Thank you all!

I know I’m not addressing my readers directly a lot. I usually ramble on and talk about my stuff and leave it to you to decide whether this interests you or not. But every now and then, when people leave a comment and I realize they’ve not just read this one post, but at least a few others, I know I’m not just talking to myself here.

I probably would continue to talk about myself, anyway, because my blogs have proven to be quite therapeutic over time. By talking (or writing at least) about the things that annoy me or the things I think about a lot, I can quite often just let go and feel better.

At the same time, it is nice to know there’s someone out there who’s interested in what I write. The combination of topics in my main blog (the one you’re looking at right now) has changed over time. It started out as a place to bitch about all the stuff that I found annoying. And there was a lot I found annoying, believe me. (Or just check the first two years or so of my archive.) But slowly my personal life crept into my blog and I started to write about other stuff as well. I started posting pictures of my hometown (and whenever the weather is nice and I remember packing my camera, I will continue to do so) and doing my weekend update. I started writing about movies I went to, book I was reading, games I was playing and a lot of other, more personal things. My feminist posts got their own blog and I started a third one (various times) which developed into a blog about writing.

There’s a lot of me in these blogs, from my pet peeves to my world views to my favourite hobby (writing, no matter what). Still, I have not posted – and never will post –a picture of me. You’ll have to live with the Southpark character I have created for fun even before I started this blog.

And now, a few posts shy of the big 1,000 (will there be a special post for it? You can bet on it!), I would really like to thank you, whoever you are, out there in the endless space of the internet. I would especially like to thank you for coming this far with me, through my burnout, through my ramblings about politics, society and gender questions that aren’t really questions. I promise to start posting a few funny pictures from the various LOL-sites across the net again soon. Not every day, possibly, maybe not even every week, but every now and then for sure. I also promise some more nasty remarks about glittering vampires (hey, there’s even a picture from a LOL-site I can combine with that…). I have just had some really nasty experience with the way they try to get unemployed people back into the job market in Germany, too (and I’ll post something about it). There’s quite some casual games I’d like to tell you about, too.

So, once again: Thank you all for reading this blog and putting up with my ramblings and probably sometimes rather strange grammar. I like English a lot, but I’m not a native speaker…

Doodle God

I stumbled over an article about an iPhone app while browsing the news online. The game “Doodle God” is a rather unique game. I did a Google search and found out that there’s also a flash version of the game online.

The principle of the game is rather simple: by combining elements you create new one. But it’s the mass of different elements you can create that actually makes the game so fun. You start out with the four basic elements: fire, water, air, earth. By combining them, you then create new elements like lava (fire + earth), steam (water + air), swamp (water + earth), alcohol (fire + water – the game doesn’t take everything seriously), dust (earth + air) and energy (fire + air). Then you combine those elements (not all of them can be combined) and go on. Over time, you create things like humans, ghosts, dragons, birds, trees, various chemical elements and much more. All in all, there’s 115 elements in the game and you start off with only four of them.

The elements come in 14 groups (four are the basic elements, the others are such groups as aether [containing things like energy, life, egg, seeds or lightning], basic life [such as moss, weed, bacteria, worm and mushroom] or human [containing various types of humans, such as wizard, hunter or warrior]). So you call up two groups (or twice the same if you want to), choose one element from every group and, if you are lucky, they get combined into a new element (sometimes even two or three elements).

Most of the combination are rather logical. A feather and paper, for instance, combine into a book. Clay and fire combine into bricks. A human and stone combine into a hut. Some are a bit stranger. A dinosaur and fire combine into a dragon. A bird and fire combine into a phoenix and a bird and a storm combine into a thunderbird. If you give life to clay, you get a golem. If you give life to this golem, it turns into a human. And so on.

It takes a while to find all combinations (I wouldn’t have half of them now, had I not been looking online for a few tips). So it’s a game you can play for a long while without getting bored. And you even get to create a car and an airplane towards the end.

Weekend Update

Another hot weekend lies ahead of me, so I’ll have to find ways to cool down, such as

• DVD to watch: maybe “Sherlock Holmes” again … or something else
• Book to read: “Evil under the Sun” by Agatha Christie
• Game to play: “StarCraft” (no, not part two, part one)

Ah, weekend and some interesting things to do…

Puzzle Agent

FBI special agents usually are tough guys. Nelson Tethers isn’t. He’s with the FBI, he’s a special agent (there are not other agents in the FBI), but he’s no tough guy, he’s a geek, in a way.

I have waited for this game to be published by TellTale Games for a whole month. They promised to publish it in June – and did so at the very last day, late enough for me, as an inhabitant of Europe, to get it on the first of July instead.

Apart from providing me with pictures of snowy landscapes (a good thing throughout the heat wave we’ve been experiencing here for the last couple of days), it also does provide me with a lot of puzzles to solve. It does so, because it’s some kind of “Dr. Kawashima” with a story and without an analysis of my brain power beforehand.

Nelson Tethers is working in the puzzle department. One day he has a vision which leaves a mark on his daily crossword puzzle. It’s just one word: “Scoggins”. Scoggins, it turns out, is a small town and the site of the Scoggins Eraser Factory, the only factory that supplies the White House with erasers. Now the factory has been closed and all agents looking for the reason have disappeared. So it’s time for Nelson to solve the puzzles in Scoggins and find out what has happened there.

Even though Nelson travels from one area to the other, as people do in an adventure, even though he talks to people, the game is mainly about the puzzles various people in the town give him. There’s a large variety of those, all kinds of puzzles.

The graphics are a bit crude when you look at them for the first time, but that’s the designer’s style. The way all characters were drawn actually grew on my quickly.

The story around the puzzles also is quite interesting. There’s strange red gnomes running around in Scoggins, there’s a light in the eraser factory and a complicated lock outside. In addition, it’s freezing cold and everyone seems to be thinking only of puzzles.

The game could be a bit longer, but considering it only costs 9.99 $, the price is okay. There might be some new cases for Mr. Tethers ahead, after all.

Once you’re through with the story, you can replay the puzzles you’ve solved already and you can play the puzzles you might have missed (you do not have to play all puzzles in the game to solve it).

So, if you’re looking for an interesting game that supplies a collection of puzzles with a story that’s interesting, but weird, “Puzzle Agent” might be something to check out.

Weekend Update

Hot, hot, hot – that’s how the weekend is going to be. But then, I’ll be occupied indoors with a few things. Which things?

• DVD to watch: “Bones” season four
• Book to read: probably some “Discworld” novel
• Game to play: “Lego Harry Potter” (still have a lot of things to find)

What else to say about this weekend? Have I mentioned that it’ll be hot?