Happy New Year!

Firstly, I would like to thank everyone for a great year. That includes people who read my blog, my Twitter followers, my website readers, BBot users, Ubuntu programmers, and a wide variety of non-profit organizations which help make the world a better place. It is people like you who make the world a less-lonely place.

However, 2010 has been a year filled with success and failure.
Success

• WikiLeaks has started releasing 250,000 secret diplomatic cables which sparked a world-wide debate that was not only about our government, but also about net neutrality and freedom of information. Even many lawmakers are questioning the over-classification of documents.
• It is been decided in a court that hardware owners are allowed to use their hardware how they want (homebrew, jailbreaking, etc...).
• Facebook has finally done something about privacy options (although still not enough, it is a start).
• I have completed an HTML5 game which is advancing the use of open technologies on the Internet
• We have seen the foundation of the Dot-p2p project which hopes to provide a decentralized DNS system.

Failures

• Governments all over the world are losing sight of what free-speech is and switching to censored Internet models like those contained in China. Projects like Freenet might be our only hope. Although the United States hasn't gone this far yet, the the government has decided that it doesn't need permission to take down domain names.
• Hosting providers, credit card companies, and DNS providers alike have caved in to political pressure from the United States government had have cut services from WikiLeaks. Although it isn't illegal to ask private corporations to infringe upon your free-speech rights, this shows how the world will be going in the future with what is essentially legalized censorship.

I would just like to remind everyone that even on new years night/day, I do not rest, I keep fighting communistic control of speech (hence this blog post). Although I can't expect you to be this extreme, I sure hope you will send your congressmen an email asking them to support net neutrality and free-speech in this upcoming congressional term. Without speech, we are nothing, and I am not about to let that happen.

Happy New Year everyone!

Firefox 4!

I have been using Minefield, which is basically, the very, very latest code for Firefox (which can sometimes be buggy). By using Minefield, I have been introduced to a variety of new features that will be included in Firefox 4 when it will be released (scheduled for January 2011). With this release drawing dear, I have decided to get into the true HTML5 spirit by making a complete HTML5 game. So, I made a Snake Clone. To play, simply click start and use the arrow keys to collect the food blocks to help your snake grow. This snake game was made completely with HTML5 (HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and the canvas element) making it one of the most open games to date!

This silly little game has also been submitted to a HTML5 game competition (which I was not hoping to win). You can read more about the results on the new AJ00200 Blog.

By the way, I am accepting donations to fund the development of more open-technology HTML5 based games. You can send donations to the Bitcoin address 12pkhaGcZmoa9RkG11PQm1XNG9D6m62Q2U. Don't have Bitcoins? You can get 0.05 or 0.5 (if you are lucky) at http://freebitcoins.appspot.com/. Remember, any little bit helps.

My Thoughts
Overall, I thought that designing a game using HTML5 was great! Although my JavaScript skills were a bit rusty from under-use, I still managed to complete the game within a few hours. The process was very smooth the whole way through. I am glad to say that HTML5 will replace Flash eventually, but not without a good fight. Until then, making an HTML5 app rather than Flash is the best way to get my attention as I would choose anything over Flash.

Tweet

jHS
I have not yet announced the jHS project on my blog, but jHS stands for javascriptHackingSoftware. It is meant to be similar to MHS (Memory Hacking Software) or CheatEngine, except for HTML5/JavaScript games. This program is a long way off, so you don't have to worry about anyone hacking your HTML5 games just yet, but make sure to do the security right the first time.

Happy Gravmas Everyone

Happy Gravmas (Gravmas is a non-Christian celebration of Isaac Newton who was born on December 25) everyone.

As my Gravmas gift to you, I would like to show everyone a little known piece of software called LMMS (Linux Multi-Media Studio). LMMS is a powerful program for both Linux and Windows which is used for creating music. It is similar to FruityLoops (and it can, in fact, import files from there) and possibly some of the trackers I have come across. Here is the summary from the LMMS website:

LMMS is a free cross-platform alternative to commercial programs like FL Studio®, which allow you to produce music with your computer. This includes the creation of melodies and beats, the synthesis and mixing of sounds, and arranging of samples. You can have fun with your MIDI-keyboard and much more; all in a user-friendly and modern interface.

