Frets on Fire

Remember GuitarFreaks? Part of the Bemani arcade series, those simulated instruments? If you loved those, then you’ll love Frets on Fire. Created by Unreal Voodoo, a group of talented Finnish people, this game rocks big time.

At first I thought gameplay would be similar to Stepmania, Dance-Dance Revolution ported to PC, because afterall, I don’t have a simulated guitar to stick into my PC. After downloading, you’ll know how much fun it is. Turn your keyboard into the simulated controller!

Although there’s only 3 songs at the moment, each one of them is pretty lengthy. And you can also create your own track to play. (You need to tracks mainly, the guitar solo and the background music). Read more on the readme file.

Here’s the video demonstration on YouTube.

Download size is only 34Mb, pretty small for such a cool game. Download now and don’t break your keyboard ;)

via DownloadSquad

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Site Search Tags: fun, games, guitarfreaks, fretsonfire

Reinstall

After reinstalling my Windows XP a couple of times, I’ve decided to make a list of programs I usually install first. Although I have these applications backed-up in a CD, sometimes it’s just not the latest version, so I’ve re-created the list, and bookmarked their official download site into del.icio.us, in hope that I’ll always have an up-to-date version of them.

Needless to say, update your Windows XP using either Automatic Updates or going to Windows Update site, and install these afterwards. And of course, these are all freeware and/or Open Source..

So here it is, in no particular order:

1. Avast! Home Edition
   A pretty good, free for personal and non-commercial use AntiVirus with Resident protection, P2P and IM shields, Network shield, internationalization.
2. Ad-Aware SE Personal
   Provides advanced protection from known data-mining, aggressive advertising, Trojans, dialers, malware, browser hijackers, and tracking components.
3. xplorer2
   Windows File Explorer replacement, dual pane views…
4. Mozilla Firefox
   Need I say more?
5. Mozilla Thunderbird
   Actually this is the first standalone mail-app I tried…
6. RKLauncher
   An application that will allow the user to have a visually pleasing Mac OS X style bar at the side of the screen that is used to quickly launch shortcuts.
7. Notepad++
   Notepad replacement, supports several programming languages, syntax highlighting and folding, multi-view, etc.
8. XnView
   View and convert graphic files, Image IPTC, EXIF Metadata support, batch convert and rename, etc.
9. iTunes
   I use this in conjunction with Winamp…
10. Launchy
    A Windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.
11. Neowin UXTheme Multi-Patcher (Optional)
    This patches the UXTheme.dll for Windows XP/SP1/SP2 Beta/RTM and 2003 and allows you to use un-signed custom visual styles for extra eye candy. I use this to replace the original Windows GUI, purely a matter of personal preferences, of course..

These are basically the applications I installed before I start working on my newly installed Windows XP, you can find more of these freeware using an excellent list here (freeware utility) and here (Open Source Freeware). Many thanks for creating this list!

PS: I’m sure I’ve missed something.. I’ll probably update this post later on, brain’s not working as it usually do…

Or you can go visit my del.icio.us account tagged with Reinstall, where I should most likely update the list there.

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Site Search Tags: reinstall, applications, freeware, utilities, Windows-XP

Instant Web-Based Chatrooms

This one’s a quickie, bumped into ChatCreator.com yesterday and found it pretty neat. It’s basically a web-based Ajaxy chat rooms that you can create instantly, and invite some friends who aren’t using the same Instant Messaging system as you do (I’m using MSN Messenger, many of my friends are using Yahoo and/or others).

Best of all is perhaps the zero-registration thing, slap in a cool name for your chatroom, copy the address and post it to your blog or something, and make a schedule for you and your friends to join the fun. No need to register, hassle-free! (Perhaps they’ll implement this later on when many people are creating un-organized chatrooms or stuffs, who knows?)

I’ll probably create my own chatroom later on nextweek. Am going to attend my lovely sister‘s graduation at Taipei this weekend, so catch you on Monday!

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Site Search Tags: web-based, chatrooms, chat, ajax, personal

Hello Again

Hello again people! Just got back from my 2 weeks trip to Jakarta last week; nothing particulary interesting though, as usual.

Haven’t got the time to find anything new to post yet for now; besides, I’ve got a little problem with my PC and I’ve decided to re-format it a couple of days ago. Installed a new copy of Windows and it worked twice as fast! But the problem persists.. I sure do hope it’s not my hard-drive’s problem…

Anyway I’m sending it to the repair-guy I know around town, too lazy to do it myself, Ha!

So howya guys doin’? Hope all is well wherever you are, and see you again soon enough.

RSSOwl

If you saw my previous post about NewsAlloy, then you’ll know I’m currently searching for a couple of RSS aggregator, be it web-based or standalone application.

