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20080403

Tentacle Day

Entry 572 posted in: 3. Gamebits

Yep, it's a flying toilet. I start with my favourite Groucho Marx scene, (probably) with Thelma Todd. They are having a romantic rowboat scene (as far as a romantic scene with Groucho is possible) when she says: “Spring is in the air.” Groucho replies: “And fall in the water.” Cracks me up every time.

Of course you need to know that this is partially a Yiddish joke. I don’t speak it but Yiddish antecedents can be found in the German language and the German language isn’t that far from Dutch.

So when Thelma Todd says: Spring is in the air, Groucho interprets this as shpring meaning jump. Jumping up and down in a rowboat on a lake is a hazardous thing to do and you might ‘fall in the water’. Of course this elaborate explanation has ruined the joke completely so it is better to go on with the actual subject of this post.

Thus a few days ago I said to myself: “spring is in the air” and for one inexplicable reason or another this idea got intermingled with the thoughts of a game I used to play in the early Nineties. The only problem was that I couldn’t remember the name of the game anymore, but I did remember that it involved putting a hamster in a deep freezer and defrosting the poor animal in a micro wave oven about two hundreds year later. And I could remember, oddly enough, the makers of the game: Lucasarts.

The official LucasArts website doesn’t mention those vintage games they used to make when pixel were roughly the size of square centimetre. They prefer going on, ad nauseam, about episode XXXIX in the Star Wars saga. So I went over to Abandonia instead. That site doesn’t mention any LucasArts games at all. Very strange. Over to Home Of The Underdogs. Some games were mentioned over there but not the one I was looking for. It only made my appetite, called it hunger, for the unknown game bigger.

I soon found out that LucasArts (and others) have asked several abandonware sites to remove their games, even when they date from the past millennium and can only be played using emulators like Dosbox. Legally the makers have the right to do that, these games are still copyrighted by their owners, but what if I decide to play the original Manic Mansion and find out that my computer will not eat a five and a half inch floppy disk anymore?

Thanks to the net I found out that it was the Manic Mansion sequel Day Of The Tentacle I was lusting for. A lucky wind of bits put it on my hard disk and after a few false starts (due to the incompability of XP and good old DOS) I was laughing out loud with its wacky humour. This game hasn’t aged a bit.

Googling around I found out that some German fans are willing to take over the world with a version called DOTT2. Germans and humour? They must be meshuge.

If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Nomen Est Omen: Starship Titanic.

20080406

Games For May (ArianeB 5.0 walkthrough part 4)

Entry 584 posted in: a. ArianeB

NEW: THE ARIANEB WALKTHROUGHS have now got their own domain:
http://arianeb.atagong.com

ArianeB or Virtually Date Ariane, probably the best - free - adult dating simulation game in the world, has been recently upgraded to version 5 .0. The game has been revised, half a dozen of new scenarios have been added, and there are now over 900 pictures and situations to be cherished.

Here is the fourth of a series of walkthroughs I am planning to publish. I’d like to warn you first that playing by the book would take most of the fun out of the game. But if you are one of those guys in a hurry…

Warning: this 18+ game contains some exquisite, sorry explicit, nudity. To put it in other words: if your mommy forbids you to look at thongs and titties you are not welcome.

The Lingerie Shop Edgar Allen Poe ones wrote something like:
"Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?"

But this has got nothing to do at all with part 4 of the ArianeB walkthroughs where we will give some attention to the different games inside the game.

2.0 Introduction

The second walkthrough on this blog tells you how to get acquainted with ArianeB: A better start. Basically these moves are the same for every scenario. After that we will try to play some games with her.

4.1 Rock Paper Scissors

You can let a game of Rochambeau decide how the game will evolve. Start the game with the basic introduction, but once back on the couch you will not head for the kitchen but play a good old game of rock-paper-scissors instead.

From here the game can take two directions, either you win, or either you lose. (If you tie the game will be repeated until there is a winner.)

