Nadrew's site

If your friends are having trouble accessing the website.

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:45:08 +0000

The last week we've gotten quite a few reports about the website being inaccessible to many people but not for others.

What appears to have happened is some bad DNS data was sent into the pipe for an unknown reason, and like DNS data does this bad information propagated across the internet making the site unavailable to anyone who managed to cache this bad data.

After some investigating and helping people resolve this issue here are a few tips to help get things working properly again.

First, run the command 'ipconfig /flushdns' from your command-prompt (cmd.exe) this will force your DNS cache to clear and update with new information. This generally resolves the problem right away, but in some cases it doesn't.

If that doesn't work try running the command a couple more times, disconnecting your internet and then reconnecting. After you've reconnected run the command once more and give it a shot, everything should be fine by this point.

If you're still having trouble run the commands 'tracert byond.com' and 'nslookup byond.com' tracert should end with the domain 'byond2.byond.com' and nslookup should end with the IP '67.228.127.155' if this doesn't happen you may need to wait a little longer for the DNS fix to propagate to your area.

This problem will automatically resolve itself in time, but these steps should help speed the process up.

Re: d_hub library

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:45:46 +0000

Lummox JR wrote:

That's a bad habit that started with Nadrew.

Like hell, Dan's the one that got me started on it. Blame him.

Pager failing to report external IP in certain cases.

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 17:45:56 +0000

I'll explain this the best I can, if you're hosting something from a computer on your network and you connect to the world using the network IP (192.168.x.x) the pager will report that as your external IP and will attempt to connect people to that IP if they attempt to join you through the pager. Logging out and back into the world using the actual external IP fixes the issue.

What I'm guessing is the pager doesn't realize it needs to report the external IP because it assumes the person is connecting to a LAN game and the internal IP is all that it needs to handle.

Impossible to post non-parsed HTML in blog comments.

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 06:27:08 +0000

Say you want to post something like
You just have to do something like <a href=blah.com>Blah</a>

Not gonna happen, the comment page will still read it as HTML, it's impossible to post something like that without it being read as HTML, the <TT> tag reads HTML and the <CODE> tag is unavaliable.

Portforward.com now includes detailed support for BYOND!

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 20:10:49 +0000

Thanks to the good people over at http://www.PortForward.com there's now a detailed manual on setting up your pager if you're behind a router or a firewall. The person from PortForward.com said he'll be adding information on setting up hosting too, but the pager port instructions should put you on the right path to that too.

You can find the information here.

New review functionality coming.

Fri, 23 Dec 2005 04:09:27 +0000

Recently we've started working on a new review process that will bring the community into the loop more, in preparation for this new system we've stopped all current reviews. We hope to unveil this new system in the in the near future. Thanks for your patience.

Spyware got you down?

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 08:10:04 +0000

Sure, most people know of Spyware now, this time last year only 2% of all internet users knew what it was and how to deal with it. And sadly with publicity and more ways of fighting Spyware, Spyware developers are becoming more and more cunning about how their programs work. Spyware IS illegal in a few US states including California (where SPAM mail is also illegal), so if you live in a state with this law all you have to do is make a legal complaint about the Spyware company and action is taken.

But, if you live in a state where Spyware is still running rampant here are a few program that will make life easier.

For Windows 2000/NT/XP users

Microsoft AntiSpyware
Very fast and efficent scanner that's free and easy to use, includes a very powerful real-time scanning agent, and automatic updates (if you want them). Don't be fooled by the Microsoft title, the program was developed by a company that knew good amounts about Spyware, all Microsoft did was add OS intergration that only makes the program more powerful. I use this and have yet to find anything harmful since.

For Windows 95/98/98SE Users

Sunbelt CounterSpyware
Built on the same engine as Microsoft AntiSpyware and with the same general functions. Not free, sadly. If Spybot and AdAware aren't working well enough the free trial should work just enough to help you out.

For Windows users with Windows 95 or above

Spybot Search and Destroy
One of the first, but it doesn't find everything. Decent updates, when they happen. And it's free.

Lavasoft's AdAware
Came out before Spybot, still has defination updates, but lackes in program updates. Doesn't find everything, it's a great compliment to Spybot, and it's free.

If you're a Linux user and get Spyware, shame on you! You should know how to fix it yourself.

Also, if the system is in too bad of shape to run a scanner I recommend Googling a free online scanner, or formatting your drive.

Fable for the X-Box.

Mon, 24 Jan 2005 10:01:18 +0000

I must say, this game is pretty neat. Not the most indepth and epic of RPG's but definatly original in many senses, with tons of ways to keep you interested long after the actual game is complete. Basically you decide how to "raise" your character, you can be a good-hearted hero helping others, a bloodthirsty monster of a person killing everything in sight, or just be an average everyday neutral person.

The equipment system is somewhat generic, but unlike most it changes your characters appearance based on what you have. You also have the option of "augmenting" a weapon to have special magical properties.

I liked being able to change most of the visual aspects of the character, this includes tatoos, hair, clothes, and just about everything else you can change after birth.

My only real problem is the lack of game length, I really wish it was longer.

Installing BYOND and DMCGI on a Linux computer.

Mon, 24 Jan 2005 09:54:59 +0000

Here's a few basic tutorials on how to install BYOND and DMCGI on a Linux computer, it includes methods for normal users, and computer administrators.

For Administrators

Firstly, we'll go over getting everything running in a 'superuser' environment, this means as the 'root' user.

Step 1: Download and extract the latest BYOND linux version.

Step 2: 'cd' to the directory where BYOND was extracted to (usually the directory you're already in's "/byond" folder)

Step 3: Run the command "make install", this will fully install BYOND for all users to use. This includes the "DreamDaemon", "DreamSeeker", and "DreamMaker" commands.

That's it for installation, DMCGI will already work on your webserver if you rename the .dmb file to a .cgi file.
But if you want to use .dmb you have to tell your webserver that .dmb needs to be read as a CGI-script.

For most Apache servers this is simply editing your httpd.conf file to include .dmb in the "CGI-Script" parameter. (Make sure you always have "ExecCGI" enabled for your CGI directories)

For Non-Administrators

Steps 1 & 2 are identical to Steps 1 & 2 from above.

Step 3: Run the command "make here" to install for your account only, follow the on-screen intructions.
(source /your/home/byond/bin/byondsetup)

Step 4: Edit your startup script to include the "source" command, the startup script is usually in your top-most directory and is usually named either ".profile" or ".bash_profile". The command "ls -a" will display what you need.

Since you usually don't have access to the actual webserver configuration you have a few more steps for DMCGI. First off, you have to change the world/executor variable of your DMCGI source to the location of DreamDaemon on your account plus "-CGI -logself" to insure it runs as CGI, and you MUST rename your .dmb file to .cgi since your server has no idea what a .dmb file is.

REMEMBER: Always chmod your CGI files to 755 to insure proper permission settings.

CGI.Logout() doesn't redirect.

Mon, 17 Jan 2005 21:15:21 +0000

I've noticed calling CGI.Login() redirects the user to the page they clicked in from, but CGI.Logout() brings them to this page. Is there anyway to change this behavour? It would make login and logout links on DMCGI websites a bit smoother.