[A few PHP and Apache q's]

For quick access to a server behind a firewall via SSH, consider a VPN. Hamachi is currently free and has clients for all platforms. It's real easy to set up too.

[Hak5 Graffiti Wall]

And a pair of bash functions for dropping in your .bashrc (assuming you're running on Linux)

function writeScreen()
{
echo "$@" > ~/test.txt
}

function writeScreenln()
{
echo "$@" >> ~/test.txt
}

These again assume a file (this time in the home dir) called test.txt. You may need to change this path as necessary. :)

[Hak5 Graffiti Wall]

Hey guys, I'm lovin' the graffiti wall (even though it's more like the Graffitivision now.)

I went ahead and hacked together a script in python to let folks run something similar on their own machines.

You need:

Python

PyGame

#import and initialize
import pygame
pygame.init()

class Message(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
  def __init__(self, filename):
    pygame.sprite.Sprite.__init__(self)
    self.font = pygame.font.SysFont("Verdana", 36)
    self.filename = filename    
    in_file = open(self.filename, "r")
    filetext = in_file.read()
    in_file.close()
        
    self.text = filetext
    self.image = self.font.render(self.text, 1, (255, 255, 255))
    self.rect = self.image.get_rect()

  def rendertext(self, font, text, pos=(0,0), color=(255,255,255), bg=(0,0,0)):
      lines = text.splitlines()
      #first we need to find image size...
      width = height = 0
      for l in lines:
          width = max(width, font.size(l)[0])
          height += font.get_linesize()
      #create 8bit image for non-aa text..
      img = pygame.Surface((width, height), 0, 8)
      img.set_palette([(0,0,0), (255,255,255)])
      #render each line
      height = 0
      for l in lines:
       t = font.render(l, 1, (255,255,255), (0,0,0))
       img.blit(t, (0, height))
       height += font.get_linesize()
      return img

  def update(self):
    #-----Read text from text.txt----#
    in_file = open(self.filename, "r")
    filetext = in_file.read()
    in_file.close()
            
    self.text = filetext
    #self.image = self.font.render(self.text, 1, (255, 255, 255))   
    self.image = self.rendertext(self.font, self.text)
    self.rect = self.image.get_rect()
    label.rect.centerx = background.get_rect().centerx
    label.rect.centery = background.get_rect().centery


#display
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((800, 600), pygame.FULLSCREEN | pygame.DOUBLEBUF | pygame.SWSURFACE)
FULLSCREEN = True

#Entities
background = pygame.Surface(screen.get_size())
background = background.convert()
background.fill((0, 0, 0))
label = Message("test.txt")
labelSprite = pygame.sprite.Group(label)

#Action
#  Assign vals to vars
clock = pygame.time.Clock()
keepGoing = True

#  Loop
while keepGoing:
  
  #T - Timer for framerate
  clock.tick(30)

  #E - Events
  for event in pygame.event.get():
    if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
      keepGoing = False
    elif event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
      if event.key == pygame.K_ESCAPE:
        keepGoing = False
      elif event.key == pygame.K_f:
        if FULLSCREEN:
          screen = pygame.display.set_mode((800, 600), pygame.DOUBLEBUF | pygame.SWSURFACE)
          background = pygame.Surface(screen.get_size())
          background = background.convert()
          background.fill((0, 0, 0))
          label = Message("test.txt")
          labelSprite = pygame.sprite.Group(label)
        else:
          screen = pygame.display.set_mode((800, 600), pygame.FULLSCREEN | pygame.DOUBLEBUF | pygame.SWSURFACE)
          background = pygame.Surface(screen.get_size())
          background = background.convert()
          background.fill((0, 0, 0))
          label = Message("test.txt")
          labelSprite = pygame.sprite.Group(label)

        FULLSCREEN = not FULLSCREEN
        screen = pygame.display.get_surface()


  #R - Refresh display
  screen.blit(background, (0, 0))
  labelSprite.update()
  labelSprite.draw(screen)
  pygame.display.flip()

Can't take credit for quite everything, as I had to creatively Google to find that rendertext function that I dropped in the Message class (Why the heck doesn't pygame.font.Font.render support newline chars?) but the rest is mine. :)

Note that this reads from a file "test.txt" in the same directory as the script itself...still working on checking for existence and creating if non-existent file.

EDIT: Had to update a few things: the Python was erroring out on Windows (I have to reinitialize each surface each time I reinitialize the screen...)

Also set the font to "Verdana" because I know every Windows user will have it, and (almost) every Linux user will default to the much prettier FreeSans if they don't have it....

I can zip up a py2exe, if anyone wants it for "drop-in-and-go"