Category: software

Kingpin

I have old game discs lying around. I even have a few floppies, albeit they are rarely used thanks to emulators, and my last floppy drive having developed the click of death. I keep only the games that I enjoy, and continue to do so. Ones with a journey, a campaign, a linear storyline with entertaining gameplay.

Games with titles such as Kingpin, Cadaver, Max Payne, Half Life, and the more recent The Last of Us, and Uncharted. All offering virtual escapism for hours on end. With well trodden familiar territory. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve completed Kingpin. Yet despite the aging graphics, it still entertains me. Occasionally It’ll replay Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, and other 90s FPS titles, but Kingpin remains my favourite.

I’ve played mods and have my favourites, especially for Max Payne. New Dawn leads by far. I know the levels inside-out. Some games I’ve played so many times that I’ve gone way beyond a hundred percent completion, beyond easter eggs, and testing boundaries, to testing how the games handle the unexpected. Most stand the test of time. My hats off to their QAs.

I’ve dipped back into point and click revisiting Monkey Island, the Amazon Queen, Enchantia, and Kyrandia. Said hi to Simon, Larry, Sam and Max. Dropped in on top-down with the early GTA and very early Commando. And I’ve emulated the Valhalla Classics. Yet I keep coming back to my well-worn Kingpin disc. I’ve replayed this at least once every decade, if not more. Maybe every half-decade. I keep coming back to it. The forgotten classic.

What games have stood the test of time with you? 

About you

Sell yourself.
Write about you.

Ever had writers block when having to create an About page for LinkedIn or a website, explaining who you are and what you do. Your credentials. Your bonafides.

Takes me back to English class. Write a short essay on yourself. Five thousand words. All about you.

It was compulsory in the early days of the web. Your website must have an about you page. As compulsory as a running dog chasing a ball or construction worker to signify that your site is coming soon or under construction. Just don’t use blinking text.

Tell me about you.

Zero results found

Back in the early days of the internet there was a game we played with Google, where we would try to search for something that would return no results. We would do this on purpose. As more and more data made its way onto the internet it became harder and harder to find something that returned zero results, or even just a single result.

These days it’s practically impossible. Google will always return something, even if it’s just a page of sponsored links. And now there’s AI adding content to the results of your search.

So much data. Zero results.

An app for Ronin

An app for Ronin

The last company I worked for offered all employees a health benefits package that came with an app. By completing physical and mental exercises each day recorded by the app, you could earn coins and those coins could be turned into vouchers at retailers such as Amazon and John Lewis, essentially gamifying physical and mental fitness.

When you left the company the app still worked but the coins were not worth as much. Still, the offer of free money, however little, in return for activity remained alluring despite many of my colleagues that also left uninstalling the app.

Those of us that kept on using it were added to a public leaderboard, consisting of hundreds of individuals that had formerly worked at other companies. All of us are now Ronin, masterless, completing the activities partly out of habit, and partly for the free money.

When working for my last employer I was always in the top 5 on the company leaderboard but against many many more people I struggled to stay in the top 20, yet the challenge that represented only made me more determined. The more activities I completed the more coin I raked in.

Until it all came to an abrupt end. After ten months of no longer being attached to a company the app announced that my coins could no longer be traded for vouchers unless I joined another participating employer. I could still play without reward, and out of nothing but sheer habit I continued for a few more weeks until an app update resulted in my login details being requested, and as the email address belonged to my former employer I was true Ronin: on my own.

Who called me

Who called me

When you work with computers and possess at least one certification in cyber security, you tend to have friends or family that call or message you on occasion asking you to trace a phone number for them as if you are some form of digital private eye.

The truth is that only the authorities with the assistance of the telecom providers can legally do that. All these websites that say they can trace any number in the world for you are lying. They are just scams after your money. At best they have scraped open source content for numbers and can tell you the network provider, country of origin, and anything that is available online for free. Maybe they’ve concatenated and absorbed phone directories and public domain phone number repositories. They certainly can’t trace an unlisted number for you.

That said, if the number does have a footprint of some kind in the public domain then there are ways of finding it. Using Google Dorking to scour search engine data may uncover something useful. Governmental company registration databases that are open to the public may also reveal data. Whois records, club memberships, company websites, etc.

