The weather is back to normal summer temperatures (low to mid thirties Celsius), so my desk area is now safe for human use. This week I’m attempting to finish off all outstanding Ph.D. material so I’ll be free to move on. I expect I’ll have some administrative stuff still to go next week, but it should all be done with, really and truly, within a fortnight. So I won’t be posting much business or art related material for a week or so until this is all sorted.

I did get to play a couple of indie games last week. Apart from Duck Tiles (which I’m still playing through the Flash puzzles), the other indie game I’ve been playing is Mousechief’s Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble! (despite the cheeky title, the link is quite safe for work.) It’s an odd game to categorise, but I’d describe it as an adventure game about a gang of rebellious school girls who solve mysteries, all done in the style of a vintage 1920’s board game. The gameplay is done as a bunch of minigame challenges, but the setting makes it rather compelling to play. And the game is one of five nominees for the

In my efforts to avoid working on my dissertation, I’ve found a new time wasting activity: devising new pangrams. A pangram is a short sentence that contains all letters of the alphabet, like the famous “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” or “Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz”. It’s used a lot by typeface designers to test out their new creations, which is where I picked up the reference: I’m planning on making a font out of my handwriting.

If you’re interested in wasting time with pangrams too, there’s a handy on-line flash tool called the Pangrammer Helper which will check used letters for you. It’ll help your sphinx judge your vow as you pack your box full of liquor jugs.

Here’s some of my pangram creations:

Big band; live rhythm: slowfox, quickstep, jazz.
— This one isn’t a complete sentence, but it’s mainly along the same theme and uses a lot of punctuation marks.

Black adze vanquishes jumpy wax frog
— I like the pure silliness of this one.

Amazing quick jump to fly over box's width
— a.k.a “The Mario Pangram”. My favourite so far. I’m currently using this as the test sentence for practicing my handwriting.