Dire Thoughts

So I was out on a walk…

Posted by Henry - 29/12/11 at 12:12:58 pm

2 short videos recorded and edited with a potato (iPod). Off to Hong Kong. May blog. May not. I am mysterious in my ways.

Derp

H./

How to annoy Apple (and Think Differently)

Posted by Henry - 22/12/11 at 09:12:38 pm

I’m sure that most of my readers have entered an Apple store, or at the very least know of Apple. Those of you who have entered an Apple store will therefore be able to share my experience and knowledge, that I garnered today at the Apple store in Westfield Shepherds Bush, London. Having been doing the typical post-movie teenage thing of loitering around doing nothing, I tried to see what I could do with one of these:

from the Telegraph

These iPads have a special app on them, and disabled home button keys, so they can only be used to display the information about the product – I believe that most, if not all Apple Stores now have these. They are charged and thus need no touching by staff, so they are locked into the glass. But thanks to the Apple design, which is so pro curves, I discovered that if you put enough weight on the top left corner – where the lock button is (I put my elbow on it), you can lock it. You can then either turn them off – at which point it makes it a pain, until the store staff work out how to turn it on, or you can simply enter the main screen – the dashboard where all the apps are. These iPads are peculiar enough, having some apps to have the display and some “remote login” app that I didn’t want to explore but no doubt can be googled. But they are connected to the Wifi in the apple store, so that they can be remotely updated using the new fancy shcmancy syncing that iOS 5 brought us. I managed to navigate into settings, where I found the wifi network – it’s “hidden”, but that doesn’t particularly matter – a simple scan that bypass’s “hidden” wifi networks would find it. But I then went onto Youtube, via Safari (the Youtube app didn’t exist on this special store edition). I discovered to my surprise that the Wifi network the iPads were connected to was the same as the Apple TV’s. I wanted to check though, so I got up “Retarded Running Horse”, a personal favourite, and hit the play button. I then hit the Airplay to Apple TV, randomly choosing one. And I then looked around to see the Apple TV belting out “SHUGAHANUNAHARAHUNAH” and an image of a 2 legged horse. The “advisor” at the Apple TV looked awfully surprised, but didn’t really pay any attention. We tried it out on the entire desk of display iPads (for the iPods), and they were all connected to the same wifi. I then figured that I could connect to that wifi network via my iPod, or possibly a Linux laptop. Now a Linux laptop, with the help of ChronicDev could possibly allow me to hijack every single Display iPad in the store – 60 odd. And as the staff devices were on the “staff” Wifi, I’d have those too. I would be able to Airplay to 80 devices – and Airplay is unstoppable – the audio will keep going and it overrides the music/video/safari capabilities. They would have to turn off all the devices – and when the iPads are in a glass case that I doubt many people know how to switch them off, they’d have a hard time. You could play ANYTHING on them. Pro-Android ads, the Windows 7 ads. Hell – the “Genius” bars monitors could be changed to something pro-Microsoft, anti-Apple. Now me being the lovely grey-hat I am, I find the nearest “advisor”, wearing their lovely festive red apple t-shirts. I explain to her, and demonstrate how to do this – she asked me for my age, and my friends’(who blogs at the Aftermatter) who was with me. Apparently we knew more about the store and the wifi setup that she did, although she had only been there for a week. I guess that’s the Apple rigorous employee training for you! She gets her manager, as she is rather confunded by how we do this. I explain to the manager, who is not entirely sure what I’m on about and keeps on going on about “hidden wifi”. I explain to him the prospect of Wireshark, but this doesn’t seem to cheer him up, and he says we would be banned from all Apple Stores if you were to do that – he was very condescending and patronising, if I may say so, in contrast the chirpy female advisor. He then backed up, claiming the Apple TV magically switched Wifi networks, but I retorted to that, and I think he lost that train of thought. Nevertheless, we left, like kind teen-hackers, to bide our time. I don’t think he likes us anymore

Here’s your simple 6-step guide on how to hack a Display iPad

1. Find an Apple Store. There will be a Display iPad
2. Put down some weight on the top left, until you either get the lock, or the power.
3. Either turn off to simply do the basic troll, on reboot.
4. Once you have rebooted, go to Safari – then youtube. Choose a video! To demonstrate, we used Retarded Running Horse and the Stormtrooper. Then airplay to an Apple TV. Repeat on other iPad’s if wanted.
5. ????
6. PROFIT!!

