specs.htm: How to search the web, by fravia+ ~ (¯`·.¸(¯`·.¸ specs ¸.·´¯)¸.·´¯)

~ Specs ~

				Specs

Version december 2000

[Where] [Mirrors] [How] [Noads] [Images & swords] [Your specs] [Moving around]

WHERE

My main "fortress" (i.e. the site I personally update and regularly check) sits on Peter's unix american server at [http://209.103.174.104/], where [http://www.searchlores.org] resolves to. All other occurrences of my site around the web are either mirrors or teleported copies of my site. For european security reasons some parts of my site, like the PHP lab, are located [elsewhere]. I hope to remain undisturbed on my fortress for the next couple of years - non convalescit planta quae saepius transfertur - but I'll redirect searchlores.org if needs be, so use always [http://www.searchlores.org] if you wish to link.

Note also that [fravia.org] might (or might not) resolve to my searchlores site as well. There is a third domain: [http://www.searchlore.org], (note the missing s in lore) that points to a very fast and separate server: should searchlores.org be temporary down, you may just 'cut the s' and connect to searchlore.org, which corresponds to +Forseti's synchronized mirror (always updated).
This said, remember that you would be well advised to spare time and connect at the quickest possible choice: choose the best location for you, try the various mirrors out.

MIRRORS

"Official" mirrors of my fortress (as per December 2000):

http://www.2113.ch/fravia/ or
http://62.2.252.210/fravia/: Luc's ~ Europe ~ CH: Swiss mirror, where the [PHP lab] is located!
Fast and always updated (uses its own perl [bot]!)
http://fravia1.virtualave.net/: Bernd's ~ Europe ~ A: Austrian mirror
Has an Austrian touch. With banners alas!
http://magick.org/searchlores.org/: J.K.Gray's ~ United States ~ Indiana
Fast and always updated
http://crazyboy.com/fravia/searchlores.org/: Crazyboy's ~ United States ~ New York, Uptown, West :-)
Fast but not continuously updated, to say the least
http://qu00l.net/s/www.searchlores.org/: +Forseti's ~ United States ~ New York, Downtown, East :-)
(+Forseti's really fast mirror can be reached using [http://www.searchlore.org] and
[http://beam.to/searchlores] as well)
Fast and always updated (uses its own wget-type [bot]!)

And if you want to know how many visitors I receive, [here] are some mid-september data for my main fortress (without all the hits on the mirrors, that I don't check... anyway "millions" mean nothing when speaking of hits)

HOW

My site has been ENTIRELY coded per hand using [ultraedit 32] version 5 (by Ian. D. Mead), a very advanced and versatile text editor, that you will be able to find on the web, which beats hands down every other text editor I have ever used. I know that Mead is continuously updating it and he is now at version "7b", but I am against continuous software updates: version 5 works perfectly well and you'll find it either on the web or on many second hand magazine cd-roms (around first semester 1999) for less than one euro.
The advantages of coding per hand are so evident to all conoisseurs that I wont even bother explain you why you should NOT use overbloated "frontpage-similar" applications, which would and will gladly fill your html code with unwanted crap.

NOADS

There is NO ADVERTISEMENT whatsoever on this site, nor will you ever be asked to click on a banner, since I find all form of advertising vulgar and insulting, on the web and elsewhere.
Actually there is a whole [anti-advertisement] section where you'll be able, inter alia to learn how to [remove banners] from the so-called "free" providers. See: I dislike zombies clicking on banners almost more than the idiots that design, publish or (try to :-) impose them: I think that the former deserve the web-inferno they are condemned to live in. For the latter, being impossible - and possibly illegal - to hang them physically to their PC-towers with their own mouse' cables, the only hope is that they will die soon, pancaked by a truck, or something similar.

