Just two things today �
A small slice of coffee break gaming�
Skywire is a fantastic little game I discovered on miniclip.com. The premise is simple � move your little cable car to the end of the wire with all your passengers on board. There are only two controls: the up arrow key to move forwards/increase speed and the down arrow key to move backwards/decrease speed.
In your way are all manner of nasties. Simply touching one of these objects will result in losing a passenger, lose all three and it�s game over. It�s surprisingly addictive, I recommend you try it!
Another one to try is Snow Line. This one sees you helping Santa to collect all the presents he dropped when his reindeer hiccupped. Again it�s very simple, you draw lines of snow for him to sledge on using your mouse. You can make steep inclines to build up speed, or gaps to jump etc.
It actually feels a lot like an old game I used to play at college. I forget the name but you had to steer your mountain biker around the terrain without allowing the rider to touch the landscape. The suspension was suitably springy and some sections were just mind bending (riding upside down etc). The mechanics of Snow Line are similar but allowing you to effectively draw the landscape is genius. Try it now!
Introducing ObjectDock�
I�m very impressed with this, and stumbled upon it purely by accident. Essentially it�s a �dock� similar to that seen on a Mac but for windows. It has nice rollover effects, the ability to hide the Windows taskbar and position the dock virtually anywhere on screen.
Included �docklets� include an analogue clock and weather watcher. Unfortunately, despite being able to get weather updates through the associated website weather.com, I can�t seem to configure the weather watcher to display weather for the United Kingdom. It�s always nice to know what the weather is like in New York though.
I also don�t know of an easy way to hide the Windows recycle bin � most solutions point to editing the registry and I think this pc has had quite enough of that! I believe TweakUI allows you to hide it but I can�t be bothered with all that either.
These minor gripes aside, this is a fantastic little utility and best of all it�s free (There is a Plus version for sale with more features but the free version is excellent on it’s own). So if your as sick of Windows as I am and like me you can�t quite afford that gleaming Mac just yet, why not temporarily satisfy your desires with this little gizmo? Also from Stardock is WindowBlinds, a utility for skinning Windows (part of the Object Desktop utilities), however I believe this one is shareware.
See you space cowboy�
