vector

I recently took the unusual step of parting with some money for a computer game. The last time I did that was in 1999 when I equipped myself with PC Scrabble. Prior to that my last purchase would have been around the time of JSW II. I don't play very many games apart from Descent every now and then a few years ago and the odd flurry of Tekken and Wip3out 2097 back in 1997 when Blockbuster rented out Playstations for £15. The odd Flash game or puzzle such as Text Twist, Bloxorz and of course DTD have had their moments but I generally resist the temptation to get proper lengthy games just in case I get hooked by something.

I had been a fan of Doom in the mid-to-late nineties although I only had the three-level free version at home and didn't discover II or III until way after they were released. I never really played Quake and thus avoided what seemed to be the logical progression which led to Half-Life and then HL2. When visiting Rodti he often attempted to lure me into it by showing the trailers with the tripoddy things and gravity gun but I never even got round to playing it when he lent me a copy or invited me to use his Steam login when he wasn't using it.

One thing which did intrigue me slightly was the trailer for Portal when it turned up last year. I susbsequently completely forgot about it until I was advised the other weekend that it was imminent and available in a package with HL2 for apparently a good price. Signed up, pre-ordered and pre-loaded it a few days later and spent last night finishing off the basic levels after a quick poke on Wednesday night. It's very good. Very short too but I expect it'll be expanded soon enough. If you were intrigued by the nice logic-puzzliness of Bloxorz you'd like it.

Anyway, the point is that Portal is addictive to the point of making me stay up until half past three last night to finish it, requiring that a portion of the morning of my day off be diverted to catching up on sleep, going for a camera-free wake-up-walk then doing a few loads of washing before Nicky returned when we set off for Ayr to visit her parents. I was driving, we were fed as soon as we arrived then spent a fun evening hearing about how EVERYONE had been suffering terribly from contagious sickness and diarrhoea recently and I ended up forgetting to try and take any decent pictures. I ran outside at five to twelve and failed to get a decent shot of the raindrops on the picnic table umbrella as the ISO was still set at 320 after getting a picture of the filthily-gnawed child-drink bottles on the dining table earlier on. So there they are. Partially to blame for the spread of the illness, perhaps?