Speedy's Cafe - General Chat about anything you like!

[Arcadia]

Christmas alone, urk. I drove to my brother's to avoid that fate. Had a nice time.

I'm one of those thousands of people who were without power due to a snowstorm for the last three days, and the house has no insulation (!) so I had to keep the woodstove going all that time. I'm exhausted (had to wake up every two hours to stoke the stove, trips outside to get more wood, collect snow to melt into water so I could flush the toilet, etc.) -- and now they're talking about a similar snowstorm tonite. Ouch. Have to find a way to make sure I wake up if the power goes out again, or I will be a popsicle tomorrow morning...... plus I'm running out of wood.... ak. This is not the life I imagined when I bought this place. 

One of the most beautiful snows I've ever seen, though.

[Arcadia]

Better camera.....

[Carol the Dabbler]

3 hours ago, Arcadia said:

Better camera.....

Ooh, yeah, much better!

5 hours ago, Arcadia said:

Christmas alone, urk. I drove to my brother's to avoid that fate. Had a nice time.

Let's just say that my in-laws are a much higher-energy bunch than me.  A few hours with them and I'm frazzled (let alone a few days).  So Christmas "alone" was an inviting option, especially with three cats to keep me company.  They aren't much for conversation, but they're cuddly.

Could have driven up to visit my brother Ebeneezer, I suppose, but he was presumably visiting his in-laws.

 

[Artemis]

10 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

Let's just say that my in-laws are a much higher-energy bunch than me.  A few hours with them and I'm frazzled (let alone a few days).  So Christmas "alone" was an inviting option,

That's a bit how I feel about spending time with my brother's family.  Christmas for me was hectic and very draining, and I think I might have preferred to spend it alone this year.  I'm desperately in need of some time to myself.

10 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

brother Ebeneezer,

Ebeneezer, lol.  I'm assuming you're calling him that to imply that he's something of a Scrooge about Christmas, and not because it's his real name.

 

[Artemis]

It's my birthday on Saturday and I decided to treat myself to a birthday present.  Something entirely unnecessary instead of one of the many things I've been needing, lol.  But I can't decide on what.  I'm on a LotR/fantasy kick lately, so I was thinking something LotR-themed.  Perhaps a new phone case, or a candle holder.  I saw this pretty "Elvish" lantern on Etsy.

Or, I could add to my weapons collection.  I've been eyeing a fractal-burned staff for quite awhile now.  I recently learned that there are stretches you can do with a bo staff as well, and that's something I'd probably like to try; keep myself flexible.

I would treat myself to a movie, but there's never anything good released in early January.

Anyhoo, I am just rambling to avoid going to bed.

 

[besleybean]

They are lovely.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Either the lanterns or the staff sound good to me.  I was doing Chinese "wand" exercises for a while, years ago (they're actually done with what I'd call a staff), and they were kinda cool.  But then I moved away and no longer had my friend's staff available.

 

[Fantasy Lover]

 

On 1/6/2022 at 2:40 PM, Arcadia said:

Christmas alone, urk. I drove to my brother's to avoid that fate. Had a nice time.

I nearly had to celebrate Christmas alone as well, I got a stomach bug a few days before. I was mostly healed by Christmas eve but I had to skip dessert. I was able to eat dessert by Christmas but I didn't get a second portion.

[Carol the Dabbler]

What can y'all tell me about Google Play?  I've been getting ads for it on my phone, and it looks like they have some games I might be interested in, which are supposedly free.

However at this point I'm a little bit leery of anything related to Google.  Will they be tracking me?  Will they bury me in ads?  Are the games actually free?  And are they any good?

Also, do you have to install one big app for all of Google Play, or only the game or two that you really want?

 

[Caya]

Question: when you say Google Play, do you mean the Play Store or the Play Pass? Those are two different beasts.

Play Store is already installed on your cellphone if it's an Android (otherwise, you have its equivalent, the App Store of Apple). Looks like a multicolor Play button (mostly blue). That store is how you generally download new apps, including games, on your phone - you may or may not be able to download them elsewhere (some phones have this disabled by default). There is a f*ckton of games there to be had, a few genuinely free, most "free" (as in, they "offer" in-app purchases), some ask for money upfront. The Play Store itself doesn't run ads as such, it does however recommend games to you, which seems to be more based on who pays for that recommendation and less on your preferences (like, I'd rather put my phone through a blender than install Homescapes and yet it's a so-called personal recommendation occasionally). Many games have in-game ads, even a few of those that cost money. With some, it's part of the mechanics (as in, watch an ad, get free turns or whatever), some just swamp you with ads because they can.

