Easton (The Quince Man Quincy) Royce

After my recent discovery of Face Book (no I don’t have an account, that’s why I have a blog!, and yes I know it’s been around for ages), I decided to search the internet for other “books”. The first of two books I came across was Hatebook. Quoted from the Hatebook about page:

The Hate Book is a website where people can read and write about things they hate. You may find you use Hatebook to vent, to associate with others, take things in perspective, or even to find some humor in life

I’ll admit, I have used Hatebook a few times already. It really is a great place vent about anything! Your narky sister, your stupid friend, how much you detest Microsoft, absolutely ANYTHING! It’s awesome! It’s also completely anonymous.

The second of the two books I came across was Sorry Book (aka I’m Sorry Book, and Apology Book). Sorry book is almost the complete opposite of Hate Book. Instead of venting your hate, you can anonymously pour your heart out for forgiveness. Quoted from the Sorry Book about page:

Sorry Book (Also known as I’m Sorry Book and Apology Book) is a website where people can read and write about things they are sorry for. You may use Sorry Book to be rid of some guilt, to associate with others, to take things into perspective, or even to find some humor in life.

Sorry Book seems to be particularly new, and at the time of writing, only had a few posts, however I expect that this will pick up in the near future as more and more people discover they now have a place to repent after venting their anger. The two about descriptions make the websites look related. After contacting the Site Master of Sorry Book, I was assured that Sorry Book is an independent project, but was inspired by the existence of Hate Book.

Looking for a place to let all your anger out, or perhaps you need a place to tell the world about everything you are sorry for? Either way, I am sure many of you will find a use and possibly some fun in both websites.

written by Easton Royce \\ tags: anger, apology, book, Comedy, forgiveness, hate, Hatebook, humour, master, Random, sorry, Sorry Book, vent

Chrnocat and I traveled to Sydney on the 28th of September for the annual Animania Festival! Needless to say we had quite the adventure. Throughout the entire visit, I was convinced The Chaser would be out somewhere causing trouble. Unfortunately for me, they were causing troubles in places that I wasn’t in.

Since I am tired and just about ready for bed, I am going to type this as fast as possible and hopefully avoid making any mistakes. I have been meaning to cover this topic and take care of this post for some time, and at this point in time, as depressed and irritated as I feel, I believe now is a good time to write.

Day One 28th of September

I had never been on a plane before, and on an air plan was our designated travel style for this trip. We boarded a “Dash 8” at the Narrabri Air Port for out what seemed to be a short 2.5 hour flight. We first had a stop over at Moree, before finally making the leg to Sydney. The flight to Moree takes roughly 30 minutes. The plane simply flies up, and then down again, without leveling off or reaching normal flight altitude. Needless to say, I was very excited about being on the plane, and when we landed in Moree for a refueling before continuing on, all I wanted was for the plane to be back in the air again. It was a very surreal experience, and reminded of all the hours I used to spend playing Sim City.

Upon arrival, we collected our luggage, and left the Sydney Airport terminal by train. After finally arriving in the city, we set out to find the hotel we had booked our accommodation at. A week before our trip, the hotel manager had contacted us and informed as that they were undergoing maintenance and were moving us to a different hotel. Not only was the different hotel completely tacky (and the coffee was nasty as), it was even further away then our original location, which was still too far away from the location the Festival was being held (Town Hall). I don’t know what Chrnocats mother was thinking when she said “Oh the hotel is in Kirribilly, it’s near everything”. Fark that! It was near nothing, and we needed to travel by ferry to get there and back again. After canceling our accommodation at both hotels and getting a refund, we ferried back to the city, found an internet cafe and book some real accommodation at they Sydney Central Travel Lodge.

Finally after checking in at the hotel, we headed to Town Hall for the evening opening ceremony and other random events that began the Animania Festival. We were hoping to get some shopping in today, but unfortunately we were unable to.

Finally late in the night, we made it back to our hotel for showers, costume preparations for the big day on Saturday, and sleep. Chrnocat realised she had lost one of her hair clips. I reassured her she would find it at the air port when we got back. I hadn’t seen it fall off, but I had a good feeling I was right.

