How To Help Blitzed
The aim of this page is to explain to you the best ways for you to help Blitzed. It isn't intended to be a begging letter, just a frank explanation of the sort of resources that are in short supply around here, and in order to answer the question that we are frequently asked: so how can I help Blitzed?
What sort of help does Blitzed need?
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Your time and talents
If enough people are working together they can achieve a great deal with very little in the way of resources. We have always been in favour of collaboration, but this does require a lot of effort on your part. Not only do you need to have some talents that we can use, but you have to be willing to communicate with us enough that we can trust you to work on our stuff.
If you're interested in helping out with any of our projects, then please get in touch with us on IRC (server irc.blitzed.org channel #blitzed) or on our mailing lists (start with the public list). Just be aware that at first you may have to do a lot of drudge work!
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Advertising
If you like us, tell your friends. If you have a web site, place one of our banners on it. Some people say our banners suck, if you think so, feel free to contribute some of your own designs.
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Computer hardware
From time to time we desperately need to upgrade the servers that we use. Here's some items we would find useful and the place they need to get to:
Item(s) What for? Location - Standard ATX minitower case
- ATX power supply, at least 250W
- Any motherboard capable of taking a 1GHz+ processor and DDR RAM
- DDR RAM
- Any 100M PCI network card that works with FreeBSD
- Floppy drive
- Any IDE hard drive of 40GB+
We will shortly be losing our colo arrangement with Frontier, which will leave us without a web server and will put the OPM project on hold. We have been offered alternative hosting but we will need to get a machine there. Our existing machine, angora is worth less than the shipping cost to send it there. California, US (Blitzed staff, if you have a requirement for some hardware then please mail the details to eb@lists.blitzed.org and it will show up here. Make sure to explain what you need it for!)
The above aren't just "cool toys" that we would like, these are items that we really have a pressing need for in order to continue operating our various projects.
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Internet services
We can use most kinds of Internet services in some way. The obvious examples would be colo (we provide the hardware, you provide the bandwidth and power) or dedicated servers (Rackspace-style stuff) but we could probably find a use even for shell accounts.
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Money
Obviously we can use any money that is donated to supply our needs in most of the above areas.
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Place an order for a Blitzed T-Shirt!
A (very) small part of the purchase price goes to Blitzed. More designs to come after the first batch is done!
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A gallery picture
Well, at least it keeps morale up.
How can I donate money to Blitzed?
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PayPal
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Western Union Money Transfer
Donate to Blitzed from: US Canada. May be available elsewhere too; check their site.
Can send money online if you have a (MasterCard or Visa) credit or debit card, they will also accept cash if you show up at one of their "agent locations."
Recipient details should be:
Phil Clarke
82 Butneys
Basildon
Essex SS14 2DP
United Kingdom
Charges depend on where you are sending from, contact Western Union for more details (and then tell us, so we can put on here what the typical charge is).
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NOCHEX
Available to anyone with a UK debit card.
£0.99 charge for sender, 1% or £0.99 (whichever is higher) charge for us.
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Cheques in Sterling (British Pounds) or Euros
Probably not that easy for non-UK people to arrange, and obviously no online payment.
Post to:
Phil Clarke
82 Butneys
Basildon
Essex SS14 2DP
United Kingdom
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Posting cash
Not really recommended, but if any Sterling or Euro cash does show up we will certainly accept it!
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Purchase things from Amazon
Use the form above, or follow our Amazon Associate link and then buy items from Amazon.
We will receive 5% of any purchase you make to a maximum of £10 per item.
What does Blitzed provide that is worth my support?
If you're looking at this page then it's likely you already know what we do for you that makes us deserving of your help. But if not, here's a quick roundup (in no particular order!):
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Blitzed IRC Network
An IRC network that currently hosts the chat activities of several hundred channels and around 1000 clients.
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Blitzed Open Proxy Monitor
A proxy-testing solution for IRC servers, in use by Blitzed IRC and many other networks, including efnet and ircnet.
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Blitzed OPM
A DNSBL of hosts believed to run insecure proxies. In use by Blitzed IRC, many other IRC networks, and many large email providers worldwide.
We provide these services because we enjoy doing so. We do not earn money from any of them, we do not employ any sort of banner ads on our sites. We are only able to do what we do due to the donations of time, services, hardware and money from our staff and sponsors.
Hey! What if I linked an IRC server or became an oper!?
One of our projects is an IRC network, so of course we need IRC servers, IRC admins and IRC operators. However, these things are not that hard to get and we don't really need that many of them. For us it makes sense if the people who are helping the most in other areas do the IRC oper and admin work as well.
If you want to be an oper the best way to go about that is to help us in some other area and hang around on IRC where our admins hang out. It probably won't be that long before you are noticed and an offer is made. Please don't on any account ask first. That really puts us off.
We already have a whole bunch of IRC client servers. You can always apply to link a new one if you like, but client servers that don't come with users will probably not get accepted, since we already have so many. Some more routing hubs would be nice, but we're getting by.
What do I get for donating things?
At the moment, all you get is our gratitude. If we get any sizable donations we will probably list them on a page of some sort (if you want). Sizable donations may lead to us putting a button that links to you (or your company), though we don't really want to start putting full banners up. That's how Alternative Web Services got onto the sidebar already.
It isn't possible to buy your way into the position of oper, admin or any other trusted role, though. The only way to get access to some of the more restricted areas of the Blitzed universe is to be regularly working on stuff that requires that access. We are quite open about various aspects of what we do, so you're not missing out on a lot except for politics and drudge in any case.
We'd like to sell Blitzed T shirts and the like, but we don't have anyone with experience of this and time to organise it. If you have some experience with this maybe you could help us set this up (we have some designs already). This would be a way for us to get money, and we could also give free T shirts to people who help us. Come and talk to us on the public list about this.
If I donate money, who does it go to? Who decides what it gets used for?
The named recipient for all of this stuff is Phil Clarke. He is a member of Blitzed's Executive Board, and any money you donate will go to him. In the future we do hope to have a separate bank account for this stuff, but for now this isn't possible.
All three members of the Executive Board will decide what exactly to use any donated resources for, and that will always be the case whether money goes into Phil's personal bank account or a proper Blitzed account. If the person donating has any strong opinions on use then we'll try to take them into account, but we can't promise. We do however promise that any money donated will be used strictly for the operation of Blitzed. We will not use it to fund personal expenses. All donations and expenditures will be recorded publically on this site.