One game that has been around for years is Bubble Shooter. It's a game that appears on plenty of websites. The i use is on shooter-bubble.com. My brother brought it to my attention years ago, and i've had a love/hate relationship with it ever since. The game is unfair and cheats, though as you play you get used to its quirks and just roll with them. It's great for playing while talking on the phone, and sometimes just as a break when switching tasks. I used to play for high score. Mostly, you get it until there are two or three colors left, and just play until it forces you to win or lose. Some scores are ridiculously high, and the game gets quite boring at that point.

At some point though, i decided to play for a better challenge, that is, to win it quickly. I jumped between lowest score, lowest ball set changes (refreshing the balls on the bottom and adding a row to the playing area, more than one when colors are removed from play), and both. Eventually i just settled on lowest score because ball set changes can be played strategically.

It took a while to realize the importance of the three ways to lose balls. The obvious method is to connect (at least) three balls. That gives 10 points for each ball including the one shot. The second is to cause a drop by removing its connection to the other balls (or top of the screen). That gives 100 points per ball. The third way is to when adding a row to the playing area lowers all rows on the screen which causes some balls to shift. If a shift causes a ball not to be connected to the other balls, it is eliminated and gives 0 points per ball.

The games starts with 9 rows of 17 balls each, making 153 balls total. Meaning, the lowest score possible with a cleared board would be if all were the same color, including the balls shot, for a score of 1540. Considering that it starts with six colors, the more likely lowest score, though quite unlikely, would be 6 balls shot, for a total of 1590. Maybe there is some way to force the third way of balls disappearing to get a lower score, but i would assume that due to the new row added, the benefits would be outweighed by the loss. Of course, considering the "bonus" which doubles the score when the screen is cleared, the score is actually 3180.

Anyway, i have developed some (mostly) rules to play by to get that low score. No more then 4 balls can be dropped by the second way. When of of the lower balls is the same color as upper balls, make sure to hit both, maximizing mathed balls with only 10 points each. When on the last ball in a set, do not cause the color to disappear, because when the row resets, it will have yet another extra row in the playing area. So, better to put that off until later, or when there is a fresh row set. When near the top, start planning which balls have to go to allow others to make a set. And, when there is a choice, remember the third way might disappear the balls anyway for free.

When i was trying to get this low score, i started to get under 20k (before the doubling). Eventually 15k, and then even lower. From texts to my brother about my progress :), i see i hit 11,950 on 5/24/16, and then 9580 on 8/10/17. I always knew i must beat 10k to be good, as the bar is lowered each time i win. Well today (it's just after 12, so technically, yesterday) i went to new lows, 7330/14,660. Woohoo! Fwiw, the score beforehand was 7200.

To beat that low score i'll need a good board. I wonder if it's even possible to go lower. Then again, until today, i thought you always had to be "over 9000!" Who knew?

I list my journals via https://slashdot.org/journal.pl?op=list and edit via https://slashdot.org/journal.pl?op=edit. However, https://slashdot.org/~Chacham/journal.pl?op=list and https://slashdot.org/~Chacham/journal.pl?op=edit do not work. Links work both with and without the username in the url.

Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, is receiving a lot of justified hatred on reddit and youtube of late.

I started my own subreddit for no reason. I plan to just store links there i may want to find later.

I started reading slashdot over 20 years ago. That's just downright scary. I don't really read anything here anymore though.

As if Some puns was not enough, we're back with more! Most of these are from Reddit, either /r/jokes, /r/cleanjokes, or /r/oneliners, but i rewrote a bunch of them.

