Completely off-topic, just canvassing opinion ;-).

For a long time I have been contemplating / threatening to set up a personal blog, something imaginatively named like "CrackZ's blog" or "A day in the life of a cracker" for example.

Like many out there my time to write lots of public material has disappeared into the ether but I still like to turn my hand to projects, many of which result in little snippets of semi-useful and pointless information, code snippets etc, etc.

What are peoples thoughts on blogs generally?, are there those that you read regularly or would read regularly?, obviously I'd need to be legally careful on the kind of information posted, I just think it might be an interesting angle.

Regards

CrackZ.

There is a new Blog component available for vBulletin, which dELTA has been shamelessly begging Woodmann to purchase, but maybe his approach has been overshadowed by other things Woody has had to deal with, like me nuking the server, and such.

It is something we have discussed and considered. We just need to make a decision whether the vBulletin solution, as currently configured, meets our purposes for such software. Maybe your Post will help him make a decision.

Regards,

i can imagine the content 99.9% shania ;p

Well, that wouldn't be a "bad" thing!

Maybe he could also attach audio files of her greatest hits.

Regards,

im trying very hard not to make a 'shanias crackz' reference...

doh...

must... try... harder ;p

If he has been begging ME, he has made a very poor effort.

I would consider said purchase if I could see dELTA show some of his begging skills in a more public place like this forum.

What say you all ? .

Woodmann

Ah damn! Now he's going to be cutting and pasting his previous efforts. I know, I'll beat him to the punch!

Here's one quote:

"Version 1.0.1 just released:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=243372

Woodmann? Pleeeeaaase?"


Regards,

CrackZ: I'd be very interested in reading a blog by you. More technical content is always good.

There are around here truly intersting tech blogs, as
Mark Russinovich' s Blog, Alex-Yonescu, KernelMustard, Nynaeve..

I suggest you to search about these

Have a nice Day,
Evilcry

http://www.woodmann.com/crackz/index.html

What's wrong with just appending/prepending to a text file linked somewhere from there?

Heheh, someone else who reads Kernel Mustard. Kinda dying these days, but..

A blog is a good idea,
I would like to see 0xf001's blog too..

The difficulty with a blog is keeping it maintained. When it's brand new and shiny, people tend to post regularly. As the novelty wears off the blog entries tail off accordingly. You see it all the time - 10 posts in the first month, 5 in the second, 3 in the third, then maybe one a month if you're lucky.

I'm not saying blogging is a bad idea, because if it's well written and continually updated it can be a fascinating read. But not knowing Woodmann's financial position or the cost of this module (too lazy to google, I know), be clear on the commitment before spending the cash. It may be that the money is better spent elsewhere, like enabling those Frontpage extensions I'm sure you're all dying to use

Sounds like a nice idea, but can bring up a whole slew of legal problems. Lets say I was reversing some new packer being used on Photoshop CS 5. Now technically all this means is I have broken the EULA I had signed in order to install Photoshop, and thus terminated my "contract" with Adobe, disallowing me from using that software ever again. Technically Adobe shouldn't be able to sue me unless I'm posting cracks all over the place. "Technically". I'm somewhat loathe to try it out in real life. Maybe someone who actually knows what he is talking about can tell me if you could get into trouble reversing such popular software and posting about it on a blog?

It will be most unlikely that we can permit anyone to attach a "Blog" to these Forums which suddenly is permitted to "discuss" things which we prohibit from being "discussed" here in the Forums.

For example, we do not permit the "identification" of a target in a Post which includes the posting of "code" from which one could construct a "crack" of the "identified target" or circumvent the "protection system." Perhaps you need to re-read the FAQ! If you wanted to release a "crack" of your "target of choice" in a "personal blog" then, most likely, you would need to acquire your own "blog" software and host it somewhere else. And, yes of course, you and WE could get in "trouble" for posting such information in a public place in a country with enforcable copyright and trade infringment laws. Such actions would, in the least, undoubtedly bring complaints to our ISP.

These are subjects we will have to spell out BEFORE we provide blogging software in conjuction with these Forums.

Regards,

Sorry for late reply/beg. I've been working hard to get the <insert second top secret project that will make this place an even more central and appreciated part of the reversing world here> ready for release, which has unfortunately been set back quite a bit for each time the server has been nuked, so I haven't wanted to beg too much more in addition to my previous internal begging to Woodmann about this blog project idea until I have proven that I will finish the <insert second top secret project mentioned above here> project as promised.

