CloudReady - An Easy Way to Install Chrome OS via USB

I originally saw CloudReady from Lifehacker.

But I think the video above is a great demo. It's a complete walk-through of where to download the OS up to installation.

I already have my 8GB USB drive burnt with the CloudReady Chrome OS. If you like the concept of Chrome OS and would like to try out a live USB version, watch the video above.

Btw, the live USB can install to SSD or HDD, but be careful and backup everything before doing this, as it erases the drives completely.

Sorry, no dual-boot yet.  

I Will Play Daggerfall In Celebration of Skyrim

Also known as I can't play Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on my old PC, so I'll just play Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall instead.

Download the Daggerfall exe here for free and legally. This executable package is actually the full game wrapped in Dosbox so that you don't have to dick around with the settings.

How I Made Windows Vista Start Faster

It's not a secret that any version of Windows will start to slow down as the install gets older. This certainly apply to Windows Vista most of all. This Acer PC that we bought years ago came with Windows Vista. We bought it a few weeks within the release date of Windows 7. That's what I get for being impatient. So, as months and years passed by, the Vista install in this desktop started slowing down, most especially at boot.

The only way I knew how to make the boot faster is MSCONFIG. However, what if I need some apps to launch at start-up? MSCONFIG has no ability to delay launching of apps. But this cool app called Startup Delayer can. This is literally the only thing I did to make my boot faster than before.

Of course I had to defrag my hard drive and clean my registry once in a while, but Startup Delayer did everything after that.

I'm not affiliated with the Startup Delayer folks. This is not a paid post, just to be clear. I was never paid to post, nor will I ever accept money to post positive reviews for anything.

Chrome Addons - Screen Capture

Since formatting my EeePC 701 I opted to give XP the boot and give Jolicloud a try. Simply put, Jolicloud is an Ubuntu derivative (Jaunty) optimized for netbooks. And let me tell you, it really breathe a new life to my aging 701.

Since going Linux, I want to be as minimalistic as possible. So I choose web apps much more readily than local apps. One such minimalistic app is called Screen Capture by Google. As the name suggests, this app captures parts or whole web pages. It does not come as minimalistic as this since Screen Capture is a Chrome extension.

The app works great. As I said, it can capture the whole or visible parts of a webpage, it can annotate, redact, and circle webpage content. The screenshot on the left was made using Screen Capture. It's as easy as clicking the icon and choosing save.

If you are a Chrome user and you need to capture webpages, definitely give this app a try.

Freeware Apps Reviews Tumblr Blog

I made a Tumblr blog consolidating all my freeware apps reviews.

The site is called Bastich's Freeware Reviews. I will write mini reviews or capsule reviews of all the best freeware Windows applications that I really use and obsess about. I made that blog to make freeware apps discovery easy and secure. Instead of going to Download.com or Snapfiles, my site will be something of a filter for the best and most usable freeware apps for Windows.

Of course, the site being a Tumblr blog, I will point to cool links, post pictures, videos, and everything else that a Tumblelog is famous for. Please give it a look see if you are interested in freeware apps.

Operation Pedopriest

This game is so wrong on all levels, sigh. Play this thing calls this game Diner Dash with child rape. Why the heck would you waste time to create a game with such a theme? Shock value, maybe?

I did not even play this one, like I did not play Super Columbine Massacre. Just read the Play this thing review of this game. They are better games journalist anyway.

DoomRL - Doom the Rogue Like

Look at that screenshot. It's the marine (you) with a shotgun against a former human. That is DoomRL or Doom the Rogue Like. I love this game, I've been playing this non-stop when I have free time. I still can't finish the darn thing because I find it difficult, but I still slug on and delve deeper to get out of the demon infested base.

Some of the features:

1. Original Doom II music and sound effects.

2. Fallout-ish perks at every level up.

3. Turn based gameplay presented in an action packed way.

4. Text mode only! (Yes this is a feature.)

5. Very fun too play. (This is also a feature.)

I have to say that this is the first rogue like that really got me interested in the genre. I know, it's pathetic, but hey, better late than never, right?

