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All,

I checked yesterday and found out that , with current IBAN, it is possible to effortlessly (fairly) transfer money direct to  someone's bank account. So no more mucking about with Paypal needed (though that does offer its own benefits. Of course, the bank may be legally forced to hold back large payments (or many payments of small amounts), and/or report them to the government), vut for transoceanic (e.g. transatlantic) bank transfers, all you need is the IBAN (International Bank Account Number) and the BIC (Bank Interchange Code)

Thought I'd mention it now, waaay before Mittens, just so you know.

Am I the only one who experiences this? I search, get a neat, perfectly normal page with results, when I  li k a link, I get taken to , for instance, http://www.satellitedirect.com/?hop=ppccrash while the link is listed in google's results shown as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripstop . This happens both on a laptop and desktop (using Firefox 5, FWIW). If I copy and paste the link I do get to the desired site.
Sample of the search result (I manually added the red lines and ?):

Let me explain: I've just come back from a visit to my sister who lives in Norway, and of course we've travelled a bit- like proper tourists, And at one Fjord, we stopped for lunch at a kro (Norwegian for road-side restaurant) where they served kummle, a local dish that looks like this:

The flavour wasn't awful (don't let the looks deceive you!), I bravely finished the dish, but I now understand why the Vikings set out on rickety boats for other worlds, and the fabled (though back then not yet so much) Haut Cuisine!

Oh well, at least I'm immune to the cold now! Didn't really need it: in Hol, we had temperatures of about 15°C, which were very nice (it felt much warmer than it actually was).

Forgive me for asking this question, but I didn't know where else to ask.

I want to copy a whole bunch of files with a given extension (say, *.txt) from a dir structure into a single directory, leaving out the directory structure.
Say,the files are in D:\aa\aab\*.* and aa\aac\*.* etc and I wanted to copy all *.txtfiles to c:\yaddayadda. I tried xcopy, but it does copy all the aab and aac directories, which I obviously don't want. I don't know how else to do this / what tool to use. BTW I'm on XP, not Windoze 6 or 6.1 (aka 7).

Since these are 40 files I don't want to do this by hand.

I've passed my test for the motorcycle so, as soon as I've got that paperwork in, and I've had a new license made (and I've got a new battery in my bike - and I've had it's frame checked for straightness, and maybe fixed), I can go riding again.

Oh, and I never told you about my dad's stroke, did I? A few months back, he had it, and was in a pretty bad state for a while, but he's pretty much back to his old self again (warts and all - I wouldn't have minded if those - figurative - warts would have stayed away, in fact I'd've preffered it) so now - since the change in his health-state -he's had to take a test to show he's able to drive a car again (otherwise he'd be uninsured).
The weird thing about yesterday (when I had the test) was, that my dad has had the same test except for his car-license. He had a test by the same examiner, one hour before I had mine, so we ran into him when he was just leaving, and I arrived for my test. I was glad to hear that he'd passed, since if he'd have ######ed up, the examiner might be in a bad mood and since we obviously have the same familyname, that would make my test start of under a bad moon. And I definitely made some mistakes even right at the start - not grave ones, but still stupid ones that could've cost me but luckily I'd shown enough good to compensate. The test lasted half an hour which included waiting for a funeral procession - it would be in bad taste to call that lucky, wouldn't it?

So, now all I've got to do in the meantim si get a new battery for this bike and have it's frame check for structural soundness, and with any luck I might ride my bike to Italy this year (I'm looking forward to that), not only mitten up with the crew again - if only for a few days. And basically, I feel a little more whole again, more like the full self I used to be, now there's one more restriction lifted.

I'm happy!

I'm stuck. Not for long though, 'cause the planet gets demolished anyway, before I can get off.

Spoiler

I got out of the pub, walked to my freshly demolished house, just stood there for a while with nothing to do (and nowhere to go, except up - but Arthur can't do that by himself, now, can't he?) and then Ford walks off muttering about not wanting to wait around while the earth gets blown up and game's over. But I can't find anything to do.

[close]

Also,

Spoiler

I couldn't order the peanuts in the pub. Which I would have needed, according to the book.

[close]

On the upside, I have several towels, and I know where they are: in the closet in my bedroom. (speaking as DutchMarco, not Hugo Veld (Arthur Dent's name in the Dutch translation)

European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.

The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w"with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.aa

So I tried to sell my new cellphone today (Megashaft Windoze will never be my kind of OS, not in mobile form or whatever; eyeing Android now) so I put up an asking price of 299 euros, one ady I saw in te mail that I had an offer for 310. Whahey! thought I, so I contacted this guy, sent him an e-mail ( in Dutch), and got answer in English (this raised suspicion a bit) and the buyer said he wanted to buy it for a friend of his who had helped him with hospitalization in Nigeria (!). Oh well, for that kind of money you give someone the benefit of the doubt, right? But I was definitely in cautious mode now.

