Mum Wants a Nice Lunch – The WP Email Capture Challenge

So, in case you have been living under a rock or insanely busy with work (actually probably the latter, it is a Monday morning), I’ve launched WP Email Capture Premium. WP Email Capture Premium is a feature rich, professional version of my 50,000+ downloaded plugin – WP Email Capture.

I’m not going to bore people with the details of the plugin (you can read them here), but rest assured I’m absolutely delighted to get the plugin launched this morning. Feedback from all who have seen it has been positive, so I’m chuffed to bits.

Anyway, I’ve set myself a little challenge for myself, and I need your help!

I’m hoping to get my first sale before lunchtime (Midday GMT) today. Of course, if you would find the plugin useful then feel free to purchase it, but I’d appreciate as many shares of this blog post as possible –Ā Say Hi To WP Email Capture Premium – with the hashtag #mumwantsanicelunch.

The prize? Well I’m not going to suggest a “Money Can’t Buy” prize that isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, but instead I will take my mum out for lunch. She gets a nice lunch, the skinflint in me gets Ā£20 poorer and I know that my plugin sells.

Anyway, will be back in the afternoon with how the project goes.

Update: We did it! Mum got a nice lunch šŸ™‚

A Christmas Gift: Bringing Your Games In On The Last Day

At the beginning of the month, I was out with members of the most excellent Computer Club in the Lass O’Gowrie. At the club, there are various Atari Jaguar home brew developers – who develop their own games on the console. One of the more popular games is Superfly DX – which is a gorgeous one button game based on Copter*. I commented that I made a simlar game in the early noughties, during a summer where I didn’t work nor do much except program video games and speak to the lovely people on Blitzcoder, some of them I still chat to now and again.

Anyway I found the video games I made, including the game mentioned above – Wormhole, so I’ve decided to give them away as a free Download.

I usually give them away (they were on my other blog for ages), but for those who missed them, I’m sharing them here :).

1. The Wormhole – The game mentioned above, a game that was started out as a bet, but turned out to be pretty good. A mate of mine said that I couldn’t create a game that copied the helicopter game to perfection. So I spent the best part of two days making this: The Wormhole. My mate said that it was better than the original, so I lost this sportsman bet in the greatest travesty in recent history.

Download The Wormhole

2. The Square Game – Loosely based on an old Commodore 64 Game: Sensitive, The Square Game was my most ambitious game I ever made. Took over 6 months to make, and features a Level Editor. Fairly well received (featured on loads of download sites), but I didn’t enjoy playing it up until recently, as by the end of the project, I was sick of it.

Download The Square Game

3. Penalty Prize 2002 – A remake of my first ever game made in QBasic! Updated for the 2002 World Cup (the original was for the 1998). Penalty Prize is back, live and in living colour! 2 players only and featuring the last 16 teams in the World Cup (so all you French and Argentine’s have to make a cup of tea!). 6 players for each team trying to win the shoot out. Incidentally, the first game that I was in talks with for being published, and me receiving money for. Result!

Download Penalty Prize 2002

4. Intruder Alert – After a discussion over at Blitzcoder about certain games, this was the result. The discussion was about games where you play the bad guy (Dungeon Keeper and Wario) spring to mind. This is Pac Man, but instead of playing the hero, you play the ghost, who has to protect his pills from the intruding Pac-Men. First game I made to feature music. Not, fortunately, made by me.

Download Intruder Alert

5. Gridshot – This was a competition entry for “Produce a Vector Game” (lines and internal graphic functions only). This was loosely based on the classic Tempest. Not as good, but still good fun to make.

Download Gridshot

6. Eskew – The Second Entry for the “Produce A Vector Game”. Move a circle around a grid, collecting squares and avoiding blue balls. Was based on a flash game.

Download Eskew

7. Sudoku Blitz – My Sudoku game. Nothing more, nothing less.

Download Sudoku Blitz

8. Lizzie’s Jubilee Manager – I completely forgot I made this! There was a “Stupidest Game” Competition on Blitzcoder, and my game was a Satirical Satirical Commentary on The Golden Jubilee that was happening at the time. Increase Royal Popularity by completing a whistle-stop tour of the UK. It’s crap, but that was the point.

