Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Happy April! Ubuntu + Radeon Videos Cards?

Hello again my lovelies!  Not too sure how many people actually ready this blog or anything but MEH! who cares?



Right now as you might guess from the title of the post, I'm using Ubuntu again!! YAY!! And I'm using it with my Fancy Pants computer!!11oneone. Now because of my wickedly awesome new computer I am using fantastically new bits and pieces! The main crux of this post is my Sapphire Radeon HD5570 1GB DDR3 Pci-e graphics card.

Now if you have this graphics card and you are running Ubuntu like I am you will be able to use it right away with no need to worry about anything else. BUT if you're like me and want to run compiz and use 3D graphics, you're kinda going to have to get some drivers to use it properly. Now you can use the drivers that Ubuntu's "Additional Drivers" but I found that they were downloading far too slowly for my liking so I have the solution for you!

Radeon HD 5570 Radeon Drivers

This will provide all the support you will need. Just click the download button and away you go. Once the file is downloaded you need to go to the folder where it was downloaded to, right click and  go Properties -> Permissions and click "Allow running this file as an executable" Apply and close and then run it.

Now please remember that this is for the ATI Radeon HD 5570 ONLY running 64 bit Linux and nothing else!

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Hacker Evolution

Now this sounds rather ominous right? I'm not the most legit person in the world so people who know me might be thinking "What the fuck is he doing??"

Believe it or not I'm promoting another game, the first being Quake 2, called Hacker Evolution for Steam. Now I only have the demo but if the demo is anything to go by it is friggin sweet :D

Now the object of the game is to hack servers around the globe? Sounds easy I hear your ask? Well it isn't!!! It is ridiculously hard!

The main "plot" of the game is that you are Brian Spencer, kinda sounds like the guy from The Fast And The Furious right?, and since your family died in a car crash you decided to plant yourself on a private island to live out your days. You now work for the government or something. You have to crack your way through the servers, decrypt the passwords, download the exploits and uncover what ever the mission objectives are.

And yes, it's hard, did I mention that? Now seeing as there are no right or wrong ways to go about the game you can go about it however you like and not get caught by the police or anything. Yay!!

Go buy it! It's only $9.99N|ZD

LINK!!

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

New Zealands Best ISP

Which company is the best ISP in New Zealand? Is there a "best" ISP in our fair country? I don't know but what I do know is which ones are ones to go for and which ones to steer clear from. To start off with I'll do the major companies i.e. Telecom, TelstraClear, Orcon and then  go to the smaller companies i.e. Farmside, NZNet, Actrix, Whoosh etc. I recommend reading through it, it may take some time but it's well worth the wait for the reviews especially of the one on NZnet, or if you are impatient you can just skip to the end of the post.


Telecom
Traditionally Telecom have been rather good with their broadband packages. You pay a fair bit more than the competitors but with that extra you pay for you get a dedicated technical support team which is available from arount 8am until 9pm 7 days a week. Download and upload speeds are as fast as the line can handle which is around the 3.5 to 5MB per second (theoretical maximum)

TelstraClear
TelstraClear is another big contender within New Zealand as an ISP with the likes of their cable network is available in Christchurch, Wellington (excluding Porirua area but includes Kapiti Coast up to Waikanae) and Auckland. Outside of these areas you have to jump onto their PDQ, Pretty Damn Quick, ADSL network which as the name suggests is pretty damn quick. You have a 12 hour call center, 8am-8pm, 7 days a week with good technical support. If you live outside of their cable network then go with Telecom as with TelstraClear you are paying too much for too little.

Vodafone
Now as far Communications companies go you would expect a multi-naational corporation to be able to deliver you a phoneline and broadband pretty damn quickly right? Wrong! Now call me biased but when I called them to get a new broadband and internet connection I thought that they would be able to get it sorted out within a week, 5 working days, and get back to me saying that I would be able to have a connection and that it would be connected on x date. Apparantly when I put my application forward they didn't have a contact number for me and even though they had my email address they couldn't send me an email requesting the extra details that were needed due to Vodafone staff not being able to send external emails. Personally, couldn't be bothered with them.

Woosh
Now Woosh is a relatively new company who do pretty much the same things as the rest of the other ISP's out there BUT they do have ONE advantage if you live in Wellington. The ENTIRE city is their wireless hotspot so if you have Woosh Wireless you can log on anywhere in the city and still have your lightning quick wireless connection.

Orcon
Now Orcon is just one of those fantastic ISP's that have no fixed term contracts, high data caps and speeds and actually know what they are talking about when it comes to their technical team. You can choose to go for either their traditional ADSL and phoneline packages OR you can go for Naked DSL which is where you get straight broadband without the need for an analoge phoneline. Also when you sign up with them, you get an @orcon.net.nz email address FOR LIFE.