The farthest I got here, I think is level 7 after the Hell Arena. I got killed by 3 imps with plasma blasters. I'm not sure if the imps had blasters, it could be just radioactive vomit. I can't tell from the graphics, sorry.

WinFF - freeware audio / video converter

WinFF is a frontend for FFMPEG. It's a crossplatform, opensource application that can easily convert any audio or video format to any other audio or video format you need.

It can convert xvid to mpeg to avi to mp3 to wav to flv to 3gp and a lot more. Try out any video or audio format you may have, and this baby can convert it for you. It's free and easy to use.

Try it out for XP or Linux. I love this app and I use it to convert my favorite podcasts to 16k MP3's.

You can also try Cdex for free audio encoding and CD ripping.

Castlevania II - Simon's Quest, Windows Remake

I suck at twitch games. That's just the way it is. But I still play games like Castlevania, which is not so much twitch as it is RPG-ish. Castlevania II - Simon's Quest was a new breed of NES game.

It is completely innovative to the point of experimental, really.

It's non-linear, much more so than the NES Metroid. It was, I think, the first attempt at a Symphony of the Night type of gameplay on the NES. This is also the reason why Simon's Quest was criticized. It was just not Castlevania, except for the main character.

I like Simon's Quest, even with all the glitches. I wasn't able to finish it then, that's why I searched around to find a remake of it.


Dracula's Shadow is a freeware, Simon's Quest remake. It makes use of the original NES tileset, but the coder added some other fun stuff, minus the bugs of the original version.

The truth is, I only glanced at the screenshot and decided to post it here for my own reference. I have yet to make the game run on my PC.

Hope I can make this play on my PC next time, maybe.

Alien Breed & Alien Syndrome - both inspired by the Alien movie?

As promised earlier, I made this post to discuss two old games inspired by the Alien movie. One is a NES game made by Tengen, and the other is an old Amiga classic remake.

First, let's take a look at the Amiga remake of Alien Breed since it's the superior game.

The remake is called Alien Breed Obliteration. The game play is a simple 2d, top-down shooter. You're a generic soldier sans background story or any of that jazz, dropped in a base infested with aliens that you must exterminate forever.


The random screen above is just a sample of the gorgeous Amiga-ish graphics from the original Team 17 version. It looks great and it plays great, even for a person with shitty manual dexterity, a.k.a., yours truly.

Yeah, I suck at twitch games, but I played this game and Cave Story exclusively, every time I need a little break from my sickbed. This is almost the same experience I had with Ikari Warriors back in the day. I suck at it, but I still played the crap out of it.

Alien Syndrome, though, is a bit easier than Ikari Warriors. The RPG factor of getting money and upgrading equipment really helps boost your survival in the labyrinthine military base.

Ed: I'll try to find the rom image of the game as soon as I can, and maybe I'll write a little tutorial on how to use an Amiga emulator as well.

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Now we go the 8-bit road and take a look at Alien Syndrome - The cool NES, TenGen game. I made a little slideshow of the screens I took while playing the first few minutes of the game.

I really like this game as much as the one above, but it's probably because of my nostalgia for NES graphics. I'm just biased when it comes to the Atari 2600 and the NES, that's just the way I am.

Anyway, the premise of the game is also the same as the first game above, but this time you can play with a partner to help you kill all the aliens. I read on Wikipedia that the Amiga Alien Breed game also had co-op mode in the original, but the remake I mentioned above does not have it as of now.

Alien Syndrome is also a 2d, top-down shooter. You can pick a male or female character at the start of the game. Then, you'll get your standard military pea shooter to hunt down the aliens and rescue your comrades before the bomb explodes.

The only difference between Syndrome and Breed is the way of acquiring better equiptment. In Syndrome, I got the coveted flamethrower on the first level. It's just a capital letter F stuck on the damn wall, like a poster in a dorm room. Regardless, it's the freaking flamethrower, I can't complain.


Alien Syndrome (NES) - 1st minute on Vimeo.
It's still a fun game overall, and I'd love to play it co-op.

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Ridley Scott's Aliens was a magnum opus of a movie that inspired people to create fun games and make people appreciate, and learn about genuine sincerity and friendship in every way and every day of their lives, specially when kicking alien booty.

