15 Shoot Em Ups

Shooters, Shoot ‘em ups, Shmups..

Whatever you like to call them, here are 15 that you owe it to yourself to play if you’re a fan of the genre.

  1. Galaxian - Namco’s Improvement on Space Invaders.
  2. Warning Forever - Abstract & freeware Japanese shooter.
  3. Llamatron - Jeff Minter’s insane Robotron style shooter.
  4. Xenon 2 - Stylish vertical scroller from The Bitmap Brothers.
  5. SWIV - Evolution of Silkworm. (Silkworm IV = SWIV) Vertical scroller.
  6. DUO - Abstract and original shooter.
  7. Thunderforce III - Fantastic vertical scroller from Tecmosoft.
  8. Ikaruga - Insanely hard & frantic vertical shooter.
  9. Gradius V - Vertical scroller, the pinnacle of the series.
  10. Rrootage - Ikaruga-alike abstract freeware shooter.
  11. DoDonPachi - Arcade vertical scroller from Atlas & Cave.
  12. R-Type - One of the original and best, from Irem.
  13. R-Type Final - The pinnacle of the R-Type series.
  14. Geometry Wars - Abstract and insanely hard shooter from Bizarre Creations.
  15. Psyvariar 2 - Another Ikaruga-alike vertical shooter.

The Red Star should be on this list, but it’s a hybrid shooter/beat-em-up (Ikaruga meets Streets of Rage).

Any other good ones I’ve missed?

@0705310103

25 Open Source Web Applications

Here are 11 ideas (and 25 apps) to make better use of your webspace. They are all open source alternatives to major Web 2.0 applications that you can install on your own web server. Most require PHP and MySQL. All are free.

Why? By taking control of the services you use online, you can increase your understanding of PHP, MySQL, and how web applications work. You also get advertising-free (or subscription-free) versions of your favourite sites, and the ability to backup your data easily. In addition, with many of these scripts, you get to fully customise the software with your own unique look.

Blog
Publish your online journal, share your thoughts, write about your favourite hobby or promote your business. Blogs are everywhere these days, but they show no signs of decreasing in number. By hosting your own blog, you get far more control over the look and feel. You can download themes from the hundreds available online, but also you can extend the functionality of the software through freely available plugins.
Recommended software: Wordpress
Hosted alternatives: Blogger, Typepad.

Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows visitors to add, delete and edit content. Chances are you’ve already seen one of the biggest of it’s kind, Wikipedia, but with your very own wiki you can share it among friends and use it as a collaborative knowledge base, or use it to document your product, or as a personal notebook or even as a company intranet.
Recommended software: Dokuwiki, MediaWiki
Hosted alternatives: StikiPad, Wetpaint

Forum
Nothing gets people talking, more than a forum. A forum is a web application for holding discussions and posting user generated content. Internet forums are also commonly referred to as web forums, message boards, discussion boards, bulletin boards or simply forums. Most forums have regular users, which can be a great way to build virtual communities. Forums can be focused around a specific product, lifestyle or genre, or can be much more informal and general.
Recommended software: Vanilla, PhpBB, PunBB, YaBB
Hosted alternatives: Google Groups, Yahoo! Groups

Photo Gallery
If you have photos you want to share with friends, family and the wider internet, there are plenty of services on the web that can do that for you. However, some people like to retain more control over their own photos, and not be restricted by the terms & conditions of some of the big sites. Sure, the big sites can offer exposure and a sense of community, but that’s not for everyone. There are plenty of cool tools to allow you to host your own photo galleries or photo blogs.
Recommended software: Filebrowser, zenphoto, folderblog, Plogger, Coppermine
Hosted alternatives: Flickr, Zoomr

Mailing Lists
If you run a business, or a hobby website, often you’ll want to be able to easily communicate your latest news and updates to your visitors. For some companies, RSS feeds have replaced the need for contact by email, but there are a wealth of people out there who don’t understand RSS, and they outnumber those who do, and sometimes only an email will do. While there are tools online to maintain mailing lists, why not run your own directly from your own domain name.
Recommended software: PHPList
Hosted alternatives: Campaign Monitor

Webmail
Hands up who has a Gmail or Yahoo email account? Even though many of you probably have POP3 accounts with your ISP, you favour the web based versions because they provide ease of access when you are at work, at school, etc. Well, you can actually install a webmail system on your own webspace, and take advantage of the services they offer without sacrificing your cool domain name.
Recommended software: Roundcube, SquirrelMail
Hosted alternatives: Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail

