AnthonyKinson.co.uk

Firstly, gaming is not something i take seriously, however i do like getting the achievements on the XBox 360. Now, achievements are a great way to get people to keep playing a game after they have usually finished doing everything else the game has to offer, Halo 3 being one of the games with the most gamer score up for grabs and the most achievements.

As you may or may not know, the Achievement descriptions can sometimes be a little bit blunt and only contain a short description of what you have to do to obtain this achievement.

A couple of days ago, Me, a friend, and a few of our family members decided to have a few games on Halo 3, we created a party of 8 and joined in a social matchmaking game. All is well, the lobby we was in has a maximum of 16 players, yet we didn’t get matched up with anyone (pay attention to this) . So, there is only us 8 in the game, fair enough, its a social lobby, nothing in there effects any ones rank and so on.

So while were playing, a few of us with live accounts unlocked some achievements… fantastic… or not, because shortly after we were presented with a continuous message popping up telling us our accounts and XBox 360 consoles had been banned from earning experience for 2 weeks. Annoying as hell as we had not done anything wrong.

I created a topic over at Bungie’s forums, and after being greeted by the usually halo 10 year olds with there “hard talk” and “l33t” status, a bit of information finally came out.

Firstly, the system auto bans people who seem to be doing “too well” or benefiting “too much” from a game. Another reason given is that if there are “dead sticks” for example, people not moving, you will get banned.

Now, according to Bungie, me, my friend, a bunch of kids and my friends wife should all be aware of this. They say we should KNOW these rules. My point to them was, how the hell would we know? The impression i got is that everyone is born a Halo geek, and we are all taught the basics of Halo game play when we enter this world.

So all that aside, people with some knowledge and actual intelligence start to comment in the topic i made expressing their opinions, and a few valid points where made. Why would Bungie ban us for playing a family game and doing nothing wrong and effecting nobody, when there are Network manipulators out there, “boosters” and hackers / modders actually changing how the game works.

Answers? no, the topic got closed because “the trolls have come out” (their words) some people speak up, they end the topic and cut of discussion. Way to go Bungie!

They also decided to hide behind the “its in the XBox terms of service” (which apparently everybody with an XBox reads) saying it states you cannot cheat to get achievements. I’m sorry… but where did we cheat? The mythic achievements state that you should do a certain task (for example 5 shotgun kills) on a mythic map, in either ranked or social playlist.

We did this, we was in a social game and we got them legit. No where does it state that you cannot have a game containing all your own friends AND, remember what i said before about not being matched up with anyone else, well, if they didn’t want the achievements to be obtained this way 1. Why make them obtainable in a social playlist, 2. why did we not get matched up with anyone, there was 8 of us in a size 16 playlist with over 6,000 people playing in there.

Now, were not to bothered about not being able to earn experience, we play for fun, not to be respected by a bunch of kids who live for Halo, to be honest, we don’t give a damn. I do care about morals though, which Bungie seem to be lacking.

The fun doesn’t end here though, we decided to play again today, social 8 player again as the kids enjoyed it last time. Again we didn’t get matched up with anyone, and after a few games, guess what? We have a whole bunch of new messages popping up saying our accounts and consoles have now been banned from matchmaking altogether! which means we can no longer play Halo 3 online.

I don’t swear a lot on my blog, but FUCK YOU BUNGIE, seriously, banning us and a bunch of kids for playing a social game, seriously, what the fuck. Bungie seriously need to re think there auto banning, because it takes the piss, if they don’t want us to play like that, or don’t want people to go the toilet in the middle of a game, they should boot players out of the game who don’t move for so long, or quite simply MATCH OTHER PLAYERS UP.

No, that’s not the case though, Bungie would rather ban innocent people playing their game because they themselves lack the intelligence to make a system that fucking works properly.

Fuck the hackers and manipulators and people cheating in ranked matches effecting other people, totally ban a bunch of innocent kids having fun and harming no one.

I’m seriously starting to think those “l33t” 10 year olds from the forums i was talking about earlier actually run Bungie Studios because as far as I’m concerned, we didn’t cheat, we played a feature that is openly available to every single person, there was no detailed information on how to get these mythic achievements and i don’t know of ANY other game who bans you from playing it because you got an achievement in a different way to how the developers intended. If you ask me, if the achievements are not meant to be obtained this way, its a bug in the game, which leaves only Bungie to blame.

