Make Easy Extra Cash with SurveySavvy Surveys

I'd like to share with everyone a website I've been involved with for a long time, and one that's been helping me bring in spare extra cash that I've been splurging myself with—SurveySavvy.

Now, it's probably what you're exactly thinking. It's one of those websites that gives you money per survey you complete, right? Correct.

SurveySavvy is clearly one of the best paid survey websites I've used, and over the years I've used many, including SurveySpot, Opinion Outpost, Sendearnings, Inboxdollars and others. The amount of surveys they invite you to daily is very high (around 1-3 per day) and the amount you get paid is top notch. I usually receive surveys from anywhere from $1.00 all the way to $20.00. Depending on the incentive received, these surveys will take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour to complete.

I've gotten invited to and allowed to participate in quite a few awesome and memorable studies. Here are some of them:

Get paid $5 every month for letting SurveySavvy look at all the spam e-mail in your account.
No, it's not some horrible scam to lure you into having a evil doer steal your e-mail account and identity, it's an awesome study that helps study what kind of spam e-mail companies and individuals are sending customers and random people. The best part about this? You don't even have to do anything! It's like you're getting paid for free! I have no idea what exactly they are deciding to do with their findings, but hopefully they'll use it somehow to try to cut back on the annoying spam e-mails!

Get paid $10 every month for letting SurveySavvy take all your junk mail.
We're talking about real mail here, not electronic e-mail (you know, the physical ones that usually comes in envelopes). But this right here is a double pro. Not only are they getting rid of your junk mail for you for free, but they in addition are paying you to do so! The process is even ridiculously simple: just put all your junk mail in one of their prepaid envelopes they send you, send it off to them, and just wait for the payment check!

Get paid for eating food.
Yes, you heard me right. SurveySavvy has several studies where they'll actually send you free food samples and you get to eat them AND you get paid! How cool is that, getting paid to eat free food? Of course, you still have to take a survey giving them feedback after you've eaten the food. In the recent years, I've gotten full bloody meals from them that I could eat once and not be hungry again for the rest of the day.

Get paid for testing out physical products.
Essentially similar to the above, except instead of being edibles, these ones are physical products you use on yourself or whatever. Some of the things I've been sent are shower soaps, shaving cream and skin lotions. They almost always send you a generous amount, so it's almost the same as buying a full sized product of that kind from the store.

Can you be rich with SurveySavvy or other survey websites? Probably not, but it's not pennies either. Combined with another survey website I recommend (SurveySpot), I have made around $1,000 in a little over a year. That's quite a bit of extra money!

I guarantee you'll have a fun time taking their surveys, participating in some of their special studies mentioned above, and getting paid for it. It's also especially good to know that you're giving feedback to help improve upcoming products and other things.

If you want to join SurveySavvy and give them a shot, click on the link below to sign up. It's 100% free!
https://www.surveysavvy.com/?m=233689

This post and message are not in anyway sponsored or endorsed by SurveySavvy, OK?!

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Google Face Detection Fail

Just the other day, I was playing around with Google+ profile photo (I don't use it BTW), and this occured:

My sister said: "That's because she's a doll, not a real human.". XD

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Q&A All About HD Video Capture!

I'm going to do another brief questions and answers post. And because I still get asked quite often about HD video capturing—including what my setup and equipment are and my process, I'm going to dedicate this Q&A exclusively to HD video capturing!

Q: What are your current video game capturing setup and equipment? 

A: I have owned and used the same setup and equipment since I started uploading HD videos in YouTube, way back in 2008-2009. So right off the bat I won't say it's the absolute best setup and equipment, but it is still incredibly high quality and efficient till this day.

For capturing hardware, I use a Hauppauge HD-PVR. Not the HD-PVR 2, as there's really no difference between the two besides the added benefit of HDMI (which is mostly worthless to my videos anyways, as most of them are on PS3 and it has HCDP aka "copy protection").

HD-PVR Front

HD-PVR Back

 I also think owning the original HD-PVR opens up a lot more options for me. For instance, I can configure the HD-PVR so it can capture all my videos using a simple DOS command prompt. If you have ever used the supplied Total Media software to capture, you'll know how much of a strain it can put on your CPU. Capturing through the command prompt uses absolutely zero percent CPU use. Remember to hook up your component out to your HDTV of course, unless you want to do blind capturing. If you want to learn how to do this and have the first generation HD-PVR, e-mail me!

The HD-PVR is connected to a laptop with a dual boot of Windows 7 and Mac OS X.

For software, I use literally too much, but then again using that many allows me full control of everything. But the most often I use are the three of: DGAVCDec for demuxing the .ts output file; AVISynth to enable the opening of the video file in VirtualDub and for basic trimming/fades; and VirtualDub for filtering and encoding/compressing.  For more advanced videos where serious editing, filtering and joining is required, I will additionally use Sony Vegas Pro.

