Thunderbozz

My laptop's broken, which is an incredibly annoying development for several reasons, one of them being the unscheduled suspension of Thunderbozz until it's fixed.

The story The planet has been taken over by the evil INKT Corporation, a corporate military dictatorship hell-bent on draining every last drop of colour from Chroma City. It's not long before Comrade Black has turned the entire town grey and enslaved the population. Enter the Colour Underground, the last pocket of resistance, and their secret weapon... de Blob. The game The game is split into ten levels, where the object is to restore colour using de Blob as a giant, comic paintbrush. Smashing open Leechbots and draining them of the colour they're carrying enables de Blob to "paint" the buildings by jumping on them. Once enough buildings have been restored (in other words, once you've collected enough points), you can advance to the next sector. Along the way, there are four categories of mini-games and challenges, some of which have to be completed to allow you to progress. These include races, painting challenges and battling the Inkies (foot soldiers). T...

I have decided to scrap my one semi-serious new year's resolution (to try and reach the arbitrary magic number of five portions of fruit and veg a day) because it backfired in the most spectacular fashion. After four days of fruit juice with breakfast, fresh fruit in the afternoon, lots of veg with dinner... I was struck down with a cold. They say "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" – well too much fruit can kill a man, too, you know. Despite my severe illness, I managed to battle my way into work... and all this despite the literally freezing temperatures up here in Sheffield, which would have made the journey miserable even if I'd been fighting fit. Actually, that's probably not true. I think the only time you can appreciate cold weather, sub-zero temperatures and snow underfoot is when you know that it's not contributing to the destruction of your immune system. According to reports, it was even freezing cold in the tropical south, where the fi...

2009 has well and truly arrived, a point hammered home by the number of times I had to type the date on letters at work today. January is traditionally the busiest month where I work, and there was a huge pile of papers sitting in the "in" tray this morning. Fortunately, it would seem that most of our clients decided to take the day off, because the phone barely rung all day. I hope everyone had an enjoyable Christmas and New Year's Eve. We were out in a surprisingly quiet Sheffield city centre for the first few hours of the latter, gradually working our way towards the Cavendish on West Street via the marvellous new Players bar (barmaids in cheerleading costumes + great music + Sky Sports News = marvellous) and 'Spoons. The plan was to move on to my friends' flat down by the riverside to see in the new year itself, but there was a bit of a snag. The lock on their front door failed, despite numerous attempts, to actually unlock the door. Faced with the pros...

Happy New Year, everyone.