Saturday, April 19, 2008

House Sneak Peek

As usual the OS has provided pics of objects and patterns from the new house. It's always a great teaser, and fun to guess what things are. I went through with a friend last night and here's some of our guesses:
  1. Grass, obviously, but not real grass. Possibly on the ground in the backyard, but who is to say this isn't whacky wallpaper or a table top or something strange.
  2. The bullseye pic looks like it is painted on concrete. It could be a games area in the backyard, but may just be the theme of the whole backyard. Regardless, it is somewhere outside.
  3. This one is obvious. The water tanks from last year along the back wall of the garden have been painted sky blue. This makes them less prominent, so maybe less focus on the "green house" of last year.
  4. Well, it is rope surely, but made into what? Our guess was it is a person made out of rope. Looks like arms and a head and a torso. Looks like the patio area of the backyard possibly.
  5. Another obvious one, a shower head, and it's outside. They have had a shower by the pool in previous years so maybe that's it. What's the glass structure in the background though? A new back area of the house? A greenhouse? Also, we've seen pics of the pool in a separate backyard. Is this part of that area?
  6. Dumbells in the gym.
  7. This was interesting. At fiest it looked like a wall art made from leather stools, but then we thought what if it is the top of the Diary Room chair? A grey wall and the DR chair made out of tops of stools in red, white, and blue.
  8. A floor. Kitchen or bathroom.
  9. The wall from whatever room the floor is from in the previous picture.
  10. Wall art. Looks like melted toilet seats! Could be anywhere really. Bedroom, living room, "rewards room" (if they have one), diary room.....
  11. Now first guess was this was either the emergency ward or the BB chapel! Later we thought perhaps the diary room door, or a door to somewhere else. Defintiely a wall or door given the angle of the lighting and the reflections of lights, but there looks like there is something behind it.
  12. A ceiling or a floor. Probably the same area that pic 11 is from. Very dark though.
  13. Carpet, but could be on a wall or anything in the BB house. This may be the bedroom colour this year.
  14. This is last year's eviction corridor-- light bulbs behind fabric. But where is it this year? Looks like a wall somewhere. Could be the eviction corridor again!

So let's see how many are right on launch night!

Official Website

Yesterday the official website was launched. Surprisingly, it works quite well. My signin from last year worked first shot.

Strangely, when I signed in I had a gold crown next to my name, which I would have thought meant I was signed up for VIP, but I have not done so yet. Is this a bug, an anomaly in their database, or do they just love me? Regardless, I think I'd better sign up properly anyway.

They have provided some good teaser videos, slideshows and stories to kick off with. It's good to have some content on there for the launch. Looks like there are a lot of spaces where more information will appear after the launch, e.g. the very vacant looking header bar. Also there are a lot of menus missing that will have to appear later, like the Diary!

Navigation is a bit dodgy. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but things have moved around a lot. The top menus seem out of logical order. This again may sort itself out later.

But thank goodness that horrible dark gloomy website of the last 3 years is gone. This one is very bright and clean and spaced out nicely. It looks a lot easier to read. The video player is also greatly improved on last year, and my video capture software works perfectly with it, so I'll be able to grab copies of all the videos they put up. Last year it was way too tricky!