K’~EXkurogane~’s Blog

My new blog:

ks-exkurogane.blogspot.com

Actually i’ve created this blog for over a month already. Mostt of the time will be Gundam stuff, from kits review to some news. I won’t be using Friendster blog anymore since it is easier for all my friends to read my blog after i made one at blogger.

Ok, my favourite day is here: April Fool’s day. I like pranking on people. Okay, to cut short what i need to say, here are some tips, both for pranking people, and prevent yourself from being pranked.

Preventing Yourself from Becoming A Victim

-Don’t simply lend your handphone to your friends, the closer that friend is to you, the more probability you will get pranked.

-(In campus/hostels) Don’t take afternoon naps just for one day today if you know you have the potential to become a target for pranking.

-(In campus/hostels/school/tuition centres) If hostel or toilet doors is slightly ajar (open), beware. You may have a pail of mud/water coming down.

-(In campus) Park you car/bike at places where there are guards frequently walking around, or places where there are many people. Who knows, If you don’t, you might end up seeing your car splashed with orange juice or coffee.

-Watch your chair everytime you sit down in classes, or the chair may be pulled backwards when you sit; or your friend may slide in a pizza.

-Be extra cautious if your friends suddenly become friendly and close to you, and watch you back if anything is pasted on; oh yes, and if someone tells you there’s an extra/cancelled class/teacher looking for you. Don’t trust just for today before you confirm it.

~Prank Tips~

Don’t try:

-Pasting a “kick me; f**k me, kiss me” etc on your friend’s back. It’s lame, don’t you think?

-Doing anything that may hurt someone: tying shoelaces together, pulling of chairs when people sit; giving him/her a 3-legged chair etc.

-Tell someone that a teacher is looking for him/he or she is fired by his boss, because most probably he/she will not believe if he/she knows today is April Fool’s Day

Try:

-tying a pail of water (a scoop is enough, actually) above a door left slightly open to support the pail. Sounds lame but works for people not alert enough.

-put some sauce (not spicy ones like chilli) on a friend’s hand (palms) when he is asleep, then tickle his nose. See what happens next.

-stuff some flour in the nozzle of your friend’s hairdryer. Beauty turns ugly.

-Prepare water colour-filled plastic bags and throw them on your friend’s car/bike when there’s no one around. Black coffee or rotten egg is better as your friend will have a hard time washing them off. Avoid potentially corrosive stuff like detergent/soap powder, lemon juice etc.

Top Notch Tricks Worth Trying

-You need to prepare at least one day early (too bad you didn’t). In campus and hostels, when your friend is sound asleep, preferably early morning you’ll need to wake up first. Get your friend’s handphone and bluetooth in sound files, like farting sounds, and the best is the voices of having sex/porn video. You can do that by ripping the audio of a porn video in mp3 format. The sound file is set as your friend’s ringtone and messaging tone. If you friend is using Nokia, better. The silent profile canbe assigned with a loud ringtone as well, so that in lectures, you can call him and embarrass him in lectures. He’d be surprised jis phone is ringing in silent mode. (Or set an alarm with that tone)

-Also your friend’s phone. Activate call diversion and use his/her love interest’s phone number as an alternative number (if you know, it can be found in his/her contacts) or his parents’ number. Any receiving calls will instead be accepted by the person with the alternative number (Your friend’s parents/love interest).

-Do this when there is hot sun. Get a few rolls of tissue and wrap them over your friend’s car/bike. Then pour water on it and leave it to dry.

-Switch the gender signs on toilets (if they are removable). If you are lucky enough you hear girls shouting.

Alright, on this game that i’ve just installed on my laptop, i have both types of comments on its reviews: lots of compliments as well as complaints!!! We’ll see…

Here’s a short review of the story of this game:

Grand Theft Auto IV’s protagonist, Niko Bellic, is an ex-soldier from Eastern Europe who moved to Liberty City to escape his past and pursue the “American Dream.” Niko was persuaded to move by his cousin Roman, who claimed to be living there with beautiful women, sports cars and lots of money. It soon becomes apparent, however, that Roman lied in order to cover up his own failures in life - the truth is he runs a failing taxi business, has mounting debts, and various criminals from Liberty City’s underworld have put a price on his head. Niko also has other motivations for moving to Liberty City, which are revealed as the story unfolds.

Alright, i haven’t played much of this game yet, no time, just gone though a bit. Now, on my compliments/praises about this game:

-fantastic graphics, no doubt, and real-looking environment of Liberty City and vehicles, awesome and natural-looking human characters and my favourite part: realistic cars, realistic crash damages and explosions!!!

