Category Archives: Reviews and Rants

Circus Afterhours

Montreal, Nightlife, Reviews and Rants

I was at Circus Afterhours this Thursday to see my friend Wiktor (aka Viktor Destin) spin. He entered a contest run by the owner of the nightclub and was in the quarter finals. Since I’m a big fan of Wiktor’s music, I decided to participate and support his gig. I was in the line-up at Circus at around 2 AM and waited till 2:45 AM. Since I was on the guest list thanks to my friend, I didn’t pay any cover charge (I got in for free!). Last time I was at Circus must’ve been at least 3 years ago and not much has changed from what I can recall.

Anyway, once in, I met up with Wiktor and a few of the Tranceaddict guys and pretty much listened to house music the whole night while drinking vodka (sneaked in!) with energy drinks (crappy Base, no Rockstars). I was having a pretty good time and got to see a lot of talent play, such as Blake, Driss and Allied Nations. Finally, at about 6 AM, Wiktor was up to spin. He took over the decks and for the 45 minutes I was there, he delivered some sick tracks. He knows how to build up his sets and it really shows. From what I heard that morning, Wiktor definitely has his stuff together and it wouldn’t surprise me if he wins this contest. The club definitely could use his energetic style.

At about 7 AM I had to leave since I was dead tired and had to go to work the next day (but luckily it snowed in so I didn’t go to work). If I had known that I wasn’t going to work that day, I would have stayed longer till the place closed down, but I don’t know how I would manage to stay up longer!

Controlled Labs Green Magnitude Review

Reviews and Rants, Supplements

It has been over 2 months I have been using Green Magnitude by Controlled Labs and would like to say it is a great supplement. In the past, I have used AST Creatine Monohydrate with moderate success, so I felt like it was time to switch brands and try something new for once. I did some reading on the Bodybuilding.com forums and noticed a lot of people praising Green Magnitude for its efficacy as a creatine supplement. One thing they kept mentioning was its supposed great taste (Green Sour Apples). While I never had a problem with a supplement’s taste (until Purple Wraath came along, wait for the upcoming review) it didn’t influence me in my decision of purchasing the product.

After waiting about 2 weeks for my shipment of Green Magnitude to come in from the Bodybuilding.com store, I was eager to try it out. I loaded up a scoop of GM into a tall glass of water and mixed it in. The water immediately turned light green and the smell of sour green apples floated around the room. I took a sip and first thing that went through my mind was “this stuff is sour!”. According to the tub’s dosage instructions, adding more water will make the solution more sweet, but I didn’t have a problem with the sourness. Now, to be honest, the taste is decent, but I much rather have a creatine solution without any taste or additives of this sort. After a while of taking Green Magnitude, I got used to the taste and whatnot, but I still long for a colourless mix and taste-less creatine supplement.

Now, moving on to the efficacy of the supplement, it performs very well. I responded to this stuff right away and got great workouts at the gym each time. I recall the days I didn’t take it (after being off the stuff for a week) I noticed I was energy-less and more prone to being fatigued. Whether this is a placebo effect or whatnot, I strongly believe the creatine from GM works. In fact, I was so happy with Green Magnitude that I decided to try out Controlled Labs’ Green Bulge creatine pills as my next creatine supplement (that’s in 2-3 weeks). The reason why I am now switching to pills is because I am tired of mixing powders.

For the price I paid, this is a top quality supplement that needs to be on every bodybuilder’s list. I highly recommend this to everyone who is in need of a great creatine supplement and doesn’t want to pay for the higher priced garbages out there. Apart from the sour taste, I give this product a 9/10.

Update: check out the free samples of Green Magnitude and Purple Wraath!

Thank You For Smoking

Movies, Reviews and Rants

Two days ago, I watched the movie “Thank You For Smoking” with my brother. I really digged it. The main character, Nick Naylor, reminds me of a good friend of mine who is quite the talker. What’s scary about this film is that people like Nick actually exist out there, who are very good at what they do. I refer to these types of people as “Social Engineers” as they’re very good at manipulating a scenario to their liking with ease.

After watching this film, I felt like smoking. Crap.

LayeredTech Hosting

Reviews and Rants, Websites

For more than a year, I have been hosting my servers with LayeredTech. These guys are professional, efficient and affordable. Now, the following rant about them means nothing about their quality service; rather, this is about the miscommunication that occurred between the company and myself. The story goes something like this.

December 19th: Sometime in the afternoon, I take a look at the server email logs and notice that the log size has reached 8 megabytes in size. Upon examination, I realized sendmail was being used, resulting in an open-relay for spammers. I quickly delete the binary and symlink sendmail to Exim. I noticed the suspicious logging activity stop. This, of course, was an “error” on my part, as I didn’t then look at the Exim mainlog to make sure the suspicious activity had stopped completely.

At about 6 PM, my dad tells me he is receiving spam from the contact form page we had setup for visitors to download our programs from. I quickly shrugged it off and told my dad “I guess they’re just spamming us through the form, whatever.” Big mistake for leaving it at that.

At about 8 PM, my dad is still complaining, and he told me to come check it out in detail this time. I take a look at realize that the contact form was being used for spamming by a spammer. Without thinking twice, I rush downstairs to my computer and completely delete the form. *phew* I think to myself. I then realize there’s over 10,000+ emails queued up in Exim, ready to be delivered to poor folks. Quickly, I read the documentation on Exim on how to manipulate the queue! I come across a command called “exiqgrep” which allows you to go through the queue. Along with the main binary “exim”, I simply remove all the queue emails, whether they were good or bad. Note: I then realized there was a front-end script in Direct Admin control panel that manipulated the queue without needing for the command prompt.

Now that the queue was cleared, I decided it was time to hit the sack. Little did I know, however, that all this time LayeredTech was sending ME emails, warning about a disconnection that was about to take place in an hour or two. Of course, I didn’t get those emails because my server was smart enough to tag them as junk, resulting them being ignored. It also didn’t help that I was sleeping at the time, so no way in hell would I notice anything suspicious.

A few hours later, LayeredTech disconnects my server.

At 7:30 AM today (December 20th) I get a call from my site partner, only to realize myself that the sites and email accounts were not working. I shoot off an email to LayeredTech asking for a quick reboot, unbeknownst that my server was cut off by the Abuse Department because of the spam. I quickly get a reply saying to contact the abuse department. Shit.

Within half an hour, the situation gets resolved when I let them know that it was the contact form being abused that resulted in the spam. Thankfully, the staff at LayeredTech understood the problem and reconnected my server, stating that the support ticket will now close. All is well I thought.

At about 6 PM, after about 10+ hours the issue was closed, I get another call from my site partner. The sites and email accounts are down yet again. What the heck is it now?

I login the ticketing system setup by LayeredTech again and realize the spamming ticket issue is still open. I skim through the ticket to realize a technician had re-disconnected my server because the issue was still open, and he wasn’t sure if I deleted the contact form or not. Jesus, what do you think I did with the form, announce it to everyone about a vulnerability on my server? Frustrated and furious, I shoot off a few emails stating how I’m considering moving my business to another host since they shut my server down without any proper warnings. “At least call me” I tell them. Minutes later, the technician replies back saying he had sent me 3 emails and that was sufficient for a warning. To make it short, he reconnected my server and told me to check the support ticket portal next time.

This whole thing really ticked me off. It was after this incident I noticed that my server was blacklisting LayeredTech support emails, only because the email they sent me contained various spam terms, like “Viagra” and miscellaneous pharmaceutical garbage. Sigh.

Anyway, matter is done and over with. I told the host to contact my cell phone next time they decide to disconnect my server. I still love LayeredTech, of course.