LieroX is better than Counter Strike

Liero Xtreme is a fun remake/sequel of the original Liero

When I still had my Windows 98 box there's this fun but little-known game called Liero. Liero is like Worms but instead of turn-based combat, Liero is real-time like Quake, Counter Strike or Doom, just 2d and 8-bit.

But alas, Win XP can't even load Liero now. Fortunately, there's Liero Xtreme, a fan made sequel that works on XP and adds a lot of other new features to the game.

Like Counter Strike, there are different kind of games for LieroX: Deathmatch, Game of Tag or Capture the Flag. The AI for Liero bots is somewhat weak (but still fun) that's why the program is more suited for multiplayer, plus you can also challenge a friend for a duel on the same keyboard (a little cramped though).

Liero Xtreme is in beta and may crash on you. Just re-install the game if you have any problems 'coz that seems to fix crashes for me. Yeah, I'm a hardcore Liero fan.

Home of the underdogs

The Home of the Underdogs is back

The best abandonware game site is back at http://www.the-underdogs.info . Still the same great download and database of old and free games

This site is where I found free games like Littlefighter, Abuse, Duke Nukem, King's Quest etc... Their collection is really huge and the selections are awesome. Check out their Hall of belated fame and you will be introduced to old and free games that were very good but did not meet commercial success. They also have a very good list of Interactive Fiction as well as fan remakes of old games.

There's not much to say, so download your favorite old game now and enjoy.

The best freeware games site

This site has the best free games collection
Titles are from all genre like Action, Adventure, RPG, Strategy, and a whole lot more

Abandonia reloaded is IMO the best site to look for free games, this guys list only the most enjoyable games out there.

The site has a very clean interface that is a joy to navigate and the forum is well moderated with friendly and respectfull users. The games are also rated by the editors and are balanced out by the votes of the users. Reloaded is a good website with a good community. No, I don't work for them, I just really like the site.

Another good site to check out games (some are demos) is Indie Gamer . This site has a wide selection of games reviewed in his archvie. Indy Gamer is listed on my blogroll in the sidebar.

True categories for Blogger

Aside from other hacks, this one looks like a true categories integration to Blogger

I saw this commenter (named Craffter) post in Blogfresh :

My god, brilliant work...so this is it... true blogger categories...man oh man... now we can have 2 kind of categories if wanted, and if we just add a category counter, we can have the numbers of post displayed on them.. tags, listing categories, true categories...awesome stuff.

This comment was about Labelr , a service that integrates categories to Blogger. Unfortunately, Labelr is in closed testing so I can't say much about it other than what Blogfresh reported.

It's pretty exciting to have a solid third-party support for Blogger because it keeps the service very functional. Well, until Blogspot adds their own categories, I'll be watching Labelr closely .

How to find GBA roms online

Tutorial: How to find GBA roms online

Disclaimer: If you don't own the physical cartridge of the downloaded roms you have 24 hours to try it out then you have to delete it.

The easiest way to find GBA roms is to download P2P clients like Limewire or Bittorrent. The down-side to using bittorrent is the size of the download. Since BT was made for easy distribution of large files, actual GBA zips are like more than 1 gig of collected titles, though that's not so bad depending on your internet connection.

However, if you have a slow connection it's easier to use Limewire if you only need one or two titles that you need. For single downloads, you can also use Google to search for GBA roms, but the good sites are slowly dying one by one.

If you're using Google instead of typing "GBA roms" for a search string, try typing "insert title of a GBA game here GBA rom." For example: "kingdom hearts GBA rom." Believe me, that's the best search string to use since it narrows out the search to one title.

Best rom translation and hacking site

This site is the best rom hacking and translation site

It's almost since I started on the internet that I've been an emulation afficionado. On the early days The Whirpool was the best emulation site when it comes to rom translations. Now from the creators of The Whirpool comes http://www.romhacking.net/ , a completely redesigned upgrade to the old site, with better UI and an active community.

Here's the latest post from Romhacking.net:

After years of work it’s finally done! Now all of the Enix NES games can be played in English.

Awesome news! I'm sure gonna get some of 'em patches for my NES emu. The latest Enix patch is for The Portopia serial murder case, the first freaking adventure game for the NES. Emulation junkies, let's go get the patch, forward ho!