Sometimes I will also use iMovie and Final Cut Pro X, depending on how fancy I need things to be.

Q: What are your steps to creation of a video for YouTube? 

A: Here is a brief summary of what I usually do >

1. Capture footage using HD-PVR through rcTVCap (DOS based capture).
2. Demux the .ts output file in DGAVCDec.
3. Edit my AVISynth script file, add a fade in/fadeout if necessary, add trim points if necessary.
4. Open the video file using the AVISynth script file in VirtualDub.
5. Apply my filter and compression presets for all my HD videos in VirtualDub.
6. Encode/compress the video using x264 codec (H.264). 

 If you don't understand that, then it's perfectly fine. It's quite advanced!

Those steps however are only the case if the video in question doesn't require serious editing and filtering, in which the steps will be a little different. I usually will just encode the video file in VirtualDub as uncompressed and edit it further in Sony Vegas Pro.

Q: What would your future video game capturing setup and equipment be, or what do you suggest would be the best one out there? 

A: If you truly want the best; meaning the best quality, the best audio and the best efficiency, your only option would be capturing uncompressed through HDMI and perhaps optic audio.

At the moment, there are quite few video capture devices on the market that can capture uncompressed and these are usually ones that are tailored to the professional market. The only ones that springs to my mind are any of BlackMagic's Intensity products.

So why does capturing uncompressed matter anyways? It matters because when you capture uncompressed, you are actually capturing the footage in its pristine, pure, natural state, with zero added compression of any kind. That means ZERO compression pixelation! More popular consumer capture devices (HD-PVR, Elgato, etc.) will force your videos to all go through its hardware encoder/compressor (usually H.264).

H.264 is an awesome codec and should be used on every video, but it's not so awesome when you want to use it for editing and have to recompress again. Recompressing H.264 with H.264 over again can degrade your video quality.

On the other hand, if you upload your captured videos the instant it comes out and never need to edit it, then a H.264 type capture device would be an easier, more affordable and better option. Then again, you may not care too much about the quailty either.

After you captured your uncompressed footage, you can then bring it into a video editor, edit it and then encode/compress it to H.264 at a HIGH bitrate. This results in the most minimal amount of quality loss and compression pixelation possible. Don't try uploading uncompressed videos directly or even use them for long term storage, as they can take up as much as 180MB per second!

Another added benefit of using uncompressed videos is that video editors tend to work much better with uncompressed videos than compressed video. If you don't believe me, just try to edit a H.264 video file then an uncompressed video file in Sony Vegas Pro.

The biggest downside to capturing uncompressed is the significant demand on your PC/Mac hardware. If you don't have either a huge SSD or hard drive RAID setup, don't even bother.

To answer the actual first part of the question—yes, I will change to an Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt soon, along with a new desktop computer to meet the demanding needs of capturing uncompressed.

Q: Any thoughts on what you believe is the best video editing software? 

A: I have always liked and recommend Sony Vegas Pro or Sony Vegas Movie Studio to others. It's timeline based editor and interface is one of the best and easiest to use.

I also enjoy using iMovie and Final Cut Pro X on Mac at times, when I need to do some more cool looking visual effects and transitions (Sony Vegas doesn't come with a whole lot of awesome, jaw dropping visual effects and transitions).

Like I mentioned earlier, if you just want basic editing including trimming and light filtering, AVISynth and VirtualDub together makes an awesome combination.

Q: HDMI vs Component. Is there really a quality difference? 

A: Nah, not really. I tested both and at most you'll gain a 5% quality increase with HDMI compared to component, most being HDMI being a tiny bit sharper. Another benefit of HDMI is that its completely digital instead of analog like component. So if you live in an area that has a lot of analog interference, HDMI can completely get rid of these for you.

The only prominant reason to have the need to use HDMI is if you plan on capturing in 1080p. Then again, most PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U games today aren't even 1080p native. What you are essentially doing is forcing the game to stretch to that resolution.

Capturing through HDMI with the PS3 also doesn't work because of the so-called HDCP copy protection. There are ways around this, but they usually involve converting the HDMI signal to component. What's the point?

Q: Any tips for HD video capturing? 

A: I have lots of tricks and tips in this post I made in July!

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How to Resign Xbox 360 Game Saves

Recently, I received an e-mail from someone (who I decided should remain anonymous here), asking if there was a way to resign game saves on the Xbox 360 as easy as the PS3 with no modding required.

I'm glad he/she asked, because just a few days ago I had to resign a Lost Planet 2 game save on the Xbox 360. But yes, resigning game saves on the Xbox 360 is just as easy if not easier than the PS3.

