Author: Olly

  • Obsessions: Summer 2013

    I have an extremely addictive personality and slight hoarder-ish habits – and i go through phases of being totally obsessed with things…

    Some of these things last for a few months then die off… Some seem to last for years.

    The last few years have seen an increasing obsession with Rap Battles, like this one;

    http://www.youtube.com/user/DontFlop

    And this last year has seen me become TOTALLY obsessed with Professional/Competition Eating.. Like this;

    http://www.youtube.com/user/furiouspete123

    I had a phase of watching Storage Wars, Pawn Stars and all those awesome programs about old treasure.. That obsession has passed for now.

  • Home Security Measures

    We’ve recently moved into a property we bought in Mansfield, and so far its been amazing. Its not the biggest and best house in the world – but its ours.

    The last few weeks have seen various house upgrades such as new carpets and freshly papered and painted walls – but one of the next items on my list is a solid, professional home security system.

    Living room, before and after...

    I want at least 3 cameras, fed to a DVR that is high enough resolution for the images to be used in a court of law. I’m also going to be installing carpet grippers along certain fences to aid in protecting my stuff – i have spoken to the police who have off advised me which fences not to put them on – he didn’t say much about the others 🙂

    I’ve also read that using spikey plants like the “Spanish Dagger” in your garden is a great way to protect against burglars – totally legal, they look awesome and if someone jumps over a fence to steal your warez they get some very sharp spikes in their bottom.

  • Syncing my Social World

    Hello 🙂

    So for ages i have argued with myself about how i should use the social networks that are available to me – i use about 6 quite regularly but i feel that i repeat myself or end up writing the same thing, on a few of them, and i only have the same friends/followers on most of them anyway.

    I’ve been pondering over an idea to simply use each social network for the things it does best (or what it started out doing) and then bringing them all together using one of the 6.

    Here is my plan, i think…

    Firstly, YouTube and Miso don’t really come into the plan (as such) as they are specific social networks and you cant really do what you do on these on the likes of Facebook or Twitter. I will however bring these into one of the more generic ones so that all my social activity is linked.

    I am going to use Twitter to chat, talk, and post quick messages (that’s what its made fo’) and i’m going to start posting all my images through Flickr (again, that’s what its made for) but of course each of these social networks will link to the other, so Flickr will notify Twitter that there is a new image, which will in turn post to Facebook)

    Foursquare will continue to be my location based social network – i used it before Facebook introduced the ability to check in.

    Im going to try and only use Facebook to show my updates from everything else – i’m going to (try to) sack off adding updates directly to it and only use the app for replying to any notifications.

    And i’m afraid coming in last place – is Google Plus. I do use it and i’m trying to use it more, but at the moment the only thing it really gets used for is the instant backup of all my photos. I do use the communities and find it more of a nerdy social network than anything else – i guess i need to expand my nerd crowd a bit more 🙂

    Its all going to take some planning as if i’m not careful ill have multiple updates on the same networks for the same information – ill draw myself a nice diagram later!

    Let me know how you use your social network accounts – do you link them up? Do you use any cool tools or apps to enable you to never miss a trick? 🙂

  • Skype Payment Scam – Explained

    I’ve been around these parts (the Internet) since I was 13, and over those years i’ve noticed lots and lots of cyber scams in various shapes and forms – I find them funny to be honest as they are usually so poor, it amazes me people fall for them..

    I received a funny one today – thought i’d screenshot it and explain how its easy to tell its a scam;

    How to spot a scam!

    From the top down, firstly, the title of the email has a space before the exclamation mark. This is not proper grammar, and a company as large as Microsoft/Skype wouldn’t make such a schoolboy error.

    Next, the email address is “support@numberbook.com” which a) isn’t a Skype email and b) is sod all to do with Skype or Microsoft (MS own Skype now innit)

    Moving swiftly on, the wording of Skype and the orders@ email address are formatted so that its not picked up as an email address by spam filters, having a question mark instead of a fullstop and then not including the next full stop (before the UK) is again a huge error, and no reputable company would do that.

    The next part down is the same, the email addresses formatted so it still looks like an email, but spam filters wouldn’t be triggered.

    And finally, the last part of the email is the nail in the coffin IMO – PayPal is one word, not two – no official email from a huge company would make such an error – plus the “Pay Pal” link points to;

    hXXp://www.elrinconoculto.com/config.html (link nulled so you cant click)

    …Which is obviously not an official PayPal domain 🙂