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(Apparently it is more believeable to tell someone they are the long lost distant relative of Frederic Chopin, at left.  It would be too over the top to say Beethoven).

Do you believe it?

Remember spam’s “greatest hits?” Every day it seems that you are winning the lottery in a foreign country, or are the last known relative of an oil tycoon.  It morphed from the version that was going around about a dozen years ago now that you were in Princess Diana’s will.  I have been named as Frederic Chopin’s long lost heir through my mother’s side before as well.  I have learned to hit “spam” on many of these messages, but sometimes they sneak by my spam filters.  Now, they are getting more creative.   Some of these similar love notes are being left as comments on my blog!

The spam filters don’t catch them as they appear to be real messages, not just a spattering of links to various unrelated sites.  (By the way, my favorite spam comment of all started out with, “Stop Oval Haired Woman.”  Was this referring to a gal with an assymetrical 80s hairdo, a bad Toni home perm or is she a newscaster with helmut head? Oh. And who could forget the comment on my Targus review post that asked me what I thought about baby acne. Just the right plausible/odd ratio to get me to click. Ha-ha. I didn’t. )

The story remains the same.  Someone is in trouble and somehow, I am the only one who can save the day if I would only send a certified check, accept a certified check, or give out my banking details.  My response remains the same, in not responding.

However, sometimes I receive them with phone numbers and addresses from some out of the way island.  Perhaps I should forward their information to missionaries in the area to check to see if they really exist or are really in trouble?  Maybe I will go onto a forum and ask someone from that country to look up who their next door neighbor is, alert them to the situation, and have them knock on their door, unraveling the whole scam….and of course helping them with that heart condition they are having which caused them to reach out to me as the last traceable heir of their family in case they die. Oh well.

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This is a sponsored guest post written by Matt Kelland on behalf of Moviestorm. Post powered by Sponzai.

Moviestorm is enabling a new generation of amateur film-makers to realize their visions. It offers easy, affordable animation tools that can produce sophisticated high-quality films on practically no budget. After several years in development, Moviestorm has demonstrated that home movie-making needn’t be limited to cheap hand-held cameras and clips of the kids goofing around. Its virtual movie studio allows users to break free of the limitations of the real world, and allows them to direct, film, edit and distribute 3D animated movies without any knowledge of animation techniques or 3D modelling. And best of all, it’s free, and comes without any copyright restrictions.

Iain Friar, known as IceAxe, is one of Moviestorm’s many successful film-makers. His short film, Clockwork, a dystopian vision of a totalitarian Britain after a Soviet invasion in the 1980s, is winning accolades and awards around the world, most recently the audience prize at the Atopic Festival in France and the Grand Prize at the Machinima Expo. Clearly influenced by both 1984 and A Clockwork Orange, with a visual style that evokes both Communist era propaganda posters and more recent animated movies such as A Scanner Darkly, it is a stark, powerful film that belies its modest origins.

Iain, who’s 42, works in marketing, and started making movies just 18 months ago. “I’ve always been a hands-on person, in music, sport, and everything else,” he says. “I thought it would be fun to shoot a music video, but I’m not the most technical of people, and it seemed extraordinarily hard. I remember when computer games started using in-game animation to tell the story instead of video clips, and this interested me, especially now that game technology has become so sophisticated. So I bought a book, Machinima for Dummies, which had Moviestorm on the CD, and I was hooked. I liked Moviestorm because it did what I was looking for, even though I didn’t really know what I was looking for at the time, and the Moviestorm community was very supportive. I initially made comedies, but I could see that the movies people respected were more dramatic, so it seemed that was the direction to go in.”

He spent four months working on Clockwork, and then the same again on his next short, Cloud Angel, a steampunk thriller set on board an airship. Apart from the voice acting, he made the entire film himself at his home in Basingstoke, England. “I’m lucky that my friends are so willing to step up to the mike and read my silly scripts!” he laughs. His next film is Gridlock, a science fiction comedy which he is co-producing with another successful Moviestorm director, James Thorpe. For this, they’ve stepped up the production costs a notch: they hired a recording studio and got the local amateur dramatic group to do the voice acting.

Iain is realistic about his future, though. “Am I ambitious? Yes. Do I want to keep it as just a hobby? Well, probably yes, because I imagine that if it became a full time activity, the fun might go out of it. I make movies as escapism. That said, I think that this industry would be really interesting to work in, because it’s embryonic; I’m not sure what direction it will go in. It’s exciting!”

Moviestorm’s CEO, Jeff Zie, is hugely enthusiastic and supportive. “Iain and the many other Moviestorm users are an inspiration to us all,” he says. “We’re really proud that we’re giving talented people like this the tools they need to unleash the creative potential they never knew they had, and to produce these wonderful films.”

Try it and see!

