alexcomputer

Yes, I haven't used this blog in over a year. I'm actually active on the Internet, but I haven't been updating this blog because I don't remember about it. Livejournal is a blogging platform no one uses, and I first signed up here when I was a n00b, about 3 years ago, and I was just experimenting random blog services.

I have a new blog. This time it's different. It's not about the good things that are happening in my life. It's about the neutral and bad ones. Because now that I'm a teenager, life has completely changed.

Visit at your own risk, you might completely change your opinion about me.

See you there.
You can also follow me on twitter and add me on facebook.

• Linkin park, 1000 suns: The old school which was a nightmare. The most important song was “the catalyst,” because I became friends with that rich guy with every object you can imagine thanks to that. We both liked that song, and we both were listening to it on 32gb white iPhone 3gs’s. (Yes, I used to have an iPhone 3GS too, it was my first iPhone). Oh, and “burning in the skies,” the first “real” song in the album, which reminds me of the dark morning at 7:00 AM where I had to go to the bus stop.
• Lady gaga, born this way: The most uncool decision I (or better, my parents) have done: Go to Istanbul on vacation instead of London or New York. EVERYONE was materialistic. I only listened to that album because everyone did. The songs I remember the most are “scheiße” and “judas” (judas makes me shiver every time I hear it again). The only good thing about this vacation was fruit, for example cherries. They aren’t so delicious over here. Oh, and jelly. But of course, I bet I could have found even better food in the UK or US.
• Katy perry, teenage dream: Same thing as lady gaga’s album: Thanks to the “teenage dream” song, I promised myself to get drunk, possibly on the beach, just like the song. Well, that never happened. And hasn’t happened yet at the time of this writing (April 2012)
• Foster the people, torches: Many things after the new school year started in September 2011, but I listened to it a lot during the pointless school trip to Villach in Austria on December 15, 2011. The songs I remember the most are “pumped up kicks” and “warrant.”
• Coldplay, mylo xyloto: The stuff after that that trip. The thing I remember the most though are the occasional Saturday afternoons where I’m alone at home because the rest of my family goes to watch my brother’s football match. The songs I remember the most are “major minus” and “don’t let it break your heart.”
• Magnus pålsson (aka souleye), PPPPPP: This is chiptune music. Started listening to it not more than a week ago. I’ve never particularly liked chiptune music, but this is awesome. I downloaded it in FLAC, and it’s an ear orgasm. “Potential for anything” is my ringtone, and “path complete” is my text message tone, but my favorite song is “predestined fate.”
• Gotye, making mirrors: Started listening to it a couple of days after PPPPPP, and sometimes alternated between that and this. Of course, the first song I discovered was “somebody that I used to know.” At first, I listened just to that song for like 20 times in a row every day. And I’m still not tired of it. But then I downloaded the whole album in FLAC, and now I listen to all of it every day. I can’t get tired of it anytime soon. One song is better than the other. This is one of the best albums I’ve ever listened to. Since I’m still listening to it, I can’t tell exactly what memories it will bring back. We’ll have to see that later on.
• Lights, siberia: My brother likes this album. Actually he only likes the first four songs: “siberia,” “where the fence is low,” “toes” and “banner.” He plays them every day as I do with making mirrors (but I play the whole album, and on earphones). I keep overhearing it, and it’s sometimes stuck in my head. I don’t like those songs, and she looks like a slut (especially on the album artwork.) Again, it’s too soon to see what memories it’ll bring back.

Thanks for reading! To be continued…

My first ever iOS device was the iPod touch 2G (MB model). It came with 2.2.1 when I bought it. I've been through all iOS's with it (3.0, 3.1, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3 isn't compatible) but now I restored it to 2.1 (older than the OS it came with) just for the lulz (I made it because this old iPod generation doesn't need SHSH keys to downgrade), because anyway this device isn't being used anymore because it has a cracked glass, it's old and slow, and it's only 8GB.

