Mugs

Here are some more of the many mugs we have acquired:

Firstly, Chip. He's from Beauty and the Beast. He's very cute, with his painted-on missong chip, happy face and jaunty angle, but he doesn't get used a whole lot, as he's quite small and not microwave safe. He's still great though.

Next, Dark Souls 3. This is one of the man's favourite games, and also one of his favourite mugs. It's another temperature change one. It's plain black with nothing in it, but hot liquid makes flames appear. It's pretty cool. Again, not microwave safe though.

And finally, Hedwig. She's from Harry Potter. Again, not microwave safe and a little difficult to clean properly, but I love her. Favourite ever mug! I just love her face.

Game Reviews: Even More Android Games

Here are some more of my favourite Android games. To start, Township. It's a cute game where you build your own town. You build houses, roads and community buildings and expand your town's area to satisfy the needs of your people. You grow crops and make goods in your factories for them. In addition you send goods elsewhere in exchange for building materials so that your town can grow. As you level up you can build additional buildings and make new goods in your factories. The supply chains can get quite complicated. For example you might grow wheat and corn in your fields, combine them in your feed factory to make food for your cows. Once fed the cows can then be milked, the milk can be used to make cheese in your dairy, and it can then be combined with syrup, strawberries and cookies in your pastry factory to make cheesecake. I enjoy playing. It has fun events and mini-games, although it is quite time-consuming.

Next, Klondike. Looking for gold! It's quite similar to Township in that you have a settlement where you grow crops and a dairy and a pottery and things where you make goods. As well as your settlement there are other areas to explore. Your characters use their energy to cut the rocks and trees and things out of their way, and to collect useful materials such as coal and iron ore, and treasure like gold, amethyst and malachite. It's a beautiful game. Really well-drawn and nice music. You do run out of energy really fast though. It often takes three sessions of playing to cut out a single rock.

Diggy's Adventure: Another game that's fairly similar to Klondike. You have a base and also explore ancient Egyptian tombs, looking for clues to what happened to your father. You run out of energy much less frequently than you do in Klondike, which is nice. There's no challenge in this one whatsoever, but, well, it's kind of cool to explore tombs and talk to Anubis and stuff. After all, didn't we all want to be Egyptologists at some point?

Obviously, being a big Harry Potter fan, I've tried the Harry Potter phone game. It's a role-playing game where you play a Hogwarts student a few years older than Harry. You have to solve the mystery of what happened to your brother. You can customise the way you look, and choose a name, pet and Hogwarts house for your character. You meet familar characters, such the Hogwarts professors, as well as people like Tonks and Bill Weasley. To move forward in the story, you need to learn spells and potions, make friends, find objects and win duels. Like Klondike and Diggy, you need energy for this, and like with Klondike, you run out of energy annoyingly fast. The game's storyline is interesting enough, but to be honest, gameplay is repetitive and boring. Fans of Harry Potter will enjoy the familiar aspects of Hogwarts, and the fantasy of seeing yourself having your own adventures at Hogwarts but I don't think this is a game for non-fans.

And finally, Helix Jump. This is a fun and simple game. Think of it as an upside-down Doodle Jump. You control a bouncing ball, and you have to control its fall down to the bottom of the level. There's a pole in the middle with platforms attached to it, and you use your finger to turn the pole around so that the ball falls down the gaps between platforms. There are dark areas of platforms that you need to avoid, as they kill you, and to make it harder there are some very narrow gaps and also some platforms that move. Like Doodle Jump, you need fast reflexes. It's a good game, although the adverts between attempts are annoying.

Book Reviews: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stane

As previously mentioned, I'm a masive fan of Harry Potter. This is the Scots translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. I really enjoyed reading this! It went a little slowly at first as I was getting used to the new language patterns, but I soon sped up. I read the entire thing in a Scottish accent in my head. It was really interesting reading something so familiar in a different style, and really interesting seeing a style of speaking in print that I'd only heard spoken before. In my head it sounded just liked several ex colleagues! And my Scots came on leaps and bounds! I learned lots of new Scots word. A cat is a bawdrins, a toad is a puddock and an owl is a hoolet. I thought the translators did a really good job with it, being true to the original, while making something new at the same time.

Book Reviews: The Casual Vacancy

Being a massive fan of the Harry Potter books I was pretty nervous when I picked this up.   I knew it was going to be nothing like Harry Potter, and by all accounts nowhere near as good, but my curiosity forced my hand.   I needed to know what J.K. had been up to.   It centres around a local election.   It turns into a pretty fierce and dirty fight and brings out the worst in a lot of the characters.   It's told from the point of view of lots of different characters.   Perhaps a few too many to be honest.   It takes a while to get them all sorted out in your head.   I thought I might like it because I enjoy her humour and characters more than her storytelling, and even a book with no magic in it would surely still have just as many funny bits and characters just as appealing.  I was wrong.   Just about every character in this is detestable.   And while the humour is definitely still there, it's a lot more well hidden.   The humour in this comes from the skilled way J.K. depicts a small, claustrophobic rural community and its small minded petty people who care more about image and their own comfort than their neighbours' welfare.   I think just about every character reminds me of one or more of my parents' friends.   It's surprisingly gritty.   There's plenty of sex, drugs, self-harm, poverty, bullying and people generally being awful to each other.   And it's convincing too.   I never thought J.K., the author of Harry Potter, would be able to do grit, but it's properly shocking and dark.   There's so much conflict between children and parents too.   There doesn't seem to be a single happy family in the village.   Really makes you think about what's under the surface and what seemingly happy people are hiding.   And of course it doesn't have a happy ending.   The wrong person wins the election, the socialists lose their fight and children die.   I can't say I really enjoyed this book.   It's well-written, interesting, insightful, moving, but not really my sort of thing.  I much prefer my books with some magic in them.  

     

Film Reviews: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Before I start I would just like to say that I am a huge fan of the Harry Potter books.  the films, not so much, but, being reasonably impressed with part 1, I thought I may as well watch part 2 too.   I was a little skeptical at first.   After all, in part 1 they'd got all the way up to Lord Voldemort taking the Elder Wand from Dumbledore's tomb.   Beyond that point how much story was left really?   The battle for Hogwarts and that was it.   Was the entire film going to be one long battle scene?   But no!   It was actually really well done.   There was quite a bit of story in it.   Snape's memories take up a fair amount of time and do add a lot of substance to the film.   It's feels like a whole, complete film that you can watch without having to watch part 1 at the same time.   The polyjuice potion scene was really well done too - Helena Bonham Carter acting as Hermione, acting like Bellatrix Lestrange was really odd to watch!   Also interesting to see Crabbe's part in the film being filled by Goyle and Goyle's by Zabini instead.   Apparently Jamie Waylett who played Crabbe got sacked for drugs.   Ah well.   And they kept in Mrs Weasley's line!   She says the B word.   I'm glad they kept it in.   It's a great line.   Predicatably enough they gave it a more Hollywood ending though.   Harry snaps the wand rather than putting it back in the tomb.   I can forgive that, because it's the same outcome really.   Doesn't affect the story.   I wasn't that impressed with the final scene though.   The effort at aging the actors seemed a bit half-hearted.   Though I suppose that witches and wizards do live longer than muggles, so maybe they were purposefully aged accordingly?   But all in all, my favorite of the Harry Potter films, and yes, I did cry like a baby!