Summary of Firsts:

• First time on a plane
• First time taking the air port train to the city
• First time on a Ferry

Continue reading »

written by Easton Royce \\ tags: Adventure, air, animania, Anime, aquarium, Chrnocat, Comedy, computers, excitement, food, fun, Games, Movies, pc, port, Random, Rant, sydney

I tried out the Apple Safari browser for Windows today. Yep. Even downloaded the Windows Vista version. It sucked. I was going to write this post in Safari, and include a nice happy speech about the supposed speed improvements, stability and reliability, but it crashed before I was even able to get to a website. Apparently there is too much code to execute on my default internet explorer home page (http://www.ninemsn.com.au). So what more can I say?

I downloaded Safari. I installed Safari. I opened Safari. I went to a website. Safari crashed. I went back to Firefox. The end.

So long Safari.

written by Easton Royce \\ tags: Random, Rant

I was listening to the radio this morning, while shaving my face of unsightly hair. The radio program was “Hendo In The Morning” (the announcers last name is Henderson “Hendo”). As he does, Hendo was kicking off a competition. Basically, you had to listen to the first second or half second of a song, call in, and tell him the name of the artist and the name of the song. I often cringe at such competitions, because I am almost 100% certain, that they pick the callers to go on air, so that they sound like idiots. After a song, a competition intro and the playing of the song tidbit (which is actually Break Away by Kelly Clarkson) it went pretty much like this:

Hendo: “Caller One, What’s Your Name?”
Caller One: (might as well have been douche bag, he sounded like one) Mitchell!
Hendo: “What’s the Answer Mitchell?”
Mitchell: “Umm, err, I dunno, is it Kelly Clarkson?
Hendo: “And what is the name of the song?”
Mitchell: “Umm, err, I dunno, is it Baby One More Time?”
Me: YOU FARKING IDOT!!!!
Hendo: “Nope! Better Luck Next Time!”
Hendo: “Ok, Caller Two, What’s Your Name?”
Caller Two: (might as well have been dumb blonde, she sounded like one) Jessica!
Hendo: “What’s the Answer Jessica?”
Jessica: Umm, err, Is it Daddy Cool with Eagle Rock?!!!
Me: FOR CRYING OUT LOUD YOU IDIOT! FARKING DADDY COOL! YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME, ARE YOU AN IDIOT?!!
Hendo: “Nope! Not Even Close! Better Luck Next Time!”
Hendo: “Call Three, Our Last Caller, What’s Your Name?”
Caller Three: (Might as well have been dumb ass, he sounded like one and obviously wasn’t listening to the previous callers) John!
Hendo: “What the Answer John?”
John: Umm, err, is it called Walk Away?
Me: FOR FARK SAKE!
Hendo: Awww, Your Close! and What is the artists name!
Me: WTF! Your Accepting that Answer!
John: Umm, err, is it Kate Winslet, or Kate Cebrano?
Me: YOU IDIOT! YOU FARKING TOOL! DO YOU KNOW HOW DUMB YOU SOUND!
Hendo: “Nope! Close, But Not Close Enough! Better Luck Next Time”
Me: For Crying Out Loud!

As you can see, I was very disgusted with the three callers, from my own town, who obviously don’t know anything about music! This is why I believe the callers are hand picked before they go on air. I mean, they don’t want the competition to be over as it starts now do they? They want the bonus prize money to be huge first, while the rest of us music fans sit and cringe at the voices of the idiots that call up, thinking they got it down!

written by Easton Royce \\ tags: Comedy, Random, Rant

It never really ends. Whenever you finish with one Nitwit, another one takes its place. Since the extinction of my old blog, I guess it is kind of hard to actually know what it is that I am talking about. Let me explain …

I am a TAFE (Teaching / Training And Further Education) teacher. TAFE is something of a college, an alternate path of further education, if university is not for you. It is offered in several countries I believe, but it is biggest and best in Australia. Why? At TAFE, you can gain country wide accreditations in almost all industries, at just a pinch of the cost and time of University. I love TAFE!