-Well, the languages doesn’t change, i mean, more vulgar language, the better (lol…)

-If you have good achievements, prepare to win prizes from the official websites

-Try to play with the cops, and killing people and commiting crime looks realistic, sometimes blood-splashing looks real but violent, especially you blow a girl’s head off with a combat shotgun. Due to social emphasis, you’ll need to bring girl for dates, make friends and go out together etc. You can watch tv also, but that’s stupid…

-The major improvement after graphics is gunfire sound. You’ll feel like playing Counter Strike. The previous games (Vice City, Liberty Stories and San Andreas) have awful gunfire sounds.

-The PC version is of course better than the rest (PS3 and XBOX 360) as exclusion features are included: Record your most epic moments in the game in a video (don’t worry, no set up needed, just load and play, and after you finished a superb stunt or whatever, press F2 and the moment since you loaded is saved. You can cut later in the video editor), radios consist of user tracks and customizable handphone messaging tones and ringtones from your own songs.

Thats all for the good part. I haven’t played much yet so i can’t comment much. I will update this post, maybe paste a video link to my recordings to Youtube. Now, on my complaints, lots of them, actually it is the fuss you have to go though during installation and setup procedures:

-Installation was quick, maybe because i have lots of RAM, but, you’ll need to register online the official website (or you can’t play), craete a gamertag profile at xbox website and like it to your windows live ID, then these 2 are linked to your profile in GTA website. Why? who knows, if you have good achievements or you are really a hardcore criminal and made it to the top list of a particular achievement, enabling you to win prizes from the official website. Every of your actions including missions and crimes are recorded in a statistic and can be posted online. (After the hassle, enjoy…) The online registration is optional, but it is recommended you do so. Create a windows player profile as well in your game or you can’t save your game.

-This is why most PCs and laptops cannot play this game: Sys requirement:

At least Intel Duo Core at 2GHz (recommended 2.1/2.2 GHZ and above), 2.5-3 Gb RAM, minimum NVidia GeForce 8400GS graphics (all types of ATI Radeon cannot be used), 18Gb Free space, and only usable in Windows XP SP3 and Vista Premium (SP1)>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>What the Fuck, lucky i made a wise choice when i bought my laptop, spend extra cash for good specs but worth it, my laptop has no problem in support, but there’s still a bit hang or being lack. So i had to turn off every background-running programme if possible, like MSN messenger, Skype, download managers, Nokia PC suite, and even antivirus (pop-ups from them are annoying and may end up hanging your game) prompting for updates even if you are not online. It would be the best if you restart your laptop before playing the game if you usually leave it on sleep or hibernating mode to refresh the system.

- Now, you were a pro in GTA San Andreas, but you’ll be like a fugitive or an amateur criminal in GTA IV. You easily get wanted and busted, and the controls are different. Almost every key has a function and you can’t really change much of it. The cars are difficult to handle and explode easily, you die easily as well. That was a good point as it makes things look real, at the same time it might piss you off, and make the game tougher.

-Cheats block off certain achievements, so you will not be able to score high (prevent cheating in competitions/prize giving), and, keying-in cheats are difficult. You’ll need to bring out your handphone and key in teh phone number which is a cheat code with directional pads. suppose you ge caught in a gunfire, getting health full with cheat takes time, and most probably you die first.

So, that’s all. In short, this game demands too much from a computer, and it is designed to be played on a desktop PC actually, considering the default keys  set invlove lots of numeric keypad that i reset them as in laptops you’ll need the ‘Fn’ key to access numeric keypad, and the system requirements. It’s not cheap to get a laptop as shown in the above’s specs. I wanted to upgrade my intel centrino’s processor into higher GHz (speed) but that costs me RM 600. Overall rating 8.1/10.0 . Sad. It could have been higher.

I just gotta admit is this one of a hell best anime i’ve watched so far. The main point here is not because of the mecha battles, but the plot and the protagonist’s excellent strategies in combating government forces to tolle the Brittanian government and gain independence for Japan. Leleouch Lamperouge/vi Brittania aka Zero is a much better strategist compared to Osama in real life terrorism, as i can say. And he gets greedy and yearns for a government himself and therefore sacrifices many people. I’d never really knew what would happen in the final episodes of both seasons given the twists in the plots of the story. I liked the first season much more, but all the theme songs and ending songs are not my type that i like. This is an anime series i’d recommend to anyone, perhaps, Gundam series should learn a bit from this series in terms of plot -being unpredictable and twists. 5 stars.

