Category: Toys & Tech

How to Stop Spam SMS messages from True (TrueMove H)

I’m fairly satisfied with my monthly TrueMove H internet subscription; it’s fast enough and I’ve never run out of my monthly high-speed allowance (although I am careful not to download or stream too much with it). One thing that always bugged me about it, though, was the number of stupid spam messages I would receive from True, especially since I’m using this SIM with a Nexus 7 tablet (that doesn’t even have a phone function!).

Eventually, I got around to looking it up and found that it’s very easy to unsubscribe from the SMS spam sent by True themselves:

  1. Call *137 from the phone you want to unsubscribe (I had to put the SIM from my tablet into a phone to make the call).
  2. Press 9 for English.
  3. Follow the automated instructions (as of 2014, you press 1 to unsubscribe from SMS spam although this may have been changed to pressing 2 in April, 2020.).

That’s it!

The only problems I have found after doing this for a few friends are that sometimes the system gets overloaded, and sometimes True has no control over 3rd party spammers – in which case you should look for an app to help filter your spam while praying feverishly that the spammers quickly die horrible deaths and are reborn as toilet brushes.

The Best YouTube Script for Chrome

This post will be compiled almost entirely of material taken from other sources, because I am lazy. If you follow the instructions and install the script successfully, you will have the best YouTube functions integrated directly into Google Chrome. This includes turning off DASH (where YouTube segments videos into parts that prevents you from preloading whole videos – handy for slower or overseas connections), downloading videos in all available formats, and many, many other options.

A Chrome extension for this script is downloadable from the Google Play store, but it seems to be causing a lot of problems. The workaround is to install an Opera extension, which is counter-intuitive, and this is why I’m compiling this short guide.

What is YouTube Center? (via Github)

YouTube Center is a userscript designed to expand the functionality of YouTube. It includes the ability to download the video you’re watching, auto selecting your preferred video quality and much more. Here’s a list of all the features.

 

How to Install the Opera Add-on into Google Chrome

  1. Download the .crx file from this page. The exact procedure to do this as of October 18, 2013, is to click on the green “Add to Opera” button. A pop-up will appear as shown below. Click on the link to “get it anyway.”
    YouTube Center extension - Opera add-ons
  2. Click the Chrome menu icon Chrome-menu-icon on the browser toolbar.
  3. Select Tools > Extensions.
  4. Locate the extension file on your computer and drag the file onto the Extensions page.
  5. Review the list of permissions in the dialog that appears. If you would like to proceed, click Install.

For me, even just the downloading function is worth the hassle of installation, but really, this is how YouTube should look and work by default.

Testing the WordPress Publicize Function

Since Twitter got hacked a while back, the apps using its API have been refused permission intermittently. Until now, I used a site called twitterfeed to daisy chain my blog posts from my dedicated blog to Twitter to Facebook, but that all fell apart when Twitter security got oversensitive.

So now, I’m going to see how the WP Publicize function works out. Guess I’ll try to post a photo and embed a YouTube video:

Some random photo my wife took in Burma a few weeks ago.
Some random photo my wife took in Burma a few weeks ago.

Random video from my YouTube “music” playlist:

Sony hates you.

“Last Friday, Sony Music sent Gummy Soul a cease and desist order for Amerigo Gazaway’s “Bizarre Tribe: A Quest To The Pharcyde”.”

LINK

Sony just doesn’t get it:
They don’t know how to make good products anymore.
They don’t understand “fair use.”
They don’t know how to get back all the loyal customers they chased away over the years…
It seems they only want to make a last few bucks before Samsung and Apple and all the other companies who do get it (a little better, at least) collectively piss on their grave.

Die, Sony, die.

By the way, the album mentioned above is simply sublime.

Line seems to be the best option for Burma telecommunications

Like it says in the title, Line.

My wife is in Myanmar/Burma for a week. I looked up the best options for calling to/from that country before she went, but the telecom market is in a state of constant flux and it seems they the government controls the sales of SIM cards. What sad state of affairs: Third world telecom service with first world bureaucracy!

As it turns out, most of the airports and hotels she’s been to have had barely decent wifi, which has left us experimenting with voice/video chat services. Here are the results for using chat apps on Android to/from Yangon, Mandalay, and maybe other places in Burma:

1st place: (Naver) Line
Excellent voice quality even on weak connections. If there was a major disaster, this is the app I would rely on (oh yeah, that’s why it was made in the first place).

2nd Place: Google Hangouts
Fairly stable, but laggy with both voice and video calls. Consistently laggy, though (about 1/2 second), so usable if you want to speak slowly and wait for responses.

3rd place: Skype
Skype changed my world, then abandoned it. I still have most of the money I put into Skype credit 7 or 8 years ago. TOTALLY UNUSABLE FOR ANYTHING UNLESS YOU LIVE IN KANSAS CITY AND GET FORCE-FED INTARWEBS FROM GOOGLE. Seriously, I’m going to uninstall Skype from all my devices. So fucking sad.

Accidentally turned my Tilapia into a Grouper

It took a few hours to research and get a custom ROM installed (SmoothROM v5.1), so I was dismayed to see that it lacked 3G support. Oops. So I started over again using Nexus Root Toolkit and pushed the latest cyanogenmod nightly for Tilapia (Nexus 7 3g) and gapps via my laptop. Success!

cyanogenmod is kind of boring because it’s so stable – and that’s a good thing.

Regarding the title above,

grouper = Nexus 7 wifi
tilapia = Nexus 7 3g