But to show that I'm serious about my great visions for this blog too, I'll beg some more right now, inbetween working with the <insert second top secret project mentioned above here>:

Pleeeeeeaaaaaase almighty Wood, who art in heaven. Bestow upon us, your humble servants begging on their knees, this precious gift of the blog plugin, and we will use it to the maximum potential of our feeble capacity, to make this place, this world, your kingdom, a better place for all. *whipping oneself in sacrifice to the great Wood lord*

Humbly awaiting any sign of you hearing my prayer, directly or through a divine messenger, because Woody works in mysterious ways, and his will shall always be done.

And yes, all you other people can thank me later for this begging, when you all have your fancy blogs on the most coveted reversing blog site in history. You will remember me as he who sacrificed himself for you all, and crawled in the mud to make it possible for you all to confess your reversing sins onto the divine blog, to be able to be ultimately forgiven by almighty Wood, and even maybe admired by his other disciples.

Anyway, I'm off again to work on the <insert second top secret project mentioned above here> again, and you will all await my return, because it will bring with it a truly magnificent event (and possibly even judgement for you all, but I'm not making any promises about that one).

Smell ya later all,
dESUS

Nah... wouldn't work...

You'd just prolly be so busy, you'd update it, like, once every six months... :P

On the other hand, may be a case of the pot calling the kettle black, so go ahead by all means...

Have Phun

IMHO, a blog is a metrosexual personal webpage...

"Knowledge is now free at last." - do you remember?

Ok people, rock 'n roll!

http://www.woodmann.com/forum/blog.php

(also available from the "Blogs" option in the top menu row of each forum page)

Let's see some quality blogs now!

yay

@JMI
I'll behave

Many thanks for the blog feature!

It's nice to see the Code Wrapper functionality, i've a wordpress blog that does not have a free code wrapper, now i can post code, this is great



Have a nice day

We're happy to have your blog moving here evilcry!

We're also looking into the possibility of importing all old blog posts from e.g. Wordpress blogs, for any member who wants to move their blogs here, so stay tuned...

Importing from Wordpress shouldn't be too hard IF you have physical access to the mysql database files.

From what I understand, you can download the Wordpress software and install it on your own php/mysql based server. If that's the case then you only need get me the database files (or provide me with server details) and I can set up the vBulletin script already provided for importing Wordpress blogs.

However, if you use the free Wordpress.com service I think that's a different matter. From browsing their site it seems you can only export your blog in a propietary XML format ("Wordpress eXtended RSS" which is only suitable for importing into another Wordpress blog.

That said, I believe there are ways to convert standard XML to Mysql, maybe we can even reverse the wordpress format to suit, but that's something I'd have to look into further.

I'll take a look at our import options if anyone wants to send me the relevant files from another blog, i.e. an sql dump of the database if you have it, or more likely with the free Wordpress, the XML export.

Kayaker

The hardest parts for me about blogging:
1. Having content to post.
2. Being able to publicly discuss certain technical things.
3. Avoiding the desire to blog about non-technical stuff (due to concern it might "water-down" the technical nature of my blog).

I've satisfied #3 above by posting personal stuff on Facebook instead.

Here are some solutions to your two yet-unsolved problems (very good solution to the third one there btw ).

There is no time-related pressure at all, if you only come up with something good to post about once a year, we'd still be very happy to have it. And having the blog ready and created will make it much easier to do this once you come up with something you want to publish quickly and easily.

Hmm, let's see... What about posting/discussing the things you can discuss, and don't post/discuss the things you can't?

Now that all problems are solved, we're looking forward to reading your blog here.

Hi,



IMHO is better to publish one good blog post at month, than every day garbage/irrilevant posts

Regards

Hah-hah, disavowed has a facebook page. I'm off to deface it.

And if you are successful, he shall have to save face

Like the others above me have said, I'm probably going to write a blog post only if I have something worth blogging about -- which may come soon.

i've had friends defacing it for the past year.. you don't scare me

i already have a blog though
it would be cool if you could import external blog rss feeds like openrce and facebook do.