At the current moment, I am working on a set of beats which will be released under the Creative Commons License for use in whatever you see fit, and of course, I am doing this in LMMS.

Want to share, join #beat-masters on irc.fossnet.info (port 6667; SSL 6670).

Universal Subtitles

I have just added the UniveralSubtitles JavaScript code to my blog so that many videos will either display subtitles or give you the option of subtitling them yourself.
Here is a quick demo of a video from YouTube which a subtitled (Wikileaks themed of course).



Subtitling videos in this manner greatly improve accessibility for your website and it is easy to do. You don't have to download any software, just use their website.

Wikileaks Documentary

This might possibly be the best Wikileaks documentary yet and I highly suggest you watch it. Show it to people against Wikileaks, show it in the classroom and so on.
Please Tweet this as well with the button to your right or the one at the bottom of this post.

A Great Wikileaks Documentary that EVERYONE should watch! It is even more shocking that one would expect.

Wikileaks live discussion

The live discussion is now over, but you can watch the recordings at: The LiveStream Website

Watch live streaming video from pdfleaks at livestream.com

Personal Democracy Forum presents: A Symposium on Wikileaks and Internet Freedom

Julian Assange Person of the Year

Tweet

Skip the article and vote for Julian Assange

Time Magazine is running their regular Person of the Year contest, and Julian Assange could seriously win! My vote, however, was not only to show support for Assange, but also to support the freedom of information worldwide.

Julian Assange currently (as I write this) has a 89/100 average approval rating which has put him in first place, just above Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has an average rating of 83/100. Another person of interest is Barack Obama who is at 60/100.

Please note, you rank these people on a scale of 1 to 100. It is not a "I support this person" or an "I don't support this person" vote. You show how much you support this person.

What if Julian Assange Won?
If Julian Assange happened to win, I think it would make politicians everywhere realize that we desire freedom of information, free speech, and that we don't want Internet censorship.

Vote for Julian Assange!

Join in the discussion in the comments here or by adding #wikileaks or #cablegate (or both) to your Twitter post.

What is Up with BBot

BBot 6 has been waiting to be released for a long time now and it is widely known that this release hopes to be much faster than previous versions which tended to be somewhat of a drag. I am happy to say that Bikcmp and I have worked together on this yesterday and we rewrote 90% of the bot making it more compatible with other backends (like Twisted) and improving the API.
But don't forget speed, speed is always important to us and I must say that it is functioning quite well so far.

BBot 6 is almost done and hopefully it will be out before Monday. If you would like to follow the progress in real time, join #spam on irc.fossnet.info (port 6667 or 6670 for SSL) for live commit reports.

The Probelms With Education

We all know that there are numerous problems with education, especially in the area of math, and here is a presentation summing up some ways to get students interested in math and help them understand the big picture better.

Math is not linear on Prezi

Normally I try to keep my blog accessible to most people, but this is a sad exception, Flash Player 9 required

Comments welcome!

How we agree to make our lives worse!

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I have just finished reading this shocking article about the various failings of airport securty. Think about it, millions of Americans and people all over the world take off their shoes and walk through metal detectors, x-ray scanners, and experience privacy-invasive pat-downs, but the entire system is broken! You owe it to yourself to read this article and you owe it to the world to do something about it:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/the-things-he-carried/7057/1/
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Hi Altnet, Nice to Meet You!

Recently, I had the joyous experience of removing the Altnet virus from a clients computer, and what a joy it was! Not only was the virus kind enough to stick around while in safe-mode, but it also disabled my clients anti-virus software. Lucky for me, no anti-virus software that I had my hands on could remove it so I had to go in and do it by hand.

I removed the Altnet key from HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Altnet in the registry as well as a few others related to the virus. I recommend just doing a search for "altnet" on your registry.

