techteendaily

"The User Profile Service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded" [SOLVED]

2012-01-31T04:29:00.000-08:00

This problem usually happens when you do a partial OS recovery on your computer or did not configure Windows properly during first boot, or as in the case when temporary user profile is disallowed in group policy.

If you have another Administrator account that you can log into, go here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947215 and follow the instructions.

If you have a fresh install or fresh recovery of Windows 7 or Vista, try these steps.
1. Restart your computer and press F8 continuously until you reach the Advanced Boot Options. If you see the Windows boot logo instead, repeat this step.
2. Choose "Safe mode with Command Prompt" and press enter, and try to login.
3. If you can login, a command prompt should appear, type

net user administrator password /active:yes

4. You should see "The command completed successfully", an administrator account with password "password" is created. Reboot your computer by typing

shutdown -r -t 0

5. After the reboot, login using administrator account, then try fixing your account using Method 1 from instructions here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947215

When you do a partial recovery (reverting the OS to factory state while preserving user data), the recovery tend leave some bits of old data and may result the inconsistency in user profile.

When I tried to do a partial recovery using the OEM recovery manager, I faced this problem and tried to rectify the problem by doing the regedit method, but I did not have the .BAK or .BK entries. Thought about dumping that corrupted account and use the newly created account, but the new account is pretty broken anyway because that account is a what Windows define as default account and I cannot do any changes to it. So in the end I backed up everything to a second partition and did a full recovery, after that no more problem.

Document Image Writer workaround for Windows 7

2012-01-19T08:21:00.001-08:00

If you use Windows 7, you will find yourself frustrated with the lack of option to print documents to TIFF or other image formats using the ol' Document Image Writer. Do not despair my friend. Instead of 'printing' the document, you can 'Fax' the document instead.

To 'fax' a document to image, just select the Fax option at the printer option at the Print dialog.

Then 'fax' the document. Ignore all the Fax setup and press cancel all the way. Then you will be presented a New Fax window here.

Drag and drop the Attachment, and the TIFF file is yours.

NOTE: if you are 'faxing' a multi page document, it will produce a TIFF file with all the pages inside, view the pages with 'Windows Photo Viewer'

Grooveshark Anywhere account for free

2012-01-14T00:15:00.001-08:00

I recently sent a support ticket to Grooveshark and got a reply a day after. (however i only noticed the email reply about 2 weeks later)

And guess what, I got upgraded to a Grooveshark Anywhere account for nothing.

The support ticket I sent was about the surveys that I have been taking on Grooveshark, as they said that surveys will be released everyday and you can gain points by completing the survey, but at that time I wasn't able to see any surveys available for me to answer.

And the reply from Grooveshark was that they were in the process of rolling out a new survey system, and I was given a month of Anywhere upgrade to 'compensate for the trouble'.

Well the heck I tried to sign into my account on my phone and it works.

Actually I do not really mind about the surveys and just sent a support ticket to them to just inform them about the problem.

Grooveshark Anywhere costs 9 dollars/month.

Data Recovery for free

2012-01-04T21:31:00.000-08:00

You lost that whole memory card of images and videos due to unforeseen accidental actions, or rather you'd reformatted a storage media, only then you realized it's the wrong one being formatted.

No point trying to search recovery software online, because the first 2000 results you get are either shareware or payware. Try searching for opensource alternatives, and I have one pretty nifty, functional and free data recovery software.

Photorec/Testdisk
This one works flawlessly in my case, when I accidentally deleted some files on my phone's MicroSD card. It works on a wide range of file systems such as FAT, NTFS, the linux EXT2/3 and HFS, and recovers over 390 known file formats, and even works on DVD/CD and floppy media! It does it's job, without any quirks, and recovered my files all in one piece. You can even choose the specific type of file to recover, so you wouldn't need to sift through tons of cache or temp files and speed up recovery. The performance was quite reasonable, unlike other recovery software, Photorec/Testdisk recovers as soon as it starts reading the first block of the storage media and dumps all uncorrupted files into a specified folder, or if you prefer you can also choose to force it do a partial recovery on corrupted files. It took about 5 minutes to recover a 2Gbytes memory card. Testdisk, which comes with the package, is designed to recover lost partitions such as the case when you removed additional partitions on a harddrive during OS installation. Photorec/Testdisk does not need installation or any registration, just unzip and run, and runs on Windows, Linux and Mac.

FreeUndelete
FreeUndelete from officerecovery is a commercial software that does data recovery. It can recover files from NTFS and FAT file systems, and from HDD and flash media. It does not recover partitions though. It offers basic file recovery and has a easy to use GUI that is just point and recover. On recovery, it needs to scan the whole drive first only then you can choose what you want to recover. I have not tested this software, but I suppose it will work. The personal version is free. You have to run a setup prior to using it. Since it is not OpenSource, don't expect free updates and bug fixes or support.

Speed up your Windows 7

2011-12-16T21:07:00.000-08:00

It is not recommended to do DIY stunts like this on your Windows 7, because Windows 7's services depend on each other. Windows 7 is a lot lot lot more chaotic and messy than your plain ol' Windows XP and turning off a few services can mean your whole computer cease to function completely. So, please refrain from doing the customizations yourself, and if you still really want to make your win 7 faster, start using Add or Remove Programs and uninstall all unnecessary bloat, or even better, don't install things you don't need.

You have now yourself a really non-responsive and slow-than-usual computer and you just don't know what the heck is causing it or don't really know how to deal with it. There are lots of ways to get your computer back to the younger days. Here I show you my method.

My method assumes that you use your computer just for web-browsing and running regular Windows applications.

You know how breezy your Windows feels when you boot into safe mode? However safe mode gives you a really stripped down experience, as essential drivers and services are disabled in safe mode. However, you still can have your regular Windows but with the breezy safe mode experience.

Firstly, boot into safe mode by pressing F8 constantly on boot up, then select 'Boot Windows with networking'. After the desktop loaded, run 'msconfig.exe', and go the services tab, there you will find a list of services, then click 'disable all services'. Sort the services by clicking the 'status' title, then tick all the services that have it's status 'running' (these are the networking services).

Then look for these services and enable them (put a tick beside the service):
Audio
Windows Audio
Remote Prodecure Call (RPC)
Windows Audio Endpoint Builder
Multimedia Class Scheduler
Aero Interface
Desktop Windows Manager Session Manager
Themes
Performance
Superfetch
Turboboost (if you are using a Core series processor)
Printing (enable this only if you do printing)
Printer spooler

Then, click on the Startup tab and click 'Disable all'

After all that done, just click apply and restart your computer.

After: Less processes and less memory usage = a more happy computer

In the event your applications stopped functioning properly after the tweak, which is quite rare, you can just revert the changes you made by going back to msconfig.exe, and select 'Normal startup' at the startup selection.

"20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web" look-alike

2011-07-08T09:24:00.000-07:00

Having seen that great HTML5 demo made by Google Team, I decided to emulate their idea by utilizing more or less the same methods used by them which is to implement interactive web content using open standards.

So here you have it, a look-alike of the Google's book which I call it Brownbook.

It consists of Javascript for the page turning animations and the transition of text, while CSS is used to anchor and position all the web elements, and HTML serves as the content structure.

While it does not look exactly fancy and much more interactive than the Google's one, but hey it can be done and it's possible to make one of those books yourself. I did not manage to include the hardcover, because I'm very inexperienced in JS.

The javascripts credits to Hakim El Hattab, one of the developers at F-i.com for the Google's book, who gave quite an insight to how the book is made and provided snippets of the codes.

http://smartypants.dlinkddns.com:8888 Brownbook

Managing Old Computer(s)

2011-03-24T09:12:00.000-07:00

- a typical day at file management (fail)

Is quite a headache. Being a computer user for so long, I've never done backup or file management myself ever, mainly because the files and programs I use are usually redundant and does not have any importance at all, such as games and miscellaneous schoolworks., and when I do not need them, the files will just be deleted without much second thought, but they never got deleted anyway because the harrdrive failed and did it for me (a few times).

