Category Archives: Admin’s Opinions

Smile And Frown Of The Day

Posted on by
Reply

When I visited California and Nevada I came back to England disappointed that I hadn’t seen any sign of native Red Indians and their culture. Today I go shopping in drizzly Yorkshire and see not 1 but 3 Red Indians in all of their colourful glory.

They were playing what I assumed to be red Indian music outside the bus station. They made me smile and everyone around, what a lovely change.

What made me frown was in the toy section of a department store. An outfit that looks as if the child is on fire for goodness sake. I can still hardly believe that it was on sale and aimed at any market never mind impressionable children. Do we really want our children dressing as if they are on flames? Shame on those toy manufacturers, how long will it be before a child sets themself on fire because they have seen this ‘toy’?

Luxury Travel And Dodgy Dealings: Review of Grim Fandango

Posted on by
1

51CHCRM57ML._SL160_This adventure game starts in El Marrow where Mexican Manny Calavera is a travel agent in the land of the dead. When people die he goes to the land of the living to collect their souls, brings them back to El Marrow and sells them tickets for their four year journey to eternal rest. The best tickets are for luxury packages and can only be bought by those who have led a good life.

Manny needs to sell lots of luxury packages to earn his way to eternal rest. Something strange is happening. None of Manny’s clients merit a luxury package – they have either led bad lives or somebody has fixed the computer to make it look like they have.

Enter Mercedes Colomar (Meche), who Manny falls for *sigh*. She swears that she has lived a good and honest life and he believes her and not the computer. She leaves without the ticket for the luxury package that she is entitled to and Manny starts to become suspicious of his boss Don Copal and fellow travel agent Domino Hurley. He encounters Salvador Limones, the head of the resistance to the dodgy goings on; who recruits him to investigate for the cause.

Manny needs to find Meche who has already left El Marrow. He can’t leave on foot and the only way for him to get out is to be driven by a demon in a bonewagon. He finds demon Glottis and off they go to search for Meche with lots of adventures on the way.

Despite the title the game is not grim. It’s funny in parts and really interesting. There are 55 different characters and most of them have a human form but look like they have a paper bag on their heads with features drawn on them. You can see what Manny looks like on the picture above. Demon Glottis looks like the Honey Monster – remember those Sugar Puffs adverts a few years back. He’s big, friendly and cuddly and manages somehow to squeeze into the bonewagon that takes them on their journey.

There are hundreds of puzzles that give clues to help Manny in his quest. The clues are usually in the dialogue that Manny has with Glottis and others that he meets. Phrases appear on the screen and you point your curser and click on the ones that you want to hear spoken and hear a reply to. There are always several choices including some funny one-liners. When you spot and work out the clues you know where to go and which items Manny needs to pick up to use or save in his inside jacket pocket until later. It’s amazing just how many things he can get in that pocket without it bulging!

The game is split into 4 years. The first year is set in a petrified forest and Manny and Glottis have to find their way through and past some beavers with flaming tails. The forest looks appropriately spooky but it was a little too dark in places for my liking.

The second year is in Rubacava where you meet more of the characters and search for clues in bars, casinos an old boat, a lighthouse and a morgue. They meet the top man in the crime ring, mobster Hector Lemans who is one dodgy character. Manny and Glottis want to sail on a ship in the morning and need to find and overcome certain things before they can do that. I liked the Rubacava scenery, it was interesting moving from one location to another but I did get lost a few times.

The third year sees them travelling to the Edge Of The world, on the sea and under the sea and encountering a huge octopus. They have more things to overcome before they can go on to the fourth level and end their journey at the Ninth Underworld with a few more adventures back at the others and some new locations first.

The 3D graphics are great and according to the package Art Deco and Aztec inspired environments. I have never played a game like this before and certainly found the graphics and the whole idea impressive. I was captivated by the game but being honest I didn’t understand how to solve the clues at first and had to refer to a cheat site to help me. Once I got the hang of it the game ended all too quickly, but I still got several weeks of fun playing it.

As the characters are already dead they couldn’t be killed again. The designer gets round that cleverly by providing guns that turn the characters into flowers. It sounds naff I know but in this game it works well.

The background music is jazz and apparently swing era be bop. I was too enthralled in the game to notice it much but liked it when I did.