My second one was the iPhone 3GS (new bootrom). It came with 3.1.2. That time I didn't know about the old/new bootrom things, so I thought that blackra1n jailbreak would work fine. Instead it didn't work and I had to restore. By the time, 3.1.3 already came out, and the 3.1.2 SHSH weren't saved because I never jailbroke, so I was forced to restore to 3.1.3. I stayed a few months without the jailbreak, then Spirit came out. I used that, and saved the SHSH for this software, so I can downgrade if I want to. I've been through 3.1.3, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2 but a few months after iOS 4.2.1 came out I got my iPhone 4 and I gave the iPhone 3GS to my mom. She and my brother installed apps with installous because we aren't that rich (we buy apps sometimes, but not always). Right now it's still on 4.2.1 because the untethered jailbreak is needed. As soon as an untethered JB for 4.3 is out we will update it.

My third iOS device was the iPad. It came with 3.2. I jailbroke it but for some very stupid reason it didn't save the SHSH keys. However it did save the 3.2.2 ones, so I can downgrade to that. iPad doesn't have many iOS versions. I've been through 3.2 and 4.2. It's still running 4.2 because I need the jailbreak on that too.

My last iOS device is the iPhone 4. It came with 4.2.1. At first I couldn't jailbreak it untetheredly, then the new greenpois0n came out. I've also had 4.3 on there a few days, and planned to resist with the tethered jailbreak, but I didn't want to so I downgraded to 4.2.1 using the SHSH keys that were saved. It's still on that software now.


I'd say that 4.2.1 is the best iOS yet, especially due to its ability to get jailbroken very easily.
BTW, why do I have the jailbreak? Not for themes, I like the original iOS theme. I jailbroke mainly for cracked apps that I buy or delete later, and for some utilities like PDANet, which is better than personal hotspot feature in iOS 4.3, 3G unrestrictor, for high-quality YouTube video playback, Display Recorder, an awesome screen recorder which I actually paid the $4.99 for, and some other things I can't remember now.



Thanks for reading, Until next time!


2012 EDIT:

-The iPod touch is now abandoned in a closet. Last time I was using it it was running 4.2.1. It still works, but the screen is still cracked, so using it is very uncomfortable.
-The iPhone 3GS is my brother's, it now runs iOS 5.0.1 jailbroken.
-The iPhone 4 is my mom's, it runs iOS 5.1 without jailbreak.
-The iPad used to belong to the rest of my family, but now it's mine again. It's running iOS 5.1 with the semi-tethered jailbreak (I never reboot my iPad so it's not a problem). On there I only use the jailbreak to pirate one or two very expensive apps (I buy the cheaper ones that are up to $5).
-I bought myself an iPhone 4S. It's running iOS 5.0.1 jailbroken. It originally came with 5.0. I only have the jailbreak for tetherme (a better version of PDAnet, that actually uses the native personal hotspot feature, but don't pay the extra tethering plan)

First off, let's say this: I'm venting in this post.

You might think that thinking about which cell phone carrier you have is stupid. If you read on, it appears to not be a very stupid thing after all.

Okay, so let's list the MAIN carriers in my country (Italy) (There are more, but these are the main ones):
-TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile)
-Vodafone (or vodafone IT)
-3 (or 3 ITA)
-Wind.

I am a teenager (14 years old). I go to high school. I am in a class with 28 people. All of these people (me excluded) have the "Vodafone IT" carrier. But, I have TIM.
At first, it was nothing that important. Until I went out, and came back home with the bus.
Every boy or girl with a cellphone had "Vodafone it" as well!!!!

There's something wrong.

In my class, no one wants to call or text me just to save five cents.
So, why do I have tim?

Answer?

It's cheaper, the voice of the woman is more pleasant, the customer service is better, etc.

But why does no one have tim then?

Answer?

I have no idea.

Some people in my class have a TIM SIM card, but when you turn the phone on, it says "Vodafone IT"! It means they used to have TIM but switched carriers!
I have no idea why people decided to do this.

But after a month of thinking, I figured out I should switch too.

