At the time of writing this, I’ve got a little over 10 episodes online right now and I think my momentum is just starting to pick up! I’m slowly learning how to get better sound and video quality- mostly through trial and error- and I’m getting more confident in the talking and just being myself while playing a computer game. That last thing is not as easy as it sounds; I still get the “What?!? I sound like that?” after every recording I do. You know what I’m talking about!

So if you’ve got some spare time, give these videos a go. I’d highly appreciate any feedback and if you like them, click the like button! That’s why they put them there after all.

Ralph Plays Minecraft – Youtube

In Minecraft you can do whatever the hell you want to do. You can go exploring, zombie hunting, mining, deforesting, pig slaughtering, farming, fishing, building crazy things and more and more as new updates are released. The game revolves mostly around 2 simple things: destroying and placing blocks. Unlimited worlds are generated as you’re walking around. The world consists of blocks (which are generally accepted to be one cubic in-game meter) of various materials such as sand, dirt, stone, wood and more. You go around “harvesting” these blocks, meaning you use a pick-axe to break and get stone, a regular axe to get wood, a shovel for dirt and so on. With these materials you can combine them to make tools or more complex blocks to place back in the world.

You can start to see where the name “Minecraft” comes from. You do a lot of mining to get resources like coal or iron or more rare ones such as redstone or diamond. After getting the right ingredients it’s time to start crafting to make better tools, weapons and devices to use in your world. Pair the openness of building and exploring with multi-player game-play and you’ve got yourself a winner!

I’ve been playing for a while and building stuff, some things more impressive than others. If you want to check out a bunch of screenshots head on over to http://minecraft.rvdbrg.com which I’ll update frequently. If you haven’t played Minecraft yet and this article has peaked your curiosity, head on over to http://minecraft.net and purchase a copy of the game. At the moment it’s still in pre-release and at a discounted price.

Do you have some Minecraft stories you want to share? Stick them in the comments below. Thanks!

Naturally a bunch of people are gonna whine about it, people always do when something changes, but personally I really like it. It actually makes me check my email more frequently because Gmail looks so good now!

Perhaps even a bigger story is that Google opened up it’s doors (though only shortly) for new members to it’s Facebook competitor: Google Plus (Google+). It’s got a slick new interface keeping up with the redesign of the rest of Google’s services but more importantly there are a couple of features that make it a very viable competitor. The first thing you’ll be presented with are “circles”. They’re Google’s take on groups- you choose who you share stuff with based on these circles. The reason it may very well work this time around is that it’s a very easy and intuitive process to stick people in circles and it’s practically a requirement to do so. Unlike Facebook’s “Friends”, Google Plus has a more Twitter-like approach with follows and mutual follows, which is achieved by sticking someone in a circle and being stuck in their circles. It’s still very new to everyone, so if you’re one of the lucky few who got in, play around with it.

Another noticeable feature is “Hangouts”. I haven’t tried it yet, but according to others it’s “Group video chat finally done right”. Be sure to also try out “Sparks”, which is like a live-search for particular interests.

So yeah, I’ve barely been using it for 24 hours (and for part of that I was asleep), so there’s probably tons more to discover. I’m looking forward to see how this turns out, especially when it opens up to the world. I think it will really kick off because Google Plus can become a uniting factor and a social layer between all the Google services that you use, including search. Do you have some experiences to share? Stick them in the comments section below- which is ironically powered by Facebook. Cheers!

Easy Set up

If you haven’t done so already, download and install uTorrent and Dropbox. Both are awesome programs; if you want to know more about Dropbox, I’ve written about it here and here. Inside your Dropbox directory create a folder and call it what you want, for instance TorrentFiles, because that’s what we’re putting in it. It doesn’t need to be public or shared, but you can do that if you feel like that’s a good idea (many other cool things you can do).

Next, in uTorrent, open up the “preferences” and under “Directories” set your previously set torrent file save location in the field for “Automatically load .torrents from:”. Now every time you want to download something, grab the torrent and stick it in your designated torrent folder in Dropbox,  and if the PC running uTorrent is running at the moment or if you’re turning it on later, the file will automatically be included in uTorrent’s download queue.

That’s all there is to it. The reason I like this solution is I only download torrents (run uTorrent) on my home PC but I’m away from it most of the time. I can add torrents to the queue from literally anywhere because of the Dropbox app for Android and Dropbox’s web interface. There are a ton of other tricks you can derive from this, such as moving completed files into your Dropbox directory (if you’ve got enough space for that) for ultimate remote-ness.

