Working for Microsoft

No no no!!! It’s all lies. Well, not really lies, just a misunderstanding. It’s another Jonathan Carter that has gone to work for Microsoft, not me. I’ve received two phone calls today and one email asking me about it. The other Jonathan’s about page says “I am currently acting as the technical evangelist for the .NET framework and Visual Studio at Microsoft” – that makes it quite obvious that it’s not me.

Moving to Jo’burg

I’ve been spending a lot of time in Jo’burg the last 2-3 months. Lots of people have told me things like “I hear you’ve moved here permanently now” or “I hear you’re moving to Jo’burg next year?”. I don’t know where you’re hearing this, but it’s not true. I might spend more or less a week or so there every month next year, but that’s about it, there are no plans to move to Jo’burg, and it’s extremely unlikely that there ever will be.

Hope that clears everything up

Well, except for the MPAA, maybe

And yet more thanks to Matthew Garret, because now we also have a new episode of ELER, it’s about time!!!

The biggest reason I switched from the previous blogging software I used to WordPress, is the amount of spam I used to receive. I didn’t really know how well WordPress dealt with spam, but I had to try something else, removing blog spam all the time became a tedious and repetitive job. So, I installed WordPress, and enabled the Akismet plugin. It works great. It moves all known spam out of your way (you could review it if you really like, but I’ve never seen a false positive in my spam queue), and if it’s unsure, you can manually approve or deny the spam in the usual WordPress moderation queue.

Since I enabled it, Akismet has caught 100 000 spam messages. Glad I didn’t have to filter that by hand

I’ve added the Akismet sidebar plugin as well, it displays the amount of spam messages caught. Thanks Akismet!

Previously, I blogged about 10 games that’s available in the Ubuntu Universe that I found interesting. Since then, the Ubuntu MOTU Games team has merged with the Debian games team, and the amount of packaged games have increased.

Here are 10 more games from the Ubuntu Universe, based on comment-recommendations from the previous article:

1. Battle for Wesnoth

Ubuntu package: wesnoth

Shew, judging by the comment from the previous blog, I should’ve really included Battle for Wesnoth in the first blog post!

2. Nexuiz

Ubuntu package: nexuiz

This wasn’t packaged for Ubuntu previously, another community devleped first person shooter.

3. Torcs

Ubuntu package: torcs

Racing game, the picture basically sums it up.

4. Frozen Bubble

Ubuntu package: frozen-bubble

Fun little game, you can even play it 2 players with your girlfriend (and she’ll enjoy it).

5. Enigma

Ubuntu package: enigma

Puzzle game with interesting mouse controls

6. Ur-Quan Masters

Ubuntu package: uqm

Previously known as Star Control 2, this game is now free software and available for Ubuntu.

7. OpenArena

Ubuntu package: openarena

First person shooter based on the Quake III engine.

8. LBreakout2

Ubuntu package: lbreakout2

“Breakout is a stupid game.”

9. Fillets ‘o Fish

Ubuntu package: fillets-ng

Fun little puzzle game. At times hard to figure out how to play though.

10. Rrootage

Ubuntu package: rrootage

Why stop here!?

There’s much more games available for Ubuntu, here are some links to set you on your journey.

• Ubuntu games page: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Games
• List of games available for gratis (it’s free software, sorry Han!): http://libregamewiki.org/List_of_games
• Two more games from Tombuntu: http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2007/08/31/two-more-linux-games
• Rangit.com’s top 8 Linux games for 2007: http://rangit.com/software/top-8-linux-games-of-2007/

Have fun!

Last night, I went to see Surf’s Up, very fun movie. I couldn’t help notice that Big Z had black & white Ubuntu logo’s running down at the sides. Cool eh? I admit, it takes a bit of imagination, but it was more noticeable in the movie

The people from #clug aren’t too convinced though:

13:20 <&highvoltage> you can see it, right?
13:22 <~Vhata> I'm not convinced
13:22 < nlt> doubting thomas
13:23 < nlt> Just like religious nuts who see jesus in cheese sandwiches, highvoltage sees ubuntu in random fur patterns.

Have you seen the movie? Can you see it? Ubuntu is EVERYWHERE! Believe!