I absolutely hate vodafone it. Even the ads are terrible. They censor the Apple logo in the iMac and MacBook. Even if TIM ads have bad songs like "well, well, well", they aren't bad like that.

What about other carriers like wind or 3 ita?

I don't know, I don't know anyone who uses those, except my art professor which has an iPhone and 3 ita.

So, I switched, today, November 25 2010, exactly a month before christmas. It's quite a painful experience, leaving your favorite carrier. But I had no choice.

As soon as I told my friends the news (I said this morning that maybe I was going to switch), everyone went "Awesome, you rock!". I know you can't become friends with somebody just because of a carrier, but apparently my friends' reaction tells that it helps a little bit.

I thought I had to leave my iPhone, because the cheapest Internet offer that vodafone has is extremely expensive and there's no way I can afford it. But later I found out there's an offer that offers 2x more data than the cheapest TIM offer, but is 1,5x more expensive (€12 instead of €8 every month). So okay, let's activate that offer.

My mom went to the vodafone store, did everything, and came back home with:

My TIM sim card, which is still TIM, it will become a vodafone in a few days, and a temporary vodafone sim card with all the offers already activated on that.

When I inserted my new temporary sim card into my iPhone, I got at least 10 text messages about offers, and other things. They even recognized that I have an iPhone!

So, soon my TIM will become "voda IT" Why only voda? "Vodafone" is too long for the iPhone, so they needed to shorten it.

This whole story looks like something lame, but it's not really. It makes me feel cool.

If people with TIM, vodafone it, wind and 3 were equally distributed, I would have stayed with my TIM forever.


Until the next post!

Despite it being quite unusual, and not liking some songs very much, the album "a thousand suns" by linkin park is breathtaking, hypnotizing and awesome. This album's style is different compared to previous albums, although I still found a point where the artist screamed (the only thing I hate about linkin park songs). But since I just found it once, it's not a big deal!

My favorite songs are "burning in the skies", "robot boy", "waiting for the end", "iridescent", and "the catalyst". There is nothing better than listening to these songs with headphones at a high volume.

There are a lot of songs that are transitions. For example, "fallout", my favorite transition IMO, is between iridescent and the catalyst.

Personal rating? 9 out of 10 (not a perfect 10 because again, some songs weren't really nice IMO), or 4 out of 5 because the album is not perfect.
Linkin park ftw!!!

That's it for my review, it's not very good, but it's my opinion. Bye and see you next time!

We all know how bad Windows Me is.
However, that was not the worst OS I've used. I've only used it for like 2-3 hours.
Instead, the worst OS I've used is:

Windows XP.

Yup, that's right.

Windows XP is the OS I've used the most in my life. It was my main OS from 2002 to 2008, unlike 95 that was from 1999 to 2002, Vista from 2008 to 2010, 7 from 2009 to 2010, and Mac OS X from 2010 to now.

Well, I must say that I've had worse problems with this OS, especially on my Acer laptop. Maybe it was the computer's fault? I don't know. The problems were more and worse compared to the ones I've had with Me or Vista. And believe it or not; I've had nightmares about these problems too.

Let's list some of the worst things I've had with that OS.

1-My first BSOD was with my Acer laptop. I had installed a game with a CD, and I was playing it. But suddenly, everything froze (even the sound, like this-is-is-is-is-is-is-is-is-is)
Anyway, I thought the application was frozen, so I took the CD out. (it was required for the game to run) and it started making STATIC noise just like on an FM radio. Then, after a few seconds, I've seen a screen with a blue background and white text, and it was saying Windows has been shut down to avoid damages to the computer. It said that if it is the first time I've seen that screen, to restart the computer. However, I read on and it said my drivers were locked into an infinite cycle. I thought "OMG MY COMPUTER IS DONE FOR" however, after I restarted, everything seemed to be working fine.
I've gotten this blue screen again, maybe once every 5 times, when playing that game. I was clueless. But I was SO happy the computer still booted up after restarting.
I found out later that it was my graphics card that crashed, in fact it mentioned "ati2dvag" which I've googled later, and found out it's my Acer laptop's shitty graphics card's driver.

