They are a pan in the arse. Who the hell ever comes up with these must be a real ass hole. Because yeah people are really going to click dodgy links that are spammed millions of times all over sites in comments, forum posts, guestbooks, and any other scripts that allow user interaction.

I had the same problem on my old forum, whereby spam bots would sign up an account and post lame links, usually inappropriate ones all over the board a lot, they even bypass captcha images and stuff. My method to solve this was to create an extra field required to register in which you had to basically type the numbers 9 to 1 in the field. Seeing as how the bot scripts picked this up as an extra profile field and not a captcha or anti spam image they just put the usual crap in their (usually filled the field with "google" or something like that) and as it was a required field they could not pass validation.

With this script I enabled comments, not because i give a rats arse about what anyone might say but because I expect complaints. Captcha is enabled but bots can bypass that, block words and blocked IP addresses etc are enabled but today i come on to find 40 trackback comments all advertisements for gambling sites from the same IP, that all bypassed captcha, flood control amongst other spam blocking methods.

Why the hell do people use this. The online world was a great invention, until idiots, fraudsters, ass holes, amongst other people decided to come to it and abuse it.


Looks like I will be making some script modifications soon to fix this problem.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there was a level 36 geekoid noobie in town talking a load of crap and making really lame insults and stuff. Bob and I bumped into him the other day. I had switched to DRK which is currently and probably always will be a low level job, we were getting some low level EXP at Ghelsba, and the geekoid was there. He kept sending /tells saying "hahahahaha". I replied with ?s asking what was so funny. He proceeded to follow us everywhere around the place spamming /wave at us. Which as we all know spamming is a reportable offence so his bad if the GMs tell him off. Anyway he does this for a while then says "you don't remember me". I replied with "sure, you're that geek from town selling firewood". he carried on spamming wave and then a few minutes later he said it again. I was like... "i just said, I remember you". Then he wandered off saying don't ever make fun of me again. So me being well the person I am wasn't going to let some ignorant nerds lame attempt at acting tough on the internet scare me (cause being waved to is just oh so scary). I sent a /shout saying "q u e e r" and he came back and proceeded to spam the wave again. After having fun with him getting him stuck in places he'd obviously never been and stuff we were getting bored. Then he walked off again saying "if you ever make fun of me again I'll get my friends to do that to you".

At this point my only reply was "sounds fun". Seriously what the hell.... the geek spams /wave at us and threatens to get his "friends" to follow us everywhere and do it (bet they wouldn't follow us quite everywhere) and hat we are supposed to be scared right? Well on the internet there is that many nerds especially in game, you tend not to criticize as much but seriously man that is just LAME! LAME! LAME! Guy needs to grow up, get a life, or at least learn how to piss people off properly, because "/wave" just doesn't do it for me. As for pissing people off, heh the guys gonna get burned if he wants to play that game, it's something that Evilbob and myself do...well let's just say better than anyone. Seriously makes me think of GAM but that's another story.

On another note about noobs, there's been more folks camping on top of us, heck one person even sent me a tell asking if I wanted to party with them. When I already had a level synch icon above my head, was right in front of them, and if they would have checked the search would have realised I was the party leader.

Too many noobs, we all start somewhere right? we all begin at the bottom of the food chain, we were all new once, but that's no excuse for stupidity and lameness. **** Noobs.

Paladin this Paladin that. It's a nice job in game ok. But over-rated. I definitely prefer it to Ninja but as I'm sure everyone has come across at least one of them; there is always some Paladin out there who think they're so damn good.

After recently reading The Noob Comic A particular part made me laugh, although as a whole its hilarious, the part about Paladins is funny.

Seen in Episode 55 and Episode 56 I came up with my own adaptation below.

CLICK HERE: paladins.png (PNG Image, 600×464 pixels)

(Image was too large to be imported here)

Since I can't really think of much to say right now, I thought I'd let you in on a little known secret. General Gadalar is really Michael Jackson.




Evidence!

Well I got my Sandy Rank 6 last night at long last. The Shadow Lord finally choked on my Polearm and died. /cheer

The main problem was that when it put up its physical resistance paling we had very few options. Now as much as we (ok, mostly Evilbob) were beating the hell out of it. Once it becomes physical resistant I could do nothing and Bob could cast Banish which isnt enough as while that's happening he'd kick the crap out of us. So we enlisted the help of Creden from MountainDew LS. He came as SMN75 subbed WHM and kept us alive as well as had his avatars do some magic damage to SL while he was physical resistant. Which kept us alive and got over that hump. So then we (yet again, mostly Evilbob) could kick the living hell out of it. And we won. So I got my Rank 6. Maybe someday I will catch up wit Evilbob and be a Rank 10... someday. Now It's on to that pickle fight..... fun...not.

Either way, I finally got rid of that hideous [5] next to my name.

