nastybun

Ok, so it’s been a while… but you get that. Right? Right? …

Things that have happened lately.. I finally got off my arse and did an exam that I’d been ‘studying’ for for a while, passed it sufficiently. The problem with studying from courseware that’s intended to be accompanied by a person talking is that there’s no one to tell you what to believe when the book contradicts itself, makes no sense or just outright lies at you. And it’s bleedin’ boring. Still, with some practice questions and help from an appropriately knowledged up oracle, it was adequately passed. And subsequently forgotten, as most of it is irrelevant for the current version of the software anyway. The fun of learning something that’s out of date. Still, it’s an easier exam than the current one, so I’m not complaining!

Me mate was in town last weekend, we went and saw the rugby that was on. Great game, we outplayed them and won. I won’t go into why, because most.. if not all.. of you aren’t interested. Or already know. Still, even though I was nauseus to the point of thinking I was gonna chunder earlier in the day, it was an enjoyable night out.

I’ve finally got the papers sorted for my car, all that remains is to head into the RTA office and swap the plates about. There will be times when not having it are inconvenient, but the three and a half odd grand I’m not spending a year on it will be more convenient. And I like it.. I’d rather it was being driven.

Onto more meaningful things. If you wish to pass some time and fondly recall times playing old school adventure games, or wish to know why some people fondly recall playing old school adventure games, check out Ben There, Dan That. It’s a little point and click adventure littered with in jokes and references to things you may recognise, and it also contains dinosaurs. From the site:

Written by and somewhat-narcissistically starring heroes Dan Marshall and Ben Ward, it’s bursting with bold cartoon graphics, laugh-out-loud dialogue, colourful characters, some frames of animation and nearly 100 different sound effects! There’s no need for hand-eye coordination or split-second reflexes here; it’s a fun game that anyone can play as long as they don’t mind a few naughty words here and there and the odd dabble of mild racism.

It’s fun, amusing and a pleasent way to spend an evening. Give it a go, it’s free! And then if you appreciate it, donate to the struggling developers! Get that warm, moist feeling in your pants that can only come from helping out those less fortunate than you. It’s not their fault that they’re poms, but at least we can try to make it easier for them.

Next on the agenda are some tweaky bits for Windows XP. Wonderfully timely I know, but these may be useful for some of you. They’re all from the Powertoys page, so they’ll be old news for some but there may be people for whom this is useful. There are three that I’m currently using, and I’m going to miss all of them when I eventually can afford to bin this boat anchor masquerading as a PC and get something worthwhile. They are:

Tweak UI: “This PowerToy gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more.” Essentially, you get more options to make little changes to your PC that can be handy. Things like removing the little arrow from shotcuts. Or trimming the crap from the New (file) submenu. Some very nice little things that add up to a much nicer XPerience. (Yes, that’s truely why XP is called XP)

Open Command Window Here: “This PowerToy adds an “Open Command Window Here” context menu option on file system folders, giving you a quick way to open a command window (cmd.exe) pointing at the selected folder.” This one isn’t of much use to normal users, but for those who will find it useful… well, it does what it says on the tin. Something that should be there already, frankly.

Image Resizer: “This PowerToy enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click.” Read that again. How brilliantly handy would that have been back in the days of dial-up? No more tooling about with photoshop to debiggen a picture for someone. It works excellently, it’s super fast, and it just lives in the right-click space on picture files. Definately useful for everyone, if someone has ever broken your e-mail my sending massive pictures tell them to get it and install it. No more excuses!

Unfortunately… these are only for XP. There are image resizers for Vista, I’ve not tried one (and lost the one that Blake found for me) and I’ve no idea what they’re like but if they’re modelled after the powertoy there.. brilliant. I’ve no idea why these little things weren’t tooled into Vista, they’re stupendously handy and add basic functionality to the OS to make living with it so much nicer. Give em a crack!

Ninety-eight per cent of all life forms to exist on Earth are now extint.

I guess if you think about it then… we’re not so bad after all!