4.1.1 You win!

Next move. You can choose between:

Go for a walk. This triggers the walk in the park.
Get some wine. There are a lot of possible scenarios after here: wining, dining,...
Have a barbecue. Take a steak to the patio. After the dinner ArianeB will decide to go shopping.
Go out to dinner. This will be the posh dinner at the bistro. After the dinner ArianeB will go to the bar.

4.1.2 ArianeB wins

Next move. Ariane B decides to have a picnic (steak dinner).

4.2 Hamburgers and some more…

All in all I am not a big fan of the rock-paper-scissors game, so I’ll skip to another scenario instead. We’ll grab a burger (veggie for me), we will impress her with our general knowledge of the fine arts and last but not least we’ll take Rebecca to the bar and play a strange variation of water polo afterwards. After the basic introduction we go to the kitchen where we will not, repeat: NOT, have a drink but immediately ask ArianeB out to dinner.

Suggest going out to dinner. Blimey, it turns out to be a hamburger joint.
Go inside.
Eat dinner.
Compliment her
Talk to her.
Leave and follow Ariane somewhere else. Junk food and art are a fine combination, thinks ArianeB. She brings you to the nearby museum.
Go downtown
Start tour. ArianeB will show you three paintings. If you can persuade her to be an art lover you will get some extra attention (she loves smart guys). The possible answers are:

Bougereau
Cubism
Durer
Rembrandt
Renoir
Van Gogh

Hang out downtown. From here on you can decide were to go.

4.2.1 Lingerie shopping and pool games

Go lingerie shopping. The lingerie shopping scene (and its solutions) have been described in: After Dinner Mints (ArianeB 5.0 walkthrough part 3).

Agree to drinks at the club with Ariane and Rebecca.
Ask Ariane to dance.
Go back to the bar.
Buy the next round of drinks.
Watch the two of them dance together.
Let them continue to dance.
Take Ariane and Rebecca back to Ariane's place.
Vote for skinny dipping.
Take your clothes off.
Get in the pool.
Say POLO.
It is Ariane's turn.
Say POLO.
Close your eyes and say MARCO.
Chase after Ariane.
Let go of Ariane's breast.
Say goodbye to Rebecca. From here on the game is all yours (most scenarios have already been discussed on the previous walkthroughs).

4.2.2 The dress shopping game

Go dress shopping. The dress shopping game basically is a memory game. Out of 6 skirts and 6 blouses you have to choose a matching outfit. Choosing two skirts or two blouses will end the game. The position of the clothes on the clothing racks is randomized with every game. Here are the possible solutions:

black lace skirt - black lace top
blue shirt - blue skirt
evening gown skirt - evening gown top
pink skirt - pink top
red party skirt - red party top
white blouse - white skirt

Drive her home

4.2.3 The home decor store game

Go to home décor store.
Look around.
First test: vote for the right picture.
Keep looking.
Second test: vote for the left picture.
Keep looking.
Third test: vote for the right picture.
Buy it and take it home.

4.2.4 The bar trivia game

Go to the nightclub.
Go to bar.
I’m driving so club soda please.
Play bar trivia game.
Here is a list with all the possible questions and their answers...