Now, as file size of the programs I use grew substantially, and of course the collection of music, photos and videos are becoming larger, it's a pretty messy job to sort them out one by one, because I never had the habit of saving files I need in a systematic manner and for example unrar files wherever they are, now both the computers I'm using are in a state of chaos in terms of file management. Now only I realize, I'm paying the price of inefficiency for the collective laziness. The situation is much worse at my older Asus laptop, and now I'm painstakingly sorting files and deleting unnecessary ones. The process is slow, much due to the dilemma of 'to save or not to save'. Like some of the legacy exe files I used to use, I cannot decide whether to get rid of them or save them for archive. Very frustrating.

But to think of it, if you still insist on using your old computer but is lazy to deal with the mess, why not use the ultimate method of getting an image or snapshot of the harrdrive, by swapping the whole old harddrive and store them, and replacing them with a new harrdrive.

The Differences Between LAME MP3, WMA, and AAC+ at very low bitrate.

2011-02-03T10:04:00.000-08:00

Here are some demonstrations to the more obvious differences between today's most popular audio formats when pushed to the limit.

AAC+ @ 32kbps, 44.1khz stereo

LAME MP3 @ 32kbps, 44.1khz stereo

WMA9 @ 32kbps, 44.1khz stereo

For technical reasons, mp3 is obviously the worst method to compress your music, as it is quite an old format. Newer audio compression formats such as Vorbis, WMA Pro and AAC are generally much better as it has much less limitations.

The original source is FLAC audio ripped from a CD.

searching for music treasure - right in your mp3 player

2011-01-31T13:11:00.001-08:00

It might sound weird, but in fact, thats how I actually listen to my music sometimes. For a few times, I had accidentally reformatted or deleted music files in my mp3 player, and found myself panicking because I did not have any copy of the files anywhere, so I had to do data recovery on it. And to make things worst, prior to the data recovery, I copied some more music files onto it, making my effort to have a complete recovery futile. But i tried recovering it anyway, as I need to recover a long and important .wav recording from the player, and guess what, even though I've written fresh data on it, the recovery software still saw the 250mbytes REC023.wav file that I've lost, but it was listed in the lost chain and incomplete category, but I copied the whole raw data anyway. That's when the fun begins, I tried playing the .wav file, to my surprise, it did not play any recording at all, instead the whole .wav file contains all the mix of long lost mp3s which were still retaining in the flash memory, and since the files are all mp3, the recovery software actually copies the whole chain of lost mp3 together thinking that it is a one stream of .wav file. I always had the trance and house music in my mp3, and this process have somehow created a really random mix tape of it all, and actually, the random process itself have chosen some of my forgotten favourites, from Moonbeam, to Kyau & Albert, some of the bits and pieces of mp3 survived the formatting and deleting, and are together chained into the .wav file. So, instead of making a playlist, the recovery software did the whole thing for me, but sadly, not even one piece of the real .wav recording was recovered.

The same thing also happened on my Nokia, I have an 8Gbyte microsd card which is really messy, and contains everything from videos to pictures to apps to everything, and is always filled up. I have an app called symtorrent, which I used it to download torrent straight to my phone, and once I was downloading an album which consists of all mp3 files, and I hadn't yet download it completely just at around 40%, and I tried playing the broken torrent mp3s, and to my surprise, the player jumped all around the sd card playing random bits and pieces of mp3s in the card. Whenever it reads the incomplete mp3s, it somehow got addressed to other places in the sd card, and since the incomplete mp3 is actually overwriting my past mp3 collection which was deleted, it reads the raw deleted data whenever there is a hole in the incomplete mp3. And there I go, reminiscing the past mp3s, long forgotten, and now revived by the incomplete mp3s. I thought it should've have skipped the null data, instead, it reads the data (since it's also mp3).

Create your own custom font - Illustrator

2011-01-31T07:27:00.001-08:00

Wanting to create your own unique font for your name or logo but does not like the ones you find online? Then create one for yourself, just like how I do, here I am going to show the steps to how I make my own font using Adobe's Illustrator CS5.

The font here is based on techno and the text I am creating is 'la vida' which means to live life in spanish, which is also my facebook name. However, you can also create your own text based on the techniques I use below.

First, open up a new document in Illustrator and go to view>snap to grip and show grid.

Then, create a rectangle with the rectangle tool. We are going to make the L alphabet.

Use the Pen tool, to dot on the points like shown in the red circles, that will create a path for shape editing.
Then, use the direct select tool to bend the point shown in the figure below.
Then, select the upper part of the rectangle, and delete it, the result should be the same as figure below.
Now, make another rectangle beside the L rectangle and use the Pen Tool to dot the edges for the alphabet A.
For the V.
For I.
For D.
After creating all the individual texts, select all of them and go to effect>stylize>round corners. Make sure the stroke size for all the objects in Illustrator is zero.
I chose to use 5 pixels, as it is adequate.
Then, open up Photoshop and make a layer with gradient settings (or whatever you like) shown in figure below.
Select all the objects in Illustrator and copy paste them into photoshop, with the paste settings shown in figure.
Here are some of the styles for the 'Shape Layer', however you can do whatever you like to the 'Shape'.

The end result.

So there you have it, a quick way to create a simple yet stylish font.

Punkbuster Busted - Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare (COD4:MW)

2011-01-30T05:01:00.001-08:00

I wanted to test the reliability of Punkbuster (which was to detect potential cheaters) in COD4 and this is what I get.

A rather funny thing though, as I was expected to be greeted with "Inappropriate Software detected" or "violation detected", but instead the game continued on, even after map change, punkbuster did not seem to detect anything suspicious.

The hacks I'm using here are the custom texture hack and the decafcoffee's dll that is injected by using Sinject. Initially, I used the texture hack due to it's undetectability, but after awhile, i wanted to up the ante because some admin banned me permanently for being funny, so i changed my cd key and ip and went back to the server. The weird thing is, PB has had detected and banned people who was using decafcoffee's hack.

The server is an official server (202.71.97.81:28960, BolehVPN HC TDM server), and has PB enabled.

I think it's due me using windows 7, and the security mechanism of the OS has somehow disabled the ability of PB to spy on my processes and files, plus the incompatibility of the 64bit.

So hack as you wish as long as you are using Windows 7.

it sucks to be me

2010-09-16T01:11:00.000-07:00

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CSS sandboxing : tumblr

2010-08-01T04:31:00.000-07:00

Hey, recently signed up for tumblr and got hooked with the customization ala css the beginner way. I never had any experience on css and the documentation on tumblr helped a lot. Check out my tumblr here

Anyway just made a custom theme off Sujay Thomas's 1000 Suns theme and its lookin great.

Just replaced and removed some elements and colors. And I can say css is one simple yet powerful web designing language.

You can download the source code here

Retrieve key for WEP networks (by passive means)

2010-07-06T02:03:00.000-07:00

Its quite simple really.

Just follow these steps and you should be fine.

And also, this can only work on a computer with wireless card or USB WiFi dongle.

Step 1
Get yourself Backtrack and install the .iso file to a thumbdrive using unetbootin.

Step 2
After all that done, boot the thumbdrive on your computer.

Tips :To boot from a USB storage device such as a thumbdrive, you have to use the 'boot list menu' which is usually accessible by spamming F12 (or some other f keys) during the boot screen, or change the boot sequence so that it boots the USB device first via your computer's BIOS.

Step 3
You will then be presented with a list of Unetbootin boot options, choose the default option which is the 1st one. After all the gibberish finished rolling, type

startx

and wait till it settles to desktop.

Step 4
Open up 'konsole', which is a program similar to CMD in Windows, or just click the little black square at the taskbar.

Step 5
Just to check if your wireless card is compatible, type in

airmon-ng

and see if it lists any wireless interface. If there is, Linux will usually name the interface as 'wlan0' or in rare cases 'eth0'. In this case we will use the interface 'wlan0'.

