Laundry (Photo Thursday)

Monday 12 May 2008 at 12:19 pm My first entry to the Photo Thursday (Valokuvatorstai) challenge. The idea is to post a photo to match the subject matter given each Thursday. Free-flowing inspiration and liberal association are strongly recommended.

This week the challenge was a beautiful painting by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, featuring a woman gazing through a laundry window:



This is what I came up with (granted, it is an old photo):

Forest

Monday 12 May 2008 at 11:57 am More photos, this time a bit more recent ones. The camera used is a Nikon D40 with a 8-55mm kit lens.

Lingonberry:


Lalli enjoying his freedom in the nearby woods:


Another shot of Lalli:


Click on the thumbnails for larger versions.

Photos!

Monday 12 May 2008 at 10:39 am One of the tags for this site at the Finnish blog list is photography. This site hasn't featured much of it, as it has turned out that I have never been able to shoot anything impressive. However, in hope for feedback and educated opinions, I've decided against my best reasoning and will now start posting some of the better photos I've managed.

First a couple of pictures from years ago, taken with an old point-n-shoot camera (3,1Mpx Sony DSC-P72).

Botanical garden in Lublin, Poland:


Peles castle in Sinaia, Romania:


Aurajoki, Turku, Finland:


Clicking on the thumbnails takes you to larger versions of the pictures.

Even More Time Wasters

Thursday 08 May 2008 at 11:59 am First of all, I'd like to point out that the number of these time killing threads is in no way related to my productivity at work.

In this little game your task is to fly your triangle-shaped little craft through area filled with cubes. The further you get, the higher your score will be. The horizon turns as the craft steers, which makes this pretty fun a challenge.

Levers is a game of balance. Your task is to balance an array of given objects so that none of it touches the water below. This turns out trickier than it sounds, as the objects include a birdhouse (with three inhabitants flying around), a submarine, a bowling ball, and so on; it's very difficult to estimate their weight at first. The most annoying bit is that when a new item is dropped into the scenario, it dips into the water and soon gets very difficult to find again. Anyway, this is a fun logic puzzle.

Bzzzzz SWAT bzzzzz SWAT bzzzzz SWAT SWAT SWAT! In Fly Swatter your task is to kill 10 flies in as little time as possible. Easier said than done, but the fun and simplistic gameplay, the nice graphics (albeit a little illogical; the game field seems to be a table, but yet you hang the swapper on a nail?), and the realistic sound effects make this fun all the way through!

Zork online!

Thursday 08 May 2008 at 10:08 am Earlier I've discovered the online version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure, but today I hit the ultimate jackpot: online version of the original ZORK! With saves and all that jazz!

Zork I was the first part of the best-selling series of Infocom, and probably the most famous interactive fiction game ever created. It's plain awesome that it is also available in an easy-to-play-when-the-boss-is-not-watching format!

Why didn't anyone tell me about this?

More Time Wasters

Monday 05 May 2008 at 2:47 pm Throw Paper is a simple game very much in the style of Card Toss from the previous time-wasting post. Bored at work, you set up a paper bin, produce lots of crumbled-up scrap paper sheets, and position your fan. Using the wind the fan is creating, you're supposed to throw the paper into the bin. Simple, fun, addictive, and excellent for killing some idle time!

Guess the Google is an interesting concept: the game shows a series of pictures, and your task is to guess the word that was entered in the Google search engine resulting in those pictures. It sounds simple at first; if you for example see pictures of bridges, you can pretty safely assume that the original search word was "bridge". But not all clues are as simple and straightforward as that..

Puki 3D pits you against endless hordes of cute but bloodthirsty little critters, armed only with a laser gun. Your task is to wander through tunnels, firing at the cuddly, evil creatures and trying to survive as far as you can. Puki 3D features blood, guts and mayhem, and pretty impressive graphics for a simple online game!