Flickr

Coming back from an awesome road trip vacation in America is always hard. Why does everything here in England now seem so .. crap and expensive!? And how come people seem rude and foul mouthed too? Hmm weird...

Anyhow, I've signed up with Flickr and I'm editing many of my road trip snaps and uploading them for all to see. I love photography and the keen amateur in me is making full use of this excellent website. I just wish my upload speeds where faster!

I'll still be using my web gallery at Apple's MobileMe, so now I am able to pollute two areas on the web all at the same time! lol. Please check me out @ Flickr and MobileMe. Also, I shall be blogging the entire month-long trip at my TravelCrypt website but this will take me AGES due to having other commitments. So keep yer eyes peeled on it!

For all those worried about the future of my Mac/fps/mods website, AppleCrypt Mods. Please don't be! It's not dead and I still have plans for future updates. Please remember that I'm a family man now (with another baby on the way!) so my Mac time is now sadly limited. But updates will come, again, keep yer eyes peeled on this site also!

For what it's worth, all my sites support RSS, making them easy for anyone to follow without having to manually check them out yourself. Go grab a copy of the freeware program 'NetNewsWire' and you'll soon see the benefits of RSS feeds :-)

I'm back !

Miss me? Whattya mean you didn't even know I was away? Sheesh.... Okay never mind then! (sob) Well, we're back from our month-long road trip vacation in mighty Texas.

We've had a fantastic time and got to see many awesome places and meet lots of nice people also. I'll give a run down of our ventures from my travel blog (link here) but don't expect this just yet as I've a zillion things to catch up on first!

Burger tip..

if you're in western Texas and you passing Langtry then you must visit the Langtry Depo. Quite literally the best-ever burgers plus you have a great view of the Rio Grande, Judge Roy Bean and some of the coolest ghost town builders ever! Okay, I'm odd..

Atlanta

Any NASCAR fans here?

Jeff Gordon to win at Atlanta today!

Here is a couple of cool RSS feeds:

feed #1

feed #2

And here's the 2009 Sprint Cup Series schedule <click me!>

Battlefields

This post is to simply let all the fans of Battlefield 1942, and all visitors to AppleCrypt Mods, that I'm about to post a wonderful (and very large) addition to our archive.

Get ready for the ultimate collection of every single player / coop map for Battlefield 1942 that has ever been made!!

We're talking around 2.3GB and I'm 99.9% positive that I've collected everything that's ever been released. That's everything, ever! From day one of the games release too today, Sunday February 22nd 2009. This is a fine collection indeed, an ultimate collection for one of the best Mac games.

I've uploaded all the files to our ftp server, which are split RAR's.  So grab yourself a copy of a freeware program like UnRARx or Stuffit Expander from MacUpdate.com). However, I'm juggling my limited time here, amongst working on the web page, doing housework and entertaining our baby girl!

So give me a few more hours to update AppleCrypt Mods with the new details! :-)

Virus worries ?

Okay, there seems to be a few Mac owners that are worrying themselves silly about trojans, worms and other virus infections.

The answer is don't.

Simply make sure you have your in-built firewall turned on along with the firewall that's configurable within your router's settings. That's the main done already!

Secondly, always make sure you run Apple's Software Update as often as possible. This can be set to run automatically at regular intervals.

Next, stay clear of dodgy websites like Pirate Bay and many others. If you want something - save up and buy it!  (or google for a freeware alternative).

Why take the chance that your stolen download, from a torrent server or other file sharing website, is the legit thing? The recent issues with people ripping off Apple's excellent iWork is proof of this but the sad thing is that it's such an affordable purchase! Hardly M$ Office or Photoshop and there are even FREE alternatives like Open Office.. No excuses!

In fact, never install something that you didn't personally download yourself from a legit site like MacUpdate.com or direct from the author's website!

It's all about common sense folks. You've already made the right choice by not buying a Windows based PC so why risk deliberately infecting your Mac?