Anyway, rant over, i finished the game, i have all the achievements, i have no reason to play it again and i WILL be getting my money back for the game. Only reason we played it was for a bit of fun, the kids at Bungie though have taken the fun out of it. Its a video game and that’s all these is to it, they seem to think its some big important religious icon or some crap.

Oh and a bit of advice for anyone else who has any complaints they want to put forward to Bungie… don’t bother, they don’t care, chances are they will find a way to ignore you, cut your topic off or whatever and hide behind some technical crap from the XBox live terms of service which no one reads anyway.

Here’s the whole topic if you want to check it out http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=40340052

Until next time people

With 2009 over, its time to focus on the plans for this year, in regards to my work, there’s a lot of stuff to come. Firstly, the massive IP.Mail application, which so far is proving to work amazingly well and has had a lot of support. I’m hoping to have the first public Beta version of IP.Mail released by the end of January.

Bouncy Radio Center will also see a new version coming out, and more importantly, a new module which will allow for people with dedicated servers to run and manage their own SHOUTcast server right from within the radio center itself.

Bouncy XBox LIVE will also have some cool updates, this time for the Forum Achievements which people have been awaiting for a while.

For BouncyServers, we shall be soon doing an updated on our licensing software in order to have everything managed from 1 client area instead of the 2 client areas we currently have (for hosting services and licensing) this should make everything much easier for everybody.

More updates will be coming soon, so check back!

Anthony

Design is something i enjoy doing, and the excitement and overwhelming pride that takes over me when i complete eye catching, good looking designs comes second only to when i pull off an app that i thought i couldn’t achieve.

With this in mind, i have decide to embark on the skinning journey for IPB 3.0, skin choices at the moment are very limited as its still early days for Invisions fantastic new software, and with that in mind i am working on 7 skins with different theme’s all based around the 7 deadly sins.

The 7 sins idea came to me a while ago but i never put it into effect, reason being IPB 2.3 was going to be replaced, and the determination to put so much effort into creating skins that were going to be no use in a couple of months seemed like a waste, so i waited.

Starting off the themes is the 7 Sins (Pride) skin. When looking at it you may wonder what does this skin have in relation to pride. Well, the skin is based on BouncyBootlegs and BouncyServers design, something 2 sites in which i am very proud of, so this skin is more related to my own personal pride. both sites have come along way in the last 5 years, especially BouncyServers, with a bigger client database than ever and more and more people seeing the benefits of hosting with bouncyservers i think it is definatly something i should be proud of.

As usual you can see the development in progress of these skins, at time of this writing the default skin on the dev forum is the pride skin, which i am still finishing off, but you ca register and comment on the skin and leave any comments in the shoutbox, or here on my blog!

The default skin will be replaced with the next skin i work on when it starts so you can visit at any time and be sure to see the current skin that’s being worked on.

http://dev.bouncyservers.co.uk is the link you will need, or you can check out the screenshot below

So i have had OS 3.0 on my phone for a few days and was unable to setup internet tethering because o2 did not offer the service until today. However, yesterday there tethering information page came online along with their prices for the service.

So first of all let me explain to you what Internet Tethering is. It basically allows you to connect your mobile phone to you PC or Laptop via USB or Bluetooth  and then allows you to use your iPhone as a modem, providing internet to the device its connected too. Pretty much like a mobile broadband dongle does.

Now, anyone with an iPhone from o2 will be aware that all contracts come with unlimited data over 3G and from WIFI Hotspots, so there is no need to purchase additional internet to use your phone tethered right? wrong!

This is another services in which is provided solely for the provider to make money.

The image to the left shows the prices o2 are charging to use the internet tethering feature on you iPhone. Now the problem with this is that it actually costs o2 or apple NOTHING for us to use Internet Tethering yet they are charging us for more data to use with tethering, when we already have unlimited data plans!

Now, i also have the fortune of owning a Nokia N95 and over the last year, when i have needed an internet connection on my laptop, i have put my Sim card in my Nokia N95, USB connected it to my laptop and launched Nokia PC Suite.