Actrix
Now I'm not going to imply that I know what Actrix are like because I don't although I have read some good reviews from these guys. They are a Wellington based ISP who have been around or the last 15 years or so delivering internet solutions to businesses and consumers alike. If you want more info about them then check their site.

Farmside
Now these guys are absolutely fantastic! These guys I love. They are wicked and I have mad respect for them. They provide phoneline and broadband packages at a VERY reasonable price and by very reasonable I'm talking $125 for phoneline, 30GB of broadband, and 700 minutes to call anyone in New Zealand and Australia. If you can't get broadband where you live due to distance from the exchange then no worries, they have a sattelite package where you get quick broadband from their Taiwan based sattelite. Worth checking them out

NZNet
Now these guys I have a HUGE problem with. Not only are they absolutely shit, their broadband speeds shit and slow, their "tehcnical support" useless and only open during business hours, 8.30am until 5.30pm Monday to Friday, but they constantly change the dates of when things are meant to be connected. I switched from Farmside to NZNet as NZNet offered us a cheaper broadband plan and phoneline. I currently have Naked DSL through them and I have to say that the service that I am getting is utter fucking shit. The connection drops out at least 5-6 times an hour but the download speeds are shockingly slow. Now I'm not sure if you are aware of this but the definition of broadband is being at LEAST 8 times faster then dial up. The fastest dial up you can get in New Zealand and anywhere else in the world is 56k or 5.6K. With NZNet the AVERAGE download speed that I get through them is 20-40K. Thats only JUST on the cusp of being labelled as broadband. Their digital phoneline service? Don't know what it's like as it's taken over THREE WEEKS for them to send out the new IP phone that I am to be using and to get my number ported over from Farmside. You can check them out but I DO NOT recommend them WHAT SO EVER!

OKTA Touch ROM Kitchen

Right, now if you are like me you would really like to know HOW to create your own ROMs but wouldn't know the first step in going about it?

Well now you can do it with this linky here --> : linky

The package that you are wanting to go and download is Linux ROM Kitchen (linuxromkitchen_20080806-1_i386.deb)

Once you have downloaded it head on into your Terminal and tpye in the following

Code:
cd Downloads (I'm assuming here that this is your default download directory)
sudo dpkg -i linuxromkitchen_20080806-1_i386.deb

Now you MAY need to download some more dependencies I'm not sure. I didn't have to but whatevs.

Now I have no freaking CLUE how to use this BUT the cool thing that you can do is extract an .nbh of the ROM that is on your OKTA Touch (HTC Vogue) and see what is installed in it and what you can remove. If you need help I'm pretty sure that the guys and girls at the XDA-Devolpers forum would be more than happy to help you out.

365 Albums in 365 Days

Well seeing as one of my very good buddies is doing a musical blog I thought that I would share it with the world.

365 Albums, 365 Days

Check it out, hes a bloody good reviewer and should not be selling mobile phones :D

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

lUbuntu

Now I know I post alot of useless shit that no-one will probably never read BUT I feel as though I have to share this magnificent distro with the rest of you who care :) I present to you.....






Now my first impression upon looking at this was "Oh god, another bunch of losers fucking with Ubuntu like Peppermint OS did" BUT after the 500MB download and burning it on a CD-R and actually trying it, I have to say that I am inpressed. Not only is lUbuntu lght enough for my underpowered laptop to handle but its really quick and rather simple to use.

Sure you have to sudo apt-get install alot of different things e.g. gparted, amarok, wine and use the Synaptic Package Manager to get VLC but out of the box it's nicely setup.

Want the download link? Well because you asked so nicely then you shall have.

Torrent
Direct Download
MD5 Checksum

Monday, February 28, 2011

Make Your Own Custom Linux Distro

Well kids, just as the title says, you can make you own distro (distribution) of Linux running the KDE4 front-end and based on Slackware.

Now you might be wondering by now "Why the hell is he telling me about this for"? And the answer would be why the fuck not? Think about it. You get to decide what gets put onto YOUR 100% ORIGINAL Linux ditro. Like or example whether or not to have OpenOffice or Koffice. Whether or not to use Firefox or Opera. What games to put on, what Audio/Video software. What backgrounds etcetera etcetera.

It can be booted off a CD, USB flash drive, installed to your harddrive, installed over a network the choice is yours.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Quake 2 and Windows 7 - A non-playable game?

