FartDump Feed

Wall of Secrets Tweak

I decided to revisit the algorithm that I slapped together last year for showing secrets on the wall. It wasn't the greatest. I was giving new posts a huge boost for six hours, then they tank if there is no engagement. That was bumped up to 12 hours.

I was giving older posts too large of a penalty, so engaging posts were falling down the list too quickly. That logic has been tweaked, so you will start seeing older posts higher up now. A few other variables were adjusted as well.

Remember: Upvoting, downvoting, and commenting have a huge impact as to where the secret lands after 12 hours.

We will try this new approach for a few days and see how it works out.

You were driving to work the other day....

I've taken a bit of break this week. One feature did get worked on though and that's DOTZ. A simple game where you try to connect dotz  to create squares. 

The AI still needs a bit of polish to make the game tougher to beat, but it's playable for now. I may add modes so you can set the difficulty in a few days.

Made some privacy gains today: no more personalized ads, no more Google tracking. I built my own lightweight pageview system, so I ditched that annoying cookie consent popup too. Asking for tracking on an anonymous site felt dumb. Now it feels right.

I brought the Google reCAPTCHA badge back to the surface. Hiding it was causing some issues and occasionally triggered misleading “Invalid Captcha” errors; even though the forms still worked.

While digging into it, I found out hiding the badge actually violates their TOS. So yeah… shouldn’t have done that. Live and learn. Still better than clicking “I’m not a robot.”

I've wanted to build my own StumbleUpon clone for a long time, and today, it finally took off. It's still basic, with only about 15 websites in the rotation, but it's functional and ready for you to start browsing.

There's a link at the bottom of the page if you want to submit your own weird finds to the Stumbler.

Planned features include up/down voting (or maybe just a like button) so I can build an algorithm to surface the best sites more often. I’ll also add a reporting option in case you hit a dead link or something that won’t load right.

Both are easy adds, but my brain is fried after building the foundation. The rest will come soon.

I switched to invisible Google reCAPTCHA last week, but their badge was huge and obnoxious, so I nudged it out of sight. That caused some errors on a few forms (oops). I think it’s fixed now, but if you still get an “invalid reCAPTCHA” error after leaving a secret or comment, hit me up on the contact page.

Also updated the Privacy Policy to mention that FartDump uses Google reCAPTCHA.

Not much got accomplished this week; sometimes that’s just how it goes. I’ve got several ideas for the site, but I tend to sit on them for a while to mentally map out how I want to handle the functionality.

That said, I did get Soundboard submissions started and fixed the datetime inconsistencies across the site. I had been using server time instead of UTC during testing and forgot to clean it up before pushing to production. That caused some odd output quirks and incorrect timestamps, though it was subtle unless you were paying close attention. It should be working properly now.

While tinkering with the secrets files, I tracked down and fixed a few other bugs too.

So... hey, not a total waste of a week. Any progress is still progress.

Something Stinks

Celebrities like to die in three's. This week, we lost:

• Ozzy Osbourne
• Malcolm-Jamal Warner
• Hulk Hogan

The week isn't over, could we get a fourth? Who... is... next?

Cranked up the character limit on secrets and comments from 255 to 1,000. Some of you needed more space to spill your guts (or just rant). Hopefully, this means less cryptic nonsense and more actual stories. Give us the juicy details, not just a headline.

🚨 New Feature Alert: You can now upload your own farts! If your masterpiece fits the vibe, I’ll add it to the Soundboard. This will either be epic; or the day hackers finally destroy FartDump. Either way, worth it.

If you have audio or video of a fart, send it in! >>>Submit Fart<<<

Fun Fact: The average person passes gas about 14 times a day. If you didn’t fart at all, you’d be in trouble; holding in gas causes bloating and can even affect your mood. In fact, doctors say healthy farts are a sign your gut bacteria are doing their job digesting food. So next time you let one slip, just say you’re "optimizing your microbiome."

Wonder how many times you’ve farted in your life? Check out the fart calculator on the homepage.

I decided to move the captcha to an invisible captcha instead of attempting to build my own. Hopefully, everything is still working. We will find out if no one posts any secrets for a day or so. I'd say send me a message if you find something not working, but I moved the contact form to the same logic. haha

If everything is working as expected then it should be much easier to submit secrets, comments and all other forms on the site. Fingers crossed.

I was supposed to build my own CAPTCHA this week. I’ve got it mapped out in my head, but honestly, I just couldn’t force myself to mess with it. Still sitting on the ole to-do list.