Hi disavowed,

That's a great idea. Turns out we can do that
We've already got the ability to import member RSS feeds into a forum and display them as threads or announcements.

As a matter of fact, I'm looking at an external RSS feed in a test forum right now... took me about 2 minutes to set up. If the "collective we" would like this feature I don't think it should be a problem to set up a separate forum (or individual subforums/per user) for specific RE related external RSS feeds.

I think the import templates could use some customization, the default look isn't quite as good as OpenRCE's for example, but that's something to play with. We might be able to port the display over to the Blog pages with a bit of hacking in the future, but for now an External RSS Feed forum is a ready solution.

Interested?

Cheers,
Kayaker

Cool, I've actually been looking for this exact feature so that we can do this exact thing, but I was looking in the blog plugin, which seems to totally miss it.

With some tweaks this feature might definitely work and be a good thing, so we'll get back after fixing it up a bit and seeing what we can do with it.

Ok people, we now have an official blog forum!

http://www.woodmann.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=46

All local blog posts will be automatically posted in their own threads here, and also all posts from imported external blogs!

Feel free to discuss and comment any blog post in its thread in this forum!

(also, please don't use the "comment" feature of our local blogs anymore, but rather comment the blog posts in their respective threads in this forum instead, we will soon disable/redirect the blog-local comment feature to this forum instead due to it's bad integration with the forum software)

Oh, and to avoid any confusion, do note:
Local blog posts will be imported to this forum 10-30 minutes after they are posted to the blog, just so you don't think something's wrong when it doesn't show up immediately after you posted it to your blog.

I see what you did there.

I find it... wierd.

Huh?

...to turn a blog into a forum thread.

I see. Please don't worry about it though, we have several very good reasons for it.

That being said, we are of course still completely ecstatic about hearing your as ever constructive and encouragingly formulated feedback.

edited blogs are not updated in the forum

Are you sure it's not just the usual 10-30 minute import delay?

Please give an example of a blog post for which this happens, and I will take a closer look at it.

I edit my last blog post yesterday to add some more info, and checked in forum an hour ago, and it wasn't updated

Good point, edited blogs won't be updated because once a blog has been imported a uniquehash id based on the md5 of the {rss:guid}, or permanent link for the blog post, is inserted into the rss log table. On the next cron job the log table is scanned for the id to find and ignore feeds that have already been imported.

I think I can see a solution for that, we need to test for the last updated date and modify the unique id check to account for that variable as well. I've found the mysql table in question and should be able to do something about it.

Importing local blogs isn't 'officially sanctioned' by vbulletin, so it continues to be a reversing exercise to get the scripts to work the way we want. It's at least nice not to have to ignore a EULA for once

EDIT: I manually reset things so a couple of blog users were reimported. Not ideal for a number of reasons, but will do for now.

As I mentioned elsewhere, we also have a problem getting any of the comments to be showing here in the Blog Forum. We have Blogs with comments in the Blog section, which do not appear in the Blog Forum.

Kayaker is trying to resolve that issue also, as well as do his "day job."

And just to make that process more complete, vBulletin just released an update to the Blog code yesterday.

Regards,

I found this old thread while searching for something else, and noticed that we are still waiting for CrackZ' first blog post... About time soon, wouldn't you all say?

I have created a blog entry on OpenRCE, and would like to import the blog entry to Woodmann as well.

I have been looking around the forum and blog areas and searching both but cannot figure out how to import a blog entry.

Would some one mind pointing out how to do it? Thanks.

Howdy,

I think blogs from openrce get imported automagically.

Woodmann

Kayaker has spend some time on improving the "magic" and dELTA has worked on various problems also. As I understand the process, it involves an RSS feed and they are on a timecycle. Your's probably hasn't reached the "magic" moment for importing.

Regards,

When it comes to external blogs (like e.g. blogs hosted at OpenRCE), only selected ones are imported, if they contain enough quality material, and no unwanted/off-topic material.

You can recommend blogs for importing to the moderators, e.g. to me, and we will review and consider it. No promises though.

Thank you all for the explanation. At the moment I would not consider my blog worthy, although I hope it will be one day.

Thanks.

You (and everyone else) are always welcome to mention and reference any external blog posts that you may find interesting, in separate normal posts in the forums though (e.g. the off-topic forum if you're not sure what other forum it might fit in).