In Australia, we go to university only if we want a piece of paper that says how good we are, and have tonnes of money so that we spend tonnes of years in lectures and boring class rooms. We go to TAFE, when we want REAL hands on practical training in our chosen area of interest, without getting sore ears and suffering the boredom of class rooms. TAFE rules in Australia, and the universities hate it! I love TAFE, did I mention that already? People even leave their university courses to come to TAFE instead, because it’s so great! It’s so much better then university, especially if your attention span is short!

For more information about TAFE, checkout it.

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written by Easton Royce \\ tags: Random, Rant, TAFE

Well, I finally did it. I finally managed to import all my old blog posts from my original Drupal driven blog site, to this lovely new WordPress driven blog. How? It’s 5 minutes past 12:00am in the morning. My girl friends fish died today, and I am really cold. In other words, I’m not not going to bother posting a tutorial show-you-how for importing all your Drupal blog entries into WordPress right now. If someone should ask me via the comments, then perhaps I will devise something for you. For now, just be happy for me, that I no longer need to deal with Drupal. Drupal was great, but it was over kill for my needs. In my case, anything that is over kill, leads to endless fiddling and testing!

In the mean time, you can find the solution to Drupals 30 Item RSS Maximum here: http://drupal.org/node/57569

FCOL: I then downloaded the entire feed with FeedForAll. Saved the feed as an XML file and then uploaded that to WordPress 2.2 using the Import facility and choosing RSS.

The only caveat in the whole process, is that all the posts were imported into the default category (blog) where they should rightfully be I guess. It’s just that I created a category called “old blog” and I wanted them all to go there instead…

FCOL = For Crying Out Loud

Oh an FYI: Any links in any posts under Blog, that are “pre 2007″ probably don’t work! If they do, well that’s nice.

Another FYI: quincy.roycesoftware.com now points to this website, not the old website. Yes, I know about the Google API error. Do I care? no.

written by Easton Royce \\ tags: Random, Support, Tutorials, Wordpress

I really don’t like this current theme. Yes, this totally awesome Spider-Man 3 theme. It looks fantastic, but that’s because every time I add a new post or entry, or plug-in or widget or whatever, I edit the damn theme to show it up right! Eesh. I guess the theme developers didn’t really have nerds like me in mind. Not to mention the edits just to make it work with WordPress 2.2!

You should see the amount of effort it took just to transfer the content from my old website to this fancy smancy new one. I’ll be taking the old site down soon, so I figured now was a good time to get the content moved while I was still thinking about it.

I figure it is going to be time for a new theme soon. I never intended to keep this theme forever, just for the duration of May while the world sees Spider-Man 3. Come June I will be using a different theme and making changes and edits all over again! Hopefully on a more permanent basis.

I guess that is the way it is really. If you want you blog or website to function exactly the way you want it to, instead of just settling with the results it yields by default (regardless of the CMS you use), you really gotta get your hands dirty and edit the code. Otherwise you end up ditching a cool widget, just because the title heading is out of line or miss out on using a cool theme because the page content font is too small. It’s too bad really. I would love a CMS that was just perfect. Where I never had to edit the code.

I guess when it comes down to it, I like editing the code. So who am I to complain?

written by Easton Royce \\ tags: Random

Just something I thought I would share. Lets say you have a computer, and it’s got viruses on, but no anti virus software. You install some anti virus software, and begin to remove viruses. However, no matter how hard you try, so long as an internet connection exists (even if you only reconnect after you believe the viruses are gone), there are more viruses. So, how do you describe this to a complete beginner, that figured installing 5 or 6 anti virus and adware/spyware programs would keep them safe? I came up with the following analogy:

Lets say a criminal broke into your house, while the front door guards were all fighting over who’s shift it is. No matter what you do, you can not get the criminal out of your house, but you have managed to corner the criminal into a room, where you have locked all the doors. However, the window is open.

Some viruses got on your computer, while you had no anti virus protection (because all the programs were fighting for system domination), you sorted this out and got a single anti virus program working. It found out about the viruses, and now all day long, 24/7 you keep getting messages about viruses that have been caught.

So you keep the criminal locked in the room. However, so long as there is oxygen in the room the criminal will stay alive.

