Graphics Caqrd Driver Updating

Is your graphics card up to date?

First of all some software is very sensitive to how updated your graphics card drivers are, and I know first hand that Second Life can be a bugger with this, so what we're going to do is highlight what your graphics card is, and how updated it is.

If you are running Second Life on a windows operating system (Windows XP, ME, Vista or 7), press the windows key on your keyboard plus "r", and you will see a small command box pop up. This new box is called the "Run..." window which allows you to type in a command and it will run it.

You need to type in "dxdiag", and then if you click "Ok", you will see the run box disappear and a small pop up asking you if you want to digitally assign drivers. Click yes at this point. Once you have clicked yes, you will see the Dxdiag window appear with more details. For this article, we will be looking at the tab called "Display" or if you have two monitors/graphics cards it will be named "Display 1".

If you have clicked on the tab, you will see a few bits of information. The information that you need is as follows...

Device section -
Name: This is your graphics card name.
Manufacturer: This is the creator of your graphics card.

Drivers -
Date: This is the last time your graphics card drivers were updated. If this is longer than 4 months ago, I'd advise looking at updating these drivers.

To update your drivers, locate the manufacturers website, and then you will see the option on their website to update your drivers.

Good website links:
http://www.nvidia.com
http://www.amd.com
http://downloadcenter.intel.com

Rock on peeps.

Process Credit - Second Life

How do I sell L$?

First of all you need to make sure that your Second Life account has a billing age, which is an age that starts from the moment that you first make a financial transaction.

So if you have bought L$ through www.secondlife.com, have a premium membership or placed a positive USD balance "credit", onto your Second Life account you should be able to sell your L$ and process them.

The process is relatively simple. Go to www.secondlife.com, and if you log in, then scroll half way down the page, you should see your L$ balance on the left hand side. Just below the L$ balance, you will see the options "Buy L$" and "Manage". If you click "Manage", you will see a collection of options drop down, with the title "Manage your L$".

You will see the option "Sell L$", if you click on this, you can see the opportunity to place the amount of L$ you wish to sell. You will see the fields "Estimated Value" and "Estimated Proceeds". The finance you will receive in USD is the "Estimated proceeds" value. Linden Lab take a small portion to help maintain the servers and technology that allows you to make the L$, that you're current selling, so don't worry.

Once you have sold the L$, if you go back to your "Account Summery", you will see half way down under the title Linden Dollar Summery, the field "US Dollar Balance", where you will see the USD that you have just been given.

Do you remember that section of links under "Manage" ? Well if you go back to them, you will see the option to "Process credit". If you click the link, it will take you to the appropriate page, with details and information of how to transfer the USD balance to a Paypal account.

At the bottom of the page you will see the "Paypal" written in green, in the table. If you click on it, you will be taken to the page where you can enter the Paypal address and the amount of finance you wish to send to the Paypal account you want.

Is it really that complicated? Yes.

Rock on peeps!

Remove Second Lifes Typing Animation

I've just started using Second Life, and one of the most annoying things about it, is the default typing animation, that everyone starts with, when inside of Second Life. The first question posed is, "How do I remove the typing animation in Second Life?" Well the answer's remarkably simple, because it's just a command inside of the Second Life viewer that's set to "true".

1) Open the Second Life viewer, and log into Second Life.
2) Once inside of Second Life, if you press Ctrl+Alt+D, you will get the Second Life advanced menu, appearing at the top of the Second Life viewer.

3) Click on the Advanced menu, and then select "Debug Settings" near the bottom.
4) You should now see a small box appear within the Second Life viewer, called Debug settings. If you click the drop down arrow in the first box, you will see a large collection of Second Lifes commands, but for now the only command we're interested in is "PlayTypingAnim".

5) Once you have located this command, you will see a breif description of what the command does, and the word "TRUE", which if you now change to "FALSE", and save. You will see that the typing animation in Second Life will now be stopped.

So jump back into Second Life, and have fun. My avatars name is "Nightfaller Aeon", for those who wish to know.

Regards,
Sycrid.

PHP Coding - Country Flags

This is a short piece of code that was developed for the YoYo Tech Gaming Group, in a recent project. The code simply drags out the name of a country from the database and takes that variable and drags the image with that variable as a name, with the extension of jpg or gif at the end. Then echos this image to the screen.

< src="">.png" width="18px" height="12px"/ >

As you can see we are telling an Image to appear with the "img src" opening the directory that the countries flags are stored within, in this instance it is "Flags/" and then we are jumping into the php.

We open up the php command with the usual ?php then we are echoing the variable which is stored in the database in the field Country, closing the php statement and then finishing the line of code with the file extension, which here is .png

Once run through a browser this will appear as ...

