Thursday, January 29, 2015

The biggest mistake you are doing right now

The biggest mistake you are doing right now
old unrelated photo, XD sorry but I like it

    We are all doing this crucial mistake that if you avoid can change your life forever. It took me more than 2 years to realize the solution to this, and now that I have been successful.

    I remember my first android phone was an LG P970, which for all you newbs, is a 512MB RAM and a 1GHz flat-cored processor, and the android version around that time was 2.3, and it certainly was seeing an exponential decrease in quality from the very beginning. Clearly, android at the stage it got popular was still not a good phone to entirely replace your Nokia phone and laptop social media lifestyle, was it? 

this was my first, after 1 month I dual-wielded this and an S2


   Well, yes and no. Back then, nobody really used a phone correctly, not even the companies packaged the proper equipment to care for your smartphone properly. But what is correctly? Simply put, we need a way to keep the phone in a good condition as good as it came, i.e. no lag, no “viruses” and more battery life. But it is as if Android is an alkaline metal that comes out of the oil as soon as you open it, and the air just rusts it away so quickly. Even having a SIM card in the phone was an issue!

here's a picture of a car battery because I desperately want you to laugh at my joke even though it isn't funny.



   To counter this, some people started using it as a Nokia phone: aka only stock apps, not even linking a google account to the play store. However these people overcharged their phones and eventually reached the 6-month syndrome only 1 month late. Personally, I’d never do that to any phone I get. YOLO all the way; why would you waste buying a smartphone if it would become a light brick? And even then, it was always prone to overcharge, and the transformers that came with the phone had the output current as low as 0.7A even at the Galaxy Note (Android 2.3.5 era) which made charging slow and discharging fast because the current was bad. Since the battery always gives the phone a different voltage depending on percentage, performance of applications and particularly widgets was affected on a permanent level, and third party replacements for everything stock android should do from home to lock screens to SMS and dialers (root of course for the full replacement). Custom ROMs, that were dangerous at that stage, began to surface and even I used one for cooler widgets and lock screens. 

only 2009 kids remember this. or wait..



   The life of the phone was short, then it turned into the laggy pop up-infested phone that takes forever to load WhatsApp and open the stock keyboard, and then you’d leave the WhatsApp session to once or twice a day, giving out a little sigh and mentally reminding oneself to google an android emulator to use WhatsApp from before using. Luckily, people caught on that Android phones need to have more durability and that is not by not being able to personalize them like iPhones, which feel like I am borrowing a friend’s phone and cannot use to their fullest.

danmaku death was running smoothly though, even during heat


    Phone Manufacturers and eventually Google realized this, and began to change their policies. The manufacturers started first by adding “slow charging” notifications, then increasing battery life, adding battery saving modes, more settings to disable background apps more effectively, adding “fast charging” ability to their hardware, increasing POWER OUTPUT FROM THEIR CHARGERS FINALLY (sorry for caps) which allowed their more useful lock screen widgets to take effect and not eat battery unlike the custom ROMs sometimes. For stock Android to surpass mods is a great achievement, it is just like Minecraft vs Tekkit (oh… we still didn’t reach the industrial age in Minecraft yet, have we?) Nevertheless, it is a terrific feeling to an extent.

I'd hire you creepers :3



    Google’s response to the growth of Android was actually a bad one, but I have already talked about that in a previous Choose Your Death article (if android dies, I die). With the increasing Google Play services that apps depend on, in the future, apps will have less permissions unless they utilize Google’s services, which give G more control over your device. I’ll leave that for you to check the article yourself, else I geek out here.
from the forums of Androidcentral

   So, what does this have to do with your present day phone? Should you be safe and not use it at all?

    Actually, split the expected 3-year life of your phone into a few stages: new, 6-month syndrome, a year and above. It is not actually 6 months or a year, depending on your usage.

   New is when no matter what damaging pop ups, hundreds of spam apps you install, and malicious widgets you load along with the live wallpapers you use, your phone will always be new. At least at the first 3 months and then you will get the 6-month syndrome. At this stage, it is always best to restrict background data of the game apps only, and just explore the Play Store to your heart’s content, do not overcharge it, and your phone may make it before the 6 month mark.

yay a new picture!


6-month syndrome is when your phone apparently feels worn out, but the process is actually reversible. If you had been misusing the charger, replace the battery. At this stage it would be advisable to only start replacing home screen and keyboard from now (not when it was new) because  it can tolerate it still. You should continue to explore the Play Store, but do not hoard items in your storage (I had over 300 apps at this stage, reduced them to 254). You can still use the apps to their fullest while running, but the fitness or GPS apps will be a hindrance unless absolutely necessary.