So long as you keep connecting to the internet again, the viruses will just keep coming.

Continue reading »

written by Easton Royce \\ tags: Analogies, Antivirus, Beginners, Random

I really love Last.FM! They really do have a way to accommodate just about everyone in every single way. For example, check out the cool album quilt thingy on the sidebar (you might need to scroll down a little). Isn’t it awesome!

One thing is for sure, I can’t have the Spidey them forever, and when the day comes to change… dang it, it’s gonna be a pain! Well, since you are here, you might as well listen to my Recommended Music!

written by Easton Royce \\ tags: Last.FM, Random

So after a coffee with my girl friend and a couple of episodes of xxxHolic, she decided to go to sleep and I decided to come back to play with my new (old) blog! So now I got some ad-sense ads crankin’, bit of a navigation thingy happening here and there, search dooby, calendar, and a few others plug-ins that should assure my further success in this online blogging world. I think I will now use this as my WordPress test site as such, and get rid of my “official test site” as it is just a pain to keep maintaining it, and it’s probably best if I use a live site for testing. That way I can see what plug-ins work with other plug-ins I am already using, not to mention I’m not too concerned if things go offline for a while!

Well thats all from me for now. Need to go get some sleep, got a busy day coming up tomorrow (err today… )

written by Easton Royce \\ tags: Random, Wordpress

Why Warez is Wrong! – Spyware, Adware and More…Why is Warez Wrong?

Warez is wrong for many reasons. Firstly, it is depriving many software developers and companies of rightfully earned money for their own hard work. Software developers spend many hours and many cups of coffee creating software applications and games for you. How would you feel it you put your heart and soul for 3 years straight into a computer application or project, and then found out after it had been released, that there were more illegal copies of it available on the internet and being downloaded, then being sold in a store?

Why is Warez Bad For Your Computer?

Warez sites are driven by the evil’s of the internet. SPAM, SPYWARE, AD-WARE, CRIPPLEWARE, CRAPWARE, JUNKEMAIL, ILLEGAL and ILLICIT MATERIAL. It’s because of all these evils, that these Warez sites are able to survive.

Usually when you access a Warez site, you have to click many buttons, vote for many sites, and….. install many “plug-ins”. The sites them selves download all sorts of tracking bugs and want not on your computer the second you access them, so when you install the plugins as well (otherwise you can’t get the software), your just asking for trouble.

SPAM and JUNKEMAIL

SPAM and JUNKEMAIL are very much an annoyance. They are responsible for more then 65% of the worlds internet traffic and that statistic is continually rising. A valid email address is usually required during the process of obtaining the software, and just because they say they wont sell your email address, means nothing. It just means they’ll pass it on to other companies for free, that will then sell your email address.

If you need to use an email address for something on the internet, but aren’t sure about giving out your real email address, consider a service like Mailinator .

SPYWARE

SPYWARE is software installed on your computer that has no particular use to you, but allows a website to track you and much more.

Want someone to spy on your every move and activity on your computer? Go to a Warez site then, and install any or all of the plug-ins offered. Better still, at the same time, your processing power and hard drive storage will probably be used to better a Warez site somewhere. Whether it be for traffic bandwidth, or the storage of Warez material on your computer! Better still, SPYWARE will provide you with ADS, as soon as you logon to your computer, eliminating the need to start your web browser yourself and find your own ADS.

ADWARE

ADWARE, is not as bad as SPWARE, but is generally just as annoying. ADWARE, is usually bundled along with free software, in order to keep the software free. In some cases this is ok, provided the ADWARE is not invasive, and does not make your computer available for use on the internet.

As with SPYWARE, you should also avoid ADWARE at all costs for best protection.

CRIPPLEWARE

CRIPPLEWARE is software that you download and use for a while, but once it runs out (as its more then likely a trial or demo) it begins to destroy your computer untill you register it or un-install it. CRIPPLEWARE is often in the form of SPYWARE and ADWARE, and could basically be considered as dangerous and offensive as a virus. CRIPPLEWARE in the form or SPYWARE or ADWARE, is usually a peace of software that a Warez site will say that you need to download to your computer in order to be able to access their files. This may very well be the case, however, the integrity of your computer begins to fail straight away. Never install any plug-ins or software from a website that you do not know. Unless it’s from a reputable company like Microsoft (r) or Macromedia (r) then you should veer away from it instantly.

