A few people have commented to me that I hardly ever write anything about what's happening to me in my
diary any more. Possibly this is because I have a limited amount of free time and there are so many games to post when I do get the time, but I submit this post to persuade you that this might not be a bad thing given the warped way my brain works. So...
I work in an office. Most days I sit at my desk for 10+ hours. Looking at a drab desk for that length of time, sometimes you do stupid things to brighten the place up. So when I acquired (they were given them away at all the mainline London railway stations) a little foam rubber pig that was advertising
pigsback.com it seems natural to garnish my desk with it's presence. Especially since you could also play catch and football with it when the boss was out... Oh how we chuckled in the office.
Anyway, with this creative feat accomplished, the little pig remained on my desk, some what forgotten. That was until December when
Innocent Drinks adorned all their juice and smoothie bottles with little woolly bobble hats. "How cute" we all thought as we supped our nutritious fruit based beverages at lunchtime, but
what do we do with the little hats once we have consumed 2 of our 5 fruit/veg portions for the day?
This is where Graeme's warped brain kicked into gear. I looked at the seemingly useless mini-bobble hat. I looked at my until recently forgotten pig type desk ornamentation. With stunningly fast mathematical equations zipping through my brain I reasoned that with a minimum of stetching that little hat would fit over the ears of the pig. Bingo! It worked. With one stroke of genius I had created the ultimate winter desk accessory for the bored web developer. See
my pig in a hat creation in the picture above (in a very abstract way that's my desk in the background).
Well obviously I was very chuffed with myself. My desk was adorned with a one off artistic masterpiece which was a talking point among all my colleagues. I had fused together random items found in the course of a working life in London to produce something that was a physical commentary upon the modern man's working desk environment, through the medium of a pig in a hat. Brilliant. Perhaps I should take it down to the
Tate Modern down the road to see if they would be interested in exhibiting my work?
Anyway, as always in the office, time moved on. Within a matter of a couple of months everyone had forgotten I was an artisitic genius and expected me once again to earn my living developing and installing intranet systems. So it was on a cold February day that I found myself in one of London's fine
black cabs making my way to Fenchurch Street (home to many of the biggest names in International insurance - if you've travelled on a plane, a ship, or a space shuttle it's insured here - I kid you not).
Arriving at the client's fine offices (don't even get me started on their view), I was offered the choice of doing my work either a). In a super chilled server room with no human contact and the possibility of death by
halon, or b). Sitting at a nice comfy desk, near the coffee machine, with a window view (damn that view!). Having discovered through many past experiences that while the cold is bareable, and halon infrequent, in server rooms, they almost never feature a chair. And certainly not coffee. Coffee is frowned upon when you are surrounded by thousands of pounds worth of business critical servers. I found that out the hard way. So I opted for "b"; the desk.
So I've done my job for a while now, and I know if I concentrate hard I can get all my files copied, web server configured, database set up, etc, in under half an hour (personal best: 4 systems in an hour), and head out onto Fenchurch St. where I know for a fact that there are at least three quality coffee houses within a 5 minute walk (Lloyds of London started as a coffee house fact fans), even though one of them has "bucks" on the end of it's name.
Thinking hard about coffee primarily, getting the job done quickly, and, I suppose, not looking
too much of a g33k in front of
actual business people, I barely noticed the desk I had been assigned, home to some poor grunt that was not in that day. So it was a good 10 minutes or so later (while I was
still waiting for remote access to the server) that my eyes settled upon a curious object on the shelf in front of me. What was that? Surely it couldn't be? A pig. A
pigsback.com pig. But wait. What was that stetched accross it's little foam rubber ears. Nooooooooooo. An
Innocent Drinks bobble hat, maybe not the same jaunty yellow number that my little porker sported, but certainly from the same line.
Step one was to snap
the evidence with my phone camera - see the
pic below. Step two was to find out who the regular inhabitant of the desk was - perhaps they were a member of the project team I was delivering for? Perhaps they had visited my office to view the prototype system?
Perhaps they had stolen my invention???!!! No. I had never had heard of them. That could only mean one thing. They had
independently created the pig in the hat! Or perhaps someone had told them about
my pig in a hat, and they thought it was such a great idea they made there own. No.
That was ridiculous. So they had
independently created the pig in the hat! You could have knocked me down with a feather. Who knows how many other people in London had seen the possiblities enshrined within these two simple objects? Perhaps it had spread further afield? Where would it end?
And so folks, there you have why pigs in hats are this season's "must have" item for your office desk, and why it's a good idea I just stick to posting games most of the time.