Grim Fandango was released by LucasArts in 1998 and was selected the best game of the year by Cnet Gamecenter and Gamespot, I can’t say that I’m surprised. It’s typical good versus evil with lots of entertainment and atmosphere on the way.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Windows 95/98 DirectX-compatible computer
Pentium 133 or faster
32MB or higher
Quad speed or higher
2MB PCI Graphics card
100% Windows 95/98-compatible 16-bit sound card
Optional support for joysticks and gamepads
Microsoft DirectX 6.0 is available on the Grim Fandango CD and must be installed to play the game
Your system may require the “latest” Windows 95/98 drivers for your particular hardware
3D Acceleration: Optional 3D graphics support requires a 4MB PCI or AGP 3D accelerator

I bought my copy in a second hand gaming shop for £5 but would have been happy to pay more for it I’ve enjoyed playing so much.

I wasn’t too sure which to choose when filling in the difficulty and complexity slot below. For me it was very difficult at first but for players used to this type of game I would guess that it would be much easier but difficult enough to keep you playing for a while.

Grim Fandango is available on Amazon.co.uk for £5.50 and Amazon.com for $22.89, or if you would like to download a playable demo visit www.lucasarts.com/products/grim/grim_spotlight.htm

Obviously I can highly recommend it and will play it again in the future once I’ve forgotten what the clues mean. I just feel disappointed that there doesn’t appear to be a sequel, if there was I would be rushing to buy it.

Get the game at Amazon.co.uk

Do XSitePro And DLGuard Work Together?

Posted on by
Reply

Although I can build websites with html or use Dreamweaver and Frontpage I am not an expert website designer and to be honest I struggle with software and scripts. Accepting my limitations I bought the XSitePro web design software in 2007 and upgraded to XSitePro V2 last year.

When I first got XSitePro I built my digital download site solely using that. Used Paypal as my payment processor and had thank you pages with download links for every product. It was a cheerful but not very professional looking site. I was fond of my efforts but there were problems with my download links being accessed by cheats and as time passed I began to cringe at the unprofessional look of my website.

As I had made a major investment in some software called Memberspeed I decided to rebuild the site using that. Although the software was intended to build membership sites it has a shopping cart and article directory which meant that I would get regularly updated content to help the site along in the search engines.

Fine but the fatal flaws were that using the software was time consuming and difficult for me to figure out and that it wasn’t flexible enough. For somebody with greater website design skills it might not be a problem but for me it was. My website looked more professional on the surface because I used a ready built Memberspeed template, but the shopping cart looked an uninviting mess that I simply did not have the skills to rectify.

Sales disappeared and another solution was called for. I wanted part of the solution to be XSitePro V2 because I love working with it. I have tried to use other shopping carts but find them difficult to understand and I don’t find them flexible enough for my limited skills. I had regularly seen posts in forums about using DLGuard as a shopping cart, or indeed paying memberships. Most but not all of the posters recommended DLGuard, but not everybody is going to like the same thing.

One day a question was asked about whether or not DLGuard could be integrated with XSitePro V2. The replies were all in the positive and when I checked out some of the sites indicated as using both I was quite impressed. A timely payment from Google Adsense was deposited into my PayPal account so I thought ‘go on girl go for it’.

I bought DLGuard for the princely sum of $146.05 including VAT. Before I could use it I needed to build the bones of a site, and being an impatient bod it was a good job that I had the speed of XSitePro. I used XHeader (a freebie with XSitePro V2) to make the header and utilised the many inbuilt design features to build the rest of the site. Not perfect but it looks more professional than my first digital download site and I can make alterations very easily.

My next step was to unzip DLGuard and upload it to my website following quite easy instructions. It wasn’t long before I’d uploaded my first product and added my Getresponse autoresponder details. That’s built in with both XSitePro and DLGuard so that was the easy part.

My next step was to redesign the DLGuard shopping cart to make it look like my website design. I sat and looked at the screen, scratched my head a few times before I decided that I was out of my depth. I went on to the DLGuard and XSitePro forums looking for how to tutorials and couldn’t find any. I thought about it for a while and decided that the only way to do what I wanted was to experiment.

I had a list of alterable DLGuard pages so I visited my sites Cpanel and viewed the source files. I wanted to edit them but being cautious I copied the source files into notepad before I began. That way if I boobed I would be able to replace the original source files.