  After 1-1.5 years, you will slowly start to open less apps, so feel free to uninstall. Because at this stage, the stock keyboard takes time, the malicious software is a bit too much. A factory reset at this point will get it close to a 6-month syndrome so whether or not you should reset is still unknown to my experiments, though I’d stick around for longer. This stage is a bit mixed into different stages, such as the 2 year mark where Samsung devices must replace their batteries or some models can completely electrically disconnect batteries like Lenovos, and there is too much to write here, and if I write it all in one sentence Word gives me a blue line which is annoying. Just Google an old device before you buy it (if you are into buying old/mid-ranged devices) because the forums everywhere can be accurate.

  It is important to note that software updates are bad at late stages because they do not get understood properly unlike when the phone was new. You might say that phones do not get software support for so long, but remember that if you misuse the phone you can quicken its life cycle.

   Did you know all these before? It took me a long time to investigate, and I haven’t been writing for the blog for so long that my sentences are too tall. So if you are still sticking around, thank you so much. I bought a mid-end phone recently just to test my theory (namely the S duos 2) and I just bought a high-end phone which I will compare and review quite soon.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Reality of Minecraft Servers

Reality of Minecraft Servers

   So much has been going on, and I lost all the partial files of my texture pack, so I fell into playing Minecraft for a while, and so on. I noticed there are a lot of unsaid things about Minecraft, so I decided to say them here.
 protect it already!


   Minecraft cannot fit only in the sandbox or indie genre, it is also an MMO, a MOBA, survival horror, RPG, FPS. You name it and Minecraft is that genre. Bukkit was really the best mod experiment to be created and used by servers. But sometimes, servers limit the game so and it rarely looks like a game anymore just a gallery of images.

some people..

   I am looking at you overrated factions PVP servers. You need to walk for an hour in order to find unclaimed land, and nothing is fun in that. If you are lucky, you get one of two people at spawn. Type 1 are the dreaded noob callers who think they have the right to spawn kill you just because you are new to the server. Sure, there are safe zones but they don’t really prevent that much. It’s kind of like that episode in Log Horizon where the cat and the red girl were walking out of town and seeing the spawn killers unable to do anything until they cross the safe line. Not helpful.

  The second type are the charitable giving type. They stand at spawn and throw 5000 stacks of diamond and act really friendly to the new comers but they do not realize how giving an unfair advantage to the ones currently online could be trouble to the rest, because you are saving trolls and spawn killers the hours that would otherwise make them give up. Coming from an ex-troll, mark my words, trolls are impatient. If they don’t climb their way through the server’s economy by “kind” people or bullying kids on chat to have them forfeit their items, cheap killing, and verbal abuse, they’ll leave the server and forget about trolling in it. Don’t help people until they prove potential. I only mean this in video games, not real life!
Monetised MOBA everywhere.

    Other than faction servers are the MOBA games, which start out very creative. MOBA stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, popular servers include Uberminecraft, HiveMC famous for its Blockparty. They are extremely creative, but it sucks to see a game die out, like spleef :’( and replaced with other laggy games (splegg I’m looking at you ). Sure, the new plugin introduction to games is cool, some games have potential, but these servers are all increasingly competitive and player-heavy, where the plugin developer is the one who makes the rules to the game. Good to kill time sometime, but may be the next Call of Duty online phenomenon.
some people... x2

    That said though, I do not feel addicted to MOBA Minecraft. Most modern servers (not exclusive factions) mix a global economy, some MOBA/ minigames, and some MMO games, like prison, factions (again) or something special like My little pony, Breaking Bad (mafia craft) or Skyrimcraft (which didn’t satisfy me, by the way). These servers try to mix in a lot and manage so many minigames at once. One has got to be appreciative of these amazing feats of holding the server together, always having a mod online.
don't hate the game hate the player. what?

   But for once, I longed for a real Minecraft experience. You just spawn in a random place and there are no claimed lands. I am not saying no bukkit entirely but the real McMMO needs to let me edit terrain as I please. Kill as I please. Live dangerously as I please. Don’t protect me from PVP, but at the same time, allow me to protect a small amount of land, not huge chunks of factions. I’ve tried Skyblock, but that doesn’t seem right (and again, I was trolled) so I finally found survival, NOT survival games (Hunger games MOBA). And one where I got a good chance too. Lichcraft has real survival that works, even though the servers are full half the day, and in next month, I won’t be online until the time where it’s full. I am in no way advertising servers, but these are all just suggestions for you to find your perfect playstyle. If Skyrimcraft fixes the skyrim part, I’d play it. But for now, I changed my top server.
i am having deja vu here for some reason..

   If you know of any worthy servers that entertain you/take all of your free time? If so, mention them in the comments! I am looking for the perfect server, and might video the best server. Until then, Play More Zelda!