Books What 19th century author is often credited with inventing the mystery novel? C
Books What was the title of Sherlock Holmes first adventure? C
Celebrities Who was not born in Canada? D
Movies In 1935, what was Bugs Bunny originally called? D
Movies What actress played Tom Cruise`s love interest in Cocktail? A
Movies What year were Bladerunner (...) and Poltergeist released? C
Movies What year were Office Space, Fight Club and The Matrix released? B
Movies Which Johnny Depp film involved a search for Satan? B
Movies Which of these war movies was set mostly in Iraq? D
Movies Who directed the Carl Sagan movie Contact? B
Movies Who played Bond in On Her Majesty`s Secret Service? A
Movies Who sang the theme song to Pump Up The Volume? A
Music How old were Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix when they died? B
Music What 80`s New Wave band sang Hungry Like The Wolf? (Duran Duran) #
Music What band is famous for creating rock operas like Tommy? B
Music What song has the lyrics "doo wop, doo be doo doo wop..."? C
Music Which Beatles song has lyrics mentioning "Father McKenzie"? A
Music Who is considered the first rap star? B
Music Who was the first African American to have a music video air on MTV? A
Television How many human looking Cylons are there in Battlestar Galactica? D
Television In CSI: Miami, what is Heratio`s last name? B
Television In Gilligan`s Island, the Skipper`s actual first name was? A
Television In Seinfeld, Jerry`s dad was called? C
Television In the A-Team, Mr. T had a fear of ...? C
Television In Three`s Company, what was Jack`s restaurant called? C
Television On Star Trek, what race had laws called The Rules of Acquisition? A
Television On The Simpsons, who shot Mr. Burns? C
Television What corporation aired the first commercial on television? B
Television What is NOT a race from Babylon 5? A
Television What superpowers do Superman and Nathan Petrelli share in common? D
Television What vampire did Buffy the Vampire Slayer send to hell? D
Television What was the evil organization on the show Dark Angel? B
Television What was the name of the slayer that rose after Buffy died? D
Television Which show was NOT a spin-off of Happy Days? A
Television Which TV show was the first to air a toilet? D
Television Who is the first winner of American Idol? C
Television Who is the host of Show Me the Money? D
Television Who killed Lillie Kane on Veronica Mars? B
Television Who lived at 1313 Mockingbird Lane? C

Let’s go home.

Probably we'll go for the spaghetti dinner the next time, and with a little luck, some photoshooting at the lake as well...

Update : the latest walkthroughs for the ArianeB 6.21 game can be found at: The ArianeB 6.21 walkthroughs: All in one 

20080411

Astral Pipers Forum Down Under

Entry 618 posted in: 5. The Pink Thing

Hey, is that Charley?
Yes...
Hello Charley...
Great.

This week I have been trying to write a eulogy for the fact that the Astral Pipers #2 forum has disappeared, but alas what is there to say?

The first Astral Piper forum, a very successful spin off of the Astral Piper website, collapsed when some people started to accuse some other members from things that really don't matter anymore. A partial account can be found here but is not always pleasant to read.

What also wasn’t nice was that a few dozen members, including me, had lost their place to ventilate their feelings. Eternal took it upon him to create a new forum, called Late Night, and the game of tracing back the shattered members could start. This was done by mail, by telephone, by letter (some virtual friendships had grown into real-life friendships). Pink Chick, who I will cherish for the rest of her life, warned me through MySpace that a new place had been created. I am just a little proud to say that I could rescue at least one member from oblivion by putting a guerrilla graffiti on the message board from the Astral Pipers website itself.

Days went by and became weeks, weeks went by and became months. A very close friend of the administrator of the original Astral Piper had joined us as well meaning that there was finally some kind of frail truce between both fighting camps.

After a while a second Astral Piper (#2) emerged again, attracting some newcomers who had been looking for Syd Barrett news on the Astral Piper website, that hasn’t updated since March 2007.

But old wounds run deep and this week the plug was again pulled and the second Astral Pipers forum went out again without a single warning. This time it will probably be for good. On the Astral Piper website a message has appeared that the site will be no longer updated and that the subscription will (probably) not be renewed (news that had already reached me almost a year ago).

But life outside cyberworld goes on. It flourishes too. I can only wish J & D and their soon to be born Sydney all the best.

And Dion, that offer is still valid you know… Felix (Piper 24)

If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Astral Pipers Forum Back Online or this one Astral Pipers Forum.

20080412

Moon And Mooning (ArianeB 5.0 walkthrough part 5)

Entry 623 posted in: a. ArianeB

NEW: THE ARIANEB WALKTHROUGHS have now got their own domain:
http://arianeb.atagong.com

ArianeB or Virtually Date Ariane, probably the best - free - adult dating simulation game in the world, has been recently upgraded to version 5 .0. The game has been revised, half a dozen of new scenarios have been added, and there are now over 900 pictures and situations to be cherished.

Here is the fifth of a series of walkthroughs I am planning to publish. I’d like to warn you first that playing by the book would take most of the fun out of the game. But if you are one of those guys in a hurry…

Warning: this 18+ game contains some exquisite, sorry explicit, nudity. To put it in other words: if your mommy forbids you to look at thongs and titties you are not welcome.