So the guy said he'd pay me through Paypal, and include E50 for shipping. (which costs only E17.76 for a foreign shipment)Ever more luring into actually shipping the damn thing!

I received 2 mails from "service@paypal.com" <assignedaccountmanager@accountant.com>
claiming the Paypal transactions were completed, of course, I saw nothing of the sort in my Paypal-account. So I wrote the 'buyer' (calling himself Justin Qilliams, jwhills41@yahoo.com) thatso long as I hadn't erceived any money, I wasn't going to ship anything.  Now, this is when the real fun started:

I started getting e-mailswith 'Justin' claiming he had genuinely paid the money, but Paypal wouldn't book it to my account until I gave Paypal a shipment confirmation,And he'd take legal action unless I was wiling to protect my good name and my Paypal account (which he'd have Paypal block), and I promprtly also received 2 mails by the "FBI Investigation department" <investigationcomplain@cyberservices.com> (I thought the whole FBI was about investigating and it was the CIA that also had a department beside that, one for shooting magic bullets from grassy knolls).

But I wasn't going to rigorously cut this path off, so I offered him the chance of coming by my house in person, collect the phone and pay in cash, if for some magic reason Paypal had delayed transferring his moneys to my accounty, then either I would transfer it back to cancel/withdraw his transfer.to get his money back. I even said it was now up to him to make sure taht Paypal didn't follow those ridiculous rules about not transferring money immediately as is the Paypal-norm (I think, but I'm not telilng this guy I'm not 100% sure about that) but they'd have to transfer the money immediately to my account.

The moment it arrived there I would imediately send him the phone, and not a second sooner. But the guy wouldn't let up (well, maybe he just has, I haven't received any mails anymore after that), he continued to believe I was stupid enough  to fall for his transparent ploys.
So ehst have I learned from this? I really hate it when people take me for an imbecile, I'm insulted that they think I'm stupid enough to fall for their nonsense. Don't get me started about how this applies to politicians as well... (you already know what I'm talking about, so fill in the gaps yourself) I know I've got to be angry with this guy, and trust me, I am. But I can't help but laugh at him for the stupidity that he has portrayed, It just wouldn't dawn on him that I owwould not fall for this scam.
Maybe the light first dawned on him when I adressed him in my last mail as "Justin (Or whatever your real name is),
And he actually repeatedly ended his mails with an ultimatum, like this:
"Am waiting within 30 minutes".

I hop you all got a good laugh out of this, I certainly did (and a good cry and similar frustrations as well).

Oh, and if anyone is interested in buying it, here's the add (in Dutch)
Link To Purchase

Just watch this, you'll laugh out loud:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEjUAnPc2VA

So it's not entirely adventure game related, but this film could have been the script of an adventure game.

Trust me, I have my reasons for asking and I sldocthink there are some here, who might be able to help me out with this. I'm looking for the Welsh translation of
"New Wales".
Anyone? I know Wales is called Cymru  I believe it's supposed ta be pronounced as kuhmree. I might need some help with the pronounciation though, send me a sound file with an example (pm me for my mail-address) and I may even ask you to read my podcast story.

Hi guys-n-galls, I seem to have worked my way into stuckedness again, Ican't get into Atlantis. They've taken Sophia in there and I can't align the stones properly:

I think they're aligned properly, but apparently they're not!

I could really use some help here!

Thought I'd share this with you, even though it's not a game, and it's not even about Indy himself! But the author hsa made a sterling attempt to get close to the atmosphere, using some supernatural (religeous) twists on the Indy-theme to make it different (enough). So here's where you can find it:
http://www.podiobooks.com/title/ancient-rising-1
(BTW you did realise I was writing about an audiobook, right?)

And yes, the warning about the synthetic voice starting at chapter 12 is very prudent (and fortunately not needed fo most books there, being fully narrated by humans), but still worth a listen!

I've foud this sit, www.jamendo.com where you can download w lot of freely distributable music under the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ license. This should be a cool resource for games-music! (and leisure-music too)

Hi All,

Yes, I know, why play that old thing again, well, because it's cool! But it's also difficult, and now I'm enormously stuck. I'm on Crete, (in the team path btw), and I've released the X which marks the spot (see pic) But where does it end up? I can see it flying off teh bottom of the screen, butI don't see it landing anywhere.


Could anyone help me with this? I've got a walkthrough but it doesn't help me with this. I tried exploring that area to see if an X was stuck on the ground, but I couldn't walk reach the area where I thought it would be or it wasn't in any other position I've looked.

