So, your at work/school/home and you remember that your tier 2 PI is going to end soon, and you are wondering what the price (at Jita) of the PI goods you are making are… and you can’t access EVE, so how would you check the price? Well… it’s simple… You look here.

That data is pulled from EVE Central every Hour… I would like Half hour, but when I try that EVE Central always returns 502 Errors so it’s a no go there…

But what if you are In EVE and it’s full screen, how do you get refreshed data with out having to minimize EVE (Which EVE does when you select another window which is on another screen)? Simple, the page uses magic (*Cough* Javascript *Cough*) to refresh every Hour, which is good, because co-incidentally thats the time which the Data is refreshed from EVE Central… So you have to do absolutely squat, while you Mine/Kill everything/Generate ISK by reselling products for a profit.

So what exactly can you see on there?

• Refined Minerals (If you don’t refine you are losing ISK)
• Refined Ice (Same reason as above)
• PI goods (Teir 1, Tier 2, Teir 3, Teir 4)
• Ships [Caldari, Amarr, Gallente, Minmatar, Ore] (Battlecruisers , Battleships, Capital Ships, Cruisers, Destroyers,  Frigates, Industrials, Shuttles) [This includes the new Tier 3 ones!]
• Ammunition (Missiles, Hybrid, Laser Frequency crystals, Projectile, Rocket, Torpedo, Defender, Mining Crystals, Bombs)
• Plex

“But the prices aren’t what EVE reports to me! Why?” – Simple answer, the prices showen on my pages aren’t live… And they can’t be unless I get direct access to CCP’s EVE Market database… Which they probably will never allow, and at this time I don’t want it. This tool, is created solely for the reason of gathering a rough idea of the prices around that time… Not the exact price. As such the prices will be delayed up to an hour in most circumstances (It’s a ~1.5 hours delay if you put a market order up right on Maintenance).

Will you run this for ever?

Maybe, it depends on the Data usage (Unless Telecom NZ remove my Data cap ), but I will attempt to run this for as long as I can!

Due to the fact I live in NZ, this probably displays before December 25th where you live.

All I have to say is, have a great time, don’t kill your self (Or anyone else), and if you hurt yourself, make sure you video it and put it on Youtube.

And hope you enjoy all the wicked gifts you receive!

Also, in the next few days (Read 3 days)  I’m going to release a fun little tool, for EVE Online… If everything works to plan!

Boboon

Because it was a Perfect release. Everything they said will be in the release, was in the damn release, which is a far cry from Incarna, where they said that we will receive all 4 Captain’s Quarters (3 of which were released in Crucible) and that we would be able to walk in stations (Which we still can’t do.)

But the important part was that they actually showed that they listened to the community! They brought back Ship spinning, after the community complained. It showed that they picked up on the fact, that they had lost their way, and were focusing on the wrong things (The Nex Store and Monoclegate) and were just alienating the community.

But there are still some niggles with how they have implemented it, like there are some minor shadow bugs in Caldari CQs, some of the messages aren’t completely correct (Jumping to Stargate, displays the Origin Stargate’s name not the Destination gate’s name, so it comes up with Warping to Stargate(Poinen) then Jumping to Stargate(Poinen)) and there should be away to set the darkness of the trails (Client side only.)

But all in all, there are no major issues with it, and it’s actually got me back into EVE… which is surprising.

Also, it causes issues with Skyrim, I need more time in a day so I can play both.

Also this is post 2⁷ or post 128… I am to much of a nerd.

Then the user has 7 days to set it up, and when those 7 days have elapsed, it will become viewable to the public & other users.

It’s that simple.

MAN YOUR HARPOON GUNS A COMET APPROACHES!

Now, the actual plan is not to use a Ballista to launch a harpoon, but to use an explosive charge to fire it, but for “Safety reasons” (AKA. The Engineers just wanted to make a weapon) they are just testing it with a Ballista.