Mama mia! Que bella! When the moon’s in the sky
Like a big pizza pie
That’s amore!

One of the new scenario’s in ArianeB 5.0 is the spaghetti dinner. Let’s see what happens….

First I’ll need to convince you one more time to do the basic introduction that can be found by clicking here: make a compliment, say something smart, give a shy kiss, try a little dance,…

5.0 Spill that spaghetti!

Alas ArianeB contains no spaghetti scene like in the famous Tintin En Suisse parody...

Go back to the couch.
Go to another room.
Kitchen.
Get wine to drink.
Finish drink.
Make spaghetti for dinner.
Eat spaghetti. It is meatball spaghetti, the horror, for Christ's sake!
Compliment her.
Talk to her.
Drink wine. ArianeB spills some sauce on her shirt and wants to clean that right a way.
Suggest taking off the shirt and cleaning it.
Finish cleaning. Now it is up to us to find a way to get shirtless ArianeB in a better mood.
Change into a swimsuit.
Wait for her in the hallway.
Go to the backyard. From here on you can do several scenarios but we'll let the game decide and play a game of...

5.1 Spin the bottle

If you return immediately from the backyard into the kitchen (so no swimming or tubbing) you can have a spin the bottle game. The bottle will decide what will happen next.

Go back inside.
Go to the kitchen for dessert.
Play spin the bottle. The game will choose one out of four possible situations...

Park Fountain Shoot. Bikini photo shoot at the park fountain. Not as revealing as the scenario that was discussed before at After Dinner Mints (ArianeB 5.0 walkthrough part 3).
Hot Tub.
Swim.
Go for a drive. ArianeB will change clothes and you can go to the city.

5.2 Cosmology

Something else this time. After the basic introduction, we'll go immediately to the backyard.

Backyard. Between the hot tub and ArianeB's right hand (that we see at the left side, obviously) is a small hotspot reading…

Sit and look at the sky. A random picture of the moon or the sky will be shown. ArianeB wants to check your knowledge of astronomy. There are 4 possible questions:

5.2.1 Moon shot: Crater Copernicus

Point here. There are 2 hotpoints with the same label, be sure to choose the good one located at 317-188-371-240. It is a small round crater a bit up and left from the center, NOT the big grey area a bit up and right from the center with the same label.

5.2.2 Moon shot : Sea Of Tranquility

May be here. Easy to find, there is just one hotpoint on the screen with that particular label.

5.2.3 Star shot: Triangulus

Pick here. This is the hardest hotpoint to find as they all carry the same name. The one we are looking for is situated in the middle of the screen at location: 231-253-449-359.

5.2.4 Star shot: Aries

Maybe here? Easy to find, it is situated left and up from centre.

5.3 Teletubbies

Now that you gave the right answer ArianeB will propose to have some wine or a barbecue. We'll choose for the BBQ.

Have a Barbecue.
Get wine and go outside.
Drink wine.
Finish drink.
Eat dinner by the pool.
Wait for her in the hallway.
Eat steak dinner.
Compliment her. Personally I find this shot one of the best scenes of ArianeB.
Talk to her.
Drink wine.
Go somewhere else.
Get in the hot tub.
Suggest playing 'Truth or Dare'.
Dare.
Have you ever had sex in a hot tub? (or any of the other questions)
Dare.

From here on ArianeB will accept all ToD instructions: for instance:

5.3.1 Dare her to kiss you.

This scenario leads somewhere but not were we want to go.

5.3.2 Dare her to take her top off.

Help her take off her top.
Dare.
Dare he to take her panties off.
Continue. You can use your imagination or...
Dare her to go skinny dipping in the pool.
Take of your clothes and skinny dip.

5.3.3 Dare her to go skinny dipping in the pool.

Go skinny dipping.
Jump in the pool naked.
Keep swimming naked.
Get out of the pool.
Go back inside. Several possibilities from here on.

