunately I had to install a few Windows program under Wine. Then I had to install VMware so I could install XP under Linux. The only reason I have it is because of school work. Dam school and there Windows…

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So there it is… Linux… IT ROCKS!