That did not make any goddamn sense. WTF are you waiting for? Play the games! I'm so pretentious to think that people are still reading past the screen shots.

My top 5 games from the 2008 Bootleg Demakes

It's official, the 2008 TIGSource Bootleg Demakes is over. I was not able to cast my votes, but if I was a judge, these games would be my top 5.

For people with a moral high ground better than everyone else, bootleg demakes are not pirated games. These are simply remakes of games to look as if they were done on lower-end systems, or at least to look like it. The example in the TIGSource forum is "Cogs of Conflict" a demake of "Gears of War."

So, don't be afraid of burning in hell when you click on the links below. It's all freeware.

Here's a list of my top 5:


5. Buddy Base II - This a deliciously, pixelated demake of Team Fortress II. Look at the NES style screen, so awesome! It looks like a Heavy is shooting it out with a Pyro. Try the game here.


4. Fake Pigs II - This awesome game looks to be a demake of Grand Theft Auto. According to Jimbob, Fake Pigs II is a little Amiga-ish, inspired by Alien Breed.

Alien Breed, by the way, has a remake called Alien Syndrome, also an awesome game that I will play right after this post.

Ed: Nope, Alien Breed is different from Alien Syndrome. See my next post, later.


3. Bootleg Bash - This is an 8-bit demake of Super Smash Bros. The graphics are awesomely done, plus the characters in the game are all parodies of some videogame character.


2. Heroes in Guitarland - Guess what this game is demaking? That's right. This little game is very difficult for a neuro-kinetically challenged person like me, but it's fun. It has cool rock songs (real songs) in 8-bit music that NES fanboys (or girls) will love.


1. Fillauth - Fallout 1 is my favorite CRPG of all time. I finished the first Fallout game more than 5 times back in the day. This is the reason why my number 1 is Fillauth.

The demake is only a demo for now, I hope that Kinten gets enough motivation to finish at least a few scenarios of the game. You can do it Kinten, we believe in you!

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If you want to see the complete list of entries for the Bootleg Demakes, just follow this link here. For more freeware games, check out my post here.

The best sites for free games / independent games

Look, not all of us can afford to buy a PS3 or an Xbox 360. That's why I love being a PC gamer. However, PC games today are made for monster systems that cost almost as much as stupid expensive consoles. How can cheap bastards like us get our gaming fix?

This post will be almost a small update of some old posts I did, but it's all good. You can visit my old posts here for Abandonia, Abandonia Reloaded & Independent Gamer Blog.

The links below go to sites where you can download free LEGAL games. These are not emulation links or ROM links, so some of you self-righteous people can click on the links without fear of eternal punishment in a lake of fire.

Here's a list of some new links for freeware / open source / independent gaming:

1. TigSource - This site is pretty popular and I don't think they need me to pimp them or anything. But if you are new to independent gaming, there's no better site to visit for awesome PC games than this place.

2. Fully Ramblomatic - The homepage of the world famous Yahtzee. Writer, producer, animator, and star of Zero Punctuation. If you don't know, he's also a game developer, with freeware hits like Trilby's: Art of theft and 5 days a stranger.

3. Gnomes lair - Though Gnome is on semi-retirement from blogging, he's still got an archive full of fun games. Why not give him a visit and maybe you'll find a cool game.

4. Play this thing - Another blog about indie gaming by popular personalities who actually worked as indie games developers. If you are familiar with Costikyan, Dugan, or Short then you know that these people has a lot of experience with games and games journalism.

5. Liberated games - This site is like the Lazarus pit of commercial games. It's basically a warehouse of commercial games that the IP holders has given away for free. I have two games that I will mention to get you to click on that link: Mechwarrior 2 and Marathon 1 & 2, for free ! That's just on the letter M, people.

I'm taking a little break from emulation gaming. I'm playing Alien Syndrome and Cave Story at the moment, and then I'll probably beat Trilby. Ah, so many awesome free games, so little time.

I'm sure that I will try and update this post again, just to add some sites that I forgot, but that's all for now.

Read ebooks using your mobile phone

Ebook readers are all the rage today. E-ink technology is still in its infancy, but we are lucky that the promise of perfect paperless reading will happen in our lifetime.

