Web-Hax

If you want to do it quickly and via my web server: this script works. Just don’t send the same e-mail over and over again or the address might get messed with:
Clicky Clicky.

If you’d prefer to send the e-mail from your ISPs smtp server (the long route) do the following:

start off by opening command prompt.

Incase you don’t know how to open it, on vista search for “command prompt” in the start menu. For XP and earlier versions go to the start menu, click “run” (pictured below)
Windows XP:

Windows 2000:

Type cmd.exe (or “cmd”) then press enter. Now you’re in command prompt.

Next, type: telnet mail.isp.com( or smtp.isp.com) followed by: 25

so you should have this:

telnet mail.bigpond.com 25

Press enter.

Then after a connection accepted type message is displayed  type:

HELO mail.isp.com

(no don’t type hello, type “helo”)

then type

MAIL FROM: this@isatest.com

replace this@isatest to whatever you like.

if it says sender ok (which it should) type

 RCPT TO: email@hotmail.com

as usual replace email@hotmail.com with whoever you want to get your message

SOME EMAIL FOWARDS DON’T WORK!!

if it says recipeint ok type

DATA

and press enter

then type

Subject: this is a subject

now press enter twice

And finally just type out a message and press enter, then press “.” (no quotes) then press enter again.

should say something along the lines of message accepted.

enjoy

Wireless internet (WiFi) connection problems are rampant on iPhones. Connections dropping out constantly or not connecting at all. Network settings deleting themselves periodically. Although Apple have not made an official fix (and may never be able thanks to router incompatibilities) there are a few additional steps you can try before resorting to restarting your router or modem. (Which is an absolute last resort, but guaranteed to work if combined with these tips)

Go into settings and select wifi (duh)

Choose your connection and go into the settings.

Hit the “Forget this Network” button below in blue.

Reconnect to your network.

Try accessing the internet.

No luck? Lame. Go back into your connections settings.

Still missing details? Try renewing the lease until details return.

STILL not working? Can’t get the details to come back after hitting renew lease, or maybe you can but the wifi still drops out or doesn’t stay connected or work at all?

Try going into Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings.

This will restart your iPhone. You will be required to reconnect to your network. Before attempting the steps again if some of the information is missing in network settings after a setting reset – go into safari or another web powered app and try and make a web request. If it still fails either repeat the steps or look for another solution.

I have began further integrating aspects of my twitter account (such as my tweets) into my website and vice versa. New links to new blog posts (like this one) will be tweeted from my account, and a summary of my tweets for the week will be posted automatically in the random/blog section. That’s all for now.

Here’s a few good ones from vimeo, note that none of these are created by me:

Lumitectura from barno on Vimeo.

Arkologie from Neal Ellis on Vimeo.

Muse from FIELD on Vimeo.

RECURSION / Zhestkov.com from Maxim Zhestkov on Vimeo.

SNASK from Mike Crozier on Vimeo.

a journey through asia from ivan vania on Vimeo.

Nokta . from Onur Senturk on Vimeo.

.. and so on, there’s plenty more. Check out vimeo before it becomes filled with crap.

Here’s a few from youtube :

^ really good.

That’ll do for now. There’s plenty more really good ones, go check ‘em out yourself after watching these.

Well, it’s certainly been a long while since I did a blog post, so let’s have another.

This post has been rushed so there isn’t much attention to detail.

As for what I’ve been doing:

Web Stuff

As you can see since my last blog post there’s been some changes on site in terms of both appearance and content.
The major changes are the new theme, the removal of the advertisements and the removal of the spam bots clogging our comment sections.
Another web thing I’ve been working on is a php script I decided to resume that I started a few years ago, it’s just something redundant/generic; a php/sql powered string based text response bot.
In simple terms, something like Spleak, Smarterchild, or this. I’m using the “PSCS” framework I made a while ago (php/sql shoutbox with user registrations) which i’m planning to clean up a bit and post in full separate to the bot. I’m also using visual basic 6 to create a viewing client for the shoutbox, and then when it’s complete for the bot as well.  (so you can open a program to talk to it, or to whoever uses the shoutbox)

School

I’ve also recently started the 12th grade (11th wrapped up at the end of ‘09) so a portion of my time during weekdays has been devoted to that ( as well as social obligations ), that and recreation time leaves less overall for miscellaneous projects (Such as this blog). I’ll be happy this time next year when I’ll (hopefully!) have my SACE. (my states version of the high school diploma, valid internationally).

Recreation

Some games I’ve been playing:

• - Bully (Scholarship Edition) [torrented]

• – Far Cry 2 [torrented]

• – Burnout Paradise (Ultimate Box) [torrented]

• – Command and Conquer generals (in mini LANs) [torrented]

• – Scarface: The world is yours [RS]

• – State of Emergency [RS] (Good old arcadish fun, used to play it when it came out)

• – Brief fling with Second Life (there’s something cool yet amusing about smoking weed in a game with your friends whilst simultaneously doing it in real life.)

