00110102… WTF?!?

So I had a customer come in today wanting to switch to a micro sim for an iPhone they had just purchased. I almost swapped the sim card for him when I had a look at the iPhone box, it looked a little small so I asked if it was a fake iPhone. He said it was real so I had a closer look. Upon close inspection it was obviously either a really good fake or a really bad quality real iPhone (which I find hard to believe).

What I noticed straight away was the box was noticeably smaller than a normal iPhone box. The images all seemed right to me (although I didn’t compare them with a real box). The iPhone itself looked like a real iPhone and even worked just like one. It was fast and smooth to operate, the settings app seemed to have everything correct. I put a blank sim in the phone and connected it to a computer running iTunes only to find a message saying the sim card is not supported.

I then had a closer look at the iPhone and noticed there was a gap between the metal outside and the screen allowing you to see inside the phone. One of the black lines around the outside was not straight either and the mesh in front of the speaker was missing.

The customer called the person he bought the phone from and he came into the store to tell me not to call the phone a fake as it is real, claiming if it was fake I would be able to take the back off the phone. Admittedly the back did not seem to be removable however I wouldn’t think all fake iphones allow you to remove the back cover. He then told me to check the IMEI, which I did so against apple’s warranty search. This showed me it was an IMEO for an iPhone 4 8GB, but seeing as the software would have been fake I don’t see how hard it would be to fake the IMEI either. I didn’t try match up the IMEI with the IMEI on the box.

This actually worries me, knowing that people would actually fall for this. It was also my first time seeing a fake iPhone in person (not that I have ever gone looking for one). Honestly though, why would anyone purchase an iPhone of such poor quality. I just wish I had thought of taking photos while I had it.

I was at spotlight on Friday and I found a mini cross stitching kit. I’ve been thinking about trying cross stitching for some time now, but I never wanted to spend a heap of money on everything I would need to get started. I ended up buying the kit (it was only $4) and I started it on Friday. I have been working on it since then and I have got to admit I actually quite like this.

Alien Swarm was released on Steam for free recently. I’ve been playing (and loving) it. I found a group to do speed runs with and out speed runs of the first 3 maps are already uploaded. 4 and 5 are coming soon (already completed awaiting upload).

Landing Bay:

Cargo elevator:

Deima Surface Bridge:

The team:

• Q-chan
• ^8n00b
• Agito
• and me

I randomly came across a blog today and I was going to submit a reply, but I was unable to as I did not have an account. There was no way to create an account either, yet there were 4 comments from 4 different people. Sure, there could be 4 members and they all commented but I had my doubts, so I had a closer look at the website.

It seemed to be a website about traveling/hotels/vacations what what really got me wondering is why every post title was a question, every post was short and expanded on the question, and every reply was a answer to the question. Sure it could be a real blog like that, but what kind of blog would only post questions? A few minutes of searching let me work out exactly what’s going on.

Every single blog post is copied from Yahoo Answers! Every comment was a answer to a question. If you ask a question on Yahoo answers with certain keywords (looks like hotel, vacation and travel are the keywords used), then your question will be copied to the blog. rel=nofollow is added to all links posted so you can’t exploit this to increase your page rank but the links may bring you some new visitors (although I doubt it).

After working this out the first thing that came to mind was “surly this is against the Yahoo Answers TOS”, so i had a quick look through the TOS and look what I found:

12. NO COMMERCIAL REUSE OF YAHOO! SERVICES
You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade, resell or exploit for any commercial purposes, any portion or use of, or access to, the Yahoo! Services (including Content, advertisements, Software and your Yahoo! ID).

If anyone is wondering, the website is journeyshirts.com (I will not make that a link as it does not deserve to be linked to) and while I was looking into it I also found financebis.com (same thing but this is about finance, looks like a different owner too).

I wonder how many blogs like this are out there.

About 2 months back we recieved a call from Optus asking us if we want to switch to a new 100GB plan (100GB no offpeak, shapes to 256kbps and about $5 more than my current plan). After quite a long phonecall we decided to switch to it.

