Lovely photographs and Machinarium

I've been spending a bit of time going through Tom Palumbo's Flickr stream after he was featured on Ancient Industries. He takes/took such lovely lovely photos - high fashion, art, every-day life, all stylish and just right. Photos like this one just leave me in awe, how could he know just when to click the shutter, to be just where he was, to see the moment and be brash enough to take the photo?

Others like this one just make me smile because it's so lovely

They're worth viewing in their larger sizes just to appreciate the details.

Hazel and I have also been playing a lot of Machanarium which is this fabulous little game from Amanita Design. Essentially you have to solve puzzles to help a little robot rescue his girlfriend from the bad guys and foil their nefarious plan.

This is the opening screen

Most of the puzzles are too hard for Hazel to solve at four, and several of them are too hard for me to solve at 40 - but that's what cheat sheets are for right? Otherwise it gave my brain a great workout and Hazel noticed lots of little details that I missed so we made a great team.

The robot dancing to the band's music, pity the images are static because it's very cute.

We reached the end and now we've been going back and playing again just to enjoy the story, the drawings, and the very very cool music. The Machinarium link above takes you to a free demo of three 'levels' and then you can buy the full game + soundtrack if you want. Personally I thought it was well worth the price!

I seem to have captured the robot looking the other way! I just love the scenes in this game, so detailed and whimsical. I also love that all the animals are robots as well - owls, cats, mice etc.