What do you call a person who points out the obvious? A person who points out the obvious.
I started a dating site for chickens...It's not my full-time job, I'm just doing it to make hens meet.
While the restaurant does get orders for undercooked steak, it's pretty rare.
I wanted a simple definition for "inexplicable" means. But it's really hard to explain.
I was addicted to hokey pokey but I managed to turn myself around.
I was so addicted to ladders, using them to get high. Luckily, i found a 12 step program to get off.
I asked my daughter what "idk" meant. She responded, "I don't know."
How many mystery writers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two. One to screw it in most of the way and the other to give it a surprise twist at the end.
I love taking photos of myself standing next to boiling water...My doctor says I have selfie steam issues.
The world champion in reading tongue twisters was arrested. Prosecutors say they are seeking a tough sentence.
White people don't shoot each other in the streets like black people do. We do it in schools, because we have class.
My vegetarian friends scolded me for allegedly dating a meat-eater. But i swear, i've never met herbivore.
A jailed stutterer's girlfriend had moved on. She said it took him too long to finish his sentence
I'm seriously thinking about re-marrying my ex-wife. But I'm pretty sure she'll figure out I'm just after my money...
How many police officers does it take to change a lightbulb? They don't. They just beat the room for being black.
I saw a sign that said, "watch for children" and I thought, "that sounds like a fair trade."
Why did Stalin only write in lowercase? He hated capitalism.
How do you cut the sea in half? With a seesaw.
I bet my butcher $50 that he couldn't reach the meat on the top shelf. He said "No, the steaks are too high".
"Hey Dad, have you seen my sunglasses?" "No, son. Have you seen my dad glasses?"
How is a flock of geese like an airplane full of encyclopedias? They're flying in-formation.
I just passed my Canadian citizenship test. I got an Eh plus.
Some children are kind, but German children are kinder.
What do you call a dog with no legs? It doesn't matter, he isn't going to come anyway.
Did you hear about the kidnapping at school? It's okay. He woke up.
First cannibal: Am I late for dinner? Second cannibal: Yes, everyone's eaten already.
Join The Flat Earth Society. We have members all around the globe!
the only thing Flat-Earthers fear is sphere itself.
If I could have any one superpower, i'd pick Russia.
My feeling of illiteracy is so strong, I could not possibly put it into words.
Did you hear about the evil mime? The things he did were unspeakable!
Never iron a four leaf clover. It's not a good thing to press your luck.
Braille isn't hard to learn. You just need to get a feel for it.
Vodka might not be the answer, but it's worth a shot.
I wonder if my vet's receptionist realizes how many people's passwords she knows?
I tried to kidnap a blacksmith, but when I turned my back, he made a bolt for the door.
The shovel was a ground-breaking invention.
Dogs can't operate an MRI, but catscan.
Cliches are not my cup of coffee.
I choose which beer i like on a case by case basis.
What do you call a fat psychic? A four-chin teller.
Did you hear about the Mexican that got stabbed on a golf course? Someone made a hole in Juan.
When you clean out a vacuum cleaner. You become the vacuum cleaner.
I've been diagnosed with a chronic fear of giants. It's called fee-fi-fobia
Which prison has the best food? Australia.
How many people does it take to make a mistake? In your case, two.
Islamic extremists are the most fashion-forward people. They're always dressed to kill.
Did you hear about the horse that could read and write? He was a stable genius.
You'd make a great electron. You're so darn negative.
What do you call a hippie's wife? Mississippi.
A blind man walks into a bar...And a chair And a table.
Today in church they asked what a Bishop does. Apparently "move diagonally" wasn't the answer they were looking for.
I thought my snail's shell was weighing him down, but after I removed it he appeared even more sluggish.
A Buddhist goes to a hotdog stand and says, "make me one with everything." He paid with a $20 and asked for change. The vendor said, "change comes from within."
Why did the Buddhist refuse Novocaine? He wanted to transcend dental medication.
I only believe in 12.5% of the bible...Which makes me an eighth theist.
I never want a conversation with a Mobius Strip. They're so one-sided.
I'll do algebra, I'll do trigonometry, I'll even do statistics, but graphing is where I draw the line!
I can't stop reading fantasy novels with female protagonists. I'm a heroine addict.
I set out to lose 10 pounds this month...Only 15 more to go.
What is a man without nose and body called? Nobody knows.
What is the difference between Iron Man and Iron Woman? Iron Man is a superhero. Iron Woman is a command.
Enter password: 'Snowflake'. Re-enter password: 'Snowflake'. Your passwords are not alike.
Why did the slave go to college? To pick up his master's degree.
Did you hear about the mathematician that was scared of negative numbers? When counting down, he'd stop at nothing to avoid them.
Why did seven eat nine? He was going for his three square meals.
A communist joke is only funny is everybody laughs.
Where is the capital of North Korea? In a Swiss bank account.
"Why do you keep calling David, Dave?" "Well, it all started when he had his id stolen..."
Two carrots were walking when one got hit by a car. After surgery, the doctor says that he has good news and bad news. the good news is he'll live. the bad news is he'll live the rest of his life as a vegetable
I used to be addicted to Thanksgiving leftovers...I had to give up cold turkey.
I bought a pair of sneakers from a drug dealer. I don't know what he laced them with, but I've been tripping all day.
I saw a post on Craigslist that said: Radio for sale, $1. Volume knob stuck on full. I thought to myself, I just can't turn that down.

