Red, black and loud...

Hmm, I know I should've paid it in my own money, but my dad bought me a new phone when we and my mum went to church and took a stroll during Independence day. The phone's a Nokia 5320 XpressMusic, which was the Finnish electronics firm's way of pissing off Sony Ericsson and its ubiquitous Walkman line.

The phone's a 3G\HSDPA-capable handset, with media playback capabilities of course, although the latter features were its selling point, for those teens and twenty-somethings who can't get enough of their fave tunes, yet aren't willing to shell green for an iPod. It looks just fine on the cosmetic side, although the rewind/FF/play keys are a little wobbly, and the USB jack cover is a little too awkward to pop out.

It boasts a dedicated DSP chip for a more epic sound experience, much like the decoder used in the original N-Gage and the 3300, as well as most other XpressMusic handsets. While the single mono speaker that came with the phone didn't do great justice (sounds were a little scratchy, especially those lo-fi, oldschool and low-bitrate tracks, such as Shirley Temple's "Be Optimistic"), docking it on a speaker stand or a home theatre system does the trick - a 3.5mm headphone jack comes standard, which lets you use practically any speaker or headset without any adapters.

As for the interface and software, it is a little straightforward once you get used to the S60 platform, save for a time when I can't find my SIM contacts. Most of them apps that work on an S60 Third Edition device may work on it (some of the apps that I tried were a file browser, an antivirus, and some games), although warezed games, unsigned utilities and other such stuff are crapshoot to install, no thanks to the mandatory digital signature scheme, but at least it's a better stretch than having an infected phone. It also has an ARM11 CPU @ 369Mhz under the hood, which is powerful enough for the phone to run emulators for Speccys, NES, SNES or even the GBA. Grand Theft Auto Advance runs at a playable framerate via VBag, and I'm certain that other Game Boy titles might work. It also comes with the N-Gage online service built-in (older firmware versions weren't bundled with it and will have to be downloaded separately), with free trials of popular NG titles such as The Sims 2 and Asphalt 3: Street Rules. It could've used a little help from a dedicated GPU like the N95, but since they had to make sure that it comes with a lower price tag, well, you know what I mean.

Other than some minor quirks and occasional apparent hang-ups, I had no problems with the device, and it did fare pretty well on me. I personally recommend this phone to younger people who are looking for a cool yet not-so-expensive or bloated music device. If you're looking for a phone for corporate stuff, this isn't for you. If you're a sixty-something and you find it hard or frustrating to boot up a smartphone, this isn't for you.

Funny but true: Rockstar Games' thoughts on social networking

I find this spoof website of theirs entitled MyRoom, from Grand Theft Auto IV, quite funny. The fact that they poke fun at our society is, is what makes me play GTA often.

I often find Jack Thompson and his followers' opinions about the series as rather bollocks; sure, they have a point regarding the apparent risks of underage kids playing violent videogames, but the fact that school shootings are merely exaggerated by yellow journalists such as Faux, er, Fox News, and overzealous bigots cash in on the GTA craze, made me think that they're getting too far, although I do cite Hot Coffee as purely R*'s fault, since they unwittingly left the offending code, and ended up wasting a large sum of money just to fix the mess they made.

OK, enough yada-yada, here's a witty excerpt from MyRoom.com, which as you may notice while playing the game, is a thinly veiled parody of MySpace. I'm sure this one applies to them teeny-boppers and newbies to the internets out there:

Tips for creating the perfect social networking page:

• Express yourself with a garish multicolored background. Your page should be as ugly and distracting as possible. Make it look like a peacock ate a crayon box and crap on the internet.
• Use a font color that is as similar to the background color as possible. The idea is that people should feel physically nauseated after reading a couple of sentences.
• Cover the page with seizure-inducing glitter graphics.
• Post pictures of celebrities and that you have found on the internet. [insert social networking site] positively encourages mass-copyright infringement.
• Set up embedded music files that launch at maximum volume as soon as somebody clicks on your page. Include ones with lots of profanity.
• Write crappy poetry and add some cheesy quotations like "live each day as if it were your last".
• Make identity theft easy by listing every single piece of personal information you can think of, including birthday, address, phone number, mother's maiden name, first pet's name and social security number. Then wonder why a creepy man is shooting loads on your bedroom window.
• Write down every last detail of your sordid little existence so that future employers have a full history of your sexual promiscuity and drug use.
• Remember to spend every spare minute tweaking your profile. You are SO important!

Au revoir, comrade...

I guess Niko Bellic of Grand Theft Auto IV was right, life is complicated. There are times that people stab you in the back, some nasty things happen, or one of your best buddies leave for a reason.

Like in the case of a friend of mine named Janry. He is indeed a respectable young man, a good friend to me and my cousin, and a talented person. He is a little strict sometimes, but he has a real sense of humor and laughs when I show something funny for the lulz. And his leadership skills are something that's worth mentioning, too; he's currently a member of the local youth council in his neighbourhood.

But it's sad to say that he had to leave us for good, since he enrolled in a maritime academy, so as to fulfill his promise to his family. He won't be able to connect to the internets or at least have a shot at communicating at us, but at least he did something that we can all be proud of, right?

Well, good luck, comrade, GOD Bless, and aim high...

