W-Shadow.com

I’ve recently added internationalization support to my Broken Link Checker plugin, so if you like the plugin and would like to see it in your own language, consider contributing a translation! So far people are working, or have already sent in, localization files for the following languages :

Italian (complete; even got two – by Gianni [...]

During the last few months I have been working on an improved premium version of my popular link cloaking plugin. And now, on this unquestionably glorious day, I finally deem it sufficiently polished and bug-free to be ready for public release. So if you do affiliate marketing and want to protect your commissions, go check [...]

Packt Publishing is running their 2009 Open Source CMS Award, so go forth and nominate your favorite CMS for one of the award categories! And in case you’re not sure which CMS to vote for, here’s a friendly suggestion:

Clik the image to go to the nomination screen with WordPress pre-selected
Hat tip to [...]

I’m planning to release my first commercial WordPress plugin later this month. The plugin will be an improved version of the Link Cloaking plugin and will include a bunch of new and exciting features, like cloaking links anywhere on the site (as opposed to only detecting links inside post/page content) and the ability to display [...]

Here’s a little webcomic about the most common ways an AI project can go (in fiction and otherwise). Click the image to see the the full-resolution version.

Props to anyone who gets all the references.

Minecraft is a browser-based sandbox game where you can build enormous structures, explore underground caverns, play with lava and water… or just watch grass grow. The game world is very flexible, allowing you to completely reshape the terrain. If you register for a free account you can also do all of the aforementioned things in [...]

And now for some useless stats.
I know, I know – it’s a stupid question. You can’t really download the Internet. It’s so ridiculously huge and messy that even Google hasn’t indexed all of it. But what if a clueless fool eccentric multibillionaire came by and asked you to do it, stating that “money is no [...]

After the Deadline is an advanced spell checker plugin for WordPress that was released on Monday. In addition to the standard spell check and suggestions features, it also includes style and grammar checking. The plugin also lets you define custom dictionary of sorts – you can set it to always ignore certain words. Here’s the [...]

The latest version of Broken Link Checker for WordPress is now available on WordPress.org. If you’re already using the plugin you should get an update notification within 24 hours. Below you’ll find a list of changes and a bit commentary about the update.
Around 20 people downloaded the beta version. I haven’t received any death threats [...]

The next major update of the Broken Link Checker plugin is almost done. I’ve added several new, oft-requested features and rewritten most existing functions to make them more secure and faster. However, as anyone who has at least dabbled in programming will know, lots of code changes equals lots of potential for new bugs. So [...]

It seems clear that Internet users have grown to expect a certain minimum of cat pictures to be present on any worthwhile site. Unfortunately, the aforementioned fare has been decidedly scarce on this domain. Today I seek to remedy this lack by posting a small number of carefully selected images of the feline pesuasion. I [...]

Imagine the average Internet user. Would it be a reclusive nerd, or a companionable social networker? Would their favorite pastime be writing witty blog/forum posts, or commenting (ever so eloquently) on YouTube? Would they lol about lolcats?
Here’s some completely unscientific research on these burning questions :
The Myers-Briggs type indicator is a popular way to label [...]

You can never have too much stats, right? Today I came across a new load testing site that might provide you with some interesting data points. LoadImpact.com simulates multiple users accessing a website and presents a simple report on how long the server took to respond. Here’s an example report :

You can run the [...]

263 identical tweets per minute – estimating from Twitter Search results, that’s how fast this little hack is spreading as I write this post. It’s almost enough to make me stop writing it – after all, with such a large scale infestation, every major “Web 2.0″ outfit is already rushing to cover it. Oh, they [...]

If you don’t care about amatteur philosophy/self-development/logic, I recommend you ignore this post. This is a pure rant, so I’ll try to keep it short.
There’s this unbelievably popular self-development blogger Steve Pavlina. Some of his posts are quite insightful and have practical uses. Some make we want to embed my head in a concrete wall, [...]