I also deleted "C:\Program Files (x86)\Altnet Music Plugin" which appears to be related to the Kaza music player. However, I did grab the file and move it to an external drive for future inspection (currently underway).

I ran the executable in conjunction with InCtrl5 and found a lot more things that were created, but I did just update IE as well, so I am still looking through it all. While searching the internet for more info about: {3DA165B6-CC41-11d2-BDC6-00C04F79EC6B} I found a whole ton of forum posts about people being unable to delete it. I suspect that this is part of the Altnet virus so I would advise seeing if you have any of the symptoms I described above. I also uncovered that HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/AMPMDM is also related and should be deleted as well.

I am currently working on writing a rule for Spybot Search and Destroy and I will post a download link when I finish. I am also working on my own anti-virus software, LitmusAV

Firefox Auido API

I just watched this awesome demo video about the Firefox Audio API.

More info about how this works can be found On the Mozilla Wiki. This feature will be included in Firefox 4, but it is already in the beta version you can download now.

We Haven't Lost Yet!

Common Democrats! We can still save America from slipping back into a recession! We need your vote. I'm looking at you, people on the West Coast. Republicans are sweeping up places in the House, we need to stop this! Get out there and vote.
The Senate is a close call. If we want to have control, the Senate is our best shot.
As I post this, its 44 Democrats to 37 Republicans. We are still in the lead, and we can do this! Just 6 more and we will have half. The Republicans still need 13 if they want to push us back into a recession. We can do this.

Remember, your vote counts.

Please make sure to read my post below.

America Needs Your Vote - Republicans are at it again

Well, another election day is upon us, and Republicans are using their dirty tricks to confuse voters at the polling place. More information can be found here: http://www.ourvotelive.org/report/12380 and an even worse one here: http://www.ourvotelive.org/report/12665.

Republicans have also been using scare tactics to try to keep minority parties away from the polls. Every citizen has the right to vote! This can not be stressed enough. We need your votes, so don't be scared. The website I linked to above along with various other groups are documenting abuse by the Republican party. They won't do it when they know we are watching. If you see someone being abused, report it! This can be done at http://www.ourvotelive.org/ or by calling 866-OUR-VOTE.

I would like to clear up one last misconception before you go. The Republicans have blamed job loss on Democrats and their Stimulus Package. This is WRONG! Democrats were handed the worst economy since the Great Depression and were told to clean it up. Now that thats finally happening, Republicans what to go right back in and mess it up again. They could have fixed this mess faster if Republicans didn't undo all their work once they got re-elected. Also, the Stimulus Package was an INVESTMENT and we MADE MONEY FROM IT! Don't be fooled, it didn't increase the National Debt, it was used to bail out businesses who have paid back their loan and more!

Cave People

Mentioned more recently on the new AJ00200 blog in an article titled Our Tax Dollars at Work

It amazes me that every 2 years people everywhere come out of their caves. What do they do? The watch TV and do exactly what it tells them. Sadly, event occurs right before the election of the new congress and these people have had no idea what has gone on in the political world the past 2 years. The come out and vote however the television ads tell them to.
It is because of this that America has set itself up to be mislead, to be confuse, and to fail. The people who can afford the most advertisement are the exact people we don't want in Washington. These are the corporate lobbyists, namely, the Republican Party, who favor big business and have made many promises to these corporation for tax cuts in order to get the money they used to fund their campaign.

This wouldn't be near as bad if the Republicans were running a fair campaign, but instead they have only pointed out things that have went wrong in the past 2 years and blamed it on the Democrats. How is this fair? Democrats have been cleaning up their mess. Democrats were handed the worst economy since the great depression walking in the door. The Republicans caused the mess, and when the Democrats are finally cleaning it up and the economy is recovering, they want to come back in to mess it up again!
I don't know why anyone would vote for the Republicans after what they did to us, but apparently all the Cave People who make up most of the eligible voters favor their corporate funded ad campaign.

The Democrats need all the help they can get if we are to continue to get the economy back on its feet. We've made it this far and I'm not backing down now! I urgently need your help. You need to vote for your Democratic candidate this election if you want to continue to live in an economy controlled by the people and not by corporate monopolists!

Ghostery

The Firefox Ghostery Addon is a must for anyone who values privacy. It allows you to be notified of and disable just about every tracking program used on the Internet. such as Google Analytics, Google Adsense, and 348 others! It does seem to have a problem on images.google.com, but using the classic version link at the bottom fixes this.

Ubunu 10.10

Ubuntu 10.10 is out, not much different than the last version, but the new Ubuntu Font does look quite cool. Not much of a reason to rush to get the download, but it is definitely not a waste since there is a lot of other programs updated with it.

Ubuntu 10.10 released on 10/10/2010

BBot 5.0 Release Coming Late

Well, it turns out the the BBot 5.0 release will be coming late. There has been a new, unexpected bug in the API that has not been noticed because the feature is little used. I may end up releasing this version with the bug as it is not a security problem, but it could get really nasty if left unchecked for even longer.

Either way, hopefully I will be able to release this version soon.

A Week with my New Laptop

Last week I bought a Toshiba Satellite L655D-S5050, which is what I consider to be a very nice laptop. I had a bit of a problem getting my WiFi to work in Ubutnu, and even using an Ethernet cable didn't work, but upgrading to 10.04.1 fixed this problem.

I now have a really nice laptop that I got for a crazy low price running a secure OS and its perfect for 3D modeling/animation in Blender, and I successfully ran the Beta version on it.

I would HIGHLY recommend this laptop to anyone.

Government Censorship

I was just reading some scary articles about a bill the Obama Administration will be suggesting soon (don't get me wrong, I like Obama, its just that everyone does something really stupid in their life, and sadly, he is doing it right now). You can find some of these articles, like this one from the EFF, and here and here which tie in very closely with internet censorship. So, here is a nice guide to keep you safe from a government takeover.

Use Linux for your computers opperating system.

Although this is the hardest one to do for most people, its is also the most important. Linux is the worlds most secure opperating system, so as long as you keep it up to date and use a secure password, the government will have a very hard time trying to hack your computer, which would be a great way to spy on you and censor your every message. However, this is not as hard as you think. There are many great Ubuntu distrobutions which are very easy to use, particulary Ubuntu which is very easy to setup, and even lets you keep your normal Windows or Mac opperating system on your computer as well. Ubuntu also includes the tools you need to encrpyt your files and so on.

Create a public key

This is probably the second most important thing which you can do, but it can be somewhat complex as it involves encryption and more work to use the encryption. They can't spy on you if they can't read what your saying, so really make an effort to encrypt all sensitive data. I good guide on this can be found right here. The more you encrpyt, the better! Encrpyting your e-mail can be made easiear with the EnigMail Addon for the Mozilla Thunderbird Email Client.

Use Tor

Tor is a program which encrpyts all your network traffic and sends it all over the world before it reaches is final destination. This hides your orgional location as well as encrypting your network traffic. (For the techy people, it also hides your IP address).

Always use https links

When you see a link or url that starts with https:// not http:// (note the extra s at the end), that means that the connection is encrypted, although, this type of encryption can easily be fooled by governments that have too much power, so watch out!
See also: Encrypted Google Searches

There is always more you can do to stay safe online, so if you have an addition you would like to add to this post, just leave a comment, and I will get it in as soon as I can.
To the people who think that the government should be monitoring our messages:

As the rest of use know, the government can easily abuse this power. It starts out as "We are only monitoring suspected terrorists" and then it moves to accusing people of being terrorists just to monitor them. Or its "We are only monitoring suspected criminals" to "We are only monitoring people who we think may be doing something wrong, but have no idea what or where they are doing anything wrong" to "We are monitoring everyone to make sure they don't do anything wrong." And when they start monitoring everyone, all privacy is gone.

