Author: Olly

  • Life changes

    Not only is that the title of one of my favorite Wu-Tang tracks,  its also a very true statement. You never know whats round the corner, and it doesn’t matter how good you think you’ve got it – you could be back to square one before you can say “smoke me a kipper, ill be back for breakfast…”

    For the last few years of my life i’ve been in a relationship and going down the whole settling down, having kids kinda route – very strange for me at first as its not something i ever really wanted, but i warmed to it and it soon became what i wanted to do with my life (that and work loads to earn loads of money of course)

    Then due to some still pretty much unknown (to me) reasons the relationship ended – which left me having to make changes to my life that i never thought i’d ever have to make again. 🙁

    I’m now living with a couple of my mates, nearer work – just outside Mansfield. The house is lovely, its got an awesome back garden and a garage for the caddy – if the circumstances for me moving here weren’t so shit, i’d have said that i’d landed on my feet with this house! 🙂

    I have to make the best out of any situation im in, so now that the focus of my attention has shifted i find myself in a position where i have more time, and much less reponsibility – so im filling this time with new ventures, old ventures resurrected and generally doing all the things i set my heart on all those years ago when i was starting out in my entrepreneurial journey through life.

    I still get to see my dog at the weekends, so my weekends will consist of long walks getting lost in random forests, trips to the seaside and generally spoiling her rotten! No matter what i do through my life, she will always be the most important thing to me and the time i spend with her will always be treasured.

    More soon…

    Peace!

  • Rap Battles Ruined my Life

    Ok, so a good few years ago me and some friends started watching Rap Battles on YouTube, we’d laugh at the likes of Dirt Bag Dan making jokes and spitting bars to his opponent… But after a while the gun bars and American references got a little too much and we all kinda lost interest.

    A few months ago, Liam (friend and business partner) linked me to a new rap battle that he said i’d like, it was Blizzard vs Mark Grist – Student/Teacher Battle from Dont Flop Entertainment, and after watching it, laughing my ass off for 17 minutes, i was once again hooked!

    After watching a few other battles i decided that i needed to really swat up as there were too many “in jokes” and references to old battles and i wasn’t sure what some people were referring to in some of the rounds.

    So i went back to the very first Dont Flop-esq Battle, which is hosted on Don’t Flop Founder, Eurgh’s own YouTube account – EurghTube. I then proceeded to watch every battle on EurghTube, until i’d seen them all. Then, rather than watch every single video on the actual Dont Flop channel i singled out certain MC’s, searched for them (within the Dont Flop channel of course) and then watched them from debut right through to the newer stuff.

    I find the level of intellect and preparation from some of the battlers is just outstanding, people such as Tenchoo and Lego make me actual LOL at times, and then people like Micky Worthless and Lunar C both got bars, but their stage presence and jokes add an element of humor to Dont Flop that really makes it stand out as one of the most entertaining things on YouTube right now.

    Being the type of guy i am, i want to get involved in some way, not sure how as they have most things locked down, but i extend this offer to the Dont Flop team, if you need help with anything web-related then im your man – that includes help with the Blog too!

    Im off to mow my lawn, sit in the sun, and probably watch more rap battles!

    #DFAFD

  • The “Hidden” Internet….

    This week in the news a couple of teenagers have been arrested due to carrying out some crazy phone hack on the US government – i started reading into it as I always find it hilarious when a couple of kids can take over something set up by a load of really clever .gov types!

    Anyway, I’m reading an article on the register about it and after I’d finished I noticed that the good fellows at #Anonymous had closed down what was described as a “hidden child abuse hub” in around Oct2011 – now I’m not into child abuse hubs, but this once again intrigued me as to what these articles meant by these “hidden” resources.. They cant simply mean passworded sites as the servers that hosted these sites would be located and shut down?

    So after a bit more digging I find another article talking about the “Hidden Wiki” and something called the Tor network. A few minutes later I had installed it, opened it, clicked a few links and ended on a directory that contained links to possibly some of the most disturbing things i have ever seen in my life – all on domain extensions that when trying to access on the normal Internet simply present you with a 404 page.