If you’ve got some cool tips and tricks to share I would love to hear about it in the comments below. Thanks!

Dear client

Spam is sent from your FaceBook account.

Your password has been changed for safety.

Information regarding your account and a new password is attached to the letter.
Read this information thoroughly and change the password to complicated one.

Please do not reply to this email, it’s automatic mail notification!

Thank you for your attention.
Your Facebook!

Since when EVER have they ever signed an email with “Your Facebook”? Oh and with an exclamation point: YOUR FACEBOOK! ASSHOLE!

Seriously though, if you’ve got an eye for grammar then you’ll be safe from 90% of phishing attacks like these. I don’t pretend to be a grammar master, but look at the 2 most obvious examples: change the password to complicated one. and it’s automatic mail notification! Shall we correct them? change the password to a complicated one. and it’s an automatic mail notification!

Then there are still some technical issues which are kind of dumb. “A new password is attached to the LETTER”. Come on, it’s an email! You can call it a message, an email or a notification but not a letter. Another immediate sign that this was fake was that I HAD JUST LOGGED IN to Facebook, my password had not been changed for safety.

Now really seriously, a lot of people are undoubtedly going to fall for this, so please just spread the word to protect those you care about. Peace!

Nevertheless, there’s still the occasional bit that’s blog-worthy, such as the invitation or attendance list to the Royal Wedding ceremony. I think it’s a bit interesting that an ex-Spice Girl is on the list, but 2 ex-prime ministers aren’t. I thought with these weddings you just sent out invitations to be polite even if you expected certain people not to make it. They’ve invited England’s current PM but not the blackest president of America ever!

Like I said earlier, I can’t really move myself to give damn. What I do like is yesterday on the BBC the Kenyan representative must’ve just triples Kenya’s tourism industry by explaining how William and Kate decided to get engaged on a super romantic mountain in Kenya. Score!

This basically involves running Linux commands via the terminal emulator. Don’t let these big words scare you away, it’s only a couple of really short lines. For this example we will get rid of the Twitter app that comes pre-installed on most Android phones these days. If you’re familiar with Fickle Gods you’ll know I personally prefer another Twitter client.

Start by typing su and hit enter to get superuser permissions. Continue by navigating to the directory where Twitter is stored by typing cd followed by the directory, in most cases cd /data/app

To check if you’re in the right directory, type ls to get a listing of the contents. Scroll through it to find Twitter, it’ll have something like com.twitter.android.apk or in my case it was com.twitter.android-2.apk, just remember that bit for the next step.

Now our final step is to delete the shit out of it with the following line: rm -rf com.twitter.android-2.apk

Don’t ask me about the specifics of what each of the commands do, just believe me that it works! Just enter in ls again to check that it’s gone and that’s it!

One of the benefits I enjoy with Twitter out of the way is that my “share” popup list was getting a little long and parts would nearly disappear of screen.

Source: Lifehacker

Anyway, this movie is all spoken in Mongolian, I suppose. Damn, it could be Chinese or Korean for all I know. In the end you better get yourself a version with subtitles, that’s what matters. Don’t let this put you off, though. It’s a very good movie with a couple of bloody battles to please the dudes and Temudjin’s undying love for his wife to please the ladies. The story starts of where Genghis is a little kid and chooses a bride (SPOILER: she chooses him) and then everything turns to shit. Seriously, the Mongols go all ‘mongol’ on each other. Temudjin kind of has a shitty life for a while and the movie ends when he’s just about to start taking revenge for it on the entire half of the world he lives on.

It’s a good movie. I wouldn’t watch it twice, but I’d give it a thumbsup-type-good-star rating. You should watch it because I think it’s based on history. Actually I think the movie is based on stuff that happened right before the history started.

Note: I’ve just gone and looked it up on IMDb, so here’s the link to it: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416044/

Seen it? Let’s hear what you think of this movie in the comments below!

First off, I just want to say that I’m just learning as I go along and I would really appreciate any feedback in the comments below or through any other means. Unfortunately for me I can’t really know the effectiveness of my security measures until I actually get attacked (which I try to avoid!), so we will all benefit from each others experience here.

