Free SNOW screensaver

As it's snowing outside today I decided to put together a quick SNOW screensaver.

You can download the installer here
This screen saver is free and will always remain free.

The AM logo is not visible on the screensaver, just the snow.

The screensaver requires the Flash plug-in to be installed (you will most likely already have this).
This should work with all versions of Windows from 95 and up. I've only tested it using Windows Vista and XP.

To change settings (time before it starts), either go to your start menu and click Control Panel then search for "screensaver", or right click on your desktop and select 'Personalise' (in Vista), or I think it's 'Properties' in XP?

To uninstall open your Control Panel and choose 'Uninstall a program' (Vista), or I think it's 'Add/Remove Programs' in XP?

This has only been tested on a 16:10 screen so if you are experiencing problems (like loosing the edge of the background etc.), on a 4:3 screen please let me know and I'll try to fix it.

A C64 Christmas!

Being a fan of chip tunes I've stumbled across several 8-bit Xmas albums on the net featuring chip versions of well known Christmas songs. As it's getting close to that time of the year I decided to put together a collection of festive Commodore 64 SID tunes from the HVSC.

The tunes have been converted to MP3 and edited slightly; you can download the collection here
You can download the songs individually or download the two ZIP files to get the whole album

I've also recently moved the collection to SoundCloud, you can also download the tracks there.

If it proves popular I may put together a few more collections; perhaps some using different hardware. Any suggestions are welcome, thanks.

Duplicate shortcut not working in Illustrator CS4?

Just come across this and found a quick solution.

I've used Illustrator for years and very often I'd 'alt drag' an object to copy it, then I'd use 'ctrl+d' (or Apple(cmd)+d on Mac), to duplicate my last action; very useful for creating a series of objects following a path.

For some reason this shortcut no longer works; I couldn't even find the 'Duplicate' option in the menu.

The fix is to 'alt drag' your object as you would normally; then, in this order, use:

'ctrl+c',
'ctrl+f',
then 'ctrl+d'

(Mac users swap the Apple (cmd) key in place of ctrl).

eBay: change Best Match to Time Ending Soonest

I don't know about you, but since eBay changed the search defaults to Best Match I've found searching for items pretty annoying.

To change the search defaults from Best Match to Time Ending Soonest follow these steps:

1. search for an item as you would normally

2. at the top of the search results in the bar where it lists View As: or Sort By: there is another option that reads [ customize view ], click on this.

3. a small menu will appear titled Customize your search, from this menu there is an option on the right titled Advanced Options, click on this.

4. from these options you can now change Sort order in Search and Sort order in Browse by clicking on the down menus and selecting Time: ending soonest; once done click Apply changes, and you're done.

Hope this is of use to anyone, comments are welcome, thank you.