How did it all start?

So there I was on a lonely Thursday evening, trying to do something if not cultural, at least interesting. I couldn’t find anything and I ended up on my facebook’s news feed and here’s what I saw:

I honestly don’t know the girl who posted that message nor do I keep in close contact with the person who had this thing posted on her wall. I did however felt like something was wrong. Therefore, I clicked on the link. Using any bullet proof browser like.. well, anything else except Internet Explorer. In my case, Mozilla. And I got to the following screen:

Well, that was pretty expected. I don’t know, however, who would attempt to hijack some facebook accounts. My best bet goes towards some Farmville or Mafia Wars maniacs but I am not pointing any names yet. So, anyway, since I’m not afraid of getting any virus/malware/whatever (yeah, I’m that cool), I ignored the warning.

How to tell if you’re in the course of a forgery?

First of all, it’s obvious I didn’t fill out that form. I did however go this far in order to show you how to easily detect a spoofing. If you haven’t realized this so far, spoofing is the term used for a web page which has the same design as one of your usual login pages but it’s sole purpose is to steal your account info. Spoofing can occur on any type of web site that deals with data: internet banking, e-mail, social media and so on.

Therefore, let’s go back to the screenshot. The first thing that should get you alerted is that big thick red bar which would be present right under your tabs. It only appears there if you’re using mozilla and my guess is that if you’re using mozilla, you wouldn’t need me to point the other two clues:

1. That’s not a facebook address. Period. Whenever you enter any personal information into any forms on the internet, always check if the domain you are sending the info to is the one you expect it to be. Well, not on any form. Nobody really cares to steal e-mails from the e-mail newsletter service but that’s a whole other thing.
2. Facebook without full language support? Come on, the guys have 300 million user accounts, worldwide and you expect them to show question marks ( ???????? ) instead of the actual Japanese or Chinese characters?

What to do if things went too far?

Basically, if your account has been compromised, there is only one thing you can do except praying: changing your password. If you don’t do that, you will never be able to sleep peacefully. Nightmares will haunt you and by the time you wake up, compromising stuff will be posted from your account to your friends walls.

If your password has already been reset, you should immediately reset the password yourself, with the help of the e-mail that you have registered your facebook account with. If you don’t have access to that account anymore, my suggestion is to contact Facebook in order to resolve the problem.

Conclusion

That would be about it. This has not been the first or the last guide against spoofing but there is always a lack of tutorials on this theme. Surf safe and don’t do drugs!

I have been feeling sick for quite some time now. However, the way I was raised taught me not to go to the doctor except if it’s mandatory: there are people in a whole lot more need than I am. However, sometime around the last Saturday evening, I have started developing a fever. And when I say fever, I mean FEVER! No matter what I had tried, the best outcome I was getting was by taking paracetamol or ibuprofen but those would have effect for 1 or 2 hours at most and then the fever would be back. I couldn’t take the pill again since it would’ve been too fast for my body to handle and I just had to resist.

Sometime around 12 AM, I realized that something was wrong: I have never had this kind of fever. I do get sick pretty often so anything out of the pattern rings a huge bell in my brain. Therefore, I have decided to call the emergency doctor in Aarhus. For those of you who don’t know about him, he is practically the first step before calling 112 and he should be called if you don’t have an immediate emergency like a robbery, fire or accident.

Therefore, I called him. After being held with a very crappy music for some minutes he answers me. I tell him what the problem is and what he told me shocked me: “It is most likely the Influenza type A. You know, H1N1, Swine Flu”. I got scared. I told him that I was practically burning and that my eyes were about to be on fire and he told me that I should just continue taking one Paracetamol every 6 hours, drink a lot of teas and just stay inside. Wow, I don’t think I would have ever considered that! That’s like a genius treatment that I have never ever tried before! After getting out of the shock of hearing the treatment suggestion, I asked him about this swine flu. I did know what the symptoms of this flu are but I never knew you can evaluate it by phone. He told me (and pay attention here) that his brother has had the same symptoms, followed this treatment and he is better now. I thought myself “What a jerk!”, told him to have a good night and went to bed myself.

Meanwhile, the fever persisted for a little while, then disappeared. However, all the other symptoms started bursting all over my body: coughing, continuous nausea, stuffed nose and sore throat. I knew that taking the paracetamol or the ibuprofen will not take the flu away but rather hide the symptoms. Eventually, I decided to go to my assigned doctor but in order to go to him, you need to make an appointment.

I wanted to go there on Monday but I couldn’t contact them on Monday morning. Tuesday came and I was not able to contact them and finally, today, after being held with the crappy music for around 15 minutes, I got an answer.

Again, I started telling what the problem is and again, I was in a shock: I was told that it’s most likely the swine flu(!!) and that they will not schedule a meeting with the doctor for me because there is no point in doing that. They just said that I should stay at home, in bed, drink teas and take paracetamol. Should I make any comment? I guess not!

So here I am, staying at home, without knowing whether or whether not I have the swine flu. Usually, the doctors have to be trusted but it’s just hard to trust a diagnostic made through the phone. I could have a normal flu or just a very unusual sore throat and chances are that none of these are contagious. However, due to the lovely doctors around here, I am not able to go to any place where there are more people: what if I pass them the swine flu which I don’t know if I have?

It could all be dealt with so easily: accept my meeting with the doctor, do me a fast test so I know what I am dealing with and make me feel comfortable: Don’t tell me I have the swine flu if you don’t know for sure. I do have an internet access and can easily see how many cases of death there have been. What if I would get scared and do something foolish?

