Happy 1000th Birthday!

1000

To me! Well, to this blog. This is post number 1000, which I find hard to believe but WordPress is listing the other 999 so… wow. You should now all send me birthday presents and stuff and things. The more valuable the better.

So somehow I’ve managed to post 1000 items about **** knows what. I’m glad WordPress doesn’t count how much time I’ve wasted on this crap. The sad thing is, I’m quite happy to go on for another 1000. Large bribes will not work, but by all means send me the cash anyway.

I now really hope that CERN experiment didn’t **** everything up. It’d be a pisser to post this and then have the world end. People might think it’s my fault.

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Ben There, Dan That!

Ben There, Dan That!

Strange title, but it’s about a strange game. I found it via a link from some random blog I get RSS feed from and – if you have a PC – it’s a very worthwhile download.

Ben There, Dan That! is from Zombie Cow Studios, which seems to be a two-man band. Sadly, the days where people like the Darling Brothers (Codemasters) did this and became millionaires are long gone, which is a pity as I had a great time playing this game and the guys who worked on it deserve some kind of reward. And incentive to do more.

It’s an old-fashioned, point/click/examine/talk to/combine objects adventure. The graphics are rough and cartoonish and just work in a quirky way. Best feature by far is the dialogue. When you play, examine everything. Try to use everything. Talk to everyone. Go through every line. I honestly laughed out loud on several occasions. If you enjoyed the likes of Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle, or if the name Guybrush Threepwood means anything to you – get this game.

I certainly wouldn’t say it’s very hard – I finished it in a few sessions with no help – but it’s hugely entertaining and will work on even the lowest-spec PC. Ideal for my crumbly laptop. Also, there’s no real “installation” as such. It just kind of sits there. And – best of all – there’s no fee. It’s free.

However, if you do enjoy it, please consider dropping Ben a quid or so. I think they’ve made about £150 from the game so far, which is nice. But they’ve had 3500 downloads. At a quid a pop it’s nothing from each game player, but a real incentive for more great stuff from the Zombie Cow crew!

Ben, thanks for your time and that of everyone else. Best of luck with whatever’s coming next.

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Google Chrome

Google Chrome

So Google has a new web browser out called “Google Chrome“. It’s very much in beta (I think the current release is 0.2) and the interwebnet world is going apeshit about it. I’ve only had an hour or so to play with it as I wait for my bus and… I dunno. It’s got a lot going for it on paper, and there are some features I like but I’ll have to play with it more before I decide if I really like it. It also needs a few more features or plug-ins such as Firefox‘s No-Script.

Oh, and I managed to get it to crash completely which is supposed to be impossible as each tab has its own process. By all means check this one out – open two Gears-enabled sites in two separate tabs and grant the first permission to use Gears. As it’s updating the files, start the same process on the second. Chrome stops responding, or at least it does on my laptop.

Incidentally, as it’s updating the files Chrome very nicely tells you that “Gears is installed and enabled on this computer. You can disable it from the Safari menu.” I guess they’ve not told Gears itself about the new browser, so it thinks it’s Safari! Both browsers are sat on the same codebase (excuse my incorrect terminology) so it’s understandable that Safari is a best guess.

Also, I can’t get the spell-checker to work. I’ve checked all the language settings and they’re fine, but I never get any indication of mis-spelled words in my dialogue boxes.

As I said, it’s a work in progress and it seems like a good idea. Different enough to be worthwhile and something I will continue to toy with. In the meantime, though, Firefox3 is still very much entrenched as my default browser.

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Google can’t count

GLASGOW, UNITED KINGDOM - APRIL 12: (FILE PHOT...

As well as doing searches, Google‘s capable of some other funky things. Try entering the following if you’re in a foreign country:

16500 VND in GBP

That’ll convert Vietnamese Dong into British Pounds. Handy for any currency conversions.

define serenity

Popping that in your search box will return a definition at the top of the page, followed by the usual search.

what is the time in Beijing?

Will, surprise, give you the current time in the Chinese capital. Hell, if you’re not sure what the capital of China is:

what is the capital of China?

Maths is another useful function. Quite a few complex functions such as roots, squares and the like can be handled. Yet it falls down on subtraction. Before they fix it, try:

399999999999999-399999999999998

Copy/paste if you want to ensure you get the digits correct. I’m pretty sure you can get the correct answer. Shame Google can’t.

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Anatomy of a Malware Scam

The box art of Windows 1.0; the first version ...

Jesper M. Johansson has a very interesting 8-page article up on The Register entitled Anatomy of a Malware Scam that’s well worth a read. It does start a little techy, but I urge any Windows user to have a browse through it just to see how “clever” the thieving ***** who write this software really are.

It’s quite an eye-opener and I’ve seen a couple of other examples of this “in the wild”, particularly since I returned to Asia where anti-virus/anti-spyware software on public PCs is a thing of legend.

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