Now Nokia PC Suite comes with a program called “One Touch Access” as seen in the below image. This allows your laptop or PC to connect to the internet using your Nokia N95 as a modem and using your phones 3G or in my case 3.5G connection as the sources.

Now last year i phoned o2 and asked them if my laptop using my iPhones 3G data would cost me anything, to which they replied “No, you have unlimited data plan, you will not be charged for using data”

So, Nokia have provided this feature for years, and now Apple have finally jumped on the bandwagon giving it a new name of “Internet Tethering” and forcing operators to charge for the service… yes, FORCING.

Yesterday i phoned o2 with a few questions, first was why my iPhone would send MMS but not receive them, answer being i have os3.0 early and o2 have not provisioned the MMS receiving yet. when i questioned them about tethering, they said its something they have to charge for as its in their agreement with Apple. So the prices as shown above or just ridiculous, i have unlimited data, yet i have to purchase extra data just to use for tethering, when the data is provided the exact same way! Over 3G, so why should i have to pay extra for it.

Now, like me, many other o2 iPhone customers already spend a minimum of £45 a month on their contract with o2. with the smallest tethering package, that price will jump up to £60 a month and only allowing you 3GIG of internet for tethering!

The iPhone is a great device, but they are starting to annoy me big time with the charging for services which have been free on other devices for years! I really don’t understand how they can justify it or how they can charge you such a high price to use a feature that is absolutely free on other devices.

Slowly backing away from the iPhone, and i can see myself Jail Breaking it now just so i can use the device i paid for how i want to use it, not how Apple force me to use it!

Summer is here and what better way to spend a hot summers day than in a swimming pool. Its a very simple process. Set up the pool, fill it and jump in.

Well, we got an easy set pool… a massive one, so you would think it was easier. For the people who don’t know what an east set pool is, it usually involves no construction, just a inflatable ring round the top, because air rises in water, the force of the water raises the sides, meaning you have a solid set pool with minimum effort.

Below is a picture similar to the one we have just bought.

Its actually identical, except ours has a white ring around the top, and a different filter pump. Now, your probably wondering what the fire brigade has to do with this?

Well, the first time i filled it, with a regular outdoor garden hose, its took a whole day, and then some. kids were a bit disappointed, so the next day came along, and we took the cover off it, done.

Problem is the time it takes to fill, after so long the water becomes manky, the filter can only clean it so much.

Now, i was told that the fire brigade will fill pools for you, for a price of course. So i gave them a ring.

First of all the receptionist didn’t know anything about them filling pools and put me through to the fire chief, he said to me that they do fill them but its quite expensive. at this point I’m thinking hmm, maybe charge £20 – £30 so the chief said he was going to get the price list, and then he said it, the price for me to have the fire brigade come to my house and fill the pool.

£284 per hour

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…

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shocking right, £284 for the fire brigade to fill the pool in the above picture.

The weekend just gone has been absolutely unbelievable, so many problems with company’s trying to over charge me for things.

First of all, our data center, we ordered are new server, which was supposed to take 24 hours to get provisioned, and now being more than 48 hours later i am told that it has not been setup because of an outstanding invoice. Thing is, we have no outstanding invoices, and telling them this we are told over and over again to email there system admin’s and so on, which just results in us having to repeat everything over and over and sitting around for hours waiting for email responses. We just this minute however asked to speak to a manager, who was very helpful indeed, he had already reviewed the situation and had the whole thing resolved in a minute or two. still, 3 days of messing around.

Next on the list is Rapidshare, somehow my Rapidshare “Rapidpoints” had been stolen, and used to order a new Rapidshare account, when i checked the logs it appears that a server in Chicago was responsible for redeeming / stealing my points. Now, they responded to me informing me a phishing websites, which is what i would expect them to do, fact is, i use a download manager to download, so my login information is never entered manually into any website, and when i login to my premium zone, i manually type in the Rapidshare URL, so i know that I’m entering them into the correct site. again, i reported this on Saturday, and i only just got my points back today.

Third and finally is o2, after my recent article about the £655 phone bill a lady on the phone told me that i would not have to pay a bill this month and that it will be sorted out for me, however, checking my bill i notice i still have a £655 phone bill, which is not a good sign, and in my experience, things are never resolved as easy as they first appear to be, so its probably going to result in more phone calls to o2, more explaining of the situation and more frustration for me.