Step 6
Now it's time to determine your prey, or rather sniff and capture packets. To do this, type

airodump-ng wlan0

This will list the WiFi networks that can be seen by the computer. Here we will just work on WEP networks, so under the 'security' tab, look for networks that uses 'WEP', anything other than 'WEP' should not be used. Let the airodump-ng run for a while and note networks that has the highest number of packets captured, or the highest packets/s value. Note down the BSSID (the name of the access point), MAC Address (in the AB:CD:EF:GH:IJ:KL format) and channel that the access point is on. Then ctrl+c the airodump to stop the sniffing.

Step 7
Now we will try to capture the packets coming to and fro the chosen access point(AP). Type

airodump-ng --channel [the channel of the AP] --bssid [name of AP] -w [a random name for the captured packets file] wlan0

Let it run for as long as it takes. If there is a lot of network activity, you should see the number of packets captured (from clients and from the AP) to rise very rapidly, or if the network is quite idle, be patient.

Step 8
Open up another 'konsole', here we will try to retrieve the key from the captured packets. The captured packets is dumped into a file called [random name that you entered earlier].cap which you can see on your desktop. So type in
aircrack-ng -b [name of AP] -m [MAC address of the AP] -n 128 [name of the cap file].cap

Aircrack-ng will run while the packets are being captured. The key should be found when the number of captured packets reaches around 100,000 or more, this may vary a lot. You can also try rerun aircrack-ng with the value of WEP key length of 64 or 256 or 512 instead of 128 if you feel that it's taking too many packets and still has yet found the key.

Lastly
If all goes well, aircrack-ng should happily print out the WEP key. There you have retrieved the key of the WEP network.

shastera - thank you for your response

2010-07-03T19:19:00.000-07:00

edit: i never knew someone would actually view this page. Really sorry for the flame post. It's gone now, like nobody saw it. Peace.

World of lordcraft : imitiation a source of comedy

2010-06-27T06:46:00.000-07:00

Only someone who’s a complete stranger to the world of gaming would think that World of Lordcraft is an original IP. So, is the craft of lords better than that of war? In short: No. But it is way funnier. Currently under development by a company called GSprite, this WoL of shame pilfered almost all of the lore and terms of WoW.

Nowhere else does the presence of the phrase “All rights reserved” become funny; and yet there it is at the bottom of WoL’s website. Just about the only original thing about this game is the ugly art and the new words and meme-worthy phrases produced by typos.
As far as I can tell, the game is not an MMO; it outright rips off the Alliance and Horde, and even Arthas’ mug, but I think it plays like an RTS, with Heroes of Might and Magic-style battles. I think. There’s no relevant information regarding the gameplay. What is on the website is the most pathetic game trailer I have ever seen, narrated by someone who sounds like an adolescent Alan Rickman.

I wouldn’t be surprised if GSprite soon finds itself in a World of Lawsuits. Until then, fellow Lords, NEVER SURRENDER YOU FREEEDOM!!!

Solve the bottleneck of / pool old laptop hard drives

2010-06-08T22:03:00.000-07:00

The approach is quite simple. Mainly you just need a router, a few LAN cables and a bunch of old laptops or computers. We will try to tap into the unused wasted resources of the old souls.

The main reason you'd want to do this is because
1. your laptop's / computer's harrdrive is damn slow
2. "" "" has a small RAMs
3. improve your computing experience on old "" ""

My idea is that, since old """" has limited RAM and when it loads huge applications it tends to run out of RAM and starts disk swapping . And when it does disk swapping it's impossible for one to do anything except wait for the application to finish loading and vice versa. So, since I have a couple of old laptops around and it has quite nice HDD space in it so why not I make them a pool of storage centre and utilize the 100mbps ethernet on board.

My laptop's counter strike launch without HDD pooling took about 15 secs (HDD loads and swaps data like nobody's business) and the processor was left there doing nothing. But after I moved the whole counter strike files another laptop on the local network, then load counter strike from there, my asus laptop's counter strike launch took only 4 seconds (there is no HDD load from local drive but only swaps data).

Think about it, if I can pool storage of these bunch of laptops, why can't I pool their processing power and make them some networked parallel processing computers? But the problem is the speed of all these bunch of computers are limited by the 100mbps talking to each other and latency.

Combine all the unused resources of old computers really interests me, I mean, why throw them away when you can make them ftp servers or host games or make them a backup centre or media centre since all these jobs only requires little processing power. A pentium D is more than sufficient in my opinion.

Multitasking also made easier when you use multiple old computers, in fact a greater productivity is achieved than using a dual core or the so called quad core processors. Reason being, you are using discrete computers which does not share resources with each other (perhaps except for internet bandwidth) and you can use one without multimedia capability for communication and the other with a graphics card for multimedia processing and the other for data processing, and then another one with a huge HDD for unified data storage. Each computers has it's own distinct function and does not interfere with each other and in the event of computer crash (which is pretty rare) you can have the others to debug or continue doing whatever you're doing.

Is it because im desperate of getting a new comp or what. I dunno. bah reselling old laptops will just get your nothing so why not use whatever you have at hand.

Rant : apple the religious cult

2010-06-08T07:59:00.000-07:00

This month, I happened upon the third truest statement about gadgets that I have ever seen. It was on a message board. The poster said : 'Everyone always says Apple's stuff looks great but every time they bring out a new product it makes the last one look lot like shit.'

You can take this statement two ways. One is that Apple is constantly raising the bar(though that not might be true, multi-tasking e.g.), blazing a trail and unleashing total war on idle conformity.

The other interpretation is that we all get as over excited as a ten year old with a new flick knife when Apple releases a new product, then feel a bit silly with the benefit of hindsight.

Look at the ipad, it's undeniably an almost sexually gorgeous thing, but how can anyone recommend a tablet with no usb port, no flash and no multitasking and keep a straight face?

It's a clanging testament to Apple's marketing and our credulity. Apple tells us that what appears to be a flaw is actually a feature, and because of overall excellence of their various product lines, we swallow it. And by 'we', i mean you apple fags.

Truly, Apple are the kind of people who would run over your cat and then hand it to you, beaming beatifically and say :'look, you don't need a cat flap now, it can slide under the door!' or ' don't you think red is much nicer for a cat?' and then, 'that will be 2000 ringgit please - and then you can only buy cat food from us from now on.'

Just look at the result they got from it, though. The launch of ipad was considered so vital to the zeitgeist that the BBC gave it mass coverage. The iphone 4g however, of course, was wall to wall.

Reason being, apple not only sometimes make great products, it also makes people feel great about owning them.

The iphone is a gnat bite in the nokia's 40% worldwide market share. yet apple will thrive because it doesn't want to be seen as the biggest, it wants to be seen as the best.

Let's all learn something from that as we dig a hole for our flattned moggy.

Homework for IT week 1 : Immersive Multimedia in Entertainment scrapbook

2010-05-02T03:31:00.000-07:00

you can use my scrapbook as a reference or use it at your discretion.
but please include my credentials.

download from my ftp server:
FTP site 1

Sneak Peek: Facebook's "Huge Redesign" Is Coming

2010-04-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

Sneak Peek: Facebook's "Huge Redesign" Is Coming

nonsense

How to bypass Streamyx web filter

2010-03-30T08:34:00.000-07:00

There are currently two approach to bypass the filter. One thing for sure, tmnet is not taking this filtering issue seriously, as it's pretty easy to trick the system and access blocked sites.

1. Change your DNS server.

(for win XP)
Here for a video tutorial for vista

Edit : I've made an exe to switch dns automtically. Download it here

Your OS is configured to use the default DNS server (which is the streamyx dns server), and tmnet exploited this default setting by configuring it's dns servers not to resolve blocked website's IP address. This made it easy for streamyx to block sites, but it also made it fairly easy for us to bypass this.

First, go to 'network connections' and right click the connection which your computer is connected to the internet(be it WLAN or LAN or whatever), click on properties.