IF you must install virus protection software then I'd personally advice that you do not consider Norton AntiVirus. It'll do a great job of slowing down your Mac and others have complained about conflicts and crashes. Intego's VirusBarrier is a better choice BUT even this slows down your Mac.

Interestingly, I scanned my hard drives recently and we're talking around 2 million files spread over 3TB's of disk space dating back from 2003.  Zero viruses found! Think about it...

However, I do recommend you try out the freeware program ClamAV as it's a cool little app that doesn't slow down your computer too much. Though please make sure that you read all the information associated with it first.

I have ClamAV installed now...

...of course, it also has found zero viruses! ;-)

Bottom line, if you're gonna be an idiot and download illegal software or visit dodgy porn sites then what do you expect is gonna happen to your lovely Apple Mac? Happy computing!

Trailer Park Boys

I've recently discovered this incredible new show on Paramount Comedy channel.

It's Canadian and based at a fictiona trailer park in Nova Scotia. It's kinda reminding me of the awesome show My Name is Earl but with the extra zaniness of an English made sitcom. This is a great show!

Apparently, it's been running since 2001 and the final season was made about a year ago. But, that's UK television for you. Late, as always!

Of course, someone will tell me it's been running for years on another channel... So I shall get out from this box and say a big thank you to the Paramount channel for airing this show. Also, I have set my cable box to record every episode! :-)

For more information, see the official homepage and click onto channel 132 if you're also on Virgin Media's cable.

Glest

Here's a great game that's recently been updated, it's called Glest and it's a wonderful 3D RTS game - that's totally FREE!

There, I knew the word 'free' would get your attention!

Play against your fellow Mac gamers online or in a single player that is similar to Myth or Dungeon Siege.

You can take full control of either two factions; tech which are mainly warriors and mechanical devices or magic which are mages able to summon up other creatures.

The graphics are lovely and Glest plays quite similar to many other RTS favorites, like the Warcraft series for example.  However, it's quite sad that I am really bad at this game - lol - but I still loved it! For more info, click here for the Glest homepage.

For the Macintosh download - click here!

For information on other excellent games that are also free, please visit my website AppleCrypt Mods :-)

Hard Drives

A quick question for the hardware techies out there!

I've got an old Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 from 2003 with a couple of internal SATA drives. Now, we're coming up to 6 years old here and I'm getting a little worried about these dying on me!

I'm seeing many different hard drives at places like Amazon and they're usually SATA2 versions. A little googling tells me I can use these inside my G5 but, is this true?

Is this a simple case of ripping out the old and slapping in the new using the current connections?

See, simple question! Thanks in advance :)

AppleCrypt Mods

I'm making this quick post for three real old games, Carmageddon, Duke Nukem 3D and Wolfenstein 3D.  Yep, that's right, AppleCrypt Mods even has mods and single player maps for these dinosaurs.  Actually, I take that back as these are three Mac classics!

Okay, this is a big mixture of stuff. Firstly, with Carmageddon you can expect various mods such as new cars, naughty billboards, power-ups, Spice Girls, Splat Pack enablers, Mac utilities and more!

Duke Nukem comes with some nifty Mac utilities, a couple of mods and a couple of total conversions too. I'm sure Duke fans will love this collection so much!

Finally, Wolfenstein 3D has many Mac utilities and lots & lots of single player maps for you to enjoy! I spent months making this collection, okay it's years old now but there's some awesome maps here folks!

Now dig out those old Macs and enjoy these golden oldies :-)  Here are the links :

Carmageddon | Duke Nukem 3D | Wolfenstein 3D

Remember, tell everyone with a Apple Mac and a love of fps gaming about AppleCrypt Mods!

Super Bowl XLIII

Must admit to being new to American football, but I've been watching our recording of yesterdays Super Bowl and I loved it! I still prefer Baseball and Nascar over the NFL but it's a start. Why are American sports so great? So much atmosphere and action - MORE! MORE !

The making of Doom !

I have just seen this RSS posting from Inside Mac Games about an article first released back in 1984. A behind the scenes look at the ID world and wondrous games we've played.  It's an enjoyable and historic read for all ID / Wolfenstein / Doom fans from the era!  [IMG]  [GAMASUTRA]

Question of the day!

