Mestiv

Last.fm is much older than Spotify and doesn't let you listen to music. It's just used to track what you listen to (on Spotify or on many offline players if you prefer to listen to mp3). It also allows you to compare your music taste with different users. I use Spotify and the Spotify client simply sends data about what I listen to to Last.fm.

Of course, you're right Teach is better, and program is more accurate.

Hmpf I'll need to launch more spy satellites then...

Yeah, I broke it for a moment. It won't write usernames for a few days, that's not that simple to do... but I'll get there

Wait till it writes your username...

I wonder if my signature breaks any unwritten rules... Is it OK to have a dynamic signature?

Achievement unlocked! Last.fm feed is in my signature If anyone else wants to have their own Last.fm feed in their signature or wherever feel free to use it. If you don't know how, contact me Now, let's learn my signature to recognize your usernames

Tell your parents that someone bumped your car or something maybe?

My reaction for the new companion so far: meh, we'll see

Take a programming class It's not for everyone, but it's worth a try. If you'll find it fun and interesting, you can have a nice career as a programmer Eki is right, I read the page that the URL leads to. That's why my signature doesn't work in private conversations and locked subforums, that are not accessible to anonymous user. I'll have to work on that

Maybe Prince is smaller in numbers but is bigger in the Spiritual realm?

Did it get your location correctly?

Python with Django.

I've made an explanation topic of my signature here: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/54116-mestivs-signature/

This is a topic about my signature, and because said signature is not so artsy, but still a creation, I put the topic in this forum A couple of users expressed curiosity about my signature and asked about how it works etc. So, to avoid repeating myself I decided to explain everything in one place and also tell you what else I'm planing to do with it. So, what's do special about this signature? As you may have noticed, my signature changes depending on the topic you're viewing it in. It contains the title of said topic and page number. It also contains a more or less accurate approximation of where the user seeing it physically is. In the future it may contain even more fun stuff. As a result, every user sees a different text in my signature. How is that possible? Images are frequently included in signatures here on 17th Shard. Most of them are just static files, available at some address on the Internet. They are stored on some server and sent to everyone wishing to display them. The Polandball in my description is like that, it's just a small PNG file on a server. The part of my signature that has text in it is different. It too is an image, because that's the only way our forum allows me to include something that I control in the signature. However, this image is not stored anywhere. It is created from scratch every time you wish to see it. Your browser asks my server about a file called "sig.png" and instead of just sending a file from it's disk, my server creates it using information it gathers while your browser waits for response. How does it know what topic you're viewing? When your browser asks my server about the image it tell's it on what webpage this image will be displayed. Having the address of the topic you're viewing, my server takes a peek on that page and looks for the title and page number. Then it quickly writes what it found out on the returned picture. How does it know where you live? It doesn't know where you live When you ask my server about a picture, you establish a connection. For a connection to work, both sides have to know the address of the other side. This means IP address. This part get's a bit complicated, so I'll spare you technical details, but what you need to know is that in most cases you are hidden by your internet service provider. My server receives some IP address, that is frequently shared by a lot of other clients of your ISP. That's why location provided by my signature is often incorrect. How does IP address translate to physical location? That's simple, there are free, open databases that provide such information. I use GeoLite2. Those free databases aren't too accurate and because your ISP can have a huge inner network, the location can be wrong. Often, location is not even available and I have only a country. You can also hide your location using VPN. Remember! Just because I can't pinpoint your location, doesn't mean that FBI can't Can I track your movements on 17S? Currently my software can distinguish two different 17S users asking for my signature, but it doesn't know who is who. I plan to change it however, and code a way for it to learn your usernames. Lets say that I can identify who is asking for the signature. Then it would be possible to log information about part of your movements on the Shard. HOWEVER! This would only include pages of threads that I've posted in. If you view a page where my signature is not present I have no idea about it. I believe that you can disable my signature to prevent any communication with my server. Also, I'm not interested in spying on you. What else do I plan to do? Well, I want to do two things next. First, I'll try to teach my software to recognize users using information from this page. That will allow me to address you by usernames in my signature Second, I'm gonna create something that everyone can use I will make a picture displaying what I've listened recently, based on what's visible on my Last.fm profile. I'll make it so everyone else will be able to display data from their profiles too Sooo, any questions? Comments?

Yes, it would be posiible, however it wouldn't be that simple to make it precise, because if there are several posts on a page, the signature is requested only once. But that can be done.

Orlion is right, generally speaking. I'm on my mobile now, but when I'll find a moment I will make a topic with some explanations.

It is always socially acceptable to order pizza

Your internets are confusing my signature I'll have to delete it and just hope my idea for identifying your usernames will be enough to make people impressed

It's somewhere between Oslo and Goteborg. That's where your IP address leads I might need to remove this localization part if it's wrong so often

Well, It's not perfect But is it at least close? Or are you using some kind of VPN?

The word "immediately"... how does one know how to spell it without looking it up? Every time I try to write it from memory I end up with something like: immidietly or some other twisted version of this word :/

I'll probably phrase it something like that, but in lighter tone to not scare people too much (if that scares anyone at all...)

Aaaand my signature now knows where you all live (more or less) Now, teaching it how to figure out your usernames will take some time, but I'll get there

Hush, you'll ruin the magic Yup, that's what I do. I get the page address, then download it and read it looking for title and page number. I'm gonna teach my signature to recognize users and maybe even tell them where they live... that would be fun