RSS Reader
If you don’t use a news reader (or aggregator), they can be a great way to keep track of updates to your favourite sites. Almost every major website has an RSS feed that updates whenever they publish new content. By hosting an RSS reader on your own webspace, you can access your subscriptions from anywhere, rather than just when you are at your computer.
Recommended software: Gregarius
Hosted alternatives: Bloglines, Google Reader

Bookmarks
Social bookmarking is a great way to share interesting sites you’ve found with friends. By adding tags to each site you find, you allow other users to browse links by genre. Usually most services offer some way of subscribing to the bookmarks of a specific user. If you’ve ever used del.icio.us, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It also means you can access your own bookmarks from a remote location. By installing a social bookmarks system on your own server, you can do something different and stand out from the crowd.
Recommended software: Scuttle, Sabros.us
Hosted alternatives: del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, Furl

Tasks
As an alternative to keeping a paper to do list, you can keep all your upcoming tasks online. You can even order tasks by priority and deadline, or organize them by context. For business use, you can have multiple users too and allow sorting of tasks by project. The beauty of running this from your own webserver, is that you are not reliant on third-party services, and you know it will always be there when you need it.
Recommended software: TaskFreak!, Tudu Lists
Hosted alternatives: TaDa List, Bla-bla List, Remember The Milk

Social News
Social, democratic, news sites (such as Digg, Reddit, etc) are great places to find the latest news stories and websites. URL’s submitted by users, and then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system. There are plenty of good reasons to host your own social news site, such as narrowing down the subject matter to a specific topic, or limiting the users to those on your LAN or Intranet.
Recommended software: Pligg, PHPDug
Hosted alternatives: Digg, Reddit, Newsvine

Calendar
There are 2 easy ways to manage calenders online. One is to use software on your computer such as iCal (Mac) or Sunbird (PC/Linux) and then install software on your server to parse the calendar file and display it online. Alternatively you can install a script that lets you actually edit and maintain your calendar directly on your website. Useful if you need to make changes when you are at a remote location.
Recommended software: PHP iCalendar, phpEventCalendar
Hosted alternatives: Gmail, Kiko

While all these applications are free, you will need some webspace with PHP and MySQL support. There are two options:

  1. Find a good webhost such as Segment Publishing, Media Temple or Textdrive. This is going to cost you.
  2. Run your own web server yourself. It’s a little more tricky to install and configure, but if you are running Mac OS X (or Linux), you can quite easily install Apache, PHP & MySQL or run MAMP/LAMP and host all this software on your own computer.

If you have a static IP address and a domain name (try Pairnic for domains) you can even setup a web address with a subdomain for each project. If you want to do everything for free, or you don’t have a static IP, you can even get a free subdomain using a service like DynDNS.

Conclusion

If you want to do something more interactive with your online prescence, or want to move away from the 3rd party hosted services, I hope the above list has given you some good ideas to build upon. Wikipedia is a good starting point for finding out more.

While I haven’t listed every service, or alternative, I welcome suggestions for glaring omissions in the comments below.

@0705281157

SSH Tunnelling with Firefox & PuTTY

With two free pieces of software for Windows (Firefox & PuTTY) and a little bit of basic TCP/IP knowledge, you can create an SSH tunnel to your Mac at home (or almost any Unix/BSD/Linux based machine you have an account on), and encrypt your browsing session from another location.

This diagram shows the fundamental difference between how an unmodified Internet Explorer and a correctly configured Firefox would fetch a webpage under this system.

While it is possible to set Internet Explorer to use the SSH tunnel (via a local SOCKS proxy), it does not support remote DNS requests and is therefore not recommended.

These instructions assume the use of a Mac running OS X 10.4, Firefox 2.0.0.3 and PuTTYTray 0.59. Instructions may need to be adjusted slightly for different versions. PuTTYTray is used, over PuTTY, because it allows the window to be minimized to the system tray. If you actually intend to use the shell while you’re connected, go with PuTTY instead. They also assume both computers are behind straightforward NAT routers/firewalls.

So, lets begin. There are just a few simple steps to achieving this. We’ll assume that you want to implement this at work, connecting to your Mac at home.

  1. Enable SSH on your Mac.
  2. Configure port forwarding on your home router.
  3. Configure PuTTYTray to create an SSH tunnel, and a local SOCKS proxy.
  4. Configure Firefox to use the SOCKS proxy and send remote DNS requests.
  5. Test to ensure all is working.