Am I the only one here with Doom for the Atari Jaguar? :D

Zombies !

Being the biggest fan of zombie movies (and the games) for far too many years now, I was glad to find my Christmas presents hiding in the TV cupboard earlier today!  Four classics: Diary Of The Dead, The Zombie Diaries, Zombie Honeymoon and Zombie Strippers.  Ohhh yeah!!

Yep, they've been in here since Christmas day and I'd forgotten all about them..  So I think it's time to watch one today?  I've already enjoyed the Resident Evil Trilogy (brilliant!!) and now I've got four more to go.  What a darn good find  :D

A-Team !

Because I live on another planet, I've missed out on a wondrous fact - there's going to be a remake of the A-Team!!  My God this could be awesome or it could be terrible..

The A-Team was (is!) an awesome tv show. It had it all; action, guns, adventure, humor, characters, cars, explosions and more.  This was the perfect show - for the boys!   I think Mr. T would still make a great B.A. Baracus, even today, but as an alternative how about Ving Rhames?  Definitely a great choice imho.  I hope this does work, I'd hate my childhood memories ruined by a crappy remake!

Memories? What am I talking about, I've got every episode on DVD :-)

iLife '09

Ignoring the snoozefest that was Macworld '09 I was personally happy to see the new iLife details. For me, only iMovie and iWeb hold any interest. I'd normally include iPhoto too, but I've upgraded to the awesome Aperture 2. So I don't care!

iMovie is a great application to break into humble video editing, I've learned and gained confidence with last years version. I'm happy to see improvements like precision editing, smoothing a shaky frames, maps, themes and better drag & drop. Not forgetting animated titles, new transitions, and cinema-quality video effects. OMG I cannot wait to install this!

iWeb drives my two websites, AppleCrypt and the new TravelCrypt. Nice names, eh?  Apple appears to have added lots of sharing type content with support of RSS, YouTube, iSight and Facebook. Due to having a real life I don't really take any interest in YouTube, but I might actually log back into my old Facebook account as this could come in handy. I'm going to be very interested in what other features and improvements Apple have incorporated into iWeb, this is a great program that I use almost daily.

IS82.com

Anyone care to join me in a crazy game of Interstate Racing sometime? (aka IS82)

It's a Battlefield 1942 total conversion mod that completely and utterly changes the game into a mad, zany multiplay driving game. There's often little racing, just people messing about doing stunts and wacko driving tactics. As you can see from my screen shot - a fantastic laugh!

FWIW. I'll have IS82 for download at AppleCrypt Mods this coming weekend. It will be latest release plus lots of extra maps thrown in for good measure! If you cannot wait, check out IS82 now..

Lights Camera Action

We've just become the proud owners of a new camcorder, well, it's our first actually. It's a JVC GZ-MS100 model with SD ram cards rather than tapes, drives, discs or whatever. It's light, small and the battery lasts forever. Even better, we're getting "DVD" quality at 720x576. Sweet!

Hardly "HD", I know.. But my olde Power Mac G5 cannot supposedly handle the codec, due to being a PPC model rather than a spanky new Intel Mac (thanks Apple!).  Not bothered too much, probably couldn't afford an HD camcorder anyhow lol

The main purpose for it is recording our daughter as she grows up plus also our travels around the globe. Should come in handy for our American road trip later in the year.  Talking of road trips, check out my new travel blog - The TravelCrypt (nice name) ;-)

Happy New Year

Found this great image on the web! lol

Anyhow, happy new year for 2009 everyone !!!!!

Merry Christmas !!

I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very

Merry Christmas !!

funny face

I thought I would share this incredibly funny picture of our daughter, taken a good few months back.  I cannot believe she posed so well making this one of the best images! imho, of course ;-)

Duff Beer

I have to make this post! I've been meaning to for months but never seem to get around to it. Basically, a big thank you to the people behind Miller for finally bringing a twist-off cap beer to England. Sure, it's been out since around spring iirc but I finally found the time!