    The idea behind the Tor network is basically an entire anonymous Internet only accessible when you connect to their network, where the source of websites, and the identity of the people browsing them cant be traced – so you can basically talk about everything and anything and get away with it – and it doesn’t take you long to see who mostly inhabits this underworld – lowlifes, peado’s and no doubt terrorists and everything in-between…

    Like most normal people, until i started reading into it I didn’t know this world existed – and according to sources it is potentially 400/500 times BIGGER than the commonly defined world wide web. That is a worrying thought, is it not?

    To conclude, I’m all up for an open, free and anonymous Internet but nothing should ever be 100% unrestricted as it ends up being used by child abusers and the likes to fuel their sick desires – please, Tor Police – do something about the horrible stuff on there… That’s not why you set the Tor network up, is it?

    🙁

  • Windows 7 64bit on the Sony Vaio VGN AR88E

    I’ve had my laptop for about 3 years, and in those 3 years i’ve had a new keyboard, upgraded memory – and i have installed windows 7 twice on it, once was 7 Professional and the latest is 7 Ultimate.

    Windows 7 is the best windows OS to date – it goes on most systems with ease and as long as your system is supported by windows 7 you simply have to slam the files on and it tends to do the rest itsself.

    However – for some reason my beloved Sony Vaio VGN AR88E seems to be one of the few systems that has a few issues with windows 7, specifically the 64bit version. Actually that statement is wrong, its actually the NVIDIA 8400M GT grpahics card that has the issues but rest assured there is a workaround to get the NVIDIA 8400M GT working with windows 7 64bit – its not for the feint hearted but it works!

    NB: The out-the-box installation of windows 7 on this vaio WILL install some drivers that will make the PC seem like its working fine, but plug another monitor in (or two more in my case) and you wont get very far….

    Step 1 – Download the official, latest version of the drivers from the NVIDEA website: http://uk.geforce.com/drivers (i found i had to manually search for them)

    Step 2 – Run the downloaded file, it will extract a load of files to your C:\ – go to My Computer, double click on C:\ and then carry on until you are (roughly) in this directory;

    C:\NVIDIA\DisplayDriver\296.10\WinVista_Win7_64\

    Step 3 – Find your graphics card ID by right clicking on “Computer” in your start menu, then clicking properties. When the window opens click on “Device Manager” on the left and then locate the “Display Adapters” option, double click to reveal what will probably be labelled as a “Standard VGA Controller” or something like that.

    Step 4 – Right click and click proiperties on the Display Adapter and then click on the “Details” tab, and in the dropdown menu find “Hardware ID” then click on it.

    Step 5 – Make a note of the top “Value”, it will look something like this;

    Step 6 – Find a file called NVMT.INF and open it – for me it was inside a zip file called additional_infs.zip.

    Step 7 – Search for your graphics card, mine is the GeForce 8400M GT and it was set out like this;

    NVIDIA_DEV.0426.01 = “NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT”

    Step 8 – Search for [NVIDIA_SetA_Devices.NTamd64.6.1] and for [NVIDIA_SetA_Devices.NTamd64.6.1]

    The first search will bring you to a list where you will see this;

    %NVIDIA_DEV.0426.01% = Section005, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0426&SUBSYS_55841991
    %NVIDIA_DEV.0426.02% = Section007, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0426&SUBSYS_88971033

    Step 9 – Copy the last line, and duplicate it;

    %NVIDIA_DEV.0426.01% = Section005, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0426&SUBSYS_55841991
    %NVIDIA_DEV.0426.02% = Section007, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0426&SUBSYS_88971033
    %NVIDIA_DEV.0426.02% = Section007, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0426&SUBSYS_88971033

    Step 10 –  Change the bold bits, the first to 03, the second to 11 (dont know why, the guide i read said to) and the 3rd bit to your hardware ID (so in my case 9016104D)

    Do the same for the second search above except put 12 instead of 11.

    Step 11 – Search for Strings and find your graphics card again in the list;

    NVIDIA_DEV.0426.01 = “NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT”
    NVIDIA_DEV.0426.02 = “NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT ”

    Step 12 – Duplicate the last line as follows;

    NVIDIA_DEV.0426.01 = “NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT”
    NVIDIA_DEV.0426.02 = “NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT ”
    NVIDIA_DEV.0426.03 = “NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT (Sony Vaio) ”

    Save all the changes and you should now be able to install official drivers to your Sony Vaio.

    Things change and some systems may vary – if you follow these steps and it doesn’t work please don’t bitch and moan to me, try some other stuff and you will get there eventually.