You can download Moviestorm for free: Windows and Mac versions are available. If you want, you can expand your virtual film studio and buy extra costumes, sets, props, and sounds in their marketplace. If you’ve ever wondered whether you might be the next Tarantino, Ang Lee, or J J Abrams, now’s the time to find out!

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A friend wrote me about my Geocities post.  The one thing she missed about the internet of the 1990s was the price of service.  Whatever happened to those cheap ISPs?  Well, firstly, they were all on very slow dial up, but there just seemed to be more options out there than there are now.  Perhaps since broadband technology costs more to maintain, there are no longer as many local ISPs.

I stumbled across BasicIsp.Net. They offer old fashioned $6.95 a month internet service. Granted, you may not get all the bells and whistles, but if you are looking for the basics, its definitely “retro.” The website design looks like they madeit in 1997 and haven’t changed the feel of it as well.  There are a multitude of access numbers, so it leads me to believe the service is all dial up. That may be okay, considering the price. There is an accelarated package that you can also opt for.

The service is Mac compatible. You just need to be running OS 8 or later. In other words, if your Mac was made in 1997 or later, it is most likely compatible. Those G3s and original IMacs would be just as capable of handling the load as the new models that are running Snow Leopard as an operating system.

If you are just looking for a cheap ISP to use to check your email, it may do just fine. Have you tried Basic ISP? If so, what do you think?

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Periodically, I look for new accessories for my Mac. It is easy to find software and extras for my IMac, but I often have to hunt a little harder for items for my G3. A lot of new components are compatible, but they may not be age appropriate. The whole look might be a little off. I have a few trusted sites, but the new sites that I stumble across don’t have a way to simply order. You have to register for a profile and give up all sorts of other information. I find that my inbox is loaded with all sorts of junk mail after a purchase. Most of it is legal junk, as they are communications from the site I actually used, and not third parties.

What I most worry about is credit card theft. Not all sites take Paypal, and Paypal sometimes comes with its own headaches. I found that ShopShield.net is a new Secure Payment Agent that really is the answer to all of my concerns.

Shop Shield anonymizes your email address and the payment is processed without the places you shop having your actual credit card number. Shop Shield creates a temporary credit card number for the transaction that expires when the transaction is complete. The temporary credit card number can only be used for the amount of the transaction, so if the number is stolen, it cannot be charged on. The original funds are still debited from your credit card balance, but the temporary number is not traceable and does not recharge your card.

To protect against spam, Shop Shield creates a proxy email address. Pertinent communication is forwarded to your actual email address, but a company never has your real one. There is a Shop Shield companion that you can download for your web browser. Right now, it works with Firefox on both Mac and Windows.

Have you tried Shop Shield?  Let me know what you think!

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I was at a party last year, and someone happened to mention Geocities.  Everyone seemed to have a personal page parked there.  I didn’t, but it was “the thing.”  By today’s standard, the sites are very simplistic in design, but it was your way to put yourself out there.  Oh, and another thing.  Do you remember sites becoming unavailable if you had too much traffic?

Everyone had a “neighborhood.”  Depending on the theme, you could have your site on “RodeoDrive,” in “Hollywood,” or in the Colosseum.  Honestly, I think it was on the honor system and no one really checked. It was later scrapped, but sometimes you could still stumble across sites with a “city” in their url.

Oddly enough, Geocities is still around.  Well, they were until today.  Geocities is going offline, and joining the big Angelweb in the sky. Registrations ceased in April, and today was the end.  Farewell, Geocities, and Godspeed. May the flash animated websites of sparkly dancing aliens and Gilligan’s Island Fan Sites give thee rest.

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I use an optical mouse rather than a trackball mouse with the iMac. Up until this time, and with previous computers, I used a trackball like everyone else. The biggest complaint I had with trackball mice is that they tended to stick when they got full of dust and grime.

An article I was just reading, Why Do Disk Errors Occur, mentioned that while an optical mouse seems to the the antidote to a sticky mouse, they still need cleaning.   They can periodically catch dust in the opening that the electronic eye “sees” through.  Typically, the opening is shaped like a keyhole.  The other parts that might accumulate dust are the rollers and bearings.  Of course, the “stick” factor is a lot more slight in an optical mouse, but it still can occur.

Instead of cleaning as regular maintenance like I would do on a traditional mouse, I tend to only think about my mouse when there is a problem.   It got a little jumpy once, and I sort of just rattled it a second and that seemed to work.  Now that I know that I can clean my mouse, I will probably do it as preventative maintenance to keep it in good condition.   It is easy to be envious of someone who has a pristine old Mac, but they got that way because they were taken care of in the beginning, when they were new.

Surprisingly enough, I also learned that disk errors can occur because of very simple things like this.  There may be dirt and grime lurking around your hardware, and it is a much easier fix than giving up on your computer and buying a new one, or paying an expert.  For more tips, check out the article.

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