Are they any good? Yes of course, there are great games (it'd be sad if there weren't any among the millions out there). Right now I'm having lots of fun with one called Switchcraft, which is a match-3 with an excellent storyline (written by a female team and wow does that show), and I'm playing Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery on and off. Finding a good game, however, can be a truly daunting task, and the Play Store is rather unhelpful there (you can't even put games or categories of games on ignore). As for installing, the Play Store is already there and you just pick and install the games you want from it.

Tracking, they already do that - the setting for ad personalization is "on" by default (even though it looks like it isn't). Here are instructions how to turn that off: https://www.groovypost.com/howto/reset-your-ad-tracking-id-on-your-android-or-ios-device/ .

Play Pass, which I mentioned earlier, is sort of like Netflix, just for cellphone games. You pay five bucks a month, I think, and get access to a cache of games that you would otherwise have to pay for. Never used it (I'm more of a PC gamer and the three or so games I paid for on Android, it was easier to just buy upfront) and you don't strike me as the kind of intense gamer that would get their money's worth out of it. Might use the free month to check out their games, then stop the subscription and buy those you liked, though.

eta: To get you started when it comes to games: https://www.mysterytribune.com/top-6-apps-ultimate-sherlock-holmes-fan/ . I've only played the first one, which was helluva tough at times but great fun - it is set ca. S2 just before Reichenbach, and has video scenes which were filmed for the game's storyline.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Yes, I have the Play Store on my phone (though I think it used to be called something else), and  as you guessed, am not interested in acquiring the Play Pass.

The game I saw advertised was Word Trip, and after posting my question last night, I looked for reviews.  There are numerous complaints of being bombarded with ads -- though one gal said she just plays in airplane mode, which makes sense (though I do like to be able to do stuff online any time I feel like it, without having to GO online every time).

The other common complaint is that the game (which is one of those "how many words can you make from these letters" things) will often reject perfectly valid words.  After studying one of their ads, I think I understand why:  The ad said something like "Can you find all eleven words?" whereas I easily got up to fourteen and could possibly have found more.  I'm guessing that the game's creators find as many words as they feel like looking for, and then those are the only acceptable words -- even if lots more words could be made from that letter set.

Also, they apparently keep hounding you to buy stuff (not sure if that's with cash or with points, but I hate being interrupted in mid-game, which these ads apparently do).

So all in all, not my kinda thing.  I'm looking for something along those lines, but just the game part -- and played fairly.  Just something simple to play while I wait for Alex, or when I'm settling down in bed.  I currently play solitaire, but would prefer some variety.

 

[Arcadia]

On 1/24/2022 at 9:29 PM, Carol the Dabbler said:

Yes, I have the Play Store on my phone (though I think it used to be called something else), and  as you guessed, am not interested in acquiring the Play Pass.

The game I saw advertised was Word Trip, and after posting my question last night, I looked for reviews.  There are numerous complaints of being bombarded with ads -- though one gal said she just plays in airplane mode, which makes sense (though I do like to be able to do stuff online any time I feel like it, without having to GO online every time).

The other common complaint is that the game (which is one of those "how many words can you make from these letters" things) will often reject perfectly valid words.  After studying one of their ads, I think I understand why:  The ad said something like "Can you find all eleven words?" whereas I easily got up to fourteen and could possibly have found more.  I'm guessing that the game's creators find as many words as they feel like looking for, and then those are the only acceptable words -- even if lots more words could be made from that letter set.

Also, they apparently keep hounding you to buy stuff (not sure if that's with cash or with points, but I hate being interrupted in mid-game, which these ads apparently do).

So all in all, not my kinda thing.  I'm looking for something along those lines, but just the game part -- and played fairly.  Just something simple to play while I wait for Alex, or when I'm settling down in bed.  I currently play solitaire, but would prefer some variety.

 

Okay, I had Word Trip on my phone, and quite enjoyed it for a long time. Yes, they bombard you with ads, though not nearly as much as some other games I tried. Personally, I think it's worth trying just to see if the ads bother you. If they do, the games are dead easy to uninstall.

Lately I've gotten into color sorting games. I Love Hue is one ... there's ads, but they're not too frequent. Some of the games, though, I've uninstalled five minutes after downloading them ... more ads than games! 

Airplane mode doesn't completely disable the ads either, I discovered .. can't quite figure that one out. But it helps. I rarely bother, though, for the reason you mention ... rather keep the internet access on and put up with the ads.

