Giglamps rambles

That's it, it's not "typing" anymore. It's "invoking the keyboard." I will not budge on this. Put a circle of salt around your device of choice, it's time to invoke the keyboard about a variety of things have been occurring recently, as we stubbornly trudge toward the arse end of Summer (I hate this season with a burning passion - give me literally any other time of year or give me death.) Starting with the endeavour to give some love to the front garden because for a while now, I've been at a bit of a loss for what to do with it. For a few weeks in Spring, it looks beautiful with the laburnum, lilac and bluebells in full swing - it's a delightful little fairytale patch of joy and colour during that time but once everything has done blooming, then it spends the rest of the year looking a bit shit. Making a start, I picked up a gargoyle, naturally, and this colourful peacock spinner. The gargoyle looks a bit satanic, so we've just gone ...

There's a bundle of blog posts waiting in the wings but I still have a million other things going on and trying to find the files I need to finish them up during little pockets of downtime is proving difficult; it's a sod of a situation but rest assured, there will be footage of local waterfowl doing aquatic bird stuff sometime soon. For today though, we're having a look at Pools, and a fraction of the 805 screenshots I took during my first playthrough (this is after trimming the numbers back 'n' all - it has a very appealing aesthetic!) It has a compelling atmosphere, both beautiful and eerie in equal measure, and the mazes are superbly satisfying to explore. When you get a feel for how everything connects, what passageway leads where and you find somewhere you haven't previously been, reaching a new area feels really rewarding, especially in the moments when you walk into the more grand rooms that almost feel like ancient temples in how they're laid...

It's time for more screenshots today and at the moment, I'm revisiting Hellblade on the Steam Deck, thankfully a breeze to get going after the amount of faff involved with setting up other things. Control, perhaps unsurprisingly, was a bit of a sod to set up (thank you to some kind stranger on the internet for putting up a bundle of settings that balance nice visuals with the game running properly because man alive, I was completely lost at sea with that lot.) Also, for some reason, Prey was hell bent on crashing out while it was meant to be installing. No idea what the problem was but I had to keep an eye on the machine for ages, then run the risk of restarting GOG Galaxy and just hope that it wouldn't lose the progress with the installation after an hour and a half... but yes, it's on there now, ready to go. That's the main thing. Not quite fun 'n' games in the traditional sense, but here we are. While all this was going on, I also took a run a...