• – AudioSurf [Torrent]
  - Stranded II (Played the GMod game mode, didn’t even realize it was based off an awesome game – silly me)

I was also playing a lot of arcade & N64 games since acquiring all N64 roms (7gb+ worth), and all SNES and SEGA roms. Even made a seperate “Arcade” user on my laptop for it.

I’ve taken a break from regular Sims 3 playing it would appear, after a multiple month long love affair with it. (As well as GTA IV – I played that everyday for a year or more prior to it going stale, though I still play them both every now and again – I would more if my 360 didn’t red ring nullifying my IV expansion)

Recent media acquisitions (Some stuff I’ve downloaded):

In addition to the games discussed above I’ve also fished some other cool stuff out of the abyss of the web to entertain myself with, here’s most of the notable stuff

Music

• Bad Brains discography. (Had their self titled album and loved it.)

• Pendulum’s “Hold your colour”

• Prodigy’s “Fat of the land”

• Gorrilaz new album “Plastic Beach” – Which in my opinion (in comparison to Demon Days), SUCKS ASS. Too many guest vocalists and not enough original tracks to gain my adoration. Maybe it’ll grow on me.

Also, earlier this month I bought another rapidshare premium account.

(For those of you who don’t know, rapidshare is a file sharing site. Non premium members have wait times in between files and slowish speeds, premium members don’t. Having breaks in between files is usually a big problem when downloading large files that have been split into several parts (games or HD movies for example) to be put on these file sharing sites.)

Anyway, not long after getting my new account and (with the recommendation of A99 from our IRC) JDownloader set up as my download manager I began to fill my external hard drive with:

• 4 Seasons of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Seasons 1-4, torrented season 5) (my new favorite show, I saw Danny Devito talking on I think Conan about how he was having a lot of fun being apart of the show, and I can see why. It’s brilliantly evil at times, and blindingly awesome at others.)

• 1 Season of Kenny VS Spenny (Season 6, torrented 1-5)

• 1 Season of The Simpsons (Season 19, used to have 20 or 21 torrented)

• 1 Movie (“District 9″ – Awesome movie, do watch it!)

• 1 Movie (“Spiderman” – Saw it when it was in cinemas, oudated but cool movie.)

• PC Game – (“Scarface – The world is yours” – Like a spin-off where Tony Montana survives – mentioned earlier)

• PC Game – (“State of Emergency” – Mentioned earlier)

• PC Game – (“Batman: Arkham Asylum” – Broken installation, will be reacquiring and playing it next month.)

Not long after getting those files (and many more) my monthly ISP bandwidth allocation (50GB) had just about dried up, and tonight it ran out and I am now on 64kbps until the 28th.

Oh, and I also got a pet rat again for the first time in 9 or so years.  His name is Thor and he is most likely cooler than you.

That’s not everything but you get the gist of it, I’ll likely elaborate on some of the happenings discussed here in another post, update this one, or talk about something else in another  post soon(ish).

Thanks for reading and stay tuned.

I’m surprised I hadn’t already posted this, so I thought I would as it’s extremely useful.

Here is a module for vb6, import it using vb6 by hitting “Project” (up the top) followed by “add module”, then click existing and browse to the location of the extracted .bas file.

Here’s an example of how to use it in your project:

if GetAsyncKeyState (112) < 0 then
call DoStuff()
end if

This will trigger the events of the DoStuff sub when the user presses F1.
To get a list of key codes visit this link and convert them to decimal.
(To do this in ms calc click view up the top > scientific and then click the hex radio button, paste the number from the MSDN page and then click dec. The resulting number is the one you use in VB6.)
Good luck!

I have changed the layout of the sites index to display the “using the site” page as opposed to the previous setting which just output whatever the newest articles are (in order of publication) on to the front page

I have also added two new inter-related categories; Art & Photography and Open Access College, the former for Artwork & Photographs I’ve created (most likely stuff produced in conjunction with OAC, as well as freelance) and the later specifically for work I have completed for OAC.

And finally I have created the “Articles by pH”, “Articles by Magnus” and “Articles by Rob” (our new author) categories for posts to be sorted into, as wordpress does not seem to display authors of articles on this theme. (though it display authors of comments to said articles). Thanks to Rob for the suggestion.

See title, mediums include magazine and oil pastel.

Here’s two short articles I wrote as part of an assignment for a stage one Media Studies class at Open Access College. I was pleasantly surprised to learn not long afterward they (coupled together) got an A+.

IV:

In the earlier days of video games the storyline/campaign/main game mode was usually very linear in structure with specific things to be done at specific times in specific scenarios, resulting in the same or extremely similar outcome each time. There wasn’t much space to store files for games to use as resources, and machines were big and costly to produce.

Over time things started to improve, more space for consoles and hard drives meant more room for files and better quality games, visually and overall.

GTA IV has one of the largest installed (ready to play) and un installed file size to date, the equivalent to 20+ full length movies as opposed to the average of about 4-8.

This extremely large size is because of amazingly detailed textures for every single building and model in the entire city.

