Daniel15's Blog

So, umm, yeah, I don't blog often. You've probably noticed. Seriously, look at the "Archives" widget on the right (or left, depending on what stylesheet you've chosen for this site) and you'll see there's basically nothing since 2007. I really just don't have much to write, haha. I eventually want to write a page about me for the homepage here, but I guess my MySpace and Facebook profiles are serving that purpose right now. In any case, my sister has a blog, which you should all go read. Unlike me, she has a talent for writing, and I promise you that her blog is a lot more exciting than mine. Go subscribe to her too. And send her lots of spam (well, okay, maybe not the spam, but do all the other things. 😛 ). Also, check out my friend Ben's new blog "EpicToast.com."

While I'm on the topic of blogs (including this one), it's interesting thing to note, my "37 things a girl probably doesn’t know about a guy" blog post is still by far the most popular/accessed. And it wasn't even mine, it was just copied and pasted from a MySpace bulletin. Maybe one day I'll write something similar, with my own thoughts on it. I guess. Speaking of random stuff that gets passed around, I keep getting tagged in those "12/20/38/50/100/whatever Things About Me" notes on Facebook, haven't done any yet though. I suppose I might do one of those one day. It's hard to think of that many things about myself, though. And I also try to avoid those chain things anyways. But one day someone will be like "OMG DANIEL YOU HAVEN'T DONE THOSE ANNOYING CHAIN THINGS, I HATE YOU LALALALALALA RAWRRRRRR" and I'll be like "OH FINE >_<" and do it. 😛

So anyways, what's been up with me, apart from avoiding chain "random stuff about me" Facebook forwards?? Well, Valentines Day came and went... I bought my amazing friend Ciera some flowers and a valentines day teddy... She loves them both 😄. I wanted to do something special, seeing as this year's the first year I've considered buying something for someone 😛. Apart from that, I haven't been doing all that much. Over the last few weeks, I worked on a few programming projects, then got bored of that and stopped working on them xD. Nothing much apart from that, just the usual chatting on Windows Live Messenger, and browsing Digg, news.com.au, and some other sites.

I go back to university on Monday... Second year of Professional Software Development at Swinburne University, should be fun 😃. No usability this semester! Although I reeeeeeeeeeally hope that we don't have a subject that's as bad as Usability was, HIT2308 Software Development Practices looks like it'll be just as bad as Usability 😢. And I have that THIS SEMESTER. We'll have to see if it's bad. I blame you (yes, whoever's reading this) if it is. You're evil 😦

For now, I'll leave you with this video clip by GoRemy:

❤️ GoRemy

And here is a remix of "Break Up" by Kim Sozzi that I started at the start of January:

[wpaudio url="http://dan.cx/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/Kim-Sozzi-Break-Up-Daniel15-Remix-2nd-Iteration.mp3"]

Here's the MP3, if you want it (not that you would, it's not too good 😛)

Well, that's all for now. Have fun browsing your internets.

— Daniel

Okay, so a lot of people read my blog post about my MySpace account getting deleted for reporting a security issue. Well it appears someone named Joe from MySpace's Security Enforcement division read that post, and contacted me via email. He was able to restore my account, so I now have a working MySpace account again, and someone to report security issues to 😃

So, yeah, things are all good now. Just thought I'd write a short post about this. 😄

— Daniel

As you might have read on my blog, I recently reported a security issue to MySpace. Instead of getting a "thank you for informing us of this problem" (which was all I wanted... I was aiming for MySpace to make their site safer, not for any publicity or anything 😛), they deleted my account. The security hole I reported was patched though, so I guess that's good. I'm still annoyed at the deletion though. All my test accounts got deleted, but suprisingly my music account wasn't.