I posted a joke on reddit, using "noone" in the title, and got a lot of hate in the comments, with every one of my replies modded down. I find that funnier than the joke. :)

Personally, i think "noone" has a different connotation than "no one". Well, not actually, but it is how it feels to me. I use the two word form when one is a number: no one person could eat all that. But the one word form sounds like nobody. Why not use nobody? I'm not even sure; i just think noone sounds better.

I was in Toronto Pearson airport for a while, at a table for laptop usage. Just after i set myself up, a lady came by and said good morning, then corrects herself while laughing and says good afternoon. I looked at the clock to see 12:00:03.

Looks like the journal page is still broken so I have to scroll to the bottom to find the link to create a new journal.

sooooo why is /. dying? Ohhhhhhhh yeah.

Cool. Haven't seen any of those in five or seven years. I suppose that means I have to go by the front page, though...

So, Google finally killed simple gchat and replace it with ugly Hangouts. After one message or two, i got so annoyed, i turn it off in gmail and disabled it on my phone, and i just installed Pidgin. I remembered my ICQ password but not AIM. I can do that later though. I'll have to check if Pidgin supports hangouts. As long as it is a simple chat client, i don't really care what the protocol is.

Shock, actually. But good. Hoping for more.

Hi world,

I'm currently trying out a new behavior trait: "going back to the way it was before." Sounds exciting, huh. Color me Facebook-less since 1.5 months and frankly, this is the first time since I feel the need to actually share something.

My idea was this: what if I would write down and re-visit the steps that lead up to that decision to leave the largest social network in the world? Why? Well, for one thing, I think the idea to go back to earlier practices (such as writing a full blown more than 140 character journal) is going to move slowly back into the center of our collective conscious over the next 5 years. People will start to realize it's the sane thing to do, or so at least that is my guess. But let's look into the dynamics of how I got there.

Many of us remember the so called "browser wars", the epic "os flame-wars", or even further down the burning question wether gnu or unix would be preferable, wether java would be worth it compared to c++, etc.. 30 or 40 years ago, these discussions were of a technical level and nerdism that few can aspire to imagine today. These discussions, much like today, were full of noise, trolls and the occasional insightful remark. These wars were fought in obscure IRC channels and BBS forums, but there was one thing pretty special about them. The technological limits were the only roadblock that stopped our brains from dumping their content in 7 or 8 bit streams that could be shared and read by our fellow peers and friends (and foes). After the browser war came the Napster incident, the BearShare and KaZaa incidents and many systems that predate our current torrent / tor p2p sharing infrastructure. Curiously, I never read about social network wars, which of course also happened. A quick look at the Wikipedia page shows a whopping 208 unique social network websites that attempt to capture our attention, every day life, pictures, personal data, emotions, furniture, love for smiling shit and everything else in between. Not every single one of them survived of course. Who remembers Myspace? Bolt? MS LiveSpaces? or Hyves? So yeah there were wars, but the concept of war was never prominently played, things just "evolved".

So there I was in December 2016, pondering if I still needed facebook. I struck me that I had refrained from posting personal things. In fact in multiple runs, I had slowly started to remove personal data, simply because it increasingly looked ridiculous. Would you start yelling your city of birth and birthday just about anyone in the street? Your marital status? Would you show all the pictures of all your travels and everything else to complete strangers? Of course not. Sure you can spend endless hours 'managing' all that information. Such fun. So much to re-post, so much 'news' to share.

Until you've had it with the latest policy change. Until you realize you are again indicating people they are sharing fake 'news' or hoaxes. Until you realize all your friends posts start with 'OMG'. Or that you can't include 2 images in one post that blatantly refute each-other, because, hey it's facebook. Until you realize that all posts shared say: "look, this is *really* interesting, but I'm just going to dump it here because I'm tired of pretending my shit is more interesting than yours. eat it or die."

Ego needs a cookie. I did truly post some interesting stuff. