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So, You Want To Stop Links in the YouTube Comments?

11/10/2013

2 Comments

 
With the new integration of Google+ comments on YouTube, it seems that Google forgot how important a spam filter is, and just left it out. Due to this, many people have disabled comments because people are posting links to sites that may or may not contain malware or are just generally places on the internet where you don't want to go.

I have taken the time to write a filter that will prevent any URL from being posted on either your channel comments or video comments. I also added a bit that should prevent some ASCII artwork.

All you have to do is copy the contents of the text file that is available below, and paste it into the comment blacklist filter, which can be found here.


tld_filter_-_tdpstudios.txt
File Size: 2 kb
File Type: txt
Download File

That's it, you should now be able to block all URLs and some ASCII art, if you found this helpful, share this post with others and consider donating to help me out by going to my donate page, here.

-Puddleduck
2 Comments

RTK Anti-Adblock: How to

6/25/2013

1 Comment

 
So, I guess you came here because you had trouble getting RTK Anti-Adblock to work. It is very simple to implement, and once you have it in place it is incredibly effective. Let's start by going over what the thing is!

When you navigate to the github page where will find the files you need to set up the anti-adblock, you may be a little confused. You need to hit the 'Download as ZIP' button!
Picture
Now that you have the files needed, extract them somewhere and fire up your text editor! The simplest way to implement the anti-adblock is to use iframes. What you need to is create a html document that consists of just your advert code (In my case, that code is simply the Google Adsense code). You can do this by doing the following, there may be better ways of doing this, but this works just fine!
<html>
<body>
-YOUR ADVERT CODE GOES HERE-
</body>
</html>
Now that you have created the advert page, you need to save it as "advert.html" or a name of your choosing. Now, if you have existing ads on your page, you will need to replace them with an iframe that directs to your new advert page. You can do this using the following code:
...
<iframe id="advert" src="http://www.mydomain.com/advert.html" width="735" height="97" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
...
I found that those were the sizes that showed a 728*90 'leaderboard' ad from Google Adsense.

Now that you have implemented that code, you need to add one more piece of code to your page. Just before your closing body tag, add the following:
...
<script src = "blockcake.js"></script>

...
That code is referencing the part of the anti-adblock that does all the hard work. Make sure that you have the file 'blockcake.js' in the same directory (folder) as the page you are referencing it from. If you do not, you can reference it by puting the URL of it (wherever it is located on your server) in place of 'blockcake.js'. For example: 'http://www.mydomain.com/randomdirectory/blockcake.js'

Now we need to edit blockcake.js so that it knows what to block. Open it in your text editor. Remember that iframe we made? Here you are going to use it. We gave the element an ID so that the anti-adblock would have something to reference. Where it says 'var advertcode' you need to place your iframe code as follows:
...window.onload=function(){ var advertBlk = document.getElementById("advert"); 
var advertcode = '<iframe id="advert" width="735" height="97" src="http://www.mydomain.com/advert.html" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" ></iframe>'; if(advertBlk.outerHTML != advertcode) { 
console.log("Adblock Detected"); 
window.location.replace("adblockalert.html");

The code in bold is your iframe code that we made earlier. Now that we have the anti-adblock functional, it is time for a little customization! In the files that you downloaded from github and uploaded to your server, you should have the file 'adblockalert.html'. Open that file in your text editor.

Here you can customize that page that adblock users see when they are detected by the anti-adblock. You can make this whatever you want, but the creator of RTK Anti-Adblock has included a template for the type of thing that you could say. This template is called 'template.txt'.

Now, you can test this by installing/enabling adblock for your site. If it doesn't work, post a comment here and I will see what I can do to help you.

If You found this tutorial helpful, feel free to donate, you can do that here!

-Puddleduck
1 Comment

Mace Swinger

6/23/2013

1 Comment

 
Hello, and welcome to one of my very rare blog posts!

I don't write them very often, as I actually have very little to write about most of the time. Now that we have that out of the way, I suppose I should go into more detail, and explain what the title means.

If you pay attention to what I say in our YouTube videos, I am a fan of Sips of the Yogscast. If you also watch him, you will know that in his Game Dev Tycoon videos he made a game called 'Mace swinger' and I have the privilege of being on the team that is making Mace Swinger into a real, playable game. I am by no means a master game developer, so the main role that I am playing is one of community manager.

In this role, I have access to the official Mace Swinger community resources, such as our Twitter account, @MaceSwingerGame, the Facebook page, MaceSwinger as well as many other sites that I can not remember at this point in time.

I am very proud to be a part of this, something that erupted spontaneously out of the fandom for one man, I am very humbled by the reaction from the community, and I hope that the game has massive success!

If you want to get more info, visit our website (maceswinger.com) where we also have forums where you can interact with the developers as well as other Mace Swingers.

-Puddleduck
1 Comment

Hacked Minecraft Account

4/11/2013

3 Comments

 
So, we are in a rather sticky situation. A good friend of mine, we'll use his internet persona 'Iamninja28' has come into the unfortunate situation where his Minecraft account has been hacked. We have tried contacting Mojang support but seemed to have hit a brick wall.

The situation is that the account seems to have had the password changed, this is ninja's fault for not upgrading to a mojang account. That usually wouldn't be an issue, as you can simply reset your password provided you have access to the email account that you used when you created your Minecraft account.

This is not the case.

Ninja has lost access to the email account that was used to sign up to Minecraft and therefore cannot reset his password. To recover his account he required his transaction ID, another detail that was lost when his email account was hijacked/locked/deleted/sent to the moon.

The account seems lost, no matter how many people can vouch for his real ownership of the account, unless there is severe intervention and goodwill from Mojang it will be in some little script kiddies alternate account database for evermore.

By vouch, I mean some serious people, most notably a 51k YouTuber (DRLGaming) and a handful of other people.

-Puddleduck (P.S: Please help!)

This is the seemingly 'canned' response from Mojang support: (click to enlarge)
Picture
Ninja's first tweet, after a few of mine to try and get help from the head of Mojang support:

@marc_irl Ive lost my MC account and have contacted support to no assist.Can you help me? Proof of email: i.imgur.com/M5raJyx.png Thanks!

— The_Ninja (@iamninja28) April 11, 2013
3 Comments

Password Vulnerability

3/30/2013

1 Comment

 
One thing that annoys many people these days is the requirement to make such complex passwords. They aren't really complex when you think about it, but to a computer, if you add a number, change some letters to upper case and perhaps even add a symbol it gets a whole lot more tricky to crack.

This is in part the reason why when you create an account, I will use the domain registrar 'Namecheap' as my example, you are asked to specify a password with some of the features I mentioned above. The vulnerability I am referring to is in relation to password resets, you could say the weak link in the defences protecting your account.

Not only can people gain control of your email account, therefore giving them control over almost every account attached to it, you can inadvertently make it easier to gain control of your (for example) Namecheap account!

I forgot my Namecheap password, the complex one designed to keep hackers out, and I had to reset it. To my dismay I was not asked to make a complex password on the reset screen, meaning that I can have as simple a password as I wanted. They only specified that it had to be at least 6 characters long. That password just got a hell of a lot easier to crack didn't it.

On an unrelated note, shame on Crazy Domains for expecting passwords to be transmitted via email in plain text.

-Puddleduck
1 Comment

Windows 8

2/23/2013

1 Comment

 
So, as many of you may know, Windows 8 is out, and it as terrible as everyone thought it would be. I am actually using it at the moment, and even heavily modified it is not very user friendly. I had to do a registry edit to get the 'charms' to behave in a way I liked, and I had to install 'Classic Shell' to get the most basic things that has been a standard in Windows; the start menu.

Even if you disable the 'metro' interface it still looks clunky and not very intuative. The taskbar looks like it is too thick, but that is probably something to do with the laptop screen I am using it on. If you are the average  user it is unlikely that you would know how to 'fix' these things, and with registry editing, there is always the chance that a novice will kill Windows.

This isn't really a review of the OS, this is mainly me just venting my feelings after I have had my first major session using it, I certainly wouldn't recomend upgrading to it (if you can even call it an upgrade...) and I won't be upgrading anytime soon. I also will avoid using the metro interface at all costs, thanks Classic Shell! <3

-Puddleduck
1 Comment

The New Year!

1/9/2013

2 Comments

 
Hello guys! I will start with some good news, the web filter service at my school has been replaced, and therefore my website, and the control panel I use to update it are now unblocked. This means that I can make use of the resources on my site, as well as write updates such as the blog post I am writing now.

Moving on, the start of the new year has seen us smash past our Christmas targets of 100 subscribers and 10,000 views on the main channel, and the stats currently stand at 111 subscibers and over 11,200 views (when I last checked last night). This is good for us, and we are above our usual averages for view rate, but our subsciber gain rate has slumped slightly. (Source: SocialBlade). The gain in views may be due to the stint of videos I released in the lead up to Christmas day, which was a total of one video per day, way above our normal rate of production.

This may also be in part due to the return of our much anticipated Skyblock adventures after a very long (too long) break. I will be editing episode eight of this when I get home this evening and aim to have it released by Friday, possibly Saturday at the latest.

Please note that I am writing this using Internet Explorer, the only browse installed on the school systems, so forgive any poor spelling.
2 Comments

Taking Advantage

9/7/2012

1 Comment

 
Hey, guys, thanks for reading!

I just felt like getting this off my chest. I feel that I am taking advantage of Zimmby a little bit, he makes all my graphics for me, and I have nothing to offer in return, and to me, it feels as if I am taking advantage of him. he may deny this, but in my heart I feel it, and whenever I ask him to do something, I feel bad inside.

What is your guys opinion on this? Do you think i am taking advantage?
1 Comment

Nine Pence!

7/23/2012

2 Comments

 
Well, after seeing no income all week, we made £0.09 in one day!

In other news, I recently watched the RasPiThon, a 48hr coding marathon to raise cash for the Raspberry Pi foundation, I donated £0.10 so over all we are one pence down this week! Its a start... I guess!
2 Comments

New Website

7/6/2012

3 Comments

 
Well, you seem to have found the official website of The Duck Pond, well done, I imagine it wasn't an easy find. I have spent the last few hours setting up the basics of the site and as I sit here I can feel myself becoming bored, and no-one does their best work when they are bored.

Now that I have your attention I will talk a little about the state of our YouTube affairs.
The channel "TheDuckPond01" will remain active, even though it is no longer the main channel of the organisation. Now, the new channel ("TheDuckPondMC") will take over this role. This new channel has been monitized and so we are able to generate some revenue from our efforts, so it is is understandable why we have made the decision to move over to the new channel. We are not purely driven by money, but it is important to get something back financially as I personally have put in well over £150 to fund hard and software.

Thank-you for taking the time to read this, and good-bye for now my friends!


3 Comments

    Puddleduck

    Executive Producer and founder of The Duck Pond. A rather interesting fellow once you get to know me!

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