Do anything with web applications

Do almost anything using Web 2.0 applications

What is it that you want to do? Do you want to:

• Share with other people: photographs, webpages, bookmarks
• Set up an online calendar
• Collaborate on documents, web pages, spreadsheets, searches
• Create networks of relationships with others
• Communicate with other people; chat, email
• Do things with multimedia; podcasts, streaming
• Manage my time and myself more effectively
• Do things with email; disposable addresses, mailing lists
• Do things with webpages; watch pages, shorten URLs, annotate pages, create start pages
• Collect and store material that I find online
• Discover music/authors/films that I'd like
• Do clever things with RSS and wikis
• Have a bit of a laugh

You can do all of that and more when you visit http://www.philb.com/iwantto.htm . This site has a large collection of the latest and greatest web applications that will help you do all of the things listed above. Be productive, use the web to its full potential.

Pocket organizer from a piece of paper

Make a disposable pocket organizer using a sheet of a4 or 8.5x11 paper

PocketMod is an innovative way to use a sheet of paper and turn it into a little disposable organizer. Just visit www.pocketmod.com and run the flash program. You have choices on what to print in every page of your pocket organizer. You can choose notebook lines, to-do lists, calendar by week, month, etc...

You can then follow a simple instruction to fold the piece of paper into an organizer that fits in your wallet or pocket. Cool!

Read comics using your PC

Disclaimer: Let us support the comics industry. Please do not download comics that you have no intention of buying. Download only comic back-issues that are impossible to find in stores.

Yes, you can read comics using your PC

Note: These comics are compressed jpg files of scanned comic book pages that are surprisingly easy to read on the monitor.

1. The first thing you need to do is to learn about Bittorrent. You don't need to learn about all the nitty-gritty of bittorrent, just learn a few basics of the concept and you're ready to go.

2. Download a bittorrent client like Azureus.

3. Go to a torrent site like TorrentSpy. Search for words like "Uncanny X-men," "Superman," or what title you want to download. Next, download the torrent file that you need and activate it on Azureus.

4. After you have downloaded the files using Azureus, realize that digital comic books are in .CBZ or .CBR format. You can view files like this using Cdisplay.

5. Enjoy!

For a great audio discussion of digital comics and how to read comics on your PC, Linux box, or Mac go to www.comicology.net and hunt down podcasts number 70 and 71.

Encode, convert MP3 or WAV

Free and easy way to rip audio CD's

If you're a newbie and you want to rip your audio CD's to your PC, just download the open source program called Cdex. After you have downloaded the program just open Cdex and you will be greeted by the simple interface.

On the right side of the program you will see 6 icons. The first icon is a one-click button to extract CD tracks to WAV. The second button will extract CD tracks to compressed audio file (MP3). The third button will extract a section of the CD to WAV or compressed audio file.

The fourth button can convert WAV files to compressed audio files. The fifth button converts compressed audio files to WAV. The last button gets the album information from remote CDDB.

Now, put your audio CD in your CD drive, Cdex will hopefully detect your CD (you can check this by clicking "convert" on the toolbar, if "extract CD..." is active then you're ready to go). Now if it did not detect your CD press F4, select the CD drive tab and configure your CD-rom drive.

After Cdex detects your audio CD just click on the extract CD buttons described above, and that's all there is to it. With one click you will have a WAV version or MP3 version of your CD.

Cdex can also convert your music files

To convert your WAV file to MP3 just press F11, choose the file or files you want to convert then click the convert button.

Converting MP3 to WAV is just as simple. Just press F12, choose the file you want to convert then click the convert button.

You can also convert MP3 and WAV files to other formats like Ogg Vorbis.

Hey, you can re-encode your MP3's as well

Now if you have an MP3 player with limited space, like my 256mb iRiver player, you can re-encode your MP3 to a lower bitrate If you don't mind losing sound quality. I purposely researched how to lower the file size of MP3's so that my sister can fit a lot of music in the 64mb memory card of her cell phone. Cdex is a real space-saver imagine having a 3 meg song down-sized to about 400kb. Here's how you can reduce the MP3 size:

First you need to configure Cdex, so press F4. Click the "generic tab." In the generic page, check "normalize volume." This will keep your volume normal even after the MP3 has been down-sized. After you do that, click on the "encoder" tab.

In the encoder options set the "version" to MPEG-1, then set the "bitrate min" to 32.

The last step is to set the "mode" to mono. Setting the mode to mono will avoid the annoying humming sound you get from converting stereo sound MP3's to a lower bitrate. That's the end of configuration.