Mind you, they have to aim the Ballista downwards for safety reasons, as if they fire it upwards the harpoon will fly for a mile (About 1.6 Km)! This is because the pair of truck leaf springs and the bow string made of steel cable 1/2 inch thick, provides 1,000 pounds (About 450 kg) of force, which accelerates the Harpoon to 100 miles per hour (160 km/h)

“We had to bolt it to the floor, because the recoil made the whole testbed jump after every shot,” - Donald Wegel of NASA Goddard

Now I want that for my house!

You can read NASA’s official press release here.

Also this post has the 200^th tag, and the 2^6^th Category!

But there is now a Korean official Medical facility Server attacking my server to find out my stats of my server…

WTF is it and Korean’s with becoming Botnet Slaves! That’s 3 different IP’s in Korea that has hit my server in the past 12 hours…

Registered to Korea Telecom again…

Today, I was reading this article on Wired about Hackers in Romania.

And what do you know… a few minutes after I read it… I got an unusually high amount of requests… 84 requests in a minute… which is odd… It’s more requests in a minute than I usually get in a day… All from one IP.

All with the User Agent “ZmEu”… looking for pages related to “admin” and “PHP admin” so I think it was trying to find PHP MyAdmin.

What is this “ZmEu”?

Judging by the name…

The name Zmeu (no capital E) is the name of a fantastic creature of Romania. There are so many stories that there isn’t a clear understanding of what it is… but it is human like, can spit fire and wants to marry young women.

If you’re wondering, it is generally a bad guy.

-  Attack by ZmEu

Ok, First hint at the origin of who made this… It’s a Romanian creature.

But the IP (I’m not going to post it…) is owned by “Korea Telecom” (Which is based in South Korea)… So obviously it’s a infected PC in Korea that is launching an attack as it’s gotten infected by a Bot (I’ve had “ZmEu” attacks from different IP’s before) so that’s a blank there…

Second hint at the Origin… the first page it attacks is “w00tw00t.at.blackhats.romanian.anti-sec”

Ok, Definitely a Romanian Hacker…

How to stop it.

Simple trick is to create a rule in Apache’s .htaccess, all you need to do is place this code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^antibot.php
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (.*)ZmEu(.*)
RewriteRule .* http://<Insert your Domain here>/antibots.php [R=403,L]

in a file called .htaccess in the root level on your web server. [After changing the <Insert your Domain Here> part to be your domain]

Then you create a file called antibots.php and put this code:

<?php
header(“HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden”);
?>

and place it in the same location as the .htaccess file

What this does is that when a bot with the word “ZmEu” in it’s User agent (so “Completely not ZmEu” will still fire it) accesses your web server, it gets told that it can’t access the page, and if it ignores it, and follows the redirect, it will just go to a blank page, so it ensures that they never get access to any files!

And the great thing is that it reduces the memory usage, as Apache doesn’t have to build a 404 page for all the requests!

What happens if I have a different bot attacking me?

Just copy and paste the .htaccess code above and change the word “ZmEu” to a string that is common to the bot shown in the User Agent (If you are looking at the Apache Access log, the User Agent is displayed in the last set of “”, so if you have the line

127.0.0.1 - - [15/Dec/2011:09:56:14 +1300] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 482 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/535.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/15.0.874.121 Safari/535.2"

The User Agent is:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/535.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/15.0.874.121 Safari/535.2

Which is Google Chrome (Version 15.0.874.121)

and if you would then want to block Google Chrome from your site (Why would you?) you would put in the .htaccess file

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^antibot.php
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (.*)Chrome(.*)
RewriteRule .* http://<Insert your Domain here>/antibots.php [R=403,L]

Which will block all users that use Google Chrome (Any Version).

Does the file have to be called .htaccess and antibots.php?

Yes and no.

Yes the file .htaccess MUST be called .htaccess.

No the file antibots.php can be changed to any file-name as long as it ends with .php and doesn’t exist (Don’t use index.php, as that will only cause problems!)

Just make sure, if you change the name of the php file, you must make sure that the code in the .htaccess reflect that change.

The links in brackets are links to where you can get your own… For your convenience!

Lets begin at…

10. EVE GTC… As more ISK is never a problem. (Shattered Crystal)

9. Mythbusters – Detonator Collection. Complete set of Seasons 1-6, and 41 DISKS! 113 Hours of Mythbusters… If I could afford it… I would buy it! (Mighty Ape)

8. Stargate Atlantis – The Complete Series. As a Stargate fan… this is a must. (Mighty Ape, Amazon)

7. Logitech G35. 7.1 Surround sound isn’t bad! (Mighty Ape, Amazon)

6. LEGO City Space Centre. It’s Lego, and About space, it is the only 2 things I love more than Tech! (Mighty Ape, Amazon)

5. The Bro Code. A must for every male! (Mighty Ape, Amazon)

Also. Good Video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P_BEW8dOvY

4. Plantronics BackBeat 903+ Stereo Bluetooth Headset. I use my Phone for lots of things, one of which is as a Phone, and mostly to listen music. This, is perfect! (Mighty Ape, Amazon)

3. Asus Eee Pad Transformer – 32GB. It’s Android, a Tablet, and awesome! Plus, it has a Dock, with a Keyboard and inbuilt aux battery. (Mighty Ape, Amazon)

2. Energizer Energi to Go SP1000 Solar Phone Power Pack. I have a modern smartphone, which has an issue, they skimped on Battery to make it thinner. So this is a MUST! (Mighty Ape)

1. Is tied, between LEGO Technic Bucket Truck (Mighty Ape, Amazon) and LEGO Technic Backhoe Loader (Mighty Ape, Amazon)… When I saw these, I just got hit with a Nostalgia trip… as I have always wanted these since I was 8… Thank you Mighty Ape… Could have done with a warning.

0. LEGO NXT [It's even 2.0!], It’s programming, building and LEGO, what other reason do I need? (Thinkgeek, Amazon)

-1. Logitech diNovo Edge Keyboard. I’m a laptop user… who likes lying on the couch coding… It’s a must. (Mighty Ape, Amazon)

Why wouldn’t you buy it?

The games that are being sold in this round are:

• Shank
• Super Meat Boy
• NightSky
• Jamestown
• Bit.Trip Runner

And if you pay over the average price (At time of writing $5.02) you will get:

• Gratuitous Space Battles
• Cave Story+

And the great thing: All these games are redeemable on Steam!

Feel free to do a Charitable thing, and get some games, from the Humble Indy Bundle 4.

But be aware… Only 14 days remain…

I learnt something new…

1. Are is a metric unit… Of 100 square meters (Hectare is 100 ares or 10,000 square meters.
2. The web defines “Going” as “Got”
3. Bethesda got hacked by LulzSec
4. It is very easy to think too far into a joke… especially if you know a lot in the subject.
5. You can sign up to Majong’s Scrolls Alpha! (I’ve done it!)
6. “Obtain the powerful scrolls” is it talking about Majong’s “Scrolls” or Bethesda’s “Elder Scrolls” series?
7.  ”Joke” in Spanish is “Broma”…
8. I have nothing better to do than Google Translate the word “Joke”

Yes, I have played hours of this game! (87 Hours at the time of writing!) and it is still thrilling me, I’m still not finished the main story-lines… That’s right, story-lines. There are 2 main story-lines, One to kill all the Dragons, and the other is to join ether the Empire or the Stormcloaks and take over Skyrim.

Also, the amount of coin you can find is insane… I’ve got 4 houses, one in Whiterun, one in Riften, one in Solitude (Which costs 25k gold just to get the key!), and one in Markarth and I’ve just got married, which gives you 100 gold a day!

My only problem is that the amount of dragons you can run into… I have 18 dragon souls waiting to be used because I’ve just wandered past them, and had to kill them (Or I would be killed, which isn’t the recommended path to take)

Sure the Graphics aren’t the best, nor is it exactly stable, but it is all round awesome. The sound is very good, but does suffer the fact that Voice Actors have been reused, on multiple NPCs, and does confuse you if you listen to the voices to figure out who the NPC is that is talking to you… As they always walk up to you and say something random, even if you are talking to someone else! I had to kill a whole flock of people for a mission, and if I listened to the voices there were 3-4 Voice actors for the 12 people… Which is brilliant when you are trying to gage the amount of people still standing.

The weapons system is much better than other recent releases (*Looks at BF3*) as the weapons get more powerful as you head up weapon weights, and skills, and that you have to use the weapon to get perks, which means that weapons that you use get leveled and more powerful, as you skill, knowledge (Especially of the Glitches) and intelligence of that weapon class increases. Which explains why my Archery level is 90something and my One handed is level 32. I do my stealth kills from range, and I only use a Two-Handed blade for close quarters.

Storyline.

This game is completely open ended. Most of the people who die, die because of your choices. And you have the choice to chose your characters own destiny. So, you get to chose if someone will die, or if they will live. Or who you will marry, if you want to marry. You even have the choice to marry a man, if that floats your boat.

Unlike other modern games, this game is on rails. The main storyline can be halted for any length of time, and that you can chose an “Infinite” [According to Bethesda, the game's 'Radiant AI artificial intelligence system' will generate an Infinite amount of side quests] amount of quests, and can have as many going at a time as you like!

The only problem with this is that if a NPC dies, you can lose missions further down. And there are missions that require you to kill friendly NPCs (Google is you friend when choosing who to kill) which can lose you training and mission opportunities, which is detrimental to your massive gold balance, and honestly, it gets big, I have 67,300 gold worth of Houses, and easily enough gold to bankroll my further expansion.

And Bethesda has done the Imperial Empire and the Stormcloaks battle well. You have to chose a side, and since I’m a High Elf, I’m screwed either way I go. If I go towards the Stormcloaks, I’ll be killed. But if I go the way of the Empire, I’ll be killed , like the rest of Skyrim (Due to the Thalmor’s plan). So its a Lose-Lose situation.

Graphics & Stability

Ok, the Graphics are not that brilliant, still they are very good!

And it’s stability could be worked on, but if you have the PC then this will improve and very quickly!

The Music

The Music is drop dead perfect.

With it building into a crescendo when the fighting gets intense, or into a light melody when the battle is over, and you are walking away from the piles of bodies.

It adds to the Ambiance by the truckloads, and just sends shivers down your spine when you hear the dragon fight music for the first time. And they focused on the music side so much, that the theme song, in the Dragon language they made up, which actually translates to actual English, to the melody of the Elder Scrolls theme song… adds to the story-line, AND just blows you away by the Choir that sung it!

Multiplayer

The multi-player isn’t that nice…

Wait…

There IS no Multiplayer!

Would be nice… just imagine 12 people fighting a dragon, or ravaging a whole hold!

Extras

Why else would you not want to play this game.

So, my recommendation is to buy it! NOW! (Steam, Amazon, Mighty Ape)

Summary

This game… is awesome. Bethesda focused on everything, The music, the graphics, and more importantly the storyline!

BUY IT! (Steam, Amazon, Mighty Ape)

And thankfully GOG is completely DRM FREE!

So GO NOW, Pick up a free game here! Cos everyone loves FREE GAMES!

And view GOG’s official post here.

Oh, and thanks Blaknite for your post that alerted me.

This caused about 5 drop outs for this site, for which I’m sorry, and completely baffled at why it suddenly felt like packing a sad (I blame Telecom NZ, as my Phone line also has packed a sad in the same time-frame! I have prioritised that one as a bit lower than this, as it is still usable most of the time. But it is the next issue I have.)

So, again, Sorry for the outages, they are still being investigated!

There is a petition here, that is just screaming stupidity (Though, I do like the names of people on some of the Signatures)

The funny part, is that it is a completely serious petition, and yet the person that created it, can’t type Skyrim correctly, by always typing it “SkyRim”.

The ideas the person want to get done are:

1) To enact an immediate ban on the videogame known as “SkyRim” produced by Blizzard Entertainment.

2) To seize and destroy all copies already in public hands and erase its presence on the internet.