[Carol the Dabbler]

2 hours ago, Arcadia said:

Okay, I had Word Trip on my phone, and quite enjoyed it for a long time. Yes, they bombard you with ads, though not nearly as much as some other games I tried. Personally, I think it's worth trying just to see if the ads bother you. If they do, the games are dead easy to uninstall.

Thanks for sharing your personal experience!  I may try Word Trip after all.  (I'm always a bit leery of getting into something that's hard to get out of.)  But you say that you "had" the game on your phone -- why the past tense?

I don't mind games that run ads between rounds.  (In fact, I've found that the easiest way to deal with the ads in my solitaire game is to close the game and reload it -- just a swipe and a click as opposed to figuring out where they've hidden the tiny exit "X" this time.)  I can even tolerate ads within a round if it's just every now and then.

2 hours ago, Arcadia said:

Lately I've gotten into color sorting games. I Love Hue is one ... there's ads, but they're not too frequent.

I've seen ads for some of those games, and they look intriguing, but I was hesitant to install a pig in a poke.  Thanks for the specific recommendation!

2 hours ago, Arcadia said:

Airplane mode doesn't completely disable the ads either, I discovered .. can't quite figure that one out.

I'd guess that it depends on whether the ad is built into the game.  The solitaire that I have on my tablet is clearly like that -- near as I can figure (without wasting much energy on it), the ads are selling ways to cheat on the game.  I fail to see the point.

 

[Caya]

Finding a game that you like and that doesn't overdo it with ads can be a daunting task, partially due because the Play Store is so bad for sorting (I'd love something like Steam only for Android but so far came up short, alas). I'm glad that Arcadia knows more about Word Trip because I really don't. But if you're looking for time wasters (in the positive sense, as in something to play while sitting in a doc's waiting room) then here are my past and present ones:

Switchcraft: This is a match-3 (colorful pieces you have to rearrange to, well, match three or more of the same color) but what kept me with this one so far is the story, about a student at a magical college (and, for once, no anime graphics to go with it). Female team behind it and I really dig their ourput, but wow is that game hard. Then again, that could admittedly be me, because this is my first ever match-3 while everybody else probably is two million levels into Candy Crush or something. Almost no ads - you can volunteer to watch up to five a day for in-game prizes but that's completely optional, and they never show up unprompted.

Happy Color: That's a paint-by-numbers and rather pesky when it comes to ads, I'm afraid. Only reason I still have it on my phone is that you can play it anytime you like ... free-to-download games have a tendency to offer limited turns, games or whatever until time has passed (or, naturally, you paid for more). This one doesn't run out and you can color pics to your heart's delight (or waiting time).

Sherlock: The Network: It's been a couple years, but I had lots of fun with that one. Not ideal for winding down when John Watson is talking to you as the new member of the team. Puzzles can be quite hard though (or, detecting a running theme here, I might just suck at them). First two cases were free, then you had to pay once to unlock the rest afaik and I don't remember any ads.

Catan Classic: The boardgame, only against AI players and on the cellphone. No ads, pay once iirc. Had a bit of fun with it but it does not have a lot of long-term appeal, or at least not for me.

Assorted Mahjongs: Haven't found one yet that doesn't annoy me so much with ads that it gets uninstalled pronto. Recommendations gratefully welcomed.

Plague Inc.: That one might be a bit too dark these days, I played it pre-Covid. Basically, you need to wipe out humanity with your killer microbe. Surprisingly fun and makes you consider moving to Madagascar. Can't remember any ads, you can pay for new levels/skills or unlock them through play iirc.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Thanks, Martina!

Switchcraft:  I'm not really following your description, so apparently I've never even seen anything of this type.  Maybe I just need to see how they advertise it.  You say it's hard -- is that due to a time limit?

Happy Color:  I've seen ads for this sort of thing.  Might give it a try, just for a change of pace.

Sherlock:  Does this rely on audio?  If so, no good for unwinding at bedtime, since it'd wake up Alex.  Does sound intriguing otherwise, though.

Catan Classic:  You say it's a board game.  I'm not generally into competitive games, mostly the puzzle kind, so will probably give this a miss.  But it might well float someone else's boat.

Assorted Mahjongs:  These are also a board games, I assume.

Plague, Inc.:  Ewww!!!  (No offense intended!)

 

[Arcadia]

5 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

Thanks for sharing your personal experience!  I may try Word Trip after all.  (I'm always a bit leery of getting into something that's hard to get out of.)  But you say that you "had" the game on your phone -- why the past tense?

Once I found some other games, I stopped playing it, so deleted it just to keep from cluttering up my phone. I got to something like level 400 before I lost interest.

