Remember Win 3.1

So you are gladly clicking away at desktop icons and changing themes. Complaining about your OS or comparing the speed and cosmetics against another.

Well not me, I tend to use only Windows XP and a bit of Linux. But who remembers where this race for the ultimate GUI operating system started? Long before Windows 7 even XP there was another…yes an ancient one called Windows 3.1…

Can you still remember what it looks like or how it operated? No…. then you are in luck. Someone spent some time he’ll never get back to write an emulator…that’s right, a Windows 3.1 emulator. And it is web based. No virtual machine needed.

Here is a screenshot:

Go check it out at : http://www.michaelv.org.nyud.net/

WinMobile Geekiness and More Adventures

iPhone has its fancy rouch screens and iTunes…Blackberry I’m told, has features unimaginable to the common win mobile user. That may all be true, but I found this little application on the net that I’ll probably be using a lot more.

It is called MyMobiler.

It is basically a “remote desktop” to you windows mobile phone. Here is a screenshot of my phone:

You  can pretty much do everything with the phone that you would normally do. Some of the features includes mapping the keyboard to the winmobile keyboard, copy and past from your pc to mobile etc etc.

I’ve changed the theme to show that the pic above is not just a randomly downloaded pic:

Enough about that…do you still remember the guys in the pic above? no? Well that might be because I haven’t been updating the geeks’ adventures in ages. I’ve decided to start adding a few adventures again as I get time. What to expect: Bombs, gags and two world dominating gold fish.

The Adventures of T-Man, G-man and friends

The sounds of Metal and Lemmy!

So I’ve finished Brutal Legend up to 99%. I couldn’t be bothered with unlocking the last multiplayer concept art and would have to suffice with not unlocking the ultimate trophies a PS3 game has to offer : Metal God and Rock God!

But I did how ever get my hands on the Brutal Legend Soundtrack and it took me about a few seconds to upload it to the ol iPod.

That being said, I wasted more time going through some of the concept art on the internet and came across this beauty:

This was the original concept art for Eddie Riggs inspired by Lemmy Kilmister. Would the game have been the same? I mean, the kept the massive muscles, but look at him…. the “Lemmy Riggs” just looks fucking mean! Might have put a more Brutal spin on an already brutal game!

Merry X-mas and keep it festive!

All jokes aside…this wasn’t the Christmas I planned.

Apart from the weather that didn’t play along, there was a disturbance in the force and the  festive mood drew the shortest straw. My wife tried to keep it as happy as she could and we tried not to concern ourselves with the massive-fucking elephant in the little apartment we call home.

Without boring my fingers with the childish details that tilted the equilibrium, lets just say that not all grown-ups are grown up and children can get pretty tiered of that.

We’ll see what the next few days hold for us. But isn’t that just it. Sometimes you have a great time, the next you are looking for the easiest escape route pointed out by the closest cabin crew. Such is life.

Facebook Suggestion Intelligence

Most of us use the old facebook to keep in touch with friends and family. Apparently facebook is smarter than me. It knows exactly who I need to connect with and why.

A feature was introduced a while ago where facebook would inform you who on your home page that it is time to connect with with this fella because you haven’t spoken in ages. Or with this fella who you should know because 29 other friends know him. Maybe this isn’t such a bad idea for the bored facebook prowlers. They could hang around on the homepage and as soon as smartypants facebook makes a suggestion, they pounce on it.

But luckily facebook is smart in that sense as well; Lets assume you dislike this one person in the group of “friends” that you really couldn’t care less if they know how to use the internet, if you don’y want to see that bastards face who 29 other people are friends with, you can clickidy-click the little cross next to the suggestion and that would take remove his mugshot from the side.

That wouldn’t be a bad idea if I cared to click a little cross on every suggestion they made. You’ll notice a little See All link on the top. Wow, so not only didn’t I want to see this person/people in the first place, but I can clickidy-click on that and see them all!!!