Download Lizzie’s Jubilee Manager

Disclaimer

These games are for Windows PC’s. These games work on my Windows 7 machine. Your milage may vary though. I’m not sure if these games work on Apple Macs.

Some of these games have dismal music (Intruder Alert, I’m looking at you), so you may want to mute your speakers.

I’ve checked (and compiled) these files, so there’s nothing untoward in them. However, if you download these and your computer blows up, you can’t hold me responsible.

A Chance of A Christmas Miracle?

These are most of the games I’ve made, but not all. I made more games that I’ve been unable to find. My Christmas Wish would be to find these games, as they represented a good time for me:-

  • Ripcord – No idea why I don’t have this. Was my first ever game I produced and was a parachute simulator. It was featured on remakes.org (now Retro Remakes) and looked like this. Possible file name – ripcord.zip.
  • Intruder Alert 2 – A sequel to Intruder Alert that was an entry into the Blitzcoder “8 Bit” Competition. Play a Space Invader and destroy wave after wave of Turrets. It looked like this. Possible file name – ia2.zip
  • Blitz Lights – A “Lights Out” Clone. That’s all I know about this I’m afraid.

So if you can think of ways of digging up the files (these were previously hosted on http://mysite.freeserve.co.uk, and then http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk), I’d be extremely greatful!

Merry Christmas Everybody šŸ™‚

Rhys

* Copter was based on another game (which name escapes me – Wormhole’s based more on that flash game – linkback if anybody can remember it)

 

How To Sort Spotify Playlists into Alphabetical Order

So this week I took the plunge and purchased Spotify Premium. In truth the ads were getting annoying and some of my favourite songs were disappearing due to the over five plays, and do you know what, I like it, I like it a lot.

I like the syncing feature with my phone and the offline mode (which is great when listening to music on your phone as you don’t get charged a metric shit load of data) so I set about creating a playlist featuring songs I listen to regularly, which raided all my previously made playlists (including my Epic 90’s Playlist) and the Manual Link Building playlist that we usually listen to in work.

Unfortunately, on test run one, it was tricky to find songs, as instead of being listed A – Z (like it should be), it listed it in the order I copied & pasted it (I’m not a firm believer in orders of playlist, sorry, I don’t care about music that much).

Anyway, there is a workaround, which I’d thought I’d share (until Spotify implement this feature).

1. Create Your New Playlist – Something Like [Original Playlist Name – A – Z]

In this example, I’ll use my equally epic Welsh Music Playlist. If you don’t know how to do this, then really you’re struggling.

2. Organise Your Original Playlist Into Alphabetical Order

I do this by track (as on Spotify Mobile I find it easier to find stuff). To do this click on the track heading.

3. Copy Your Tracks into the New Playlist

Boom!

As I said, it may be obvious to some people, but it took me ages to figure out. Google wasn’t much help, but now it will (hopefully) be. šŸ™‚

Blackpool Illuminations 2011

So early last month I headed to Replay Expo to sample some fine gaming, fine beer and even finer food (seriously folks, the nicest curry I’ve ever eaten has been at the Jali restaurant in Blackpool). The day before the conference I was a little bit of a loose end, so took the long way back to the hotel via the Illuminations.

The Illuminations of Blackpool are famous, generating thousands of thousands pounds worth of tourism to the area when most of the rest of the area is drab as the UK enters Autumn. It certainly brightens up the area, at least! Here’s some photos from them:-

Got a little surprise for my Christmas Post, posted just before Christmas. I’ll leave you to speculate what it is!

Does Anybody Else Get Fooled, Then Annoyed When Google Does This?

I was going to Tweet this, but then I’ve not had a blog post up for a while.

Lets say I do a Google Search, finding the directions between Witton Albion to Northwich Victoria. I click search and this gets brought up.

Useful, but not exactly what I want. Instead I want Google Maps. And I click on the link highlighted in the green arrow. This what happens:-

The query disappears!

I can’t be the only one who does this, am I? I know you can click on the links down the side, but surely it’ll be more useful preserving the queries between the links on the top of the page.

Anybody? Or just me?