An hour later I had added my new header to the shopping cart, altered the background colour and a few other things to give the appearance of integration. Considering how hopeless I am with scripts and software and my lack of design expertise I have surprised myself with what I have achieved.

My website now has an integrated shopping cart and my downloads are secure from cheats. It has flexibility in that I can add articles and reviews quickly and whenever I want. To my eyes it looks better than the previous two designs and it’s even started to make sales again after a spell in the doldrums.

One little glitch was with my first sale on the new site. I had redesigned the product download page and to check to see if everything was working I reduced a product to $0.01 and bought it with a joint Paypal account that I have with a partner. As I was testing I got called away and when I got back to my computer somebody else had bought the product and told me that the download link didn’t work. No it didn’t because I hadn’t uploaded the blooming product at that point. But, never mind the lower price than normal sale tested the rest of the work that I’d done and showed me that yes XSitePro and DLGuard do work together and it isn’t all that difficult.

You can see how I got on at Ebook World and find low cost ebooks, software and templates. Or check out my Resell Rights blog for information about Resell Rights products.

XSitePro 2 Review – is XSitePro Still Easy Website design?

Posted on by
Reply

Having used XSitePro quite happily for a year I was in two minds whether or not to pay for the May 2008 upgrade to version 2. The aspects that I liked about this website design software were the ease of use, speed and the quick analysis of my website pages for optimisation.

The downside has always been not very good templates and a recognisable same as look for many XSitePro sites. Despite that I found the software quicker and easier to use than Dreamweaver or Frontpage.

Temptation got the better of me and soon after the upgrade was mine I was redesigning one of my older websites. As some far more professional looking templates had been added I used one of those for practice after completing the website building tutorial.

Next I imported another of my sites but added my own banner and used one of the 30 navigational menu designs provided and changed it to my own colour selection to blend with the banner. I then started to build a music site using one of their templates and am now building a travel site from scratch with my own design.

I’m really pleased with all of the websites; to my eyes they look good and even my own designs look more professional than they would if I used Dreamweaver or FrontPage. The XSitePro sameness is a thing of the past. For someone like myself who has the aspirations but not the ability of a professional website designer and wants to design their own sites XSitePro 2 is a great tool.

There are several new features that I am enjoying experimenting with. 30 different navigational menus with colour selection I have already mentioned, but you can now easily place your choice of menu at the left, right or bottom of the page or as an info bar at the top. Your navigational menus can be added to more than one place and easily altered if you want to change the design.

New pages can be added easily and you are prompted to start optimising them for the search engines straight away. Article pages are new, there are 11 different styles that you can further customise or you can use a blank page. You can choose when the content is published, for instance you can set up an advertising campaign to automatically come online on a pre set date.

A new feature that I’m finding useful for the travel site that I’m building is that you can have a different right hand margin for every page. As each page has a different destination I am using that feature for my hotel affiliate links for those particular destinations.

Adding Google ads is still easily done but now you can add Amazon ads in the same way and customise the ads to integrate with your website. You can store your publisher ids and channels, so once they are stored a couple of clicks and your site is monetised. You can also store your affiliate links and you don’t have to visit Paypal to set up payment schemes. These features save a lot of time from having to search while adding your advertising.

I’m quite taken by the Mobile Site Wizard. In a couple of minutes I created versions of my sites that are automatically optimised for viewing on mobile phones or Internet able PDAs. I wouldn’t have thought of doing that but now my websites are available for viewing to a wider audience.

There are tons of graphics that you can use and it’s easy to upload your own graphics. A form wizard with different form designs that you can use to capture email addresses is new, also a banner rotator – and one of my favourites an image gallery creator. There is now a selection of social bookmarking icons that are easy to add to the pages and an RSS feed creator that can be used on the pages that you want syndicating.

You can now choose to add 3 different site maps and use siloing to help with the search engines. Redirects, customisable search boxes and pop ups are quick to add and I nearly forgot – you can have streaming audio and videos on your web pages.

There are so many new and improved features with XSitePro version 2 that it’s impossible to mention them all here. So I’m going to finish with my absolute favourite the Links Page Wizard. In the old version your links page was just a list of sites and descriptions, now you can do a lot more. You can customise the links pages to blend in with your site design, add your own text or ads to the pages and best of all split into categories and include a longer description and screenshot.

