So I did a Munin plugin. In PHP ofcourse. ;) It’s my first Munin plugin, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be the only one written in PHP. It’s available for download at Munin Exchange, and the code is here for those that just want a quick look.

Update 27.04.10: Updated the plugin to v1.1.

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
/*
#################################################################
# Title : Qstat ping plugin for Munin v1.1
# Author : Håvard Pedersen
# Email : fuzzy76 @ fuzzy76 net
# Loosely based on the Qstat bash script plugin by Benjamin DUPUIS - Poil
#---------------------------------------------------------------#
# CHANGELOG
#
# v1.1 (23. april 2010)
#   - Added highest ping, lowest ping and query response time.
#   - Now supports being run for testing with ./ in front
#
# v1.0 (initial release 22. april 2010)
#   - Basic thing with average ping only
#
#%# family=manual
*/

$qstatloc = "/usr/bin/quakestat";

function doHelp() {
  global $qstatloc;
	echo "To test the script, just run qstatping_ GAMETYPE ADDRESS PORT
Run qstat to see the available gametypes (q3s, q4s, cods, etc)
To install for Munin you must ln -s /usr/share/munin/plugins/qstat_ /etc/munin/plugins/qstatping_GAMETYPE_ADDRESS_PORT
You might also have to set the path to qstat in $qstatloc
Have fun!
";
}

function doConfig() {
  global $argv;

  if ($argv[0] != "qstatping_") {
    $parts = explode("_",$argv[0]);
    $gametype = $parts[1];
    $ip = $parts[2];
    $port = $parts[3];
  } else {
    $gametype = $argv[1];
    $ip = $argv[2];
    $port = $argv[3];
  }

  echo "graph_title Ping on $gametype at $ip:$port
graph_vlabel Ping
graph_category games
minping.label Minimum ping
maxping.label Maximum ping
avgping.label Average ping
querytime.label Query time
";

}

function doFetch() {
  global $argv, $qstatloc;

  if (substr($argv[0],-(strlen("qstatping_"))) != "qstatping_") {
    $parts = explode("_",$argv[0]);
    $gametype = $parts[1];
    $ip = $parts[2];
    $port = $parts[3];
  } else {
    $gametype = $argv[1];
    $ip = $argv[2];
    $port = $argv[3];
  }

  $querytime = "U";
  $output = array();
  if ($gametype && $ip && $port) {

    $time_start = microtime(true);
    exec("$qstatloc -raw \";\" -nh -P -$gametype $ip:$port", &$output);
    $time_end = microtime(true);
    $querytime = ($time_end - $time_start) * 1000;

    array_shift($output);

    $pingavg = 0;
    $pingmax = -1;
    $pingmin = 9999;
    $playerscount = 0;
    foreach ($output as $line) {
      $player = explode(";", $line);
      if (count($player) >= 3 && $player[2] != 999) {
        if ($player[2] > $pingmax)
          $pingmax = $player[2];
        if ($player[2] < $pingmin)
          $pingmin = $player[2];
        $pingavg += $player[2];
        $playerscount++;
      }
    }

    if ($playerscount != 0)
      $pingavg = $pingavg / $playerscount;  

    if ($playerscount != 0) {
      echo "minping.value $pingmin
maxping.value $pingmax
avgping.value $pingavg
querytime.value $querytime
";
      return;
    }

  }
  echo "minping.value U
maxping.value U
avgping.value U
querytime.value $querytime
";
}

switch ($argv[1]) {
  case "config":
    doConfig();
    break;
  case "help":
  case "?":
    doHelp();
    break;
  case "autoconf":
    echo "no (edit the script to set path to qstat)";
    break;
  case "fetch":
  default:
    doFetch();
}

?>

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php

// Use http_proxy environment variable
stream_context_get_default(array('http' => array(
	'proxy' => str_replace("http://", "tcp://", getenv('http_proxy')),
	'request_fulluri' => true
)));

// Quote cache location
$quotefile = getenv('HOME')."/.bashqdb";

// Only one instance accessing the cache at a time
$fp = fopen("/tmp/bashqdblock.".getenv('USER'),"wb");
if (!flock($fp, LOCK_EX))
	die("Couldn't obtain quote file lock!");

// Read cache
$quotes = @file($quotefile, FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES | FILE_SKIP_EMPTY_LINES | FILE_TEXT);

