Recently I have been seeing a fair few viruses come in that are not being detected by a number of Virus Scanners. It is pretty obvious that they aren't legit but its a bit worrying that they aren't detected automatically by the mail server and the scanner on the local PC.

I had a look around on the net for some online scanners so I could try and work out what virus it is. I found a website called Virus Total ( http://www.virustotal.com ) which allows you to upload a file for scanning. It scans the file against 36 anti virus products.

Its a pretty easy way to work out if a file is infected. Its not 100% of course. If none of the virus scanning products know about the virus then of course it still wont be detected.

Once you know for sure that it is infected you should be able to submit the file to your virus scanner vendor in order to get your software updated as soon as possible.

For anyone interested, this is the results of one scan
http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/f058407658b04b30d817b72be96b0ad8

The other night a friend suggested that we checkout this Ethiopian Restaurant called Abyssinan. I wasn't sure what to think and we all wondered what weird stuff we would be served.
I went with a group of 17 people, we decided to go with the Banquet so we could try a bit of everything. It cost us $20 per person for the Banquet, the amount of food they brought out was well worth the price.

The food all seemed to be beef, chicken or vegetable based. There didn't seem to be anything weird that you would need to avoid. One of the beef dishes reminded me of a Indian Vindaloo but not as spicy. A few of the dishes had some spice but there was plenty without if your not into spicy food.

One of the most interesting things is that you don't get any cutlery to eat with.
There is a spoon to serve each dish onto your plate but from there on its fingers only.
You are given a pice of Injera ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injera ) which is a pancake like bread. Using small pieces of the bread you are able to pick up your food from the your plate.
I wasn't sure if you're supposed to eat the bread each time, so I reused it a few times to pick up a new bit of food from my plate. I only ate it once it was too soggy to pick up anymore. This way I could taste the food a bit better also as the Injera sort of neutralises the taste of other things. The bread itself has a slightly sour taste which some people didn't seem to keen on, but I rather liked it, especially when it was soaked in some of the spicy beef sauce.
They did bring out some more Injera a bit later on in the meal so I probably didn't need to be as sparing as I was.

The atmosphere is laid back and friendly. There were some kids there so it is family friendly also.

Just as we were about to leave someone said "don't you want to stay for the drums". We thought yeah why not. From memory they come in on the 1st Saturday and 3rd Saturday of each month to sing and play the drums. It was interesting and funny. The main person tried to get everyone involved. Some of my friends even started dancing. People from other tables were looking over and laughing. It was fun.

I will definitely be returning to this restaurant at some stage and I recommend it to anyone who is up for a different dining experience.

Abyssinan - Ethiopian Restaurant
Address: 126 Henley Beach Rd, Torrensville
Phone: 08 8443 4300

People that don't know the difference between Australia and Austria.

I have a friend that was looking at renting a house. She found a nice place on a free classifieds website.
The listing at a quick glance looked real and the photos looked really nice.
After a bit of looking into the text of the listing I started to get a bit concerned.

A few things stood out to me.

• They were overseas on a "mission for god". Not saying people don't go overseas for that work, but when ever I see the word 'god' in something for sale or an email I think scam.
• They for some reason have the keys overseas with them.
• They are really religious doing missions overseas, but for some reason they don't trust anyone here that can be a 3rd party to do the exchange of keys & money
• They will only express post the keys, but if they don't receive the bond and 1st few weeks rent they will call the postage company and get the package returned

I figured it was a scam and told her what I thought but it didn't do much good.
She hoped it would be real and corresponded with the seller. A bit later they said that a package was sent. I don't know if any money was exchanged, I hope not anyway.

They sent through a tracking number ( EC932373096US ) which I kept checking for her. This made it seem more legit, but I wondered what would actually be in the package.

After a week of checking I decided to do some further research.

I started by looking at the other houses on the classifies website.
ALL of them seemed to be similar. Similar wording and under the price for what you would expect for the area.
I then looked at some of the photos. They all seemed very nice places. But then I noticed something. One was a 15th floor apartment.
Adelaide is a small city. There aren't many buildings that tall, but fair enough it could be.
I then noticed something, outside the window of this 15th story apartment is a tree, the big bushy part of a tree?! How many trees grow 15 stories tall, especially in the middle of a city?
Next I noticed that the ceiling inside of the apartment had sloping roof beams. I don't know of any multi story building that would have sloping exposed wood roof beams. The person above must hate their uneven floor.

By this stage I was 110%++ sure it was a scam.

My next bit of research was to check out the shipping company "iShip". I couldn't find much on Google about them. They seemed legit.
Next I searched Google for "iship"+scam which returned 500+ results.

One page said it all. I never saw the email correspondence between my friend and the 'seller' so im not sure if its exactly the same, but its definitely close.

http://aspiringtoordinary.blogspot.com/2008/01/beware-of-west-africa-house-for-rent.html

The same tracking number EC932373096US is also listed on that site.
Its interesting to note that the tracking number always says in transit.

There seem to be a number of other scams listed on Google to do with iShip. I'm not saying they are running scam, but I think they are being used for scams.