The screenshots get my vote – apart from it being more appealing to other webmasters to exchange links with you; every time those web pages are updated you get fresh content to help keep the search engines happy. Although this is my favourite feature it also holds the only downside that I’ve found so far. I wanted to add the XSitePro company website to my links pages but the software has problems with the screenshot for their site and it won’t view duh!

Is XSitePro Version 2 Worth The Asking Price?

For somebody who only wants one or two websites then I would say no. There are plenty of website designers including XSitePro users advertising on the Internet. Or there are lots of ready made free or paid for templates or free site building resources available on the Internet.

I believe that it is absolutely worth the full asking price if like myself you want to build multiple big websites with constant content updates, sales pages or smaller sites. Or if like me you wake up one morning and think that your site looks as messy as your hair and you want to change the design throughout as quick as it takes to get your hair restyled. It’s also easy to change your site design back when you realise that you should have woken up properly first with a cup of coffee!

I am having a lot of fun with XSitePro 2 and am finding using it refreshing after spending several months struggling to learn how to use the rather more expensive Memberspeed membership site software. It may not be fair to compare them as they have different functions, but although excellent in it’s own way I find Memberspeed hard to use and very time consuming and frustrating in comparison. Maybe that will be my next review.

What Upgrades Would I Like to See in the Future?

Although I got far more than I expected with the upgrade and am having a lot of fun using the software it does no harm to have a wish list. I think what would be the most useful is more interactivity with site visitors, perhaps the option of visitors being able to add comments. A shopping cart and a way to add members built into the software – now that would be the icing on the cake!

To see some sites built with XSitePro check out the Creative Writer and Make Money From Writing websites where you will find free writers tools worth over $3000. Or visit the UK Smart Guide

Bad Gift Ideas Or Are They?

Posted on by
Reply

It’s coming up to that time of year when we are all looking for Christmas gift ideas and it seems to get more difficult every year. I always try to find gifts that the recipient will like and use no matter what the occasion but we all end up with gifts that gather dust.

Carla, one of my friends recycles unwanted and unused gifts every year. That’s a good idea in this age of recycling, but she came a cropper last Christmas. The year before she received a large gift basket containing lotions and potions from a well-known beauty product chain. Carla put it in her gift recycle box because she is allergic to that particular brand, sneezes every time she uses the products. If it had been another brand she would have been delighted but there you go.

Last Christmas she was struggling to find the time to shop for gifts having just given birth to a little boy, so the gift recycle box came out. On Christmas day she prepared a festive dinner for ten and after they had eaten the gifts were presented. When Carla’s mother in law opened hers; instead of the expected smiling thank you Carla received a frosty look.

Feeling uncomfortable Carla said “I thought you would like it I know that you use that brand”. “Yes I do” replied her mother in law “So much that I gave the exact same basket as gifts to all of the women in the family last year, they were made up especially for me”. Carla now makes a note of who gave her the gifts in the gift recycle box and vows that she will never recycle to her mother in law again.

I have received some amusing gifts over the years, but not for the reason that you might think. One year my mother gave me a slimming recipe book and a big tin of chocolate biscuits – quite a contrast. Maybe with the slimming recipe book she was hinting and with the chocolate biscuits she decided to give me a treat before I had to suffer on a diet.

The chocolate biscuits went down well but the slimming recipe book is still on my shelves gathering dust. Not because I haven’t been on a diet since but because although the recipes look really tasty like many other slimmer’s recipes they are based on meals for 4 people and not for 1, which would be more useful to the many go it alone slimmers. I’ll always keep the recipe book because whenever I see it I smile so the gift does come in useful after all.

Last year on my birthday my 4 year old grandson gave me a set of plastic trowels for my garden. He chose the trowels, he was trying to be helpful bless him. I’d had problems with my garden fence getting knocked down or blown down in the wind for several years and I lost interest in gardening. The garden became very overgrown and had fascinated my grandson even as a baby – one look and he would stop crying.

What he didn’t know was that I had already arranged to fork out a king’s ransom for a much sturdier new fence, the weeds removing and for most of the garden to be pebbled over. Now there is a very tidy patch with a few flowers down the side of the garden path instead of the jungle that it was. When my grandson sees it his eyes light up, he believes that his gift of plastic trowels worked the magic and I’m not going to disappoint him and tell him any different.