2-This is a small episode, but probably the scariest. I was still using the Acer laptop as my main computer, and I was browsing the web. I don't remember the topic, but I remember I was googling something, and clicked on random pages. Suddenly, when I clicked on one, after it finished loading, I got another blue screen. It was shorter though; you could see more of the scary blue background. It was saying something about a process terminating unexpectedly (note: I KNOW about BSODs now, I'm trying to act like a n00b right as I'm writing) but the scariest sentence was the last one that said "Il sistema è stato chiuso." which literally means, "The system has been closed.". That sentence, thrown in pricelessly, just made me jump out of my seat. However, restarting fixed the problem again. I've never encountered such an episode again.

3-I was a n00b with computers before I made a YouTube and learned everything about it. And also, since we had two computers that time (My HP PC from 2001/2002, and my Acer laptop from 2004/2005), I could use either computer, and no one in the family cared much. My old HP PC actually didn't have many problems. I've only got a BSOD once due to a weird program/game I've downloaded from a random website.
If one of the computers broke, I was actually scared and just stopped using it until my family (my mom exactly) found out. And I remember when I was messing with software on my laptop because I was bored. That time, we were using NOD32. I still have the original box and CD. I don't use it anymore though since the license expired and I've discovered antiviruses that are almost as good, and are free. However, I found a CD with random software. Don't remember much about it right now. Anyway, I put it into my computer, and saw cool programs. I was having fun until I saw this program called "bitdefender". I didn't know what it was but I installed it anyway. After I installed it, I ran it and soon after, I got the dreaded blue screen again. This time it was not talking about the driver, it was talking about a process that was terminated. And no it did not say the system has been closed. So I restarted the computer. And guess what? I've got that system closed screen. I restarted again, still got it. It was bedtime then, so I decided to drown my sorrows by going to bed. When I woke up, I tried again. Still got that BSOD. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know about Safe mode that time. This time, the OS was really fucked up. But I didn't say anything to my mom and just used my HP computer again. This for about 2 months, until my mom found out somehow. She was angry and wanted to bring it to a technician to format it, but she was still very angry because that would have costed. So, I got scared. Until this CD caught my eye. It was a CD about recovering the OS. "WOW THIS MIGHT SAVE US SOME MONEY AND FRUSTRATION" I thinked. I put the CD in and restarted the computer. Yes, I did know about the boot menu that time. So I entered it and booted from CD. It asked me if I wanted to reinstall, and I happily said yes. Yes, I lost all my data, but we didn't have any important data so I didn't care. Then, it asked to insert disk 2. I inserted it, it continued.
The recovery program had the image of a ghost. I thinked "Ooohhh my god that ghost might bring bad luck". (I later found out that ghost is just the recovery tool on the CD, which is called norton ghost.)
Then, it ejected and asked me to reboot. And guess what? It booted back up, and it was actually much faster. YAY!!!

4-This episode is older. It is the first bad thing I've gotten with XP. It still has to do with me hiding stuff from my parents. But it's older. So old that I wasn't even on my new house that time (I moved in 2006).
So, I was still using Windows XP on my Acer laptop. However, one day, I booted it up, and after the desktop, I noticed the McAfee antivirus splash screen won't go away. (McAfee antivirus came with my Acer laptop. It was kinda useless since I was never using Internet there, but oh well. When I was in the new house I didn't have it anymore, but I didn't uninstall it. Read on to know why)
So back onto topic, This splash screen wasn't going away, so I moved my mouse to try to do something. The mouse wasn't moving. So I waited a couple minutes. Then I decided to look at the clock, and compare it with my real clock. THE TIME WAS OFF!!! The time was frozen!!! The WHOLE COMPUTER was frozen!
I didn't know what to do. I just hid my computer, and went back to my HP computer. After a few months, my mom wanted to use my Acer laptop, and then found out it was frozen. I told her I did not do anything, it just did this by itself. And it couldn't be a virus, because when I was at the old house, my Acer laptop has NEVER gone to the Internet. I did not know about the recovery disks. We left the computer on for hours, it was still frozen. So I had to give up.
The Acer laptop stayed in its bag, abandoned for about a year. During that period we moved houses.
Right after moving, we decided to finally bring the computer over to a technician to repair it. We decided not to save the data. Then my computer was working again. There was no antivirus though, because the technician formatted and reinstalled Windows. That day, we also bought NOD32. I also discovered nice goodies that the technician installed: OpenOffice (it was version 2.2 I believe), Windows Media Player 11, and Nero.