Blessings,
Huck

Opera Mini doesn't work for you? Here's a workaround...

OK, so I was pissed off. Really, really pissed off, when my phone refused to connect to the internets via Opera Mini.

I have a Nokia 6233, which runs on Series 40, Third Edition. Nokia made a lot of changes in the interface, of which it added some functionality, and some epic design failures. One of which are access point settings. Starting with S40 3rd Ed phones, you can't specify a proxy when you make a new Access Point via the manual settings. Anyone unfortunate enough to be a T-Mobile or those with WAP network plans (such as TMobileWeb users, Airtel NOP users) are unable to use J2ME programs that require internet access (such as Opera Mini, Google Maps, or games which involve online access).

I dunno, but it seems as though Globe Telecom was a bit piss-poor at implementing its Over-The-Air connection settings; it turns out that the config files they're assimilating to end-users have something missing, therefore making it difficult for them to connect using Opera.

A workaround is to make your own provision file (which is the same stuff used by service providers to distribute configuration settings to their customers). I compiled an archive here; there's another archive containing a bunch of provision files for several telecom providers.

I made a custom .prov file for my telecom provider; you may edit it by opening the NokiaJAVAProxy.wml using a text editor.

Save your changes, and then run SPARTA.BAT (I named it after the Greek kingdom out of randomness... :p).

Send the .prov file to your phone via Bluetooth (either by dongle, or by transferring the file to another phone, then BT'ing it to the target phone).

The phone will then recognise the configuration settings, and will prompt you to save them. Don't worry if it says "no supported applications".

Go to Settings->Configuration->Default Config. Settings, and change the default config to [the name of the configuration we just loaded].

That's it! JAVA midlets like Opera Mini, Google Maps, and all them J2ME online apps should work now.

God Bless and enjoy... = )

P.S.: Oh. and if you're too lazy to edit the config file yourself, kindly post a comment here. Tell me your handset model, the country in which it is based, and the service provider you're subscribed to, e.g.: Nokia 6300, Globe Telecom-Philippines, or something like that, OK?

Windows 7 watermark blues...

I once patched my Windows 7 install just after installing, well, to get rid of the annoying "For testing purposes only" nag message that comes with every beta copy of Windows. There are a couple of third-party hacks for this, most of which involves editing a system file named USER32.DLL. You can do it with resource hacking tools, by finding the strings related to the nag message, and then edit them out. Another method involves an automated script to replace the old DLL with a modified one.

The problem is that when you try to replace the DLL in Windows 7, applications in compatibility mode crashes. I searched for hours just to find out the fix for this problem, and I nearly got into reinstalling the whole system.

As it turns out, the permissions and file ownership have been changed from its default values. Modifying the file will impair compatibility, and causes a conflict of some sort unless if you give them the default permission settings (you can still use the patched user32 library, though).

To do this, go to Start > Computer, double-click on C:\, navigate to your Windows\system32 folder, and then find user32.dll. Right-click on the file, and then click Properties. Click on the Security tab, and then you'll be greeted with a window similar to this:


As what I've said earlier, modding this file affects file ownership and permissions; Microsoft probably did this so that users will find it harder to mess with their system. To restore them to defaults, click on the Advanced button on the user32.dll security property page, and then click on Change Permissions. Notice that the check boxes are dimmed, as if you can't tamper with them.


Untick the "Include inheritable permissions" check box, and you'll be greeted with an error message. Click on remove. This will get rid of all of the permission entries, but don't worry, we'll bring them back to normal.

Here are the permission settings, courtesy of Neowin:

System - only "read and execute" and "read"

Administrators - only "read and execute" and "read"

Users - only "read and execute" and "read"

NT SERVICE\TrustedInstaller - "Full Control"

Save your changes, and then click OK.

On the first Advanced Settings window (no, not the one similar to the above screenshot), click on the Owner tab, then click on Edit, click on Other Users, and then enter "NT SERVICE\TrustedInstaller", without the quotes. Save your changes, restart, and then check for compatibility. If it doesn't work, try doing the same for c:\windows\system32\en-us\user32.dll.mui

God Bless and have a nice day... - Huck

Semestral Break

It's been a while since I posted here. The fact that I've been "too busy" kept me from updating this blog, or something.

I maintained my site, posted at forums, talked to my Grandma, and did some various schoolwork. Oh, well, maybe next time... God Bless and have a nice day... - Huck

Shall we, like, sue Epson?

OK, I was about to print a label when my dad's printer fouled up; he installed a third-party CIS system, but dismantled it because it (the tubing to be exact) pwned the printer's mechanism, and there are times that some colours don't show up on hard copy. And so my dad bought some original (as in genuine, not third party) ink carts, slapped it in, and did a few copies. It turned out well at first, but when I'm about to print a label, the driver warned me to replace my yellow ink tank, even if you can still print with the other three cartridges. It seems that their razor-and-blades tactic at selling things turns out to be somewhat morbid and aggressive, forcing the unwary user to buy stuff even if he already has one; sure, the efforts made by the CIS industry at decrypting the smart chips might seem warez, but Epson's doing it at the cost of practically forcing consumers to buy a replacement ink tank (colored, by the way) just to print a black-and-white document... C'mon, man, are you guys gangsters or something?

Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epson_ink_cartridge_controversy