psykro’s phunhaus

As a PC gamer I often find the current prices of games to be quite ridiculous. Sometimes new games can cost up to R500, for something that you only take about 2 weeks to complete.  This has led me down “the dark path of Captain Sparrow” more often than not, as I have a huge problem shelling out half a grand for something that may or may not be useful to me after a fortnight. That is not to say that I don’t purchase games. I merely wait until they are available at a more acceptable (bargain bin anyone) price.

With this in mind I was quite impressed with two games developers decisions regarding the price of their games.

First off, World of Goo reached its first anniversary this week and is currently offering the game at whatever price you feel prepared to pay for it. It’s more along the lines of a donation and a few simple clicks later I have purchased my copy of World of Goo at a price I can afford and think is reasonable. Not the mention that the game was only $20 (about R150) to begin with.

Secondly a new game called Torchlight, from a team made up of the creators of Diablo and Fate, will soon launch at a mere $20. I’m sure this game will give me hours of endless fun for only R150.

I hope that more and more game developers follow this trend, turning gaming back into a fun hobby as opposed to the wallet draining exercise it has become.

I love puns, good bad or ugly. Here’s bunch I received in an email today. Share them with your friends and watch them groan…..

The roundest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.

A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.

No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.

A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: ‘You stay here; I’ll go on a head.’

I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’

The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

A backward poet writes inverse.

In a democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes.

When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

1) As easy as the update process is, it’s usually always better to do a clean install.

2) The alternate CD is awesome for a quick installation (under 30 minutes)

3) You will never get away from using the command line, no matter how many cool gui apps there may be.

4) But thats fine, because the linux command line is like finding a R20 note in an old pair of Jeans, and again and again and again…….

5) I’m not switching back any time soon…..

As I am sure we all do, a few weeks ago I received another one of those “I have loads of dosh and I want to give it to you” emails.

Hello,

I am Mrs. Cynthia Jean Juarez an ageing widow suffering from long time illness. I have some funds I inherited from my late husband, the sum of US$3,500,000.00 and I am in need of a very honest and God fearing person that will use the fund for God’s work to help the less privileged out there. I have mapped out 20% of the total sum for your personal use in this work. While the rest will be for the work of up lifting the lives of the less privileged once. Please if you would be able to use the funds for the Lord’s work kindly reply for further details.
Mrs. Cynthia Jean Juarez

I was feeling…….”difficult” on the day so I decided to respond….

Hello Cynthia

God be praised, your email has come at such an opportune time that it must be the work of the Almighty himself.

My name is Paster John Thomas and I work for the Masakhane Educare Centre helping underprivileged children in rural areas.

For a long time now we have been trying to raise funds to build a school in the Khyalitsha area. We have had many problems raising funds for this endeavor and have been praying to the Lord that he would help us.

Your kind offer is the answer to all our prayers.

Please let me know how we can receive these funds to uplift and better the lives of these poor underprivileged children.

Yours in God.

Pastor John Thomas.

I’m still waiting for a reply.

Funnily, I haven’t received any more emails like this one since……

It’s such a fun time of year.

There’s the excitement of driving on the roads behind those wonderful idiots who now suddenly feel that they have to either drive as if they have suddenly aged 50 years and cannot move faster than 30km/h or are on a constant mission to beat the rain and the rest of the road to their next destination.

You suddenly start getting all these lovely emails reminding you to give charitably to your local hospice/old age home/SPCA as they are now badly in need of blankets or warm clothes seeing as they obviously spent any money they made the rest of the year on those pesky advertising campaigns to remind us they exist in the first place.

And lastly, every news broadcast or article is now punctuated by a report on the devastation of the local informal settlement and some local government representative explaining the dire situation of these poor people as if he (and they) has never experienced such a harsh winter here before in our beloved “Cape of Storms”.

But personally I love winter because it is the one time of the year I can stuff my face with all kinds of fatty/salty/sugary/chocolaty goodness, safe in the excuse that I “need to burn the extra energy to keep warm”.

Bring on the hot chocolate and Ouma’s!

It never fails, I get all excited about starting a new blog, post a few articles that I think people might be interested in, start spending less and less time posting, all the while knowing that no-one is going to read the damn thing unless I syndicate it and make it interesting somehow and eventually the thing falls to the wayside.

It all boils down to the fact that a) I am lazy b) I have no idea what people will actually find interesting and c) I have no idea what the best way is to get others to read my daily blog.

*sigh* it’s a hard path to walk and even less fun when you are alone…..

But enough of this useless self pity.

Tomorrow is another day…..

Gmail turned 5 last week.

If I think about it I have been using Gmail since early 2004 (when one still had to be invited to be able to create a Gmail account) and have always been impressed by its speed and functionality. I’ve used hotmail (urgh, how slow that was, kinda like windows I suppose) and then switched to a local service called Webmail, which as proudly South African as it was, never really impressed.

Gmail did what no other web mail service had done for me yet, it worked, it was fast (even on dial up connections) and I would “never have to delete another mail again”. (at that stage we had a total of 3gb of mail space, now a whopping 7gb and counting).

So happy birthday to Gmail.

Now give me a job, Google! ;0)

April is officialy “Ubuntu release month” this year and to be honest about it I am quite excited.

I switched to Ubuntu as my primary OS earlier this year and I have been loving every minute of it. I even convinced some family members to switch and have installed a total of 4 machines with various versions of the OS.

I’ve downloaded the Jaunty beta release and have been testing it when I have spare time and I am quite anxious to get hold of the final release. (it’s like having a mini christmas for us geek types…)

To find out more go to www.ubuntu.com

While I have to admit the level of online April’s Fools jokes seems to have dropped a little this year, perhaps due to the fact that people now tend to expect them, I did read one or two articles that really stood out.

First off was Toms Hardware, claiming that they will now switch to an Apple only format for reviews etc, possibly my favourite of the day. Second was GMail’s Autopilot system which really made me giggle, specifically the example automated responses.

Thanks to all those who work so hard to make us laugh on April Fool’s.

I havent posted here for a while, mainly due to the fact that I am training for a competition on Saturday but also due to the fact that I don’t have as much time (or thoughts) to post lateley.

However I was recently introduced the the LOLCatBible. For those who know (and love) the LOL Cat phenomenon (as I do; I know, its an illness) this is a nice little addition. Plus it’s spiritual (kinda).

Here’s an excerpt (Psalm 23)

1 Ceiling Cat iz mai sheprd (which is funni if u knowz teh joek about herdin catz LOL.)
He givz me evrithin I need.

2 He letz me sleeps in teh sunni spot
an haz liek nice waterz r ovar thar.

3 He makez mai soul happi
an maeks sure I go teh riet wai for him. Liek thru teh cat flap insted of out teh opin windo LOL.

4 I iz in teh valli of dogz, fearin no pooch,
bcz Ceiling Cat iz besied me rubbin’ mah ears, an it maek me so kumfy.

5 He letz me sit at teh taebl evn when peepl who duzint liek me iz watchn.
He givz me a flea baff an so much gooshy fud it runz out of mai bowl LOL.

6 Niec things an luck wil chase me evrydai
an I wil liv in teh Ceiling Cats houz forevr.

Ceiling Cat’s blezingz be wif yooz…. kthxbai