So I’ve spent a good 1 minute of my life I will never get back to edit and show you what I mean:

Suggesta Box

Take a good look at the above. Just because Pitty the Fool has 29 mutual friends, doesn’t mean I give a shit. Or because Mr Leave me Alone doesn’t have any friends, should I care?

My suggestions to the suggestions box are simple:

1. Add a tad more intelligence to pick up that the 100 times I didn’t add Pitty The Fool to my friend list, and stop suggesting him.

2. Add the Who gives a shit button like below:

New SuggestaBox

By clicking Who gives a Shit it will not only destroy the suggestion box but will also select the fattest rubber chicken and slap the developers silly with it.

Now that is webapp intelligence I would like.

You’re a bad man!!

We’ve all seen the look alike photos posted all over the net right?

Here is a over-posted-yet-I-can-never-get-tired-of-seeing-it example:

Darth Pope

So today I’m going to jump on the band wagon again… I saw this post : The Most Unflattering Picture of Steve Jobs Ever. Apart from the fact that I hate it when people just add “Ever” at the end of sentences, I clicked the link and its about a guy using a few pictures and a simple little app to create a collage of Steve Job’s face. Why Steve Jobs? I think it might have something to do with this post where they used BSoD photos to make a collage of Steve Balmer (Wait…they both are named Steve???). Anyway, back to Jobs…

Here is the pic of Jobs:

Nice ain’t it…. well no, but I thought to myslelf : “Myself, I saw that picture before…even that pixelated” So I turned to Dr Google and got the picture I was thinking of:

Stab him!!!

Were is another one without the guns and knife and pixels:

Baby Jobs

So if you’re still not sure who I’m trying to compare him to:

Now I’m not saying that Jobs is evil and I’m not saying that he will one day try to take over the world with his iPods which we just keep on plugging mindlessly into our ears. I’m just saying that the collage made from/for him looks really bad.

But here is something to think about:

Forgotten Games and their Monsters pt1

There are a lot of old games that we tend to forget. Spending countless hours trying to get a better score. Today I was reminded of another one.

I was going through my usual morning routine of reading my bookmarked comics when I came across this one:

ahhh yes… A little man on a massive ski slope. If I recall correctly, this was released as part of Microsoft’s Entertainment Pack. You can read more here…I didn’t.

Any way..So I thought I would find the game again and see if it is still as much fun as it was ages ago. I tried the “Most Official SfiFree Site” which not olny took ages to load up, but also timed out on the downloads. Then I resorted to Mr Google which delivered this link. Funny enough it also provided a link to a facebook site called “Damn The SkiFree Yeyi!!!!“. I love this quote from the fan page :

If you own a windows computer then you should play and remind youself of what a bastard that yeti is.

The key to this game, if my memory serves me, is to do as many aerial tricks as possible as fast as possible without crashing.

So go on give it a try. I’ll try to beat my old scores without cheating…yip…you can cheat in this game. And remember to say hallo to my little friend!

P.S. I tried the “F” key and it does work, but guess what… there are more than one Yeti…

Mating Tips… I mean…Dating Tips

While browsing the internet and going through the usual digg.com posts, I found this one: The “How to meet woman” Quiz.

I’m married so definitely don’t need this (I’m putting this out there because I know you will be reading this) but thought I’m going to run through the 10 questions to see what DR. INTERNET has to say about my dating skills.

The questions are straight forward and you tend predict which of the answers will give you the best score. (no pun intended)

Here is the first one:

1. Three attractive women are standing a few feet from you at a local bar. You want to start an interesting conversation with them that gets their attention. What’s the best way to start it?

But I decided to answer it truthfully. My wife will tell you that I’m as romantic as a rock… and by saying that, it is usually an insult to the rock.

