JavaKrypt.com

As some might know, I’m currently doing a Home Learning Course (HLC actually stands for Home Learning College – the creditor of my exams/coursework), in CompTIA A+ Certification. But I have hit a bumpy patch so soon. You see, I’m on JSA (Job Seeker Allowance). For those of you who don’t know what that is, it basically means what it stands for, I’m unemployed and seeking work. I get £80 a fortnight to support myself which is a squeeze on the best of times, but I have gone onto what is called “New Deal” – Which has been set by the Government to get “us” into work quicker. Whilst also keeping tabs on us to make sure we are indeed seeking for work.

Short and sweet, they don’t care. They never will. They want us to get jobs that don’t exist. Even to this day young adults are leaving school, college and university without a leg to stand on. Leaving with degrees and not being able to get a job with it, because these jobs don’t fucking exist! But targets, targets, targets. Let us all just meet them and not care about the people behind them, that’s how this world works isn’t it?

But onto my dilemma. I’ve undertaken this course with my career in mind, which if you’ve read my blog, or know anything about me – I don’t want one. 40 hours a week in a job doesn’t sound like a life to me, even worse when it is something you don’t want to do. So I undertook it as my “leap of faith” in life to get onto this course in hopes for a brighter future in the IT industry. Doing what I love doing. But it’s not so gleaming. I’ve hit a big turd, with this new deal program I get an added £50 on top of my first started basic “salary” of £80 a fortnight, making it a total of £130. The added £50 I got a fortnight, I saved up £40 every fortnight, so at the end of the month I had £80 to pay off the £72 charge for my Home Learning Course. I’ll explain the course financing in more detail in a sec. With my using this extra £50 as a way to not be the typical bum who claims JSA, it’s come and bit me on the ass anyway. The New Deal course is 13 weeks long. I’ve already completed 11 of those weeks (This includes with week just ended.) I have 2 left. Next week, and the following one after – which will be the last time I claim £130 before my money is dipped to an miserable £80.

Here is the run down of the finances of my home course. The total cost is accumulative to around £1700 all together, including my tutor (When needed), Examinations I take at the end of the course, the course materials and access to the on-line “support suite” – where I take mini exams for my “tutor” to grade to make sure I am ready to undertake my exams – Also to keep a progress log to make sure I am learning what I am meant to be learning. They don’t want me to fail the exam, and neither do I! So I’m on a 24 month credit agreement which I will pay back £72 a month for 2 years. This is fine whilst I am claiming £260 a month, but now when I am going to dip to £160 in a matter of weeks. I have to eat you know!

Now here is the breakdown of my living expenses. I spend roughly £40 a fortnight on food (To feed THREE people for 2 weeks. Not just me), usually more (Read the rest of my blog, you’ll see why!) upwards of say, £60 if there hasn’t been any food bought. Again read my blog, you’ll see the reasons why. I have to pay £15 a month for Internet access, again, usually more depending on calls. These aren’t included in the monthly price. I also have to take off £10 a fortnight because I have to pay back my crisis loan I got off the JC+. Now that so far leaves me with roughly £10 a month, spare. This though doesn’t stay around long. So there you have it, how can I pay £72 a month with £10? Can’t. Now my outgoings are the same for my normal £80 a fortnight JSA money, but with a further £72 removed. Leaves me with a few pounds, which is like a few pence in this day and age.

With this I can’t get any funding, no help. In two weeks I’m going to be in debt of nearly £1600, which by the terms of the contract of HLC they can demand at any time. Here are the reasons:

• 3. Default and Early Repayment of the Balance.
• 3.1. We shall be entitled to demand that you repay immediately the whole of the balance of the Repayments outstanding (whether or not accrued due for payment) if:
• 3.1.1. any of the following events (listed in clause 2.3) shall occur, and
• 3.1.2. (in the case of a breach which can be remedied) you do not remedy the breach within the period specified in a default or similar notice that we shall serve on you.
• 3.2. The evens referred to in clause 3.1 are:
• 3.2.1. If you shall fail to pay any Repayment or other sum due under these Terms on the due date, or otherwise shall be in breach of your obligations under these Terms; or
• 3.2.2. If you shall become bankrupt or unable to pay your debts or if an interim order in bankruptcy is presented or made, or you become apparently insolvent; or
• 3.2.3. If a proposal for a voluntary arrangement relating to you is presented or made; or
• 3.2.4. If you shall die; or
• 3.2.5. If you shall be convicted of an offense involving dishonesty.
• 3.3. Upon Repayment by you to us of the whole of the balance of the Repayments outstanding, we shall allow you a rebate of interest equal to the minimum required by regulation under the Consumer Credit Act 1972. We shall supply details of this, and the amount required to settle your liability under this agreement, on written request by you.