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Well, since i found this post is a bit short, i’ll just add some stuff here: My favourite Gundams list: Top 10:

1. ZGMF-X20A Strike Freedom                                                                           

2. ORB-01 Shiranui/Oowashi Akatsuki                                                               

3. ZGMF-X19 Infinite Justice

4. GNZ Reborn Gundam                                                                           

5. GN-0000+GNR 010 00 Raiser                                                                         

6. MBF-P01 >ReAMATU Astray Gold Frame Amatu Mina Custom

7. ZGMF-X10A Freedom

8. GAT-X105E Strike Noir

9. ZGMF-X12A Divine Testament

10. ZGMF-X42S Destiny

Bandai/Sunrise decided to backwards back to UC 0081 for this Gundam 30th anniversary. I was expecting something different here, at least a Gundam Unicorn series or a 3rd season of SEED. However, there are notable improvements in character design, though the heavy armour nightmare begins to haunt me again. I hate MS with excessive armours till it looks so fat, and i’d prefer to see giant MA that docks with MS. Well, this is probably because it is the anniversary of the original series. Despite complaints, i’ll, we’ll, all the the Gundam fans despite what their favourite series will still watch it right? Haha… Let’s get to the point…

So far, this series does not have a confirmed name yet, set in U.C. 0081, 1 year after the war where the world is regaining peace. However, small-scale battles from resisting Zeon remnants continued in various places. The Earth Federation are conducting out a clean-up operation on these Zeon remnants to solve this problem. Caught in the midst, is a verteran Earth Federation soldier with is assigned to this operation. On the opposite side of the battlefield, are a group of young Zeon officers executing their secret strategy for the revival of Zeon.

Below are the rest of the details regarding this upcoming new series:

Mechanic Design: Katoki Hajime

Character Design: Suzuki Tatsuya

 _

 Erik Blanque
Male. Age 20.
A young officer whose family is a distinguished family in the Principality of Zeon. He takes command of the “Invincible Knights” in order to execute a counterattack operation against the Earth Federation Forces.

Well, I happen to come across pirated or bootleg Gundam kits at my place, and hence you have a choice of Bandai or Bootleg stuff like Little White Dragon, GHD, BENDI, etc.

Before i’ll start briefing on these stuff, i’ll just have to admit that i admire China. They are pretty good at producing bootlegs and pirated stuff other than just Gundam kits. I was dissapointed i forgot to take some photos of these items when i went to Shanghai last year. I visited a Mega-sized mall, nope, Giga sized mall that will take you a few days to visit every shoplot and has more than 50 entrances. Yes, after i went though the Electronics section, my first words are: “you gotta be kidding!!!”. I saw a phone that looks like the Sony Ericsson W910, 90% similar, except it doesn’t have the Sony Ericsson logo. It was named “Suny Ericsson”. I laughed. “Suny” at the same time is a vulgar word in tamil. Next, you see a Nokia N82 look-alike, named “N88″. Where the F*** did N88 ever existed? Of couse, a W910 at a price of a K700 phone. That’s China.

Here’s a comparison of Bootleg and Bandai stuff, the boxart. The 2 boxes on the left are pirated/bootlegs. Quite obvious for familiar Gundam collectors. They give good names to the Gundams.

As usual, China’s masterpiece.

As for the manual, good details for the LWDragon brand, translated in chinese and English, at least the details are 70% accurate. Not bad. But, other brands do not have such details given.

A photostat of the ori kits, just translation.

I happened to buy a few, err… 3 kits, bootlegs for experimental purposes and out of curiousity. The quality is still decent, but not as good as Bandai.

Trust me, this kit may look better than expected, cuz i did some work on it, i’ll tell you, pirated plastics melt in contact with thinner/turpentine. The paints will corrode if you spray a new color on it, and result in mixing of colors. I happened to lose the crest on the head of this Abyss. Some parts are slightly loose, but not a problem  to me, while some parts just don’t fit nicely, and i’ll need to sand the ‘poles’ that fits into the ‘holes’ in the interior, or make the hole bigger. If you put some extra work in it, it’ll be good enough even for poses. As you can see, the legs particularly, the linings just ‘melt’ after i sprayed lacquer, may be due to 2 reasons: I sprayed too much, or the bootleg plastic couldn’t take much paint and absorb.