Then on this window as shown on the figure, look for 'Internet Protocol', click it then click on properties.

Then, change the DNS setting to 'use the following DNS addresses:'
This will allow you to configure your desired DNS server to use, instead of the 'auto' which uses the default streamyx dns.

get youself an alternate DNS server (e.g. OpenDNS)
208.67.222.222
208.67.222.220
I use OpenDNS because it's the fastest and most reliable.

Click on OK and close everything, then go to cmd and run the ipconfig/ flushdns to use your newly appointed DNS server.

You should be able to view 'lots' of sites now. (e.g. you know what)

-OR- (if you want to go even further (e.g. bypass web or location based censor)

2. Use TOR - the free p2p web anonymiser

this is simple and straightforward.

go to tor download and download TOR.

It is pretty straightforward, but to stay anonymous, please use the provided Firefox portable, and the provided pidgin IM.

and now you can practically be anywhere or anyone in the world. and that said, you can have the unfiltered and uncensored open internet privilege. You are not in malaysia anymore.

How did i know:

thanks to the transparency of google chrome, i was able to pinpoint the issue right away (everytime you tried to access blocked site, it doesn't load and shows a DNS could not be resolved problem), and that is basically the answer to the problem.

i used to think that streamyx has implemented something more aggresive, like keyword based filter or content screening, like the ones offered at school internet, but to my surprise it was relatively easy to bypass the filter by just tweaking a few settings.

Screamyx Rambler : Rambling one

2010-03-21T04:25:00.000-07:00

it's all fucking corruption money. With that noob HSBB project on going, telekom can suck more money and put into their own pocket while saying ' HEY DOING BROADBAND INFRASTRUCTURE IS REALLY EXPENSIVE YOU KNOW?! ' 8.6 billion ringgit wasted, just like that.

I mean wtf? I'm still using a RM99 1mbps while in UK you can RM56 with 20mbps unlimited. And blame it on the fucking monopoly of TM, where it is still lengang lengang thinking ' HEY YOU CANT RUN AWAY FROM ME HAHAHAHAHAHAH ' and look at p1 and maxis broadband, their QoS either sucked or more or less the same as streamyx.

My verdict is, STOP CORRUPTION, NATION FLOURISH!

Philips SHE9550

2010-03-17T00:40:00.000-07:00

-Bass sounded too bloated
-Bass sounded too bloated, and desperate at times.
-Bass sounded too bloated, everything is just too sharp and it hurts your ear, especially the bass.
-Bass sounded too bloated, like bass gone drunk.
-Bass sounded too bloated, like bass gone wild, and hurt people in the process.
-Bass is too powering seriously, i never said i hate bass, just that, adequate amount of it would be better.
-it's just went burrr burrrrrrr it's not the genuine grunt that makes you go mmmmm, instead the bass so strong that it distorted my ear.
-I even need to set the equalizer to the bare minimum, because the bass dominated the whole soundstage and it's impossible to sit back and relax because it's just so hard to try to listen to songs with such heavy and uncontrolled bass. Imagine trying to look at at birds in the sky when the sun is shining right in your eye.
-Mid range sound bland, it's so limited and tight, too quiet.
-Mid range sound bland, it's so quiet, just to compensate and amplify the clarity, and that is bad.
-No dynamics, it's as if the earphones itself has a normalizer. Bad one.
-To describe what i hear through the track of 'about you' by moonbeam, 'BBBBBBBBOOOOM DIDI BOOOOOM BIRRGHHHH RGHHHHHHHH BRRGHH BOOM DCHIII IIIiEEEK BUUUMMRGHHH RGHGHHHHHHHH' (AHHHHHH SO ANNOYING)

What's the big fuss about TM FIREWALL?

2010-03-16T14:56:00.000-07:00

Damn.

I mean, I thought I was gonna puasa for internet-content when the MSC declared to block explicit websites from us.

But wtf? Did they even try to enforce their block or what? The thing is, our computers are configured to use the ISP's dns servers if we don't specfically provide them with the DNS server address.

For me, there are still so many loopholes in their so-called blockers. You can have :

1. Tor - as a proxy to access all the shit you want
2. openDNS - so you won't be a dog eating shit food from streamyx DNS servers
3. google page cache - though this doesn't do flash or java

208.67.222.222 << openDNS dns servers.

To change who your computer request for DNS, simply go to (WIN XP) your the connection which connects you to the net.... TO BE CONTINUED

Damn

2010-03-10T09:52:00.000-08:00

Take a good look at my pre-stone age laptop.

Its pretty fucked up, all parts are not working except for the keyboard, screen, processor and the whole piece of shit to make it boot.

i can't even run linux on it, due to the fact linux is too new for it. no hopes for live boot too, bios is 10 years old phoenix BIOS ftw.

it does facebook and youtube and all that crap ok, but when it comes to more intensive flash and videos it just gets choppy and laggy, don't even mention HD content.

write again soon. hopefully

Netbook vs. ipad

2010-02-22T06:17:00.000-08:00

Round 1 : Netbook

Posted by: Babyfacemagee
I think the author, Charlie, sounds like an Apple fanboy. The iPad is really designed for one purpose and one purpose only; To sell Apps through iTunes thereby making money for Apple. That is why Apple did not and will not put flash on the iPad. They can pull out every tired, lame excuse in the book (unstable, outdated, will be replaced soon in new HTML5) but it’s all BS and they know it. Fact is that 75% of video and games on the web are flash based. If they allowed flash on the iPad, customers could avoid buying films and games on iTunes and just use the limitless content on the web that uses flash. It’s all about making money to them. Any other argument is just silly and naive. Why anyone would want to be on a closed system like that is beyond me. Apple is making the same mistake they did with the Macintosh. Eventually, an open system ALWAYS wins out because no one company can stay ahead technologically for very long…it’s just too easy to emulate and improve upon today. Look at the google phone. Soon there will be more ‘apps’ available for google’s android platform than there are apps for the iPhone. How do I know this? Because the same thing happened in the Mac vs. PC wars. Was the Mac first in the windows GUI on a mass market computer? Sure they were. But then intel/microsoft ate their lunch for the next two decades and took 90% of market share. How? By having an open system that is always infinitely flexible compared to the closed, inflexible system Apple uses.
So why do some people line up to buy Apple’s devices? Simple really. They’re not technically sophisticated shoppers. Apple sells devices that are easy to use for the non-tech adept. They work in the medium range of performance and do so with little flexibility and hassle. But if you’re someone that loves technology and likes to customize and push your gear to the limits, the PC platform will always be superior. There’s a market for both of course. But as far as the iPad goes. I feel it’s a mediocre product that doesn’t exploit some of the obvious benefits of a tablet device…such as no handwriting recognition and no video chat capability. Those two are a bare minimum on my list to even consider getting on. Without handwriting recognition or the ability to take notes and draw with a stylus then u really need a keyboard (a real one) to do any kind of lengthy input. But I suppose that brings us back to what I said at first. This device isn’t about user created content. It’s about Apple selling apps, video and music through iTunes. This is an iTunes facilitator. The iPad is the Razor and iTunes content are the blades.

Posted by: Mael
For those bagging on MS. Try and do your job on an Apple product. Think you could do it? Because the list of things that Apple computers can NOT do is long and contains things that are used daily in your office. All that security that keeps your companies information safe, Apple doesn’t do. The ability to use any software tool available so you can do your job better, Apple doesn’t do. Email servers, secure remote access, even simple hardware upgrades like adding RAM or a bigger hard drive, Apple does do. Plus they’re much more expensive.
What Apple DOES do and does well, is make simple technology for the masses. It’s not concerned with the capabilities of it’s devices. It’s concerned with whether it looks cool, is easy to use, and can accomplish the bare minimum with zero thought required from the user, and zero configuration ability aside from the most basic settings.
But what they do best, is marketing. They are able to convince people that they NEED the products Apple sells.
I’ll admit that iTunes and the iPhone app store as “killer apps,” and the best bet for the iPad is to get school book stores online with eBooks so students can buy all their text books for an iPad and save tons of money they would normally spend on paper books. But this is not the next generation mobile computer.
And it makes me laugh that they made the sim card a micro sim card so you can’t use the normal sized sim card (the big one out of your smaller iPhone) in this new device.