IMAGES & SWORDS

I know that most good knowledge sites do not use any images at all (there is actually a very good and sound "trend" towards "almost imageless" sites among the very people you should strive to browse to :-) yet I always enjoyed going against currents :-)
Thus I have decided to have heavy slow-loading images nevertheless (only for the main sections of my site), for aesthetic & didactic reasons that would be too long - and pompous - to explain here.
I hope that you'll excuse this small frill of mine. Consider on the other hand that all the essays and hint pages will load quickly.
Since, as you should know, images slow heavily down any form of page-loading, it is probably a good idea to avoid loading them at all if you are in a hurry or on a slow connection. For this purpose (and for many other good reasons) you would be well advised to use [OPERA] to browse my site.
Actually you would be well advised to use Opera to browse ANY site on this increasingly advertisement-polluted web.
Opera is a marvellous recent european browser which is totally customizable, very powerful and small (vis à vis the two horrible american browsersaurii: Iexplorer and Netscape), does not have any hidden "snooping" code (contrarily to Iexplorer), and allows you to SHUT OFF image loading on the fly, which is an increasingly necessary option on this terribly commercial inflated web, in order to avoid the banner and advertisement hell I spoke of above.
Consider that for a seeker the browser is prolly his main weapon, your sword, so to speak, your Balmung, your Tizona or whatever name you'll eventually decide to give to it (and names are [everything] on the web :-)
I have called my personal, completely reverse-engineered and quite modified copy of Opera (based on a old version 3.6) Flamberge, like Rinaldo's sword - silly enough - but that is also how I at times announce my passage to the websites I visit.
Note that you don't need to reverse any code to have fun this way: you can obtain some similar effects - on the fly - using the good ole [proxomitron] :-)
Anyway you may of course use any browser you like on my sites, I simply don't care - nor check - if the site looks "nice" as well for those among you that still do not use Opera. Note that there is now a Linux version of Opera as well.
Since getting rid of microsoft explorer -especially if you use windows 98- is far from being easy (on purpose), here you have a link to [http://www.98lite.net/], which will help you on this worthy endeavour. My special page [tutti all'opera!] could also be of some help on your journey towards intelligent browsing.

YOUR SPECS

You are expected to have a monitor resolution of 800*600, which is the current standard. There are no frames on this site, nowhere. Of course there are neither flash nor shockwave craps on my sites.
I assume you are using windoze, because I am fishing in the pond where most fishes are, but the information bulk on my site will of course be useful for linux and mac users as well. In fact some of the advanced pages will be useful for you only if you use a serious operating system (i.e. Linux) and not a toy system like Windows.
There is no need for me to advice the poor readers that are still stuck with windoze to try Linux out: the battle is already over and Linux has already won :-) In fact there are so many reasons for you to move to Linux and leave windoze to the drooling slaves that I don't even need to list them, since you'll go to Linux pretty soon anyway, no matter what I or others could say. It is indeed not necessary to advertise Linux at all, as you'll understand by yourself when you'll have gathered enough knowledge, here or elsewhere. The move to Linux is just a pons asinorum (sortof) for any internaut... btw, google, prolly the best among the "commercial" search engines, just [moved to] Linux, eh :-)

MOVING AROUND

All pages carry at least one small jpg image, some pages, being relevant for more than one section, carry more than one. Clicking on these smaller images you will always land back to the referenced page, no matter how deep inside my maze you will have landed.

Main sections
There are only four main sections. Note that on each side of the big images of the main section there is a forward and/or a backward narrow 'column' image that will allow you to pass to the next logical main section.
the basic pages	the advanced pages	the classroom pages	the farewell pages

Minor sections
So called "minor" sections will (try to) go in the depth of a specific branch, which, though deemed useful for your seeking knowledge, you may leave aside without any problem if you don't care about it.
Introduction	proxies	reality cracking	anonymity pages

As you'll discover perusing my site, there are many more sections. For security reasons some of them like the [PHP lab] are located on a different server while some other will become accessible only once you yourself will have gathered enough searching (and hopefully ethical) skills. Yes, there are indeed many pages on my site... you are not compelled to follow any logical path. You may peruse everything at will, you are welcome. Do not be scared, nor paralysed if you don't understand everything immediately, knowledge is like one of the chill white wines bottled in the old lagoons I come from: you should sip it slowly and knowingly, else it won't do you no good.