To re-encode the MP3, click "convert" on the toolbar. Choose "re-encode compressed audio file" and choose the MP3 file(s) you want to down-size. Just click on convert and that's it. I also need to inform you that your converted or re-encoded files will be saved on a different folder, leaving the original files untouched for back-up purposes. Though you can configure everything on this app.

I'm sure that Cdex has other uses that I've not touched on in this post. That's the beauty of open source software, you just don't know what new feature will be added on the next release of the program.

The Bastich top podcast post

People say that only 1% of all the podcasts out there is good (hint: something that won't make you smash your head on the wall) and the rest of them are just noise. They're right, that's why I'm here to help you by listing what my nominations will be (My top podcast list, if you will) if there ever will be a podcast awards. The podcasts I've listed will of course be in relation to the geeky theme of this site. Hence the categories for my nominations will be for comic books, technology, and video games.

If you don't know what a podcast is let me quote Cnet's explanation:

In a nutshell, podcasting is the relatively new phenomenon of publishing media files--usually MP3s--so that they are available for download to anybody who subscribes to them. A typical podcast is a talk radio show, recorded so that you can listen to it when it's convenient for you.

Using one of the many free podcast aggregation/reader applications, such as iPodderX, iPodder (for Mac, Windows, and Linux!), or the handy podcast features in iTunes, you can subscribe to any of thousands of podcasts.

Creating your own podcast involves recording your show in MP3. Publishing involves creating an RSS feed.

Here's my top podcast list :

First category is for comic book podcasts. And the nominees:
1. Comicology podcast - A guy makes a no-frills and simple comic podcast that is clear and direct to the point.

2. Comic News Insider - News, previews, reviews, and comic book evangelization.

3. Comic Geek Speak - A bunch of guys talking about anything and everything about comics.

Second category is for technology podcasts. And the nominees:
1. Buzz Out Loud - A daily tech podcast.

2. This Week in Tech - A weekly tech show by THE Leo Laporte.

3. Diggnation - Two guys poking drunken fun about off-beat tech news in Digg.

Third and last category is for video games. And the nominees are:
1. Video Game Show - Gamers on high-caffeine diet talk about games.

2. PCGamer podcast - Editors of PCGamer magazine kicks back for a relaxing chat about gaming.

And there you have it, just some short description for each show 'coz I definitely want to review some of them in depth in the near future.

Video Game Show podcast

Dreamstation.cc is a fan-made video game site with the regular reviews, previews, and other stuff concerning the latest and greatest games on all platforms and genres. What sets this site apart from the other fan site is the great podcast that they produce. The podcast is called the Video Game Show and it's a great weekly podcast about the gaming world.

I've listened to a lot of video game podcasts and I can say that the Video Game Show is one of the funniest and informative shows out there (the hosts are funny and very knowledgeable), and considering that they are not in league with the big names, they do produce quality episodes (meaning, professional production and content) week after week.

Give this one a try. Frankly, I don't own a 2nd generation console or a good gaming PC but I still keep up about gaming stuff because of this podcast.

Foobar, private Ryan's player

All my friends know how crappy my PC is. My stupid PC is about 9 years old with only a few minor upgrades from outdated graphics cards and second hand Intel processors. This makes me very choosy with the software that I use in my PC. Obviously, using Windows Media Player is out of the question as it eats hundreds of MB of my RAM.

Luckily there are programs like Foobar2000 that are easy on system resources. Foobar2000 is not an all-in-one media player that can run video (I have a good app for video too) but this app will run a lot of music files from MP3 to Ogg Vorbis. The great thing about this player is its stability, though it's a v0.9 beta, it never crashed from a couple of months that I've been using it.

The best part is that I can play my MP3's even while playing Rise of Nations, now that's what I can call optimized to run, specially on my crap PC.

You can get Foobar2000 (free) at www.foobar2000.org

A spotlight on launchy

Launchy is a great freeware (open source) software that launches your windows program like the Mac OS X's Spotlight function. Basically you can call the program via hotkey of your choice then type the name of the program or file you want to launch, and that's all there is to it. You just have to configure it a bit to recognize directories and files but the great thing about it is how intuitive the whole process really is for the PC user. I have actually removed all of my icons and I can launch anything I want with no problem. One quick thing, the program also has an algorithm (or AI?) that remembers what you are typing, so if you type Firefox a lot, you can just type "f" or "fire" and the program will show up like the picture above.

