Quick Review of Dead Island DLC: Ryder White

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Kip

Let me sum this up quickly: Do not buy the Dead Island DLC Ryder White.

Come on, guys, this is not how you do DLC. Ryder White is supposed to show us the events of Dead Island from the viewpoint of Ryder White, the Australian officer whose wife becomes infected with the…whatever the hell it is that’s turning people into zombies.

Here’s the problem. The Dead Island folks have stripped leveling, experience, and the entire skill tree out of this DLC. What you are left with is a soulless first-person shooter. Oh, and it’s linear — no exploring an open environment this time.

About the only good thing you can say about it is that there’s more gunplay; more guns in general. Really, that’s it.

Avoid this thing like the zombie plague. 5.0/10, and it only gets those 5 points because I liked the original Dead Island so much.

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iOS 5/5.0.1 jailbreak for iPhone 4S and iPad 2 (A5 devices) is HERE — instructions, link, and tips

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Kip

Okay, here we go. Greenpois0n has released a jailbreak for A5 devices. Currently it’s only available for the Mac, but a Windows version is “coming soon” (sorry to disappoint those of you without a Mac — just have some patience).

The jailbreak is called “Absinthe”, it’s untethered, it works (verified), and you can download it here.

Now, let me add a couple of tips. At the end of the jailbreak process, the tool will tell you to “Unlock the screen, if necessary, and tap the Jailbreak icon”. Note that when you unlock the screen, you will NOT see an icon titled “Jailbreak” but you will see an icon titled “Absinthe”. That’s the one you want to tap on.

If Absinthe hangs for any reason, go into settings, and turn VPN on and then off again. This should fix any hanging problems. If it doesn’t, reboot, and try VPN on-off again.

For more detailed instructions, try here: http://www.iphonehacks.com/2012/01/how-to-jailbreak-ipad-2-absinthe-ios-5-0-1-ios-5.html

Happy jailbreaking!

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iPhone 4S Jailbreak SCAM ALERT REDUX

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Kip

Hey all, I’m just here to let you know, once again, that there is still no jailbreak for the iPhone 4S or iPad 2. The latest scam I saw today really annoyed me, because it’s trying to take the limera1n/blackra1n good name and sully it. It’s a “product” called “Easyra1n”. I think the reason that this particular one is cropping up is because we are actually close to a real A5-device jailbreak from the hard-working pod2g. Last week, pod2g tweeted that he had successfully jailbroken an iPhone 4s, and posted screen shots of it. He went on to say that the jailbreak might be available as early as this week.

However, a few days after that, pod2g had to take that statement back, as it turned out that the exploit he used to jailbreak was based on an iPhone developer kit and doesn’t work with a regular old iPhone 4S. So at the moment pod2g is working on a way to translate the dev kit jailbreak into a jailbreak that will work for the rest of us. So, obviously, the jailbreak has been delayed again. Hopefully not for TOO long, though.

In the meantime, I repeat, THERE IS NO JAILBREAK FOR IPHONE 4S OR IPAD 2 YET! Anyone who asks for your money for a working jailbreak for those A5 devices is scamming you out of your cash! Do not get taken by these a-holes!

Again, for all things jailbreak, visit http://limera1n.cc.

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On the aesthetics of my blog…

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Kip

Just thought I’d take a moment here to explain why I keep my blog with a functional but minimalist layout. You know, the old default WordPress theme, etc. It’s just that I’m a firm believer in content on a website. After all, it’s what I do to make money, mostly — provide content for websites. Your site can be as snazzy-looking as you want it to be, but if there’s nothing there of interest, who cares?

So maybe someday I’ll get bored and play with different themes. Until then, I’m leaving things the way they are and hoping my posts help people (arguably, my content may suck, which you are free to take issue with me on — let me know what you want, though, if you decide to).

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The “3 Holes” Joke

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Kip

Ah, time for dirty jokes again. This one comes courtesy of hearing the punchline in a RiffTrax short…

A guy’s car breaks down in the middle of town, and he looks for a hotel to stay in while he waits for his car to be fixed. He finds a very small hotel and walks in.

He asks the man at the counter, “Do you have any rooms available?”

The man at the counter says, “Yeah, but don’t stick your dick in the 3 holes.”

“OK.” The guy agrees and walks to his room.

A couple of days go by and his car is still in the shop. He gets curious and sticks his dick in the first hole.

He says, “Ahh,that feels good!” Then he sticks his dick in the second hole, “Ahh,that feels even better!” Then he sticks his dick in the third hole, “OUCH!!My dick!!”

He quickly pulled his dick out and it was all bloody. He was very confused, but he went to sleep.

The next day he went to the counter to see what was in the holes, but before he could ask anything the man at the counter said, “You stuck your dick in the three holes didn’t you?”

He said, “Yeah, how did you know?

“The man at the counter said, “Well, my wife is pregnant, my daughter is pregnant, and my pencil sharpener is broken.”

(The punchline I heard was: “A pencil sharpener in the third hole, ha!”)

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Castro’s Death Probably E-mail Virus Hoax…

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Kip

There are currently rumblings on Twitter that Fidel Castro has died — go to http://hashtags.org/castro to see them — however it is also believed this may be a hoax to spread a virus via email. So if you get an email saying Castro has died with a link, or, worse yet, an attachment, I would STRONGLY advise you NOT TO CLICK ON IT. I will follow this and post if Castro has actually died. If you see no post from me, assume it is simply a virus. This happened a few months ago, the exact same scenario…

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Quick Roundup of last November’s game deluge

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Kip

Okay, guys, I kinda let the blog languish for awhile and never got around to reviewing any of the awesome games that came raining down on us around November. So I’m going to quickly rank the ones I’ve played, in order of how much I like them (the ratings I give them may not correspond to this; a game I rate higher may be farther down my list simply because I like a different genre more, or something like that).

