Blogs by this user:
 ELFMap down (4)
 ELFmap still online (1)
 ELFstats (0)
 ELFquiz - Take 2 (1)
 The Google incident (8)
 ELFquiz (2)
 ElfenLied quiz (2)
 ROGRESS!! (1)
 UPDATE on ELFmap (1)
 ELFmap - Now as a blog (1)

So guys, since ELFmap is a little less appreciated than I expected, I decided to take down the statistics programs and conclude the project. Everyone who has the wickersoft tracer in their sig can remove it now, it will just cause traffic to my server now.
These are the results after one hundred something days of runtime (I copypasted it):

Numbers:


Total number of IP entries: 1626
Total runtime of the project: 107 days
Resulting average activity: 14.2 People/day.

This page has been viewed 475 times.

United States Hits: 392 (45.5%) Avg. Hits/day: 3.66
United Kingdom Hits: 88 (10.2%) Avg. Hits/day: 0.82
Canada Hits: 64 (7.4%) Avg. Hits/day: 0.6
Germany Hits: 59 (6.8%) Avg. Hits/day: 0.55
Netherlands Hits: 18 (2.1%) Avg. Hits/day: 0.17
Australia Hits: 17 (2.0%) Avg. Hits/day: 0.16
Poland Hits: 16 (1.9%) Avg. Hits/day: 0.15
Portugal Hits: 15 (1.7%) Avg. Hits/day: 0.14
France Hits: 14 (1.6%) Avg. Hits/day: 0.13
New Zealand Hits: 12 (1.4%) Avg. Hits/day: 0.11
Brazil Hits: 10 (1.2%) Avg. Hits/day: 0.09

Activity over time:


You did a good job at reviving the site, people.

So guys, those of you who know me and my project: ELFmap is still online:

http://wickersoft...org/elfmap

Those who don't: Read my other blogs, most of them are about it.

Trying to get the tracker all over ELF again:

Oh by the way: ELF is pretty slow, and it's not because my connection is so crappy (well, that too), but the server seems to have enormously high pings, just saying.

Just to let you know: I'm continuing the ELFstat and ELFmap project because I'm curoius about the current demographic situation.
Don't worry: I learned how to actually control my server and it's safe as can be now.

If you don't know whaI'm talking about, read my old blogs.

By popular request I have now added an index page with all quizes made by you!

Link: http://wickersoft...s.org/quiz

I also changed the code of the editor so that now multiple people can work with it at once, which I think is a huge step too =)

Make your own quiz here:

http://wickersoft...z/new.html

Prepare for the longest ELFblog EVER!

It seemed like a lot of you people don't really know what I was talking about yesterday, so I thought I would clarify a few things with this blog.
First of all, again, what this project is about is getting a rough idea of how active the ELF is and where the members come from. Instead of asking Pico to build in some fancy Google Analytics scripts I thought it might be a good use for my server to build everything by hand, this also makes the entire process a lot more flexible, because I can change layouts, contents and entire blocks of information in no time and respond to criticism much faster. (For example if anyone has a suggestion for the website)

And here's how it works, this time it should be easy to understand for everyone:

On my computer, which is connected to the Internet as a server, (think of it as something like Photobucket) I have a tiny JPEG picture. It is so small, that it's barely visible to the human eye. Bio and I both have this picture in our signatures in the forum.
Now every time you read a thread and Bio or I posted in it, your computer will automatically display this picture. And in order to do that, it has to load it from my server, obviously. Effectively, my server gets the request "Send picture own.jpg to computer 91.50.145.45 (that being your IP address)". My server not only sends the picture to that computer, but it also writes down your IP address in a text file. A self-written program on my computer then reads that file and does some math with it, finds out if this IP has been here today already, and basically counts how many different computers have requested the picture today, yesterday, all time, etc.