// If empty (or non-existing), fetch batch of quotes
if (!$quotes)
	$quotes = fetchQuotes();

// Select the first quote for display and remove it from array
$quote = $quotes[0];
unset($quotes[0]);

// Massage the text for display
$quote = html_entity_decode($quote);
$quote = str_replace("<br />","\n",$quote);

// Output
echo $quote."\n";

// If that was our last, fetch a new batch
if (count($quotes) == 0)
	$quotes = fetchQuotes();

// Write the cache back
file_put_contents($quotefile, implode("\n", $quotes));

// Function for fetching a batch of suitable quotes, returns an array
function fetchQuotes() {
	$matches = array();
	$source = file_get_contents("http://bash.org/?random1");
	preg_match_all("/<p class=\"qt\">(.+?)<\/p>/si", $source, $matches);
	$quotes = array();
	foreach ($matches[1] as $match) {
		$quotes[] = str_replace("\n","",$match);
	}
	return $quotes;
}
?>

<?php

$xml =  simplexml_load_file($_GET['input']);

$ix = 0;
while ($ix < count($xml->channel->item) ) {
  if (!array_in_array($xml->channel->item[$ix]->category,$_GET['categories'])) {
    unset($xml->channel->item[$ix]);
  } else {
    $ix++;
  }
} 

echo $xml->asXML();

// in_array that accepts two arrays (and returns true if it finds any common value)
function array_in_array($a, $b) {
  if (!is_array($a))
    return in_array($a, $b);

  foreach ($a as $elem) {
    if (in_array($elem, $b))
      return true;
  }
  return false;
}

?>

Install to a PHP5 server and use like this (fictional example):

http://yourserver.com/rssfilter/index.php?input=http%3A%2F%2Fvg.no%2Ffeed&categories%5B%5D=Sport&categories%5B%5D=Rampelys

The script returns a RSS feed with only entries in one of the chosen categories. It does no caching or header support, so it uses much more resources than necessary. That’s why I don’t tell where my personal installation is. :)

Backspace won’t work through SSH

Insert export TERM=linux into ~/.profile. I dunno why Apple has decided to be retarded about this, but it REALLY bugged me.

System default encoding isn’t UTF-8

Norwegian input language is, for some reason, not enough. But there was an extended norwegian input locale that actually changed the default encoding to real UTF-8. Again a seemingly stupid default choice from Apple. It’s really about time you put the "Mac Roman" encoding to rest.

iChat can’t connect to MSN

I signed up for a Jabber server with MSN transport, and it works like a charm. :) Jabber.no comes highly recommended for norwegian users. The only downside is that you need to set the display names for the contacts manually. I just set the right address book vcard for my contacts.

I want pretty colors in the terminal

The OS X terminal is color-challenged by default. Add the following to ~/.profile:

CLICOLOR=1
LSCOLORS=ExFxCxDxBxegedabagacad
export LSCOLORS CLICOLOR

Source: Mac1.no

Finder leaves .DS_Store files all over the place on remote servers.

Just do a defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true from the terminal and reboot.

Mediacenters and home servers should never go to sleep

My mediacenter would go to sleep if I wasn’t careful enough with the play button on the Apple Remote. And when I woke it up again, it wouldn’t always reconnect to the WLAN. sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1 solved it. Sleep is now 100% disabled.

OS X has completely broken support for pageup/pagedown/home/end

The default behaviour for these keys are completely useless out of the box. Fix them by saving this to ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict :

{
    "\UF729"  = "moveToBeginningOfLine:";
    "$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:";
    "\UF72B"  = "moveToEndOfLine:";
    "$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:";
    "\UF72C"  = "pageUp:";
    "\UF72D"  = "pageDown:";
}

Source: Phatness.com.

Proxy settings doesn’t work for command line tools

Ryan Tomayko had a partial solution for this, which I’ve adapted slightly. Add this to ~/.profile :

netloc=$(/usr/sbin/scselect 2>&1 | egrep '^ \* ' | sed 's:.*(\(.*\)):\1:')
http_proxy=$(egrep "$netloc[ \t]*=" /etc/http_proxy | sed 's/.*=[ \t]*\(.*\)/\1/')
if [ -n "$http_proxy" ]; then
  export http_proxy="$http_proxy"
  export HTTP_PROXY="$http_proxy"
else
  unset http_proxy
  unset HTTP_PROXY
fi

Then add this in /etc/sudoers (needs sudo), right at then end of the lines starting with «Defaults»:

Defaults	env_keep += "ALL_PROXY http_proxy HTTP_PROXY"

From now on, all new terminals will use the proxy setting of the network location that was active when the terminal was started.

