Sweepies

Well, I'm just playing with the new preview of the flock browser. It's based on the firefox kernal, but it has in built support for del.icio.us bookmarks, flickr pictures and its own blogging tool. It's a bit wobbly as yet - it won't download previous posts for editing yet, but I think that it's worth keeping an eye on. I particularly like the flickr toolbar that displays all of your flickr images as thumbnails in the blog tool so that you can just drag them into your post when you need them.

I've had a couple of days off this week with one trip to Birmingham on Wednesday, where I managed to get loads done. Thursday afternoon was spent at Ikea, and it was a little bit stressful - there were clowns posted at the entrance for some reason, and half way round I started panicing because I thought we were going in circles and were doomed to wander amongst the showrooms for an eternity. Still, at least Jan got the office chair she wanted as well as a sort of shelf thingy to go over the bed, and I had fish and chips for lunch as a treat. Yaybo! Friday was Meadowhall day, and we completely failed to get the teapot that was the whole purpose of the trip, but instead we came back with chinese food, bodyshop deoderant and a Teen Titans comic for Jamie.

I played a bit more of Thief : Deadly Shadows, and after escaping from Pavelock prison and retrieving all of my thieving gear I found that I had been framed for a murder and now had telepathic assassins tracking me down. Hmmm, wasn't expecting that.

This morning though, saw the long awaited Call of Cthulhu : Deadly Shadows drop through the door and after doing the hoovering I've played through the prologue. Bloody hell, it's scary stuff. There are none of the usual first person health displays or numbers on the screen - everything you need to know is communicated by what you see. As you get injured, you see blood splatters and you start shaking and slowing down. More importantly though, as anyone who knows anything about the Cthulhu mythos will tell you, is your fragile grasp on reality - as the horror unfolds and your sanity is drained, the screen starts to blur and distort, the controller pulses in time with your heart beat, and the sound is muffled so that you can just hear your breathing. I think this is one to play at night time for best effect. Even on a short play, this game gets my highest rating of ACEBEST. I feel another gaming journal coming on ...