Now basically I could just delete this IP list every day, so that it won't get into the wrong hands, but my program is still under construction and requires a lot of re-starting. In order to keep the information it has produced when it was running last time, it needs to have access to this file, that's why I need to keep it. It also needs to be accessible to PHP so that it can read it. To prevent machines and people who are not allowed to view it from getting access to the file, I gave it a very strange and unrecognizable name, like 9r8ugfbfw8673zt.txt . Apparently, this doesn't prevent Google bots from finding out about its existance though, and because I am a noob I forgot (or rather didn't know how) to tell the server to deny any requests for files inside my "secret" folder, and Google listed the document with your IP addresses in its results.

Rest assured that this did not cause any harm to you or your computer at any time, since the list mainly contained old IP address entries, which are absolutely useless, since your IP address changes every day at least (unless you use a proxy server, like Ivailoto, lol :3)

Of course I had to do something against this by deleting or moving the file out of the server, but that required some effort, since my program and all my websites that use this document need to know where that file now is, and changing something in my program may cause major bugs and thus break the entire mechanism. In order to make sure that the program still works, I needed you to stroll around in the forums and load the picture from above, to make my program do what it's supposed to and see if it does that right, that was all you were supposed to do. Posting replies didn't do anything really.

The situation now:
The entire mechanism has been changed in a way that the document is inaccessible from the Internet without me permitting it (password protection) and all the bugs are fixed. Basically, everything is as before except for the fact that my project is a lot less unsecure o_O.

I have also leaned something from this incident: I can grad Google's attention by hosting documents containing IP-addresses on my server, so I decided to make an html file that contains 500 fake IP addresses (have a look: http://wickersoft...iplist.txt :3). After it is listed in the Google search results, I will change the document so that it redirects to my main homepage, the one of my friend or, most importantly, ELF =)

Thanks for reading! Have a ncie day.

Looks like my work on THE ElfenLied quiz lead me to a slightly different goal: I put up a website where you can assemble your own quiz and distribute the link yourself...

Here is the URL to the QuizCreator website:

http://wickersoft...z/new.html

Have fun and post links to your Quiz in comments and the shoutbox =)

I stumbled across Ivailoto's ElfenLied quiz thread, and I thought it might be a good idea to code some quizes on my server and post links to them all over the place.

PM me your quiz with questions and possible/right answers!

I will put links to them in my next blog and the shoutbox. Thanks!

IP-recognition-algorithm 2.0 now recognizes the place where the IP comes from and filters it twice. This makes the active-member-per-day count now up to 95% accurate - This is about the best you can achieve only by knowing everyone's IP.
Also, the graph on my website now begins to show useful information. Check it out!

http://wickersoft...org/elfmap

UPDATE: Cali pointed out the security issue of publishing the list, so I hid it in an almost unreachable corner of my server and made a password protected redirect page. Whoever wants to see the list can ask me for the password or get the list client (if it's actually that important...) The link has been changed already.
Here is the first real result of my project:

http://wickersoft...org/elfmap

I decided to post updates on my project in a blog rather than a thread - basically because nobody would post a reply anyway - and because it is actually a blog rather than a discussion topic. If you have any questions, send me a PM and i will quote you in my next entry.

Here are the old posts (typos and grammar corrected too )


Okay, I was going to make a website on my server, but then I thought it's important enough to make a thread (or now blog) about it. I have decided to make an "involuntary survey" about the origins of all ELF members by finding their IP addresses and having a little program on my computer look it up on an IP locator website.
You don't have to do anything to help, my computer and the ELF do all the work.
Here's how it works: Biologic, as the top 1 poster, and I both have a very tiny "picture" in our signatures. In fact, it is a 1 by 1 pixel JPG file. This JPG is not uploaded to any "real" server, but is loaded from my computer which is running a webserver. Every time you view a thread with a post by either Biologic or me, your computer will automatically load that little JPG. As soon as it does that, my computer will figure out your IP address (which is normal) and a little program (which I call WATCHDOG) will process it and add its origin to this list:

http://wickersoft...aysips.txt

This is to get a better idea of where all the Elfen Lied fans are living and... yeah basically just as useful as other surveys too Pfft
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them (now in a PM), I'm bored!