Now here’s the punchline, they only give you 5-7 days to cancel the course once you received your materials, though I wasn’t in this mess at the beginning, and I honestly thought I’d be helped by this country – I was wrong. I got my letter and materials on the 23rd May 09, that’s over 7 days. So the contract basically says I’m fucked. If I can’t pay it back, they’ll most likely come and bring the bay-lifts to my house and take my stuff.

Just turned 19 years old, with nearly £2000 worth of debt. Not bad considering how much debt students leave university with. Stupid how “bettering your (social) life” in terms of a job seems to fuck you over, just like having a job does. What a world.

Just to warn users of MacOSX about FileVault. I have never used it before, but I always knew what it was, and how it worked. Though I never thought it would be this shit, to fuck me over within a heartbeat. The first time I used it, first time after shutting down and installing an application: Photoshop to be exact, it no longer wants to login to my user account “Stephen”. This is how MacOSX FileVault works:

It takes all your old files within your /home directory, and then creates one big encrypted file. It does this by logging you out of your account. So once you have enabled FileVault, you’ll be logged out by the system, you will see a message along the lines of “Creating FileVault backup” or something, then it will complete within around 4 mins max. (MY partition is only 15GB so it will take longer for users with more disk-space than mine obviously.)

Then once it logs you in, it deletes the old files within your /home directory, and now uses the one big encrypted file. Now here’s the bummer. Every time you log out after you have just installed and Application or file, FileVault will add these folders to the encryption. So it wont be a straight forward shut down, it will take a few seconds longer, depending on the speed of your hard drive(s), processor etc and the files themselves obviously.

What MacOSX does here is, it creates a duplicate of your files, so it will require double the disk-space. If you have a 1GB file to be added, it needs 2GB of hard-drive space clear to be used. FileVault doesn’t warn you of this, nor does it tell you this anywhere during the FileVault enabling! What a load of shit! So I only had 3GB left on my partition, installed Photoshop which was 1.5GB – I don’t have 3GB space! It would be fine once it logs back in, but it can’t complete! So every time I boot up, and I try to login it tells me it can’t. It asks if you want to “repair” (Again, another shitty idea. Doesn’t tell you the actual error, just says “There was an error you cannot login to {Stephen} at this point” Great help. thanks Apple!.) So once you have figuired out the reason, the only fix I can think of for a problem with this is:

1. Reinstall MacOSX if you are the noob who has no fucking clue.
2. Boot up your MacOSX disk, try to navigate to your hard-drive through the Terminal and delete Photoshop (Or whatever file is causing you to lose so much disk-space.) – This is to clear the path for FileVault to attempt another duplication of the drive and complete it. Then you can turn that piece of crap off once you can login! (I’ll see if you can turn it off somehow in Terminal, but I doubt it. Unless you edit a plist file somewhere, sure you could… but still, do the delete option first. Much safer.
3. Don’t use MacOSX.

Edit: Turns out, everything I’ve said above is true for MacOSX before 10.5.5, but point 1 is a must do if you are using FileVault with 10.5.5+ & point 3 is starting to stand out more and more as a future prospect. Here is the problem. Apple never said to users who are using Leopard 10.5.5 that you shouldn’t use FileVault. I don’t see why Apple has been so lazy about fixing the issues, or even disabling it within 10.5.5 knowing it’s going to break your MacOS installation. But the issue is, with FileVault and 10.5.5 FileVault will seutp correctly, it will let you boot down, and boot up once, but the second time it will do what it is doing now, saying my /home directory is broken and cannot be fixed. I’ve even tried the 2nd option I posted by using software called MacDrive within Windows, to delete Photoshop/Bridge and other applications that aren’t that big but would still be good to remove for now. Still no joy.