G:o)
PS. Of course I encourage you to send me pictures of your "pigs in hats". Bonus points if you use the same construction materials as I (and mysterious Fenchurch St Worker) used. Double bonus points if you had one
before reading this.
There's some confusion over the proper name of this little
point'n'click game, I'm guessing because very few of us speak Slovakian. I've heard it called "Escape The Lonely Island", "Escape The Beach" & "Ostrov", among others, I've settled for "
Ostrov Island". Anyway, whatever it's called, you're definately stuck on an island, and it's a Slovakian island, which makes understanding all the little notes and instructions a little tricky. Unless you're Slovakian, of course [
subbed by tia & winniethepooh].
Music Friday returns to lazylaces (yet again) with
Sand Fantasy. The artist, Ilana Yahav, creates scenes and forms using a backlit glass table and sand poured from her hands. And since it's set to music, it's a good fit for today, besides the simple beauty of it. A relaxing way to wind down from the working week [
subbed by vacklay].
I'm not even sure how
Prince Of Pension gets it's name as I don't know enough Russian, and by "enough", I mean "any", to work it out for myself. Anyway I assume the name has been correctly translated by some one, and it doesn't stop you enjoying this
point'n'click game (although I suspect it makes it a lot harder). All I've worked out so far is that there are 3 levels of difficulty, dpending upon which character you pick at the begining (they get harder as you go down the page), and it's important to jump over obstacles as you lose a life if you bump into them. Oh, and perhaps most importantly, while you use your mouse for picking objects up, you need to use your cursor keys to move around [
subbed by winniethepooh].
If you like puzzles you're probably still stuck googling, examining picture properties, etc with many of the wealth of puzzles that have been released recently, but I'm sure your massive brain has room for some more - so here's 32 levels (currently) of
The Ultimo Puzzle. Good luck [
subbed by darkflame].
I've been a fan of the
Flickr service for a while now, and now there is a great game called
Fastr based upon it. It's very similar to
Guess-The-Google, you have to guess the common theme word from a group of pictures, the pics are revealed one by one, and the sooner you guess the common theme word the more points you gain. Also with
Fastr you can see your scores alongside other folks currently on-line which adds a nice competitive element to the whole thing [
subbed by Nid].
The Hills Have Eyes Game is probably not one to share with your kids. Featuring, as it does, shooting attacking mutants. You might even want to skip it if your scared by that sort of thing. Anyway for the rest of us it's time to crank up the volume, turn down the lights, and get your favourite teddy bear to hand for reassuring cuddles...
In the
The Hills Have Eyes Game you try to escape from a mineshaft, shooting the mutants that try to stop (and eat!) you. The game is more
Doom, than
point'n'click, although it's not a million miles away, especially if you've played some of the scary ones. There are a few bonus items to collect, especially useful are the batteries which you can use in your flashlight, if your flashlight batteries run out the mutants get you. Apparently mutants have excellent night vision. Eeeeek!
One further word of warning - the controls involve using the mouse for looking (and shooting), and the cursor keys for movement. If you are playing on a laptop, like me, you might want to leave this one until you are back at your desktop machine, unless finger pain is your bag [
subbed by Debra].
Thought your cursor pointer was safe? Well
Cursor War has just been declared. The opposing side has great jumping skills, iron girders, guided missiles and so much more on it's side. All you have are top mouse *skillz* from all those point and click adventures you've been playing. Good luck [
subbed by mtf, TheBear & coolgirl].
I'm sure there are a large number of you that don't know what the
Six Nations Championship is, maybe you don't even know what
rugby is (*shame* on you), but I can still recommend the BBC's
England Academy game. There are 6 skill tests so you can train in all the basics of rugby (unfortunately for my French, Italian, Irish, Welsh & Scottish friends you have to play as England for this bit - the rest of you don't have a team in the championship at all!), and then you can pick your own team, and play your own 6 nations. Superb. Not my normal cup of tea, but it's so well done I love it.
As you might suspect from the name
Qwizard 2 is the sequel to the hugely popular
Qwizard. Time to get puzzling again people. Fortunately for folks like me who are still stuck in a world of googling after the first game you don't have to have finished all 100 levels of the first game to embark upon the next 100 [
subbed and created by Greg & Lola].
From Heaven To Hell isn't a
point'n'click game for the kids, or the squeamish, as the liberal amounts of blood you find and spooky sound effects suggest (no spooky music though), and when you get towards the end there's a fair amount of violence too. The best thing about this game for me though was the atmosphere. I found myself with baited breath when I opened every door expecting the worst. Unfortunately the worst thing about the game is that it is far too short, but it this only billed as "chapter 1", and I was left wanting to see more [
subbed by brian & ~kj~].
