A couple of months ago I decided to start playing the massive multi-player online game, Travian. Travian is a browser based game that lets you choose one of three races (Romans, Teutons or the Gauls), and then you have to create and build up a village (and its resources) while creating alliances with other gamers in your area to try create a competitive team to make it to end game.

The game, while simple when you start, gets extremely more complex and political as the months go on, and by looking at previous game play, games tend to last 12 to 15 months. I have being informed that after 10 months no new entrants are allowed in the game, and the final 6 months is a race to conquer a computer controlled race and build a Lvl 100 World Wonder.

When I first started playing Travian I was skeptical. How could a browser based game be as fun and as entertaining as the current list of games I play (Battlefield 2, COD4, World of Warcraft), but a couple of months into the game and I am completely sold. I really want to see if I can take my village to end game. However, to do that, I am going to need to make sure the alliance I am associated with 'keeps with the program', and that all enemy alliances and villages in my area are cleaned out and conquered.

There are currently over 20 000 players in the game of Travian that I am competing in. When I started writing this post, the point was not to give a review of the game (as I have just done), but rather to give a list of very useful links (as I am about to do) I have found to enable you to be better equipped for your Travian experience.

List of useful Travian links:

- Travian Website - http://www.travian.com - This is where you register and login to play the game.

- Official Travian 'manual' - http://help.travian.com - A mostly useful manual on the game and its units, resources and infrastructure.

- Travian map tool - http://travianmap.nl/index.php?ln=en# - A great tool to work out where you are in the Travian world, and who is around you.

- Travellog - http://travilog.org.ua/en - A tool to let you post battle and scouting reports to your friends and alliances members.

- Travian toolbox - http://www.traviantoolbox.com/index.php?lang=en - This tool does all types of really good calculations for you. Useful for working out battle coordination.

- Travian analyzer - http://www.travian.ws - The Travian world analyzer is a great tool for when you are doing research on a village or an alliance you have to interact with, or if you just want to have a look at whats going on in the world of Travian.

- Farm finder - http://traviantool2.ww7.be/frame_T.php?lang=com&titre=inactive - This tool lets you find inactive players so you can "farm" (thats when you raid their resources) them.

- Cropper finder - http://asite.110mb.com/cropfinder.php - This is a great tool for finding croppers (resources areas that you can take over that are very valuable) close to you.

Playing guides:

Here are a couple of guides to give you the best possible start in your game of Travian.

- Gauls. The Gauls are the best defensive race in the game. http://forum.travian.us/showthread.php?t=6302

- Romans. Romans are the economic powerhouses of the game. http://ionutbatman.trei.ro/

- Teutons. They are the most aggressive race. I could not find a decent enough guide that I would like to show you.. so if anyone is able to find one, please let me know so I can post it here.

That should be enough information to start you on a successful road to conquest. Let me know if you think there should be any other links added here.

Hey Beenz, I in response to your last comment. Here is the song I think you are looking for.

I love the tag cloud widget Amatomu offers to bloggers. It almost looks like the blogosphere is trying to talk to you and sometimes you can make out the strangest sentances. Is the tag cloud sentinent?

Most probley not, but before I call down the wrath of an army of otter's in the slight chance I am wrong, I have decided to document the occasional tag cloud in an attempt to find out if it is simply random code or Internet oracle trying to communicate with us.

So I took a quick screenshot to see if Amatomu tag cloud was trying to tell us something. Using secret Tibetan cryptogramical algorithms and the color red I will now reveal what the blogosphere is trying to tell us.

Sentient or random? Only time will tell... but are you really willing to risk the wrath of an army of otter's on the off chance that you are wrong?

*Please note the above post is Friday fun and should not be taken seriously.

When researching information out there in regards to certain scientific theories I came across a lot of pseudoscience websites that try pass themselves off as real science. A lot of the information contained in these sites is false. These sites seem to appear to push their own religious agenda's as real science as to try pull more ignorant people into their clutches.

