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RevMarzikins, RDavison, JBR, Nirejhenge, aerisdead, GazGT, Anonymous X

Hello!

Like so many famous detectives, I have found that I develop a dastardly sweet tooth while I work.

As a result, I find myself spending quite a lot of time staring at the sweets, biscuits and cakes in the supermarket trying to find the most appropriate carbohydrate-rich accompaniment to the thought process.

Let us ask the question: What is the best computer snack or sweetie?

I'll specify some criteria, in order of importance:

* My foremost criteria is that they mustn't be 'messy'.

Specifically, this means three things: they mustn't mess up your hands while handing them, they mustn't mess up your keyboard or workspace while you eat them and they mustn't require effort to clean up after you've eaten.

I don't use my computer unless I've washed my hands, and I can't stand using somebody elses mucky keyboard.

This rules out most complete meals or their small imitations. It also rules out doughnuts (especially jam doughnuts) unless you're very careful. Cleaning a keyboard is a taxing enough task without having to worry about sugary gunk from Heaven knows what.

Individually wrapped sweets and cakes rock in this category. Mints and things are also encouraged. My ideal sweetie has a classic style toffee wrapper with the twists at either end. Loosen one of the twists, hold the the other end and bite the toffee into your mouth. The sealed packet with the notch cut in the seam as used by Celebrations and Miniature Heroes is seriously lame by comparison.

This criterion has the side effect of promoting crisps (and MacDonalds fries) to some extent: predictable crisps like Squares and small Monster Munch can be tipped into your mouth without getting your hands dirty. Everything else can be mushed up and poured into your mouth, like so much fatty, flavoured grit. Yeah! Of course, if you're not super careful, your shoulders are going to be covered in salt. If you eat crisps with your fingers and then get to typing, I will kill you for keyboard abuse.

Chocolate biscuits are better than their plain counterparts, they being less likely to shatter into a million carpet-infesting pieces the moment you retrieve them from the packet. I still sometimes use a tissue to eat 'em, as if they were a bakery bagel or something.

* No artificial sweeteners. Duh.

* They must be relatively inexpensive.

This rules out individually wrapped Lindt chocolates and their ilkl, together with Celebrations and Miniature Heroes. Though Celebrations and Miniature Heroes are mostly crap. Can you buy the Maltesers Celebration in isolation yet? Maltesers themselves are a bit lame. I remember them being more awesome as a kid, but these days they seem to be really low quality: the honeycomb centre is either simply dust, rubbery (it's supposed to be brittle, damn it), or completely missing altogether. Its Celebration counterpart on the other hand is always perfect: it's has a slightly more dense honeycomb centre and a thicker chocolate layer and each one is IDENTICAL.

* They must be widely available.

There's no point getting used to things that you're not going to be able to find quickly.

* They must go well with tea.

I like to work in a caffinated trance courtesy of ridiculously strong and sweet tea that's more akin to blancmange than any Earth-borne beverage. This discourages certain types of mints, encouraging anything that's caramel or chocolate based.

These last two aren't that important. (You could flip the following to be 'must be squishy' if you wanted.)

* They must have some flexibility to their substance.

This rules out things like Werther's Originals, as they're completely inflexible. Biting them will send shards of Original through your gums and INTO YOUR BRAIN, killing you instantly.

* Similarly, they must have some adaptability.

Sometimes you want to enjoy a Mint Imperial slowly, and sometimes you want to munch through Jelly Babies like a rabid child. If the snack has the capability to be eaten either way, it wins. Jelly Babies and beans are great either way, but you're gonna end up feeling sickly and dehydrated if you keep up eating them. Anything that has to be eaten quickly while it's still hot is no good, unless it also tastes great cold, of course.

--

I conclude that the ultimate computer sweetie is the Cadbury's Chocolate Eclair. They're individually wrapped. You can find them almost anywhere. They have caramel and chocolate. You can eat them slowly or quickly. They're almost all sugar.

Runners up:
Gold Bar, Club, Cadbury's Mini Roll. They're too expensive, and you're gonna end up a fat bastard if you eat several boxes of them a day.

What would be nice:
I really like well-made cream line toffees with the jagged spiral of cream running through them. I have no idea where to buy them, or even if they exist any more.

The most frustrating obstacle in my quest is that most shops have a hopelessly narrow range. Half of everything that any given shop stocks is going to be hideous, tasteless own-brand crap. (With the bizarre exception of Custard Creams, which are always faultless no matter where I look.) My local Asda no longer stocks the Cadbury Chocolate Digestive, Chocolate Rich Tea or Chocolate Shortcake for example. WHAT THE HELL.

What obvious things have I overlooked? I kinda stopped at the Eclairs since they're just that good.