Also in regards to the recent article about the tool Ben Wizz, he sent more emails to our support department insisting that the cancel button doesn’t exist and if it is there now, that we have just put it there. what a joke, he also continued to refer to me as a “Fat Tw@” who eats nothing but McDonalds and has a sl*g of a girlfriend, which couldn’t be further from the truth, still though, it shows exactly how immature this guy is, and the fact he’s been caught is getting to him. Also I’ve had a few messages from people who are hosted with him, SHOUTcast mainly, I’d recommend you move to a different company pretty swiftly and cancel any payments you make to him, apparently he uses a MSN Address he “hacked” and a hacked PayPal account.. again, he’s full of crap, we can all be hackers, all you have to do is create a new hotmail account under a completely random name, for example, John Smith, then add all your buddies, and say “hey its ant, i just hacked this john smiths msn, how cool am i, now, send me £100 or i will hack yours” seriously? get real.

Anyhow, this guys stupidity has provided many laughs during a frustrating weekend.

don’t forget to comment and let me know how your bank holiday weekend has been.

So today at the office has been rather amusing, so I’m going to tell you all about it.

We had a client who’s name was Ben Swift, and he had some sort of grudge against another website in which we host and was attempting to DoS (Denial of Service) attack this site totally un-aware that it was hosted at the same place he has his radio.

Now, Mr Swift thinks he is all high and mighty and that he was hidden behind a proxy whist attempting to make his DoS attacks using lame downloaded “n00bie” software. He was very much mistaken.

Bouncyservers and its data center consist of a lot of technically advanced minds, and a simple IP check on the attempted attacks pointed to him, meaning i was able to identify him instantly, now, Mr Swift says he didn’t live where he actually lives, told me he was in an army barracks and there was nothing we can do about it and we cannot trace him.

Wrong again Mr Swift, our data center take this stuff very seriously, and they were able to track him no problem, he says were looking in the wrong place because he used a proxy, and as far as I’m aware, Blue Yonder don’t provide proxy servers, and if he WAS using a proxy, it would of been much harder for us to trace him, the fact we knew it was him and traced it to him proves we know what we need to know to take legal action.

Anyway, he still persists on telling us he cant be traced because he signed up to our services with a fake address and registers domains with a fake address, fact is, we have his ISP information, and have reported it to them for malicious activity.

Now, onto the funny part.

Mr Swift thinks he is a big bad hacker guy who cant be traced, and he sent us this email.

ben swift
Client
25/05/2009 17:01

Hi if there was a botton with the work CANCEL on it i would have clicked it a long time ago so stop been stupid noobies that you are and delete my accounts because i am not paying for your shitty services any more useles crap lol

Now, he’s apparently super intelligent and is able to avoid our technical team, yet he is unable to spell and types like a child, and for someone who is MORE than internet savvy, how was he not able to see this?

As you can see, the cancellation button is there, he was unable to find it, which to me, proves his intelligence.

Also as i mentioned to him in this support ticket, how are our services “shitty” when we were able to prevent his malicious attempts at an attack, trace him and protect the clients site he was trying to attack?

Quite simply, were not

Now, as for Mr Swift, he will find that his address and name will be blacklisted from ISP’s and find himself unable to get a fixed line internet connection, and if it turns out he is in a Army barracks, well, he’s going to be in some SERIOUS trouble for using a military internet connection for malicious activities, that’s the type of stuff that can cause a war if attacking the wrong place. Now, i know some of you reading this know Mr Swift, so please, feel free to laugh at him all you like for being so retarded thinking he is so savvy and intelligent. Turns out his big mouth has done nothing but get him into trouble and help build our case against him.

We actually spent around an hour today laughing at this guy whilst we were building the new servers, true entertainment indeed.

So, were coming up to the end of the month, and for many people this means there phone bills amongst lots of other things are due to be paid. For me, it marks the start of another long and boring phone call with o2 about my phone bill.

Now, i have been with o2 for years, prices are fair and never used to have any problems, that however has been a thing of the past for the last year. Something to look back on and think “ahh, remember the good old days when you used to just pay your bill without any hassle”.