A few days later I called Optus and asked them if it was too late to cancel the change and I was told there is no record of the plan change, intact there was no record of them calling us. Anyway they put a note on the account saying we don’t want to change.

Last night at about 11pm I checked my usage only to find my plan changed! I posted about it on Whirlpool and was given a link to a form to fill in. Once I filled in the form I received a call from Optus and they changed my plan back. No hassles.

I’m going to have to have a look at the new plans though. Sure they count uploads but they have a higher amount of bandwidth included.

My current plan has 20GB onpeak, 40GB offpeak for $95/month (I think)

Might switch to the 50GB onpeak, 70GB offpeak for $50/month Even after including uploads (usually 20GB/month, 40GB in February though), it’s still a much better deal!

The other day I remember a old Habbo account I created and I decided to activate it so I can use it on the merged hotel. When I tried to activate it however I was taken to a error page. I couldn’t even get it to start the merge! I submitted a ticket on the new help system (good work with it BTW, I’ve got to say I love having a proper ticket system where I can see past messages), and apparently the problem is caused by my “fuller” cache.

The original message I sent them:

Jun 29 2010 14:58

I am having trouble activating one of my accounts.

The account is <<removed>>
Character is <<removed>>
Hotel is Australia

After I enter the login details it takes me to a error page (it says “Oops, an error has occurred”).

Their reply:

Jun 30 2010 01:21

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Habbo.

Please read the information below and try to perform the suggested steps before you try to migrate/activate
your account again on Habbo.com.

You may be experiencing this problem because your computer cache is full. Every time you visit a web site, your computer stores information in a notebook called a ‘cache’. This information is stored to help memorize your favourite websites and make note of things you visit. Of course, the more you browse the Internet, the fuller your cache becomes! It’s a good idea to clear your cache every 2-3 weeks to stop it filling up and causing problems.

You’ll find many guides on the web to clearing you cache. Every internet browser/operating system is different, so we cannot provide you with specific help on this issue – but you can find it easily using Google.

Also check that your browser and flash player are updated.

Kindly reply to this email if you are still unable to migrate/activate your account after trying the steps above.

Yours,
Richard
Habbo.com Customer Support

Why thank you Richard, my fuller cache is always the problem isn’t it?

Most people who knows me would agree that I hardly ever swear, but when Sulake staff are involved that’s all they make me feel like doing. I just fail to comprehend how a company can be so successful while having such incompetent staff! In light of recent events I have decided to post about some things which have happened in the past. Hopefully someone from Sulake will read this and train/fire all of these incompetent people.

Firstly there’s the incident about 3 years ago. This is the first incident I would like to mention as everyone I have told about it will agree the staff are clearly in the wrong. To put things simply, my account received a permanent banned. Yes, I know you’re probably thinking “You probably deserved it” or something along those lines, but let me tell you what exactly happened first! At the time I was in a room talking to some friends, and I told them I was using custom web browser (made by myself) with Habbo as the startup page. This was my preferred method of accessing Habbo  at the time. I got the idea from Jagex actually, I used a simple program like this to access Runescape and I liked it, so I made a simple program to let me access Habbo. All it did was open Habbo with no toolbar so I get extra screen space, it also allowed me to easily identify the habbo window when I had a lot of running applications (which was most of the time). After I said told my friends about it (I wasn’t even offering to let them use it, we were just  talking about web browsers!) I received the ban. Now here’s the kicker, my ban reason was scamming. Can someone please point out how I was scamming them?

Next up is when about 40 of my accounts for perm banned for doing something I was told I am allowed to do not long before I did it. Yes, you did read that right. 40 accounts. Why did I have 40 accounts online in the first place? It was for some screenshots. I asked the staff using “call for help” weather or not I would be allowed to have multiple accounts online at the same time. They replied informing me that is is allowed aslong as I am not using the extra accounts for scamming. So I brought on all of my accounts and started taking screenshots, then I start noticing they were getting logged off. I quickly switch through all of the windows looking for the accounts getting logged off only to find they have been banned for “Terms and Conditions violation – cloning”. Now, I’m a strong believer in reading Terms and Conditions before joining websites, and I have read the Terms and Conditions for Habbo many times. Not once does it mention anything about cloning, so how is it a terms and conditions violation?

