So bummed,

After wanting the username @fox (twitter.com/fox) for about two years, I finally noticed that there has been a dramatic change in the past few days. It may or may not be the real deal this time, but either way the twitter support has completely failed me in getting it for myself.

Here is my email log, as best as I could find it, dating back several years now between support and myself. Plenty of candid responses, but no actual progress.

If you’re interested to see what it used to look like, before a few days ago, see below. The account itself dating back to 2010 with activity. Big up JC!

I’ve tried to track down jc, but it led me down a very arcane subset of the internet and ultimately a dead end. I never got to ask him if he was willing to give it up.

Currently the account has been freshly rinsed, and is still pretty much dead.

There is not much more I can do other than sit back and see if it’s really becomes a 20th Century Fox account, even though they already have an established username on twitter (@20thcenturyfox).

Many of my friends would agree that I’m fox, including @cn and @adii, to name just two. So nothing could be more rad as a twitter username!

What my @foxinni, looks like at the moment.

Twitter is an amazing social network and only because I love using it so much, do I care to complain about it.

Regards,
Malan

This is a free Chrome extension I made because of an idea I had. Written in javascipt and CSS, it’s about the most efficient way I could find to create a different layout for Youtube.

What does it do?
Displays comments and videos side-by-side on the Youtube watch page.

Where can I get it?
→ On the Chrome Webstore

What does it look like?

Youtube Layout Screenschot

Have fun and rate!
M

It Takes a Village

I’m proud to acknowledge the contributions of the following 218 people to the 3.0 release cycle. These are the folks that make WordPress what it is, whose collaboration and hard work enable us to build something greater than the sum of our parts. In alphabetical order, of course.

More at http://wordpress.org/development/2010/06/thelonious/

I’m making a ridiculous statement right out the gates and oddly so because Diablo 3 has not even been released yet. Why say it’s a killer? That’s because Torchlight is exactly what you’d expect the next Diablo to be like.

From the start Torchlight submerges you in a neat new world, instantly throwing you into the action, where your character and your character’s (very useful) pet quickly start delving deeper into the troubled dungeons below.

Torchlight hugely surprised me in terms of it’s gaming experience and accessibility. Let me break it down for you…

Pros:

• Gorgeous. Torchlight in-game is absolutely beautiful and crisp.
• Smooth. This game runs smoothly on PC’s older than 3 years. It’s obviously very well built.
• Tiny. Torchlight is less than 500MB in size! Most decent games average 5 to 8 Gigs.
• Cheap. This game is going for $19.95 and is ready for download right now.
• Playable. Torchlight is accurate, fast and really easy to play, with unique new interface features that makes this game loads of fun.

Con:

• No multiplayer, yet. Currently in development for the MMORPG realm, Torchlight could become a serious contender in the online gaming genre. Good luck to you I say.

Blizzard will to be dangling the release date carrot in front of Diablo fans for a really long time to come. In the mean time I hope that Torchlight makes a big splash with their online gaming experience as they totally deserve it with this well polished game.

If you’re a gamer and haven’t played Torchlight yet,  I highly recommend you do.

Next follows some eye candy for you to feast on…

Torchlight Screenshots

Torchlight Videos

As promised, I will be sharing some of the love The Killers showed the attendees of yesterdays concert.

Any chance we as Cape Townians get to go to a big concert, we leap at the opportunity. This was the case with The Killers live in concert, churning out about 20 000, individuals ready for big sound and one killer live act.

The venue was good and the vibe was wonderful. All the heartache with traffic in and out of the venue aside, there was very little to complain about. The opening band, Zebra & Giraffe stepped up with and extraordinary performance, starting things up stunningly.

I got to snap some videos and images of the Killers in action (mostly from the wedged person position) .

An emotional moment comes as I finally polish up this LONG overdue theme for my site. Many things can attribute to this theme taking well over 6 month to complete. Among those are the love/hate relationship I have with design, the lack of focus and the need to get everything perfect.

My site is not perfect. It started off heading into one direction and then started going into other directions as time went on. Right now I’m very involved with WooThemes to really create a vicious web property, not to mention the obvious to just go less.

So just to tell you more about the latest design. I’m not a strong blogger and but I still want to push out updates. That’s why I opted for a sticky based homepage, with a few posts taking main stage. I wanted to try out something fluid, giving me space to explore the wide open spaces. And brown… brown is my favorite color.

Right now there is a very big WooThemes pluck on the site. Why? Simply because I want to get more people onto our great product. And big fat sections of advertising will do exactly that. The goal it to convert my traffic into something I spend allot of time on.

Foxinni.com is suppose to be my online business card, but my business card is doing some decent SE traffic… so the inner posts and old-to-ancient content I can’t do away with, or rather, I won’t. Further more, I intend to develop an above standard Portfolio section. I’ve done a bit of design in my day, hence forfeiting the Portfolio section for now. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.

Feel free to browse and comment on any features you like and do not like, it’s all fair game. I added some screenshots to the post using ThemeSmith. It will be making a big difference to the way I blog from now on.

* Expect some browser bugs. Firefox and Safari for the win.

This past week I went to go see District 9 again. The make of any good movie is one that you can watch twice in quick succession only to appreciate it even more. The subtle South African flavor coupled with a unique story, told in an uncanny documentary style fashion made for an enjoyable second ride. The certain individuals I’ve coaxed into watching  this big screen action movie,  found that my recommendations were sound.

Remember, the Tamatometer never lies…

Last week I got notified that one of my domains (twittersa.com) has been flagged with a “Trade mark Infringement”, and subsequently had to be handed over. I don’t think that this is uncommon, as I’ve had other domains ripped out from underneath me.

Wogan and me teamed up last year and created a streamlined Twitter site for South Africans. It was somewhat successful, but as of today we’re closing it down.

It was a good run, and if you pay good money to trademark your brand, you retain that right to sue. No hard feelings.

Lately I’ve been getting lots of twitter followers. I think it’s mostly because of my recent move to WooThemes and thus I’ve refrained from over posting to twitter. I really don’t want to seem like a loony toon who tells people what he had for breakfast, and only try sharing stuff that are genuinely cool and interesting. But that might be on the change (again), this is why.

So yesterday I made a tweet with link to and article about the Boy Wonder who helped Obama and Facebook get their online campaigns into high gear, basically getting Obama elected in many’s opinion.

My point is… I’ve gotten about 10 emails this morning from Qwitter updating me of people who has unfollowed me due to that tweet. And with that I just want say… you are all FAIL, and a big fuck you for not sticking it out for a couple of updates.

I decided NOT to post the list of people… there is nothing to be gained out of it. And thanks to Qwitter for being so brutally honest, even if it hurst.