Amazon has the Kindle and Sony has their own ebook reader. Both companies use the new E-ink technology. While not perfect, it's really best suited for any amount of sustained reading on an electronic device.

Now, if you want to read ebooks, but you don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on these new gizmos, then allow me to tell you how to take advantage of pre-existing technology that you may already have.

The picture above is an open source application called ReadManiac. It's essentially a midlet creator. It creates jar / jad files that can be easily installed even on midp 1.0 cellphones. The midlets can be made into a standalone application (for phones with file systems) or a midlet with an emebeded book.

For example, my k750i is a midp 2.0 phone with a file system. The best midlet for it is the standalone application, because you can store ebooks in your flash card and access it inside the app.

I also have an old Nokia 6230, midp 1.0 phone, without a file system. The best midlet to use is the one with embedded ebook since the phone can't access files through the application.

Here's a list of some less known ReadManiac features:

1. Can read zipped ebooks.

2. Has a configurable eyeguard to remind you that you are reading on a small LCD screen.

3. Bookmarking, search, and goto page quick navigation.

Once you installed a bookreader on your phone, where can you get ebooks to read? Well, you can go to Project Gutenburg for millions of free books, or here for a few commercial bestsellers.

Simple: How to apply translation patch to ROMs

This is literally the easiest, simplest, most simple, simpliest, freaking way to apply a translation patch to a ROM without fracking it up.

Look at the screenshot and follow the instructions to the letter.



Here's the download link for this app. IPS XP can also be used to apply IPS to almost anything compatible that can be patched, not just ROMS.

If you really need an extensive tutorial and discussion about patching, just follow this link here and here.

Small but functional Linux distros

This post was inspired by a cool article written by Todd Brasel.

I was just Googling around about Puppy Linux and I stumbled upon his blog about "Resurrecting a laptop with Puppy Linux."

If you don't know what Puppy Linux is, just Google it please.

I found that the best Puplet for me is Puppy NOP. NOP is just a 60 MB iso with the bare minimum software for a linux distro. Just remember that Ubuntu is about 500 - 800 MB iso. NOP seems faster than the original Puppy Dingo, probably because it uses the Thunar filemanager, rather than iceWM.

NOP can run on a Pentium class machine with less than 256 MB RAM. It's small, fast and you can downlod packages for it just like any normal Linux distros.



The second Puplet I like is called MacPUP. It's a Mac OS X flavored Puppy, just for the heck of it, and maybe for aesthetic reasons as well. This Puplet was brought to my attention by Arthur's comment in the same article I noted above.

MacPUP is not that big for quality of eye candy you will get. It's only about 95 MB and it really looks like an Apple OS, but better, because it's free.


Macpup Dingo from prit on Vimeo.

The last Linux distro I really like was also brought to my attention by Arthur. You're awesome, sir.

The distro is called SliTaz GNU/LINUX. This OS is similar to Puppy, but it's based on Busy Box. I'm not sure if Puppy is also based on this, or if SliTaz is really a remaster of Puppy. I don't know. That requires research, and as everyone knows, I'm averse to doing actual work.

The full SliTaz iso is only around 30 MB, but it's almost complete out of the box. Like the Puplets I mentioned, this thing can also download packages via a package manager.



I have to mention that all the distros I mentioned here can use the frugal install. This means that they can be installed, dual boot on NTFS, side-by-side with your Windows XP. Just look around the net and you'll find a Puppy XP installer and even a SliTaz XP, GUI installer.

Well that's about all the time we have for today. See you next time, people. Happy Linux computing!

Mobile apps & games free to download

Getjar has a large collection of jar applications and games for almost every cellphone in the market. They have a collection of freeware, shareware and full commercial jar files.

Most of their games and apps are just freeware but they also have commercial software that you can buy.

If you want free commercial java apps and games, you can turn to Mobiles24. It's basically a site where the users contribute java games, apps, themes and a lot more.

Mobiles24 has a huge library of commercial apps and the latest java games. They have Peggle, Puzzle Quest, Castlevania: Aria of sorrow, among hundreds and hundreds of games.