Enable SSH on your Mac (at home)

  1. Open System Preferences
  2. Open the Sharing preferences pane
  3. Tick Remote Login

Configure port forwarding on your router (at home)

This step is only necessary if you have a NAT router between your computer and the Internet. If you don’t, you really should consider getting one. It’s much safer than connecting directly via a USB cable/DSL modem.

In most instances, you can simply enter the private IP of your router into a web browser, then enter the default username and password. From this control panel, you should be able to forward port 22 to the internal/private IP of your Mac. If you’re not sure what you are doing at this point, it’s time to brush up on private networks, network address translation, and TCP/IP.

Configure PuTTYTray on XP (at work)

  1. Under Connection -> SSH -> Tunnels , enter 7070 in the Source Port box, then make sure Dynamic and Auto are checked at the bottom, before clicking Add.
  2. Under Connection, enter 360 in the Seconds between keepalives.
  3. Under Window -> Behaviour , click on Minimize to tray: Always
  4. Under Session, enter the public IP address of your home router into Hostname, set the Port to 22, and Connection type to SSH. Finally enter an identifying name in Saved Sessions and click Save.
  5. Now simply choose that session name in the list and click Open.
  6. You should now get a login screen on your Mac at home. Enter your Mac username & password, and then minimize the window.

Configuring Firefox on XP (at work)

  1. Visit http://www.whatismyip.org and note the IP address.
  2. Open Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Network -> Connection -> Settings
  3. Choose Manual proxy configuration
  4. Set the SOCKS Host: to 127.0.0.1, and the Port: to 7070. Choose SOCKS v5 and set No Proxy for: to localhost, 127.0.0.1
  5. Click OK, then OK again.
  6. In the URL box of Firefox, enter about:config
  7. In the Filter box, enter network.proxy.socks_remote_dns
  8. Ensure the value in the pane below is set to true. You can double click the entry to toggle it on and off.
  9. Restart Firefox

That’s it. It should all now be working.

Testing

  1. Visit http://www.whatismyip.org again. It should now show your home IP address rather than that of the computer/network you are working from. If it does, this means that the Proxy is working. Now you need to check if DNS requests are being serviced by the Mac too.
  2. Enter the private IP address of your router at home (eg. http://192.168.0.1). If DNS requests are being sent remotely, you should see your home router control panel.*

Precautions & Other Notes

Good luck!

@0705240550

4 iTunes Visualisation Plugins

If you only download four visualisation plugins for iTunes, make it these four.

All Universal (for Intel Macs). All freeware.

  1. Volcano Kit - Minimal frequency/amplitude analyser.
  2. LED Spectrum Analyser - Everyone loves dancing graphs.
  3. GasLight - Mesmerising flames. Yum.
  4. Magnetosphere - Gravity. Magnetism. Trippy.

@0705210909

An Open Letter To Nokia

Nokia,

I know that my sole opinion doesn’t count for much amongst your 35% share of the global mobile phone market.

However, I believe I represent a growing number of consumers who can only express frustration with the way Nokia (and the rest of the mobile phone industry) has been heading over the last few years.

I believe you’ve lost your way. You used to make great phones, but now instead of being a pioneer or a leader, you’re a follower. I represent your dream market. I’m in my early thirties, male, with disposable income, and I love to evangelise good products to friends, family & anyone else who’ll listen.

I used to recommend your mobile phones, and look forward to upgrading to a newer handset each year, but now, I live in fear that my current phone (the Nokia 1100, the last good phone you made) will break and force me to “upgrade”.

The Nokia 1100 is cheap, but that’s not why I love it. I’m more than happy to spend money on technology that works, but all of the phones I’ve used in recent years (including so-called market leaders such as the Sony Ericsson K750i and the Samsung X820) have made me want to smash them up in frustration.

The Nokia 1100 isn’t without it’s faults, but it has five core things that I want from a phone.

1. Long battery life.
2. Simple UI with easy access to address book and text messages.
3. Buttons which aren’t too small to be able to use.
4. Compatibility with previous Nokia chargers and headsets.
5. A simple and traditional “ring-ring” tone.

What the mobile phone industry have failed to notice, is that there are still many of us who don’t care about having video messaging, internet, wap, cameras, java games, music players, video clips, polyphonic or mp3 ringtones, live tv or anything else that was never designed to work on a phone. You know why? Because 99 times out of 100, the user experience is just downright crappy.

The iPod is wildly successful because it gets two basic things right.

1. A hierarchical & simple to use interface which belies it’s power by keeping lesser used (and sometimes more complex) options more deeply buried than the more common ones.
2. Thoughtful, stylish, but minimalistic hardware design. Why use 10 buttons when you can use 5.