5 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

(In fact, I've found that the easiest way to deal with the ads in my solitaire game is to close the game and reload it -- just a swipe and a click as opposed to figuring out where they've hidden the tiny exit "X" this time.)

Same here.

5 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

(I'm always a bit leery of getting into something that's hard to get out of.) 

I was too at first, but once I tried it, and realized how simple it was to delete them, I stopped worrying.

The one I'm enjoying most right now is Get It Right -- you put colored balls in holes, but you have to figure out the correct sequence from the clues. Doesn't sound (or look) like much, but apparently it's just the right amount of challenge for me.

And a word game I was pleased to find had less ads than others is called CodyCross. You type in answers to clues, and some of the letters line up to form another phrase. Kind of clever.

Oh, and a cute one is Haru Slide, which is essentially Tetris, but with cats. They meow.  (But you can turn the sound off.) Pretty repetitious, but I get a kick out of it.

The biggest problem with one like I Love Hue is grabbing the correct piece sometimes ... as the levels get harder, the pieces start to get smaller, and it's easy to grab the wrong one. But if you don't care what your score is, it's not that big a deal. At first I was trying to beat the average on every game, but I've stopped caring; I just enjoy the patterns. The one I really liked (but finished all the levels, so it's gone) was just called, I think, Color Puzzle. Some of the puzzles were gorgeous. I actually took photos of some of them.  

[Caya]

The Sherlock game very much relies on audio, first because there are video clips in between the puzzles and second because there are *audio* puzzles among the mix. So yeah, not for situations where you can't un-mute or use headphones.

Switchcraft, uh, how to explain a match-3? There's a site for this one but it only shows up in German for me, sorry: https://wooga.helpshift.com/hc/de/35-switchcraft/faq/2910-what-is-switchcraft/ . Scroll to the second pic, that's what the game levels look like - you keep swapping two neighboring pieces to get three or more of the same color in a row or block, which makes them vanish and/or spawn a special piece. You only have a limited number of these swaps, which is where the difficulty comes into play.

Mahjong is a classic tile-based game from China. Lots of versions of that one.

[Carol the Dabbler]

On 1/26/2022 at 5:24 PM, Caya said:

you keep swapping two neighboring pieces to get three or more of the same color in a row or block

Ah, gotcha!  It's a bubble sort.

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

This suddenly struck me as a bit odd, so I looked up some statistics, and now it seems even odder!

The names "Jewel" and "Jewell" were given to both boy and girl babies in the US, back around a hundred years ago.  The double-L spelling for boys was the least popular of the four possibilities, never getting much higher than 500th, or about 1 per 10,000 born in the 1910's, and was pretty much never used after that.  Single-L "Jewel" for girls was the most common, but it reached only about 200th, or about 1 per 1,000.

There's a medium-sized cemetery (3-4,000 graves) here in Indiana where at least two of the men are Jewells born in the 1910s -- so perhaps the name was a bit more common in this state or in that particular town than elsewhere in the country.  But the reason I'm aware of those two men is that I knew both of them -- the only two Jewel(l)s (male or female) that I've ever known, and they're buried in the same cemetery.  As far as I'm aware, they were not related.

OK, I just searched that cemetery for people named Jewell (first or middle name), and found four more born in the 1910s (plus one born in 1897).  ALL of them were men.  So apparently naming boy babies "Jewell" was a local thing back in the 1910s.  In that cemetery, it was about 1 per 540 of everybody, not just those born in the 1910s.  Maybe there was a prominent local man by that name?

So I checked another cemetery, about ten miles away.  Out of about 5,000 graves, there are 4 women named Jewell, plus 2 men, one born in the 1910s and the other most likely born in the 1890s (exact date unknown).  So that's 1 in 5,000 versus 1 in 540.  And a 3-4,000-grave cemetery about ten miles in the other direction has two women named Jewell but no men at all.  So yeah, must have been a VERY local thing!

Still odd, though, that I should be personally acquainted with two of the six buried in that one cemetery.

 

[Van Buren Supernova]

14 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

This suddenly struck me as a bit odd, so I looked up some statistics, and now it seems even odder!

The names "Jewel" and "Jewell" were given to both boy and girl babies in the US, back around a hundred years ago.  The double-L spelling for boys was the least popular of the four possibilities, never getting much higher than 500th, or about 1 per 10,000 born in the 1910's, and was pretty much never used after that.  Single-L "Jewel" for girls was the most common, but it reached only about 200th, or about 1 per 1,000.