I leave it to your brain to work out what to do further if you were to do anything nefarious or “naughty”.

Anti Apple: 1

Pro Apple : 0

Has an iPod, and is probably going to be raided by the Apple Police and hopefully isn’t banned , (I mean where am I meant to get free Wi-Fi!!)

H./

Edit:// PROOF: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfPuEPRurBc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Many thanks to @mrphoenix for suggesting “Think Differently”.

You disgust me, sir.

Posted by Henry - 12/12/11 at 11:12:37 pm

What is your idea of hell? An inferno of screams and cries, with the earsplitting sound of torment deafening your ears, as you thrash before the red hot iron presses down on your skull? All of those you love being cruelly killed by your hands, taken over by some alien force? A lifetime of work destroyed?

Mine isn’t any of the above. This is my idea of hell.

That’s right. Comic Sans, the most despicable of fonts, made even worse with a “lovely” purple and star fill. Now before you leave, taking me for a snob, allow me to take you on a journey in the worlds most hated font, that despicable piece of trash tha- I am getting carried away.

Comic Sans was made by Microsoft, alongside the other pieces of trash they have made (we’re looking at you, Microsoft Bob and Microsoft NT). This particular typeface was based upon the  fonts used in comic books, apparently. It is a casual script, made by a man who had never looked at a comic book, but probably at a lot of hallucinogenics, and hopefully a jail sentence for crimes agains- apologies. Interesting enough, the font came about due to Microsoft Bob, in a way. It has been forced down the throats of Microsoft users since Windows 95 (but Microsoft were so kind to give a ‘warning’ by making the font come in with an ‘expansion pack’). It then, much like a parasite, slowly crept into the system, joining the default fonts for Internet Explorer (another simply brilliant piece of software I couldn’t live without). Now, with people being the stupid type of people that we are, Comic Sans lost the “casual” tag and won the “put it on anything that bloody moves” tag. It assimilated my primary school sheets, engulfing the letters home informing us all of the school fayre (which were all awful), and the interesting trip to the park that requires 6 forms to keep ‘elf and safety happy. In my life, it then vanished, occasionally showing up on godawful websites (*cough* myspace *cough*), and for some strange reason, The Sims, apparently. But in the great institution which is my school, a school that is half a millennia old, it has arrived. We’ve started off by seeing it in the biology department, feeding on the gerbils, until it snuck into the brains of my teachers, forcing them to write in Comic Sans. And it has spread to the Geography and Ancient History departments. I can only hope that the English department barricades themselves in with Times New Roman (Ol’ Faithful), Calibri (Professionally Unorthodox), Verdana (Concise and accurate) , Arial (Brutal and blunt) and the power that is Garamond (read a book, dumbass). I despise Comic Sans.

EDIT: Ed Conder informed me of this great picture.

In other news, at that institution where I apparently garner knowledge, my school, we had a “Students V Teachers challenge”, which consisted of, to start with, Just A Minute, with 2 boys vs 2 formidable members of the English department, one of whom is a published author, the other a comic singing genius (sadly he uses Myspace, but he has Youtube too!), led by the-scarily-good-at-doing-an-impression-of-Nicholas-Parsons-that-comic-genius head boy. We then had Universally Challenged, hosted by none other than Jeremy Paxman. One of the greatest political videos on the internet is that of the interview between Boris Johnson and Paxman; I thoroughly encourage you check it out. The teachers, surprise surprise, won. That’s all.

I see we are drawing close to Christmas. Some time before Christmas I’ll write a thoroughly dull boring post about Christmas to make you all depressed. That’s my present.

Actually not being sarcastic,

H./

Search