The phone number is just a character string. Play with the format when searching. For example if you were called by 07709 123456 and you are in the UK you could search for exact string matches of:

07709 123456
07709123456
7709 123456
7709123456
44 07709 123456
44 7709 123456
4407709123456
447709123456

Google for OSINT tools and techniques related to phone numbers for more suggestions.

Head in the clouds

Not everyone wants to constantly work in the cloud. Some of us like to be offline on occasion. Yet the extra hurdles you have to go through just to create something offline can be taxing.

Take Microsoft Windows for example. Let’s say you want to create an account on your laptop for your spouse or child and they don’t have a Microsoft account and don’t need one. Yet when you try to create an account for them it takes three times as long and it’s not immediately apparent how to do it.

Using Google drive and you enter an area with no internet or phone reception? You are done. The app stops working even though you should be able to work offline. You can’t edit your files anymore. They become greyed-out. Same with a myriad of other apps. It’s as if app makers these days don’t understand how someone cannot be online. The amount of errors my phone apps generate when I go offline without selecting the aeroplane icon. Did the QA guys not test the possibility of someone wanting to work offline?

Nowadays I have backups. Really basic free apps that allow me to work without constant internet access. I just copy my files into them and work on them when I’m in a dead zone. Plus there’s the added bliss that no one can reach you to disturb you.

Rant over..

Windows 10 End-of-Life

It’s Microsoft Windows 10’s End-of-Life (EoL) this October (2025). A lot of people with older machines will be impacted by this as their machines will not be able to run Windows 11, even with hardware upgrades.

Over the years I’ve managed to keep my older machines running for as long as possible with various upgrades and modifications. The best upgrade for your money and the return on investment is moving from a disk-based hard drive (HDD) to a solid state drive (SSD). I have laptops that are 15 years old that are running Windows 10 just fine but fail the Windows 11 compatibility check.

So what are the options for those of us that can’t afford a new computer?

First, backup your computer. I mean, you are already doing this anyway right? This will ensure that you have access to your data should anything happen to your PC going forwards. Backup both the data and take an image of the drive and store two copies in separate safe locations.

Once your data is backed-up, replace the OS with Linux. There are many flavours available. Go peruse distrowatch to see which one best suits you. If you are still unsure then Ubuntu is popular among those new to Linux.

Once you are up and running you can port your data across. There are Linux applications that are alternatives to Windows applications that can still read your files. Instead of Office you can run LibreOffice for example. There are many open source applications that should be able to help.

If you really need to run Windows and your laptop is powerful enough you can run something like Virtualbox and run your Windows 10 in a virtual machine. Or you can containerise your applications and run them in something like Docker. Or look at WINE, the linux Windows emulator.

Just because Microsoft is no longer supporting Windows 10 does not mean that you have to pay for a new machine to use Windows 11. You have options.

Got any other suggestions? Let me know.
   

Lists 2.0

I’m a big fan of lists. To do lists, checklists, packing lists, you name it I’ve turned it into a list. I recently learned that ChatGPT is great at lists.

Very detailed lists.

Need to plan a vacation? It will generate a list of things you need to take into consideration, in addition to what to pack. Shopping for a new laptop, car, or even a house? It can quickly knock you up a list with indented bullet-points on everything you need. Need to make a plan should a disaster occur, maybe a nuclear war or zombie outbreak? Yep it will create a detailed survival plan complete with supplies list in seconds.

Lists 2.0: create your unique custom lists with AI!

Emulators

I love emulators.

They allow me to take a nostalgic trip back in time running software and playing games from yesteryear without leaving the comfort of my current desktop. I can load up WinUAE for example and delve back into my Amiga days playing forgotten classics such as Cadaver, Dreamweb, or Alien Breed. Or fire up Directory Opus and play around with the Amiga OS.

In most cases I don’t even need to run an emulator on my OS as there are plenty of websites that will do that for you. Catering to the retro scene you can play just about any game on a myriad of bygone computer hardware or gaming consoles.

Maybe you are in the pub talking to your mates discussing the video games you played in your youth. You could pull up a YouTube video to show what it looked like, or you could fire up the game via emulation and actually play the game yourself in real time. The power of the internet!

I do love emulators!

Now for a quick game of Galaga..