As those who know me might know, I love researching stuff on the net. In addition to that, I’ve also got a personal policy of always using freeware when it does the job – my own way of avoiding pirated software. It also helps freeware authors get a nice user mass, so I can’t say I feel sorry for NOT buying commercial alternatives.

So one of the first things I did (actually before I received my black new-model MacBook with 2GB ram) was researching for apps I needed. And now, after actually testing them I figured I might publish my findings, so others could benefit from it as well. :) So here it is, my list of Mac OS X «must have» freewares:

0xED

There comes a time in every man’s life where he needs a hex editor. This is it, ’nuff said.

Adium

When first arriving from Windows, a Jabber transport (in iChat) was the only way to view your MSN contacts statusmessages. But since then, Adium (and libpidgin) has received proper MSN protocol support. And this IM is so smooth, it’ll make you go «aaahhhh» every time you start it.

Angry IP Scanner

A graphical IP scanner is nice to have. This is the best one I’ve found so far, but it seems abandoned (1 year since last beta).

AppleJack

AppleJack is a small rescue script, meant to be used from single-user mode. It can do a number of maintenance tasks and rescue operations. I have been able to repair filesystem inconsistencies, which Apples normal Disk utility couldn’t fix and I wasn’t even able to boot my Mac. So install it before it’s too late. Once installed, you will be reminded of its usage every time you login in single-user mode (command-S).

AppTrap

Uninstalling could be as easy as dropping the application in the trash, but there’s always some settings left behind. This application integrates with your trash, so that when you drop application in it, you will be asked if you want to remove other files beloning to the application as well.

Audacity

Easy straight-forward digital audio editor. Wav, MP3, Flac and so on. Great for cropping ringtones and such.

Audio overload

Small player for those obscure mod / NES / Spectrum / whatever files. Some might also require CocoModX.

Boxer

A launcher for DOSBox, a PC emulator for running old games.

Burn

Burn is a CD burning software. It’s not much to say about it, it does what it’s supposed to do.

ClipMenu

Small menubar app that gives me access to the last 20 things on my clipboard.

CocoaPacketAnalyzer

Awesome packet analyzer for that really technical stuff.

CocoASpell

Sadly, OS X doesn’t come with a norwegian spelling dictionary. Installing this gem will take care of it. :)

Cronnix

Graphical crontab editor. Nice for running things on a given time and/or date. :) I actually use this to open hours.txt 15 minutes before my workday ends.

Disk Inventory X

Analyzes a given directory (or disk) and its subfolder to give you a report on disk usage. Nice to find those space hogs on your harddrive.

Dockless

Dockless let you make any app run in the background (no dock icon).

DropBox

DropBox is a universal internet disk service. It has revisions (how did this file look like a month ago?), automatic sync (all your computers has identical files), allows you to share files with other DropBox users, it even let you share pictures in your DropBox as a web gallery. The free account is 2GB, I bought myself a 50GB for all of my projects.

Evom

An extremely easy to use application for converting videos to MP4. Also integrates nicely with iTunes.

Facebook notifier

What can I say, I’m an addict. :) Facebook notifications on your desktop and quick access to your profile.

Flip4Mac

This is a WMV (Windows Media Video) plugin so you can watch online video encoded as such.

Fluid

Fluid is a Site-Specific Browser (SSB) that allows you to create desktop applications out of webapps. I use it for API lookups, Google Reader, GMail and more.

Fraise

Fraise is what is known as a «Notepad replacement» in the Windows world. It does syntax highlighting for most programming languages, and has some very powerful text processing tools available.

FStream

A small netradio app. Handles a lot more types of streams than iTunes.

Google Chrome

This is the best browser, bar none. In the time Firefox uses just to launch, Chrome lets me launch, perform a search, visit the first hit and read it. I have also written a norwegian post with my favorite extensions.

Growl

Gives youy nice bubble notifications from a lot of programs. Very configurable and very pretty. :) Make sure you also install the extra utilities, like HardwareGrowler to get instant statusnotifications on USB devices, network connections and so on.

