David Wright's Blog - Entertainment

Free music via Spotify

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:00:00 +0100

In case you didn't know Spotify is a free online music library which streams live to you computer or now Android based mobile phones and the IPhone. It has quite a wide range of music from old to new and many types from folk music, country music to heavy metal, doom metal and industrial and electro to name some.

I heard about Spotify quite a long time ago by general web browsing and I heard it mentioned on the Gadget Show, the one where they were doing a Twitter Vs Facebook get together thing. I have just recently decided to give it ago as I was skeptical about it...and thought it wouldn't work on Linux as well as not cater for my (ahem) music tastes.

However I read the Spotify FAQ pages and was quite pleasantly suprised. The FAQ pages said that it will work on Linux but via WINE, which isn't too bad. Would love to see a native Linux version though.

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Being Human, no not me but the brilliant tv show on BBC3

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 11:05:28 +0000

Make Human from the BBC.

From left to right; George, Annie and Mitchell

I just wanted to quickly write about the brilliant program Being Human on BBC 3 on Sundays at 9pm. I can't believe I have not come across anybody who has been watching it. So far it has been quite a roller coaster of a ride. It's a mix of drama and comedy and is bloody fantastic.

In case you are not aware Being Human, created by Toby Whithouse, is about a werewolf, vampire, and a ghost (George, Mitchell and Annie) sharing a house in Bristol. In it's basic form it is about 3 characters who are having to come to terms with what they are and struggling to live normal as lives as they can.

It might sound a bit weird when trying to describe it. Luckily it's not a British version Angel or Buffy, like that awful program on ITV where they have Philip Glenister in a stupid role. Being Human is almost Underworld like with it's vampires vs werewolves theme but that's where the comparison stops. For a start the vampires can walk around during the day and are in quite responsible roles, such as the police and the funeral parlour acting as a front for vampire meetings. George and Mitchell both work as porters in a local hospital. It is typically British and quite stylised.

In fact the only thing the overall story reminds me of is I Am Legend, the book not the film, where the humans are wiped out and replaced with vampires instead. But overall the theme is about the three main characters trying to deal with their 'curses' in their daily lives. It has it's laugh out loud moments, heroic moments where you are urging the characters on and it also has its quite dark moments.

Check out Being Human on BBC, it is really good and a second series has been finalised.

Eve Online Running in Linux With Compiz Enabled

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:12:49 +0000

Eve Online so far has been quite an amazing experience and no major crashes using Linux. Also as a test I enabled Compiz and there were no problems. Compiz basically enabled 3D effects on your desktop. For instance windows explode when closed or wobble when moved. All pure eye candy but still good to show off.

I had Eve running for 4 hours non stop. Eve Online is also very good for making nice wallpaper. Something I don't normally do. So I thought I'd share the results.

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Glest - Review of free 3D real time strategy game

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:46:00 +0100

Glest Intro Screen

I have just recently started playing a game called Glest. I was aware of it some time ago but couldn't get it working on my Linux Desktop at the time (I now use Fedora 7). But one day I tapped in yum install glest and there it was. So looks like it is being actively built for various Linux distributions, which is nice! It is also available on Windows but I have not seen an OS X version.

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UFO:AI SDL_ttf Fedora Core 6 64bit Problems

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 23:56:26 +0100

I thought I should make a note of a problem I had running UFO:AI 32bit on Fedora Core 6 64bit edition. Hopefully this may help others.

I couldn't find any specific version of UFO:AI for FC6 so I grabbed the binary avsilable on sourceforge onthe UFO:AI downloads page. After extracting the archive and running ufoai I kept getting a error complaining that UFO:AI requires SDL_ttf. When checking it appears it was installed but after some poking around not the i386 version which for some reason didn't get installed. The only way I could find to install it was to get it straight from Fedora extras download. After installing this UFO:AI ran perfectly

Some more games

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 12:00:00 +0100

AstroMenace Screenshot

Whilst I was looking at those other games I came across a game which I bookmarked before called AstroMenace from an independant games company in the Ukraine called ViewWizard Games but just found out there is a free version for Linux. I played this for a good couple of hours and was really hooked. The screenshot doesn't do it justice.

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Play some of the best free games available

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 18:00:00 +0100

I have been looking at some great new free software (games) recently. These have been around for quite some time now but have really matured to really show off the worth of free software. So in an attempt to get more people playing and/or contributing here is what I have been looking at:

World of Padman

Alien Arena

UFO:Alien Invasion

Danger from the Deep

This is not an exhaustive list by all means but these are ones I have looked at recently that have grabbed my attention for more than 5 minutes.

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Neighbours to be removed from BBC

nospam@example.com (Dave) — Fri, 18 May 2007 13:59:56 +0100

It appears the BBC has finally come to their senses and decided not to renew their contract to air Neighbours

All I can say is it's about bloody time. Can we have Rolf's Cartoon Club back and the half hour cartoon slot before the 6 o'clock news?