I found the following websites to have false and misleading information that more than bordered on the fraudulent:

www.creationism.org
www.creationscience.com
www.icr.org
www.answersingenesis.org
www.drdino.com
www.sixdaycreation.com
www.nwcreation.net
www.answersincreation.org
www.natcenscied.org
www.csfpittsburgh.org
www.csm.org.uk
www.creationresearch.org
www.creationdefense.org
www.worldbydesign.org
www.bhcsa.org
www.halos.com
www.trueorigin.org
www.creationscience.net
www.highschoolscience.com
www.evidenceofcreation.com
www.creationdigest.com
www.creationscienceoc.org
www.ecreationscience.com
www.antievolution.org
www.reviewevolution.com

(satire)Protect your kids from this type of dishonesty by adding the above list to Net Nanny or another such child protective monitoring software. Stop the insanity and make sure your children get a real education that will help them succeed in our global village.

If you know of any other such websites that are trying to pass themselves off as real science please email me or leave a comment here, and I will continue to update the list(/satire). Lets teach our kids responsibility to truth over blind obedience to myth.

Edit, included satire tags.

Yup folks, sorry to bring this up again, but the simple folk on the Internet need a bit of a clue. While I am sure a lot of you think your pastor knows more about life than Dawkins, us us in the real world actually need to know the truth. Now I know if your pastor has a child with his sister he may deny the theory of evolution, but luckily the pastors work is to promote a cult that glorifies death and not to figure out how to keep life alive. Otherwise we would all be stuffed.

Evolution is pretty simple.. here it is; evolution is the change in a population's inherited traits from generation to generation.

The theory of evolution explains how this happens through different mechanics such as mutation, gene drift, speciation and others.

So this is a challenge to all those religious folk there to prove science and evolution wrong. If you can prove evolution wrong I will personally with every possible resource available to me, get you nominated for a Nobel Prize in science... because honestly, thats the least you deserve if you can prove evolution wrong.

So preachers, priests, domines, clerics, rabbi`s, pastors and other people of the fraud, sorry I mean cloth, who deny evolution are welcome to "put their money where their mouth is.". Lets see if they have the ability to be honest.

For those of you who do not want to prove it because you see no value in the Nobel Prize, think of the large amount of cash you get with it. Im sure your mega-church could use the money to buy another SUV.

I came across this movie today while browsing some local forums. Mark "The Knife" Faje does some amazingly daring (stupid) and yet awesome juggling trick in an audition for "America's Got Talent"

I really want to see this guys next performance!

Security analyst David Kierznowski shocked bloggers yesterday with a survey showing that 49 out of the 50 WordPress blogs he checked seem to be running exploitable versions of the widely used software. He said, 'The main concern here is the lack of security awareness amongst bloggers with a non-technical background, and even those with a technical background.' Mr Kierznowski also uncovered recent vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins that ship by default with the software, adding: 'WordPress users developing plugins must be aware of the security functions that WordPress supports, and ensure that these functions are used in their code.

Information directly from Slashdot, but I believed the information was important enough to share.

Related links:

- http://blogsecurity.net/wordpress/articles/article-230507/
- http://michaeldaw.org/papers/securing_wp_plugins/

Getting XGL (some serious eye candy!), KDE (The Desktop of choice) and Kubuntu to all play fair was a little more difficult then excpect. First I had to make changes to my xorg.conf file to enable Duel Monitor support, once I had got the resolved it was onto installing XGL ontop of KDE.

For those of you who do not know, XGL, developed by Novell was designed for the Gnome SUSE desktop, and has some real cool controls, like wobbly windows, pull back windows and 3 dimensional desktops. Theres a hang of a lot more to it, but thats the general gist of it.

I also decided to update my background image as that was designed more for a single monitor rather than a dual monitor. So now I run a desktop background I pulled off http://www.deviantart.com, called Delicious.