Go check out their site at www.launchy.net

Deadman manga

The Deadman manga was made by the author of Golden Boy but comparing these two creations are like night and day - while Golden Boy is a sex-comedy, Deadman is a perverse gothic tale about a mysterious vampire.

The art in this manga is highly-detailed and superb, a bit of departure from the cartoony style of Golden Boy. I can't say enough about the art of this comic--the style, the page layout, and the pacing all add to the strong story-telling of this title. The over-all style makes it easy to feel tension and terror from the situations in the story.

As usual this manga is for mature readers because of the disturbing visuals. Again that word - disturbing - but just read the damn thing and you'll see what I'm trying to say.

I'm also trying to review this title and the subsequent reviews with as little detail as possible because I want to avoid spoilers. I hate spoilers and I know that a lot of people hate this as well.

To get the Deadman scanlation just go here.

Saiyuki manga/anime

Saiyuki is a manga by Kazuya Minekura based on a famous Chinese novel entitled Journey to the West (Xi Yóu Jì). I don't know how much of the novel is identical with the manga and the anime but for sure it looks like a new adventure.

Saiyuki starts of with Genjo Sanzo talking to the three aspects of Buddha. The god then dispatches Sanzo along with Goku, Gojyo, and Hakkai to investigate why the demon population who used to co-exist with humans were suddenly going insane and killing people. So the four warriors journey West to get to the bottom of the strange phenomenon. Anyway, I'm not gonna go into full detail of the plot 'coz I found this great manga review site that can do all that better than I can.

All that I can say is that Saiyuki (both the manga and anime) is definitely worth your time and money. The characters are interesting and the art is great.

Here's a bit about the characters that might interest you: (1) Genjo Sanzo: A smoking, drinking, gun-toting monk leading the group. Incidentally, he's the only human in the group. (2) Son Goku: Yep, this is where Toriyama got his idea for Dragon Ball. In Saiyuki, Goku is the god of monkeys (I think he's unaware that he's a god) who's about 13 years old. He likes Sanzo-sama but he'll ditch him for food. (3) Cho-Hakkai: Legend has it that when you bathe in the blood of a hundred yukais (demons) you'll become a yukai yourself. Hakkai became a demon when he killed a clan of demons who raped his beloved. (4) Sha Gojyo: He's a half-yukai, half-human outcast with a big attitude but a huge heart.

By the way, the manga and anime don't have the same story. The manga's focus is on the Kame-Sama arc, while the anime goes straight to the plot where Sanzo's group goes against the group of the war god Homura. Both arcs have the same great art and action-packed stories that will appeal to both mature readers and kids alike, mature readers will love the philosophical undertones in this title while the kiddies won't be disappointed with the action.

Saiyuki has been licensed by Tokyopop but you can search for a scanlation torrent in Google. Note that the scanlation torrent is only up to volume 9, so get ready to be left hanging in the air if you are into scanlations.

I was pretty down, man

Don't you think that jocks are the luckiest people in the world? Just look at Rick Manning Jr., an NFL conerback who punched a person because he called the person a nerd. What?

According to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times, Los Angeles Police Department detective Robert Lewis said a group of people -- including Manning -- attacked a man in a Denny's after teasing him for working on a laptop computer."The group began by making comments that the victim looked like a geek or a nerd," Lewis said, according to the Sun-Times. The newspaper quoted Lewis saying the victim complained to a Denny's manager. He was then punched in the face, then punched and kicked by multiple attackers until losing consciousness.Manning, a former UCLA star, and his companions left the restaurant in an SUV and were pulled over by police soon after when the vehicle was spotted by a helicopter, Lopez said. - ESPN

I'm waiting to see Manning's side on this one, so I'm reserving judgment. Though, he's a lucky fellow to afford the $30,000 bail money for assault with a deadly weapon. Anyway, $30,000 is just cheap change since he just got a five year $21 million offer sheet from the Chicago Bears. Even with all the money, he's still depressed and all, just read what the poor guy has to say:

"I was pretty down this morning because of the situation," Manning said."But when I found out I was a Chicago Bear, it kind of brought a little light to the day. ... I can't let something like this let me have a bad start to my football career in Chicago."

Poor baby, he was pretty down, I almost shed a tear. Don't let some nerd, who by the way was minding his own business until you and your gang roughed him up, ruin your career for the Bears. Nerds were born so jocks can rough them up for no apparent reason, so I hope this entry brought a "little light" to your day. Oh, yeah, did I say I was reserving judgment earlier - oops.