You yourselves as a company are successful because you created a phone interface that was simple enough for a technophobic grandparent to use, but yet poweful enough to meet the requirements of the everyday user.

But these days, to put it simply, your phones are bloatware.

The Nokia 3210 was one of the best looking phones you ever made. The buttons were just the right size, and well spaced apart so as not to be troublesome. The simple layout of the up, down, select & cancel buttons was just perfect.

My recommendation?

Remodel the 3210.

Ok, so that last one was a bit way out there, but somebody needs to shake things up a bit.

Apple are taking an interesting direction at the high end of the market. There’s nothing wrong with phones that do everything, but rarely do they do it well. Apple spends a lot of time making sure the user experience is good. Feature bloat may thrill all the kids, but it continues to frustrate us core users who want a phone that “just works”.

Go back and look at the 5110, the 8310, the 1100 and even the 6310. Go back to basics. Thoughtful, intuitive design with powerful yet simple UI is what works.

C’mon Nokia, you’re better than this.

@0705160918

Disabling Autorun

Autorun (or autoplay) is one of those features of Microsoft Windows that probably seemed like a good idea when it was being implemented, but in reality has caused more problems than it has solved.

Autorun is designed to allow an appropriately configured CD to automatically execute any executable file when inserted into your computer.

While this may simplify the procedure for installing new software for beginners, the facility poses a security risk, allowing a CD to covertly install programs on your computer without your express permission.

From Wikipedia:

For instance, an attacker with brief and casual physical access to a computer can surreptitiously insert a disc and cause software to run. Alternately, malicious software can be distributed with a disc that the user doesn’t expect to contain software at all — such as an audio compact disc. Even music CD’s from well known name-brand labels have not always been safe.

The easiest way to rid yourself of this security risk is to disable autorun completely.

Windows XP users : Right-click on the drive icon for your CD drive, CD recorder, or DVD drive, and select Properties. Choose the AutoPlay tab, and choose the desired action for each type of CD. For example, choose Music CD, then click Select an action to perform, then select Take no action.

Alternatively, obtain and install TweakUI. After running it, expand the My Computer branch, then the AutoPlay branch, and then select Drives, then turn off the checkbox next to each drive letter for which you want AutoPlay disabled.

For a list of methods to fix other versions of Windows, see Annoyances.org

@0705161026

Sensible Password Strategies

Most of us know by now that passwords based on dictionary words are very insecure and that your password should be based on numbers and letters, the lengthier the better. The days of using password as a “password” are long gone (or at least, they should be).

It’s quite common, however, for people to use the same username and password on many different sites. Ask yourself “What happens if one of the websites I use is compromised?”. It only takes one breach of security, from one website, and your username and password is there for the taking on all the sites you use.

But who can possibly remember a different password for each site they use?

Well, there are two methods I generally recommend.

1. Random passwords & encrypted storage

Generate a completely random password using a random password generator, and store the list in a secure notepad such as Locknote (for Windows) or Little Secrets (for Mac).

The format of the file is flexible, but the syntax I use is:

Site : Flickr
URL : http://flickr.com
Username : MyUserName
Password : Sp5macapraW3phex
Email : flickr@mydomain.com
—
Site : del.icio.us
URL : http://del.icio.us
Email : delicous@mydomain.com
Password : k7G26RaPRUp5uCus
—

You can then simply access the file whenever required, and copy and paste the password into place.

The beauty of this file format, is that it can also be adapted to store serial numbers, ftp details and other important information. However, it is obviously critical that you store this data in an encrypted format.

This method is about as secure as you can get, but what happens when you want to access the sites from another location. You could store the file on a USB key, but that’s not something I’m comfortable with, encrypted or not, but that’s just a personal choice.

2. Algorithm based passwords

Rather than generate a password that is completely random, what about one that looks random, but is actually easy to remember based on a simple algorithm.

Let’s take flickr.com as an example, and assume I have a dog called “Barney”.

A good password for this site might be lib4rn3y6r

Looks nice and random, right? Well, this password is actually composed of 4 parts, 3 of which are completely unique to every website used.

li = the 2nd & 3rd letters of the domain name
b4rn3y = my dogs name, transposing some letters for numbers
6 = the number of letters in the domain name
r = the last letter in the domain name

Obviously you can (and should) adjust the algorithm for your own purposes, but with a little thought, and using a combination of the methods described above, you can create an system that creates (and stores) extremely safe passwords which are different for each website you use.

For the ultra paranoid, you may want to create a multi-tier system, with one system used for generic websites, and a completely different system used for online banking, etc.

