Paid for the Internet Channel? Time to collect a free NES game…

If you were like me, and didn’t get in on the Wii phenomenon early enough to get the Opera-based Internet Channel download for free, Nintendo would like to make it up to you.

Starting now, and running until the end of the year, you can visit the Wii Shop Channel, download a quick update, and click to download any one 500 point NES Virtual Console game.

The Internet Channel is a free download again (and was recently updated with slightly better Flash support… sorta) so download or update that if you haven’t already done so since September 1st of this year.

(PS:  I downloaded StarTropics for free last night.  Never played it all the way through when I was a kid, although my sort-of-brother Chris and I logged several hours on his copy.)

“Gattaca” (1997) — Watch it on Hulu (UPDATE: NOT ANY MORE!!)

Easily my favorite movie of all time.  Gattaca is a disquieting peek at the world around the corner, a touching underdog story, a taut mystery thriller, and just a beautiful film to experience.

The cinematography, the score, the understated sets and costumes, the (mostly) well-crafted characters… I never fail to be amazed and moved when I watch this — even though I see it at least three times a year with my biology students.

And now you can experience it (or RE-experience it) for free at Hulu.com.  Here’s the link. Click and watch now.  Feel free to thank me later.

(EDIT:  They took it down.  Hulu giveth, Hulu taketh away…)

(See how many “science fiction” bits from this film are now “science fact.”  Scary.)

Did McAfee expire on you too? I have good news…

For those of you who, like me, received your laptop about one year ago, you may have noticed that your McAfee antivirus/security center subscription has now expired. That means no more updates to the virus database (and frequent, ANNOYING reminders of this from the program itself) unless you pony up the cash to resubscribe.

HOWEVER, there is a better (read: “cheaper”) way.

You can do like I did and uninstall McAfee entirely, and replace it with a good FREE antivirus program, like PC Tools Antivirus.

Here’s how you do it:  First, download the official McAfee program uninstaller.  (Click HERE.) Double-click to run it.  WARNING: this will entirely remove your McAfee protection and leave you exposed to viruses until you activate a new virus program.  Don’t choose NOW to go surfing. Reboot when you are prompted to do so.

At this point, Windows will probably tell you that you aren’t protected because you MAY not have antivirus software installed.

Next, download your free program of choice.  I recommend PC Tools Antivirus, as it runs well on my system, and takes up very few resources… in essence, it runs faster and slimmer than McAfee EVER did, and slows things down a lot less.  Click HERE to download it. Double click the installer once it finishes downloading, and follow the easy prompts it gives you to install it.

Protection begins immediately.  I recommend hitting the SCAN NOW button when you see it pop up.

Now you’re all set!  Happy safe surfing!

Many thanks to the How-To Geek.  Here is his article on PC Tools Antivirus. He also recently profiled several other FREE security software packages, so you can find one that suits you.

Texas residents: Got Radon? Want to find out for FREE?

Thanks to fellow ASSIST-er Staci Hutto for the heads-up on this.  (I owe you a Coke.)

A company in Carrollton, Texas is offering a FREE radon test kit (one per household) to Texas residents.  It’s a little unclear who’s paying for all this, but I believe it’s partially funded by an EPA grant.

Click HERE to order your free radon test kit.

Firefox 3 is here!!

Click the big red button up there, already!

“The Seven Plastics Thing”

Here it is.  It’s a Publisher 2007 file.  Have fun, kids.

Click HERE to download the thing.

Magic Pen (or Crayon Physics 2: Electric Boogaloo)

It’s been nearly a year since Finnish casual games student/genius Petri Purho brought the amazingly simple experimental game Crayon Physics to the world, and ever since then we’ve been hungry for more.  He reportedly has been working on a more highly-polished version called Crayon Physics Deluxe (see my previous post for more info and video,) but apparently one gentleman (programmer Alejandro Guillen) got a little tired of waiting…

His take on the concept is a little flash game called Magic Pen.  It features roughly the same type of gameplay (as well as some of the levels lifted directly from Purho’s game,) with a more highly-polished interface, and some of the ideas last spotted in the C.P.D. video brought to fruition (pivots, other shapes, etc.) through over two dozen levels.

It’s unclear what the intellectual property ramifications are of these two very similar games being brought into existence.  I’m still looking forward to C.P.D., and I hope that our Finnish friend delivers on it SOON.  In the meantime, I can’t wait to really dig into this game.  My wife already has like a 10-level headstart…

Click HERE to play.

*Many thanks go out to the lovely and talented Juannah who brought this to my attention.  She has a great blog, which YOU should go check out.

It’s pronounced “ooo – booon – tooo”

I like Ubuntu. And if you knew more about it, you would too.

So, what the heck is it? Simply put, Ubuntu is the easiest way to get a stable, high-quality, low-maintenance computer operating system (you’re probably using Windows right now,) as well as HUNDREDS of self-installing, high-quality programs (for just about ANYTHING you could ever want or need to use them for,) for ab-so-lute-ly FREE.

Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Free.

Conventional wisdom probably kicks in for many of you at this point. “You get what you pay for,” you say. (Also, “the Earth is round.”)

Not true, friends. Thanks to the innovative concept called OPEN SOURCE (read more about it HERE, or watch a 1.5-hour documentary on it HERE), you can have (dare I say it?) better-quality, faster-running software than anything that Microsoft puts out, and it won’t cost you a penny.