A not very amusing gift came from my ex husband on our first wedding anniversary. There I was expecting a romantic surprise and when I excitedly tore the wrapping off the surprise was a chip pan. As I don’t like fried food I think that particular gift was for him not me. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but that wasn’t the way to my heart.

Looking back I think that my favourite and the most useful gift that I’ve ever received was a kimono. My brother and his wife brought it back from Hong Kong one Christmas and I’ve got to admit that I was disappointed at first. I had been hoping that my gift would be a duty free bottle of Pernod ungrateful beast that I am.

My kimono was tucked away unused for a couple of years and saw the light of day again when I was going on holiday to Paris. I realised that it was perfect for trips; it was light and didn’t take up much room in my suitcase – a necessity for me because I always take too much baggage. It was an attractive and comfortable way to protect my modesty and my husband thought it was sexy too!

That kimono lasted for years and was brought out whenever I went away on a trip and whenever I wanted something more attractive to wear than my old towelling dressing gown – if you know what I mean! So sometimes unwanted gifts can turn out to be extremely useful and enjoyable.

This year at least one person on my gift list is going to get a kimono and as my kimono has now worn out I’m going to treat myself to a new Oriental kimono and I’m sure that it will serve me just as well as the old one.

Britains Got Talent Final Week

Posted on by
Reply

1181642438m9159l1I was intending to write about the auditions weekly, but after the first week I found the rest of the auditions mainly disappointing. It was as if the fireworks that started the series off fizzled out. So I’m going to summarise the final week and make my predictions for the final.

Some acts were dire, such as the guy breaking wind and the fool hanging things from his ears, some stood out for me and they included dance groups Flawless and Diversity, the singer Susan Boyle and Saxophonist Julian Smith. Now we are at the end of the semi final week and the voting went mostly as I expected. The biggest drama was young Hollie Steel breaking down in tears on the stage, but she was given a second chance and came back and wowed everybody while winning herself a place in the final.

Apart from the saxophonist the finalists are all dance or singing acts, variety lost on the way to more popular forms of entertainment. Except for one act I think that the final will be spectacular. The line up is:

Aiden Davis – Dancer
Diversity – Street Dancers
Flawless – Street Dancers
Hollie Steel – Singer
Julian Smith – Saxophonist
Shaheen Jafargholi – Singer
Shaun Smith – Singer
Stavros Flatly – Comedy Dancers
Susan Boyle – Singer
Two Grand – Singers

Although Susan Boyle has been the favourite from week one and there has been a lot of publicity surrounding her I don’t necessarily think that she will win. She has an amazing voice but if I’m going to make any predictions I would base them on who I prefer and who I would pay to see. My top 3 are:

1. Flawless – Street Dancers
2. Diversity – Street Dancers
3. Julian Smith – Saxophonist

The one to watch out for in the future Shaun Smith – Singer
Funniest act of 2009 Stavros Flatly – Comedy Dancers

Yes I’ve totally missed out the youngsters and Susan Boyle. Good though they were they just weren’t my cup of tea.

Update – 2 out of 3 aint bad

What an amazing final, the best one so far. I enjoyed every minute of the show. There were so many memorable performances that until the winners Diversity appeared there were several acts who could have won. I put Diversity in second place behind Flawless before the final, and until then they were. Then they put together an astonishing routine and blew the rest of the competition out of the water.

Flawless were great, but when it came down to it Diversity were better on the night. I’m glad that it was one of the street dancing acts that won and that there are 11 happy winners rather than just one.

At least I got third place right. I’ve always had a soft spot for the saxophone and Julian Smith played it magnificently sending shivers down my spine. What a cool guy and what a great talent.

My fourth favourite was Shaun Smith. This guy has one of those voices that I could listen to all night. I said previously that he is the one to watch out for and I think that even more after his final performance. He is only 17, can sing really well and has the looks too. If he doesn’t get a record contract I will be very surprised.

I wonder what 2010 will bring along!

Thought of the Day

Posted on by
Reply

I saw some chickens on sale in the butcher part of a large food chain and on the label it said “suitable for vegetarians”.

Ok they might have been organically fed but when has chicken meat ever been suitable for vegetarians?