1. Uncharted 3 (9.75)
2. Skyrim (9.5)
3. Batman: Arkham City (9.5)
4. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (9.25)
5. Saint’s Row: The Third (8.75)
6. Battlefield 3 (9.75)
7. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (9.0)

One caveat: The two military FPSers are at the end of the list because military FPSers are not my favorite games. However, if you’re a big fan of them, these two games should be at the TOP of the list for you.

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Cleaning your e-cig atomizer (Joye 510, 510-T, eGo, and eGo-T)

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Kip

Recently I’ve been going through old atomizers, trying to clean them so they work again. The first thing I tried was what the manufacturer recommends: holding it under extremely hot water for a good while, then leaving it out to dry for 24 hours +.

This resulted in a few atomizers that died on me, and the results were, while pretty good, not tremendous. But then I stumbled upon another method for cleaning them that seems to work much better.

Two words: rubbing alcohol. Isopropyl alcohol, to be precise. Take a small glass, or dish (if it’s deep enough to hold your atomizer), and pour the rubbing alcohol in there. Take your atomizer, and put it in the rubbing alcohol. Let it soak for a minute or so. Then take the atomizer and start agitating it; pick it up, turn it over, let the alcohol run through it from both ends. Do this for about ten minutes or so. When you’re done, blow through the atomizer from the battery end onto a wet paper towel (the glass you used to clean the atomizer should now look like it’s got smoke juice in it — it looks a little bit like whiskey, but for the love of God, don’t drink it — unless you’re Kitty Dukakis or something). **NOTA BENE** As I just indicated, isopropyl alcohol is *poisonous* in high enough amounts. A good alternative (see comments) is Everclear, if you can get it, which is 100% *ethanol* alcohol, and thus a safer route.

Put the atomizer near an airflow (I use the vents on my air conditioner) of some sort. Let it dry for about an hour (if you can wait 24 hours, I would suggest that; you MUST MAKE SURE, if you’re using isopropyl alcohol, that the atomizer is FULLY DRY before using it, as isopropyl alcohol can be poisonous). Now, fill a fresh cartridge with juice, all that, put the e-cig back together. Now, tilt the ecig down, so the juice is running into the atomizer (because you’re going to get a couple of dry hits and the atomizer might burn out on you if you do this — it might burn out on you anyway, I can’t guarantee anything). Start puffing a little bit, not too hard, just enough so that the juice is absorbed by the wick. Eventually you can move on to full puffs. This seems to work pretty well for me.

Happy vaping!

Posted in tips and tricks, vaping | 3 Comments

XBox 360 Controller Emulator — Executable, Customizable

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Kip

In response to a recent comment I received, I’m uploading the latest version of the XBox 360 controller emulator for you guys. Note that this is an executable file, not just the DLL and the .ini file I gave you before. You use this executable to customize your controller and it generates the DLL and the .ini file, which you then put in the folder where the executable for your game is.

Get the new executable here: https://kiplange.com/x360ce.exe

Also, as an aside — I’m currently using the D3 tool (Dualshock 3 Tool) from MotioninJoy, that allows you to use your PlayStation 3 Dualshock 3 controller as a wireless XBox 360 controller — provided you have a bluetooth adapter/dongle. There are two downsides to it — it’s a bitch to get working, first, and, second, to use the bluetooth capability, you have to load a special driver for your adapter that precludes use of any other bluetooth device. So if you’re using a lot of bluetooth devices, it’s not worth it — although you can still use it wired, with a USB cord. Google “d3 tool” or “motioninjoy” to find out what I’m talking about — perhaps I’ll put a direct link up when I get time, but I don’t have it right now. Anyway, I’m getting off course — the point I wanted to make is that if you use the D3 tool, DO NOT use the 360 controller emulator! Your Dualshock 3 will work just like a 360 controller, and using the controller emulator files will just screw up the buttons bigtime.

Happy gaming!

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iPhone 4S Jailbreak SCAM ALERT

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Kip

To all of you out there looking to jailbreak your new iPhone 4S (or your iPad 2 running 5.0 or 5.0.1), I want to make sure you know that, as of right now, there is NO jailbreak for the iPhone 4S. There *is*, I believe, a semi-tethered jailbreak for the old 4 and earlier, and a jailbreak of earlier OSes for the iPad 2 (the problem they’re having is with the new A5 chip that’s in both the iPhone 4S and iPad 2). But nothing for the 4S and no 5.0+ jailbreak for the iPad 2.

However, there are some sites on the Internet that will pop up if you google “jailbreak 4S” and promise to jailbreak your phone — for a fee. KNOW THAT ALL THESE SITES ARE SCAMS. They take your money and run. The real jailbreak, when released, will be free to all. DO NOT PAY GOOD MONEY TO SOME JERK PRETENDING HE CAN JAILBREAK YOUR 4S OR IPAD 2 FOR YOU! Because he can’t.

For the latest information on all things jailbreak, visit:

http://www.limera1n.cc/

It looks like a 4S and iPad 2 iOS 5 jailbreak are not TOO far off in the future, so keep your fingers crossed. And here’s a bit of free advice: Whatever you’ve updated to, be it 5.0 or 5.0.1 (my new iPhone 4S shipped with 5.0.1, I would have preferred 5.0, but there’s nothing I can do about it) — DO NOT UPDATE FURTHER IF YOU WANT TO JAILBREAK YOUR IDEVICE. The new jailbreak will most likely be for iOS 5 and *possibly* iOS 5.0.1, but beyond that, they won’t have jailbreaks for newer iOSes for quite a bit of time. So just leave your iDevice with whatever version of iOS you currently have, do NOT update, and you will be jailbreaking pretty soon — with a little luck.

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