Something a little more recent would be in April of this year, My account was given a permanent ban for “Room Scripting” (their way of saying I own too much furniture and their buggy system says it doesn’t exist). I saved most of the emails sent between Player Support and me so I would be able to post them online at a future date, and I am glad I saved them. In fact I’m glad I saved them as they are just so funny to read. In fact,  I have shown a few people and every one of them have just laughed at how incompetent the staff are! The staff claimed they had some sort of proof I had used scripting programs. When I told them they have a problem on their end as I never used any scripting programs, they just closed my ticket stating my problem is “solved”. I even asked them for the proof and I have still not received anything resembling proof.

A little over one month later I finally got my account unbanned, how? Simple. I sent a message to Bamaloo (the hotel manager at the time) on twitter and asked her for a contact email so I could send the whole log of emails to her and see what she will do about it, she asked me to just tell Player Support to pass it onto her. So I wrote up a email for them to give to her which explains that I was unfairly banned, there is no proof I even did anything wrong, how much money I have spent on Habbo Credits, and fansites etc. in the hope that she would read it and finally unban my account. Well it turns out Player Support magically decided to unban me rather than foward her the email. It looks like someone wants to keep their job. Too bad they have all gone to Singapore now. (EDIT: I forgot to mention, I actually asked for a refund on the HC I lost while banned, just over 1 month which would be around $5AUD probably. Funny how they just ignored my email all together)

The final issue I want to mention is the latest issue I have had. The last rare to be released was a “Crystal patch”. Anyone who bought this received a crystal badge. that is to say everyone except me and one of my friends (and probably more that I do not know of). Now this should be a simple matter of me contacting player support, they check my credit history for the purchase then give me the crystal badge. It shouldn’t take more than 1 week at the most right? Wrong. Firstly I didn’t realize people received the badges as I kept looking for mine and never saw it, then when I contacted Player Support it took them a long time to even get back to me.

On the 11th of June I finally recieved a reply from Player Support informing me that my account has recieved the Crystal Patch badge, please note I asked them about both mine and my friends and they have not mentioned my friend’s badge. I logged into the website and looked for it, no badge. No biggie I thought, I’ll just leave it for a few days and try again. So I waited, and waited, and waited. Still no badge. On June 21st I used the new help tool to ask them about the badge again (surly 10 days is more than long enough to wait). I asked them about both mine and my friend’s badge again just to make sure we both got our badges.

The reply I got just made me loose all hope. No mention of my badge AT ALL, instead they simply told me they cannot answer emails that are not sent from the Habbo themselves. They then go on to tell me my friend needs to contact them. Hang on! Where’s my badge though? You can at least help me right? Apparently not. I asked them about mine again and then all 3 of my tickets were closed by the same person within a few minutes of each other without any help given. In fact all the reply said is they believe my issue is “Resolved”. How can it be resolved when you won’t even read what my problem is? I retaliated by copying and pasting a reply to all 3 tickets stating that they have done nothing to help me and my issues are not resolved. Now just today I got another reply, apparently my browser’s cache is the problem.

Sure, I don’t mind them dumbing it down and talking like I know nothing about computers (hey, most players are kids who don’t know this stuff, so you have to expect these things) but claiming “the more you browse the Internet, the fuller your cache becomes!” (their words not mine) is just ridiculous. Come on Sulake, can you at least hire some staff that can speak English? Furthermore I am told I should clear my cache, but they will not provide me with assistance in doing so. Instead they tell me to google it. Great help. My cache isn’t even the problem here. I have tried clearing my cache, different browsers, different computers, I even asked a few friends to check what badges I have. They all tell me the same thing. I simply do not have the Crystal Patch badge on my account.

