Today it snowed in London...

...and The Daily Mash in it's own inimitable style reported on the phenomenon:
(BTW - Carlisle is a city in England's frozen North, although this year that should be soggy North)

London Sacrifices Virgins after Centimetre of Snow

The soft South is renowned for coming to a halt as soon as a snowflake hits the ground

I could show you my favourite obsession... I've *NOT* been making a man with blond hair and a tan...

... I've been hatching scooters and hoofers!

I have a weakness for computer games. I can't work controllers and joysticks, I'm too tight for a Wii, (sounds like a continence problem) and I'm not fast enough for shoot-em-ups. However, I have blown hours on various types of solitaire (Pretty Good Solitaire www.goodsol.com 500 types of solitaire and the best) and spent ages playing match 3 games (diamond mine, jewel quest, fishdom) hidden object games and found my personal heaven in Big Fish Games. The only site that (almost) persuaded a miser like me to consider a subscription!

But now Big Fish have introduced a game that has ensured that my every free moment is spent in front of my computer and whenever I am away from it (to work, sleep, etc) I am thinking about it!

Faunasphere!

Faunasphere is a game designed for sad old ladies like me, according to the young guns who write reviews of those expensive console games everyone is being persuaded to fork out for at this time of year. But even those who've reviewed it are positive about it. It is a multi player web based game where the idea is to hatch an animal - a scooter(tortoise), hoofer(horse) or sniffer(dog) send it out into the world to grow, find food, fight pollution, and build a comfortable private world to live in. All the while if you like, you can interact with other players, make friends, and work together.

It has elements that will please various types of player, if you like to blast things the fauna have torches strapped to their back, or round their neck, that shoot out lightning and blast away pollution blocks, and some of those pollution blocks fight back! There are grades of pollution from inert blocks that just go when you shoot them, to nasties that fart on you when you try to kill, them via vileys that shield themsselves so they can overcome you with their fumes, up to the pollution monster itself that doesn't just fart! But if you don't have any aggression to work off you can pootle around the sphere, meeting up with other players, chatting, asking for and giving game tips, digging for treasure, hunting it from specific locations, accepting goals and carrying out specific tasks. If you prefer to use your design and homemaking skills you can design a private paradise for your Fauna to live in. If you are interested in genetic manipulation and breeding for specific traits you can breed your fauna through the generations to design for particular species, colours even eye and tail types. there are currently 12 species of fauna that can be bred from the original 3, and who knows there may even be more! I converted one of my hoofers to a squeaker (lemming) and one of my squeaker eggs hatched into a frog!

As a game it sucks you in, "I'll just play for a few more minutes, till I find this item, till I increase my level, till I see what's around this corner...

It's certainly better at "relieving my t-tension" than Rocky!