So here's how you do it:

Requirements:

• Game save you wish to resign
• Game save of your own from your own console and profile
• USB stick/drive (configured to Xbox 360 specifications)
• Horizon
• PC with Windows XP, 7 or 8

 

STEP 1: Format/Customize USB stick in Xbox 360 and copy a game save to it

The first thing you will need to accomplish is to configure your USB stick in order for the Xbox 360 to read and write files to it. This can be easily done by inserting a USB stick in your Xbox 360, going to System > Storage, select the USB stick and select "Configure Now".

When it's done configuring, copy any of your own game save to the USB stick from your profile. It doesn't have to be from same game as the one you're trying to resign.

STEP 2: Obtain game save you wish to resign

You will now need the game save you wish to resign. For this guide, I'll be using a Lost Planet 2 100% save I downloaded from a gaming forums.

The game save has to be a complete game save and not a character save. If you want to learn how to resign character saves, go down to the section labeled "How to Resign Character Saves".

Put the game save somewhere you can remember.

STEP 3: Download Horizon

Horizon is a tool set for working with Xbox 360 configured USB devices. It has a built-in save resigner tool and that's what makes it important and crucial for this guide.

You can download Horizon here. It is freeware.

Once downloaded, run the installer to install the program. Do not launch it yet.

STEP 4: Resign game save with Horizon

Plug in your USB stick to your PC and then run Horizon. Proceed to update the software if necessary.

When it opens, click on the "Tools" tab and then click "Package Manager". It should launch a new Package Manager window.

Click the blue "Open" button and select the game save file you wish to resign.

Click the "Device Explorer" tab on the right. It should spring load the explorer window with your USB stick contents.

Go to "Games" > "Your Game Name" > "Your Game Name Save", like below:

Double click the game save to open it up. It should launch another Package Manger window. Your screen should now look something like this:

Now, what you want to do is to copy the "Profile ID" of the game save from your USB stick and paste it to the "Profile ID" of the game save you want to resign.

Leave the "Console ID" and "Device ID" alone and do not copy it over.

Once that's all done, click the red button labeled "Save, Hash, and Resign".

Now, click on "Save to Device" and select your flash drive. Click "Yes" to the confirmation dialog.

All done!

STEP 4: Final moments

Remove your USB stick from your PC and plug it back into your Xbox 360.

You can either now just play your game and launch the game save directly from the USB stick or copy it back into your Memory Unit or HDD.

How to Resign Character Saves

Sometimes you may encounter or want to resign a character save rather than a complete game save. Character saves are usually labeled as SaveGame.sav while complete saves are Save0001.sav.

What you want to do here is to create and save a dummy character in your game, copy it over to your USB stick, then open the game save in Horizon.

Click the "Contents" tab. Right click the "Entry Name" and select "Replace". Select the character save you downloaded/obtain.

Don't forget to click "Save, Hash and Resign". Afterwards, you should be good to go.

NEED HELP?

Please post a comment directly in this post or send me an e-mail.

Other Posts You May Like:

How to Transfer Region on PS3 Game Saves
How to Resign PS3 Game Saves

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New Poll and Your Opinions Wanted!

I have put up a new poll dedicated to questioning your wants and likes about my current YouTube channel. I hope you did arrive to this blog from my YouTube channel and are therefore interested in its contents, right?!

Well, I want to know what everyone desires to see the most. This way, I can hopefully cut down on more non-popular types of videos and concentrate putting more of what types people prefer. I only listed the major types of videos I've been making; however, if you find a type of video not on the list, feel free to check "Other" and even e-mail me (or post a comment on this post) what you want to see in particular.

The poll should be located to the right. You just need to scroll down a bit to see it. Here's what it looks like:

I will leave this poll running until January 1st, 2014. However, I'll most likely pull it down much sooner than it, depends on if it has an adequate amount of votes for me to decide judgement.

Thanks!

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Dynasty Warriors 8 Weapon Modding (US and EU)

In July, I made a post about modding your weapons for the Japanese version of Dynasty Warriors 8. In order to bring fairness to the rest of everyone, I'm going to do a version for both the English North American and Europe version of Dynasty Warriors 8.

Now why would you want to do this? The following scenarios can make weapon modding a valid choice for you:

* You wish to avoid the laborious and semi-lottery style weapon tempering process in the game completely.
* You wish to not have to waste any materials such as weapons and weapon materials.
* You don't have the materials for tempering and don't want to waste time obtaining them.
* You want one or more perfectly tailored weapon(s) with the exact affinity, elements and element levels instantly.
* You want to change one or more current elements and/or affinity on a weapon.
* You want to experiment with different element builds without punishment.
* You are doing tiers/rankings.

Now this guide will be essentially the same as the Japanese version. The only difference will be in the elements list and rewording of a few things (due to official English translations).

Remember, all you need for this is an ordinary PS3 (does not have to be modded in any way), USB stick, a PC equipped with Windows and 5-10 minutes of your time.

There is NO extra experience or knowledge required, except being able to match up numbers with words!

Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Note: This mod WILL work, but you will need to use the Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends decrypter tool to decrypt the second layer of encryption.

Requirements:

• Playstation 3 console (on OFW or CFW)
• USB stick or drive - to transfer your game save from PS3 to PC and vice versa
• PC with Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8
• Dynasty Warriors 8 game save
• Bruteforce Save Data
• HxD hex editor (built-in with Bruteforce Save Data)

 

STEP 1: Copy your game save to your PC

You will need to have your game save stored and accessible on your PC as you will be modifying its contents. The easiest way to do this is to insert a FAT32 formatted USB stick in your PS3 and copying the game save to the stick, then copy it onto your PC.

The game save should be located on your USB stick in PS3\SAVEDATA. Copy the entire NPUB31234-SAVEDATA or NPEB01364-SAVEDATA folder to your PC and leave it somewhere you can remember.

Important! Always make a backup of your game save in case anything ever goes wrong. I recommend creating a new folder called "SAVEDATA BACKUP" and putting an extra copy of your game save there. I will not be held responsible for any damages caused to your game save if you fail to make constant backups.

STEP 2: Download and configure Bruteforce Save Data

Bruteforce Save Data is a powerful game save data swiss army knife for Playstation 3. It allows one to decyrpt and encrypt game save files, add cheats, transfer region, transfer saves to another owner, and more. For this specific scenario, we will only need to use it to decrypt and encrypt files.

Download Bruteforce Save Data here. 

Once it's finished downloading, extract the RAR file and run the installer. Do not run the program yet.

Create a new folder on your desktop or anywhere else you like and name it "SAVEDATA". This folder will be the folder where you store all your game saves for usage with Bruteforce Save Data. Make sure that wherever directory you store it in is NOT write protected!

Drag/copy your Dynasty Warriors 8 save folder (NPUB31234-SAVEDATA/NPEB01364-SAVEDATA) to this "SAVEDATA" folder.

Download this pre-configured game.conf file and replace the existing game.conf in your Bruteforce Save Data program folder (located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Bruteforce Save Data). This will update the database with Dynasty Warriors 8 game keys so the program can decrypt and encrypt the game save.

Now it's time to run Bruteforce Save Data.

Windows Vista, 7 and 8: Run Bruteforce Save Data as an administrator by right clicking the program icon and then selecting "Run as administrator". This is very crucial! If you don't wish to do this every time you re-open the program, go to the BruteforceSaveData.exe in Windows Explorer, right click and select "Properties", then go to "Compatibility" tab and check "Run this program as administrator". Alternately, you can simply disable Windows User Account Control (UAC).

Windows XP: You can just simply double click the program icon to launch. Although, if you run into strange issues, you may want to try running as an Administrator.

If you receive an error message regarding msvbvm50.dll missing, you need to install Visual Basic Runtime 5.

You may be also requested to download Microsoft Visual Basic C++ 2010 (x86) if you don't have it installed in your system. Downloading and installing this is a must!

If all is well, you should be greeted with a nice big window.

It may ask you to download the latest cheats file, simply ignore this and close the window.

Ignore any of the program's requests to input a console ID and User ID. You don't need to setup a PARAM.SFO template either. Just leave them all at default.

The first thing we need to do is click on the "..." button and select the "SAVEDATA" folder of where our game saves are (the one we created earlier). So go ahead and do that. Once selected, your save files should show up.

SAVEDATA folder selected as the path.

Take note of the "Key" section, there should be numbers in this field. If it's empty, you have forgotten to replace the game.conf file as directed earlier and must do so before continuing.

STEP 3: Decrypt game save files

In the Bruteforce Save Data window, make sure NPUB31234-SAVEDATA/NPEB01364-SAVEDATA is selected on the top window and click on "Decrypt PFD" button then "Decrypt All Files". You can also simply use Ctrl + D to decrypt.

How to decrypt the game save files.

After it has successfully decrypted, you should see the window turn green. This indicates the game save files are decrypted. Ignore any disc hash key errors you get.

Game save files successfully decrypted.

STEP 4: Open APP.BIN with hex editor

The APP.BIN is the file that contains all of our actual game save data. Since we decrypted it earlier, we can now open it directly with a hex editor to modify its contents. You can do this by double clicking the APP.BIN file within Bruteforce Save Data. It will open the file in HxD.

Initial opening of APP.BIN in HxD.

Once opened, you should see a bunch of scary looking hex data that no regular being can decipher. Don't worry, you will know exactly what to edit soon.

Make sure your APP.BIN file looks very close to this when you open it in HxD. It should have LOTS of 00s. If it doesn't, you didn't decrypt it or something wrong went with the decryption.

STEP 5: Obtain hex values for weapons you want to edit

Since there's no easy way to locate the exact locations of where certain weapon values are stored on the APP.BIN file, we need to refer back to the actual game to fish them out.