Anyways, I've found another security hole today. Not another XSS hole, this is a different security hole with some privacy implications. So, the way that I see it, I have a few options regarding what I can do at this point:

1. Do "the right thing" and report it to them again. Probably getting my remaining accounts deleted in the process (I have a new personal profile, and my music profile that wasn't deleted).
2. Tell someone else and get them to report it on my behalf.
3. Ignore it and hope they fix it themselves.
4. Post it to a security/"hackers" website.

Obviously, the last one is not something I'd usually do, I'm just not that type of person. However, if someone were to do something like that, assuming it's posted anonymously, nothing bad would happen. So, the thing that's the most "correct" (reporting it to them) would get punished (as my previous reported security hole showed), whereas the thing that's "wrong" (posting it to a security site) wouldn't. Isn't it obvious what most people would do? How funny.

— Daniel

Hey everyone,

I got bored today and thought it might be fun to make a MySpace profile layout that looks like Facebook. Considering I'm not a designer, I'm rather happy with how it turned out. There's a screenshot to the right, click on it to see a full-size version. I haven't tested in Internet Explorer, but that shouldn't be much of an issue, as most people are using better browsers... Right?

Want to use it?

Please feel free to use this layout on your profile. The only thing I ask is that you keep the credit (Layout by Daniel15) on the page, and in the CSS code itself.

Here's what you need to do if you want to use this layout on your MySpace profile. You should probably already know how to use a MySpace Profile 2.0 layout, but here's a brief overview:

1. This layout is a profile 2.0 layout. If you haven't already, you'll have to upgrade to MySpace Profile 2.0. This can be done by clicking the "Customise Profile" link in the "Profile" dropdown menu.
2. Go to the "Customise Profile" page.
3. Click "Select Theme" and choose the blank one.
4. Click "Change Layout" and choose a page width of 960px, and the layout with two columns.
5. Click "CSS" and paste the CSS code into the box.
6. Click "Change Layout" again (or any other option. You need to leave the CSS tab and go to another one for it to save the CSS settings).
7. Click "Publish"

Here is the CSS (click)

If you don't like the header, and would prefer the default MySpace one, delete everything between {! Begin header - Remove this section if you want the normal MySpace header !} and {! End header !}

Note I'm giving limited support for this layout. I can try to help you with bugs in the layout itself, but can't help you with anything beyond that. Having said that, please feel free to leave a comment if you find any issues with the layout.

Enjoy!

— Daniel

A while back, I reported a security problem to MySpace. Being a nice person, I thought I'd email them and wait for a reply before telling anyone else (I thought I was the only one to find this problem, but it appears a few others knew of it too. I didn't know this until later). I have reported a few problems to MySpace in the past, and they usually took around two weeks or so to reply. Sure, their reply was something generic, but it was a reply at least. Anyways, back to this story. So, after writing to them, I waited two weeks. Didn't hear anything back from them. A month, still didn't hear anything. So I thought that as a month had passed, I may as well report the security hole to a security site. I wrote to xssed.com, and after a small wait they published an article on it.

Today, I try to log in to my account, and it didn't work. Interesting, I was sure I was typing the correct password. I go to use the "Forgot your password?", and it says my email is invalid. So that's it, they've deleted my account. For me, MySpace was a way to keep in touch with old friends I otherwise wouldn't be able to talk to. And now they've deleted my account. So, they deleted my account for reporting a security issue and showing them a harmless example, yet people that actively try to attack MySpace accounts still have active accounts? This makes no sense, if anything they should be thanking me for finding the bug on their site, and being nice enough not to do anything evil with it. It's totally unfair. Just before deleting the account, I had 467 friends, 1991 comments, 2300 messages, and just over 19000 profile views. I have no clue what's going to happen to my Windows Live Messenger MySpace app, an application that now has around 51,000 users. Whatever, I'm done with MySpace now. I made a new account but don't really care about it any more. Add me on Facebook.

—Daniel

Oh, and http://www.myspace.com/daniel_1515 was my old account. In case anyone searches for it in Google.

Update 9th February 2009: My MySpace account is back. Take a look at my blog post about it.