Posted by: wbrown
If your argument is that everyone should switch to mac because they dont have spyware/viruses/ ect. then you really need to take an econ class. Supply and demand. Viruses are about infecting the 1% of people dumb enough to run then. Since 90% of THE WORLD uses windows based machines it makes sense to build viruses for windows, not macs with their 8% share. BUT if we go with your plan and switch to macs then viruses will be built for macs. Simple.
Regardless I sadly say the iPad will sell. Just look at its popularity. Everyone in America knows it name. Its a apple product and the Appletown followers will gladly jump for it. And then again in a year with v.2 featuring a camera and then again with v. 3 with faster processor. And the cycle continues.

Posted by: iversam
i dont see what the big deal is….i like multitasking…neither this nor the iphone can do that…whats the point…why even build the thing if it cant do what most users want/need…plus it doesnt support flash…so there goes 70% of media content on the web…this thing is useless and shall fail like the Apple Lisa….you dont know what that is…and there is a reason

Posted by: bugmenot
The Apple iPad - $220 worth of parts with a $600 price tag. Like the iPhone except with a bigger screen, no camera, and it can’t make calls.
This device seriously looks like a solution that is waiting for a problem. Who is going to buy this and what are they going to use it for? What can the iPad do that the Touch cannot?

Posted by: bluecrayon
Hi. I keep hearing the iPad being hyped as an eReader. But, forgive me if I’m wrong, isn’t the whole selling point of eReaders a function of their e-ink screens? I hate reading off of computer screens–and I was a wary adopter of the Kindle–but now I’m very happy with the readability of the display technology. So–I’m confused. How is low power laptop without a keyboard going to be anything other than a disappointing ereading experience? And if this thing isn’t meant to be an ereader, what does it do that I can’t already do easier and more cheaply with the things I already have? Look cool? Since I don’t have an automatic love of all things Apple to help me to “get it” maybe there’s someone out here who can help me. It’s clearly not the author of this article, whose primary argument seems to be that I should buy it because it’s “an entirely new device.” Wow, you’re right. A new device! I *love* new devices! Where can I send my money?

Posted by: captnemo
The iPAD still seems like an over-priced ‘etch-a-sketch’ do-hickey. Let me know when it actually performs some useful tasks for the $500 invested. I’ll just be over here observing, and getting some work done with my $200 ASUS Netbook…

Posted by: bilbawbaggins
I expect Charlie (a macboy author) to change his mind when he finds out that the charger only works with British style plugs…

Round 2 : ipad - have a happy period

Posted by: heavydevelopment
Have any of these people touting a netbook actually used one? They are nearly impossible to web browse on with the low res monitor. The keyboard is cramped. Slow. And all around suckage. I had to use one for a couple hours and it unsold me. It was even the fact that it was Windows. I plan on getting an iPad for my mom. She doesn’t use the internet but could benefit a ton if she did. It’s because of her experience on the PCs/Windows she has had in the past (ie connecting through dial up). I also plan on getting one when I don’t want to tote my MBP around. One other cool feature is that if you leave your computer at home on you’ll be able to remote desktop in whether it’s PC or Mac because this functionality already exists on the iphone. And, yes, for the record I’m one of those Apple toting, elitist, fascists, snobs that uses Apple products, so sue me (although the 50lbs MacPro and 30″ cinema display are a b*&%h to carry around).

Posted by: vjmurphy
Microsoft’s brilliance in user interface design is why Windows Mobile is so popular and getting more popular!
Wait, sorry, I was on a parallel Earth. Microsoft giving advice on user interface design to Apple is like a caveman giving advice on rocket design.

Posted by: Warsh
Agree completely. Yes, Apple does have the whole status/”look at this expensive thing I can afford” going for it, but the UI is where their true power lies. Hand an ipod or iphone to a 4 year old with no instruction and they’ll be using it for its intended purpose inside of four minutes. I spend 40 hours a week at the office fighting with and cursing at Microsoft products, it’s not going to happen in my down time. (Just had to reinstall my print drivers not 30 minutes ago). It’s great that the tech geeks have all these demands, but there are more people who just want something that just does what it’s supposed to. That’s where the future of the ipad lies, with the average non-tech-obsessed user.

Posted by: DadaFz
@job4zinger - i swear your type of comment makes me laugh. here is the thing. i use Apple because I can get work done on it. PCs constantly require attention, spyware removal etc. Yes I know, you are a PC demi god and u can handle all that. Well guess what? My dumb friends, parents, and everyone else who still doesnt understand what files and folders are get viruses and trojans like crazy. And guess who gets to waste time cleaning them off/reinstalling their computers? Oh you say they just don’t have good enuff anti virus software. Yup, well u are wrong. And the problem there still is to FORCE people to run Virus, Spyware, and Trojan scans EVERY time before they go online to make sure they have the latest definition files. Solution to my problem? GET THEM ON APPLE. Problem SOLVED “It just works”.
Another case in point. I have NEVER had a PC last more than 3 yrs without something dying on it or needing a major upgrade. I have Apple machines that are > 10 yrs old running Leopard and doing just fine. Find me ANY 10 yr old Windows machine that can run any recent software. NONE. FAIL.
Personally I think u are either jealous that u can’t afford a Mac (In which case how about cutting out like 10 hrs a week out of your WoW or TV watching and MAKE SOME MONEY), or u are just a hipster of your own making that likes to use PC’s just to prove how “not trendy” you are.
Get over it. I hate corporations and greedy people same as you. The difference is I dont care about brand loyalty or hating on anyone. I just like when I buy things that they work. Microsoft is great and keyboards and mice. I use their peripherals all the time and will buy them again. OS or computer systems? NOT.

Posted by: carolynmordecai
I have used Apple Mac products since the first 128K computer. I always found them to have a more creative, easy and beautiful approach for getting any creative project accomplished. I am sure I will LOVE the ipad, even though I believe that it will always need improvements like anything else. I LOVE APPLE.

Posted by: shutupgates
Yeah, like I really want someone like Bill Gates telling us what we need. For us Apple fans, that’s like having Obama telling republicans that we need to raise taxes. There’s a good reason I left the Microsoft and joined the Mac cult. Jobs will be laughing all the way to the bank on this one. I can’t wait to get my hands on one. And yes, I will be more productive because of it. I take a little sadistic joy in listening to the Microsoft whiners complain about the success of it’s rivals.

Posted by: themrwhite
Thank you Bill Gates for taking us back to the 1990’s. A stylus? Really?!? People still wonder why MS can’t grasp the consumer market, here’s your answer. MS is and has always been a decade behind Apple.
The last time an MS employee spoke negetively about an Apple product, that product (Apple’s entry into said market mind you) is now one of the markets leading devices and they did it in less than two years. If you have no clue what I’m talking about, it’s when Ballmer laughed at the iPhone when it came out. We all the the end result.

So tell me, who is the illiterate now?

Well, apple fanboys' reasoning is total failure, to me.

It does prove apple's marketing strategy is working, but it's not fool proof.

Multitasking to the max

2010-02-13T20:33:00.000-08:00

People have 2 or 4 processors running in parallel to increase performance or efficiency, and their so called HT technology which is supposed to increase processor time efficiency, but mine is even better with two discrete processors.

How do i do that? simple, plug two laptops to the router, fire them up, and you're good to go.

well, my specs are of 2 discrete 512mbytes of rams, 2 discrete identical intel centrino 2.4 ghz cpu, and of course, two discrete VGA lcd's. But the efficiency of how processes are being balanced among them is incomparable, because technically, the CPU resources are being moderated by a more sophisticated brain - me, the human brain.