I recommend the following changes. They require you to put a copy or new version of the php.ini file in the directory that you want to sandbox. For this example, we’ll call it /username/www/sandboxdir/

Setting the open_basedir

In the php.ini file, find the line with open_basedir, it’s usually commented out, so remove the semicolon from the front of it and set the directory to our sandbox directory. Basically what this does is limit anything that php can do to the specified directory tree. It won’t be able to read or write anything from a higher level (or sideways) in the directory.

Setting the upload_tmp_dir

This is not required, only if some part of your script allows for file uploads. I’ve experienced that after setting the open_basedir that the temporary directory is outside the scope. Find the line in the php.ini upload_tmp_dir which will probably also be commented out (just remove the semicolon) and put in /username/www/sandboxdir/tmp/

You notice that we’re referring to a folder called tmp which probably doesn’t exist yet, so go ahead and make that folder. Naturally you can name this folder anything you want or have it nested within another folder. Just make sure you are consistent with your php.ini file.

Remove write permissions from php.ini file

Lastly, you need to change the permissions of the php.ini file. This is actually very crucial but ofter overlooked. By default, files have permission 644, just change it to 444. This only allows reading.

And that’s it. You’ll need to go through this process for every directory that you want to sandbox, but in the end you’ll sleep better at night. Once again, I would really appreciate feedback from anyone with some experience or better tips for making your web server a safer place. Thanks!

1. Referral Bonuses for Everyone

Dropbox has a very good referral model where it’s beneficial to both parties to follow through a referral. If you refer someone to join Dropbox, you get a referral bonus, but so does the person you’ve referred. It’s possible that they join dropbox without a referral, but they won’t get the extra space.

If you haven’t joined Dropbox yet, please join via my referral: http://db.tt/h5PPdQD You will get the initial bonus, and my space will keep on increasing as well. Everybody wins!

2. Public Folders and Photo Galleries

A common misconception is that to share items on Dropbox, both parties need a Dropbox account. This is not true. Dropbox has 2 very neat features built in that allow you to share files or make photo galleries that are essentially public (anyone with the link can view).

When you install Dropbox, you will see a folder called Photos and one called Public. Whatever you place inside these folders has some extra functionality. For Photos you can place a folder inside filled with pictures. If you right-click on that folder you can use the Dropbox context menu to “Copy Public Gallery Link”. Now just paste that link in an email wherever you want to share these photos and when people click that link they’ll be taken to a Dropbox-powered photo gallery with your pictures. For Public it’s slightly different. You don’t right-click on a folder; instead you can only act on a single file at a time. Right-click a file inside the Public folder, and under the Dropbox context menu, pick “Copy Public Link”. Paste this in your email or wherever you want to share that file. Now if people click that link, they’ll get to download your file.

So, a quick recap: in Photos you can share a folder filled with pictures. In Public you can share individual files. For these options, your intended recipient doesn’t need to have a Dropbox account.

3. Access Your Files Everywhere

Accessing your files anywhere is not just limited to your files being synchronized between your computers. If you need to access some file while on a friend’s machine or at an internet cafe it’s just as easy. Just navigate to Dropbox’s website and after logging in you can browse all files that are synchronized. Basically what this means is that your information is not only synchronized between your computers but also with Dropbox’s servers. Your computer(s) don’t need to be turned on to access your important files.

For users who only have one computer and who might think that they don’t need Dropbox, think again.

4. Restore Deleted Files

Dropbox also works like a backup system for your files. If you’ve modified or deleted some files by mistake, there’s no need to panic because dropbox stores old versions of your files. You can right-click on files that are changed to “view previous versions” or if you visit the Dropbox website, you can view deleted files and restore them.

5. Dropbox on your mobile device

When I mentioned accessing your files anywhere earlier, I meant everywhere. Dropbox apps are available for Android, Blackberry, iPhones and more. On your mobile device, Dropbox doesn’t act exactly like Dropbox on your PC; it doesn’t immediately download everything to your phone, but it does give you access to all your files. Depending on the app you can use it to quickly share items in your public folder by sending a link via email.

Using Dropbox on your mobile device is also a very handy way to move files onto and off of your mobile device. I don’t know about you, but I don’t always carry my USB cables around, and emailing myself the files is just a primitive way of doing things.

So, I hope that you’ve learned something new from reading this. There are tons more great features that I didn’t want to go into in this article, and of course there are a ton of features even I haven’t discovered yet. If you know some unique tips and tricks, please share them in the comments below. Remember, if you’re thinking about signing up for Dropbox now, please use my referral link: http://db.tt/h5PPdQD

Thanks!