Well that aside, and without any further wasting your time, here is mah new desktop:

http://www.pickledbushman.com/screenshots/xgl/cube_multi_desktop.jpg

Here is another picture of the "pull back" window effect. Basicaly you hold down cntrl, and you can pull down the corner of a window:

http://www.pickledbushman.com/screenshots/xgl/pulling_window_to_the_side.jpg

And one last picture, the whole "wobbly" windows effect when you shake a window around:

http://www.pickledbushman.com/screenshots/xgl/wobbly_windows.jpg

You also get that effect when your K menu (like windows start menu) bounces up and down, and the menu options bounce out the side of it.

For the record, if you want to do the same with your Kubuntu install, simply follow the instructions in this how-to and you should be fine and dandy: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=186200&highlight=kde+compiz

Some seriously good eye candy for a great desktop Operating System! Well done Mark!

After the recent spate of scams run on the popular South African broadband news and discussion forum called http://www.mybroadband.co.za / http://www.myadsl.co.za, I have decided to keep a list of the top scammers that make their rounds. I honestly believe these people will strike again, so I have decided to keep a permanent record for history and googles sake.

Scammer/Fraudster #1:

Alias: celemasiko
Real Name: Peter Lauer

Scam(s): Pretends to be sick, either with something terminal or amputation. Tries to get sympathy money out of people by praying on his victims emotions or pity and compassion. He took a lot of people for a ride on the Mybroadband/Myadsl forums, and a lot of people fell for his lies. During the investigations a forumite from another german forum made a couple of posts, on how he had pulled the same scam there, and how he had got people to give him money there. He also has a habit of pretending to post as his daughter, often saying that "her" "father" is dying, and willing to accept money on their behalf.

Known email address's: nadjalauer2710@web.de ; Celemasiko@gmx.de
Known Website(s): http://www.celemasiko.za.net/Celemasiko%20englisch/index.htm :D ; http://www.celemasiko.za.net
RPM's last words: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=26608&highlight=celemasiko

Scammer/Fraudster #2:

Alias(s): slimothy / smint
Real Name: Warren Smith

Scam(s): The term "Slimothy", is a widely used term in the South African online community. It is often used in the context of, "to pull a slimothy", which means to commit an illegal act of fraud and/or theft.

It was first started on the popular www.myadsl.co.za (MyADSL) forum, where a forumite by the alias "Slimothy" used to frequent often. The name of this forumite was the notorious Warren Smith, from Johannesburg, South Africa. Warren, a PHP developer, developed a commercial system of the PHP torrent client known at Torrenflux, and renamed his version to Torrentbox.

In the bandwidth starved country of South Africa, users were eager to adopt this bandwidth saving technology, and many users from the MyADSL forum eagerly sent their money to Warren, with many users paying for a whole year in advance! Warren then took the money, and emigrated to another country and disappeared for a while, thereby committing fraud and stealing every ones money.

Known Email Address: smith(y?)inc@gmail.com
Known MSN: nimbleslimbo@hotmail.com
Known Contact numbers: (to come soon)
Known Address:(coming soon)
MyAdsl thread: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=30506&highlight=slimothy+warren+smith

Scammer/Fraudster #3:

Alias(s): Person ; DOT.IT ; [*]NE1Per_son
Real Name: Brian Gibello

Scam(s): Lies through his teeth for profit. Will do a couple of small deals to look legit, then frauduntly rip off a large group of people at the same time. Most often by pretending to be an "on-the-level" hardware dealer. His only one person, though he may pretend to be many. Lives with his mom, pretends to leave the country when the heat is on.

Known Contact Number(s): +27 21 761 2344 ; 082 839 3223
Known Address(s):5 Greenfields, 36 Greenfield Road
Kenilworth 7708 Cape Town
South Africa
Known Website(s): http://www.dotcomputers.co.za
Known Email Address(s): Sales@dotcomputers.co.za ; Brian@dotcomputers.co.za
ID Number ?: 8702235032086
Known Companies(s): DOT Information Technology ; Dot Co Computers

First MyAdsl Thread: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=45257&highlight=person
Second MyAdsl Thread: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=45535&highlight=person
PC Buyersguide Thread: http://www.pcbuyersguide.co.za/showthread.php?t=3611&page=2
The Prophecy : http://forums.prophecy.co.za/member.php?u=990
Other: http://www.thermaltake.com/2005/news/lanpartyZone/0804c.htm

PLEASE NOTE. UPDATES ON BRIAN GIBELLO.:

I get a couple of emails every couple of months about people worried about him. I don't blame them, from my correspondence with them it appears Brian is still up to his old tricks.