Next week, the plan is to tackle Fart Factory. It needs a serious re-work to make it more fun, more addicting, and with upgrades that actually feel like upgrades. Fart Factory was my first browser game, so it’s basic as hell right now. Time to make it something people actually want to play for more than five minutes.

Crypto Puzzle & Fartle Daily Reset Just Got Smarter

Did some code cleaning in my daily games. All input boxes now actually limit to one character; no more loopholes if you click or paste like crazy. The game enforces it for every input, every time.

On top of that, I streamlined the whole UTC midnight reset system. Both games now use the same bulletproof logic for “come back tomorrow” and show a live countdown to the next puzzle, based on universal time. No more timezone voodoo, just smooth resets for everyone.

I built the code and would get confused as to when I could play again. Yeah, I play the daily games on most days. Now we all know when we can play again with the timers.

Fun Fact: In 1995, McArthur Wheeler robbed two banks with lemon juice smeared on his face, believing it would render him invisible to security cameras; just like invisible ink. Smiling at the cameras, he was arrested within hours.

His bizarre confidence inspired psychologists Dunning and Kruger to study and publish their famous work on why incompetent people overestimate their abilities, now known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Finally got around to removing the links to my other websites from the wall. They have been there as filler for nearly 8 months. I replaced them with links to some of the games on the site. The easter egg is still there under those links though. 

Also if you haven't tried it yet, click the "Back to Top" button on the wall. 🤣

Got Fartle up and working pretty good. It's on the menu, homepage, about page, sitemap, etc. If you can't find it, you won't have fun playing it.

In other news, I promised my self I was going to work on the custom captcha this week. I have a good idea of how to implement it, but it's going to be a pain in the ass. I'm starting to chicken out.

I think I'll work on the cookies consent banner and give you guys the option to not use them. That will be an easier fix.

This is a bit premature, but I have the Wordle-style game affectionally referred to as "Fartle" functional.

There is still a ton of work to do in order to make it pretty. It is however in a good state to play though if you want.

Just a warning though, it currently looks terrible on really small screens. I'll get it styled up nicely over the next few days.

Once it's in a better state style-wise, it will be added to the homepage and menu.

I deleted the FartDump Twitter/X account last year since I wasn't using this site at the time. Last month, I decided to bring it back, but someone had already taken over the old account and is now pretending to be me, lol. For some strange reason, they were even sending people here. I’d left the account name in this site’s header, so their profile actually looked legit.

If you use X, follow me at @fartdumpdotcom. That’s the official FartDump account now.

Not sure what their endgame is, but I appreciate the free advertising.

Next week I think I'm going to attempt to build my own captcha system. I really want FartDump to stay truly anonymous with as little or no tracking of you, period. Using the Google ReCAPTCHA does allow them to track you. 

For now, it's a necessary evil to keep bots and spammers out of here. So, I will try my best to get that going ASAP!

I'll also be working on allowing you the ability to opt out of any tracking cookies from the Google ads. That won't be that difficult. 

When I rebuilt FartDump last year, I wiped the slate clean. I have a working custom CMS that took me several years to build, but I hadn’t planned on needing all of its features when I first slapped the secrets up. It was just a fun little side project; people seem to like it somewhat, so that’s why I’ve been focusing on adding more fun things here.

However, I also threw together a generic sitemap.xml file, which I was manually editing since there were only a handful of pages on the entire site. That changed quickly.

Today, I decided to build a dynamic sitemap; the manual version was just getting the date changed at best whenever I made big edits. All the timestamps were neglected and left at 6 a.m. UTC. Now they’re not only accurate, but also hands-off; the new sitemap.php grabs the last edit time for each file dynamically and outputs everything correctly.

Small win for me. Too boring to put on the updates page.

I ordered some stickers today for my car. FartDump is about to be plastered everywhere in my near vicinity.

I decided not to put the actual URL because I want people to see the sticker, giggle, and then search for FartDump online. It's more fun if you have to look for it. I may create some QR code stickers to put next to it later. That would be fun!

Yesterday, I made a post on X about Grok posting antisemitic responses. I said: 

So, xAI decided to train Grok on raw X posts and is now “shocked” it turned into a hate speech vending machine. Who could’ve predicted this? Oh wait; literally everyone who’s ever spent 10 minutes on this site. That's hilarious! 

Just as soon as I clicked "Post," I received a notification that my account was temporarily flagged.

I've used social media for over twenty years and never had a problem until around 2022. Since then, I've had nearly every account shadow banned on nearly all major social media platforms. I sat in dismay this morning while reading the most openly racists comments imaginable on X. It's so surreal.

What a world we live in!

One day, Comic sans will make a comeback. Mark my words! It's the Nickleback of fonts.