Now, for the problem. Every month I’m forced to phone o2 because they cut off my phone for no reasons, mess up my bolt ons, or start charging me for things they shouldn’t be. Well, I’m sad to say, this month they messed up BIG time.

Mobile phone tariffs can be quite expensive, for me, i choose a £45 a month tariff on the iPhone, seemed to be the best deal for me for what i use. Now, £45 doesn’t sound like much, and its defiantly something that is achievable each month for me without any problems, and this is why i choose the tariff i am on.

So this morning, 7:25am i get out of bed, check my phone and notice i have a new email. It’s from o2 and its my phone bill. I wasn’t to worried about my bill this month as I’d hardly been using my phone, but upon reading the email i found myself being smacked in the face with what can only be described as an imaginary wet fish. Let me show you the email i got.

Dear mr Anthony Kinson

You can now take a look at your O2 bill for 18/05/09 online. Your total bill for this month is £655.28. Please arrange to pay this by the date detailed on your bill. Cheques being cheques, they do take a few days to clear so if you could write your mobile phone number or O2 account number on the back of the cheque and send it in time to allow for this, that would be great. Alternatively, why not pay with your debit or credit card by using the ‘make a payment’ option from your online bill, or call customer service and select the ‘billing and payments’ option.

Now at first I’m thinking what the hell is going on here, maybe the email is just wrong, or maybe my phone was connected to the internet and downloaded some stuff while i was asleep, or maybe i accidentally dialled a number. At this point i decided to logon to my o2 account on my laptop. Here’s what i found. (click to enlarge)

As you can see, that is pretty messed up, first problem is my tariff has been listed 4 times. one is a deduction, then I’ve been charged £555 for my tariff, and then i have been charged again twice with 2 lesser amounts. Now i don’t know what the hell is going on with o2, but all they seem to do is mess up my bill, more so this month than ever before, and this isn’t just the first problem, before they updated there site, i had loads of problems logging into my account. Apparently it was my browser, or should i say, the browser on my phone, my PC, my laptop, my mums pc, my friends laptop, apparently my account was fine, and the problem was with all of these computers, despite the fact my mum could login to her o2 account on all of them. Problem is down to there poor coding in there websites, its pretty much as simple as that and anyone who has been into an o2 store will know that there computers are always down.

So, the next step for me is to now phone them, have them fix it, which will probably result in my phone being cut off like last time, they told me not to pay the bill so it could be regenerated and to pay double the following month, 2 days later, my phones cut off for not paying the bill. Crazy, the whole o2 system is a mess and i seriously think they should re-think about there system layout.

If anyone else is on o2 and has had similar problems, or recurring problems with o2, comment on this article and share your story. Would be interesting to read what other problems people are having.

Everybody works in one way or another, we all have jobs to do, and for the last few days, I’ve been dreading getting out of bed for a few reasons. First of all, because I’ve not been eating properly or getting much sleep at all over the last few weeks which is leaving me a bit short in the old energy department, and secondly, because i know I’m going to have to stare at a screen full of code for hours, and that being the reason for the first.. erm.. reason..

Seriously though, I have just spent around 8 hours finishing off the new Radio Center Sidebar Hook, and why, because it’s a long process meeting standards.

Hooks for example come bundled in 1 xml file, this file has to contain language strings, template bits, settings, PHP code, help files, database queries and so on.

Now the radio sidebar hook only contains 1 template bit, 12 settings, 24 language strings, 1 PHP file and 1 help file and its taken me all this time to complete it.

Saying that, the sidebar module uses the RAJAX module and has some JavaScript coding in it also, so I’ve had to add some stuff to the RAJAX module to auto update certain elements of the sidebar. Still, most people will look at the sidebar and think nothing of it, its small, it doesn’t look too complicated, and in reality, its taken hours and hours to complete.

The fun doesn’t end there though, oh no. I’ve still got loads of other bits to complete, the main board panel hook for starters, its almost done, i just cant decide if i like the look of it or not, mainly because of the padding with the default IPB table class, however i did write a class called “RadPad” specifically for the radio, but i haven’t decided if i want to use it or not yet.

