November 19, 2005

Nokia Blank Operator Logo

If you'd like to get rid of your network's name/logo covering part of your wallpaper, visit this url from your phone's wap browser: http://www.uncletravelingmatt.com/utm/nokia.php

Great hall locations: Miscellaneous  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

November 16, 2005

The Ultima Device / This Message Will Self-Destruct In 5 Seconds...

Banking with one of the world's largest banks has its advantages—easy international banking & advanced Internet Banking functionality (the ability to edit Automatic Payments and Direct Debits), among others.

While HSBC is fairly unknown here in New Zealand, being part of an international banking group with offices in over 84 countries means even small countries like us get benefits the latest banking technology—including the Ultima Device (pictured bottom left)

Ok, well they call it the "Online Security Device", but that sounds nowhere near as interesting. It's a portable ciphering device keyed to your account information that generates a unique code each time the grey button is pressed. Each device uses a different algorithm and the code expires in 60 seconds. The code is used when logging into internet banking and when making transfers, etc.

The advantage of this system is, for example, if you use an internet cafe and someone has installed a key logger, they'll capture your username, password and a set of expired cipher codes. Without the code generator the username and password are useless.

This is better than a TXT message based system like ASB's NetCode, because apart from having to pay for each TXT (there was no charge for the HSBC device), and most people have a different phone number when overseas and it's useless in areas without cell phone coverage (quite common outside of NZ).

ASB have just introducted a similar cipher device, however without the buying power of HSBC, ASB customers will have to pay $1/month for theirs.

Apparently the device also self-destructs if you try to open it, hehe, it's all very James Bond! lol

Great hall locations: Miscellaneous  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

November 14, 2005

Shitty Weather


A thousand words right there, the weather here is crap. I guess it doesn't matter when you're inside coding and there's good tunes on the stereo tho :)

Great hall locations: Miscellaneous  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

November 9, 2005

How The War Was Won

Most of you won't know this, but three days ago ants invaded our bathroom hell-bent on carrying off my toothbrush!

No shit, they'd trekked in through a small gap in the tiles across the floor up the wall, across the counter to where ever I'd left it.

Why? I have no idea — maybe I'd annoyed someone that died and was reincarnated as an ant and they're just f**king with me, I dunno. However, as you may of guessed I wasn't too happy about this carry-on.

Step 1 in the battle plan was to wipe out all visible ants and scrub the floor, walls, counter etc to remove their scent trail; being that's how they find their way around. This I thought worked, but no, the little buggers where back all over my toothbrush yesterday, much to my annoyance.

After that all-out thermonuclear war was declared. Though without any kind of filler on hand to plug the gap, some other dastardly plan had to be devised. The only thing I could lay my hands on was a can of CRC, which was promptly emptied into the opposing army basecamp. There have been no sightings of the ants since, although the bathroom now sinks to high hell of CRC, lol

Great hall locations: Miscellaneous  |  Talked about by: 0 Fraggles