TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entrepreneur's JourneyThe journal of a web entrepreneur on his journey to wealth.

Odds and Ends

It’s been a while since I made a post on a bunch of unrelated topics, and I hope not to resurrect this bad habit, but once in a while shouldn’t hurt, right? 😉

• Guitar Hero Prodigy
• vBulletin NoSpam Hack
• New Feedburner Record
• Shoemoney Video

Guitar Hero Prodigy

A week or two ago I bought Guitar Hero II for the XBox 360. I never played Guitar Hero before so it was quite the nice surprise finding out how fun it was. I also surprised myself; I’m 3/4 done beating the game on hard and I haven’t played all that much. However, there are some songs that are extremely difficult for me… I’m currently stuck on “Heart”.

For those that aren’t familiar with the game, Guitar Hero is a game where you play a guitar controller and hit fret buttons and try to strum in sync with falling “notes” or “beats”. If you’ve ever seen DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) then you’ll be familiar with the concept.

Anyhow, the other day I was looking on YouTube at some videos for Guitar Hero and found this. It’s an 8-year-old kid who ROCKS at the game! I think he’s playing on the Playstation 2 since the guitar looks different and the date was before the xbox 360 one came out, so he had a bit of time to practice but he’s still awesome!

Oh, by the way, this is him playing on Expert (the highest mode), and he got 95% goofing around.

A lot of losers commented on the video being fake, but even me, a newbie Guitar Hero player, can tell that it’s not fake. Anyhow, there’s a bunch more videos posted of the kid playing other songs if you click on the user that posted it.

I think the kid should get a real guitar now.

vBulletin NoSpam Hack

I thought I’d share this great hack with you guys. It’s for vB 3.6.4+ and literally takes seconds to install. You just download it, then import the .xml file from your Admin panel in vBulletin, then enable it under options.

I’ve installed this on two of my forums now, ones that I received far too much spam, even after using vBulletin’s built-in CAPTCHA system, and checking all FOUR scramble boxes.

After installing NoSpam! I haven’t had a single spammer, at least not an automated one.

Basically NoSpam! allows you to ask a human logic question instead of the CAPTCHA system. You also have a bunch of optional features such as providing more than one possible answer (Ex. allowing people to enter “4” or “four”) and entering a number of questions which rotate so people can get a new if they don’t understand one (such as if their English isn’t bad for example).

You can even use it in addition to the CAPTCHA system but I remove the CAPTCHA system.

Finally, you can specify to have the NoSpam! on certain pages such as registration, guest users using the Contact Us area, etc.

I highly recommend this plug-in if you’re receiving spam.

Here it is: NoSpam! Plugin

New Feedburner Record

As I write this, my RSS readership is currently at 515! I broke the 500 mark! My goal, if I remember correctly, was to average 500. I haven’t been at 515 long enough to say I met my goal, so here’s hoping.

If I do manage to average around 500, then my next goal is to average 700 daily. Let’s see what happens!

Shoemoney Video

Shoemoney posted a pretty good video the other day from the SES NYC conference. While you can’t view the slides, they are mainly for humor and you still get the gist of what he’s talking about. The start is a bit slow with not much real information, but it starts to get pretty good in the middle, and a lot of good advice at the end including a quick discussion of Heat Maps.

Well, that’s all for now.