5.3.4 Dare her to go out front and check her mail wearing nothing but tennis shoes and a cowboy hat.

Follow her into the bedroom.
Get her cowboy hat for her.
Go streaking in the front yard.
On a scale of 1 to 10 you get an 8. This choice ends the game.

5.3.5 Dare her to take a shower and let you watch.

Wait for her to get out.
Take a shower.

Next week there will (probably) be the last walkthrough for ArianeB 5.0.

Update : the latest walkthroughs for the ArianeB 6.21 game can be found at: The ArianeB 6.21 walkthroughs: All in one 

20080419

Photoshoot By The Lake (ArianeB 5.0 Walkthrough part 6)

Entry 747 posted in: a. ArianeB

NEW: THE ARIANEB WALKTHROUGHS have now got their own domain:
http://arianeb.atagong.com

ArianeB or Virtually Date Ariane, probably the best - free - adult dating simulation game in the world, has been recently upgraded to version 5 .0. The game has been revised, half a dozen of new scenarios have been added, and there are now over 900 pictures and situations to be cherished.

Here is the sixth of a series of walkthroughs I am planning to publish. I’d like to warn you first that playing by the book would take most of the fun out of the game. But if you are one of those guys in a hurry…

Warning: this 18+ game contains some exquisite, sorry explicit, nudity. To put it in other words: if your mommy forbids you to look at thongs and titties you are not welcome.

The Swim Duo It is not that I am passionately playing ArianeB all day long. To paraphrase the great advise given by Canadian philosopher William Shatner: "I sometimes go and get me a life but mostly it is life that gets me first".

The various walkthroughs for ArianeB 5.0 have been dealing with all major scenarios, except the one that I called Photoshoot By The Lake on the previous series (ArianeB version 4.x). But as this walkthrough can be used in its entirety on version 5.0 I don’t see the necessity to repeat it all over again.

So if you want to play (the excellent) nude photo shoot at the lake scenario go to Photoshoot By The Lake (ArianeB Walkthrough - Part 3 for 4.8 - Part 6 for 5.0) and have some fun. At the same time I have been testing the old 4.8 scenarios this morning and some of them still hold their liquor.

The following 4.8 walkthroughs are still playable (please note that the lingerie shop questions are different in version 5.0 though):

Photoshoot By The Lake (ArianeB Walkthrough - Part 3 for 4.8 - Part 6 for 5.0)  
The Couch Trip (ArianeB Walkthrough Part 5) 
Take The Long way Home (ArianeB Walkthrough Part 7) 

The others will go somewhat astray:

Sport'n Spicy (ArianeB Walkthrough Part 2) will change its course when trying to take the car for a ride.
Skinny Dipping With A Twist (ArianeB Walkthrough Part 4) will change its course when trying to take the car for a ride.
It's A Gas! (ArianeB Walkthrough Part 6) will change its course in the hot tub.

The nice thing about ArianeB is that you can take many sidesteps while playing, some of these will show you extra scenes, others will trigger events that are still far away, but others will just screw up the scenario you had in mind. Exploring all permutations would lead to hundreds of ArianeB tutorials so I will not attempt to publish them all. (Here is one called Hot Beach Romance sent in by Daniel).

This simply means that you can reach several goals in several ways (and here are just a few of the many examples):

  • You can visit the strip joint and win the competition without Rebecca;
  • ArianeB can jump in the pool with a bikini and come out naked;
  • Rebecca and ArianeB will throw you out if you decide not to join the Marco Polo game... (Pity that the game ends with the intriguing swimduo10.jpg image and doesn’t allow you to go on with a girls only scenario.)

Viewing the ArianeB code

Most ArianeB warriors don’t go unprepared on a trial and error quest but have a look at the code first. As ArianeB is entirely written in html and Javascript this is quite easy. Any html page can be opened in Notepad and looked at. I use a freeware called 2xExplorer that has been on my pc since my XP SP1 days to look at the code.

Suppose that you want to reach the third option of the previous paragraph: after the Marco Polo skinny dipping game Rebecca and ArianeB say farewell and continue the party without you.