With that being stated, leave your PC and go to your Dynasty Warriors 8 game running on your PS3. Head into any mode where you can access full information about your weapons. Select a particular weapon you want to edit and take a note of its elements. The type of weapon you select doesn't matter. You can even edit gold and treasure weapons if you want.

Now, take a look at the list below. This list details all the weapon elements available in the game and their respective hex values.

FF = Empty/No Element

00 = Thorns

01 = Awareness

02 = Survival

03 = Frenzy

04 = Barricade

05 = Aggression (Musou)

06 = Flurry

07 = Velocity

08 = Chain

09 = Inferno

0A = Frost

0B = Thunder

0C = Cyclone

0D = Slash

0E = Venom

0F = Flash

10 = Spurt

11 = Recovery

12 = Uplift

13 = Enlightment

14 = Explosive

15 = Induction

16 = Vigor

17 = Jolt

18 = Desperation

19 = Resolve

1A = Swiftness

1B = Agility

1C = Aggression (Affinity)

1D = Protection

1E = Fear

1F = Awe

20 = Morass

21 = Jubilation

22 = Roar

23 = Triumph

24 = Greed

25 = Fury

26 = Ridigty

27 = Whirlwind

Look at the weapon you want to edit again, and match up the elements on it with their hex values. On a notepad or piece of paper, write down the element hex values in the order they appear on the weapon.

Need an example? Say my weapon elements are Flash Jubilation Triumph Thorns Flurry Swiftness. So looking at the list, I would write down 0F 21 23 00 06 1A.

The weapon I chose to edit.

A weapon will not always have six elements. So in these cases, simply write down all the element hex values it does have, then append FF to each element that it doesn’t have until it equals six total (e.g. 0C 1E 07 12 FF FF, for a weapon that only has 4 elements). To be certain you don’t edit the wrong weapon during the actual hex editing process, you’ll definitely need a weapon that has at least 4 elements attached to it.

If you plan on editing more than one weapon, take this opportunity to additionally write down the element hex values for all those weapons you're going to edit. Make sure you are using memorable labels for each, as you can get easily confused as to which hex values belong to which weapons later on.

STEP 6: Edit weapon hex values in APP.BIN

It's finally time to actually edit your weapons!

With the APP.BIN file still opened in HxD, hit Ctrl + F to open the find tool. Enter the hex values to the weapon you want to edit in the “Search for” text box. Change the datatype to “Hex-values” and check “All” under "Search direction".

The hex editor should now find your exact weapon location in the file based upon the hex values you provided it. If it fails to find anything, check back in the game and ensure that you did not write down the wrong hex values for the elements or write them in the wrong order.

You can now alter the hex values to your liking, i.e. changing the affinity, attack power, elements and element levels the weapon is currently stamped with. To change the elements, simply change the current six highlighted hex values to hex values of the new elements you want—using the list mentioned earlier as a guide.

You can use the picture below to see where each weapon data is positioned:

Changing affinity:  
The hex values for each affinity are as follows -
00 = Heaven
01 = Earth
02 = Man

Changing attack power:  
You can’t just simply input any number here you like and expect it to work. You will need to use a decimal to hex converter first, such as http://www.binaryhexconverter.com/decimal-to-hex-converter. The max value or attack power you can use is 255, or FF in hex.

I never change this value as doing so will break the game's rules, which I don't condone.

Changing element levels:  
Element levels are from 01-10, but in hex format 10 is actually 0A. Hence, if you want to edit the level to level 10, you must use 0A as the hex value. Values for non-existent elements are marked with 00.

Here, I will change that Eagle Claw to the following:
Affinity: Man
Elements: Cyclone Lv.10, Velocity Lv.10, Explosive Lv.10, Induction Lv.10, Thunder Lv.10, Slash Lv.10

The end editing results looks like this:

Red indicates values that have been changed.

To edit another weapon, bring up the find tool again (Ctrl + F) and input your next weapon hex values, hit "OK" to find its location, edit it to your content, then simply repeat the process as necessary.

Caution if you have an interim save:
All of your weapon data may be doubled when you have an interim save. Hence, you may need to find the weapon you want to edit twice and edit it twice. Otherwise the modified weapon may only appear on the interim save and not elsewhere or vice versa.

Once you're done editing, save the file by hitting Ctrl + S. You can then close the hex editor.

STEP 7: Encrypt the game save files   

This step is simple and quick. In Bruteforce Save Data with NPUB31234-SAVEDATA/NPEB01364-SAVEDATA still selected, click the "Update PFD" button then select "Update PFD (Partial)". You can also just hit Ctrl + U. Do not use the Encrypt PFD option. The green will vanish and the window will return back to white color.

Re-encrypting the game save files.