Maybe the chickens were made from soya beans! Or maybe the food chain are codding themselves and their customers.

Britains Got Talent But Not Always

Posted on by
Reply

1181642438m9159l1

I’m not a fan of reality shows like Big Brother but I enjoy watching Britain’s Got Talent. On Saturday the 2009 series kicked off to a great start and I’m looking forward to watching it unfold in the coming weeks.

It’s good for the soul to see somebody coming out of nowhere and doing well, but not all of the competitors are good. Some are downright embarrassing, like the 60 year old who wanted to be a professional dancer. He just stood and swayed while waving his arms in the air. If it wasn’t for the audiences amusing reaction it would have been awfully boring.

However, I’m going to look at the positives and the acts who shone for me. My favourite was Flawless a dance act from North London. They were absolutely superb, very different and the best dance act that I’ve seen in a long time. You can see for yourself if you look on Youtube.

Another act that turned out to be amazing was Susan Boyle. Who would have thought when she entered the stage that she could sing so well. A dowdy middle aged Scottish lass who looked more like a school dinner lady than a world class singer. The audience and panel were laughing at her, but blimey she showed them!

I wasn’t too sure about  Stavros Flatley Dancers at first. The father and son dance act were a total surprise and very funny if you could ignore their stomachs and man boobs jiggling about. The expressions on the 12 year olds face were hilarious and his father wasn’t so far behind. One of the most entertaining acts that I’ve seen and almost as entertaining as Signature who came second in the competition last year.

I would have liked to include videos of the acts from this year that I’ve mentioned, but they are unavailable at present. Instead I’ve treated you to a couple of videos of Signature who were my favourite last year.

Eastenders Misery And Gloom

Posted on by
Reply

1181642438m9159lI’ve watched Eastenders regularly ever since it first appeared on UK screens on February 19th 1985 and it’s one of those programmes that I watch despite being fed up with the misery and gloom generally seen on there.

I was really cheesed off last week when they killed off Danielle just as Ronnie realised that she was Danielle’s birthmother. This was after 7 months of will she or won’t she tell Ronnie. At times Ronnie was downright nasty to her unknown daughter and I thought ‘if only you knew’.  Danielle’s character gradually turned into a whining annoying teenager who needed putting out of her misery, but not by a car.

What I would have liked to see was Danielle telling Ronnie months earlier and the building up of a relationship between new found mother and daughter. It happens in the real world and is a more likely scenario than the high drama of Danielle’s death.

Now we are left with Ronnie who suffered with loss and guilt for years after her father made her give up Danielle and being told by her evil father Archie that she was dead, now having to come to terms with the loss a second time. Not to mention what she will feel about helping her unknown daughter abort her grandchild.

That’s a whole lot of misery for us to watch, but soap writers do not like to give us any happy ever after storylines. They keep the viewing figures up with high drama, disasters and misery. You can’t have a soap birth or wedding without something going wrong and Peggy’s wedding went so wrong it was unbelievable and didn’t mirror true life.

At least we were all able to enjoy manipulater Archie’s comeuppance. He was one mean piece of work, but then so is his missus Peggy so perhaps they deserved each other. Archies manipulations were so obvious to all of us who viewed the programme, yet Peggy and all of those around her except for Pat only noticed at the last minute.

Asking her son Phil to kill her new husband was pure evil and taking Peggy’s character to an all time low. Would anybody right in their head ask their child to murder from them and then turn against them when they don’t. No way, but Phil doesn’t get my sympathy.

Heck he’s been at mummy’s beck and call for too long, he needs to cut those apron strings and concentrate on his cute son Ben not his mother. The attempts at making him look menacing when threatening Archie after kidnapping him just didn’t work for me. Now we hear that the alchoholic in him is going to come out again, poor Ben he doesn’t deserve such horrible relatives.

Then we’ve had the Branning marriage break up and Lauren trying to kill her father. It looks like that horrible slimey Max is going to worm his way back into Tanyas bed – a disaster waiting to happen!

Pretty Whitney is going through the aftermath of being abused and Ricky gets verbally abused by his ex Bianca despite helping her with her family.

Eastenders writers – please give us some happy storylines that reflect real life and more humour, give us more normal families. If it wasn’t for the Masoods, Mo Harris, Jane Beale and her brother Christian the programme would be totally miserable and not worth watching.