2 ways I use Google Chrome

Chrome is a good browser with the potential to become the dominant choice for web heads in the future. For now it's in beta, and I really don't want to use this browser when accessing my business intranet or anything involving important data.

Here's how I use Chrome from day to day:

1. Using it to make web apps

As most of you already know, Chrome can make shortcuts for web sites. I use it to make web apps of Last.fm, Youtube, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and a lot of web pages that I can live to access in a standalone form.

This frees up my Firefox 3 to do the heavy surfing while avoiding Flash heavy sites.

2. Incognito mode

This is very useful when accessing unknown content. This is not just for porn. Since Incognito will not leave any traces on your hard drive, you can access educational sites like warez, torrentz, ebookz etc. without getting tracking cookies or something similar.



That's how I use Chrome from day to day. It's a good product but not just ready to topple Firefox yet. If you have tips on how to make effective use of Chrome, please write your comments below.

Old Time Radio - An entertainment goldmine

Everything old is new again. I just found an entertainment goldmine for your MP3 players--it's called Old Time Radio (OTR). I know, it may be old news for most of you, but for some of us new to this stuff, there're tons of entertainment here.

Just imagine listening to the Sherlock Holmes radio dramas, or to that completely cheesy but very entertaining Tom Corbett: Space Cadet. Not only is it a free stroll back to memory lane, it's also tons of fun to listen to the acting style of yesteryears. Heck, even the old commercials were entertaining.

You can download MP3's of Dimension X and X minus 1, the sci-fi dramas written by luminaries like Bradbury, Asimov, and a host of others. Listen, this is better than the Twilight Zone.

Visit Zoot Radio for an extensive list of OTR downloads. You will be obliged to a free registration. I urge you to do it. It doesn't cost anything, but you'll get a ton of content. The content in Zoot are just too much to list here. Just give it a visit and you'll see...or hear great OTR from the 40's, 50's, and 60's.

K-Meleon is Firefox lite for Windows

There's this article by Nate Lanxon where he proposed a Firefox lite for low-end PC's:

There's no doubt Firefox is the best Web browser in the world. I advise everyone to use it. However, I think that the memory-hogging issue isn't really too serious for slightly-above-average PCs these days --they can handle the memory for the most part. Those who can't suffer for it.

As a user of a low-end PC, I can't agree more on his views about the memory issues of Firefox. But I think that if Firefox lite is not being considered by Mozilla, there's K-Meleon as an alternative to Firefox.

K-Meleon is a Windows only browser based on the Gecko rendering engine that Firefox runs on. But since it's a native Windows browser, it's much more optimized, hence the smaller memory footprint.

I've been a user of K-Meleon for about a year now and I find it stable with only minor problems with some websites. I believe that you can use some Firefox extensions as add-ons for K-Meleon, but I haven't figured it out yet. It would kick-ass to have Scribefire in K-Meleon.

The best thing about K-Meleon is the active community and it's open source license. This means you can expect incremental improvements and bug fixes with each latest releases.

Maxthon + Blogex + IeSpell = goodbye FF

I've been using an IE shell called Maxthon since it was MYIE.  I find it very functional and responsive, just right for my power-surfing needs.  I know it's IE and I know the dangers of surfing with IE.  Hey, I live on the razor edge all the time anyway--not really.  But Maxthon just kicks Firefox's butt out of contention.  Maxthon opens faster, has a smaller memory footprint, has plug-ins, and a lot of stuff that I can't enumerate here. 

The big minus for Maxthon is the IE engine, but soon that will be solved when Maxthon version 2 will support the Gecko engine.  I'm not holding my breath, but whatever, it could still happen.  I have nothing against Firefox except my computer is about 10 years old and can barely run the damn thing. 

I love Firefox, but Maxthon is much more practical for me to use as of now.  In fact, I'm blogging right now with Maxthon using Blogex 1.2.0., plus IeSpell.  That's all I need in my browser.  So if you love to live in constant fear of viruses and spyware, join us Maxthonites.  I love to live dangerously.

Note:  Maxthon is actually much safer than plain-vanilla IE since it has patched most of IE's flaws.