It's like i use the asus laptop for garena and gaming while the next to me the acer laptop is for communication, be it msn, skype and surfing the web while im playing on the asus.

So no lag or windows transition whatsoever. it's just that the broadband internet has to support the high bandwidth required for all that multitasking.

LOL i gtg/

Gaming on a Nokia 5800

2010-02-07T01:36:00.001-08:00

At first, before the introduction of ovi store, users have to hunt for games out there, although java games aplenty, but only few supported touch and 16:9 display. But the thing is, non-nokia-generic (java) games graphics arent eye candies and performance sucked on any phone.

So then xdancery got introduced by some chinese developers, i stumbled upon it on youtube. Then that was the most proper game you can find online.

Well, right now ovi store features games like the raging thunder and stuff by polar bit, which is also quite a decent game for nokia 5800. Graphics are rendered in OpenGL ES and frame rates are amazing, silky smooth but the overall presentation of games are like games from 1990s (think of daytona USA, but who cares, but at least the games are playable, fun. The reason why nokia can keep up with the frame rates is because the games run in very low resolution and heavily anti aliased, so everything looked muddy.

The major setback of nokia 5800 (or generally all the touch screen phones of nokia) is the lack of capacitive touchscreen, which it can register more than one touch at anytime. For example the game Toon Warz another fps from polar bit is almost unplayable and controls are ridiculous as you can only control your character with only one input at a time. It's impossible to aim and you can only walk front back left right at a time and then release touch to aim.

And also, a GPU for the phones is also recommeded. There are lots of cool games out there for the nokia 5800 but the hardware is limiting what the games can do. Perhaps a PowerVR GPU accelerator can be useful... bah i hate describing things in context i just wanna blurb out everything right now so goodbye

Thinking out Loud : 5800 has the force

2010-02-07T01:31:00.000-08:00

My Nokia 5800 is now officially aged around 1 year plus. (indicated by the podcast old updates)

well it's safe to say the nokia 5800 xm is quite a phenomenal phone. Affordable, plethora of features that can also be found on high-end smartphones. That's why i can have one in my hands, it's about 1.3k MYR when mom bought it from digi.

Thinking out Loud

2009-12-27T02:04:00.000-08:00

hey recently i've downgraded myself to adapt to listening to ghetto songs.

for one reason i like them cuz they totaly rocked my mom's car for a while, which she recently bought and it is fitted with a Blaupunkt MP36 London.

the speakers sucks, with the default so-called 'wonder sound' brand speakers which look more like a pair of WW2 tweeters and exhibits little or no excursion at all. And the amp rated at a mere 18W RMS totally scuked too.

the default audio settings sucked totally, mp3s sound mediocre, but with MY config, which is XBASS MAX and the 60hz +7 middle freq -7 and treble -5 (ridiculous configs but i have no choice but to derive on my own set of 'bass boosting', cant help it, though the SUB OUT does not work, cuz the nissan is stingy they din fit one for it)

the speakers handled the low freq (i really do mean the loooooooooooowwwww, the uhmm grunge a.k.a. 60hz) well at very low volumes, but when i cranked the volume a bit, it started making bass sound like sloppy sex.

blame it on the noob speakers, they don't even deserve the name speakers they are downright cheap tweeters extracted from a walkie talkie. the blaupunkt is good and there are no distortion at all from it although with the peak 45w and no help from external amps. at all.

thinking about replacing the two rear 3.5" tweeters with the 3.5" subs from my computer speakers which is rated at 30w.

such a shame. when ppl are talking bout car audio they talk about Alpine amps, or 15 batteries as the raw power, or hey i need 2 15KW for those 4 MTX jackhammer for the rear seat. but as for me, its all bout hey why the fuck the claudio doesnt play mp3 even it says it could play mp3.

who cares, it's my mom's car, although she doesn't mind her glove box cluttered with cd-rs or driving her maniac with beats 4 my van, it's just that whole system does not have enough juice to annoy people.

perhaps someday i can have a chervolet and make meade916 envy.
empty promise.

Hello, from Taiwan

2009-12-09T04:21:00.000-08:00

Taiwan here I come

2009-12-01T07:21:00.000-08:00

Yay, finally I can escape from my wakeup-facebook-garena-counterstrike-eat-watchTV-sleep routine already.

For this year we're heading for Taiwan, the place where so many people wanted to go, where it's name spells beautiful, just like how you see them through TV.

We were planning for Korea, but they scraped their plan because of the winter season there.

Feeling kinda excited, cause seriously I don't know whats gonna happen next, unlike any other trip. This trip my family are following a tour agent, yeah, the ever famous sit-in-bus-walk-eat-back-to-hotel story again. But I hope there's something much in this trip.

A look at the itenary, every activity seems fresh to me. 10.45am to reach the airport, hmm.

A 2k trip, 7-day.. does it worth it? Let's see.

I will sure update this blog, pun the Tech genre of the blog, about a week later, to tell anybody reading this about my trip to Taiwan.

By the way, a weather check confirmed that it's warm and humid, temperature averages 20c across the whole country.

I've got to sleep now, although I don't feel like sleeping (the time spent on idle mode at the airport is enough to conpensate my sleep time)

You can check out my live streaming of me in Taiwan, if I happen to be near any Wifi hotspot, through Qik on my nokia 5800.

The link to my qik live streaming profilet

Trance Never Gets Boring - I mean it

2009-11-24T06:05:00.000-08:00

Still remember about a year ago, i was being introduced to trance (In Search of Sunrise Asia 7 was the first album I heard). And from that time, i'm addicted to it big time.

It was quite an unexpected transition of my music taste.

When I was young, I wasn't actually interested in music. Let alone trance, which is still a genre that not everyone can enjoy and understand.

It was standard 4, i remembered because it was 2004, that my parents bought me the first CD dedicated for me, it was the techno house 2004 or something, and you've guessed it wrong, it wasn't pirated.

Back then, i don't know who the hell is Tiesto, or Markus Schulz, or any DJ that existed, although Tiesto was pretty popular. At first i gave cold shoulders to the disc because like i told you, Trance was a reaaallly odd thing to me, the looping tunes, abstract beats, made my head spin. But still, I tried to like it, though i have a few favourite tracks, like the old-time Traffic by Tiesto, and the Able to Love by Benny Benassi (i dunno the names of the songs at that time actually).

That was long long time ago. I'm lazy to elaborate the whole thing. So I'm not going talk about the insignificant past.

Trance Rocks. It puts you in a surreal mode. You are drifting away. You suddenly found yourself in sync with the music. And progressively, you are in The Trance. A State of trance 08 can't really do that, i don't really like Armin actually, except for some of the tracks like the Cygnes, Strangers We've Become, which has other DJs collaborated with Armin. ISOS7 can have that effect, in fact, ISOS7 is the one that gave me the first impression of trance.

Moonbeam. I love moonbeam. He rocks! totally! his minimalist plus techno characteristic of his tracks totally suductive. His beats. Like the Lacula, or the When Flowers Talk, my favourites. I have the whole album of his mixes, 41 of it, downloaded from iTunes, plus some from podcast extracts like the club life, totally wicked.

Beltek, Andy Duguid, and Laurent Wolf are not bad too.

If you want to have a taste of trance, try listening to some of my playlists. It may not be the best, but at least its all the best from imeem. You can't simply youtube or google trance, you need to know what you're looking for, then only you will get the best out of all the mess (Some people can't distinguish the meaning Trance and the other cheap rojak club tracks like Rage and stuff).

You can try to buy other CD titles, but the good ones are very very rare, only the established artists have their CDs on the shelves (and personally i hate them). Ministry of Sound is quite good, try getting the ones from Zouk, they have good DJs with real skills.

My imeem page trance playlist, have a TRY!

Another Free Wifi hotspot : Rapid Penang

2009-11-07T11:48:00.001-08:00

Yeah, proven with my nokia 5800

It rocks to be able to facebook on the go and watch youtube videos without paying a cent. And all you can do is pay RM2 and find a good place to sit, and start your internet journey right from the comfort of your plastic seat.