There's a medium-sized cemetery (3-4,000 graves) here in Indiana where at least two of the men are Jewells born in the 1910s -- so perhaps the name was a bit more common in this state or in that particular town than elsewhere in the country.  But the reason I'm aware of those two men is that I knew both of them -- the only two Jewel(l)s (male or female) that I've ever known, and they're buried in the same cemetery.  As far as I'm aware, they were not related.

OK, I just searched that cemetery for people named Jewell (first or middle name), and found four more born in the 1910s (plus one born in 1897).  ALL of them were men.  So apparently naming boy babies "Jewell" was a local thing back in the 1910s.  In that cemetery, it was about 1 per 540 of everybody, not just those born in the 1910s.  Maybe there was a prominent local man by that name?

So I checked another cemetery, about ten miles away.  Out of about 5,000 graves, there are 4 women named Jewell, plus 2 men, one born in the 1910s and the other most likely born in the 1890s (exact date unknown).  So that's 1 in 5,000 versus 1 in 540.  And a 3-4,000-grave cemetery about ten miles in the other direction has two women named Jewell but no men at all.  So yeah, must have been a VERY local thing!

Still odd, though, that I should be personally acquainted with two of the six buried in that one cemetery.

 

It's very cool information, Carol. 

But how on earth did you come up with that topic and actually checked the cemetery?

I mean... I have many odd ideas and known for starting to laugh randomly at midnight during my uni, but this... 

[Carol the Dabbler]

2 hours ago, Van Buren Supernova said:

how on earth did you come up with that topic and actually checked the cemetery?

Oh, sorry, should have mentioned that there's a website called Find A Grave.  I think it started out listing where famous people are buried -- just in case you might want to leave a rose on William Shakespeare's grave [link], for example.  But then people liked the idea and wanted to add Grandma's grave, so it's becoming a useful site for genealogical purposes.

It's like Wikipedia in that anyone can join, and any member can add information.  It's not *just* where the graves are, though, there's almost always a bit of information about the person, minimally what's on their gravestone (if they have one), but there are also provisions for linking to any relatives who are also listed, posting photos of the person and/or their gravestone, adding a brief biography (usually their obituary), etc.

I don't recall how I found the site or why I joined, but it's one of the things I currently dabble in.

 

[kimber8ada]

I've only known one female Jewell. She lives in my community, went to the same church I attended and she's the sweetest person in the world. She in her 80's now. I've never met any male Jewells but my brother's middle name, which he goes by, is Ewell. He was named after an old baseball player named Ewell Blackwell. I thought it interesting that the names are so similar with no connection between them.

It is odd that you should know two out of the six.

[Carol the Dabbler]

11 hours ago, kimber8ada said:

I've only known one female Jewell. She lives in my community, went to the same church I attended and she's the sweetest person in the world. She in her 80's now.

Considering her current age, she was probably named for her aunt or her grandmother.

11 hours ago, kimber8ada said:

I thought it interesting that the names are so similar with no connection between them.

Yes, that sort of thing is intriguing.  There's a Japanese name "Tami" that is pronounced about like "Tommy" is in the US and spelled like a variation of "Tammy."

Then there are names that don't look or sound much alike but really are related -- like "William" and its Spanish equivalent "Guillermo" (pronounced more or less "gee YEHR moh" (with a hard "g" as in "get").

 

[Van Buren Supernova]

Recently I rekindle (PUN!) my love for reading.

I used to love it, I have couple of walls filled with books (with a very good chunk of unread ones). When I moved almost a decade ago I was gifted a Kindle with plenty of ebooks. I still pick up books here and there but it was never at the same capacity, I'm more distracted with many other things. But now, I am back!

Any readers here? Genre?

[Carol the Dabbler]

8 hours ago, Van Buren Supernova said:

Recently I rekindle (PUN!) my love for reading.

Good one, VBS!

8 hours ago, Van Buren Supernova said:

Any readers here? Genre?

I read a lot these days, mostly online, but I'm also getting back into printed material.  The last magazine I was subscribing to recently stopped publishing (without even telling me!), so that leaves books, and (like you) I still have a bunch from pre-internet days, which I'm slowly sorting through, weeding out, organizing, and sometimes re-reading.

My husband and I enjoy reading aloud to each other (well, mostly he enjoys me reading to him, though he did read the entire Lord of the Rings to me just a few years ago), and most of that is mystery novels -- preferably with no graphic violence, and preferably with a bit of humor.  The most recent books we've read were sequels to The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (fairly gentle stories set in Botswana -- I'd advise anyone who's interested to start with that first one) and the Enola Holmes novels (all those currently available in paperback).  We also like Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels, which we find quite re-readable.

When I'm reading by myself, I'm considerably more eclectic, including a fair assortment of non-fiction.