Handbrake

Video conversion and ripping done simple.

iStumbler

Wireless network scanner, which shows a lot more info than the normal airport menu. Also does Bluetooth and Bonjour.

JustLooking

A good picture preview program. Nice for browsing large collections.

Komodo Edit

Komodo Edit is the freeware (or light if you prefer) version of ActiveState’s Komodo IDE. Even this stripped-down version has more features than any other free alternative out there. It’s also a big bonus that it look and feels identical on Windows, Linux and OS X. Syntax coloring, project management, inline compilation, error checking, autocomplete and much more.

last.fm

I consider the statistics and scrobbling secondary features. What really makes last.fm awesome is the ability to play automatic net radio based on tags or artists.

LogMeIn

Installed everywhere I can. :) Let you remote control any computer without the need for opening ports. Can also require user acknowledgement on a per-computer basis (for sceptical relatives).

MacPorts

The BSD Ports system adapted for Mac. Gives you all those geeky UNIX tools. ;-) Porticus is a nice graphical front-end.

Max

Audio conversion and CD-ripping.

MPEG Streamclip

Video software for conversion, batch processing and more. I use it to convert any video type into DV format so iMovie will use it.

muCommander

A universal filecommander, because most computers need one. This one does several protocols (FTP, SFTP, SMB, NFS, HTTP and Bonjour), several archive formats (ZIP, RAR, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ISO/NRG, AR/Deb and LST) and all the usual operations.

niceplayer

Universal player. Nicer to user than VLC, and does more formats than QuickTime.

Notational Velocity

Note editing and syncing with Simple Notes.

OpenOffice

I guess I don’t really need to describe this one. :)

OWANotifier

Let me keep an eye on my work email when outside of the corporate network.

Perian

Adds support for a ton of additional media formats to QuickTime. Too many to list here.

Remote desktop connection

Because you have to, not because you want to. :)

Renoise

Trackerbased music sequencing software. Mostly for nostalgic reasons.

Sequel-Pro

A desktop client for MySQL. Think of it as phpMyAdmins agile little brother. :)

SIDPlay

For that old C64 feeling! ;)

Skitch

This is the ultimate picture… uhm… faciliator. :-P Inputs from screenshots, files, drag’n'drop. Annotate, draw, edit. Outputs to drag’n'drop, webpublish, file, anywhere. I use this all the time!

Skype

While iChat has very good conference abilities, it’s not cross-platform. For audio/video conferencing with Windows users, this is the only viable alternative.

SlimBatteryMonitor

It has always bugged me that OS X’s battery meter can’t be set to show only when actually on battery (or charging). Luckily, this one can.

SOAP Client

A simple SOAP Web Service client. Nice for debugging. The same author also has a XML-RPC Client.

Spark

Spark lets you create global hotkeys for just about everything. I use it to start Terminal.app, control iTunes and much more.

SpeedCrunch

Incredibly fast and easy «single-line» cross-platform calculator.

Spotify

The program that really changed how I consume my music! Listen to any song, create and share playlists, etc.

Steam

For all your gaming needs. :)

Textual

Simplistic but feature-rich IRC client.

The Unarchiver

For extracting any archive format you throw at it.

Transmission

A simple and effective BitTorrent client. Though the upcoming beta of uTorrent also looks promising.

VICE

Cross-platform Commodore emulator.

VirtualBox

Free, capable desktop virtualization. Can’t see any reason to pay for VMWare, when this is available.

VLC media player

The ugly and cumbersome, but extremely powerful media player. :) I install this on all operating systems. It uses builtin codecs for all media formats you can throw at it. Whenever I encounter a file I can’t play elsewhere, VLC will. It even has conversion abilities.

WineBottler

Sort of Wine for OS X with a lot of tricks up its sleeve! :) Let me preview my sites in Internet Explorer.

And the few programs I actually found worth paying for:

• Airfoil – Send audio from any app to an Airport Express.
• Coda – The best web-centric IDE for any platform!
• Interarchy – Just plain awesome FTP/SFTP client.
• Mailplane – Standalone GMail «client».
• Meerkat – Just plain awesome tunnel handling. SSH tunnels, Bonjour support, Application triggering… This one does it all.
• NetworkLocation – Dynamically changes system settings (and more, for instance start a Meerkat tunnel) based on your location. Location may be derived from wireless networks, cabled networks, bluetooth and USB devices.
• Things – GTD-compatible todo list application with its own iPhone companion.

