50% off all Big Fish Games

Use the coupon springfever at checkout to get 50% off all Big Fish Games. Expires March 23rd, 2009. Enjoy! :)

Get 10+ commercial games FREE for Mac and Windows

Big Fish Games is a website that has many games for both Mac and Windows users, with an optional subscription service that lets you pay as little as $6.99 per game! At the moment they have quite a few sponsored promotions in which they are giving away games and giving 50% discounts on others. I got the following 9 games free for my Mac: Fairies, Magic Vines, Atlantis, Build-a-lot, Mahjong Towers Eternity, Mystic Inn, Mystery Case Files: Huntsville, Mystery Case Files: Madame Fate, and Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst. Some of the promotions let you choose from a selection of games, so you can get the games you like best (try the demos first if you're undecided).

HOW TO REDEEM YOUR FREE GAMES

1. Sign up for a free account and make sure you are logged in
2. Enter your info on the following Game Redemption Centers:
   - Verbatim (2 free games from a selection of 5)
   - Borders or 6pm (free Huntsville and Mahjong Towers)
   - Roush Fenway (1 free game from a selection of 4)
   - Barnes & Noble (free Haunted Hotel)
   
3. Send a Hallmark card: 1, 2, or 3 (free Sudoku and 1 game from selection of 3)
4. Complete this quiz (2 free games from a selection of 5)
5. Add your chosen games to your cart
6. Add Build-a-lot and Ravenhearst to your cart
7. In your cart, deselect the checkbox next to the backup CD that has been added (unless you want it of course, but it's not free)
8. Insert your coupon codes (check your email for them)
9. Coupons for Build-a-lot and Ravenhearst are FREEBUILD and HOLIDAYRAVEN
10. Once the total is $0, complete your order

Before completing your order you could also add any other games you would like to get, for example the discounted games that you received coupons for - the sequel to Ravenhearst is among them.
Once you have completed your order, you will receive an email with your registration licenses and download links. Enjoy!

P.S. Once you have signed up you can become an affiliate and earn rewards for referring friends and family! I think right now they only offer cash rewards, but soon there will also be an option to get free games if you prefer ;)

Please help Australian bushfire victims

SitePoint is holding a 3 day 5-for-1 book sale - that means you get $149.75 worth of books for $29.95! But more importantly, 100% of the proceeds will be donated to the victims of the recent Australian bushfires.

The victims of the bushfires can only rely on donations to keep them going right now. Many have lost their homes, family, and friends, and have been burnt or otherwise injured while trying to escape or help others. Firefighters and emergency workers have also lost their homes while fighting to save the homes of others, and yet they continue to do all they can to help. Click here to read more, and please take this opportunity to make a donation and spread the word.

Free Games from Mac Games Arcade

Mac Games Arcade is giving away a game for free each day until Tuesday! Yesterday they gave away "Pangea Arcade", today they are giving away "Bullet Candy", and over the next 3 days they will be giving away "Rocket Bowl", "Platypus", and "Nanny Mania". Read this post for instructions, and enjoy your free games! :D

Free Mac apps from the Mac Giving Tree

The Mac Giving Tree is giving away several commercial apps for free this Christmas! Right now only 2 apps are available for download - Synergy and Enigmo 2 - but 2 more will be unlocked on Christmas, and another 2 can be unlocked by referring your friends. I'm really excited about getting Enigmo 2, and I can't wait to start playing! I think Synergy will also be very useful - the addition of global hot keys to iTunes means I will probably be using it much more often. I'm also looking forward to finding out what the other apps are going to be! :D Hop on over to the Mac Giving Tree to get your free gifts too! ;)

Stunning vector images at Designious

In a previous post I linked to sites where you can buy and sell vector images. Those sites have big collections of vector images made by many different artists, but this means that the quality of the illustrations are not always the best. But there are also sites dedicated exclusively to vector images made by one person, team, or company. Designious is one such site, and they have a huge selection of beautiful vectors to choose from.

Designious sells dozens of $15 themed packs with many vector images in each one. The categories include Floral, People, Nature, Buildings, Skulls, Scrolls, Halftones & Grunges, Wings, and more. These packs are also available in Mega Packs and Giga Packs, which are great if you want to buy multiple normal packs, because you can get them for half price! They also have dozens of striking T-shirt designs for $10 each.

If you want to try before you buy, you can go to their free downloads page, where you can find free vector packs, T-shirt designs, icons, and some stunning illustrations.

My favorite floral design is "Floral vector pack 19", which is filled with beautiful vines and flowers! Most of them are meant to be used as abstract silhouettes, but you can still color the vines and flowers separately with a little more work. Just copy and paste your image, and remove the part of the drawing you don't need (for example everything except a flower). Repeat until you have separate images for each part you want to give a separate color to.

I have also tried the "Cartoon girls vector pack", which contains 17 vector images of women in different poses, with different hair and clothes, and of different nationalities. My first thought when I saw them was that they would be perfect to use in personal websites and blog designs! I really love using vectors instead of bitmap images, because it's so much easier to change the colors to my liking. I had great fun changing the colors of their hair, skin, clothes, and even their make-up! Try doing that so easily in Photoshop :P

Users who don't have Illustrator might have some problems with the parts of the images that are colored with gradients - I use VectorDesigner, and some of the girls from this pack were missing clothing or hair! :P Luckily I also have ZeusDraw, and was able to get around this problem by importing the EPS file as a PDF, and then converting the PDF to objects. But if you're lucky enough to have Illustrator, you shouldn't have any problems ;)

Browsing through the Designious vector packs has given me a lot of ideas and inspiration for new designs, and I can't wait to get started! :D

RSS feed not working

Some of you may have noticed that the Bits and Pixels RSS feed is not working right now. I just wanted to let you know that I'm trying to find the problem, and will get it fixed as soon as possible. I think it might be a problem with the desktop blogging client that I bought recently, and which I used to post the last two posts (which coincidentally are the ones that have not been distributed via feed and email subscriptions). I am writing this post from the WordPress dashboard, so if it shows up in my feed I'll know for sure it's the desktop blogging client's fault ;)

If it doesn't show up in the feed, then I really don't know what's wrong, as I've had the feed validated with no problems. In this case I will have to contact Feedburner to see if they know what's wrong, but hopefully I can get it fixed soon. Thanks for your patience!

Update: Okay, I don't think it's a problem with Ecto anymore. I'm pretty sure now that the problem lies with Feedburner. I have posted in their Google group, since I couldn't find a contact form or email address, but hopefully they will respond soon. Does anyone know how to contact them directly?