This will now re-encrypt the file, allowing it to be then safely transferred back to your PS3 without any issues. If you forget to do this step, the game will tell you the game save is corrupted and force you to delete it and create a new one (when you transfer it back to your PS3).

Game save successfully re-encrypted.

STEP 8: Transfer game save to PS3 and test it out   

You can now copy the modified save data back into your PS3. If all is well, you should have your weapon(s) modified to your desire without having to deal with any of the game's annoying in-game nuisances. Best yet, you can modify a weapon into a dream weapon in under 5 minutes compared to hours doing it in game!

Weapon change success!

Have fun, and remember—don't use this method to purposely gain an unfair advantage in the game. Meaning, create legit weapons and not illegit weapons that has impossible stats. Don't go just starting into the game and decide to mod your weapons either. You should only use this to shed time off attempting to get good weapons with the game's poor tempering system.

I NEED HELP!!!

E-mail me. It is the fastest way to get me to respond.

VIDEO GUIDE

Thanks to XthemastaX, he created a video detailing the steps and process.

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Declining a Podcast Appearance + YouTube Channel News

I like to give a large shout out to Get a Life Podcast, as they gave me a very nice invitation to become a guest on one of their episodes, which was to be dedicated to Japanese games, KOEI and Dynasty Warriors.

This episode was to include other guests and one of them I noticed was Chin Soon Sun! I was like, hey... I know that guy! That guy is awesome and loves KOEI and Dynasty Warriors games as much as I do.

Shamefully, due to personal complications, I was unable to accept their invitation. So I declined it.

Here is the e-mail message they sent me this morning:

 This is what I responded with:

You can read my response to see exactly why I didn't want to participate.

Regardless whether or not I'm on it, I'm certainly sure it'll be a very fun, informative and interesting podcast episode they'll be putting up, especially for KOEI and Dynasty Warriors fans. So I encourage you to search them up and check out them out when you have the time.

In other news, I will have to announce my next video on YouTube will not be until some time, perhaps even until September. Like I mentioned in my e-mail response to Get a Life Podcast, I am still attempting to get over my bad cold I caught around August 4th. I still sound like crap and to make matters worse, I'm starting to get muscle aches around my ribs. It's not all Hell, as it's getting better every day, but it's making it very difficult to make any videos.

I've got to say—this is the worst time possible to get sick. I wanted to do so much this month!

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FREE Dynasty Warriors 8 100% Game Save

I would like to give you guys and gals a little gift today: Dynasty Warriors 8 100% game save.

I have personally developed this save on my own, putting over 200 hours worth of gameplay into it. Hence, you will receive the following benefits of using this save:

• All 77 characters unlocked
• All story mode stages unlocked and cleared
• Level 99 for all characters
• Maximum 1000 health, attack and defense for all characters (injected via Academy)
• All support animals unlocked
• All movies and events unlocked
• Ambition mode 100% complete
• Special customized powerful weapons for selected types (via Tempering)
• Rank 4 weapons for all types
• Unique/treasure weapons for a few types
• 3k extra build and weapon materials
• You can use the save to earn trophies (requires resigning; see below)

The game save is available in all three regions: US, EU and Japan. 

To download and use the game save, click on the link that corresponds to your game region.

US | EU | JAPAN

To use the game save, simply copy the PS3 folder and its internal contents to a FAT32 USB stick, then copy the game save from the USB stick to your PS3. 

Please make sure to backup your existing game save!

If you want to be able to save over the game save and make it truly your own, follow my tutorial on how to resign PS3 game saves (only takes 5 minutes at most!).

Have fun!

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How to Resign PS3 Game Saves

Today, I'm going to show you how to easily resign any PS3 game save.

What is resigning and why is it useful? Well, if you ever downloaded or attempt to use a game save from someone else, chances are that either the game won't allow it at all or disallow you to save over it.

Resigning the game save will allow you to transform it into your own, allowing you to use it successfully and save over it as many times as you want.

In this tutorial, we're going to be resigning a Dynasty Warriors 8 game save. You can use any game save you like, of course. Also, this is specifically for non-copy protected game saves only.

This process is very easy and should take you no longer than 5 minutes.

Requirements:

• Game save you wish to resign
• Game save of your own from your own PS3 and user account
• Playstation 3 console (can be original firmware or custom - NO modding necessary)
• USB stick/drive - to transfer game saves from PS3 to PC and vice versa
• PC with Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8
• Bruteforce Save Data

STEP 1:  Copy your own game save to USB stick

The first thing we need to accomplish is to obtain a game save that is of your own (i.e. one that is currently tied to your PS3 and user account).

You can use any game save for this. In this tutorial, I will be using my own Dynasty Warriors 8 game save from my PS3 (to make things less complex).

Copy the game save of your choice from your PS3 to your USB stick. Plug the USB stick into your PC. You can simply leave the game save in the USB stick as copying it to the PC isn't necessary.

