STG's

MadBalls in BaboInvasion is free this weekend on Steam, and with a 75% discount too, so of course I downloaded the game and tried it. It's an interesting little shooter, where the main character and most enemies are well, balls. With faces and nice graphics. They just roll around, shooting, throwing grenades and Molotovs. Rolling ball games used to be popular - I remember playing them back in the 80s, but nothing particularly memorable. There seem to be a lot of unlockable weapons, among other unlockable items. One thing I found quite interesting is that you can buy the unlocks as a pack. Not a very common way to monetize a game. Overall, only vaguely interesting. The graphic and sounds are good, and I found the gameplay barely okay, but nothing worth spending time (or money) in for me.

Just now, I have installed Wordpress on my site (thanks to CrystalTech's help - had a bad upload the first time!). I plan to blog about my products, as well as my normal business book, software or sites posts. I'll be keeping the game and fiction books here, however.

My Life Story is clearly a remake of Jones in the Fast Lane , made by Sierra in 1990. Sadly, some of the graphics of the original were actually better! (specially the simple videos they included). Other than that, it's very similar to the original, with a few minor add-ons. I liked the original, so it's not surprising that I like this one too. Of course, both of the games can get pretty boring after a while. Still, worth taking a look, if you can get past the silly graphics.

Very interesting article of quotes from SES London 2010. There were a number of interesting items, well worth your time.

I'm a bit tired of the various limitations of PHPList (some caused by the host I have it installed on - Dewahost), so I'm looking at various autoresponders and newsletter services (my list is all opt-in, of course). GetResponse has a number of interesting features, such as their API, various analytics, split tests, etc, so I'm trying them out. One thing that really struck me when I started doing a newsletter with them is that their editor sucked. It sucked so much I tested it in Firefox too, at which point the REAL editor came on. I e-mailed them about how it failed on Chrome, and they answered that it worked fine on their end. At this point I remembered to turn off Privoxy, and now it works fine...

I've just finished the last of the Percy Jackson books - The Last Olympian. It was by far the best on the series so far, with the conclusion of the big Titan war arc established in the rest of the series.

Very interesting Google seminar about Google Website Optimizer. I've been stalling for ages, but now I guess I will get around to doing some testing :-)

Since I wrote well of Foxit PDF Reader, I thought I should warn everyone that it installs an extra toolbar (Ask Toolbar) AND changes your home page, without asking and without any check boxes you can deselect (I went through it several times, just in case). Very uncool! Even worse, Ask Toolbar won't even uninstall here...

Excellent performance from Foxit. After a very dangerous exploit was found that allows specially made PDFs to run executable content, they took only a week to fix the problem. Congratulations!

I've just noticed a new (?) feature on Adwords. It is called remarketing, and it allows you to make special ads for people that went to your site and then left, in an effort to get them back. They have a page with explanations , as well as a video about it. Pretty cool conceptually, although I have no doubt that some will think it's creepy - you've gone to a site, and now it can "follow" you through the web :-)

When you say the title, it sounds stupid, but the video is pretty cool to watch!

I've read another of the Percy Jackson, the 4th book in the series. It still felt short, but so far it was my favorite in the series. A lot of the series arc is coming into full effect, and the descriptions of the labyrinth and Deadalus mythology were particularly interesting.