The Raw HTML plugin has been updated! In case you didn’t know, Raw HTML is my WordPress plugin that lets you use unfiltered HTML, JavaScript, CSS, etc in your posts. You can download the update from the plugin’s page, or wait for the automatic update notification that should appear in a few hours.
Version 1.1 is [...]

I promised (in the Tree Link project) to post the “Trees For The Future” certificate when it arrives, so here it is

On an unrelated note, I’m having trouble with my wisdom tooth. Posting frequency will be diminished for a while.

As I discovered just a few minutes ago, Google Image Search has a feature that lets you restrict your search only to images that contain faces. However, it looks like the algorithm still has a few kinks to be worked out… Take a look at the first result of this image search query :

I [...]

December has just passed, so here’s and update on my experimental charity project. According to my stats, the Tree Link received nine links, which means I have to sponsor nine new trees. That’s not a lot, but it’s a start. And, since it’s New Year (more or less), I’ll throw in some additional $ [...]

Take a look at this cool homemade keyboard. Plus an accompanying rant about how surely there has to be something interesting in the gap between QWERTY and a brain implant.

Christmas – the time of goodwill and gifts and all that philosophical stuff – is coming. So, in the spirit of the season, I’ve decided to start up an unusual charity project/experiment. Here’s the idea in a nutshell – for every link you point to this page, I will sponsor one new tree through the [...]

Meta : A snowstorm has killed my Internet access, so I couldn’t answer emails and comments – sorry! Should get my uplink working in 4-5 days. In the meantime, here’s some delicious filler delivered via an unreliable GPRS hack…
In this post you will find a small collection of potentially interesting or useful links. I usually [...]

I’ve been trying to write a review ever since the first beta, but all I could come up can be summarized as “Meh. It’s okay.” WP 2.7 includes a lot of long-awaited features, which is great, but their implementation sometimes inflicts the aforementioned “meh” feeling.
For example, there’s the dashboard menu – finally, a dynamic dropdown [...]

Indeed, my inescapable tendency for invention procrastination has given us yet another piece of useless but potentially amusing statistics. The idea is simple : take 5000 recent comments from both Digg and Reddit and create two tag clouds using Wordle. In theory this should provide a bird’s-eye overview of the topics discussed by users of [...]

If you frequent science and tech-related sites you will have noticed that some topics seem to come up all the time. Genetic engineering, AI, nanotechnology – there’s one breakthrough discovery after another, all promising the next Industrial Revolution very soon indeed, probably within our lifetimes. The revolution(s) may actually arrive – there’s definitely plenty of [...]

With the recent release of the Google’s Chrome browser lots of sites have jumped on it and started churning out reviews. However, most reviews focus on Chrome vs Firefox – for example, I have already seen no less than three articles discussing whether Chrome’s brand new JavaScript engine is really faster than the one used [...]

A short web series of comedic sketches about an extremely angry astronaut stranded on the Moon. The good aspects include ebjoyably predictable plot twists and cliches set in an unusual environment. The bad aspects… well, pretty much the same. The whole thing (all 6 episodes together) is less than 20 minutes, so you probably wouldn’t [...]

I checked my blog this evening and discovered that every page redirected to some stupid malware site (offline now, was http://scanner.antivir64.com/?aff=1050). It was immediately obvious that I had been hacked. Fuck, that’s a first.
Emergency Measures
It took me about 30 minutes to get the site back to normal and start investigating. WP 2.6.1 has just come [...]

I’m busy with an AJAX+PHP+Google Trends experiment this week and I can’t bring myself to write a complete post, so here’s a random assortment of interesting links instead
High-Traffic Colluding Tor Routers in Washington, D.C., and the Ugly Truth About Online Anonymity
Lucid thouhts on online anonymity and why TOR is not a panacea.
PingCrawl [...]

I don’t have a consistent stance on copyright and intellectual property – I suspect most people don’t. We just make do with shaky beliefs and half-assed ideals. So I decided to finally think it through and come up with some sort of philosophical basis on this issue. Below is the the resulting epic rant. If [...]