Thursday 14 July 2011

no-more-dia

sadly my involvement with Primordia has been terminated. A publishing deal with WEG has proven my music to be non commercially viable. So i am sad now. Its production has helped me through some tough times. a great game - the team did everything they could to keep me on board but in order to get the deal dave has requested a new composer. I owe it to victor cos he's really been a dude. but anyway yeah shit :'(

Wednesday 6 July 2011

Mods' Top 10...APPLICATIONS

Firstly, some great news for fans of Kinky Island - we now have a resident background artist meaning the team is once again 100% in-tact :) You can expect some full news on this soon. Our new background artist for the game has a very impressive talent with retro point & click backgrounds - you will not be disappointed!

BUT NOW - TEH MAIN EVENT. MODS' TOP 10 APPS! I'm afraid this WILL lead to disappointment :P

At number 10: Sound Recorder (Win 98/XP)

Where would we be, or have been in the early millennium, if clicking a button to record your voice had not come any simpler? Gone are the days of classic sound recorder, which was in time replaced with some shit alternative with one button only, the record button. No sine waves, no simplicity - just shit. For that reason, original Sound Recorder is in my list of top 10 applications :D

For number 9 it's: Windows Media Player 6

Again it's a simple edition of a media player that was mandatory through the Windows 95 and 98 period, until the all new media player came out which just sucked balls. Alright, MPC6 didn't have a mixer, nor could you slow WMV files down to 50%. But there WAS a time when MPC6 found the needed codecs with ease, and it always loaded within 2 seconds of double clicking the shortcut, not 10, like all versions since.

At number 8: mIRC/MSChat

Basic chat applications don't come more basic than mIRC. It's quick, simple, free, easy, ASCII-y and useful. MSChat on the other hand added a whole new element - cartoon characters in a comic strip that looked weird. The days of what character was used for which chatter are long gone, but they were good days indeed.

So then my number screen 7: Pazera (Free) Conversion Tools

Whether you want to convert a wav to mp3 or flv to avi or any number of different settings, Paz tools remain my favourite. They're simple and quick - they don't look like some programs that spice up their interface to hide very crap functions - Paz tools do what they say on the tin and you know what you're getting when you use it. The conversion quality is brilliant, and I highly recommend them for anyone tackling multiple conversion tasks. Pazzzahhhhh!

Numero 6: Calculator (Windows)

Self explanatory. Without a calculator, my brain would need to resort to maths, so I'm glad it's always there, and functional. Nuff said!

Halfway through, my number 5: AVG Free Anti Virus

It's almost cool to have AVG Free Anti Virus, especially if you're a cheapskate bum like me! The term free-loader has never been so true with this software - the best of the best free anti virus, that uses technology you would usually pay a monthly fee for with Symnatec or Dr. Nortoid. Even McAffee have come back from the dead to plunder your cash for a service AVG can do just as well -- for free!

At lucky number 4: GetRight

The days of dial-up would never have worked out for many of us without an application like GetRight. Designed to resume downloads, it meant a feeling of safety when you knew connection problems would be a-foot. I still use it today, and I'm glad it still exists - in fairly simple form (it hasn't been Vista-ized yet). GetRight is really GoodMate and its ability to resume downloads is as amazing. In fact, it's like magic right in front of your eyes. Except when the server in question says NO, PISS OFF - you are NOT resuming that file!

So I reach my top 3. And speaking of number 3, its: Google Earth

It's a bloomin' map of the world that you can scale to about a hundred feet. Free information doesn't come any better than that. Everything it stands for is brilliant - that is our world, in an application. We can find anywhere, and street view will let us get a feel for a location - people also find oddities within the map which adds a new element. Live weather radar makes it a must for checking the immediate forecast, and renders weather reports on TV useless. All ship wrecks are listed, and so many other wonderful things...So much to explore. This is hands down one of my favorite applications of all time!

Number 2: Outlook Express

I don't know why, but without it, I just wouldn't exists as a modern man. Sure, it's not perfect. Sure, it's fucking annoying when you have to re-install Windows and all your emails & contacts have disappeared - but providing you've got the mail server, Outlook will be your friend in times of email need. Outlook has seen me through many correspondences, from game deals, to famous people, to getting myself fired, to friends, to appointments, to worldly issues... All manner of things pass in and out of Outlook, so I can't really be anything other than thankful for that :)

And finally, TEH NUMBER 1 APPLICATION IS....... NOTEPAD!

Notepad is the unsung hero of applications in my opinion. It's the one place you can write and write and never worry about file size. It's a copy and paste haven for serialz, draft letters and game designs. Notepad is often the middleman in my life. Something I will have written in a notebook usually gets transferred into the textual black and white goodness of Notepad, before becoming the product of whatever the idea that is written, is. Wordpad never caught on, and people produced only shit documents in it. MS Word didn't even come with Windows unless you bought a bundle. But Notepad has been there, through and through, since Windows 3.1 - and has never changed. Simplicity to write and re-arrange - here's to you, Notepad :)

And that's it. The important part was about Kinky Island :P