Lately I've been coming across a lot (more than usual) of players who are just dumb. As expected there are always new players who don't know what they're doing. But many of these are high level, or have been playing the game for a while now. Who just still don't seem to know the basics of the game, amongst these are that you don't steal mobs from right under peoples noses (its not like they were NMs either), don't use /shout for conversations with people right in front of you, and don't be a douche is always a good one.

It seems as though they're on the increase and its not like all of them or even most of them are new players either.

Had one person stealing mobs from right under my nose the past few days at a camp, and I mean right under my nose, as in they were right in front of me and i was getting my weapon out to attack them and someone vokes or ranges them. Just wanders into our camp and steals them like that. And I'm pretty sure I saw that same person in besieged just after this. Thats pretty dumb.

Then there was this guy, who was only about level 20 something so I wasn't too hard on him. He was shouting his bazaar in Sandy, advertising "good stuff" which basically he just had a bazaar full of very low level shields. Then I said there was no good stuff on his bazaar and he starts /shout ing stuff at me when I was right in front of him. Amongst his ramblings was about how we needed gil more than him (although Bob was on 75DRG with expensive equip on, and I was on 54 DRG with decent equip on too, and he was a mid 20s guy with rubbish stuff on), he also mentioned a few really lame jokes at us, and then proceeded to try and insult us in hose half baked geek-ass English-Japanese sentences (or Anglo-Japanese) as I call it. You know what I mean, the kind that you get a bunch of internet nerds, who want to learn japanese but cant be bothered to learn japanese properly so lean English-Japanese and call you things like a "Baka" which i think means idiot (he spelt it wrong too) and despite them not being Japanese or even being able to spell it properly, speak it properly or even write it traditionally. People like this i consider to be really sad and lame, and to try to use it in an MMO made by Japs and where a large proportion of the server population is Japanese too. I wasn't the only one who thought he was lame, other people were taking digs at him for his rubbish Anglo-Japanese and his general noobish conduct. He ran off eventually, maybe he realised how lame he was, but I've seen that same guy around bazaaring or at least shouting it for months now, and they still behave noobish in-game. I am by no means an elitist, we all have to start somewhere, but to start picking fights with and out of nowhere start insulting people 2-3 times his level who have played the game a hell of a lot longer than he has, and have by no means given them reason to.... That's not cool man.

And over the last few weeks I have seen a lot more Noobs around than usual, it is expected but not on this scale, makes you want to switch servers. All in all, the problem with the internet is some nerd can mouth off at the other end, and there's not yet been invented a way to reach my hand through the screen and smack them upside the head. When someone invents this, I will shake their hand.

It occurs to me that on ODIN server, Every time you find a good levelling spot, where nobody else or very few people come to level people will pour in.

For example many months ago Evilbob and myself find a decent location for levelling between 12-23 people visited the area occasionally but never seemed to level there. Somewhere down the line suddenly everyone started going there to level, it's not like it was a new area it's been there since the game opened.

Then recently taking advantage of level sync we find a location where by if one of us uses a job at that levels area and the other syncs to it, we can get over 10k per hour in exp duoing. So we think good good, but suddenly after going there regularly more level sync parties come along and start stealing our turf. Heck most the time they camp right on top of us and steal mobs from right in front of us. Bastards. Makes you want to turn to MPKing.

I mean it's common knowledge that it's bad manners to camp right on top of people, but bringing a party and then taking mobs from right in front of people in a small area where mobs don't spawn fast enough, thee people should be shot.


Not to mention just how sucky some of these people are, the other day I see a party of four with decent equip get killed by a local NM. Whereas not so long before Bob and myself beat this NM on jobs that were a few levels lower than theirs were, just the two of us. They weren't new players either. And its not like out setup was great, as I said earlier we were just leveling low level jobs and stuff so the jobs we were on at the time weren't the best ones in the world.

And then later we see a party of level 5s with a PL...... I mean getting from 1 to 10 solo without a PL is easy to do in 1 - 2 hours on most jobs. with a PL even quicker, and a party that's just dumb. Especially since given the lack of hit rate in the party it would have taken them longer to level in that area than it would to solo in normal areas. People are becoming incompetent on the server, no wonder I've gone of joining parties.

If folks like this had brains, they'd be dangerous.

So.... yesterday we head out on a train to Stafford, to pick up something from Argos (we got sick off Cannock Argos).

The National Rail website says that a train to Stafford will leave Landywood at 11.43. So we got there and as expected the train was a bit late.

The ticket guy asks us where we wanted to go, I said "Stafford" and he told me the train doesn't go to Stafford, every other train does but the 11.43 doesn't (**** you National Rail liars) So we end up getting off in Rugeley Town. We decide to have a look around town until the next train comes along. So after waiting about 50 minutes we head back to the train station to get the train and it just departs before we get back. Why a train that has never been on time in several years chooses to be on time the one time I actually turn up 1 minute late i don't know.