Well, i have the Legend which i’ll just keep it, not assemble, since i have the idea of building a Providence Zaku with that. Even i bought these bootlegs, there’s no way i’ll continue buying it in future nor supporting it. I always try to avoid things from China, whether it is food, toys, electronics or just anything, and i never believed in super cheap stuffs. Even now mobile phones and laptops are getting cheaper, i still doubt those that are super cheap though having good functions. As usual, quality is the top priority. ^ ^

Laptop: Dell XPS M1530

I bought this laptop around 4 months ago, for university projects, media and gaming use, yes, all the functions i need them. I had friends questioning about my experience with this model, so i’ll just type out a review here to share. I am not typing the general specifications of this laptop here, because the specifications are self-customized when you buy it online, that is, you can choose what type of windows, how much RAM, disk space, graphics card, processor etc given a minimum requirement (and the prices increase as you select upgrades, minimum price at RM 3499)

Here’s the specs i’m currently using, and my ratings:

-Physical appearance; weight: 8.6/10.0

At first glance, i just love the design. The casing is like some sort of plastic fibre, not the glossy type but is scratch resistant, and looks solid but smudgy, including the media touchscreens. And, it’s surprisingly light and slim, almost on par with my friend’s Acer 12.1in laptop.

-Performance (responsiveness, speed) at 4GB RAM, 2.0 Ghz: 8.4/10.0

Actually at 4GB RAM, this is one great performance for gaming and i enjoyed superior performance when i host the CS condition zero in a LAN. Browsing stuff, opening media applications is a breeze. My only complain is interner explorer browser and windows explorer occasionally stop responding, usually due to other running programmes like the automatic scanning of anti-virus programme/background running programme that you don’t realize, and browsing a handphone’s memory manually though My Computer, and startup is slow. Once startup is complete and you usually use hibernate mode instead of shutting down completely, then windows resume is fast. I am using only Intel Centrino at 2.0 GHz, and the max upgrade is up to a whopping 2.6 GHz. I’d better spend that upgrade cost for a Playstation 3.

-Screen (15.4 in, n-Vidia GeForce 8400GM): 8.6/10.0

Well, good resolution, no doubt. It’s n-Vidia, and no graphics card enhance needed. You have an upgrade option to the 9600 ultrasharp ver, but expensive and not necessary for me. You’ll have no probs with the latest games. As usual, you have problems using this laptop in an area that is too bright, like when there is bright sunlight. The screen appears dark even with the brightest setting, but viewing at an angle from the side is not a problem.

-Battery life: 8.7/10.0 (3.25 to 3.5 hrs in power saver mode)

Using Intel Centrino, a huge media laptop at 15.4 in can run 3.25 hrs on battery, not bad at all. My friends’ laptops can only run 1 to 1.5 hrs on battery, and a 14 inch laptop. However, the newer Dell Studio 12 in can run up to 9 hrs. Technology keeps getting better. 

-Keyboard: 8.9/10.0

Very confortable and well-spaced keys with spill-proof features. Good for typing and gaming, you won’t tab on the wrong key that often.

-Speakers: 8.5/10.0

The sound is loud and excellent when playing games or listening to music although there’s no subwoofer, but playing movies the sounds are very soft especially speaking; actions and explosions are loud. That’s not much a prob, you can set your own specifications in the control panel or install storm codec. The media keys are touch screen, and you have a fingerprint reader as well.

DVD Combo drive: 8.5/10.0

Burning and reading is smooth, not bad. You have an option of upgrading to Blu Ray drive, but that’s expensive and not practical for me.

Internet browsing; Wifi; bluetooth: 8.4/10.0

Not much details here. Everything is smooth and good. But as usual, internet explorer occasionally stop responding or have probs browsing certain websites (for security reasons, antivirus/spyware programme) but you can use mozilla firefox in this case. Bluetooth connection with handphones is a headache, you can send items to a phone easily, but receiving items from a phone is a headache-difficult to establish a connection and you get pop-ups asking for trust and how safety is the external device, even if i deactivate the antivirus.

Webcam; 2.0 Megapixels: 8.7/10.0

It’s surprising that at just 2 megapixels, the webcam is pretty decent and takes good photos, not to mention chatting. Great tools for adjustments as well. In fact, many laptops use 1.3 MP cameras and only a few 2.0 MP (the more expensive ones).

Antivirus (Mc Afee included, and i added Avira): 8.4/10.0

As for McAfee, annoying. Especially during games. Pop-ups are frequent asking for updates and offers when i am not online interfere my game and i lose counter strike many times because of this. On protection side, it is good, and malwares hardly have chance because a warning pops up when you are downloading stuff or even browsing online. I might get Norton Anti-Virus 2009 Gaming Edition later to solve pop-ups during games.