Then there’s the global radio bar hook, which i haven’t even started yet.. HA! fun times!

As far as the actual radio center goes lets see, the History page is completed, done, dusted, the schedule page is done on the public side, but I’m not happy with the way scheduled entries are laid out, so that’s probably going to have an overhaul. DJ List, not started, Downloads, not started, Linking, Not done but that’s an easy one, Stats, done, but not finished.

Mentioning the stats, i forgot to post on my blog about them, so i will write an article shortly about the new stats features.

Despite all the work i have done so far, completion still seems a long way away. I’ve literally been getting up, working on the radio center, going to bed, getting up, working on the radio center, going to bed.

Time off today i think, but saying that, I’m to anxious to get it finished i end up going back to it, telling myself I’ll just do a little edit here an there and before i know it am full on writing modules and crap.

Anyways, enough ranting from me, I’m gonna go eat.

Well not so long ago i decided my trusty old PC could do with an update. I bought this PC around 4 years ago. Compaq Presario SR1609UK, and it cost me about £400 for just the tower. Back then it was pretty good, Sempron 3000+ processor, 1GIG DDR Ram ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset and the motherboard and I/O was the most appealing. It had 8 in 4 card reader on the front as well as 3 USB, Mic, Headphones, Line In Sockets and a 1349 Firewire port. The back was just as appealing, 4 USB, 1 Firewire and all the usually stuff. The motherboard itself had PCI-E x16 which was good, 4 PCI slots, and 4 RAM Sockets.

Now, if all that meant nothing to you, it basically meant that i could upgrade to future technologies easily, for example, if i wanted more ram, plenty of space, if i wanted better graphics, no problem.

Anyway, over the last 4 years it had some MAJOR upgrades, for starters 3GIG ram was slapped inside, a Sapphire Radeon x1650 Pro 256mb graphics card, and Avermedia Hybrid TV+FM HD TV Card and a Creative Sound Blaster LIVE! 24-bit sound card.. nice, was great for ages, even upgraded to vista, loved it.

Then the problem struck, applications were getting more complex and more demanding, games were getting super heavy on the processor, an there was the problem, the processor. The version of motherboard i had didn’t use the AM2 socket for processors, it meant that getting a upgraded processor would bring little improvement and then it was hard to find a processor to fit my socket.

So now we have arrived at 2 weeks ago, my pc became stupidly slow with the programs i need to use, i mean it was taking me just over 2 hours to convert and burn a DVD (take note of this). Now i looked high and low for weeks, trying to find a suitable upgrade, and then i found it.

AMD Phenom x4 9650 True-Quadcore
High end MSI Motherboard
4GIG DDR2 800 RAM

i saved my money, i ordered, paid, and waited patiently every morning for the delivery man to arrive.

When it finally arrived, i installed a 64-bit copy of vista, and the first thing i done was run the windows rating test. here’s the result.

This was a major improvement, especially considering my laptop which is only about 2 years old and cost £500 has a score of about 2.4. Now, as you can see from that score above, gaming graphics and the hard disk are letting me down, but this isn’t surprising considering I’m using the same graphics card i mentioned above which is now quite old, and I’m using a 4 year old IDE hard disk. Graphics I’m not to fussed about, new games still run on above normal settings fine, take The Last Remnant for example, this runs good with high textures and everything set on high providing shadows are off, shadows seems to cause a major drop in frame rate, but again, I’m not to fussed, i have an Xbox for playing games. So my next step really is to get a new SATA hard drive.

Now performance, OUTSTANDING is all i can really say, remember my old 2 hours+ DVD burning time, well i tested this a few days ago, the same DVD now only took me 18 minutes to convert and burn! My processor never seems to reach above 50% usage, in fact, the only time i ever got it to around 70% was when i was rendering an Adobe After Effects CS4 HD Project, and even then i think that was slowed down because my hard disk cant write data as fast as my processor can produce it.

So, if anyone is thinking about updating there PC’s Quad-Core is definitely the answer, absolutely awesome.

And with that, if anyone is interested, I’m selling my old motherboard, processor and 3GIG DDR Ram, runs great for normal day to day tasks, I’m a bit of a power user and most of the programs i use require high end CPU’s, anyway if your interested just let me know.