You know (by using a thumbnail viewer such as IrfanView) that swimduo10.jpg is the picture you are hunting for. Now we need to find the htm file inside the datingsimulator folder that contains a link to that particular picture. 2xexplorer takes about a second to find a file called end96b.htm. The code of end96b.htm doesn’t reveal anything so probably everything is triggered from another page.

Searching for an end96b.htm string inside other pages reveals the following code inside text96.htm:

function getout()
{parent.ending("end96b.htm");
}

...and the getout function is hidden inside: pic96d.htm, pic96e.htm, pic96f.htm and pic96g.htm. Those 4 pages all contain a mapped area on the picture that will trigger the picture we are looking for…

<map name="FPMap0">
<area href="#" ONCLICK="parent.footer.getout();return false;" title="Get out of the pool" shape="rect" coords="2, 2, 798, 112">
</map>

Theoretically you can – by reading all the code in all the pages – predict every possible situation in ArianeB. But there are of course nearly 1000 possible situations and nearly 1000 htm pages to deal with.

Hacking the ArianeB code

Htm pages can be altered in any text editor, such as Notepad. Erana at Shark's Lagoon gave me permission to post the following hacks. I didn’t try these so use them at own risk:

Strip show hack: if you'd like to watch the entire strip show, just open the file text82.htm in your favorite plain text editor, and make the following changes…
The slideshow trick.
The beach scene hack.

I guess this is my last ArianeB post for quite a while. I still have my Adrian Berry book to read, my Orb Dream record to listen to, in a weak moment I promised to make a Dutch translation for some nifty software and I am in the middle of a new Unfinished Project that will be published here somewhere in this millenium...

Oh, by the way, I found out, not so long ago, that the ArianeB logo on the Metaverse website changes 9 times a day. This is done by a Javascript-script that checks the hour and publishes the appropriate picture. Neat, very neat…

Update : the latest walkthroughs for the ArianeB 6.21 game can be found at: The ArianeB 6.21 walkthroughs: All in one 

20080425

East Side Story

Entry 751 posted in: 3. Gamebits

Isn't it good to be lost in the woods? The last week I have been playing a point and click adventure game called East Side Story. It came as a free download at game giveaway of the day (GGAOTD) that should be better renamed to game giveaway of the weekend if you ask me. But nobody ever does so I'll just go on if you don't mind. I'll skip the flame war avalanche that this download created for the simple reason that it is old news now; if you are interested you can look up the insults & co right here.

My download arrived in a jiffy – in my case the 500 MB file was not corrupt. As a matter of fact the generation of the license key took longer than the actual download, some work in the activation department needs to be done by the developers of GGAOTD, if you ask me. Did I already mention you that nobody ever does?

East Side Story is remarkable. Really. Its half a gig stuffed with high quality pics from a Swedish town called Norrköping so the game looks a bit like a tourist brochure. The story starts when Carol Reed, a female investigator? - this must be Sweden!, is lying in a hammock contemplating the meaning of life and such. Before Death can invite her for a game of chess she decides to water her cucumbers and - en passant - solve a murder mystery as well.

What follows are those typical mystery puzzles we all loved and cherished in a past millennium: in order to open a door you need a key that is hidden in a cupboard, to open the cupboard you need another key that can be found inside a shirt, to find the shirt you have to go to the laundry, to go to the laundry you need dirty knickers, to get dirty knickers you need to play a game of ArianeB 5.0 (I’m making this up, of course). Another typical thing in point and click games are annoying people that will only help you, or give you hints, after you trace something they have lost. One would think they do it on purpose!

East Side Story is a game for calm people, not for caffeine fuelled bunnies like me, so I soon got annoyed. It is a bit like browsing through those endless Powerpoint presentations, with some soothing pan flute music on the background, promising you the most beautiful nature scenes of the year 2002 that some people insist on keeping on sending me. They indifferently end with the same picture of a lonely surfer and a hungry shark; only it is not a shark, but just a copyrighted dolphin…

