I'm ok with ads on those few mobile games I play. As long as they are unobtrusive.They don't necessarily even have to offer anything extra to me for watching them. I'm all in for supporting the developers who go through the trouble creating those games.

But there are many ways to integrate those ads to the game. Main ways being displaying small banner ads all the time on the edge of the screen and having full screen ads popping up every now and then.

Kickstarter has become a great source of board games in recent years. Nowadays I get almost all my games there. It's nice not only to get those games way before they hit the shelves of retailers but also being part of making those games happen in the first place.

For some reason everybody appears to have those random pieces of cutlery. There is the nice set or two of different kind that all other pieces belong to. And then there are those odd pieces that nobody doesn't even have an idea where they came from.

There is no sound in space as vacuum doesn't transmit it. There is nothing the sound waves could move through. So it's pretty silent out there.

That is actually a good thing. Our soundscape would be quite different if we could hear the loudest sound in our solar system. Despite being 150 million kilometers a way, that huge explosion in the sky that we call sun would generate a sound that would hit us at 125 Desibels. That's about the same as a sound of a jet engine from a close distance. So it would be quite deafening.

While the desktop might be dead it's still needed. Maybe not that much for consuming, for that there are many better ways. But for creating it's still mostly needed. Or is it?

The year of the Linux Desktop has been coming for years, even decades. But it never happened. And it won't happen as the desktop operating system has become irrelevant. The desktop is mainly used to run a single desktop application: the Browser. Even that usage is diminishing and threatening the desktop Computer itself as well as it's little cousin the Laptop. It's all in mobile devices nowadays. And even there the Apps are losing.

Optimization and extra features are things that can often delay software projects. Sure, it's nice to have performant code with good set of features from the start. But released software is almost always better than couple of missing features or room to speed things up.

There are people who want to experiment. They will go extra mile to try out new things and learn new technologies. They disregard all the prior work done to provide stable foundations for all projects. Every project is a bit different. But they wont commit to maintain this new creation indefinitely. They trust that others will be as inclined to learn the new things as they are.

Thinking outside the box is commonly used metaphor for creativity or coming up with new ideas. Some problems indeed require a new perspective to get them solved. But sometimes the box is all you have. You are inside the box and there is nothing out there.

Working within limits can boost creativity as well. When you have limited resources you need to come up with new and effective ways to use those scarce resources. And keeping inside those limits often lead to more efficient solutions as well.

This was a great weekend overall. Lots of playing different games mostly. The best part was our sessions of Pandemic Legacy: season 2 that we had among your family. We have really gotten up to speed with it after the long break that took most of the last year.

It's a great game and the best part of it is when we play it together as a family. I feel that everybody is enjoying it and looking forward for the next session.

Spell checker wit autocorrect, or even spelling suggestions is great. Unfortunately I have had some trouble with them lately. At some point I had to give up using Grammarly. It's a great tool and goes way beyond being just a simple spell checker. But when it started to completely eat random words instead of correcting them it made using it quite a nuisance.

Ever got those weird thoughts in the shower? Small revelations of lifes simple things. Shower thoughts they are called while not strictly limited on having them while showering. They can you hit anywhere, anytime when there isn't anything else stealing your focus. When we have a chance to allow our mind to wander for a while it might encounter all sorts of interesting things.

There is a doorway I walk through every morning in our home. Behind that door I wake up and decide this day is going to be great, today I will do all the things. There is always something to look forward to the day. All I have to do is walk through that magical doorway.

Doorways have an interesting effect on us. Especially the appropriately named "the doorway effect", the one where we forgot what we were about to do as soon as we step through one of those portals. 

Everything that I have done in my life has led me to this moment. All that is happened is the reason why I'm here right now writing this post. Anything in the past could have changed it and instead I could be doing something completely different now.

When talking about the dystopian features of our time the de facto references are Brave new world by Aldous Huxley and Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell. While they have their resemblances in modern times luckily either of them have realized even if they both got some things scarily to the point.

Communication is one of the central pieces in science fiction. It can define how fast the information propagates. The control of it also defines who is in power. And that's pretty much true in the real world as well.

The predictions made decades ago are starting to become reality. Wireless ubigous communication is here, has been many years already. We can transfer information at the speed of light all around the globe.

During all these years I haven't really written much just because of the streak. Sure, there has been many filler posts just to keep the streak going. But even those have served a purpose.

I started writing simply because I wanted to write. Then, I wanted to become better at it. Along the way I learned that I actually enjoy doing it most of the time. And even when I don't, it's manageable. That has been one of the best learnings from all this effort. At best the writings is when I can use it as a tool for self reflection. 

There is the saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But without repetition how would we learn? Where should we stop and give up instead of keep trying? Wouldn't it be insanity to give up too early?

Few things are so simple that there wouldn't be any parameters that would have a chance to alter the outcome. Therefore, no matter how small, there is always possibility of a different outcome.

We love patterns. We are really good at spotting them everywhere, even if there are no inherited order in all those things. We also consider symmetric things beautiful. 

From computational viewpoint that makes a lot of sense. Symmetry and patterns are more efficient to generate, process and store than less ordered data.  Maybe that's the reason our brains do find such things satisfying.

This love of order can also function as motivation sometimes. Working towards making something to follow a pattern can be satisfying. No matter what it would take to achieve it.

Even if I decided I won't do any end of the year reviews I did have a look at all that data I have collected and at my disposal. After all, what good is that data anyway if it's not getting used.

One conclusion was that I might not actually need all that data. It's irrelevant and just contributes to wasted time and stressing out having it all recorded. So first of all, I'll try to cut down some of that data. Saving time as well as money when I don't need to use all those services. In principle I want each one to have clear purpose and direction I want it to help me move toward.