Blender3D 2.54 Beta

I'm am a huge fan of the Blender 3D Modeler. I've used it to create 3D models, do special effects, and I've watched some rather good movies made in blender. The beta version of Blender has a new GUI making it look much, much better, and it also includes support for Python scripting, which I am particularly looking forward to playing with as I am a Python geek.

The New Blender GUI

It does take a little getting used to because of the new interface, but I am sure once you become more practiced with this latest version, you will never go back to the old version.
You can get the 2.54 Beta Version, or, if you want to use one that is absolutely stable, you can use the latest stable version.

One last note about the beta version, it requires Python 3.1 which you can download at the on python.org.

BBot 5.0 Comming Soon

It seems like just yesterday that BBot 4.0 was released, but BBot 5.0 is now in the beta phase with the following new features:

• The ability to ignore messages that match a regular expression (regex)
• A new, easiear to use config file
• 3 API functions to allow any module to easily read any value from a section in the config.
• The config is divided into sections, so your module can easily have its own section.
• New anti-spam features
• The factoid system now uses sqlite3.
• And More!

You can get BBot on SourceForge. Or wait for the 5.0 version to come out.

I say that you should try Firesay

Firesay, a Firefox addon from http://www.firesay.com/ allows you to use voice commands to surf the web without even touching your keyboard or mouse.
I have embedded their demo video here:


If you try it out, leave a comment to let me know what you think.

BBot 4.0 is Out!

This weekend I released BBot 4.0 with numerous improvements and fixes to the API and modules in general. Here is the quick list:
* Fixed Module Loading
* Fixed the API so that it calls the proper functions of the modules on a message
* Added the get_raw function to api.module to be overwritten by modules
* Added mass-hilight protection to BlockBot()
* Improved speed in BBot(), and BlockBot():
  * It is now recommended to use "if 'hi' in data" instead of "if data.find('hi')!=-1" as it is faster
*Added a new module, grepfwd, which needs to be loaded before use.

You can download the latest version of BBot on BBot's SourceForge Page or you can download an older version on the BBot Files Page.

Also, I setup the BBot forums on SourceForge, so you can get support for BBot or any modules there. You can also get support on irc.fossnet.info in the channels #bots and #bbot.

Data Destruction

Today, I am doing some tests on data destruction against professional grade equipment.
==EDIT==
I finally got the drives back. It appears that using the "dd" command to write over your dives works the best, and the shred command works great as well for shreding specific file.


This post is part of operation covert, knowing everything you shouldn't know.

Finally Back

I am finally back after a REALLY long week without posting, but sadly, I don't have much to report on. BBot is closer than ever to achieving multi-network support.

However, I do have a political rant to share with you all.
I have been watching C-SPAN recently, and for those of you who don't know, C-SPAN and C-SPAN2 are the channels on which live sessions of congress are broadcasted to all of the United States. Congressmen and women are allowed to give general speeches at various times, so I decided to watch a few.
A republican senator (I will not reveal his name because I don't wish to harm is public image) stood up and started saying "Stimulus Bill" in a sarcastic way, and then he continued to complain about how the democrats have not created jobs. Finally, to prove his point, he pulled out a graph that proves that democrats haven't created jobs.
Well, for one, the graph was the wrong type of graph for the data he was trying to represent. Anyone who did not realize the type of graph he was using would surely think that the democrats have destroyed jobs which is not the case! They also tried to blame the massive job loss at the start of the depression on the democrats, but in fact, this started during a republican controlled term. Lastly, they removed government jobs from the graph, so it looked lime democrats didn't create any jobs, but in fact, they created plenty of jobs, way more than the republicans can count.
As for saying "Stimulus Bill" in a sarcastic way, well they obviously dong know that The stimulus bill is an INVESTMENT that America MADE MONEY off of! Not to mention that this senator has used stimulus money to hold job fairs in his own state!

