For those who don’t know, I’m a partner at Order N Development. We do a lot of contract work, and among those contracts is doing the Mac porting of SereneScreen’s Marine Aquarium.

Recently I came across the blog of one Phill Ryu, who attempted to rank the ten best screensavers for Mac OS X. I say “attempt”, because obviously he failed. Despite all the hard work I put into it (well, technically it was Jim who did the “work”), Marine Aquarium was only ranked number two.

Clearly this contest was rigged from the start. The upstart “Fenêtres Volantes” took first place with its cheap French name and obvious payoff. I’m no expert, but there’s no telling how much money was made by the author off this so-called “freeware”, whatever that means.

This called for an investigation. I dug into the past of this Phill Ryu, if that’s his real name, and discovered he has a blog and likes to rank screensavers. It was obviously a cover for something far more sinister. What, I don’t know, because I lost interest after seeing all that shiny plastic over at MacThemes. I’m not sure who runs that site, but maybe they should be the ones ranking screensavers. They sure do know what looks like plastic.

I also take offense to the characterization of Marine Aquarium in the review. Its hardly “an oldie” as Phill suggests. I mean, you don’t hear geriatric radio stations playing The Marine Aquarium, do you? I thought not. Its usually something by The Beatles or Elvis. Phill also suggests that you cannot “touch” Marine Aquarium. Hooey. I caress my monitor all the time when its running. The fish like that. It reminds them of the time they were in the dentist’s office.

Finally, Phill implies that $20 is a steep price to pay for a screensaver. Oh, like all the other guys give it away for free? psh. Listen, Phill, web site hosting isn’t free, and I have to have some place to mock your hard work. So there.

(BTW, if you do decide to buy Marine Aquarium, please do it from our website. I get more money that way.)