Why more companies don't do this is beyond me. Our times spent in North America where an eye opener as everything was twist-off. It's so much better, so my question is this: does anyone know of other beers in England with twist-off caps? :-)

A new BF1942 mod with Mac support!

Hey folks, here is a link to a new modification for Battlefield 1942. I'll no doubt want to mirror this at some point in the near future but, for once, there's not really much point.  The guys behind this great mod seem to fully support our Mac. They have Mac-specific client downloads from his site.

I'm always impressed when this happens. Perhaps because it happens so infrequent? My thanks to Bumble Bee & Co.

Urban Desert Combat needs the latest release of BF1942 to work. It requires that you've also got the classic mod 'Desert Combat' installed too. (and i think 'Desert Combat Final' too, although I've yet to verify this).

I'd like to thank Gumby for alerting me to news of this new mod. Click here for the Urban DC website and downloads. Enjoy modded BF1942 :-)

Winter's come early!

Today didn't start very well at all. Woke up a little earlier than usual as I knew the weather was going to be pretty bad. Shocked to see it had snowed throughout the night (it never usually snows in this part of England!). Cleared off the car and set off for another dreary day in work.

I never made it - spent a couple of hours going nowhere before turning around to come back home and even that took almost an hour! Yep, good 'ol merry England proves itself once more by grinding to a halt simply because of slippy roads (lots of accidents on various motorways).

One question - why didn't the local councils grit the roads over night? Scotland never fails and England never learns!!

So I came home after nearly 3 hours of idling in only the next town.  But still, every cloud has a silver lining and our dog was more than happy to find my coming home early. We went out for a walk in the snow - I love winter!  The picture, above, makes me laugh. Those poor little ducks seem to have lost their pond.

Tomorrow I think I'll get up even earlier...

all your favorite TV shows

Firstly, sorry all, as I should have given this a mention this in yesterdays blog entry.  If you're not living in the UK then this Mac wonder is perfect for something like the IT Crowd.  It's called 'TVShows' and enables you to download torrents of all your favorite...err...TV shows.  As and when they are broadcast - it's all automatically done for you in the background.

So load it up and search for, say, 'crowd' and up pops yesterdays mentioned tv show. Or just manually scroll down a huge listing of available shows...  Now click on subscribe and you'll get the latest episode the moment it's available!  Please note that 'TVShows' is not a torrent application, so you'll need something like Vuze or Transmission.

Of course, this works both ways, if you're in the UK and don't want to wait for Virgin, Sky or the BBC to show your favorite American tv show then this is life saver yet again. Go grab yourself the latest Dexter, Psych, Reaper, Chuck, Fear Itself, Bones, Fringe, etc, etc, etc!!

We have our MacBook connected to our TV via HDMI and the picture quality is awesome. Many episodes are HD anyhow but even the SD ones look great. I think it's advisable to grab a copy of VLC from MacUpdate as the playback is often better than the Quicktime player, especially for HD. (YMMV)

To download yourself copies of 'Vuze', 'Transmission', 'VLC' and of course 'TVShows'  simply use the search bar at MacUpdate :-)

OMG it's like being back at work!

Looks like season 3 of the IT Crowd starts this coming Friday!   ( homepage )

Weekend breaks in the sun

I thought I would share a gorgous picture from our latest weekend away in the English Lake District.  This was a short break to celebrate my parents wedding anniversary and we all had a blast. Great laugh.  Instead of the usual mountainous photo I thought I'd be nice to have a change and show a nice, lovely image of the valley near to Force Crag.  This was also one of the rare moments that the sun came out!

IN HELL finally arrives !

WOOOOO !!!

Today I finally manage to complete the Doom 3 maps collection.  At last I got around to uploading In Hell and the download links are listed  in the maps blog entry (along with everything else from A-Z).  Family life & ISP troubles have got in the way, but it's here to play! Hope you all enjoy every Doom3 A-Z map :)

http://applecryptmods.co.uk

Babes, Fights, Zombies and then a movie!