The listings last I checked are still on the sites, so be careful everyone.


Update: I just found a news article which mentions a rental scam which sounds rather similar. http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,24212334-5005962,00.html

Tenants looking for properties via online sites are being warned about bogus "owners'' who give various reasons why the tenant cannot inspect the property, but still asks them to provide an upfront rent or deposit payment.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's SCAMwatch service says scammers often use multiple accommodation sites to post fake listings.

It says they go to great lengths to ensure the ads look genuine, including real photos and addresses.

Consumers have been warned about "too good to be true offers", claims the property can only be secured by an upfront fee via a money transfer, and ongoing excuses why an inspection can't take place.

Ingredients:    3 Eggs    1 Tin Condensed Milk    1/4 Teaspoon Coconut Essence    1 1/2 Tablespoons Chocolate Topping    1 Carton of Cream (300ml)    1 Cup Whisky

Method:
1. Place eggs in blender and mix thoroughly
2. Add remaining ingredients and blend
3. Bottle your mix.

For bottles in the past we have used long neck beer bottles and corks to seal.
Recently we have used old spirit bottles like Jim Beam ( which is also another drink I highly recommend ).

I'm not sure if this is a requirement but I keep it in the fridge. I am not sure how long it lasts for but we have had ours in the fridge for a few months and it still seemed fine.

Well it has been a few years since I started writing my new CMS and Blog software. I was nearly finished at one stage when one late night I decided I didn't like how it was going. So deleted half the code and basically started again. The development has just been taking way too long and I just want something up, so I have gone the route of some Open Source Software.

I think I will stick with this software for a bit until I get motivation to work on my software again.

I will probably get around to doing my own design though. Its not bad, but its not my design.

Anyway, I hope everyone finds this blog as useful, or hopefully more useful than my old one.

Feel free to post any comments on the new blog.

Please Note this is an old article. Please read this page for more information

Anyone that has used the Data Grid control in Visual Basic.NET will know that it is rather limited in the type of effects that can be put in fields.

In this article you will learn how to make a custom Data Grid field that will change to a color that corresponds to the value that the user inputs into the field.

This could be useful for applications that show things like costs. You may want to know what products are losing money. So you could have the cell change to red if the profit on a particular item is a negative value.

For this example I am going to use 4 different colors.

This is the list of colors I am going to use with the corresponding number value. You can change the colors and values to what you want.

1 = Pink

2 = Blue

3 = Red

4 = Black

First let’s start by creating our custom data grid column class.

Add a new class to your project.

To do this, right click on your project in the ‘Solution Explorer’ window.

Select ‘Add’ and then ‘Add New Item’

You should now see a list of items that you can add to your project.

Select the ‘Component Class’ and type in a name for the class. To make it easy to follow this tutorial use the name I am using ‘DataGridColoredTextBoxColumn.vb’

Put the following code into that class you have just created.

Public Class DataGridColoredTextBoxColumn

	Inherits DataGridTextBoxColumn 'Inherit the methods from DataGridTextBoxColumn

	'Use only this paint method. We still want the control to use the standard methods for everything else

	Protected Overloads Overrides Sub Paint(ByVal g As System.Drawing.Graphics, 
		ByVal bounds As System.Drawing.Rectangle, ByVal source 
		As System.Windows.Forms.CurrencyManager, ByVal rowNum As Integer, 
		ByVal backBrush As System.Drawing.Brush, ByVal foreBrush 
		As System.Drawing.Brush, ByVal alignToRight As Boolean)
		    
	Dim sVal As String ' String for storing the value of the current cell

		Try
			'Get the current cell value
			sVal = MyBase.GetColumnValueAtRow(source, rowNum)

			'Color the cell based on the check conditions
			If sVal = "1" Then
				backBrush = New SolidBrush(Color.Pink)  'Set the background color
			ElseIf sVal = "2" Then
				backBrush = New SolidBrush(Color.Blue)
			ElseIf sVal = "3" Then
				backBrush = New SolidBrush(Color.Red)
			ElseIf sVal = "4" Then
				backBrush = New SolidBrush(Color.Black) 'Set the back color
				foreBrush = New SolidBrush(Color.White) 'Set the font color
			Else
				backBrush = New SolidBrush(Color.White)
			End If

			Catch ex As Exception 
			'At this point we do not want to do anything if an error is caught
			Finally
			'If no error has been caught then call the paint method

			MyBase.Paint(g, bounds, source, rowNum, backBrush, foreBrush, alignToRight)

		End Try

	End Sub

End Class

Basically what this code does is it inherits all the methods that the DataGridTextBoxColumn class contains. It then overrides the Paint method.

If we did not have this override, the call to the Paint method would go to the DataGridTextboxColumn.

In this paint method is where we change the color of the cells based on the data it contains.

The first thing we do is get the cell value. We know the source and row number so by using the GetColumnValueAtRow method we can retrieve the value.

It is then just a simple matter of comparing that value to our desired values using an ‘if statement’ or a select case statement if you prefer.

We then need to create a new back brush. This is what stores the color information that will be assigned to the cell.

Finally we call the paint method of the column passing our back brush.