Seeing as it has been way more hectic the last month or two than anticipated I decided to start “publishing” the little writing I have done as filler.
This is the first “poem” I felt like writing since I was forced to write them in school. It was the start of a dark time…
Kiss not, unless your lips betray your desires.
For would you have your kisses become a duty…
a choking smoke of the dying fires?
To those you ‘love’, the ultimate cruelty…?
Neil
Pangolin found in Gir Forest, Gujarat, India (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Today is was the 26th of April, 2012… and the latest (and arguably) greatest Ubuntu release to date has finally arrived. Our Precise Pangolin is now all grown up, welcome to the real world (K)(L)(X)(Ed)Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. It has been a long and hard slog by many people across the globe, who each in there own little (or big) way made this release possible.
To celebrate the release (and heavily influenced by the latest news of Steam on Linux) I removed Windows 7 from my fairly new gaming rig, and proceeded to install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (I missed Unity (yes, Unity) too much!). I will not get into to much detail but some voodoo was required to make it work… thanks a little to my flaky monitor and Radeon graphics. (I will be blogging my trials and trebulations as I try and tame the Pangolin to do all I require from it, so watch this space).
Thank you Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Ian Murdock, Mark Shuttleworth and the thousands of others that help put a smile on my face when ever I use my computer.
Short and sweet will do this time 
Neil
Very few people that enjoy gaming on PC’s will not have heard of the Humble Indie Bundles. These bundles have brought more than a dozen awesome games to eager gamers for a fair price, put some much appreciated coin in the pockets of developers and even found a way to support charity. It could be argued that there isn’t much more awesomeness to be had from them.
But then, like in any good story, enter the antagonist. In this case an old favourite that many love to hate, Paypal.
Introversion Software (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
To make a long and boring story slightly shorter, I had purchased the Humble Introversion Bundle when it was announced late last year (and as a side note I downloaded it for Linux of course). I didn’t get a chance to actually load it up and play until February of this year (2012). Sadly my bundle didn’t want to work and kept requiring keys (so much for DRM free it seems). Turns out that Paypal had reversed the payment as they decided I wasn’t who I thought I was, and first needed me to prove to them I was indeed myself. But being myself meant not reading e-mails from them and I never noticed. So no Bundle for me then? Wrong.
After a tentative enquiry about the problem in March I again forgot all about this issue. Remembering again about it a few days ago I sent the info that the folks over at the Humble Indie Bundle had requested and yesterday I got this awesome replay from a support ninja named Melinda;
Hi Neil,
Thank you for sending over the ID, we have located the purchase in the system and see the PayPal payment freeze and reversal. As the payment system is now closed, we can’t accept further payment, but please accept the following gift key for the Introversion Bundle: http://www.humblebundle.com/<youwouldlikethatwouldn’tyou>
Please consider supporting our next bundle or giving some money to charity in lieu of payment.
Thanks for your support.
Melinda
Support Ninja
Humble Bundle
How awesome is that?! A company that gets it. That can take a customer that they have already won over and just re-cement him as a loyal supporter by taking his problem and giving him a solution far beyond his wildest expectations.
Neil
PS – It gave me great pleasure to make the first blog post about gaming with a splash of some awesome Linux goodness…