Sure. The speed is also decent though. It feels like a typical malaysian broadband speed (384 kbps, proven, tested, although i hoped it would be a bit faster), and it loads youtube mobile without much lag or buffer.

The mobile broadband ISP is Digi, and this rapid penang bus was the first bus to be fitted with 'Free Wifi on the go', and i unknowingly found out bout this when i tried to facebook on my carrier instead i was directed to a nearby wifi hotspot (which is the rapid penang one with name 'rapid penang wifi 11'

Digi recently rollout HSDPA around penang, and i can see this as my phone started to appear a 3.5G icon, and i can sigh a relief because i can now use the technology my phone is able to utilize(think about comparing south africa to malaysia as of 21st century, theres no much difference to it)

yay another free wifi hotspot added to my 'access point' list.

Wishlist : A SSD replacement for my laptop (HDD)

2009-11-07T11:28:00.000-08:00

After much stumbling through youtube, i'm now so so so desperate to do something bout the performance of my notebook here.

Currently this notebook is aged 10 years old.
Asus L2000 p4m 1.68ghz 256mb ram with ati m radeon m7
with a real slow IDE harddrive .

The boot time for xp on it including loading mcafee is around 10 mins.(yes its painfully slow and i had to bear with it)

I could imagine how this pice of shit would load if i replace it with a 60gb ssd from samsung . Perhaps i could even cut the boot time to a quarter.

I've seen people booted a clean xp under 6 seconds. No joke.

The thing is , installing an 60gb SSD is like installing another 60gb of RAM to ut PC which translates to zero waiting states and no more seek times and hell no more HDD crashes. (SSD loads my friend's desktop adobe photoshop cs4 under 2 seconds)

MOst of the time you sit and wait for the PC to load something , please, do not ever blame it on slow processors, the stupid operating system, or the lack of ram (which needs disk swapping which in turns needs the slow HDD), its all caused by the darn slow HDD itself tryin to rip data off and on the drive. And that costs a lots of time.
And most of the time the processor is also left waiting there (read 0% utilization) until it has something to process after the HDD finshed it's loading. That's why people introduced the RAM ,which is never enough.

Yeah you see Core i7 yada yada yada with its so called ddr3, i think its all bullshit cuz they're gona run as slow as my PC as long as it's still running on a stupid HDD.

Win 7 boots 80% faster on SSD computers. Proven. Seen. Even touched.

I just hope the price of SSD would tumble soon, i wanna get my hands on those foxy things, and sooner or later im gonna be loading my DoTa in less than 10 secs, and that to impress my friends, although im still running a vintage spec pc.(ITS ALL ABOUT THE HDD)

64gb would be enuf, i will just use my 320gb sandisk ext. HDD to store my media, and 64gb to solely run apps on the comp . Yeah, talk about being effective and effiecient.

Think bout it . DIsk defragmentation? This term will be erased forever as soon as SSD dominates.

Heaty Issue of 5800

2009-10-20T03:12:00.000-07:00

Well i love doing things that you wont find necessary to do. Ive done lots of mods and projects on stuffs and i wont talk bout them in context anymore cuz basically you wont be in any interest after all.

ive used my beloved 5800 for quite a few months now and its a kick ass phone and it has brought me much envy and awe..

but it tends to kinda get really warm ( i mean you it ) when you do intensive tasks on it (watch youtube videos or running benchmarks) . Long before, i dismissed this issue by placing a large heatsink that was used for my amplifier but it seems that would make the mobile phone very immobile.

And for some reason im scared of this cuz a warm phone would end up gettin fried like overclockers PC (hey, nokia runs on a 420mhz ARM, its blazing fast, faster than a iphone 3gs yaknoe).

So few days ago i had this idea do go to my 'electronic grave' and dug a 12v pentium2 fan and plug it in with a 9v batt. it worked great and i placed it at the back of the phone and sticked it with blue tac (to cushion vibration and noise, and prevents stickyness)

yay now i have a mobile cooling solution.

What a knightmare..

2009-10-17T12:35:00.000-07:00

Right its not a fantasy or dream knightmare actually its happened a few minutes ago and i decided to jot in down here on blogger.

So recently i've been using the comp for quite a while after the post year exam and i did not realize there was a ROOTKIT buried inside my 10 year old comp.

Well teh story begins when i checked on the task manager that i've always had internet activity no matter how i stopped all the services on windows ( windows update or 3rd party softwares). At first i thought it was the usual pinging if windows's to certain sites to maintain keep-alive connections of some sort. But those small pings aren't exactly small, they are not small bursts either but their pattern is a continous sending and receiving of packets, which made me uneasy.
I ignored it.

Then until yesterday my internet from my comp started to fail completely (google took 20 secs to load), then i checked on task manager. Holy shit what i found was all the red lines plotted on the graph, well at that time i knew something was really really wrong (it was as if streaming uploading data to somewhere else at maximum of my internet bandwidth)

And hell yeah that worried me to the bones, i disabled Mcafee at that time and i did not use ZoneAlarm and i also disabled all the default windows defence system (firewall, etc.) and i thought i could handle viruses well (common sence is the best organic anti virus), i was hell worried, nothing could tell me what the heck is sending my harddrive to someone else.

I tried to trace the faulty program from task manager (highest CPU usage) and found all the processes are obedient and quite, apart from taskman.exe, duh. Gahh, then the highes VM or RAM usage programs and i cant seem to find anything suspicous.

Then, i remebered cmd propmt, i used the netstat -o command and found out the culprit from the process id (the whole analysis was bombarded by a single 1207 process id on the net traffic). I thought i hit the jackpot but i found no freakin 1207 on the processes. That buffled me but i suspected it must be a hidden rootkit somewhere, but i knew i was already half into the whole situation.

I must use somekind of software which does not fetch process list from the Query API instead i used HiddenFinder to trace the 1207 ( i used my phone to download the software and installed it via USB)

Then to my surprise, HiddenFinder DID find one hidden process, and its the process id is identical to the one on netstat, and that proves me right, apparently svchost.exe was the one behind all these.

svchost.exe are processes which it manages ur drivers (sound, graphics, spool) and a whole host of networking crap shit. What i knew was svchost.exe was a rootkit/backdoor masked as a, .. well ' hidden' legitimate windows process.

i tried circumvent it by Mcafee, hell no it does not even detect anything (except for false detection in the QUARANTINE folder) , and even with the latest virus definition. Then i had to use ZoneAlarm to control the internet traffic.

When i engaged internet lock, zonealarm did effectively blocked all the incoming or outbound traffic and caught quite a few requests (think thousands of requests just under a minute) . Apparently it was contacting mostly russian servers . "Generic Host Process for Win32 services ......" and there it is, my hypothesis was proved coreect.

