Linux

Why I hate Blizzard and Diablo 3.

/ / Leave a Comment

I have never been a fan of WoW but I enjoyed playing Diablo II and Starcraft. I once enjoyed playing Diablo 3 but Blizzard doesn’t want to allow me to do that anymore. Sure I paid for the game and I only play the game single player but I don’t own the game and Blizzard has made that painfully apparent.

You see like many Blizzard customers I have had my account compromised  At the time I had an 11 character password and I’m not sure how it was cracked but it was. It seems like it is a common issue for Blizzard Entertainment customers. So I took the steps on their website to recover my account and even had progress automatically rolled back on my account. After I took all their steps I also added an authenticator on my cell phone to act as a second defense for my account. I now had a 16 character random name, number, symbol password (boy I hope that is long enough). After I did all that was my actual Diablo 3 game unlocked? Not at all. I have still been denied access to the game I paid for. The game I only want to play on my own and not online.

I have submitted another help ticket but my response from “Game Master Ryavale” was to perform again the exact same steps that did not help me in the first place. Those steps would include rolling back the progress on my game again, an action you can only perform three times.

At this point I am surrendering my account to Blizzard. I’ll play something that I don’t have to worry about how their server security works to play on my own. I guess that means more money for the Humble Bundle guys along with the charities and developers involved there.

Why I hate Blizzard and Diablo 3. Read Post »

The WordPress and Debian Experiment

/ / Leave a Comment

Prior to moving, my wife expressed an interest in having her blog on a simpler platform. I previously had it on a Drupal 6 installation which she often found the admin panel to be over whelming. I was self hosting my blog, her blog and a few other sites on an Ubuntu 10.04 LTS machine prior to the move. The server was in a 12 bay server case with and AMD Processor. I felt the hardware was a little larger and more power hungry than I needed for a home web and file server. Taking that all into account I decided to reinstall on an old Aspire One Netbook that I had.  

I decided this time around that I would use Debian as the Operating System. While Ubuntu LTS had been good to me, I run Ubuntu on my desktop and I wanted to diversify slightly. For the blogging platform I decided to go with WordPress as it has a reputation of meeting my Wife’s requirement of simple. I decided to “eat my own dog food” and I migrated my blog over to WordPress also.  Since WordPress is FLOSS software it also still makes me happy on that end of things.

The move hasn’t been all that simple. First was the hurdle of migrating blog content. Then there were the hurdles of setting up Plugins. I recently had a Google+ Plugin go haywire and repost a bunch of old content to my Google+ stream which I had to clean up. So far my wife seems to like having an Android app she can post from and I think she is happier with her blog.

If you know of any must have WordPress Plugins, please let me know about them in the comments. I would love trying a few things out.

The WordPress and Debian Experiment Read Post »

CyanogenMod 10 On My HTC EVO LTE

/ / Leave a Comment

Anyone that knows me understands that I can’t sit with a stock Android device for long. So far I have had a Barnes and Noble Nook Color that I rooted the first night of owner ship and installed CM7 as soon as the community ported over the code to it. I later Owned an LG Optimus S and I rooted it and installed a custom recovery and ROM. I went with CM7 on that device as I enjoyed CyanogenMod on my Nook and after trying other ROMs on my Optimus, I found myself longing for the tweaks and style that the CyanogenMod team provides.

Last August I upgraded to an HTC Evo LTE. I decided to go with that as opposed to a Samsung S3 due to my brother having one and the fun of working on the same phone and because I liked the hardware of the EVO. It looked and felt like it was really well built.

After getting my EVO I immediately rooted it using the files and directions at this thread on XDA:

 How to Root/Unroot HTC Evo 4G LTE! [Windows/Mac/Linux][One-Click][<=1.22.651.1]

I then waited until this month to root because most of the mature ROMS available were Sense based. If you are unfamiliar with HTC Sense it really gets in the way of an enjoyable Android experience. The biggest issues being the limited multitasking, app associations defaults being messed up and the camera refocusing constantly while I took videos or pictures. I wanted to get as far away as I could to Sense.

So this morning I prepared my phone for loading a custom ROM by first achieving S-Off with LazyPanda. The information on the Unlimited.IO website made the process very easy. As a note my phone was on Hboot 1.12 (I never upgraded my phones software). Others with an Hboot higher than that will need to use HTC Dev Unlock to install a custom rom. With HTC Dev Unlock a person can do most everything S-Off can but it takes a few more steps.

After achieving S-Off I installed a custom recovery. For this I went the easy route of downloading the GooManager App and installing Team Win Recovery Project (TWRP) through that. More information about TWRP can be found at this XDA thread:

 [RECOVERY][EVO4GLTE] TWRP 2.2.2.0 with on-screen keyboard!

So at that point my bootloader was unlocked and I had a custom recovery installed. I was then ready to install a ROM. At this point I went to the CM10 thread on XDA. Reading the comments it seemed Jelly Bean for the EVO was stable enough for my use. Your opinion or results may differ so please read the thread there. I downloaded the zip file for CM10 along with a separate zip for Google Apps. I then backed up my applications with Titanium Backup. This made some setup later easier. I then rebooted into recovery and another backup in TWRP. You can’t have too many backups! I then did a factory reset, cleared cache and installed the zip. After resetting the phone kept booting into recovery. I ended up flashing the rom three separate times before it loaded properly. I honestly don’t know what made the difference. After successfully loading CM10 I recovered my apps using Titanium. One of the individuals in the Freenode IRC chat for #htc-evo-4g-lte recommended clearing Dalvik Cache after loading my apps so I did that. So far everything has been running great and my phone is looking much happier!

CyanogenMod 10 On My HTC EVO LTE Read Post »

Barnes & Noble drops price of Nook with GlowLight e-reader by $20

/ / Leave a Comment

Barnes & Noble has cut the price of its popular Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight e-reader by $20.  The competition from the launch of Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite, which will start shipping in October is obviously what caused the shift.

 

The Nook with GlowLight, slashed to $119 from $139, is now the same price as the Kindle Paperwhite, which Amazon introduced earlier this month. Target and Walmart stores now list the e-reader at the reduced price.

It’s a smart move for Barnes & Noble considering the interest people have shown in Amazon’s flagship e-reader. While I have been a fan of the NookColor the strong competition from Amazon makes me wonder if Barnes & Noble can continue competing in the ereader arena.

 

Barnes & Noble drops price of Nook with GlowLight e-reader by $20 Read Post »