One of the best additions to modern games so far is the use of realistic physics, demonstrated by what is referred to as “ragdoll” physics engines – Because the player’s model falls realistically like a ragdoll compared to the animation being pre-defined.

GTA IV utilises ragdoll physics extremely well through the use of the amazing “Euphoria” Engine, which as well as letting ragdolls move realistically allows them to be aware of their surroundings and react accordingly. (eg grabbing onto ledges as they’re being knocked or falling)

This a major improvement in comparison to the previous physics engines used in GTA 3, Vice City & San Andreas.

As well as the highly realistic physics the game also gives each NPC (non playable character) its own personality with different reactions based on its model additionally each NPC will do a different task unique to that person.

The use of realistic physics is also present with car damage, depending on the weight and size of an object the dents will have a different density and placement each time.

As a result of every collision in the game being different and having so many variables the player will never experience the same outcome twice.

Another highly used addition to newer videogames that’s also popular is sandbox or open-ended games, meaning the story or game never ends.

An example of a popular sandbox, or open ended game franchise is The Sims. Rather than the game ending when a players character dies, the game continues as the player has the choice to continue playing as other “Sims”, usually a family member or roommate – or if none remain, as a sim in another household. As a result of the use of open ended gaming where the player can play at his own pace, and with no specific objectives (usually) the game can literally last forever.

Grand theft auto IV has it’s own unique sandbox aspect, in GTA IV the missions are presented to the user via a location on a map of “Liberty City” (A GTA version of new york city featuring many landmarks with accurately scaled buildings. ) and the player can do them as they like, in whichever order they like. At many times in the game the player has a choice of doing one objective in a mission or another, each objective shaping the outcome at the end of the game. As well as all of this, after the player finishes the main story aspect of the game many additional side missions remain open to be completed, and the game remains fully accessible to the player. Even when players finish the story and all the missions it’s not likely for them to get bored of the game, because at times it’s much more fun to just do as you please in a living and breathing city than doing the missions anyway.

The amazing attention to detail (visible in high quality players/vehicle models and the huge to-scale map), as well as amazing physics and sandbox type game play really make Grand Theft Auto IV one of the games that truly takes advantage of advances in gaming technology.

DLC:

In the previous article I discussed changes and upgrades the video game industry have began to incorporate into video games over the last 5-10 years, and how GTA IV takes advantage of said changes/additions.

In this article I’ll be expanding upon one of the more recent additions to video games, exclusive to the current generation. (2005 onwards)

This addition is of course downloadable content.

Downloadable content for games isn’t anything very new when you think about it, people have been able to download modifications, additions, fixes and updates for pc video-games for over a decade now, the difference is now this content is being brought over to consoles.

The large difference between downloadable content on consoles and computers is that of variety and legitimacy.

When a user searches online for a modification or addition to a video game on a computer they are presented with any result containing the keywords specified in their search, literally searching the entire web for a string of text. This means that the user has to:

1) Locate the content

2) Know how to install the content

3) Trust the vendor of said content

Due to the overall vastness of the internet, censorship and copyright are two very difficult things to incorporate into the process of acquiring files from anyone anywhere in the world, as a result video game industries wanting to include the ability to update games with their content ( and not content produced by 3rd party developers) have began to interact with the producers of the consoles (microsoft, sony, nintendo, etc) to include a specific location for gamers to go on their consoles for official updates or additions.

When the playstation 3 & xbox 360 were released it became obvious the companies had listened, now when users are connected to the internet & Insert a game with an update available a prompt will come up on the screen & allow the user to either proceed with the update or postpone it until another time, all of the updates are installed completely for the user as well.

As well as updates or game fixes, many game franchises are beggining to take advantage of this new downloadable content system by releasing miniture sequals or “expansion packs” (previously updates and expansions were exclusive to PC owners) on consoles. These expansion packs add new content to the game in the form of additional game modes, objects, sounds or something else.

An example of a game franchize making use of downloadable content is (once again) Grand theft Auto.

In the most recent addition to the franchize (GTA IV) users can now purchase a “Lost and the Damned” Expansion (for about 1/4 of the price of the full game), this expansion which was released 6 months after the original game allows players to unleash themselfs upon the same city as a completely different character with a completely new storyline, new missions, new side missions, new vehicles, new weapons and a further improved physics engine.

The use of expansion packs instead of sequels allows companies to continuosly profit from the same title, instead of having to keep all the new ideas for the next sequel, as well as allowing them to apply fixes to existant problems, instead of having to re-issue a “fixed” version of the game. It also prevent the decrease in the fanbase for that particular title or console that would usually occur after dismayed gamers move on to other platforms seeking additional content.

The sims franchise have also taken advantage of the expansion pack concept for 10+ years, though on the PC instead of a console.

It’s become very clear that Downloadable Content is now an important factor of the console gaming industry, as it’s finally began closing the gap that’s made up of the differences between console & PC versions of games. The only remaining difference being that PC versions of games still allow users to download (or produce their own) un-official 3rd party content.