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Active Connections
Proto Local Address Foreign Address State PID TCP your-fd88e692c7:1224 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:1382 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:1483 hostv2.zj.abitcool.com:http FIN_WAIT_1 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:1486 itrc-forums13-pro1.austin.hp.com:http ESTABLISHED 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:1630 hostv2.zj.abitcool.com:http FIN_WAIT_1 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:1666 hostv2.zj.abitcool.com:http FIN_WAIT_2 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:2289 65.54.166.122:http ESTABLISHED 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:2424 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:2440 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:2628 c17-gdl-software1-lb.cnet.com:http ESTABLISHED 3184 TCP your-fd88e692c7:2857 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:2869 192.168.1.2:1026 CLOSE_WAIT 1060 TCP your-fd88e692c7:2881 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:2888 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:2917 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:2936 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:2950 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3053 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3074 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3081 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3083 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3107 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3154 68.64.128.103:http TIME_WAIT 0 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3169 c20-gdl-software1-lb.cnet.com:http ESTABLISHED 3184 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3247 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3258 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3304 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3310 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3320 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3362 c20-gdl-software3-lb.cnet.com:http ESTABLISHED 3184 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3365 c20-gdl-software3-lb.cnet.com:http ESTABLISHED 3184 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3366 c20-gdl-software3-lb.cnet.com:http ESTABLISHED 3184 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3367 c20-gdl-software3-lb.cnet.com:http ESTABLISHED 3184 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3384 datacenter-196.169.ict-alphen.nl:http TIME_WAIT 0 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3424 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3449 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3458 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3492 ty-in-f138.google.com:http ESTABLISHED 1312
TCP your-fd88e692c7:3530 211.42.217.99:5051 ESTABLISHED 4004 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3543 92.241.170.41:http TIME_WAIT 0 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3578 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3581 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3618 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3635 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3636 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3651 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3659 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3665 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3693 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3703 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3705 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3721 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3728 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3740 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3755 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3834 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3842 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3878 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3884 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3895 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3899 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3907 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3924 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3925 89.207.152.44:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3930 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3937 89.207.152.44:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3938 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3940 89.207.152.44:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3944 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:3958 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4017 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4029 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4041 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4046 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4060 89.207.152.44:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4073 89.207.152.44:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4079 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4080 89.207.152.44:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4082 89.207.152.44:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4083 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4089 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4090 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4100 wwwbaytest1.microsoft.com:http TIME_WAIT0 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4101 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4102 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4110 c20-gdl-software3-lb.cnet.com:http ESTABLISHED 3184 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4112 beta.blogs.technet.com:http ESTABLISHED 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4115 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4128 beta.blogs.technet.com:http ESTABLISHED 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4129 96.172.11.0:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4130 beta.blogs.technet.com:http ESTABLISHED 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4132 beta.blogs.technet.com:http ESTABLISHED 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4133 beta.blogs.technet.com:http ESTABLISHED 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4144 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4146 89.207.152.44:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4147 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4150 wwwbaytest1.microsoft.com:http ESTABLISHED1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4151 207.46.16.243:http TIME_WAIT 0 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4152 58-27-186-123.wateen.net:http ESTABLISHED 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4153 58-27-186-123.wateen.net:http ESTABLISHED 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4154 58-27-186-123.wateen.net:http ESTABLISHED 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4155 58-27-186-123.wateen.net:http ESTABLISHED 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4156 58-27-186-105.wateen.net:http ESTABLISHED 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4158 58-27-186-105.wateen.net:http ESTABLISHED 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4165 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4166 cm.netteller.com:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4168 112.109.10.0:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4169 cm.netteller.com:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4170 89.207.152.44:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4171 89.207.152.44:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4174 cm.netteller.com:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4176 89.207.152.44:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4180 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4183 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4184 cm.netteller.com:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4186 *.112.2o7.net:http ESTABLISHED 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4187 beta.blogs.msdn.com:http ESTABLISHED 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4192 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4193 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_2 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4194 92.241.170.41:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4195 92.241.170.41:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4200 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4201 112.109.10.0:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4203 92.241.170.41:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4206 92.241.170.41:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4211 m.webtrends.com:http SYN_SENT 1312 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4219 89.207.152.44:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4222 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4223 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4224 92.241.170.41:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4228 mediaplan.ovh.net:http FIN_WAIT_1 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4229 92.241.170.41:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4230 92.241.170.41:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4231 92.241.170.41:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4232 92.241.170.41:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4233 92.241.170.41:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4235 mediaplan.ovh.net:http SYN_SENT 1712 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4546 c20-gdl-software3-lb.cnet.com:http ESTABLISHED 3184 TCP your-fd88e692c7:4820 hostv2.zj.abitcool.com:http LAST_ACK 1312

Analysis___

202.188.1.5 (Google Chrome too) <<< seems to be streamyx
81.177.157.74 <<< it is la2atom.ru
202.188.0.133 <<< seems to be streamyx
95.172.4.250
ns3.eu.editdns.net ---variation of 3 and 4
la2atom.ru <<<< relentless retry to access by Generic Host Process for Win32 Services (blocked by ZL) (132 retries in 4 seconds) (809 retries in 22 sexonds)
battlecore.ru <<<< could not be resolved
CONNECTION SOURCE DISPATCHED BY Generic Host Process for Win32 Services
mostly contacting russian servers

_______________________________________________________

this is the extract from my temporary .txt notebook when im trying to troubleshoot the destination that svchost.exe 1712 (always changes id with every boot) was trying to contact.

A check on ip-adress.com revealed the la2atom.ru was located in moscow.

and soon after i let it roam my internet bandwidth for a while i ran another netstat it diverted to connect to other IP's from UK.

Well la2atom.ru is a refferer and i suspected i might be a victim of a botnet PC to be used to attack another high profile target for active DoS attack.

I ran another thorough virus scan and booted my asus with all the Mcafee services on (msconfig) (and it took 10 minutes for the comp to boot with ZL and Mcafee loaded) .

To my surprise the faulty svchost.exe dissapeared, although windoes reported that 'Windows have recovered from a serious errror" , and a check on HiddenProcess the svchost.exe is truly gone. Maybe its because of the Mcafee i guess (buffer underrun protection? i dont really know how it works )

But hell it was quite an experience for to test my patience.

Orbit downloader fun

2009-10-17T12:05:00.000-07:00

With the plugin of orbit downloader in IE8, all my flash video or music downloads are made oh so much easier, without all the pain for gettin separate downloader for different websites (e.g. redtube, youtube)

Well lets say Orbit downloader plugin is more like a universal content downloader, (since most of multimedia content are hosted in flash objects). And it does it's job really well.

For example, recently i got all my music for free. Yes, for free, courtesy of imeem.com
Imeem uses flash to stream music, so i used the orbit plugin to 'grab' the flash content and download it to a folder of my liking. Sure enough, by the end of the day, all my favourite imeem music are all stored in my harddrive.

But the music downloaded are all in .flv format. A check inside the container revealed that it contains mp3, simple enough, i downloaded a flv audio extractor and voila there is my free music downloaded hassle free (since immem streaming are WHOLE lot faster than say, downloadin music from P2P. Moreover the mp3's are all in its original state (identical to downloaded stream) without any quality degrading! ( since it doesn't need recoding, just extracting)

Limewire? Frostwire?

2009-10-17T11:54:00.000-07:00

I used to use LimeWire at first to do the dirty things, which you know... (google the billboard top 100 and grap a playlist to download on the p2p) . Then i found a way to get through Limewire basic to Pro .. (faster speed)..

Then not long after i found Frostwire, another identical java p2p client to limewire but its free with all the Pro features in Limewire pro.

Then i used the 'cookie cheat' to get free music from free music streaming site (such as haoting.com which hosts quite everything you can find on iTunes), which i do require IE set to accept all cookies or temporary internet files (only it then saves the streamed .wma or .mp3 to the cache for me to retrieve). But theres a catch, i can only cheat free music streamed by WMP plugin to IE, but it excludes flash cuz flash files ends up in the RAM instead permanently on the HDD.

Then one day when i was looking for the most approriate software to actually properly download youtube videos i came across this download manager, named Orbit downloader. At first i was quite sceptical cuz usually those 'flash' downloaders does not work well and usually downloads thrash instead. But this orbit downloader does quite a great job. It actually enables me to download ANY flash content within a flash player. And it neatly download it in its raw format (.flv, container for mp3 or xvid vids of anykind), and sits there waiting for me to convert it to the format of my choice (using a very reliable all-in-one MediaCoder).

Another day of Aimless living

2009-10-17T11:50:00.001-07:00

Suddenly i thoght about creating a blog post about my own life on the web , a true, distictive one, without showing off or bullshitin. Well i'm planning to make this blog as my diary by the way, as a way to publicly introduce myself to the world, anonymously if you will.

I've always wanted to write something about myself for so long, before the exam when everything grinds to a halt and all you can do is just sit there and watch the books, and perhaps sneak a few Facebook session on the phone...

So here i am, its already 2:53AM (+8GMT) , and im still up and awake to conquer the unknowns of the forest of the web2.0. Bla bla bleak.