Just Plain Super » Tech

url shorteners: if it aint bit.ly, its malicious!

Barcode James — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 21:07:17 +0000

So I just found out that all url shortening services are malicious or spam… at least that is what bit.ly thinks. One of the members over at donation coder tweeted out a link that was shortened by a url shortener other than bit.ly. Someone else retweeted her tweet. This other person uses tweetdeck, which by default shortens EVERY link using bit.ly. (even already shortened ones) Now here is where the malicious part kicks in. this other person’s retweet contained a bit.ly link to an already shortened link. Now whenever anyone clicks on that bit.ly link, they are redirected to a warning page that states the link that they are going to is malicious or spam. This makes the person from donation coder look bad. I think this is very bad and stupid on bit.ly’s part. I am a user of tweetdeck also, so I have switched my tweetdeck’s settings to use is.gd instead of bit.ly. I would suggest to anyone who uses tweetdeck and likes to retweet peoples tweets to change their tweetdeck settings to use something other than bit.ly. (to do this, click the wrench at the top right of tweetdeck > click Services > under the box that says “Select the service you wish to use to shorten URLs” change it from bit.ly to one of the other choices.)

if you want to get more information, you can visit the post the DC member made either on the DC forums or at her blog.

follow MahTweets!

Barcode James — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:15:10 +0000

No, this post isn’t to promote my twitter page, in fact, I am not even going to put my twitter page anywhere in this post. This post is just a review about a twitter client that I ran across and really like. The client is called MahTweets. Here is a quick video review of the client, I hope you enjoy it.

Seagate Drives Suck

Barcode James — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 05:11:12 +0000

About a month ago, I purchased a Seagate 1.5gb SATA Hard drive. I thought it was a pretty good drive. It was fast, and large. You want to know what is about the drive? It died on me. And that isn’t even the best part. I RMAed the drive, and LITERALLY the night after I got the refurbed drive back… it died on me again! So on monday, Seagate is going to get a not so friendly phone call.

The Importance of Backups

Barcode James — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:47:50 +0000

Note to self: Always make regular backups of your mysql database.

If you do not backup your mysql database on a regular basis, then when your webserver’s admin decides to randomly drop the database you will be screwed. I had to revert to an older database backup, because I hadn’t made a recent update, and the admin decided to randomly delete the database on me.

Iphone obsession

Barcode James — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 13:44:49 +0000

So I have noticed that the world seems to be obsessed with iphones. Almost all the major youtube stars I see, have iphones. I’m perfectly fine with that. Though what I have also noticed is all the iphone accessories. I mean sure, there are lots of other phones that have tons of accessories for them, but with the iphone, there are tons of different wild and crazy cases. I’ve seen a channel on youtube, and there is several videos on that channel about several different cases. In my opinion, you don’t need a million different cases for one phone. Just make a single type of case that completely protects the phone, but still lets you get to all the hardware buttons, and lets you use the touch screen (if it has one) with no trouble at all. I have also noticed that there are some people that are pretty obsesed with iphones. I just don’t see what the big deal is. So you have a phone made by apple… congrats, you got a overly locked down phone with an apple logo on the back of it, big deal. Personally, I don’t really care for iphones that much. That is why I have an LG Incite instead. It also has a touch screen, and it is a heck of a lot less locked down, and you know what the best part about my phone is, compared to the iphone? I can put new apps on it that microsoft hasn’t approved of. Can your pretty little iphone do that? Nope! You have to jailbreak it. Whoops, new firmware came out… you lose, now you gotta re-jailbreak your iphone so you can put more 3rd party apps on your phone, while I’m still sitting here with my incite just as happy as can be with my 3rd party apps. I can even bluetooth the apps from my computer to my phone… whoops, just beat the iphone there again. Apple messed with the iphone’s bluetooth also. No bluetooth file transfer for the iphone, unless you jailbreak your it. So, sure, I guess the iphone is a good phone, but like I said before, you don’t need a crap load of different cases for it… and how about atleast giving support for stereo bluetooth headsets? How about those mp3 ringtones? I bet an iphone user would have some really fancy mp3 ringtones wouldn’t they? Whoops, the iphone doesn’t use mp3 ringtones either… my incite does… it even supports midi ringtones. I have the super mario theme in the form of a midi file, and I love it. I even bluetoothed it to my friend’s brother, because he liked it too. I wish you could do that with a non jailbroken iphone… well you couldn’t even do that with a jailbroken iphone… they don’t use mp3 ringtones. Thats just my personal opinion. Don’t let me stop you from liking, or buying an iphone. You just won’t see me with one.

7 tablet Post

Barcode James — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:34:56 +0000

This entire Post will be made using My G-Pen F610 Genius tablet, in the new windows 7 RC. Wow just that last Post took forever. One thing I learned is I cant write the letter P. It keeps thinking I am writing an H. I have to end this Post now, because this is taking forever to write. Wow, it changed takeing into taking for Me. That is awesome! Bonus! I didn’t have to install the drivers for my tablet either!

