My Last Post on This Domain

OK guys,

I think that it is time for me to publish the last post on this blog using WordPress as a domain. As you probably already know, GitHub is my favorite company and I have decided to switch my blog to a completely new domain.

I have published a couple of posts exclusively on the new domain and backed up every post from this domain to my new address (with one exception, but I’m working on it). I feel confident now to make the switch and I started to feel really comfortable using GitHub + Jekyll as a blogging platform, so I’ve decided to drop by and say good bye to my old domain.

From now on, you can follow me on r3bl.github.io. Be sure to use the http version of the site because https version is currently not properly implemented in the code. If you run into some issue while browsing the site or you miss a feature that I had implemented on this domain, feel free to report it here.

As always, you’re more than welcome to contact me anytime on aleksandar.todorovic@mail.ru. I hope that you’ll continue to read me on my new address.

Sincerely,
Aleksandar Todorović

Why Have I Decided To Switch My Blog To a GitHub Pages + Jekyll Combination

WordPress was a great platform for the beginning of my blogging experience. The simplicity needed for the creation and maintaining of the WordPress blog is amazing. It literally took me 10 minutes from the creation of my blog to my first post. But, a few days ago, I’ve decided that it is time for me to switch to something more powerful. I’ve decided to switch to Jekyll blogging platform.

Why have I chosen GitHub + Jekyll as my new platform?

Well, first of all, my PHP knowledge is very limited. I have always considered PHP to be the weakest spot in my education. And, on top of that, I’m not that comfortable with databases for now. Jekyll has allowed me to run a completely self-maintained blog without using any PHP or MySQL.

Using this combo is going to boost my GitHub profile and my Git knowledge

Because of the excellent Jekyll integration with GitHub pages, maintaining a blog using Jekyll is going to force me to use GitHub even more than I have used it so far. And I think that is great. By doing so, I’m going to visit GitHub more often, which will boost my desire to hack and program new things (this is the newest project I’m planing on making a reality).

It will also boost my GitHub profile in the search results, which is something I desperately need to do. While Google-ing my full name, I found out that there’s an actor, a photographer and a war criminal with the same name as mine. You can imagine the surprise of my future employer if he sees my name associated with a term such as a war criminal.

I love every single product that GitHub developed over the years

Lets be honest, GitHub is my favorite company and I love every single feature they’ve developed over the years. I love their tight integration with Git, their pages, their Gists, their Atom text editor and their Student Developer Pack (even though my request is still in the verification process).

Markdown has become my favorite markup language

Ever since I’ve started using GitHub more regularly, I’m amazed by the simplicity behind Markdown. I’m using it to type everything from by blog posts to my collage papers and essays. Now, to be honest, I’ve written most of my posts using Markdown even back when in my WordPress days, but Jekyll allows me to update my blog in an incredibly simple way. I just have to write my post inside of a new Markdown file, update my repository and that’s it. I don’t even have to open Firefox to post something.

An option to choose a commenting platform

Lets be honest, if you need comments on your website, Disqus is the way to go. Most of the sites I’m visiting are using it, and I see no reason of why I should choose anything else.

I love having the full control over my blog

Worpress.com is a free platform and as such it does have some advantages and some limitations. Even though I loved the simplicity of some feature (like a WordPress stats feature), I hated the way I was limited in the customization of my blog. Using this combination, I have no limitation that I’m uncomfortable with. I can customize my blog in any way I want and it feels great! Every Jekyll customization, every theme and every plugin I ran into were completely free (as in both speech and beer) and because of that I can customize every single aspect of them as I wish.

So, how will I make the transition happen?

Now this is a tricky one. I have decided that I’m going to be using this combination permanently, but I do have a lot of work to do before making the final switch.

First of all, there are still some parts of this excellent HPSTR Jekyll theme that I haven’t customized properly (or at all). This is why I’m regularly updating a TODO.md file to remind myself of what still needs to be done.

So, if you like my blog, I encourage you to go through that TODO.md file and to report any issues that I haven’t noticed inside of that file here.

In the meantime, I’m going to post on my old platform and my new platform until I’m completely satisfied with the switch. I have also started posting my most interesting articles on Medium not too long ago, so you might want to check that out as well.

You can expect some great new things like SSL support, my own domain and a fully customized home page in the near future. And, in the spirit of open source software, every single line of code is available for you to fork and use in your project in any way you want.

Run Your Own Copy of Pirate Bay Now!

OK, so, as you probably already know, the official Pirate Bay was shut down 10 days ago. There are plenty of articles already covering this subject. I already stated my opinion on Pirate Bay disappearing for good, where I agreed with Peter Sunde (co-founder and ex-spokesperson of the Pirate Bay).

There are already some non-legit Pirate Bay clones like this one, the Pirate Bay has not been ressurrected – yet, the Pirate Bay crew itself does not know will the Pirate Bay come online or not, and researchers are currently working on making BitTorrent anonymous and impossible to shut down. It’s pretty obvious that the copyright industry has learned absolutely nothing in the least fifteen years.