Here is my results according to DR. INTERNET:

• Your dating skills are AVERAGE!
• You scored a 69 out of a possible 100 points. You’re pretty good with the ladies, but you can be intimidated by a woman who is exceptionally attractive. There are some women out there that you consider to be “out of your league”.
• Sometimes when you see a woman you’d like to approach you become immobilized with fear, and by the time you figure out what to say, she’s gone…
• There have probably been several times in your life when a woman lost interest in you, and you just couldn’t figure out why. Maybe she gave you her phone number and then didn’t return your calls, or maybe you went out on a few dates with her and things seemed to be going good, when all of a sudden she became mysteriously unavailable.
• You might wonder why some of the women you are attracted to don’t feel the same way, when all of your female friends tell you how lucky any girl would be to have you…
• These are problems that almost all guys run into at one time or another, but very few men know exactly what to do to prevent these things from happening in the first place.
• These are problems that many guys have, but very few know how to actually solve.
• The good news is that you can learn to attract these exceptional women… and even have them chasing you for dates!

 

YEAH!! I’m either better than a rock or they are just saying this because they want to sell you something at the end. That’s right, they ask you for your email address before you get your results, which is fine because gmail has got some great filters.

So far they emailed me the 10 most dangerous dating mistakes men make, but I’ll leave that for another day.

Go on, take the quiz, you know you want to…

The Apple Rant iBandwagon

I’ve decided that I want to jump on this bandwagon. I’ve read numerous blogs/articles/facebook messages (you know who I’m talking about) about Apple and more so rants and raves about Apple products. Now I’m talking about the juicy fruit that gives you stomach aches when you eat to much..nope.. it is those things created by an evil marketing genius called Steve Jobs.

And the latest thing to come from the Pits of Hell is the Magic Mouse… nope, I’m not joking about the name either…it is called the Magic Mouse.

And here is a picture of the thing:

Magic Mouse

Stylish you may think… Uncomfortable I think. But enough about the looks… here are some of the features:

Magic Mouse Gestures

WOW!!! You can do all that with the Magic Mouse?!?! Let’s take a look at what the above actually means:

Click

Magic Mouse is an advanced point-and-click mouse that lets you click and double-click anywhere on its Multi-Touch surface.

Two-button click

Magic Mouse functions as a two-button mouse when you enable Secondary Click in System Preferences. Left-handed users can reassign left and right click, as well.

360° scroll

Brush one finger along the Multi-Touch surface to scroll in any direction and to pan a full 360 degrees.

Screen zoom

Hold down the Control key on your keyboard and scroll with one finger on Magic Mouse to enlarge items on your screen.

Two-finger swipe

Using two fingers, swipe left and right along the Multi-Touch surface to advance through pages in Safari or browse photos in iPhoto.

Impressed? I wasn’t…

Now let’s look at another mouse I have never used or seen before (making my next 2c just as useless as the above).

iHome

So its got a shitty name. But lets look at some of the features in this one (that has been around for a year or two)

1. It’s laser

2. It can scroll Vertically continuously.

3. It can scroll Horizontally continuously.

4. It can click, double click.

5. It can right click.

6. it can switch between pages

7. it can switch between applications

8. the buttons are programmable

9. it can shut down a computer with a single mouse click

10. it can make coffee

So I lied about the last one..I think, but I think you get the picture right?

And it doesn’t need a fancy chip to tell it that you are only resting your hand on it.

Apart from the shitty name, I’ll definitely go for the rather mouse-looking iHome than the Magic Mouse. But that being said and to be fair, apparently the Magic Mouse is 100% better than its predecessor.

How bad was the predecessor then? Damn… And does this show that Mac will actually catch up with PCs soon?

Brain Pain…

Today one of out colleagues are going back to UK. Since his flight is at 4ish, we decided to go out for a beer or two yesterday afternoon.
I would love to write down some of the insane stories I heard yesterday.
Some were so good that I would probably get sued when I put them in my blog.
But alas, my head hurts to much this morning and I’m having trouble looking at a bright screen…
And to be honest, maybe the beer made the stories a lot better than they were.