Those who visited my site in the past may recognize the new layout a bit. It is olmost similar to my original design, simplistic (as usual), little to no images and uses 3d borders (outset) again. The colors are quite different however, this time I have gone for a blue-like theme which I think is really appealing.

I decided to get rid of the sidebars/menu’s, I never really liked them anyways. They are just a clusterfuck of a trillion similar links, in my humble opinion. I tried multiple things and css markup for the bars, but they just didn’t seem to fit in well. Sure, they have some nice features, but I don’t mind not having these.

With the new CSS3 and browser support, I can now also add shadow to text, something I always wanted to do. It looks just awesome, makes everything better readable and it’s a really nice effect. In fact, I already did something similar on my original design all those years ago, by simply copying the text, giving it a black color and moving it behind the original text with a 1 pixel offset. That did work pretty good, however it is completely unessesary, not forgetting pages take longer to load.

RSS is now working properly too. It doesn’t have any markup however, I might change that. Other thingies will be added in the near future. If you encounter anything out of the ordinary, please leave a comment and let me know.

Hope you enjoy the “new look”.

January 29th, 2012 | Category: PhatFish, Theme | Leave a comment

Wooh! I just acquired another original beta version! This time it’s the Titans Expansion, the add-on for Age of Mythology. There are 2 original/official marketing beta versions of this particular expansion out there, and if I’m not mistaken this is the earlier one of those two. I’m not sure since I haven’t had the chance to try it out yet (only just received it!), but the CD cover seems to somewhat confirm this. Maybe it includes the beta Norse titan? Perhaps, anything could be possible, I just don’t know yet. 

One of the biggest filesharing sites in the world has been taken down by the FBI. The American congres is currently taking care of a law that allows blocking of similar (foreign) sites. A hacker group attacked the websites of several music sharing and federal websites in response.

Censorship in the making? If this continues we are going to end up like China.

January 20th, 2012 | Tags: World Wide Web | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Whoever tought of that should be shot. I mean really. Just like friday the 13th etc etc. Screw those dumbasses!

January 16th, 2012 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (1)

Holy shit! Just seen the official trailer of The Hobbit! Download it in superb quality below, nao:

Download Trailer from WB

I can’t wait to see An Unexpected Journey this coming december… I have read the whole book a few years before the Lord of the Rings trilogy was made (more than a decade ago!). I’m anxious to see how the movies live up to the story. Smaug won’t be killed untill december 2013, in the second part called There and Back again.

January 15th, 2012 | Category: Fantasy, Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Movie | Comments (1)

Made a new theme for the website you are currently visiting, http://phatfish.nl. It consists of a plain black background and is fluid in width (except the sidebar, which remains at a set width), meaning the layout stretches to each resolution.

The sidebar features my logo, which is three-dimentional, and is “laying” down on it’s back. If you’re wondering how I made it, I used several programs. First of all, Adobe Illustrator, to create the “outlines” of my logo. This is needed to export it to 3D Studio Max (I’m using an older version, 6, which I’m used to, not too fond of the newer ones). Here, you can “3Dfy” the outlines by extracting them. Then I rotated the logo to the position it is now, added a simple lighting effect and rendered the render.

From there on, it’s just Photoshop that’s required for the final touches. I added shades to the “body” parts, which makes it look more “soft” if you will. Added bit of a glow effect around it, as shades don’t work on a black background. Using the Clone Stamp tool I got rid of any unwanted edges. The final result is something I’m really pleased with.

So, why choose a simplistic theme like this? I’ve always been a fan of these and they work exceptionally well in most cases. Even IE liked it, only required one minor quirk for the main news posts to display correctly.

I always make a mockup using MS paint first (it’s quicker than Photoshop on some occassions lol). Cutting and pasting resulted in what you are seeing right now. I’m most likely to keep it this theme for a while since it’s just plain nice.