STEP 2: Download/obtain the game save you wish to resign

Now, we will need the game save you wish to resign. 

For this tutorial, I'm going to be using the Dynasty Warriors 8 100% game save I posted on this blog.

Place the game save folder somewhere on your PC that you can remember.

STEP 3: Download and configure Bruteforce Save Data

Bruteforce Save Data is a powerful game save data swiss army knife for PS3. It allows one to decyrpt and encrypt game save files, add cheats, transfer region, transfer saves to another owner and more.

Download Bruteforce Save Data here. 

Once it's finished downloading, extract the RAR file and run the installer. Do not run the program yet.

Create a new folder on your desktop or anywhere else you like and name it "SAVEDATA". This folder will be the folder where you store all your game saves for usage with Bruteforce Save Data. Make sure that wherever directory you store it in is NOT write protected!

Drag/copy the game save folder you wish to resign (ex. NPUB31234-SAVEDATA) to this "SAVEDATA" folder.

Now it's time to run Bruteforce Save Data. 

Windows Vista, 7 and 8: Run Bruteforce Save Data as an administrator by right clicking the program icon and then selecting "Run as administrator". This is very crucial! If you don't wish to do this every time you re-open the program, go to the BruteforceSaveData.exe in Windows Explorer, right click and select "Properties", then go to "Compatibility" tab and check "Run this program as administrator". Alternately, you can simply disable Windows User Account Control (UAC).

Windows XP: You can just simply double click the program icon to launch. Although, if you run into strange issues, you may want to try running as an Administrator. 

If you receive an error message regarding msvbvm50.dll missing, you need to install Visual Basic Runtime 5.

You may be also requested to download Microsoft Visual Basic C++ 2010 (x86) if you don't have it installed in your system. Downloading and installing this is a must!

If all is well, you should be greeted with a nice big window.

It may ask you to update cheats repository, click the "Download" button to download the latest database. This is important because it will update your game.conf file with the latest game keys to ensure saves can be decrypted and encrypted.

Ignore any of the program's requests to input a console ID and User ID. You don't need to setup a PARAM.SFO template either for now. Just leave them all at default.

The first thing we need to do is click on the "..." button and select the "SAVEDATA" folder of where our game save is (the one we created earlier). So go ahead and do that. Once selected, your game save should show up.

SAVEDATA folder selected as the path.

Take note of the "Key" section, there should be numbers in this field. If it's empty, you'll need to select the game save and hit F6 to Bruteforce the key. Once it's Bruteforced, press the "Refresh" button to refresh everything. The "Key" section should have now some numbers.

STEP 4: Setup PARAM.SFO template

We need to setup a PARAM.SFO template so that we can use it to resign the game save to our own PS3 and user account. This is where your own game save you transferred over earlier from the PS3 comes in handy.

To do this, in the Bruteforce Save Data program window, click on the button labeled "Set PARAM.SFO as Template". This should pop up a menu.

In the pop up menu, go to "Configure Profiles" and select "SET PARAM.SFO for Profile 1...".

How to setup PARAM.SFO template.

Now, it will ask you for a PARAM.SFO file. What you want to select is the PARAM.SFO file of your own game save (the one we transferred over earlier from the PS3, which should be in your USB stick if you haven't copied it over to your PC).

Here I selected the PARAM.SFO file from the Dynasty Warriors 8 game save I copied to my USB stick:

Once you click "Open", it will ask you to give it a friendly name. Simply enter your PS3 user account name you use.

After you click "OK", it will tell you that the current profile will be used for patches. Meaning, every time you resign a game save, it will be resigned to this profile (PS3 and user account).

Make sure your profile ID (the 16 digit number after your profile name) is not BLANK. If it's BLANK, you will need to use another game save PARAM.SFO file until you get a 16 digit number. 

If you cannot get a 16 digit number, try tying a PSN/SEN account to your PS3 user account, log into it and then create a game save or save over a previous game save. You should get a 16 digit number for that save afterwards.

STEP 5: Rebuild game save with new profile

With the game save selected, click on the button labeled "Rebuild" and then select "Rebuild Full" in the pop up menu. It will ask you a confirmation dialog; select "Yes" to confirm.

If it is successful, the "Profile" field on the game save should be changed to your own profile name and unique ID.

Resign successful!

That's all there is to resigning a game save! No decrypting and encrypting necessary!

STEP 6: Transfer game save to PS3

You are pretty much finished at this point. All that's left to be done is to transfer the game save back to your PS3 and test it out (using your USB stick).

Please don't be an idiot and overwrite your current game save without making a backup of it first! I will not be held responsible for any loss or damages of your game saves if you fail to follow this caution!

If all is well, the game should throw you no warnings about using another person's game save and you should be able to save over it now.

Enjoy!

NEED HELP?

First, make sure you fully read the Bruteforce Save Data FAQ. Your issues may be resolved by reading it.