[EDIT: IP address has changed: it's now ftp://195.241.178.132]

Hi all, I'm pleased to announce my very own little contrribution to the AGS-community: several Gigabytes of storage space on my FTP-server: ftp://77.163.184.124 EDIT: IP address has changed: it's now ftp://195.241.178.132 I'm also trying to get the hostname ftp://ooijer.serveftp.com up and going again, but I'm having problems with No-Ip.
Note that this FTP-serversi running on my NAS (Network Attached Storage device) is running in my own home, so chances are that I'll power it down sometimes (though I try to keep it running for long periods of time). Oh, also, I'll change ISP in November, so my IP-address will change then. I'll let you all know.
Note that you'll see 2 directories when loggin in: AGS And upload. Upload and AGS. both are RW-access. (I thought about setting AGS to RO but changed that. So please upload straight into the AGS-directory and ignore upload if at all possible (that's just a legacy-dri, actually). Now, even though I have enough space free now, I do reserve the right to free up more when space becomes scarce, so do yourself a favor and keep backups, this space is only for sharing, not backing up (even though I do use a RAID-5 cluster of disks), I use it as a backup device for my own, personal data
Oh, and tryo to use this only for distributing AGS-games, (or maybe a Ben Jordan-movie or somesuch) don't post any "BJ in the girls dorm"kind of movies please, also, please keep things legal-ish I don't want to get in any kind of trouble, y'all hear?
Oh, and also, pretty please, try not to slurp up all my bandwith all day(s) long or whatever.Summary: Please be kind.  

Having said all this: here's a summary of the details:

ftp://77.163.184.124 ftp://195.241.178.132 (I tried setting up a domain name but for some reason, this doesn't work any more - used to though, keep trying ftp://ooijer.serveftp.com)
UID: ags
Password: ags
(Login required both for up- and download)
Send me a message when you've uploaded a game there, I'll put it in the HTTP-directory so it can be downloaded from home.ooijer.com without cumbersome log-in)
There's a 1GB quota set for this user, I don't know if this is for both up- and download, but keep in mind, for most games this should be no problem)

Oh, also note, that I haven't setup the HTTP-server as I'D like it (as in: with access to the FTP-uploads), so you'll have to use the FTP-site for both up- and download.
The server's been offline for a while due to anISP-change but it'ds back now.

I'll have to cancel this offer for the time being- I'm fighting my routers to get that cursed port forwarding to work - I'll keep you all posted when it's OK again!

Update! I've now set and verified this domain name to work: ftp://ooijer.serveftp.com, so no need to depend on the IP-address anymore. (all other comments still apply)

OK all, I think it's now long enough after Miamittens to start thinking about the next Mittens. As the list of links might suggest, I've put in a half- decent amount of thinking (not too much, of course; I've mostly been browsing the interwebs and asked my Italian colleague for some help, regarding the Italian possibilities. I've been inspired by the suggestion of staying in a castle, and I've found a few, but not in the Netherlands though. In fact, I've not found that many suitable places over here, there are a few, but mostly the venues are rather small (like this country as a whole - apart from politicians egos :-/ ) so they wouldn't fit ±25 persons like the Hollywood house (or the chateau) and when typing in a Dutch search term in Googol, I quickly end up i nBelgium and most likely then in the Ardennes - which was a nice place, but we've already done that. If we go back to France, I think we should be in another part of the country - I'm not opposed to going back to France!
Also, I've looked for "Casa Vacanza per venti persone" (or was it "persona"?) - 20 people's holiday residences in Italy. Anyway, there area lso a few British holiday hangouts (castles), I'm all up for those too! Also for the nice Villa's in Italy, no castello though.

Anyway, ladies and gentlepeople of other genders (if any), take your pick! One downside of the Italian villas might be trying to locate them on a map or in the country, since I might just be typing in wrong addresses in Googol Maps, but I always end up with a possible choice of 3 locations/coordinates. But I'm sure that can be solved.

And before you ask: Mittenzia is a jokular Italization of Mittens, Wanten is Dutch for Mittens and ovenmits, well, there are some British castles here too, they'll most likely have ovens....

http://www.celticcastles.com/a_to_z.asp

20pers:
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/amhuinnsuidhe/
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/augillcastle/
http://www.celticcastles.com/chateaux/chateau-des-briottieres/
http://www.yourtuscanvilla.com/luxury_villa_tuscany_rental/profile.htm
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/ross-castle/
24 pers:
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/birkhill-castle/
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/venlaw/
http://www.celticcastles.com/chateaux/chateau-de-jallanges/
http://www.celticcastles.com/chateaux/chateau-de-la-barre/
26pers:
http://www.celticcastles.com/unique/corsewall-lighthouse/
http://www.celticcastles.com/chateaux/hattonchatel-chateau/
approx 22people
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/craigrownie-castle/
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/eastnorcastle/
misc:
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/lachlan/
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/castle-law/
http://www.celticcastles.com/chateaux/chateau-de-pomiro
from approx 30 pers and up:
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/comlongon/
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/cringletie/
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/culcreuch/
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/dundas-castle/
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/glenskirlie-castle/
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/glin/
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/mansfield-castle/
http://www.celticcastles.com/castles/portlick-castle/
http://goitaly.about.com/od/castlesinitaly/tp/italy_castles.htm
http://www.italofile.com/2009/04/08/tuscan-castle-vacation-from-799/
http://www.ardennentop.be/Presbytere.htm
http://www.yourtuscanvilla.com/tuscany_private_villas/list/rating/list.