CRAPWARE

CRAPWARE is everything else that could other potentially cause damage and malicious harm to your computer. Stay away from CRAPWARE and all other forms of SPYWARE, CRIPPLEWARE and ADWARE as if they were contaminated with Nuclear Radiation. After too much exposure, and then loss of 4 or 5 university theases’. You’ll wish you never went there.

Why do Warez Sites Have So Much Porn and SPYWARE/AD-WARE/CRIPPLEWARE?

They have all of these in order to pay for their website hosting, bandwidth usage, domain name allocation and various other services. They pay their hosts by having all these terrible software programs forced onto viewers. When the software is accessed, a service fee is payed along the way somewhere, and the hosting service and other services is payed for. The SPYWARE and AD-WARE always gets first time viewers, and since most first time viewers are out for a free lunch, the software always gets used, and the hosts always get paid. See where this is getting? Stop viewing the sites, stop using the software, and the warez sites will have to shutdown. Suddenly the internet becomes a better place to be? Maybe…

ILLEGAL and ILLICIT MATERIAL

This is the gold at the end of the rainbow. The software that you have finally obtained after installing all that nasty software and providing your email address to hundreds of nasty mailing lists, and infecting your computer to the point where you will need to format your PC after you restart when the program has finished downloading.

Having any form of software on your computer that you didn’t pay for (operating systems, applications, games, whatever) is stealing. It doesn’t matter how you got it, or where you got it. If you didn’t pay for it, then you stole it. Maybe not directly, but you stole it.

NOTE: This doesn’t apply to software that is otherwise free

In other words, if you have it, then you are in posession of stolen goods. This is ILLEGAL. If you want the latest and greatest software, then it is in your best interest to purchase it. If you can not afford it, then you can not have it.

PORN IS BAD, WEAPONS ARE BAD, DRUGS ARE BAD. These are the electronic form of ILLICIT materials. If you have them, you are in trouble. If you have them and you are under – aged, then you are even far worse trouble then you think.

The storage of ILLICIT materials on your computer is against the law! We strongly discourage any the storage of any form of ILLEGAL or ILLICIT materials on your computer.

How Can I Make Sure None of This Is On or Happening To My Computer?

Easy.

Install a Good Firewall. Zone Alarm is very popular. You can download the 30 day trial, or the free personal edition. This will ensure you are in control of what access the internet, what is comming in and what is going out. Zone Labs usually has updates for this software on a monthly basis.

Install a good virus scanner. There are many good virus scanners. NOD32-2 is a popular free virus scanner that is updated multiple times a week.

Install a good AD-WARE and SPYWARE Remover. The internets best choice is AD-AWARE . The free version is more the adequate for your everyday needs, and also has multiple updates every week.

Keep a record of the software that gets installed on your computer. If you have children, be careful of the software they may borrow from friends. If you have software on your computer, but you don’t have disk or CD for it, chances are, it’s probably not yours.

By following these steps, and updating your software virus/firewall/AD-AWARE programs regularly, you can ensure that your computer will be well protected while accessing the internet.
In Summary

-:- Warez is wrong and deprives hard workers of their own money.
-:- Warez is bad for your computer due to the amount of SPYWARE, and other bad content that gets onto your computer.
-:- When asked for your email from a site you are unsure about, consider a service like Mailinator.
-:- Beware of Spyware
-:- Beware of AD-WARE
-:- Beware of CRIPPLEWARE
-:- Beware of CRAPWARE
-:- Warez sites use all of these in order to pay for their hosting, bandwidth charges and other services.
-:- Don’t use stolen software on your computer.
-:- Don’t store ILLEGAL and/or ILLICIT materials on your computer.
-:- Use a good virus scanner
-:- Use a good Firewall
-:- Use a good AD-WARE and SPYWARE remover.

written by Easton Royce \\ tags: Beginners, Networking, Random, Support