East Side Story is a puzzler’s paradise and some puzzles are only revealed after you have clarified others. Somewhere in the game there is a path trough the woods that goes on for about 10 clicks. The photos are tremendous, showing trees, leaves and some more trees. Every slide however hides some other slides, exactly like in those prehistoric text adventures where you could walk east, west, north and south (and look up and down). Left from you there are some trees, right from you there are some trees. Lots of trees. Nothing happens when you look at these. So after you have walked through the path for the third time you don’t bother anymore to look sideways. But somewhere, during a conversation or by reading a piece of paper (they seem to lie everywhere in this game), a trigger has been activated and suddenly the fifth eastern slide of the pathway will reveal a hidden item that wasn’t there before. Before you know it you spent most of your time visiting all the places you have visited before and opening all cupboards, drawers and toilet seats you have opened before. Unfortunately there are hundreds of those possible places. I simply had to give up this game, it made me crank nervous. Really. Not my cup of tea. Utterly boring but strangely wonderful. Must be typical Swedish, I guess, a bit like Volvo, Ikea and Abba…

Some geeky stuff: East Side story has been made with AGS. Adventure Game Studio is a freeware that allows people to create point-and-click adventure games, similar to the early 90's Sierra and Lucasarts adventures. A slightly more recent (and more evolved) software to create these kind of games is Wintermute but who needs evolution anyway if the purpose is to make a vintage style adventure? On the other hand, AGAST seems to have lost the battle of the point & click editors as their site hasn't been updated since 2003.

If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Tentacle Day.

20080426

Ringmaster

Entry 755 posted in: 6. Self-Made Monsters

Poekie A few days ago in a ridiculously overcrowded bus somewhere inside the bowels of the local souk at the inner town of Brussels a chador-veiled beauty offered me her seat. I politely refused, trying not to drown into those big brown virgin eyes of her. My face turned red, partly from those fresh spring inner fluids that suddenly rushed through my veins, partly from a streak of anger that blitzkrieged through my body.

A woman just offered me her seat in the bus. It suddenly appeared to me that old age had fallen upon me like Damocles’ sword.

So far the text I had already prepared for today’s post… I wanted to add some more funny observations here but I’m not in the mood. Yesterday Poekie died. He’s the cat that’s been polluting my MySpace avatar for ages.

In 1998 he (regardless of English grammatical rules no cat from me will ever be called an it) was rescued by my LA-girl from the local Steiner school were the director vehemently threatened to poison him. I haven’t been able to look positively at Steiner education since. In my nightmares I portray him, alternative progressivism smudged all over his face, saying: “Today, my children, in the name of anthroposophical education, we will show you how to poison a cat.” Teacher, leave those kids alone.

Poekie was brought into our home where it would take him years to adjust to us. Basically he was a one-cat-one-person felid. The last couple of years he had switched his attention span from LA-girl to me for whatever reason a cat needs to change his opinion. I still think that luring him with Whiskas Crunch did the trick. Although he remained very shy he was the happiest cat I have ever seen (really). Behind the safety of the glass he liked to show off to the people on the street, when we came home and saw how our front room window was plastered with sticky children’s handprints we knew that he had been playing ringmaster again. The last couple of months he finally found the courage to come and have a look, from a safe distance, at people visiting us. He didn't like people visiting us. Not two weeks ago he jumped for the very first time in front of the computer monitor I am now watching at. He licked his feet and decided this was a safe place to sleep.

During the uneven fight against death he bit me hard in the finger. Way to go Poekie. Way to go. If there is a cat’s heaven, jump over to the human one, and give Rudolf Steiner my regards will ya?

If you liked (?!) this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Franco's Frocks 

20080430

iPod Random Generator April 2008

Entry 762 posted in: 9. I, Pod

Finally this starts looking like a real stat...

Also in 2008 my MySpace page will contain some useless iPod statistics. This year however my iPod will always stay in shuffle mode, in other words: the machine will decide what songs will be played. For more information: Random Blueß aka sucking for statistics.

At the end of each month I will publish the ten most popular songs of the year and the ten most popular songs of the past month.

For the top 10 list of the songs I've been listening to in 2008 go to http://www.myspace.com/atagong.

For the top 10 list of the songs I've been listening to in April, go to the MySpace blog section.

If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: iPod Random Generator March 2008