Piracy!
Piracy in the digital age – An essay about piracy in the digital age. Is it really that bad?
The WWW is not the internet!
A real geek should know the difference, do you? Learn the difference and stop being a n00b.
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Top 10 free indie games
Posted on November 25, 2011 by Jingles | No Comments
Indie games have a habit of being wonderfully great, probably because indie developers are so passionate about what they do. They do it for the love of games and gaming, they do it for the love of designing, coding, creating, not for sales and money. Although I’m sure they like the money too.
Apparently some indie developers have no need, want nor use for money and release their games for free. In fact hundreds, maybe even thousands, of indie game developers are generous enough to release their game(s) for free. If you go looking for free games you will most likely find that a lot of those free games are indie games.
With so many great free games about how are you supposed to sort the gems from the chaf? You don’t unless you download and play it. Reviews, screenshots and videos are only so tempting. These five tried and tested free (free as in they cost $0 so put your wallet away) indie games have been played by yours truly and I have certified them to be awesome. [Read more...]
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Global Agenda: Recursive Colony Expansion
Posted on November 24, 2011 by Jingles | No Comments
This is what happens if you take the Unreal engine throw in some Sci-Fi mix it with a third-person shooter perspective, sprinkle liberally with RPG elements and make it a free MMO.
Global Agenda is a sci-fi, third-person class-based shooter with guns & jetpacks! What’s not to like about that? See tohose robots in the trailer? They are evil, they don’t follow the 3 laws of robotics, you get to turn them into scrap metal. The gist of it is that you are an elite special agent, you get to acquire futuristic gear and weaponry, and battle enemy agents and robots for survival, technology and territory. Normally I’m not a fan of MMOs but Global Agenda has the right mix of shooting, action and RPG elements to make me keep playing not grinding away.
I have only just discovered Global Agenda but I reckon I’m going to keep playing, it’s that awesome. You can expect a more thorough write up about it in the future once I’m better acquainted.
Global Agenda is available on Steam or you can download it from the official Global Agenda website. Be warned the game weighs in at 6.5 GB, I installed the game from Steam and even @ 1.5 Mb/s it took over an hour to install.
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Five free alternatives to Windows Explorer
Posted on November 23, 2011 by Jingles | No Comments
Ever been frustrated by Windows Explorers limited capability while cleaning up your HDD, moving files, cleaning up, doing general house work and maintenance? Maybe it’s time to ditch Windows Explorer for a more capable file manager. Bill Detwiler has you covered with a quick look at five free file managers.
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A look at some crazy SSD tech
Posted on November 22, 2011 by Jingles | No Comments
Rewind to 2006 a common year that started on a Sunday in the Gregorian calendar. It was the 2006th year of the Common Era or Anno Domini designation, the 6th year of the 3rd millennium and of the 21st century, and the 7th of the 2000s decade.
In 2006 the Winter Olympics were held in Turin, Italy. NASA’s Cassini-Huygens spacecraft discovers geysers of a liquid substance shooting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus, signaling a possible presence of water. Life on Mars is my favourite TV show. The largest capacity HDD available is a 750 GB Seagate HDD, and Gigabyte release their i-RAM storage device. [Read more...]
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Spelunky
Posted on November 21, 2011 by Jingles | No Comments
It’s not often, in fact it’s rare, that I get addicted to a game. Most games I play aren’t awesome enough for me to get addicted to, a lot of the time I get bored of a game and never finish it or I play it, enjoy it and finish it then never play it again and those are games that I pay for.
But every now and then a game comes along that is so good that I get totally addicted to it. Spelunky is one of those games. [Read more...]
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Crimes against design – part one: Colour & typography
Posted on November 18, 2011 by Jingles | No Comments
I was going to write an article about every single design crime that I have seen committed that makes for a rancid website. Then I realised the article was going to be epicly long as in novel length so I have decided to break it down into parts.
The design and look of your blog is critically important for two reasons:
- Users use the design and look of your blog to decide weather they stay or go, and
- To asses your credibility.
It only takes seconds for a visitor to evaluate your blog and decide whether they are going to say or if they are going to leave. If your blog looks hideous users won’t be able to click the back button fast enough.
Studies have proven that the first thing a user notices about any website is the design and look. A 2002 Stanford study entitled “How Do People Evaluate a Web Site’s Credibility?” found that the design and look was the most important element used in evaluating the credibility of a web site, 46.1% of the 2,440 respondents mentioned something about the “design look”.
Some users may be more forgiving than I am but if those users created websites they would probably commit all of the design crimes in this post, they would settle for second best. I wouldn’t settle for anything less than my best effort.
Any one of these crimes against design is usually sufficient enough to make me either hit the back button, close the window, hit the ‘StumbleUpon’ button gain, or rage close my web browser. Either way I’m going to get the hell away from your hideous web page and forget it ever exists if you commit any of these crimes against design. [Read more...]
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STOP! Trivia time! Computer bugs
Posted on November 11, 2011 by Jingles | No Comments
Bugs, those annoying little errors, flaws, mistakes, failures, or faults in a piece of software, hardware or a system.
Microsoft calls them an “undocumented feature” (“It’s not a bug; it’s an undocumented feature!”), when planned updates go pear shaped it’s called an “update bug”, the release notes for the new version of a program usually has a list of known bugs that still need to be fixed.
Bugs are mostly just plain annoying, in the worst case scenario they can be exploited by crackers to breach system security. Because of their complex nature computer hardware and software will never be bug free. Bugs are par for the course.
But have you ever stopped and wondered where he term bug came from? [Read more...]
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D-Trash records
Posted on November 9, 2011 by Jingles | No Comments
You could call breakcore music, I do and I love it. Other people might call it anti music ear rape noise which would also be a valid description, although not as accurate. I also like hardcore, noise, glitchy breakbeats, beats that are broken and shattered. If that sort of thing floats your boat then hit up D-Trash Records for a bunch of free digital releases.
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John Cleese + Compaq Computer Corporation =
Posted on November 8, 2011 by Jingles | No Comments
Apparently these ads only ever aired in the UK, but thanks to the magic of the internet, YouTube and someone called CompaqVet these great ads are free to be shared!
But wait! There is more! [Read more...]
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Least I Could Do
Posted on November 7, 2011 by Jingles | No Comments
Least I Could Do is now my favourite new web comic. The best way I can describe LICD is “a web comic version of Tucker Max and his stories”, needles to say hilarity ensure if you hit the link. LICD has been running since 2003 so there is plenty in the archives to keep you entertained for days on end but you will have forgive and put up with a few jokes that were funny once a few years ago like the South Park jokes for example. LICD is still as funny today as it was the day it started unlike South Park which stopped being funny 14 seasons ago. Oh and it’s probably not appropriate for work with all the sexual innuendo.
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I'm Jingles, I'm like the Keith Miller of geeks, i.e. an all rounder, I'm a web scientist, an A+ certified (it means I'm not a “noob”) computer technician, and this is my blog. I'm your curator of all things awesome, cool and geeky on and off the net. More...
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