Yesterday while browsing through Opensourcewindows.org, I’ve bumped into RSSOwl.

RSSOwl is a Java-based aggregator which is not only good-looking, but also cross-platform compatible (Windows, Linux, Mac OSX, Solaris). Because it’s Java-based, RSSOwl is also available in many languages, which adds its extra awesomeness points.

If you have played with some other aggregators such as FeedDemon or any of their kind, you’ll get the hang of RSSOwl in no time, export or import OPML, XML. If you don’t they have a first-time tutorial for you to get familiar with RSSOwl and RSS in general.

You can choose to read the news using their built-in web-browser, or you can change the preferences to use your external browser. And one of my favorite feature is the integration of AmphetaRate, a centralized ratings/recommendation service that provides personalized news and blog recommendations. So you can rate the news you read, or read only the high ratings news from other users.

For more features of RSSOwl, visit their Overview2 section of their website.

If you want to give RSSOwl a try, make sure you have a working copy of the Java Runtime Environment. You can find the link in their download section of the site.

I’ll be using this one for quite a while, I think..

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Site Search Tags: aggregator, rss, news-reader, rssowl, java

Idle

Haven’t posted anything for quite sometime now, been busy preparing things for a week trip to Jakarta on March 26th. It’s been another 6 months since my last visit there. How oh so fast time flies…
Well hopefully by the end of this year I’ll be able to get my permanent resident ID, and to get a nice job around town perhaps in Tainan?

Yeah, okay. I’ll see you next month or maybe if I feel like it, I’ll post some of my findings lately ;P

Take care, have fun, be good.

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Site Search Tags: personal, life, ramblings

Black Glacier for iTunes 6

Yeah, another one.. A bit dark this time.
As usual, get the latest version of mplugin here.

download@deviantART

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Site Search Tags: multiplugin, itunes, itunes-skin, black-glacier

Katamari Damacy Dock Icons

I’ve been wanting to make them months ago, but being the procrastinator I am, too lazy. Here’s a couple of quick icons. Pack includes King of All Cosmos, Prince and his 23 cousins, 塊 (Katamari) and 魂 (Damashii).

ICO and PNG format, 27 icons each.

For more info on the game: Katamari Damacy on Wikipedia
Or visit their official site (Japanese): Katmaridamacy.jp

Huge, HUGE thanks to Ave for creating AveIconifier!!

This icon pack is free for personal and NON-Commercial use ONLY.
Katamari Damacy (c) Namco Limited, All Rights Reserved.

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Site Search Tags: katamari-damacy, dock-icons, icons

Google Page Creator

Google has just released Google Page Creator Beta, a free online tool that lets you create web pages, WYSIWYG style. Google said that they’re giving us the chance to play around with Google Page Creator even though it’s not yet fully baked, and they’re counting on us to send them our feedback and suggestions. Currently only available for Internet Explorer 6.0 or Firefox 1.0 or higher, with JavaScript and cookies enabled.

You sign in to Google Page Creator as if you’re using any other Google product, enter your username and password, and you’re good to go. You can choose from many templates they offer, change layouts (1 column, 2 columns right navigation, 2 columns left navigation, and 3 columns). You have 100MB of space to play with, after picking your template and layout, start entering content in the middle of the editor as you would with another WYSIWYG editor. And don’t worry about saving pages every 10 minutes because Google automatically saves any changes you make, so you don’t ever have to worry about losing your work.

Clicking on each section of the page (blue dashed border), you’ll see the bottom left part of the menu changes to allow you to choose from a couple of premade styles: headings, subheadings, minor headings, etc. And the current active style will be highlighted in yellow. After clicking on Publish, your page will be available at http://yourgmailusername.googlepages.com/ for the world to see!

Now go ahead create a page, and show them to the world!!

Note: This will NOT help you create a blog which allows people to leave comments; this is like a personal homepage to showcase some of your work, travel photos, or a shrine to your pet ferret.

via Micropersuasion

Update: Exactly my thoughts…

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Site Search Tags: internet, google, google-page-creator, wysiwyg, html, webpages

Old Sierra Games Re-released!

Ooh, this is just too good to be true. Sierra introduced action/adventure gaming to me and King’s Quest rocks my world! Not to mention Leisure Suite Larry, naugthy pixelated chicks and jackpot slot machines.. The games are said to be compatible with Windows XP, this surely is great news for all adventure-genre gamers.

Game titles includes Space Quest, King’s Quest, Police Quest, Leisure Suite Larry Compilations. Scheduled to be released on March 23 or 30 for $19.00 per compilation. The link from digg takes me to Target.com; I searched on Amazon and found a couple of them too…

Are you going to buy them?? I sure do miss King’s Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder.

via digg

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Site Search Tags: games, gaming, sierra, adventure, old-games,