3) To prosecute the players of “SkyRim” to the fullest extent of the law.

4) To create a national database of videogame avatars and “screen names” so that teenagers can be better monitored.

First, 2,3,4 are impossible to do, as 2 & 3 requires Law enforcement in every other country to stop laughing long enough to follow it, and most countries won’t as there is no grounds to prosecute and it is nigh on impossible to remove something from the internet!, and 4 breaches Privacy laws in so many countries!

Here is a Satire site taking the crap out of this petition:

http://christwire.org/2011/11/urgent-sign-the-white-house-ban-on-the-dangerous-video-game-skyrim/

http://christwire.org/2011/11/is-SkyRim-teaching-your-children-how-to-perform-rim-jobs-and-other-homo-erotic-sex-maneuvers/

http://christwire.org/2011/12/operation-fast-and-furious-and-ignorant/

Surprisingly, this satire site, actually brings up a good point…

The main parts that Churches preach are Peace & Tolerance, yet if someone disagrees, the church are the first people to yell for Hate & Injury (Including Death).

Also they do the nice thing called “We have all right to preach in your Holy place and convert your members, but you aren’t allowed you do the same in ours”. Go the Equality message in the Bible.

Yeah, people get in religious debates with me… it doesn’t end well…

But, some of the quotes, from real people, being serious are so funny!

This is America, so, you’re free to believe whatever you want to.

And this is America where we will try to block those belefs

There is nothing super about a mexican with the exception of their super laziness and lack of speaking American.

I’m sorry? Did I miss something… The last time I checked, American’s spoke English.

You wouldn’t buy a Japanese bible, so why would you purchase a Japanese lawnmower?

No, you wouldn’t buy a Japanese bible, most Bibles are made in China/Taiwan, they make more profits that way!

Just a final note,

Oh, and Yes, I’m just procrastinating, and joking… mostly joking, The petition is real. I currently need to figure out how to describe Skyrim, cos I doubt “JUST FUCKING AWESOME” will suffice…

How to recreate this…

1. Live in NZ (Or have have a time zone displacement of > GMT+5 and do it in the early morning, NZ has a displacement of GMT+12 or GMT+13 so can do it in the Morning or early afternoon [Up-to 7 pm DST or 8 pm Non-DST]) .
2. Have the new Time-line feature enabled (I had to to it manually!)
3. Create a Life Event on the same day… (I skipped past the “Loss of loved one”)
4. You will get this… (Depending on the time of day)

If you look at next to the “Friends” drop down, you will see “You have specified a date in the future.”

But as you can see, this was created Today… which is the 8th of December 2011.

Why is this happening?

Well, I don’t know exactly what Facebook does to check, but this sounds like a simple Time Zone issue…

• The server is based in the US, which is ~21 hours behind New Zealand [If my maths is correct], which means that at 5:30 pm on the 8th of December, 2011 NZ-DST (The exact time [Give or take a second] that this post was posted) it is around 8:30 pm on the 7th of December, 2011 [in California, USA... which is the State that Facebook HQ is located].
• When the Facebook Javascript(?) checks back to see if the time is valid at the server, the server says “No, it is in the future” as the servers date is 1 day behind.
• BUT if you set it as 7th of December, Facebook displays it as “Yesterday”.
• So I believe that the issue is arising because the time is adjusted to show the correct date(Timezone adjusted) on the server (When sending the date to the user), but the time is not adjusted on the request to the server (From the user to the server).

And Yes. I have filled a Bug Report!

And look at the pretty colors!

So,  what does it look like?

Facebook Timeline

Well, that looks nice, so when I wake up tomorrow I will have it… Which is very very nice!

But there is a catch… I will have it, but 66.83% of the traffic to this blog over the past month won’t… Why?

Because it’s only being released publicly to New Zealand! 

Why?

[To] measure speed and other types of performance.

So, they are releasing it to a small population, to see how fast it goes, how stable it goes, and if it fails on the measly 1.7 Terrabits per second of international bandwidth that NZ has.