I'm just proposing some possible venues here (since otherwise we'll be arguing well into '11 about where to host Mittens '10)

Because I really dug the stay in a castle idea, I've also compiled a list of castles including British ones, see above. Since the idea of staying in a castle sounds more important to me than either Holland or Italy, I've proposed these venues. I suggest that we all go and find (European)venues and post them here, whichever venue gets liked (by) most, we'll use, whereever it is. That seems like the best/fastest way to go about it.

Looking for castles/farms/etc. in NL:
http://www.vakantieineenkasteel.nl/zoeken.html

This one looks nice and big enough (23 pple)
http://www.belvilla.org/presentation.php?Huiscode=NL-4527-04&cat=10&countryid=nl&ec=direct_nl&frames=nee&fromnumberpersons=11&Lo=vakink&periodid=1w&Pt=travisi=nl

Bu this one looks most like a castle and therefore coolest (24 ppl):
http://www.belvilla.org/presentation.php?Huiscode=NL-4527-04&cat=10&countryid=nl&ec=direct_nl&frames=nee&fromnumberpersons=11&Lo=vakink&periodid=1w&Pt=travisi=nl
1 week â,¬1972, sorry it its rather a long way removed from Amsterdam, but your plane will most likely arrive and leave from there though, so you could come a little sooner and leave a little later and see if the place is all it's cracked up to be, (cracked down might be the case, since some people have negative opinions about it).
I must say that this is my favourite of all the Dutch venues.


Max 32 pple:
http://www.belvilla.org/presentation.php?Huiscode=NL-7121-02&cat=10&countryid=nl&ec=direct_nl&frames=nee&fromnumberpersons=11&Lo=vakink&periodid=1w&Pt=travisi=nl

So it's not entirely adventure (or game)-related, but still funny nonetheless: I once got a funny guitar-effects box, the Talent boost control, where your amount of guitar-playing talen could be accurately fine tuned (not reduced!), so as to be better than most of your audience and band members, but not outshine them. (which would be distasteful and would also make you unpopular with them). I must say it worked a treat, in all the time I've used it I never was significantly better than them (well, apart fro that one bass-playing woman who had some issues with relating to reality, maybe I'm thinking that brcause of all the fights we've had, her successor was a big improvement!

Pay particular close attention to the safety-cautions, they're great! "in case of flood, proceed uphill, in case of flash-flood, proceed uphil quickly".

http://picasaweb.google.com/magicmojo1/Gein?feat=directlink

DVD training 3: Character Animation http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info.php?products_id=113
On the upside, Blender 3D is for free, the DVD costs money though. If you´ve created the walkcycles, you could pixel over them to  create incredibly detailed and accurate sprites.

I have something to celebrate: I've got my driver's license back! Those who were at the chateau may remember that I've had a motorcycle accident and because of that ("change in my health-situation") I couldn't drive a car (or bike) anymore, that is to say: I'd be uninsured to all intents and purposes.
That situation has now come to an end,
All that remains now is to conquer the red tape and get an actual driver's license, which I can put in my wallet and show the kind police person (male/female/ any more options?) who asks for it. (not that that happens often :o ) But at least I have certainty that I'll get my license back.
To celebrate  (and because my current car is gettting on a bit (still in good enough shape, but It is 11 years old now), I've bought a different car:

http://picasaweb.google.com/magicmojo1/AlfaGT#

I'll admit, it was the red that clinched it for me.

This is what I waste most of my time on - wielding hot metal stick and melting tin to things that'll carry lethal voltages. Great fun! and that's before you can whip out the power tools (whip them out gently and slowly, esp. if others are around) to build the wooden box these'll fit in.
It's not the kind of Firefly that'll play such a big role in a tv-series like Serenity: http://picasaweb.google.com/magicmojo1/MojoWatt#
Find other (already finished or abandoned) projects on my website:http://marco.ooijer.com
Oh, and if you have a good relationship with your neighbours this is a brilliant path to changing that. ("If you'll build it, they'll await peacefully and not yet come." "If you'll play it, they most certainly will do just that.")