I must apologise to anyone who found themselves getting told they had been banned from my blog recently. I had installed a security mod and it logged 404s and banned anyone who triggered to many 404 errors. That’s fine on it’s own but it also changed the folder names so my uploaded images were no in a different place and any post with an image would result in your getting a 404 error.

Anyway all fixed now.

I read an article in the Guardian’s technology section about a game for the iPhone called Drop7. Now I don’t own an iPhone (nor do I want to) but the reporter said it is one of the most addictive games he has played since Tetris. I managed to find the original version that the Drop7 game is based upon and it is addictive.

It’s a little hard to explain. Basically you have to drop balls from the top of the screen to the bottom to make rows and columns. The idea is to drop that ball into a row or on to a column so that you get a straight line (not diagonal) that is made from the number of balls on at least one of the balls in that row/column. So say you have three balls side by side with the number 3, 7 and 4. If you were to then drop another ball next to them it would make it four balls in a row which would make the 4 ball disappear and get you points. If the ball you dropped was also a four then both 4 balls would disappear. Occasionally you also get rocks that drop with no number but these are removed by cracking them open. You achieve this by making them part of a row of balls that is included in the number of balls to make a ball disappear.

Like I said hard to explain but damn easy to play and even easier to understand once you are playing.

http://chainfactor.com/

Away from home or just don’t fancy installing a fullyfledged image editor? Then have a look at Pixlr. Pixlr is an online image editor written in Flash that has all the features most people need such as red eye removal, cropping, rotation etc. It also has filters for doing such things as turning images into old style photographs, adding noise, Kaleidoscope and much more. Give it a whirl. It can also be used to create images from scratch as well as saving as your choice of jpg, png, bmp and their own format pxd which lets you go back and adjust any layers etc you may have had.

Just thought I’d give a shout out to my mate Dan. I’ve known Dan for far to many years (always seems longer). Dan’s a mixed martial artist and plays in a band called Rancour that you can see performing in and around the Manchester area. Anyway just thought I’d mention him in my blog and include a link to his blog. He basically talks about UFC and gives training tips.

You a child of the 80s? Yeah I know makes you feel old

Anyway go check out Once Upon A Win and remember the good times!

I got there by a post on I Can Haz Cheez Burger which contained a link to a video of the opening credits to “The Greatest American Hero” which I used to watch on Saturdays. Ah to be young and bill free.

I just read this news story.

Microsoft is trying to improve the image of Vista (I personally have no problems with it) and they decided to get a load of XP users together who had all said they didn’t like Vista. They filmed them giving their opinions on Vista and then let them try a new operating system codenamed Mojave. More than 90% of them gave positive feedback on Mojave.

Then Microsoft told them that Mojave is actually just Vista.

Remember that life is full of new experiences and you have to give things a chance before you can honestly say you don’t like them. Be it food, people or even operating systems.

Apparently there is a virus email going around which claims to be from UPS. It contains a zip file which contains an executable (.exe) claiming to be an invoice. I’m sorry but I feel you have to be a bit stupid to open any attachment from someone you don’t know let alone run a file which claims to be an invoice but is in fact a program. Also haven’t these people heard of anti virus software? I personally run Anti Vir which is free and one of the better anti virus programs out there.

Apparently in 2003 Bill Gates sent an internal email complaining that the userability of Windows was actually going backwards. He comments that it took to many steps to install Windows Movie Maker. You can read the email at http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp.

Just to say that Mozilla released Firefox 3 today so go download your copy from mozilla.com.

I have just read the news that two spammers who had been abusing MySpace to send out spam messages for various things from selling ringtones to porn sites failed to turn up in court and were fined $234,000,000 (about £119.5 million) in their absence! Read full story.