And my screensavers:

• Lotsawater – Water effect on top of your desktop.
• PongSaver – Pong as a screensaver.
• ShuffleSaver – Slideshow based on tags/authors/sets from Flickr
• Space Invaders – The classic game as screensaver.
• Word Clock – A typographic screensaver featuring the current time and date.
• …White Knight Logic – A collection of 3D screensavers.

I will probably update this entry as I discover new applications (and scrap my old ones), so if you’re a Mac user yourself, feel free to bookmark it. :)

Edited: 11th july 2007, 27th june 2007, 24th september 2007, 24th september 2007, 13th december 2007, 3rd december 2008, 6th december 2008, 7th december 2008, 3rd january 2009, 26th september 2010.

Introducing… The OneFileFramework, a complete (well, sort of) web framework in PHP that consists of ONE single file (index.php) consisting of 27 actual code lines. :D

The webpage I set up for it (and the demo) pretty much explains it all (form validation, MVC-orientation and so on). I haven’t set up any way of providing feedback for it yet, though. So I’d like comments to be posted to this blog entry.

I’d especially like to hear if anyone can find a way to fool OFF into security attacks using the $p parameter.

For quite a while, I’ve been using a free service called ScheduleWorld for syncing the calendar on my mobile phone against my Google Calendar. It’s a service that provides sync for calendars, notes, todo-items and contacts. It supports all of this through a J2ME app for mobile phones, SyncML (which most new phones support, including my Nokia N80), Google Calendar integration and a dedicated Mozilla Thunderbird plugin (there are SyncML plugins for Thunderbird, but the SyncML protocol is hard to get a perfect implementation of). The page also has a webinterface for all your data, so it’s easy to view your «stuff» even if all of your clients are unavailable.

It suddenly occured to me that I might as well move my data completely to this service instead of relying on several third parties for this. I installed Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Lightning (a calendar/todo extension for Thunderbird) and the SW Thunderbird plugin and I was ready to go!

Ofcourse, once I set up my phone to synchronize contacts and imported the GMail address book into SW as well and they both showed up in Thunderbird, there was a lot of cleaning up to do. Thanks to the Duplicate Contact Manager extension for Thunderbird it didn’t took me long to clean it all up. Granted, I had to do 4-5 syncs between the phone and Thunderbird before the list was completely cleaned up, but it was definitely worth it. :)

And for mail, you might wonder? I still route all mail through GMail, but I’ve gone back to my old setup of using my own Courier IMAP-server, which uses fetchmail to automatically fetch all GMail. Importing everything back from GMail into the IMAP server was relatively easy, I just started fetchmail again and it churned away for an hour. Thankfully it started from the last date the account was accessed through POP3, which was when I stopped fetchmail on my server last autumn. :) Unfortunately, I did get quite a bit of duplicate messages after the import, but it was easily remedied by the Remove Duplicate Messages extension for Thunderbird (2.0-compatible version available in the comments for the extension).

As an extra tip, I figured out a way to share config files between work and home aswell. I set up a folder in my home directory called «share», which essentially is a Subversion working copy. I keep my mail signatures there, so if I edit them at home, all I need to do is commit the changes and perform a update the next time I log in at work. :) Program settings can also be stored there, and all I need to do to get it working is symlinking the real config file to the one in my share folder. :)

So there you have it! Signatures, todo-items, calendars, address books and mail – all shared across home computer, work computer and mobile phone! :) If I’m on someone else’s computer I still have Horde to fall back on for reading email (or my WLAN-enabled Nokia N80 which comes with an IMAP reader), and ScheduleWorld’s web interface for my organizer.

Warning: At the time of writing, ScheduleWorlds Thunderbird extension is not tested for Thunderbird 2.0. It worked for me (some phone numbers were «invisible» in Thunderbird, but were still present in both the web interface and on the phone), but other people have had problems with the combination.

Alternative 1: Ofcourse, the snappiest way to get mail from GMail is to set GMail itself to forward the mails instead of using fetchmail. This also let you use any IMAP server (for instance if you company provided you with an IMAP account). Unfortunately, this wasn’t an option for me as my server can’t accept incoming mail traffic (so it’s purely a dummy server).

