Alt3rn4tiv3's Tech Blog

Whenever I use Gmail, the quoted message always appeared at the bottom. When I used Thunderbird to retrieve email from my other email addresses, it seems that they’re always displayed at the top, and it caused problems for some of my email correspondences.

Today, I was rummaging through the options trying to figure out where I could change the setting and I finally found it -

Tools -> Account Settings -> Composition & Addressing

You can change the settings for each of your accounts there. Pretty nifty but I had more than 20 accounts there so I had to change them one by one.

If you ever had headaches creating logos before, you’d probably have tried running a query through Google - “logo creator” or “logo maker” or something like that. Two of the top online creators that are predominant in the first page are LogoMaker and InstaLogo.

Let’s make a logo in one of them -

To download your logo, you’d need to pay $39. Great marketing idea, really. You see your product right in front of your eyes and you’re a mere $39 from getting it. Damn it, where’s that “Print Screen” button?

It is at this juncture where you realize that there’s a grid behind your lovely logo, which acts like a (very bad implementation of a) watermark. Oh no. Your plan has been foiled! Not!

Courtesy of my brother -
Looking closely at the colour of the grid, you’ll realize that it’s just one colour, without any gradient or anything - #eceef2. Loading it into Photoshop, we are able to use the “Replace Colour” function -

Select the colour in the grid line and set the “Lightness” to 100% -

Grid lines gone!

The setback for users is that you can’t use colours that are the same as the grid lines while creating the logo. However, that isn’t a problem because you can set those colours in Photoshop.

Now, I’m not asking you to use this and cheat these companies of money. I’m just showing you a flaw in their otherwise-perfect marketing strategy. And also, I’m telling you what not to do so that you don’t get cheated in the same way, in a similar context.

So, what should you do?
1. Use gradients for grid lines
2. Use watermarks with a high z-index (i.e. above the logo)

Hope you learnt something

Hello everyone!

It’s been a looooooooooooooooooooooong time since I’ve posted. But I’ve been doing lots of things! Some of you will notice that my blog is now slower. Some will notice that it’s much faster. I spent about $4000 buying a server and co-locating at a local datacenter. Thanks to Derrick from sgWebster. Although finally I realized that Aloysius’ company sells it a little cheaper.

I encountered a lot of problems setting up the server, from the actual installation to the cPanel installation to the DNS resolving and everything else. But it was finally done and it was a GREAT achievement for me! =D

So here’s something new for you to chew on -
A few months ago, I posted something about cracking MD5 with rainbow tables. Today, I present you with my very own version of using rainbow tables to crack MD5 hashes - MD5 Rainbow Tables Cracking Serice, or RTSrvc for short.

It currently has 4 rainbow tables -
loweralpha1-7, loweralphanumeric1-9, loweralphanumeric1-6 and numeric1-12.
It also has 1.6million entries of hashes that supports the retrieval of plaintext for double hashing! I’m going to import more entries into the database and I expect it to grow to about 36million entries at the very least. Try it out!

Oh. Only 10 public usages of it are allowed each day. Be sure to try it out!

FeedFlare is giving away tonnes of prizes in a contest that they are organizing. Be sure to participate it in! And while you’re at it, check out his post on Really Simple Syndication!

Yesterday, I checked my mail and was pleasantly surprised to receive a mail -



In my mind -



It the was first donation I had received through this blog. Thank you to ptc4free[-_AT_-]gmail[-_DOT_-]com for your generous contribution!

10 cents can buy lots of things. For example, a fishball -




Alright. Enough of the lame stuff. To the main point of this post. I was very happy, receiving the first $0.10 of donations. Thus, I logged in to PayPal and checked my updated earnings. Alas, PayPal felt that it was unjustified for me to have $0.10 extra in my funds -


I can’t even but a fishball now. Sigh.


The fees of 2.4% + $0.50 SGD to 3.4% + $0.50 SGD should be removed for transactions that are less than $0.50. Or maybe even up to $1.00.

Just a quick Did-You-Know bite here. I found this piece of paper which I scribbled some notes on when I was browsing through some forensics book last year (probably).

“Deleted” registry entries are not removed until the registry file size exceeds 500kb, or until regedit /opt is typed, because it will take too much time and processing power to rewrite and compress the registry each time an entry is removed.

Two additional recommended readings are -
Discovery of Computer Data (Link Gone)
Forensic Computer Analysis: An Introduction

Yes, it’s been a long time since I last posted.
Basically, I had to go and “serve the nation". And I will have to do so for 2 years, starting from 25^th January 2008. Le sigh. I got posted out of course and to another unit from Basic Military Training due to medical reasons (no, I’m not lying about them). I thus have a life with more free time than most people. Unfortunately, I need to wake up at insanely early hours to reach camp in time every morning.

I’ve been tasked to do a website as my first job there. It’s a pretty simple site, but with pretty high expectations with pretty poor technical support. I get to stay at home often due to off-passes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a good thing because I have had to work out of office hours and even on weekends.

Anyway, I’ll end off this post with a contest submission.
Neil Duckett, who recently launched Japan Singles is holding a contest with the prize as a brand spanking new 7.1 meg Canon IXY Digital L4 Camera. Check it out!