I’ve been running Ubuntu version 7.10 since about August on my Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop. I installed it to where I can choose whether I want to run it or Windows Vista when I start up my machine. (Sadly, there are still a few programs tied to Windows that I need to use… the list is beginning to dwindle, though.) It took me a couple of hours to get it all set up, and a few weeks to work out some of the bugs I was noticing.

Since then, some geniuses found a way to install Ubuntu from within Windows. It’s called “Wubi.” (How can you go wrong with a name like that?) I haven’t tried to do it this way, but it seems pretty fool-proof. CLICK HERE to read more about “Wubi.” If you don’t like it, you can uninstall it like any other Windows-compatible product.

Also, you can try Ubuntu without installing ANYTHING on your computer. It’s called a “Live CD.” You just download a (big) file — about 700 MB — follow the instructions to burn it to a CD, then restart your machine with the CD in your drive. Wait a few minutes, and BAM, you’re test-running Ubuntu… no risk, no fuss. You decide you like it, you follow the instructions it gives you and install it.

Oh, the FREE programs. Gosh, this is so easy it should be criminal…

Let’s say you want an educational program. You click the “Applications” button (like a Start button in Windows,) click “Add/Remove Programs,” and you’ll see THIS:

Then, you can click a category on the left to browse a MASSIVE free software catalog (or simply do a search at the top for a keyword — “math” or “astronomy” for instance), put a check in a box by the ones you like, click OK, type in your password, and Ubuntu does the rest: it installs, confgures, and adds links to the programs you want in a matter of minutes. Uninstallation is just as painless — just uncheck the boxes by the programs you no longer want or need.

Office software? Yep. Compatible with ALL your Microsoft Office file formats. And did I mention that Ubuntu (version 7.10 and up) can read and write to your existing Windows (NTFS) hard disk?

And, if you CAN’T find the program you want or need in their built-in catalog, Ubuntu comes with a “package manager” program that can go out and find EVEN MORE repositories of free, compatible, software.

If you decide to give Ubuntu a try, there are LOTS of places on the Net, full of friendly folks eager to help you. These are some that I frequently enjoy reading, and have helped me solve several problems:

• Ubuntu 1501 — A blog about running Ubuntu on (gasp!) a Dell Inspiron 1501… just like yours and mine. (He told me how to fix a slow-startup bug I couldn’t figure out.)
• The How-To-Geek — This guy answers questions you never knew you had about Ubuntu, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Microsoft Office, Mozilla Firefox… and even those poor lost souls out there using Apple computers. (shudder)
• Ubuntu Web Forums — If it’s out there, and it’s Ubuntu, somebody wrote a post about it here.
• Ars Technica — A great site for news and information about a variety of techy, geeky things, from video games to viral genomes. (It was THIS POST (click) that I read there which convinced me to give Ubuntu a shot.)

Seriously, you owe it to yourself to give Ubuntu a try. Here’s the link again on how to get it. Just make sure you DO. Get it, that is. Really, what’s stopping you?

EDIT: I have been amiss in not mentioning that the seeds of the digital rebellion were planted by my Brother-In-Law, Tyler K. Thanks man.

Download video from YouTube, Google Video, etc…. for free.

Howdy folks out there in the REAL world!

During my week-long flu hiatus (currently being followed by my weekend-long nursing-of-the-rest-of-the-family-back-to-health,) I watched a loooooot of internet video.

Since YouTube is blocked by my school’s content filter, my students don’t get a chance to see the occasional worthwhile video that I find there (yes, there ARE a few… the video projects of Johnny Lee, for example (click).) I wished there was some way that I could SAVE certain videos to my laptop, so I could show my kids firsthand.

There is. Just go HERE (click).

Click the Download button to install the program. It will ask you if you also want to install their FLV Player… I would suggest you answer YES. (FLV = Flash Video, the format you find on most click and watch websites.)

There’s a tutorial that tells you all about how to use the program HERE (click), but let me save you some time:

1. Find a video on YouTube that you want to download. Click the address bar in your internet browser, then right click it and pick “copy” or just press Ctrl-C.

2. Open the program by clicking the “Moyea FLV Downloader” button that gets put on your desktop and/or in your Start Menu.

3. Click the “Show Browser” button at the bottom left.

4. When the new window pops up, right click in the empty bar on top and pick “paste” or just hit Ctrl-V. Hit enter.

5. The new window will start loading up the site, and a checklist will appear on the bottom, listing the downloadable videos on that page. You can then pick the ones you want, and start them to downloading. The main window will show you the progress of the videos you are downloading (you can do several at once.)

That’s it! Easy as pi.

Enjoy your weekend, and say hi to Mrs. Bowers for me.

Crayon Physics!

This is a game that was mentioned on the ScrewAttack.com forum. It lets you draw shapes with your mouse which then behave like real-world objects. You can get it from this page (click), or you can direct download it here (click).

There is no installer. Just unzip the folder to pretty much anywhere (your desktop works great,) and double click on the “crayon” file in the folder to play.

This video shows the next step that the software will take: Crayon Physics Deluxe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsTqspnvAaI

I can’t wait until THIS one comes out. I’d pay good money for it.