< src="Flags/USA.png" width="18px" height="12px">

Amazingly, this is a rather simple piece of code, and I will admit I got stuck with it, because before hand I was using if statements and it became a very long and extensive piece of coding, which was both a waste of my time and inefficient. However after it was pointed out to me on Coding Forums.com I did feel like slapping my self in the face because it was such an obvious solution.

Anyway the finalised product can be seen at the following location. YoYo Tech Developed Coding.

PHP truly does rock this world!
Sycrid

Proxy Server Websites

Hiya guys and girls,

I thought I'd knock up a little information about proxy servers and also give you a list of a few which are useful and seem quite solid.

What is a Proxy Server?
Think of driving, and you want to get from point A to point B, but there is a motorway in the way, and no means to cross it, until you take a small detour and go over a bridge. A proxy is like that, where you have your computer, and the website you wish to access, however you have a company/school firewall in the way which currently blocks the website you want to see. You need something to act like the bridge, to allow you to go from your computer to the website. Anyway a proxy server will act like that bridge until the proxy server is also blocked.

"An intermediary server that accepts requests from clients and forwards them to other proxy servers, the origin server, or services."
Reference: www.equiinet.com/cachepilot/support/cachepilotglossary.asp



What to look for in a Proxy Server, and what does it mean?

Include Form: Will include a URL box/form on every webpage that you view through the proxy, so it is easy to locate another website.

Remove Scripts: Removes all client/server scripting on the website you wish to view.
Accept Cookies: Do you want to accept cookies from the website you wish to view?
Show Images: Do you want to see the images on the website or not?
Show Referrer: Shows the referring website within the URL section of your internet browser.

Rotate13: Uses an encoding method called Rotate13, where every letter in the alphabet is moved 13 places to the right.

Base64: Base64 is a method of encoding binary data sent as an attachment through email. Base64 encoding divides three bytes of data into four bytes of ASCII text, making the resulting file size approximately 33% larger. Reference: http://www.ciphertrust.com/resources/glossary/index.php?term=B

Strip Meta: Removes meta tag data from the website you are viewing.
Strip Title: Removes the website title from the website you are using.
Session Cookies: Allows you to store cookies for the viewing session that you are having via the proxy.

New Window: Will open the website you want to view through the proxy, in a new window.



Good Proxy Servers:
- FreeProxyServer
- G-Proxy
- Proxy247


Please note: If you use any proxy server mentioned above, you take sole responsibility for your actions and this blog post is entirely for informational purposes only.

Serenity Movie Review

Review: From the acclaimed director Joss Whedon, came the unfortunately short television series known as FireFly, that was cut short before the last episodes of the series aired on television. Firefly managed to acquire 4million viewers whilst it was aired but due to the last episodes never being placed live on the television, the series went through to DVD and the sales exceeded what was expected, causing a series re-think.

The problem for Joss Whedon was that the series had been cut, so how could he continue to keep the audience happy? Simple he made a feature length film that went straight through to the big screen, without the viewers needing to know the series.

Serenity follows the crew of a smugglers spaceship venturing through the solar system that has been almost man made through teraforming, in the aim to create the perfect society. This dream created by the "Alliance" is not long lived and the outer planets are full of those who do not agree with the lives that they are expected to live within this society.

The movie Serenity follows the lives of the crew on board the space ship known as "Serenity" and the dark truth that they discover about how the solar system they live in, has come to be. This truth takes them through a journey that pushes their lives to the very edge of the solar system and makes them witness how mankind created such a horrific thing as the "reavers".

The crew of Serenity have to avoid both the Reavers and the alliance to show the rest of the galaxy what the truth really is, in order to stop the alliance from making more mistakes and ending valuable lives.

I will leave you to watch the movie to discover what this horrific truth is, but I have to admit that even if you have seen the series Firefly, you will not see the truth that the crew of Serenity discover, to be the most obvious of truths.

I really enjoyed this movie, so 4 out of 5 stars goes to Joss Whedon.

Originally posted on Edd The Zombie

Round Ireland With A Fridge Book Review

Review: I was given Round Ireland with a Fridge as a gift from a friend, and after doing a little research, it appears that Tony Hawk, was not an American Skater but there was also a Tony Hawk in the UK, who managed to make one extremely good life through comedy.

As with all stories, which are non-fiction, the good ones originate from a few good drinks, a bad hangover and a drunken bet. Round Ireland with a Fridge, is no exception to this rule, where Tony Hawks woke up one morning after a not so rememberable night, with a bet scribbled on his pillow.

Simply put the bet that Tony decides to take on, is that he must try and hitch hike around Ireland with a fridge at his side. Sound strange? Well the book is near enough a journal of what happened, on such a trip.

As you read through this book, you will laugh and giggle at how absurd Tony's life quickly becomes whilst traveling, from sleeping with the fridge through to sleeping in the dog house.

The book itself has sold over 1/2 a million copies and is currently being turned into a movie, which is set for release in 2010.

Originally posted on Edd The Zombie