My Bluetooth Problem

Barcode James — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:51:11 +0000

So a while back I had gotten a cell phone, and I didn’t want to get the stupid usb cable to transfer stuff to and from the phone, because I could do that through Bluetooth, and with Bluetooth, I could also connect other stuff to my computer. In other words, I would get more usage out of a usb bluetooth adapter than from a usb cable designed only for my phone. Well the first one I got worked with my 64 bit xp… for a while. It decided to randomly stop working. I got it replaced with no problems, other than it taking forever. Now here is where the fun… annoying part comes. The new one wont work with my 64 bit windows. Well not very well. I found some drivers on the internet that arent by the company that makes the device. These drivers some what work. I can send files to my phone, and I can connect and use my wii remotes on my pc perfectly. The only problem is I cant send files from my phone to my computer. So the only way I could do that is by sending a multimedia message from my phone to my email… that is crap, because I get bad cell phone signal here, and sending largeish files through text messages just takes forever! I did find a solution though. I have a 32 bit xp virtual machine, and I installed the 32 bit drivers and software in the virtual machine. Now I can send and receive files to and from my phone like theres no tommorow. That still kind of sucks, but at least it is faster than dual booting xp 32 bit and 64 bit.

Now I know what you’re thinking “Can’t you just replace your 64 bit windows with 32 bit windows?”

Yes I could do that, but I want to have all of my 4 gigs of ram, and 32 bit operating systems only support up to 3.5 gigs. So thats my Bluetooth problem, and crappy solution.

skoffer screencasting

Barcode James — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:56:36 +0000

I just ran across skoffer.com, which is a screencasting website that you can put on almost any website you want. It even has a wordpress plugin, so I made a quick video about it.

Running GTA IV On the PC

Barcode James — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 05:41:59 +0000

So I tried to run Grand Theft Auto IV on the pc a while back… it ran like crap! But, just today, I reinstalled it, and I went on the internet to see if I could find out how to run it in windowed mode, because on my old computer, games ran better in windowed mode. All I have to say about running GTA IV in windowed mode is WOW! When I ran it in fullscreen mode, I couldn’t minimize it without crashing either the game, or my whole computer. Plus, in fullscreen mode, the game just ran like crap all together. That changed almost 100% when I switched to windowed mode. I can alt-tab out of the game, and look up walkthroughs for the game… or do anything else for that matter. I can also run the game with all the graphics settings set to medium. It started out with everything set to high, but that made the game slightly jumpy, so I dropped to medium, and have been running smoothly now.

I can’t tell you the FPS though, because I don’t currently have anything installed that will tell me that. I might install Fraps though, and see if I can record a video later to show that I can run the game.

And now My system specs:
Microsoft Windows XP Pro X64 with SP2 (I don’t think x64 has SP3)
AMD Athlon 64 x2 5000+ 2.60GHz
4.00GB RAM
ATI Radion HD 3870 1GB Graphics card
I think that is about it.

In conclusion, I can run GTA IV in windowed mode at 1024×768 resolution with the graphics settings set to medium with fairly good performance.

update: and before anyone asks, I have stood still, got into a cop car chase, blew up a car, and gone though a couple of missions all with the same performance (the only exception is when I blew up the car, it only slightly lagged for a second or two)

Windows 7 First Impressions

Barcode James — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 06:35:55 +0000

So I installed Windows 7 beta, and I decided I wanted to give my thoughts on it.
To start things off, I kind of like the new task bar. I know it is still in it’s early beta, but I have a small complaint about driver support. It is possible to use vista drivers on windows 7. I found this out from reading something on the internet. I say this because I have gotten my webcam drivers to install by using vista drivers. There is a catch though. I had to run the installer under vista compatibility mode. After that though, the install went perfectly, and now I can use my webcam perfectly. Now onto the driver compatibility issue. I wanted to see if windows 7 had drivers for ati graphics cards… they kind of do. ATI has come out with a pre-release beta driver for some of their cards (mine being one of them). I installed said drivers… but now my second crt monitor doesn’t work. The strange thing though is that my tv will work. I guess there is something messed up with crt monitors, because my primary monitor is an lcd, and my tv is also an lcd tv. I just need to go jack a lcd monitor from somewhere else in the house, and see if that one works. To see if I could fix the problem, I downloaded the vista drivers for my card. They downloaded and installed perfectly… that sucks, they didn’t work on my xp computer (so I am stuck with semi working older drivers, I wont get into that, but lets just say, I can get the control panel to open). Anyways, no luck! I still can’t get my second monitor to work. Oh well, I’m not using windows 7 as my primary OS anyways, xp still works with both my monitors. I can’t really say much more, because I haven’t really done much else with windows 7. I may update this post after I have used windows 7 longer.
Update: 1-11-09~ Turns out my crt monitor didn’t work in xp either. Windows 7 borked my monitor! Now I am down to one monitor until I can get a new one in a couple of days.