You may also want to check out this guide to creating “compound passwords“, designed to thwart keyloggers, shoulder-surfing colleagues and brute force attacks.

Update: There’s a very well written post entitled How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords which expands a lot more on password security.

@0705161025

McAfee Site Advisor

Even with the tightest firewall security configuration, there are still plenty of ways your security can be compromised. Carefully constructed websites can take advantage of browser weaknesses to infect your computer directly.

Other times, the process is more indirect, fooling the user into downloading a file which they believe to be safe, but which in reality contains spyware, keyloggers, or other malicious software.

Browsing the internet can also be a minefield when it comes to the nature of the content you are unwittingly exposed to. The simple act of looking for a new screensaver, for example, can result in your screen becoming riddled with popup windows containing pornography or offensive material.

Anti-spyware, anti-virus and popup blocking software attempt to prevent all of these events. While we heartily recommend installing such software, we would rather avoid having to put them to the test in the first place.

McAfee Siteadvisor is a free browser plugin for Firefox on Windows, Mac and Linux, which is more proactive than reactive. It allows you to make informed decisions while browsing the list of results on your favourite search engine as to whether or not any given site is likely to be unsafe or not.

From the site:

McAfee SiteAdvisor helps protect Internet users from all kinds of Web-based security threats including spyware, adware, spam, viruses, browser-based attacks, and online scams. SiteAdvisor’s automated testers continually patrol the Web to browse sites, download files, and sign-up on sites with e-mail addresses. Then, as you search, browse, download or register online, SiteAdvisor’s safety ratings change color based on our test results. SiteAdvisor helps you stay informed, in control and safe online.

McAfee Siteadvisor is also available for Microsoft Internet Explorer, but we recommend Mozilla Firefox as a fundamentally more secure web browser.

@0705161015

NOD32 Anti Virus

Sometimes it seems like there are as many anti-virus products as there are actual viruses. In reality, however, there are over 70,000 different known viruses out there ‘in the wild’.

And while there are plenty of choices for anti-virus software, not all are born equal. Some have a hefty performance hit on your computer, while others are so over zealous in their protection, they end up effectively crippling the very machine you were trying to protect.

Nod32, however, is the PC industry’s best kept secret. It has a tiny footprint, so it won’t slow down your PC in everyday use, in fact you’ll barely even know it’s there, but it has also won more awards than any other anti-virus for catching real world viruses.

From the website:

Running separate applications for viruses, hackers, adware and spyware can slow your PC, be difficult to manage, and provide questionable protection. Beware of large, bloated internet security suites that consume hundreds of megabytes on your PC. These typically exist because vendors have acquired products and ‘bundled’ them together. In contrast, ESET NOD32 was designed from the core as a single, highly-optimized engine that works as a unified Anti-Threat system to protect against a broad spectrum of malware. Viruses, worms, spyware, and other malicious attacks, which are constantly evolving. ESET NOD32 utilizes patent-pending ThreatSense® Technology to detect tomorrow’s threats in real-time, by analyzing code execution for malicious intent - keeping you ahead of the malware-writers.

The catch? You have to pay for it. £23.00 (GBP) per year, per machine with big discounts on volume purchases (both multi-license and multi-year).

I love free software, and while there are plenty of free anti-virus programs out there, I thinks this is one area where you cannot afford to use anything less than the best.

That said, Nod32 is still cheaper than much of the commercial competition. More expensive doesn’t always mean better.

@0705161013

CCleaner

Your computer logs all sorts of data about everything you do, both online and offline, mostly in an effort to make things easier for you. Examples include lists of web sites you’ve visited, recent documents you’ve opened, programs you’ve run, and even usernames and passwords you’ve entered.

In shared computing environments such as the workplace, the library, the local internet cafe or even your own home computer, it can become cause for concern. It’s likely you would not want all that information logged and available to anyone else who sits at that machine.

In this day and age where we all conduct more and more of our personal and business affairs online, and in a time when your privacy is more at threat than at any other time in history, being able to use a computer without fear of leaving a trace is increasingly important.

Luckily, there’s a free and easy way to erase all these log files, thanks to CCleaner.

From the website :

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. But the best part is that it’s fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware!

Do bear in mind however, that this software only removes logs on the computer you run it on. Most websites keep their own access & usage logs, as do service providers and even corporate IT departments, which narrow down online activities to a single IP address.

For the most part this is fairly benign, but it should be something you are at least aware of. There are ways to subvert this logging process, but that’s a post for another time.

@0705161009

Next Page »