If you have managed to read this far, congratulations. Hopefully you can see why I am so pissed off with Sulake Staff all the time.

It was my birthday on Monday so I figured I should post something… Well that’s that taken care of.

-Hintswen

Well actually no, I can’t post something that short or people will complain that I don’t write enough. Today I found out I won $25 I was also $4 short to buy a license for ShowAnalyzer (They are making me pay $30USD for a license to a buggy program like that?). For those of you who don’t know ShowAnalyzer is a program used to skip comercials on Windows Media Player. It’s one of two programs I use for it actually.

Yes, that means I finally got my TV Tuner card working again. I needed to disable signed driver enforcement or something along those lines and then I installed the drivers. Also had to install ReadyBoot Plus which automatically disables signed driver enforcement when my computer boots up. I wonder if I can get one of my old webcams working now, might try that later this week.

In other news I have been asked to work for two more Habbo fan sites. I don’t understand why people keep asking me as I have told them before I will not work on Habbo fan sites for these reasons (although if any fan sites solves some of these issues before asking me, I might consider it):

• I don’t go on Habbo very often, and when I do go on it’s usually just to check what has changed
• Offering me the second fan site owner badge if it gets official does not work (see above). Offering me financial compensation for my time does work.
• If you are asking me to work for you just so you can use one of my scripts, no. I am glad you like my script(s) and want to use them, how about asking me if you can use them? I will probably say yes (although you may need to integrate my scripts via XML/RSS etc. as I may not be willing to share my source code yet)
• If you just want something small done, just ask me! If it’s something small I might just do it on the spot if I’m not busy.
• I will NOT work for a fan site where the staff do not trust me.
• I will NOT work for a fan site if it is run by idiots, people under the age of 13, or people who regularly break the Habbo rules.
• I will NOT work for a fan site which is run by or has annoying people as staff (generally people who add me to group conversations/calls without asking first).

Now that you know. Fix it or don’t ask.

I wasn’t sure it was possible but the following batch script should work. It might have some problems with special characters still… post a comment if you find something wrong with it. I’ll fix it and post the new script.

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@echo off
tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME EQ vlc.exe" /v /FO "list" > tempdata
for /F "tokens=*" %%R in ('findstr "Window" tempdata') do set VAR=%%R
set TITLE=Window Title: VLC media player
set VAR=%VAR:|=^|%
set VAR=%VAR:<=^<% set VAR=%VAR:>=^>%
set VAR=%VAR:(=^(%
set VAR=%VAR:)=^)%
IF "%VAR%"=="%TITLE%" GOTO :EOF
set VAR=%VAR:Window Title: =%
set VAR=%VAR: - VLC media player=%
echo %VAR%

PS. It creates the file “tempdata” in the same folder as the batch file. It also wont work if the playlist is focused (or was focused more recently than the main window).

There will be no output if the song is stopped (but if it is just paused it will show the song name).

Gooele: the gBall

The gBall is a football developed by google. It has inbuilt sencers to calculate the speed and force of kicks aswell as GPS to track how far it was kicked. When lost the owners wil be able to go to google maps to find the missing ball. The ball costs $10 upfront with aditional charges based on the time of day it was kicked aswell as the distance it traveled. The accuracy of the ball is within 0.025 pixels of a standard 17″ LCD monitor.

Youtube: Your new viewing experience

Youtube has flipped their site upside down! this includes videos aswell as al lthe text (although the layout hasn’t changed). They recomend turning your screen upside down because computer monitors give better quality when upside down, tilting your head or moving to Australia because eevryting in Australia is upside down (Australians are recomended to move to the northern hemisphere if it is upside down for them).

Smashing Magazine: Internet Explorer 8.1 Eagle Eyes Leaked

Claims of IE8.1 bieng leaked. you’ve got to read this one for yourself.

Sitepoint: Internet reboot today at 11:59UTC

The internet will be rebooting at 11:59UTC with an expected downtime of 1 mintue.