Alternative 2: If you do not trust a third party with your calendar and mobile sync isn’t an issue for you, Sync Kolab promises to sync all information across Thunderbird installations by using an IMAP folder. A pretty smart concept. :)

To those who are looking for someone to do work for free… please wake up and join the real world

Every day, there are more and more CL posts seeking “artists” for everything from auto graphics to comic books to corporate logo designs. More people are finding themselves in need of some form of illustrative service.

But what they’re NOT doing, unfortunately, is realizing how rare someone with these particular talents can be.

To those who are “seeking artists”, let me ask you; How many people do you know, personally, with the talent and skill to perform the services you need? A dozen? Five? One? …none?

More than likely, you don’t know any. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be posting on craigslist to find them.

And this is not really a surprise.

In this country, there are almost twice as many neurosurgeons as there are professional illustrators. There are eleven times as many certified mechanics. There are SEVENTY times as many people in the IT field.

So, given that they are less rare, and therefore less in demand, would it make sense to ask your mechanic to work on your car for free? Would you look him in the eye, with a straight face, and tell him that his compensation would be the ability to have his work shown to others as you drive down the street?

Would you offer a neurosurgeon the “opportunity” to add your name to his resume as payment for removing that pesky tumor? (Maybe you could offer him “a few bucks” for “materials”. What a deal!)

Would you be able to seriously even CONSIDER offering your web hosting service the chance to have people see their work, by viewing your website, as their payment for hosting you?

If you answered “yes” to ANY of the above, you’re obviously insane. If you answered “no”, then kudos to you for living in the real world.

But then tell me… why would you think it is okay to live out the same, delusional, ridiculous fantasy when seeking someone whose abilities are even less in supply than these folks?

Graphic artists, illustrators, painters, etc., are skilled tradesmen. As such, to consider them as, or deal with them as, anything less than professionals fully deserving of your respect is both insulting and a bad reflection on you as a sane, reasonable person. In short, it makes you look like a twit.

A few things you need to know;

1. It is not a “great opportunity” for an artist to have his work seen on your car/’zine/website/bedroom wall, etc. It IS a “great opportunity” for YOU to have their work there.

2. It is not clever to seek a “student” or “beginner” in an attempt to get work for free. It’s ignorant and insulting. They may be “students”, but that does not mean they don’t deserve to be paid for their hard work. You were a “student” once, too. Would you have taken that job at McDonalds with no pay, because you were learning essential job skills for the real world? Yes, your proposition it JUST as stupid.

3. The chance to have their name on something that is going to be seen by other people, whether it’s one or one million, is NOT a valid enticement. Neither is the right to add that work to their “portfolio”. They get to do those things ANYWAY, after being paid as they should. It’s not compensation. It’s their right, and it’s a given.

4. Stop thinking that you’re giving them some great chance to work. Once they skip over your silly ad, as they should, the next ad is usually for someone who lives in the real world, and as such, will pay them. There are far more jobs needing these skills than there are people who possess these skills.

5. Students DO need “experience”. But they do NOT need to get it by giving their work away. In fact, this does not even offer them the experience they need. Anyone who will not/can not pay them is obviously the type of person or business they should be ashamed to have on their resume anyway. Do you think professional contractors list the “experience” they got while nailing down a loose step at their grandmother’s house when they were seventeen?

If you your company or gig was worth listing as desired experience, it would be able to pay for the services it received. The only experience they will get doing free work for you is a lesson learned in what kinds of scrubs they should not lower themselves to deal with.

6. (This one is FOR the artists out there, please pay attention.) Some will ask you to “submit work for consideration”. They may even be posing as some sort of “contest”. These are almost always scams. They will take the work submitted by many artists seeking to win the “contest”, or be “chosen” for the gig, and find what they like most. They will then usually have someone who works for them, or someone who works incredibly cheap because they have no originality or talent of their own, reproduce that same work, or even just make slight modifications to it, and claim it as their own. You will NOT be paid, you will NOT win the contest. The only people who win, here, are the underhanded folks who run these ads. This is speculative, or “spec”, work. It’s risky at best, and a complete scam at worst. I urge you to avoid it, completely. For more information on this subject, please visit www.no-spec.com.

So to artists/designers/illustrators looking for work, do everyone a favor, ESPECIALLY yourselves, and avoid people who do not intend to pay you. Whether they are “spec” gigs, or just some guy who wants a free mural on his living room walls. They need you. You do NOT need them.

And for those who are looking for someone to do work for free… please wake up and join the real world. The only thing you’re accomplishing is to insult those with the skills you need. Get a clue.