Well I'm not so sure about you but have you ever had a hankering for an old school game that you just WANT to play? Well for me today, that game was Quake 2 by id software.

Now as everybody knows, Quake 2 is a bloody brilliant game and revolutionised the way First Person Shooters (FPS) were created and played using a brand new Quake 2 engine which was also used by the street gang game Kingpin.

Now like the most of the worlds PC users I run Windows 7, along side Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat that is, but I ran into a spot of trouble. Now I mounted my Quake 2 image, yes I DO own the game so an image is legally allowed for archival purposes, and went to install the game but the installer wouldn't let me go any further than clicking "Install". Hrmm, not what I had in mind but what can you do?

Well like msot, I threw a tantrum and threw all my toys around. Well not really but metaphorically I did.


Now, after my brief tantrum I used the mighty GOOGLE and had a wee look at what could the problem be and I ran into a nice little forum that told me the answer and I fel lik suck a dick for not thinkng of it sooner.

Step 1, Numero Uno - Load/mount your Quake 2 CD. Simple huh?
Step 2, Numero Dos - Open up the "Install" directory
Step 3, No more spanish - Open up the "Data" folder
Step 4 - Copy ALL of the contents into a new folder i.e. "X\Games\Quake2" just replace the "X" with what ever drive letter you want to use
Step 5 - Go back into the Install folder and copy across q2.ico into your new Quake 2 Folder
Step 6 - Make a shortcut on the desktop and change the icon to the q2.ico that you copied across
Step 7 - Run the Game!

You may need to change the video settings so that your computer/laptop can display it properly. My laptop won't display anything at 640*480 so I've set mine to 1024*768 on openGL mode.

Happy fragging!

Saturday, February 12, 2011

How to Flash your HTC Vogue in Ubuntu

I take no responsibility if you brick your Vogue

Right now I thought that I should put something like this up so that my fellow Linux users can flash their Vogues without having to try and resort to using WINE or installing Windows, like I tried and failed

For this guide I am using Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10 so if things differ from your setup then I apologise.

Right on to the guide at hand.

1) Go to the following link and download HTCFlasher: Link
Now the it is a .deb file type so if you aren't using a Debain based Linux Distro then you can get the source code here and compile it from there

2) Now you also need the following file to get HTCFlasher to work properly: Link. Again this is a .deb file and I don't know if you can get the source for it or not but oh well.

3) Right, now that you have those two files you can now install them so to do this you need to go and launch the Terminal and do the following

Code:
cd Downloads (I'm assuming here that this is your default download directory)
sudo dpkg -i htcflasher_20080806-1_i386.deb
once you've done that enter your root password - you won't have to do it again
now for the gtkdialog - again do the same as above but with the gtkdialog


Code:
sudo dpkg -i gtkdialog_0.7.20-4_i386.deb
Right now after all that is all installed HTCFlasher will be able to be used properly now. Now on to the fun part, flashing your chosen ROM.

For this part I used NFSFAN's WM6.5 Custom ROM although you can use whatever ROM you want.

1) so once you have your ROM all nicely downloaded and un-RAR'd you need to to into Applications -> Accessories -> HTCFlasher

2) click on the little circle next to the option that says "Get Device Info", plug your Vogue in and click ok. Once it's done it's thing a new window will popup, close out of it and next to the Get Device info line will be soomething similar to this


Code:
CID : [TELNZ001] - ModelID: [VOGU001]
3) Put your phone into bootloader mode by pressing and holding the power+camera button while pushing in the soft reset button with your stylus. This can be awkward to hold but just find your own way to get it done.

4) Now click on the "Flash NBH file" little circle and click ok. Navigate your way to where you extracted your rom, double click it and a little message will pop up saying flash file '/home/user name/Downloads/RUU_signed.nbh'?

Click ok and let it rip. Should only take a couple of minutes. Once the ROM has been flashed click ok on the popup and then you are back to the main HTCFlasher menu do the next step BUT MAKE SURE YOUR VOGUE IS STILL PLUGGED IN!

5) Right so you are back to the main menu, click on the little circle next to Bootloader cmd prompt and click ok. MAKE SURE YOUR VOGUE IS STILL PLUGGED IN OR THIS WILL NOT WORK!

6) Once the Cmd Prompt has opened which is basically instantly type the following code. Please note that when I write {enter} you press the enter key.


Code:
set 16 0 {enter}

task 3 {enter}
Now soft reset your phone and VIOLA!! You have just flashed your Vogue on Linux Give yourself a pat on the back and enjoy your shiney new ROM!

A big thanks goes to mrkite38 from the xda-developers forum who gave me that last bit of code. Without his help my Vogue would still be in bootloader mode