For the sake of having more than one voice on RandomBase, I’ve invited Rien (an ex-moderator on BFHforum and a great person overall) to share his opinion with the rest of us. So from now on you’ll see Rien post on pretty much anything that’s on his mind.
His English also beats mine big-time, which is hardly an accomplishment. 
A little out of my usual line, a website where you can get free domain names (yes, free, that includes .com/.net/.org/…) without a credit card or anything. Did I mention it was free?
All you need to do is go to DomainsCreek.com and sign up, complete some surveys and order the domain; it’s one 100% yours, you’ll have full control on it. This works best when you live in the USA, Canada or the UK but we have thought about the rest too by putting in a referral system. Each time you refer somebody to the website, you’ll earn 10% of his/her earnings, and this lasts indefinitely!
We’ll be adding free cPanel hosting too as soon as the first domains are rolling out, have fun and see you on DomainsCreek.com !
My current computer is a pretty nice one, it still runs everything on very high and I have no complaints, but somebody offered a decent price for it so I’ll be selling and buying a new one – a great method in my opinion! As I know nothing about hardware, I let a friend put one together for me. For the geeks, these are the specs:
I’ll be ordering tomorrow night, let me know what you guys think!
I’m very busy working on a semi-secret project (as in, if you’d really be interested you’d know which one already or you could always have asked) and hope to launch it soon, but I needed a decent CMS to work with it. My requirements were very specific, so usually I’d fire up my PHP editor and program a custom CMS but I live with the idea it’s useless to reinvent the wheel, so I tried a couple of open source content management systems powered by PHP and MySQL.
I tried three before I got to using the last one on this list, read more after the “jump” (yes – 2002 called, they want their jump back, I know).
Did some PHP coding, with a little AJAX and the usual. It all fell together into what you could call a simple shoutbox made for phpBB forum software. I’m offering it for download here already, but please continue reading before you make any comments…
This is my first published phpBB mod, I’m quite familiar with the code but not with actually publishing my own modifications, so yes – it could be buggy, it could be incompatible with your template and it might not meet the full coding guidelines and it probably won’t have every little feature you’d like such as smilies. Adding smilies wouldn’t have been too hard, but what I have made is nothing more than a pretty decent base system that works on its own, but could be easily modified to fit the needs of your own forum. I would really like any feedback you guys could give, or even correct errors/mistakes I made.
I have submitted it for review to the official modification directory and hope it’ll get approved. If you want to try it on your own forum, you can download it here. It is currently only compatible with the Prosilver theme, but it can be easily modified for your own theme, the tags are pretty obvious if you read shout.html in the templates folder.
A live demo can be found on our own forum.
This is news: major news. From the official Google blog:
We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
Google, I would like to say this: I love you so goddamn much right now. People shouldn’t be withheld any information, especially not when it comes to human rights. I understand this is an extreme step and you guys must feel incredibly confident to take it, this is a first step to breaking down the Great Firewall of China. The risk you guys are willing to take is enormous, this might very well mean Google loses all chances in the worlds biggest and fastest growing economy, your stocks will probably fluctuate or even drop a great deal, but this is still the best possible move you could make.
Google, thanks.
In all honesty, I am not expecting too much of them, it’s all based on how you guys behave there and ask more people to join in. It’s not like the other forums I usually create or administrate, it’s a simple, relaxed place with what I hope will become mature discussions and a fun hangout for both old RandomBase fans (you know who you are ) and new visitors. At this very moment it doesn’t come with fancy plug-ins or an awesome custom design, it’s just a rushed version but as usual I’ll be expanding and modifying exactly the way the community wants.
In the same category: I’ll be developing a phpBB3 shoutbox plug-in for the forum and will release it later to the public, hoping I meet the phpBB coding guidelines. This might take a while as I am used to modding the software but not when the code has to be clean and nice on the eye for a larger public.
You guys’ intellect and skill surprised me, I made only six levels because I figured you would all be spending fifteen weeks again to get to level three. I was so wrong, sorry about that!
Click here to continue the challenge all the way to ten. I hope I have made it hard enough this time for the last four levels! I’ll keep adding new ones each time the top level has been reached.
While working on the extremely secret and special community, I’ve took a few minutes to create a retardedly difficult game that requires you to look into the… details. If you suck with computers or have no clue at the first level after ten minutes of staring, you might want to find a different game. I’m sorry, but this game needs a serious portion of your thinking power (well, I hope) and your logic, even some common sense… but also and maybe most importantly a set of intermediate computer skills.
But if you’re up for a serious challenge, then please, at all costs. Click on this link already and become the first one to reach level ten.
If for any reason you think keeping up to date with Twitter is more convenient than keeping up to date directly with RandomBase – that’s ok! I’ve registered a Twitter account for RandomBase so you can now check all the news on this address. It’s on complete auto-run so do not expect too much difference with this website (as in, none).