Whoosh. Fwish. (Pop-op-op-p.) Fizz. Whoomph. Erk.

Hello! I'm J Nash and, to celebrate history's most inept bombing, I appear to have set myself on fire in the previous sentence. But never mind that now -- I've also just opened

http://orsomething.co.uk/

where you can read things that are by me, some previously unseen, some practically unseen because everyone who read them originally is now dead, all reliably unimpressive. The idea is to post an item every weekday and, with very nearly a week gone so far, I've ruggedly held to the gruelling schedule.

(Hurrah. It certainly sounds like a House of Nash for the 90s. I have just been punched by J Nash. I shall cherish the fiery bruise for always. -- Reader's voice.)

Linky

Website is a bit sparse at the moment, apart from a rather silly commercial thing.

Anyway, I hear they are going back to the roots with this one (although I have been let down 4 times before). I really hope so. Settlers I and II are still favourites that I play regularly.

THE LOST LEVELS
14,827 - RevMarzikins
10,470 - RevStu

WILLYWORLD
8,394 - RevMarzikins
7,685 - RevStu

TIME TRIALS:
1. Horace In The Mystic Woods - 10.920 - RevStu
2. Blagger Could Smell A 'Ratt' - 32.954 - RevMarzikins
3. Real Central Cavern - 30.603 - RevStu
4. Cheese Plant - 35.395 - myk
5. The Dodgy Mine Shaft - 21.676 - RevMarzikins
6. The Big Drop - 42.133 - RevStu
7. Bouncy Bouncy - 40.650 - RevStu
8. The Rocky Outcrop - 34.393 - RevMarzikins
9. Bottom Of The Mine Shaft - 30.644 - RevMarzikins
10. Cosmic Causeway - 35.317 - myk
11.Logo Of The Year - 33.437 - RevStu
12. The Final Conflict - 40.412 - RevMarzikins
13. The Vat - 27.768 - RevStu
14. Attack Of The Mutant Telephones - 38.736 - myk
15. The Warehouse - 22.992 - RevStu
16. Mummy Daddy - 27.921 - RevStu
17. It's Christmas, Charlie Brown! - 44.893 - RevMarzikins
18. Endorian Forest - 31.044 - RevStu
19. Jump For Joy - 43.068 - RevMarzikins
20. The Final Barrier - 23.514 - RevStu

Layne Lewis Jared Parker, a ray of sunshine in a shitty year.

What is this rather splendid-looking version? Anyone? Bueller?

http://www.webring.com/hub?ring=jetsetwillymanic;id=8;prvw

At 1m 27s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5FpU4P9xLI

Anyone here have or used one?

Recently, I've been loving the Defense Grid tower defence game I've mentioned so approvingly in the iPhone recommendations thread. I also really loved the Batman Arkham Asylum game. Do I think they're the best games ever? No. But I felt far, far more excited about either of them then I have pretty much anything else in the last year or more.

I think I'm just bored, jaded by games. But! Not sick of them, not even fed up. I feel like I'm at a buffet but there's nothing that I really want anymore, and even my happy memories of that awesome quiche is quickly fading as I stare at its empty plate. Now there are only tidbits and rather over-done, underwhelming thick slices of tedium.

The DS - no, sold it. Fed up of puzzle games, tired of crappy third-rate ports, unimpressed by modest portable versions of some of my favourite 'big' games like Civilization.

The iPhone - don't have one, can't afford one currently. But I wonder if it wouldn't be much like the DS, for me, only cheaper. A bigger variety of disappointment for a bargain price, like getting a Cascade 50 tape for Christmas.

The 360 - bored of first-person-shooters, I've switched to its many racing games. Well, there still isn't that much else. Other than for the Arcade, but I've already completed or otherwise done with all the best stuff on there, bar a scant few that I'm trying to eke out. If not for the occasional immersive role-playing game like Fallout 3 or possibly Borderlands (I'm still undecided about how long I'll be interested in playing it), I don't know that I'd even bother using its disc drive
.
The PC - like the above but more dodgy/buggy/unstable/slow. The reason I bought a 360 in the first place. It does however have the occasional quirky freeware delight such as Windosill or other bizarre Flash oddities. But they're not really what I'd consider a game. I'm not sucked in for hours of deep thought and bouncing-in-chair-excitement by a desktop toy, nor by really anything else at the moment.

I'm like a music lover who has played all his records to death but finds everything new out is shit or just depressingly derivative, pointless, redundant. What now?

I've just been informed I have three days to reapply for the job I've been doing for the last three years (ten with the place altogether), I have no guarantee of getting it and if not, I'm redundant just in time for Christmas. Baby's due this Sat as well. Cheers!