The system now is messed up, but that hasn’t stopped people from sharing using their favorite technology.

Presenting: Open Bay

Out of all those alternatives that came online after the raid, one really stands out and it’s called Old Pirate Bay. So, why exactly did it stand out? Well, the whole point is that this copy is from a reputable source (isoHunt). Now, isoHunt is taking one step further by doing something Pirate Bay should have done a long time ago: they released the source code of Old Pirate Bay to the public and called it The Open Bay.

You can find all of the source code in the GitHub repository. You can host your own version of the Pirate Bay on your private server. You can even create your local torrent search engine, something I will try to do (if I manage to do that, there will be a tutorial on my blog on how to do that).

The point of doing this is simple: making pirates impossible to stop.

Issues

Of course, this brigs up so many issues.

• How will we know what site is legit?
• How will we update our torrent database?
• How will we know what site does have an updated version of the torrent database?

These issues are yet to be resolved. If you do have some suggestions, leave them in the comments bellow or create an issue on the repository itself. Lets make pirating impossible to stop together!

Ljudi vam dosađuju pitanjima tipa kako postati haker? Evo rješenja

Uvod

Svako od nas se bar u jednom trenutku života zamislio kakav je osjećaj biti haker? Možda ste i pokušali da istražite malo tu temu, a nemate dovoljno dobro znanje engleskog jezika da bi pratili engleske tutorijale? Možda imate druga koji je vidio da koristite Linux i odma je pomislio da ste haker? Možda vodite blog post i dobijate konstanta pitanja tipa “Kako da hakujem Fejsbuk od svoje bivše”?

Ukoliko spadate u bilo koju od ovih skupina, velike su šanse da nemate baš dovoljno živaca, motivacije i želje da objašnjavate svakome šta znači ovaj pojam. Zbog toga sam odlučio da sve postove domaćih autora sakupim na jedno mjesto, tako da od sada kada god dobijete slično pitanje možete sagovorniku poslati jedan link i završiti sa diskusijom.

Predstavljam vam kako-postati-haker repozitorij

Ideja ovog repozitorija jeste da se na jednom mjestu objave linkovi prema svim tekstovima domaćih autora (bili oni na “našem” jeziku ili na engleskom) na ovu temu, da se poređaju smisleno i pravilno grupišu. Na ovaj način se kreira jedinstvena lista tekstova preko koje nove osobe mogu da nauče nešto više o ovom pojmu, te se na taj način skida teret sa nas ostalih da prelazimo iste teme više puta i oslobađa nam se vrijeme da radimo neke bitnije stvari (tipa rekompajliranje kernela).

Repozitorij sadrži samo linkove prema teksovima. Na taj način piscima nije uskraćen broj posjeta na njihovim web stranicama. Pored svakog teksta se nalazi i naziv autora, te link prema njegovoj službenoj web stranici.

Budući planovi

Trenutno imam samo jedan plan za budućnost ovog projekta, a taj plan jeste da listu postavim na sopstveni host umjesto da se listi pristupa GitHub repozotorij. Pošto trenutno nemam iznajmljen vlastiti host, kreiraću GitHub stranicu za projekat i predstaviti ga tamo u međuvremenu.

Kako doprinijeti projektu?

Doprinijeti projektu možete na više načina. Prvi način svakako jeste da pronađete tekstove na ovu temu i dodate ih na listu (ukoliko ne znate kako, jednostavno me kontaktirajte i ja ću to odraditi umjesto vas). Možete da dijelite ovaj repozitorij ili pišete o njemu pa da na taj način više ljudi sazna za njega. Možete da pišete originalan sadržaj na ovu temu da popunite praznine. Možete da mi pomognete da napravim web stranicu projekta učestvovanjem u izradi HTML verzije stranice ili dijeljenjem svojih hosting resursa za ovu svrhu.

Tekstovi koji neće biti primljeni

Dozvoljeni su samo tekstovi prema kojima čitaoc nije dužan da se registruje na neki sajt da bi ih pročitao.

Some Basic Facebook “Hacks” – Hack no. 4: DDoS a Website By Using Facebook

So, today I’m going to share with you a trick to DDoS a certain website by using Facebook’s notes feature. The process, although pretty simple, is a bit more complicated than previous posts I wrote in this series.

So, what do you need to do?

Well, first of all, you go to the target’s website and create a list with unique photos posted on that website. You put them in appropriate HTML tag like this:

<img src=”http://targetname/file?r=1” />

<img src=”http://targetname/file?r=2” />

…

<img src=”http://targetname/file?r=1000” />

 

The next thing you need to do is to write a note on m.facebook.com (it’s a mobile version of Facebook).

Now, you need to duplicate that note a couple of times with one or several other Facebook accounts.

After you’ve done that, all you need to do is to open that notes at the same time and watch the site go down. This process will generate thousands of HTTP requests in a couple of seconds to the target site.

You might want to check out previous posts in the series:

• Some Basic Facebook “Hacks” – Hack no. 1: Check who’s your biggest “stalker” without leaving Facebook
• Some Basic Facebook “Hacks” – Hack no. 2: Find out who’s calling you on your phone by using Facebook
• Some Basic Facebook “Hacks” – Hack no. 3: See Locked Profile Picture in Full Size

CodeCombat – The Most Fun Way To Learn New Programming Language

If you ever programmed in your life, you’ve probably realized that the process of learning a new programming language can become quite a boring thing to do. You already know how to program in X programming language, but you need to learn the syntax of Y language for yourself / for some new project / for some job you want to get? Well, believe it or not, there is a fun way to do that.

I was never a huge fan of video games, but I did like to play a game or two once every few days. I haven’t played a single game for months now. I consider playing games as a huge procrastination. One of the main reasons I switched to Linux (almost completely now) is because I wanted to be more productive, and one of the ways to be more productive is to limit your access to the things that make you procrastinate*.

But, there’s a certain game that got my attention. It’s called CodeCombat and the point of playing this game is to teach you the syntax of a programming language in a very fun way. It’s an open source project (and if you’ve been reading my blog you know how much am I obsessed by everything related to open source) and the game is not limited to one specific programming language. You can select which programming language you want to use. My choice for a new programming language was JavaScript. This is a pretty well done browser game, so you can start playing the game no matter what platform you’re using currently.

Now I’m not in any way suggesting that this is the best way to learn some programming language, but it pretty much is the most fun way of doing that. So, if you like playing computer games, but you think that you’re waisting your time by playing them instead of learning something, this game is pretty much the best of both worlds.

* DISCLAIMER: I’m not saying that gaming on Linux is not possible. I’m a huge fan of the way how Linux gaming is advancing in the last year or two. I’m just having a huge self control over it.

Some Basic Facebook “Hacks” – Hack no. 3: See Locked Profile Picture in Full Size

ATTENTION: This post is moved to my new domain. Don’t be lazy and check it out there.

I’m Joining Mozillians!

So, this is my second (or maybe even third?) time trying to join the Mozilla community. The previous attempts did not go as I thought they will, so I’m ready to start again. In my previous attempt I tried to contact my local Mozilla community, but they seem to be pretty inactive these days so that attempt didn’t go too well. Anyway, it’s time to try again.

Why do I want to try again exactly?

Well, it’s been a couple of years since I started using Mozilla’s service in every opportunity I get. I’m using Firefox and Thunderbird all of the time, I started chatting on IRC regularly (you can find me on Freenode almost all of the time), I do have some kind of coding skills and thanks to elementary OS, I started to feel pretty confident in testing out beta software. Other than that, I do have a lot of translation experience, translating projects like reddit, The Tor Project, elementary OS (and all of the software it contains by default) and the list goes on and on. I also happened to have a lot of free time lately, so the only question is why shouldn’t I help a project that’s doing so much to help us who use free software regularly?

So, what I will be doing then?

I’m going to test out Mozilla’s services as much as I can. I’m going to help my local team to translate all of the products to Bosnian language, and, if I start to feel confident enough, I’m going to start writing some code for Mozilla in my spare time.

Come and join us!

Come and join us at mozillians.org! You can find my freshly created profile there by visiting this link.

For the start, it’s time for me to stop writing this blog post and check out my mail, join the Mozilla’s IRC and so on and so on. I hope that this attempt is going to be much much better than my previous one and that I’m going to start contributing to Mozilla on a regular basis.

Some Basic Facebook “Hacks” – Hack no. 2: Find out who’s calling you on your phone by using Facebook

As I’ve already said in my previous post, In this blog post series I’m going to post about some useful Facebook “hacks” that you can do without ever leaving Facebook at all. I will not be using any external software, website or something similar while posting about this topic.

You have some mobile numbers but you don’t know who’s behind them? Well, Facebook automatically allows you to search users by their mobile number, so all you have to do is to enter that phone number in Facebook’s search. There is absolutely no option for you to disable that what so ever.

It’s a lot easier to find someone if you have them as your friends, you’ll get a lot more exact information that way, because the default privacy setting for this is limited to friends only. You can also do this with an email address.

A fun project: Create an Android/iPhone/Windows Phone/FirefoxOS application. When someone unknown number calls you, the application opens up Facebook and enters that mobile number in Facebook’s search and displays the top result to you, so you know who’s calling you even if you don’t have them inside your address book.

If you want to make this kind of application, please do let me know. I’m willing to use it and I’m willing to share it on my blog. I’m just lazy as fuck, so I won’t be creating that application any time soon.

You might want to check out other posts in this series:

• Some Basic Facebook “Hacks” – Hack no. 1: Check who’s your biggest “stalker” without leaving Facebook
• Some Basic Facebook “Hacks” – Hack no. 3: See Locked Profile Picture in Full Size
• Some Basic Facebook “Hacks” – Hack no. 4: DDoS a Website By Using Facebook

Some Basic Facebook “Hacks” – Hack no. 1: Check who’s your biggest “stalker” without leaving Facebook

ATTENTION: This post was moved to my new domain. Don’t be lazy and open it there.