So, if you live in New Zealand, expect a Facebook layout change, if you live elsewhere, it’s coming sometime…

And expect my judgment on it soon… If I can stand it.

Note: This is the infamous design that wants people to tell Facebook everything, including Deaths of spouses. Probably for Advertising purposes… like Life insurance! [No. Spam bots... Don't think about it!]

And this is only relating to the UI aspects of EVE (UI Scaling & Trails).

Ok, first. My monitor is a 15.6 inch LED with a resolution of 1366 x 768 (Which classes it above 720p but under 1080p&1080i) its the larger end of Laptop monitors in the Mid-High end laptops… and these are the issues I have encountered…

The new font.

Yes, at a UI scaling of 100% the font is easy to read but larger, and this causes some windows to be bigger, which isn’t really a problem, but my major issue comes from the Map view (Activated by F10 if you didn’t know) when you click a star-system (Eg. Jita) the menu now goes off the screen due to the increased height, and if I drop the UI scaling back to 90%, the font size goes barely readable on all other windows and the letters on buttons start merging, and the menu still goes off the screen!

This would be a hard thing to fix by dynamically resizing the font to fit, as the UI is so rigid to not be that modifiable (Which is the reason it took them so long to set up UI scaling). But could be easily fixed if EVE detects it’s going off screen, to then add a scroll bar on the side so the user can scroll up and down the list to find what they are looking for.

But in all other aspects that I’ve seen it, the new font is perfect.

Trails

This is more of a personal preference, but I would really like to see a slider in the menu, so you can set the transparency of the engine trails, as I personally prefer my ship to have darker trails, more like the ones in the main menu background, than the ones I have seen on my ships… Mainly because they are so transparent that you can barely see them against the background! But everyone is different, so so being able to customize them won’t be bad… Even if it is only client side.

If other issues with the UI exist, I haven’t run in to them, as it is just perfect (Excluding the issues above).

They are releasing a SDK kit, for free.

And they have worked with Valve to make it able that mods made by the SDK, can be delivered through the Steam Workshop, they still can release it through existing methods, if they want… But being able to automatically deliver your mod to millions of people is never bad for the mod makers.

And since Consoles require to be signed by Microsoft and Sony before they can be delivered on their respective consoles, the PC users should expect more frequent, and the ability to get patches first, unlike EA and Battlefield, where consoles (Mostly PS3) get the Patches and DLCs before PC gamers…

So expect lots more patches… and PC gamers will get these updates first, due to the faster turnarounds.

Hopefully they fix all the Crash to Desktop issues quickly!

And if you believed it was true, you were wrong… Why?

Well here is the offending image…

It's a FAKE HL3 Shirt...

But wait? that says Half-life 3… it must be true… well, no.

Look at the Logo…

The Half-life 2 logo looks like this:

Notice the difference? The Lambda symbol is on the inside of the Logo, and the Number is up in the top right… where as the fake ‘HL3′ shirt has the number in the center, and the Lambda symbol in the top right.

Half-life 1 also has the same symbol… even the Half-life website has the same design and would Valve be stupid and make their logo wrong on a shirt? Never. Also the fact that they have already confirmed that EP3 is the next Half-life game, so skipping it will never happen…

On that note:

Where is Half-life 2: Ep 3 Valve? We are waiting…

Please note… They actually don’t swear in the game!

Review coming soon!

Boboon

So you can read on!

Boboon

Also I have yet to go on EVE Online (Downloading the Crucible patch now) so, I haven’t seen any of the new things! ( I have heard that “In the first couple of hours after Crucible launched, players had spent over one TRILLION ISK on Tier 3 Battlecruiser blueprints.” which is nice)

Oh and the new Starbase updates are NOT going to be implemented yet… CCP are waiting for people to start making Fuel blocks and for people to get prepared…

And Also I hope to have an automated link between here and The LANBox Social (I would recommend going there, it even gives you a pwitty graph of your Steam Game hours) page, but I’m going to have to wait for Blaknite to set up The LANBox side before I do that…

Until next time…

Boboon

Now, launch you ship, We have to kill new Bosses!