MARINA SOKOLOVA

Good facebook games.

I don’t usually play same facebook games for long time. After a while I get bored and move on to something new. The following are my current favourites.

1. CastleVille.

I love games with very beautiful graphics and fairytale theme. This one is as beautiful as Disney cartoon. Well worth a try.

2. Revensky City.

Another very beautiful game with a magic theme. It is somewhat similar to Ravenwood Fair, but even cuter.

3. Adventure World – An Indiana Jones Game.

Like the name indicates, it's a game based on Indiana Jones adventures. It has quite interesting campaigns.

What are your favourite facebook games?

A rather unusual game.

A company called Destiny Development made a new humorous on-line game, in Russian, based on racism. Yes, that's right. You see, in Russia immigration situation is a lot heavier and more sensitive than even in the west. Millions of people from the southern republics of former USSR, China, and other countries find their way into Russia and fight tooth and nail for a better life. In Moscow you will hardly see a driver, a builder, or a cleaner who is white and whose first language is Russian. The rent prices and quality of accommodation available in Moscow are more ridiculous than in Manhattan.

The name of the game is “Ponaechaly tut”. It's a derogative phrase, equivalent to UK's “bloody foreigners”. You can choose to be a Moscow local or an arrived migrant. And you take it from there in your fight over Moscow.

Knitting Machine.

I have bought this toy knitting machine at the local car boot market for £4. While I was trying it out I quickly made these 3 scarves. I love it! Despite the fact that it is a very simple toy, one can knit a large amount of patterns on it. I no longer understand why anyone would want to knit by hands. Knitting even on simple machine like that is so much faster and just as interesting. After all, we don’t sew by hand anymore, do we?

Bargain.

This week, I went for a walk in the neighbourhood and stumbled upon the Age of Empires 3 in a charity shop in a prefect condition for just £1.99. Since I don’t have this game yet, I bought it and tried it right a way. It is quite good, modern graphics and all. It is mainly about settlers in the American continents. I can say that they have relatively good Russian language for the Russian tribe lol, almost all the words are correct and make sense. I finished the campaigns, which have quite a good storyline, and started playing with the custom games, but I still haven’t figured out how to centre on the unit while in a game or quickly select just one unit out of a selected crowd. I instinctively do the same movements that I did in the War Craft 3 The Frozen Throne, which I been playing for months recently, but it is not the same interface lol.

War Craft 3 The Frozen Throne.

I have been playing War Craft 3 The Frozen Throne a lot recently. I have completed the campaigns and I am now playing custom games on medium level. I have found the ultimate strategy that helps me win these games and I am going to share it here. The gold mines that are guarded not by your opponent, but by original monsters are marked by brown spots on the map. If you save your game and reload freshly saved game, you will notice that some of those brown spots in the places of the map that you haven’t uncovered yet have disappeared. This is where your opponent is. When an enemy has more than one location I start sending one warrior to each of it’s locations constantly. I find the flying units more convenient. At the same time I build my own additional goldmines at the map’s end opposite an enemy, I strive to have 2-3 running goldmines. Warriors that bug an opponent keep its army busy and away from my goldmines. Eventually, even those tiny single warriors wear out an enemy. By the time computer’s army gets from one location to the other, one unit can easily destroy few buildings or kill all enemy’s miners. If you destroyed the mine, keep one or two units there to prevent enemy’s workers from building new one. Save and reload the game once in a while to spot where else they are attempting to build new mines. This strategy quickly cuts your enemy from resources and it starts falling behind you in development.  There is no use doing it when an enemy has only one town. Computer starts with a big army, which will meet you half way, kick your arse, and come to bash your town. Speaking of half way: if all of enemy’s towns are on the same trajectory, you might need to take the warrior farther to the side of the map and then to where you want it. It would then make a circle around opponent’s army. Obviously you need to do this all very quickly.

Crystal Growing.

I have received this crystal growing kit as a gift:

 

Reading the booklet that comes with it, I discovered that, apparently, crystal growing can be both a hobby and an industrial process. There are clubs and competitions for crystal growing enthusiasts through out the world.

 

So this is my first attempt to grow crystals.

 

Aluminium Potassium Sulphate:

 

Monoammonium Phosphate:

 

I found that it is easier, quicker, and more effective to simply pour boiling water carefully out of the kettle onto the salts to dissolve them in order to prepare solution for growing instead of the doing long heating process described in the instructions to the kit.

LOL

http://trishwilson.typepad.com/blog/2009/04/nuts4chic-the-hello-kitty-vibrator.html

LOL

What an interesting idea for a toy: http://trishwilson.typepad.com/blog/2009/04/review-ohmibod-naughtybod.html#comments !

Dawn of War

I was bored of my pc games and Jim offered me to try one of his, called Dawn of War. Normally I don’t like dick flick stuff, which is what it looks like from the cover. He said that it is not just about bashing stuff, but has also building and development activities like Age of Empires, which I enjoyed for a very long time. Well, in my opinion, it is not like Age of Empires – much simpler and less challenging. Although, I must admit that simple mindless bashing feels kind of stress releasing and it did occupy me for few days. It also has a bit of a story line and interesting characters based on some books. It would have been worth drawing those characters in better details and close ups – it would have made the game very beautiful. And it definitely needs to be harder at least on some levels. I went through entire campaign and most of other multiple players games where you play with computer in a time race and I haven’t lost once. So, obviously it quickly gets boring.

Free online strategy games.

http://www.addictinggames.com/strategygames.html