If not, please post a comment directly in this post or send me an e-mail.

CAN I SEND YOU MY SAVE TO RESIGN?

At current, I no longer accept requests to resign game saves for someone. Please read this post of the reason and for more information.

Other Posts You May Like:

How to Transfer Region on PS3 Game Saves
How to Resign Xbox 360 Game Saves

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Got Over Cold But Lost My Voice

Good news and bad news. The good news is that I've successfully recovered from one of the worst colds I've ever had, owing all to a lot of rest, supplements and of course my miracle drink I detailed earlier.

The bad news is that I seem to have lost my voice. Well, not really lost it, but it now sounds wholly different.

Hence, I don't think I will be able to post any new videos on YouTube for at least another week, or until I obtain my full voice back. Specifically because the videos I planned on doing involved voice work.

I will still be posting on this blog with some interesting posts this week and giving out comments on YouTube, as that's pretty much the only things that I can do at the moment.

Here is what I sound like now:

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The Dreaded Cold and My Miracle Drink

You might have noticed I've been pretty quiet and restless without any video activity the last week. That's purely because I unfortunately caught a dreaded cold—one of the worst ever as a matter of fact. Thus, I was barely able to get out of bed. Then, of course anything involving energy and voice usage was out of the question. I feel a lot better today. Hopefully, I will be good again by Tuesday, as I have some videos I've been itching to post on YouTube!

I like to share with you guys what has got me going the past couple of days and really helped to relieve my cold symptoms—my miracle drink! This would also work for flus.

It's actually quite an easy drink mix, as it exclusively uses natural ingredients and ones you probably already have in your home.

All you need is:

• Green tea 
• Ginger
• Lemon/lime
• Honey

Grate or thinly slice the ginger and place it in a small pot with the green tea. Wait until it boils. After, take it off the stove and put it in a cup. Add a squeeze of lemon/lime and then some honey for taste.

It also tastes great!

All of these ingredients are very high in antioxidants and vitamins. They are scientifically proven to be very effective in boosting your immune system and relieving common cold and flu symptoms, including headaches, coughs, sore throats and nose stuffiness. Because you're boosting your immune system, you can expect the cold/flu to last a shorter duration as well. This in my opinion is much better than continuously taking over-the-counter medications, as those only temporarily masks your symptoms.

So the next time you have a cold or flu, try this drink!

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Dynasty Warriors 8 Weapon Elements - Honorable Mentions

In the Dynasty Warriors 8 - Top 10 Best Elements and Element Setups video, I went through what I believe to be the top 10 best and most useful weapon elements in the game. Since the list was decided on 10 entries however, that doesn't automatically assume any other elements not listed aren't good and should be avoided. In actuality, there are quite a bit of weapon elements not listed that can be beneficial dependent on how you utilize it.

In this post, I'm going to briefly go over a few honorable mentions of weapon elements that aren't on the top 10 and why you should use them. They are not listed in any particular order.

Aggression

Aggression increases your musou damage. At level 10, the damage multiplier becomes X1.5. Musous are already pretty powerful. Adding aggression to it can amplify it even more so. Nevertheless, X1.5 may not be that significant to notice a huge difference.

Fury

Fury allows you to use a true musou attack at any given time, regardless of your health. Paired with aggression, it can pump up your musou damage to great heights.

Morass

Morass slows down any enemy's attack speed and moving speed. The effect lasts quite a long while even though the actual status infliction is completely random (on every successful attack). One of the biggest benefits is being much safer from enemy attacks, since they move and attack very slow. The biggest downside to morass is that it can make combos/juggles all the way from being easier to downright impossible. Therefore, I would never recommend going with a level 10 morass all the time. You need to experiment with the right level to see which best suits your type of moveset/weapon.

Frost

Frost is essentially the ice of Dynasty Warriors 8, freezing enemies at random. It's not as effective as it was in Dynasty Warriors 7, as the freeze rate has been significantly reduced. Worse, there seems to be a weird bug with it. When you freeze an officer, you might visually see them frozen but immediately after they will break out from it. This causes you to get instant attacked and potentially lose health. On the good side, it does its job of stopping an enemy dead in their tracks, allowing you to punish them during their frozen state.

Inferno

Whereas frost is the ice element of Dynasty Warriors 8, inferno is the fire element. Enemies engulfed in flames will suffer continuous damage until it wears off. It works very similar to past series, but the damage and usability is definitely not as good as it was.

Frenzy

Frenzy is like a daredevil element. It greatly increases your attack but greatly decreases your defense, up to 20% at level 10. Storm Rush seems to benefit greatly from this, but you still need to watch out on harder difficulties, as you can be instant KOed by anything from an officer's counter to any of their musous. If you really want extreme offense power, cyclone would be the better choice.


So, do you have any other elements you know of that weren't on any of the lists? Let me know!

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