The only fix is, install MacOSX once again over what you have lost. Once again, fuck you Apple. If this was Microsoft people would be in uproar. But then again, it’s Apple. Kiss their ass people. They can’t do anything wrong can they?

I can’t update my MacOSX properly, I’ve tried too many times to care right now. The only reason why I wanted to update it was to try iLife 09 and iWork 09. But now I’ve found a work around. Edit the source plist file in MacOSX to confuse the OS into thinking I am running 10.5.6. The reason why is because iLife 09 has a built in package that checks the system’s version before installation. To make sure (Most likely) that legit Mac owners are downloading and installing it only. But whatever.

If you want to do it, this is what you do.

1. Open Finder
2. Go to %hd%/System/Library/CoreServices
3. Look for a file called: SystemVersion.plist
4. Open it, you will be told it’s a “read only” – Continue to edit it.
5. Look for 10.5.5 listed in the XML file. You will see this twice. Edit both values to 10.5.6.
6. Save the file. Check the System Information by viewing “About this Mac” – It will now say 10.5.6- No restart required.

Long time in a post, haven’t been arsed honestly. Whenever I got home from work, I was too tired and uninterested to even turn the PC on, let alone use it. But lately I’ve been having this one person playing on my mind, just like the last 2 years since I last spoke to him. I don’t know much information about him, all I have is his email, MySpace page that he used before he disappeared and a photograph… the one.

Firstly, here is the photograph of the person in question: His name is Justin. I don’t have a full name, we only spoke on  and off for a few months. We didn’t get to know each other that well since we barely saw each  other on-line. Either-way, I haven’t spoken to him in over 2 years, it will be turning 3 years on  this  date: 11/11/2006 – as posted on his last MySpace login. He lives in Texas, again, I don’t  know  what area. I’m sure I knew – but the last I spoke to him he moved out of his parents  house into his  own. Though he told me he would be getting Internet access within 3-6 months.  I asked for a  contact number, or any other means and all he gave me was his MySpace. I have  emailed him,  sent numerous messages on his MySpace and fuck knows how many off-line  messages on MSN and  Paltalk. All to no avail.

I’m really interested to know what has happened to Justin. If anyone who stumbles across this page, PLEASE let me know! I’ve been thinking about him ever since I last spoke to him. I’ve been thinking the worst, please Justin, even if you come across this, email me, send me your number, message me on MSN, MySpace, ANYTHING just to let me know you are doing fine. Even if it isn’t a conversation, just a simple hello. I miss you, ask anyone who knows me, I’ve hardly missed anyone but it’s been too long.

I’m desperate to know what has happened, I want to actually visit Texas and try and find you. Gather information that will lead me to you, relatives, stories, anything. Anyone who has information let me know, thanks.

For the start, check this video out. Got sent it about 8 hours ago and I thought it was just way to fuuny. So before I start my rant, check it out.

Onto the rant. There was this video on Youtube, which was featured. The guy obviously hadno sense of technology. New or old for that matter. Yet he went ahead and read what he was told, I doubt he was ‘freestyling’ his words, if he was the video comes across even worse! The video was relating towards the ‘new’ range of Sony VAIO laptops/netbooks, whatever you want to call it. The series is P. They are small, about 8 inches wide, flat, and their keys are spaced apart. Picture attached to show you:

Sorry if it overlaps, it’s this layout. You can view the full one here. Now if you look at the MacBooks by Apple, they too have spaced keys, but the way this guy words his sentences, he means it as in Sony have copied Apple’s keyboard layouts to rival their range (There is no competition). They are obviously forgetting that Sony have had spaced keys on their laptops for bloody years. Here is the video in the firing line. Even though I would LOVE to have one, I don’t have the money and I wont waste my money on it. £800 minimum? Fuck off. I’ll wait until technology advances to a certain degree where it’s a faster processor, smaller processor, and at least with more than 1 core. Oh and cheaper. Right now I’ll stick to my laptop. If it was around £400 minimum I would consider it (If I had it) but it’s not something that I could use ALL the time.

The only thing I really agree with about the video is that they shouldn’t have sold it with Windows Vista shipped onto it, what the fuck were Sony thinking? Honestly.