Finally, while watching C-SPAN2, I see that a democrat is trying to pass a bill that would give money to banks so they could loan to small businesses and get capital flowing and creating jobs, but republicans are the primary opposition to the bill! They claim that it is a program like TARP, which it is NOT! There is NO strings attached, it is a VOLUNTARY program, and the loans come from PRIVATE BANKS, not the government themselves. Everything in this bill is something that republicans support in general, but they oppose the bill because it was written by a democrat. And the republicans accuse the democrats of not being bipartisan...

Well, this blog post is long enough. I'm sure more propaganda will come up soon for me to share. Thanks for reading!

Wireshark and hard-drives

This morning a tested out Ubuntu Studio, a rather interesting version of the regular Ubuntu project. Ubuntu Studio is a fork of the Ubuntu project aimed at production of audio, video, and games. I tried it out, but it didn't work well. The audio did not function at all despite some trouble shooting, and the graphics were a bit glitchy. I am not trying to discourage you from trying it out, hopefully it will work on your system, but I'm back to Ubuntu 9.10 Where everything works as I expect it too.

I am making some progress with BBot and asynchat. BBot now manages to connect to the server and send its NICK and USER lines correctly, but the server does not seem to see them. I was using Wireshark to test it, but no luck.
You can now get the latest BBot release via git from Sourceforge as well as the development copy from Github. However, the regular downloads on Sourceforge have some security bugs, so don't download those until I get version 2 uploaded.

And finally, before I go, I have a rather interesting link to share:
http://xkcd.com/394/

Announcement of mRat

I've been trying to find a good live memory inspector like MHS or Cheat Engine for Linux, but I haven't really found much, so I have decided to create a program called mRat. mRat will search through a /proc/mem file for values matching your search and hopefully allow you to modify these values an the fly and later do more advanced searches like pointers, strings, and floats. It will be quite a challenge, but hopefully I can manage.

Today, I decided to have BBot use Asynchat instead of the socket module to reduce the blocking and the make the rpg module run more smoothly. From what I can tell so far, it will let me read each message sent from the server by setting \r\n as my terminating string so it will split the messages for me and call a function every time I get a message. This will also remove any possible bugs that might occur from overflowing the send_wait variable which could allow for exploitation of the bot if you set it too low in your config file.

Unblacklisted! Finally

2 days ago I was finally removed off of those blacklists I mentioned and can resume life as usual being a non-exit node on the Tor relay. My bot has really been doing well since I can now test it properly.
The ?math command works completely now, and I have started writing some unittests for BBot to speed up the debugging process. I have also moved all the modules into their own files in the modules folder. That should make installation of modules much simpler.
I am now working on a rpg module, rpgbot(), which is coming along nicely. Hopefully I'll have something playable in a week.

BBot and Blacklists

BBot, my IRC bot, is going well. I am currently working on the mathbot() module which will allow calculation of just about any python math statement including things like pi, mod (% in python), floor, ceiling and so on. I was just about to test this module out when my IP was added to the Tor proxy blacklist which the efnetrbl coppies. I will not link to them. They don't deserve the page-rank from google.
I have contacted both the blacklists and asked for my removal, but neither of them has complied and it has been over 13 hours. Meanwhile I am baned at my favorite IRC network, irc.fossnet.info as well as freenode and efnet not to mention everyone else who uses this blacklist. I tried resetting my IP overnight by unplugging my router, but no luck their either.

Welcome

Hello, I'm aj00200, a computer programmer from Kaukauna, WI. I'm making a blog that I will hopefully have enough content to update it with regularly.

I have a few projects going on, like BBot the IRC Bot, my website, and Sniper 3D. I have a bunch of other projects that I am also working on and may eventually finish.

As my first post, I will tell you a little bit about me. I know programming languages like Python, Javascript, PHP, and I'm working on C++. I also enjoy things such as Linux (currently running Ubuntu 9.10 and Debian Lenny), composing, remixing, and chatting on IRC networks. Make sure to checkout #beat-masters on irc.fossnet.info.

Also, I am the official web developer of the Hero of Wiek project on Github.