FREE Lego Building Software for Kids

These two freebies are great for people who enjoy lego.

LeoCAD
Do you (or your kids) enjoy building things in lego but never have enough bricks? Well, now there's LeoCAD, a FREE lego building application with infinite bricks and quite a few different varieties.

The application is available for both Windows and Linux environments and while it's fairly easy to use, though probably suitable for 10 years and over. Not only can you build things in it, but you can also animate them.



You can download LeoCAD from the following site
http://leocad.org/

Lego MiniMizer
If you're looking for something that's a bit better suited to younger children - or you want something that's instant fun for yourself, then the online minimizer is the way to go.

http://www.reasonablyclever.com/mini/kidsafe.htm

You can design your own lego people using this system... It's fast and easy and works entirely on the web (so it should work on Mac, Linux and Windows).

Here's one of my people who started out as being Smurfette;

FREE Doctor Who eBooks (From Classic Series)

There are several Doctor Who eBooks available for download as PDF Files in the style of the Classic Target Range.

They are available from the New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club

http://nzdwfc.tetrap.com/archive/novelisations.html

The books are as follows;

• Doctor Who and the Pirate Planet
• Doctor Who and the City of Death
• Doctor Who and Shada
• Doctor Who: Resurrection of the Daleks
• Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks

While on the Site, you might also want to check out their fanzines and the fan story Glory of the Daleks.

http://nzdwfc.tetrap.com/archive/glory/

In my opinion though, the best book on the entire site is;

Doctor Who - Who Killed Kennedy by by David Bishop & James Stevens

This book is sadly out of print but you can still download the PDF on this site if you want to read it.

http://nzdwfc.tetrap.com/archive/wkk/

FREE Audio Books - Logan’s Run, Planet of the Apes, Doctor Who

I’ve just been having a look at BrokenSea Audio productions.

They’ve got a bunch of Audio Books - actually full dramatisations - of various stories available for FREE download in MP3 format. Of particular note are,

Logan’s Run
http://brokensea.com/logansrun/

Planet of the Apes
http://brokensea.com/planetoftheapes/

Doctor Who (Various Stories)
http://brokensea.com/drwho/


There's also a few other things on the site including some Lovecraft but I personally found those things irritating. IMHO you have to be a reader with a certain style to read Lovecraft out loud.

One other thing to note. They haven’t been terribly good at keeping to naming conventions so you might want to rename the files as you download them so that they sort correctly in your player.

Check them out!

FREE Read-Along Books (for Kids and Kid-Like Adults)

Remember those read-along books from your childhood where you had to wait for Artoo-Detoo to beep or Indiana Jones to crack the whip before turning the page?

Well, there’s a site where they have collected a bunch of the more exciting ones (the movie-based ones) and have converted them to executable PC and Mac Files with real turning pages. You can also download the books in MP3 format if you just want to listen.

Here’s the Site
http://www.readalongadventures.com/

Amongst others, they have the books for

• Star Wars 1, 4, 5 & 6 - Plus Ewok Movies, ABCs and more
• Star Trek 1-4
• Back to the Future
• Gremlins
• The Goonies
• E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
• Indiana Jones 1-3
• Mary Poppins
• James Bond

Oh, and I just love the site graphics... so retro.

FREE Audio Books "Tales of Horror" including Salem's Lot

There’s a lot of free stuff out there on the internet and while admittedly, much of it is of variable quality, The quality of the productions on this particular site is pretty good because they're all radio broadcasts.

Tales of Horror: Stories from Early Radio

I'm a little surprised by the words "early radio" in the title. Salem's Lot isn't that old after all (and the Radio Play dates from 1995).

On the site, (http://horrortales.libsyn.com/) you can download, in MP3 format, a variety of horror stories and plays prepared for Radio broadcast and acted out by some of the stars of classic horror. The site includes a number of rather interesting stories such as;

• A 7 part 1995 BBC Radio Dramatization of “‘Salem’s Lot”
  Stephen King's masterpiece (well I like it anyway). I've listened to all of this - it's very good and closer to the book than the TV Movie(s). There's also an interesting wikipedia articleabout the radio play.
  

• “The Fall of the House of Usher”
  By Edgar Allan Poe. This is a 2 part adaptation starring Richard Taylor.

• “The Pit and the Pendulum”
  Also by Edgar Allan Poe - and also starring Richard Taylor.
  

• “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
  by Washington Irving and starring Boris Karloff.
  

• “Dracula”
  By Bram Stoker. In two parts and starring Christopher Lee in his usual role.
  

There’s lots more on the site too - so browse around.

FREE Computer Game "TuxRacer"

TuxRacer is an Open Source game which runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It’s cute and seems to work well on older hardware. The controls for this game are simple enough for young children to master - and I guess that’s about the right level for the game.

In any case, if you’re interested, you can get the game from the following web site;

http://tuxracer.sourceforge.net/download.html

FREE Computer Game "Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire" Remake

If you’re an old fan of the sierra style adventure games (I know I am), then you’ll probably remember playing the the original Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire Game.

The folks at AGD Interactive have worked their magic yet again and the game is now available for download at their site;

http://www.agdinteractive.com/

By todays demanding standards, the game probably isn't going to "blow your mind" but it's still a lot of fun.

Here are the system requirements/recommendations (though I'm sure it will work on older PCs too);

• SuperVGA Video Card with 1-2 MB Video RAM
• Pentium 500 MHz or above
• 128 MB RAM
• Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP or Vista
• DirectX 5 or above
• DirectX Compatible Sound Card
• Approximately 350 MB of Disk Space

AGD also developed remakes of King’s Quest I and II which were free and available on their website last year but the recent redesign seems to have hidden them. If you’re after those games, you might need to email them.

FREE Audio Book "U.N.I.T. The Coup"

If you like Doctor Who, there’s a free audio book available for download from the Big Finish Productions web site. First of all, you have to register (and validate) and then you can download it. The book is about 27MB and I’ve listened to the story myself. It’s not a great one but it does have some cool Silurian sound effects.

Anyway, if you’re interested, here’s the URL.

Free Audio Book: Unit: The Coup
http://www.bigfinish.com/UNIT-The-Coup

About this Blog

I started a blog a little while ago on wordpress to see what all the fuss was about (people had been telling me that wordpress is better than google blogger). It certainly isn't and the fact that I've moved the blog here should be proof enough of that.

My Wordpress blog was supposed to be about films with some other things like freebies being mentioned. Instead, I did only one review and filled the rest of the blog up with freebie info. This time I'm going to stay on topic... freebies only. In particular, I'm going to try to draw attention to;

• Free Software
• Free Games
• Free Videos/Movies
• Free eBooks (PDF Files etc)
• Free AudioBooks (MP3 format suitable for most devices)
• Free Music

As I'm moving the old wordpress blog here, so my original entries - the first seven or so, will be reprints of old posts. From then on, it will be new stuff.

I don't own any of the things I link to and I don't necessarily warrant that they're free from malicious stuff - you'll have to do your own scanning. I'll try to only post links of quality but anyone could change a link and I wouldn't know about it. In addition, I can't claim that the free stuff I link to will always be available - so get it while it's hot.

If there's anything wrong with any of my posts (particuarly copyright or offense), please let me know and I'll make changes or otherwise do my best to address the problem. Similarly, if you have related information, other free stuff (which is safe) or if you have a bad experience with any free stuff I post, I'd like to hear about it - so please add it as a comment.

I'll be moderating comments to prevent spam but won't deny comments which simply disagree.