January 11th, 2012 | Category: PhatFish, Programs, Theme | Comments (4)

I went to visit my ante and uncle today. They had a small jukebox standing in their bus (which my has been converted to a camper), which immidiatly caught my attention. After a lovely day together I mentioned I was going to search for such a jukebox on the web – this thing looks so awesome and cool. My uncle then offered me to sell theirs to me for a mere 10 euros, which I gladly accepted! Needless to say I was filled with joy and really thankful for this very nice and attractive looking, music-producing piece of hardware.

It looks pretty similar to the above one, though it is slightly different. It has a build in AM/FM radio and a tape/cassette player (good for playing those good old nostalgic tracks), and a light switch which makes the box look fabulous in the glooming dark.

Currently listening to a hard-rock/metal channel, somewhere between 108 and 106 FM. I can recommend this mini jukebox to any fanatic of these kind of things – there are newer versions which play CD’s too, or even iPod compatible ones. I did a quick search on the web, so I should tell you that these are quite costly (going up to $150 or so). Very cool stuff!

January 8th, 2012 | Tags: AM, Box, FM, Juke, Mini, Music, Radio | Category: Gadgets, Music | Comments (1)

This post is in Dutch. Use Google Translate to translate the page.

Na een aantal jaren gestopt te hebben is cabaretier Hans Teeuwen weer op tv met een spiksplinternieuwe show… Spiksplinter! Het afgelopen jaar heeft hij opgetreden in verschillende theaters door heel het land. Vanavond zijn eindelijk dan ook de TV opnames te zien.

Vergeet dus niet te kijken – RTL 4, 21:00 uur.

January 7th, 2012 | Category: Cabaret, TV | Leave a comment

For quite a while I’ve been thinking of doing some small reviews of games I play or have played on the most wonderful game system called the Megadrive, by Sega. This lovely 16 bit cutie has always been my favorite console.

I have a pretty large library of Sega games, close to 300 games (including the leech systems: Master System, Sega CD and 32x) – a full closet filled with them. Nearly all of them are boxed and complete!

Here’s a pic of my retro collection:

Pic isn’t great quality because I used my phone. Not every part of it can be seen. Also includes SNES, Gameboy/GBA and Playstation games – Sega dwarves that though. Proud of this stuff – this has been my childhood and I still like to play these games very often. Prefer this over Xbox/PS3/Wii whatever newer consoles anytime – or pixels over polygons. Not saying the newer consoles are bad – just not really in my league, with an exception here and there.

They don’t make games/consoles like this anymore sadly, or only on very rare ocassions. Anyways, lets get started with my first review!

Review: Power Rangers: The Movie

Go go Power rangers! I’ve never been a fan of the goofy looking Daft Punk like heroes, although I do watched the series sometimes. No I did not see the movie. So what does the Megadrive game have in store for you? It’s quite a decent game, but doesn’t stand out. It’s a beat ‘em up, which got me pretty excited at first as this is one of my favorite genres (seriously, who doesn’t like Double Dragon, Streets of Rage or Final Fight?).

I always play any game on normal difficulty setting at first so I can truly appreciate what the game has to offer. I want something that’s challenging but balanced. Power Rangers is close to that, but as a veteran Sega gamer I found it still too easy. There’s only little variety in enemies, and bosses are used again right after you beat one, which is pretty lame. Now, I don’t have anything against bosses being used again (similar games do this), but Power Rangers just takes it to the next level (sarcasm).

What I do like is being able to choose your favorite Ranger at the start of each stage, although they are pretty much the same with only little variety in moves. There are a total of 6 stages to complete. The graphics are quite appealing and the music isn’t too bad either.

Verdict:
A decent beat ‘em up, which you’ll play a few times and then put it to rest for a while. It doesn’t have a huge amount of replay value but it is quite fun to play once a while. Worth to pick up.

Rating:
*** (3 out of 5 stars).

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for more reviews. As you’ve probably seen and read I have a lot of games and I intend to review quite a bunch of them, this may also include any SNES, Playstation or Gameboy games.

January 6th, 2012 | Tags: 16, bit, Cartridge, Drive, Mega, Movie, Power, Rangers, Review, Sega | Category: Sega, Sega Megadrive | Comments (7)