OK, thank you for reading this VERY LONG post. I might do a video about it, if it's not longer than 15 minutes. Thank you for reading again.

Okay, so I'm very lazy and I rarely update my personal blog.

But here is an overview of what happened:
-I got my iPhone 3GS. It is awesome, much better than the iPod touch, but I can't jailbreak it.
-I promised I would do a review of my MacBook Pro, so here it is.

The MacBook Pro 15" is the best laptop I've ever had. The first time I've had it, all the stuff in the screen was tiny due to the awesome display that supports large resolutions in a smaller display. Stuff in the MacBook Pro 17" is even smaller.
Now, since I'm getting used to it, the stuff in the screen is neither big, nor small.
This computer is really fast. It starts up in under a minute. It often locks up or the software gets messed up, so I have to reboot to fix it.
But, I don't think this computer is very fast. Why? Because a day, when I tried my school's iBook G4, with Mac OS X Tiger and lots of programs and documents on it, it was as fast as my MacBook Pro, if not slightly faster. That is very weird.
But it is faster than the white MacBook.
The battery life is not very good. The Apple website says 7 hours. Well, the first time I charged it fully, it lasted about 6 hours while doing lots of stuff.
Then it slightly got worse. Now the average is about 5 hours. I've always let it unplugged until the battery ran out, then charged it fully. Another weird thing.
Multitasking on this computer is flawless. It only hangs when I run too many virtual machines.
I also installed Windows 7 Ultimate, 32-bit, in Boot Camp. It kinda sucked, until Apple Software Update popped up, with a Boot Camp update. Now it runs much better.
The keyboard is also great. It's easy to type on it. It's illuminated also, so I can type in the dark. The only problem is that when I use iTunes, when I play or pause a song, even if it's very dark, the keyboard backlight turns off. It's kinda hard to find the keys to activate it again (you can adjust how bright the backlight is).
Well, I'm happy I got this laptop. It's my main computer. If I ever want a desktop computer feel, I'll just plug it into my monitor and a mouse. I bought the Mini DisplayPort to VGA converter.

Next Apple stuff I'll probably buy in about a year:
-iPad, 16GB, Wi-Fi
-Apple cinema display, Apple wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse together OR iMac 27" (or whatever the display size will be at that time).

Thank you for reading!

I haven't posted any blog posts for a while. There are lots of updates. Let's go through the ones I'm remembering right now.

-I created a new blog in WordPress that is about posting and seeing stories about awesome lives. It's ran only by me. It's at http://mlrofficial.wordpress.com
-I started to be able to do Marble Blast levels, using the Level Editor.
-My YouTube account got suspended and is not going to be back. I was so sad. The new channel is at youtube.com/TheComputerGuy196. But I'm not that sad now because...
-Last, but most important... I FINALLY GOT A MAC!!! I got the MacBook Pro 15". The specs of it are on my channel. It's my first Mac. It's fucking awesome, even though there are some problems with it already, but they don't really matter.

The YouTube user Windows446 got mad at me because I got a Mac. Not because he envies me but because he still believes in what I did a year ago with my old account, ale12396. I used to hate Macs. But now I don't anymore. He blocked me. I liked his videos. If he doesn't like my subscription, it's his business.

Anyway, that's it for the updates! I could write more and more with this awesome MacBook Pro keyboard (over 9000 times better than my previous keyboards), but now I don't know what to say. A blog post about my thoughts on this Mac so far will come soon, in a few days/hours/weeks. Who knows?

-Alessandro