Windows Vista Pemium: 8.5/10.0

While many people are complaining about Vista, i find this windows is just good. The Microsoft Works and Task Launcher programmes for my college work and powerpoint 2007 is easy to learn and use. I can organize and search my stuff easily. Maybe i already got used to it. I am just using 160GB SATA hard drive, cuz i don’t need much and i have external drives and two 8GB pendrives to save my own stuff, and avoid a big diskspace from affecting performance, cuz big diskspaces require more RAM to operate, as my experience told me.

Overall: 8.6/10.0

Good. At least it satisfies what i need now, and solves the problems that i hate the most -slow response and limited gaming support. Of course, nothing is perfect and you may just face some minor problems wih this laptop, and it excels in media and gaming. A remote control and heatset is included. At RM 3760 after an increase of 3 to 4GB RAM plus a retractable USB Targus optical mouse, it’s a reasonable price. The same specs for a Sony Vaio may be around RM 7000, and i dislike Sony for the fact they use their brand name to dig money out of our wallets, or else i’d have bought Sony. I never go for any laptop at the RM 1900 to RM3000 range because the specs won’t be good. Same goes to handphones, i don’t go for a phone below RM 1000 (i stick to Nokia N-series only), because i emphasise on quality and versatility. I am not interested in small mini laptops either because the small keypads and limited gaming is a headache, and and i hate viewing movies with a small screen. Probably my next target gadget is, Apple iphone? No. Playstation 3? No. Ipod Touch? Not either. Sony Ericsson C905? NO WAY I’ll ever use SE phones. Nokia N97. Yup. But just later… even if it is released this year, i’ll wait and see what complaints i may hear about the phone if there is and buy it later, maybe next year. I need a good result to enter degree first and avoid ‘bankruptcy’ after spending a lot end of last year.

I wrote this copied and simplified this post from a blogger who posted something interesting and useful for the fact the college/university’s admin had many restrictions imposed on PC uses in the cybercafe or library’s PCs, and you might need it to fight certain selfish senior students who impose their own restrictions on a PC and set their own passwords for their own benefits. No additional softwares needed.

Have you ever been so eager to hack your college pc with a guest account/student account so that you can download with full speed, unblock websites and use a ‘normal computer’ ?  Well, there is a great way of hacking an administrator account from a guest account by resetting the administrator password and getting all the priviledges an administrator enjoys on windows..

If you are interested, read on…

Concept

Press shift key 5 times and the sticky key dialog shows up.This works even at the logon screen. But If we replace the sethc.exe which is responsible for the sticky key dialog,with cmd.exe, and then call sethc.exe by pressing shift key 5 times at logon screen,we will get a command prompt with administrator privilages because no user has logged on. From there we can hack the administrator password,even from a guest account.

You’ll need a guest account with write access to system 32.

1. Go to C:/windows/system32

2. Copy cmd.exe and paste it on desktop

3. Rename cmd.exe to sethc.exe

4. Copy the new sethc.exe to system 32, when windows asks for overiting the file click yes.

5. Now Log out from your guest account and at the user select window,press shift key 5 times.

6. Instead of Sticky Key confirmation dialog,command prompt with full administrator priviledges will open. 

7. Now type “ NET USER ADMINISTRATOR aaa” where “aaa” can be any password you like.

8. You will see “ The Command completed successfully” and then exit the command prompt and login into administrator with your new password

Congrats You have hacked admin from guest account.

Also, you can further create a new user at the command prompt by typing “NET USER WXYZ /ADD” where “WXYZ” is the username you would like to add with

1. Go to registry editor and navigate to this key

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList]

2. Here create a new DWORD value, write its name as the “user name” that you created for your admin account and live with your admin account forever
 

This is purely for educational purposes only and i am not responsible for any misuse of this tactic, especially for malicous purposes. I won’t be posting ways on how to hack a school server network and shut down the school’s server or gaining control over the whole network because the probability of getting caught is high. If you are trying to hack a password and login into someone’s account in myspace, friendster, facebook, msn, yahoo. google etc, there are 2 ways: using a programme (i don;t recommend it because while you found a suitable software and downloading it online, you’ll get infected and hacked first.), the second way is manually (though you’ll need certain webpages to help, and create a e-mail address and social website page with fake info so that you won’t be recognised) without additional softwares. I won’t be posting this either because people misuse it to spread viruses instead, while i use it to make fun of my friends by altering their personal details into funny stuff in a social website after logging in their page. Try to ask if you want to learn this, but i will probably only reply to my close friend that i trust.

I wish this post helps those eager to learn. Peace, and good luck.