At the end of 2006 an company in Germany contact me in regards to Brian Gibello. They informed me that he claimed to be the CEO of Tigerdirect.com ( A large brand ). Brian also claimed that he was wanting to purchase 4 Bentley GTC for 220.000 EUR each. The elite German car dealership contacted me and confirmed it was the same person. Brian also claimed he was going to fly in with his "body guards" to pick up the vehicles. Luckily the car dealership in Germany was able to prevent any possible fraud.

I keep getting updated reports from people who have caught him out lying. Just the other day I had another car dealership contact me informing me that Brian Gibello had walked into their shop and claimed to be an executive from Google as well as a student at MIT. The salesman was suspicious and he also confirmed it was the same Brian Gibello.

I often get updates about Brian Gibello and my latest sources inform me Brian Gibello's current address is (address removed due for privacy reasons)

UPDATE 29th of June 2007

I received the following email from a concerned US citizen in regards to Brian Gibello;

"Hi, I recently encountered Brian Gibello here in MA. I had a 10-15 minute exchange with him on the MBTA commuter rail. He was taking the train from South Station in Boston to Southborough Station. He told me he lives in Marlborough, which could confirm the address you have listed on your site.

He told me works for facebook on platform (which they just released) in facebook's Boston office (which doesn't exist) with Mark Zuckerberg (facebook's founder and CEO who actually works in San Francisco). He's claiming to be a Facebook engineer (I'm not yet sure to what end) and has a fake Facebook Administrator account http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=545246176 he was able to get through facebook's filters by making two Os in the terms special characters: Facebọok Administratọr . Not sure what he actually does in Boston. I've also read on his facebook 'wall' that he has a
Bentley (stolen?). "

It appears he has a different lie for every person he meets.

Feel free to contact Brian Gibello on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/s.php?k=10080&id=529805304

The latest phone number we have for Brian is +15085050022

The latest confirmed place that Brian was working at is Chikita, however I was informed he was let go very quickly when Chikita realized something was not right.

Please email any other information you may have on any of these criminals to stop-scammers@pickledbushman.com

PLEASE READ THE COMMENTS FOR BRIANS RESPONSE

Update: 21/08/2007

I received this fax from a company that had a run in with Brian Gibello. With permission I am posting it here so you can get an idea of what we are talking about:

Update: 13/12/2007

I have being informed that Brian has being arrested and is currently serving a sentence at Norfolk County Correctional Facility. Once he has finished there he will be deported back to South Africa. Anyone with any more information on, or who would like more information can please contact Fraud investigator Jack Kelly 1-800-879-1731 x 2554

Brian's incarceration has being confirmed in Norfolk County House of Corrections, feel free to call him on +17813293705

Update: 16 July 2009

Brian is in South Africa (Cape Town from the email I get) and is up to old tricks again.

Update: 07 April 2010

Any reports of Brian being arrested and in Pollsmoor Prison are fake and spread by Brian himself.

So its my version of a saturday night. What am I doing? Well, I am parking off in bed with my gf (nicely naked and looking very appealing ) lying next to me. Other than the midly perverted thoughts caused by her presence next to me, Im busy typing out this blog post, and watching Start Trek, The Next Generation.

I managed to score every episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation. This one chap at work snaked it off this oke who looked like a cross between an ancient spaniard and lucifer. One of those creepy okes who think they have skills but actually dont.

As you can see by the terrible spelling, punctuation and grammer, I am smoking a joint. A nice big fat one the gf rolled. I will do a post sometime about the stupidity and hypocracy of ours (and most likely yours), legal system in regards to this blessed `erb.