My first posting for a long while - I'm impressed I could stay clear of blogging for so long! ;)

We've recently watched the latest Resident Evil flick. I completely love the games and I've had this DVD here for far too long.  Finally, we got to watch it last night and I was hoping it was going to be every bit as good as the second movie. Thankfully, we was definitely not disappointed!

What a fantastic, fast action paced, sci-fi, gore-fest this was! The action was intense all the way through with some amazing special effects thrown in for good measure. Never a dull moment and we'd both recommend watching RE3.

If I had to be picky then I'd have wanted more from Claire Redfield, she was a big name in the games of course but (as a gamer) I felt a little let down by her position in the film.  Also, the movie's ending could have been... well... a little longer.  After all the amazing stunts and sexy fight scenes throughout the entire film, the ending was a little weak.

Well, nothing is perfect. Right? I'm looking forward to the next Resi flick along with the next Milla Jovovich project too. (I'm in the mood to re-watch the Ultraviolet and Fifth Element again!!)

AppleCrypt Mods vote !

I decided to make my first poll for my website 'AppleCrypt Mods'. Due to the ongoing upgrade from dotMac to MobileMe, I still cannot update the actual content. So, I thought I'd create this little poll while I was bored..

Is AppleCrypt Mods a site that you use a lot? We're feeling a little bit lonely and wonder just how many people bookmarked us and visit regular. It sometimes seems Mac gaming is dying a slow death, which is very backward considering how many Macs are being sold compared to recent years!

So are there many players out there modding their favourite fps game???

Leave your comments too ! :-)

Feeling lonely How often do you visit AppleCrypt Mods hourly daily every other day weekly monthly whenever i remember! i hardly ever visit here... never, this is my first & only visit i hate AppleCrypt Mods i've no interest in this site. How did I get here? lol View Result free web polls

.Mac finally gone. . .

The transition took a little longer than we all expected ;-)  But .Mac disappears forever from my computer today.  I hate the 'MobileMe' name as it's crap, but lets hope it works as good as the service it replaces.  Well, now I've got 20GB to play with, I just hope they make it a little faster and more responsive.  This was my only gripe with .Mac overall.

Goodbye forever .Mac !

R.I.P. .Mac

This week sadly sees the end of the troubled .Mac service that Apple's been providing since the days of iTools. It's had it's problems along the way and many have complained about speeds issues or the subscription fee. But i've always loved .Mac and it's been a fantastic service to me.

There's more to the new .me (urgh i hate that name!) than meets the eye. It's .Mac on steroids and comes with a whole host of cool features while still retaining the current ones.

Well, most anyhow. There's a few features that will be missing such as iCards & Web Bookmarks. I really cannot understand Apple sometimes..

I'm looking forward to trying out the new features, especially when I get an iPhone (maybe next year sometime). Until then I cannot forgive Apple for loosing the web bookmarks that's been incredibly useful over the years!

At least I'll keep my " .mac " email address ! haha

(oh, the image above is done using this website!)

Blizzard's pure Mac dedication

A few days ago I decided that I wanted to make a simple 'thank you' blog posting to one of the finest examples of a dedicated gaming company. One that supports the Mac platform as good as you could ever desire.

A company that makes their own original games and continues to support them with various future updates many years down the line. Always making sure that their collection is compatible with the latest Macs and always making sure bug fixes are dealt with. This alone makes the Blizzard team unique.

Not many companies make games for the Mac, especially original games rather than conversions of Windows titles.  Please note, that is no dig at the amazing 'Aspyr' who convert some of the best games for us to play. I humbly want to pay my respects to Blizzard for their amazing Mac dedication that's seen so little today compared to previous years in Mac gaming.

I checked out their web site the other night to see the upcoming Diablo 3. It looks incredible! Guess what, it comes out the same time as the Windows release. Amazing, I cannot wait to play this game!!

Happy Fourth of July !

Another celebration day all within the same week! This time it's America's Independence Day. So a very happy Fourth of July to you all!!

Happy Canada Day !!

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all Canadians a very jolly & happy Canada Day for July 1st.