But then again, technology with the doctors around here is so good that they can evaluate the Influenza Type A through the phone. I should trust them! I wonder though, what if I had listed the AIDS symptoms? Would they have told me by phone that I have the AIDS? That surely wouldn’t surprise me.

I’ve been stuck with this flu for quite some time now and the fever just won’t let me go. I guess I’m just too lovely hee hee.

So, anyway, I’ve decided to publish my list of bookmarks. These have helped me hundreds of times and most of them are worth at least one glance. Don’t forget that from time to time, I also post some interesting links on my twitter account so, go ahead and follow me

CSS Related

• Ten CSS tricks you may not know
• Creating DIV Layers
• Bucaro TecHelp Design : Easy CSS Popup Windows
• Making Your Footer Stay Put With CSS ~ Blog ~ FortySeven Media
• Most used CSS tricks | StylizedWeb.com
• A Roundup Of 25 Advanced CSS Tips And Tutorials

Design Related (useful materials)

• 50 Fresh Useful Icon Sets For Your Next Design
• 100 Beautiful Free Textures
• Floral swirls brushes – Free Photoshop Brushes
• Flavour Extended: The Ultimate Icon Set For Web Designers
• 80 Stunning Background Patterns For Your Websites
• 25 Great Free Photoshop Texture Packs
• 30 Most Incredible Textures for Vintage Style Design
• Best Grunge Textures and Photoshop Brushes All In One Place
• 750+ Stunning Icons In 49 Icon Packages
• 172 final flag icons – Custom Icon Design team
• Stock Images – Royalty-Free Stock Photography Images and Photos at Jupiterimages
• Free and Commercial Stock Photography Sites

Typography and other design related bookmarks

• Give Your Photos a Retro Comic Book Effect
• Vital Tips For Effective Logo Design
• Beautiful New Free Fonts For Your Designs
• 10 UI Design Patterns You Should Be Paying Attention To
• 10 Beautiful and free must have Serif Fonts
• 10 wonderful fonts you can embed with Cufon and Sifr
• 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines
• 21 Fonts That Shouldn’t Be Free…But Are!
• Best User/Web Interface Designs and How To Create Them
• Useful Glossaries For Web Designers and Developers

Javascript, jQuery, PHP, Wordpress and so on…

• Structure of a Wordpress Plugin
• Access FlashVars parameters with AS3
• jQuery (mb)Gallery 1.0
• Wordpress Theme Development Frameworks
• 10 Advanced PHP Tips Revisited
• 70 New, Useful AJAX And JavaScript Techniques
• JavaScript Slider Example
• Definitive List of Free WordPress Theme Frameworks
• Create a Slick and Accessible Slideshow Using jQuery
• In the Woods – Create a Funky Parallax Background Effect using jQuery
• jQuery slideViewerPro 1.0

I hope you’ll find something useful among these links. Some of them are real gold!

It’s not a joke:

I just thought it’s interesting to see. I’ve been seeing them for quite some time now and I have no clue how the hell they find them. Hope they won’t reach this blog though and collect these:

★ • ¨ ‘ ° º
๑ ۩ ۞ ۩ ๑ ▄ █ ▄ █ ▄ ஐ •● → ♥└─►° ♥ ™ °
♥ ß α я ĭ ε Κ η
░ c г α z у в α у
Lٱ√ٱ∂
ιlιllιlι ツ ♪
Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒღ☺

Useless post, I know but yeah, that’s what I thought: HOLY SHIT!

The original lyric states that WE are just a moment in time but I just feel like being extremely selfish today. I should be feeling selfish on Wednesday since it’s my name day (St. Victor in the Orthodox belief, if you care enough) but I’ll just be “precocial” and let the selfishness manifest itself since today.

You might be wondering what’s the deal with the Anathema wanna-be quote in the title. If you want to find out the answer to that question, don’t worry, you won’t find it here. Not fully, anyway.

One of the best decisions one can make during his online interaction with other people is logging (archiving) all the small bits and talks with other people. When enough time passes by and you get to read those, it is easier for you to realize how you and the interlocutor have changed throughout a period of time. As lame as it may sound, it might be one of the few available sources for your own personal development: realize how you were like, admit who you are at the moment and define what your future destination is.

Life gives most people equal chances, you just have to realize when it is the time to take advantage of them. And I won’t miss them, that’s for sure. I just have to make up my mind: which way do I want to go? To the south or to the east?

I’ve received an e-mail from Carpatica Forening, the other day. It seems like we will not be able to cast our votes for the Romanian presidency elections due to take place on the 22nd of November and the 6th of December(the 2nd round). The reason seems to be childish: Our elections take place on the same dates as the Danish ones and therefore, the embassy can’t provide us with a place for us to vote. I am not an expert in this kind of actions but as far as I know, a voting booth can be organized in almost any building, especially when there is such a small number of voters (there wouldn’t be more than 500 voters in Aarhus, I bet). Below, the original text, in Romanian:

Persoanelor interesate sa voteze la Århus le aducem la cunostinta ca nu se va organiza o sectie de votare in Århus. Motivul este ca trebuiesc rezervate 2 zile si alegerile din Romania se suprapun cu alegerile din Danemarca. Ambasada a luat cunostinta de interesul romanilor din zona si a promis ca va incerca sa gaseasca solutii in viitor.

Well, my vote was about to go to Remus Cernea, although the statistics show he has 1% of the voters choice. And there, I broke the ice and this was my first post on politics, ever.