So we eventually decide we will go back to tow for a bit, we picked up a few things and came back to get the train home. It was too late to go to Stafford at this point as the kids would be home from school soon and we can't leave them an empty flat to go back to.

So we get back and I just felt like ranting about how stupid trains are in this country. And why Centro have changed their name to London Midland I don't know. London has nothing to do with The Midlands.

At least I got some new tools and some duct tape out of the journey. Long live duct tape.

BT easy? Not if you're a BT customer, despite my numerous quarrels with British Telecom this one isn't actually in regards to my own phone and broadband line.

So the phone rings, its Sue downstairs having recently upgraded from dial up to broadband she needs a hand figuring things out because BT's customer support is somewhat lacking in the support department. So I say "sure I'll fix it".

She's got the new BT HUB 2.0, I wanted one of these but BT are too cheap to send me one so I'm stuck with the older model.

Now thinking "2.0 has a huge wireless range right?" I was proven wrong. The wireless signal from about 4 meters away wasnt even being picked up. After moving the hub temporarily to increase the connection I manage to install BTs software as its now connected. Then to deal with the range problem I go into the hub settings and attempt to change the frequency from automatic (1) to 11 which seems to have the best range judging from personal experience. Before even getting to apply the setting connection decides to go and then at regular intervals switch on then off and repeats every few seconds, during the few seconds its on its on "limited connectivity" we all know what that means; its connected but we just don't want to let you connect to the internet. Usually due to manufacturers settings. So after trying resetting the hub, changing its location nothing works. So I come upstairs and get Vik to help, with some new wires and stuff we try a wired connection as well as completer reinstallation of BT software, this originally works, then as soon as we try wireless both wired and wireless connections become unavailable. So then we try one of our old 1.0 hubs and a wired connection it works the wireless has the limited range problem. After iffing and arring for a while we decide to try the 2.0 hub on a wired connection and then adjust the frequency when on wired so wireless is on 11. That went well and signal speed went up by a fair bit but signal boost was minimal.

So we settle with this set up for now with trailing wires and attempt to update Sue's computer, she needed XP SP2 and Vik began the update and it took quite a while before even getting half way. In the end we decided to leave it over night to install, and called it a day. The moral of the story is no matter now much you tell BT that their HUB sucks and by far DOES NOT have the advertised wireless range (these are flats, not huge houses for heavens sake), BT will still insist the problem is your PC, hardware, settings, you're stupid, or some kind of God or Deity is interfering with your signal.

On another note about BT, i received the phone bill today as well as an email saying my broadband bill is ready for viewing online. Yet again I have a £7.50 late payment charge on my phone bill, despite it being the first bill I've received this quarter. They really are douchebags. And some day I may just switch providers and tell them to swivel.

Seeing as how Soopermuse.Com has been around for almost 3 years now, It's been a platform for me to develop various projects and stuff. But since I have abandoned the majority of my previously associated projects I had shut the site down. As I'm not one to waste a domain name, I thought it best to convert this into more of a blog type environment. So this is my first entry which is about nothing.

Recently when checking on this site I had come to notice an error, suddenly, it was not calling from any style sheet, images weren't loading and the template was not parsing. Since no changes had been made I went straight to Servage, my hosting company to find out what was going on.

"There is nothing wrong" they say things are going fine, no they are not. After thoroughly checking, I realise my .htaccess file had disappeared from this directory. Seeing as the file contains server directives which keep my site functioning as i want it to, and make my URLs nice and tidy too it's absence was causing it to be unable to parse directories properly.

I respond to them saying I've fixed the problem, and demanded to know why my .htaccess file had gone missing.

Their reply was something along the lines of "we're glad you fixed the problem". Not answering my question, so i demanded to know again, just as I did this the file got changed to .htaccess1 which had the same devastating effect. I immediately reverted it, an when i got up today I notice they replied, saying that the file had incorrect coding in it and had to be removed for server reasons, which is total BS as the coding in the file was 100% correct, not a dot out of place, and is the same .htaccess file that is used in large market scripts which they happen to recommend (like s 9 y).

So i reply to them saying that's total BS and I've yet to hear from them.

Servage are a good host with an amazing and cheap package tons of space and features. I recommend them to anyone,

but their customer support needs work, they claim to have a reply within a short time, and they do, when you first open a support ticket, but after their first response, you will be waiting hours to hear from them after your reply.

Amazingly their support used to be great, fast and helpful, now it kinda sucks.
This is the first time a .htaccess file has gone missing though. I know they are in the midst of a mass upgrade on their servers upgrading them to ServageOS (their own brand of Linux). But that's no excuse in my opinion.