Dougy Mak’s Blog

When you start your Counter-Strike and if it’s always a black screen, then you’re most likely stuck in Direct 3D mode. To fix this, you would have to set it back to OpenGL for renderer. However, you’re most likely unable to due to the black screen.

To fix this:

1. Go to your Steam (not the game, just Steam) and go to the My Games tab.
2. Right click on Counter-Strike and go click Properties.
3. A new box should pop up. Now click Set launch options…
4. In the following box that pops up, type -dxlevel 9.0 and click Ok when you’re done.
5. Launch Counter-Strike normally, and enjoy!

Fear keeps us from excelling to great heights and limits are potential rewards. Much of the time, I have these big ideas for websites and before even giving a whack at it, I give up.  The thought of all the work it would take and the lack of resources I have access to, it just scares me and I end up scrapping the idea because it would take too long. What scares me more is the huge competitors or the thought of someone out doing me because he/she has the resource and funding. However, overtime I began caring less about these things. I developed a style and a mindset that works for me. I learned to not give a shit about my competitors; I will not let their success intimidate me. No matter how big my competitor is, they can never monopolize. I will always be able to take a part of their audience, even if it’s a tiny bit. There will be people who prefer something about your website over the other. For example, as a consumer, like many other people, I support the local mom and pop shops over corporate chains. I find myself going to a privately owned pizza joint all the time.

Another way I’ve changed is, instead of looking at the big picture as a whole, I’ve broken down the big picture into little pieces. It’s good to see the big picture, but it can be intimidating when thinking about painting it as a whole. However, it may seem less intimidating if I thought about painting small parts of the picture at a time. Paint a corner here and paint a section there and then you’ll begin noticing how these small steps add up and how effective this strategy is. Instead of going crazy about every little problem in the whole picture, worry about a piece at a time. This would provide psychological comfort by helping me calm my mind. The milestone would help me feel like I’m making progress thus producing more satisfaction and having a milestone would help keep me more motivated. So in the end, I have to tell myself: don’t worry about other people, just worry about yourself. Just keep doing what you like and what you’re passionate about and the success will follow.

Recently, I had migrated one of my blogs to another host. Everything was going great until I kept getting errors that showed my old host’s absolute path which was weird because I would think Wordpress wouldn’t store something like this. However, it had to do with one of my plugins (Contact Form 7), and I could of disabled it but I didn’t want to because it was an essential part of my blog. I’m guessing the plugin had some sort of interaction with the wp-upload folder. Anyways, I did a search in my MySQL database using PhpMyAdmin for a part of my old host’s absolute path and I found the entry that needed to be updated. It was under wp_conhnp_options table with the value upload_path for option_name. So just go ahead and update it’s value and everything should run smoothly again.

Here are PhpMyAdmin instructions:

1. Select the table wp_conhnp_options in your Wordpress database.
2. Click the Search tab.
3. Below, look for option_name and in the corresponding text field, type in: upload_path
   and then click Go.
4. You should  now see one record/row, click the little pencil on the left of the red x to edit.
5. Now update your old absolute path with your new absolute path and be sure that it points to the uploads folder: /home/public_html/dougymak.com/wp-content/uploads
6. Be sure to click Go before exiting and then check if everything’s running smoothly.

There’s a big potential in the Facebook advertising platform, but there’s still a long way to go. I’ve been playing around with Facebook ads lately and I have concluded that Facebook advertising is very inconsistent. However, it may be the season that’s causing such fluctuations and differences within the results. Regardless, I’ll either continue through the Christmas season or stop until the Christmas season is over. What I did notice though was that Facebook advertising isn’t strong or any good at all for direct sales of products. However, it works better with free services, but not as well for paid services.

Thinking from a consumer’s point of view. If I wanted to buy something, I wouldn’t go to Facebook to find ads for my purchase. I would use a search engine instead. There’s absolutely no reason for me to even touch those ads. However, on rare occasions, an ad would catch my eye and I would click on the ad to see what is it about, but I would never buy something through Facebook ads just because that’s me. On the other hand, I normally would ignore most ads whether it is on Facebook or not, but I do enjoy analyzing some them and figuring out it’s target audience.

About a year ago, Dragonball Evolution came out in theaters and it failed horribly. Theaters even dropped it from their line up- epic fail. It was doomed to begin with, especially when you use a Caucasian person to act as an Asian character. What is up with that? Using a white guy to play the main character who is OBVIOUSLY Asian. You would expect other directors to learn from this, but… Now we have another white guy playing the star role of Avatar: The Last Air Bender. Gosh, it does not take an idiot to realize that the main character, Aang, is Asian! It seems like Hollywood would take any chance they have (and does) just to portray a white guy as the hero.

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As you may already know, I keep up with a few manga series. Usually, I read it on OneManga, but they’ve been really slow and then my friend Alex told me about MangaStream.com which releases the subbed version on the same day it’s released in Japan. That’s pretty freaking fast! They’re not known for archiving manga; they’re only known for fast releases. If you want to find huge archives of manga, check out OneManga.com.

Today, I was trying to declutter my Firefox. Since you can search using your address bar (the bar where you type the web address), then I decided to take away the dedicated search bar on the right of the address bar. However, when I typed in a keyword and hit enter, it would use Yahoo has the default search engine, but I wanted Google instead. With no further delays, here’s how to change your Firefox’s address bar’s default search.

1. Type about:config in Firefox location bar and press Enter
2. Type keyword.URL in Filter textbox to find keyword.URL.
3. Double-click on keyword.URL and change the value to: http://www.google.com/search?q=

Also, you can change it to Google’s I’m Feeling Lucky search- just use: http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q=

That’s it! Now give it a test drive!

Recently, Digsby decided to add a bunch of crapware into their installation. It’s very understandable considering they need to make a living too, but don’t let the crapware turn you off. Digsby is still an excellent program and it’s the best IM (instant messaging) client out there. It’s so robust, fast, and easy to use. Having Digsby handle all your social internet communications in one place is an absolute ease! It just simplifies life and even speeds up your computer since you wouldn’t have to load 5 different instant message programs. Digsby can handle instant messaging (AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Facebook Chat), e-mail (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP ), and even social networks (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn accounts)! Anyways, without further ado! I shall show you the way of the crapless install of Digsby. Read more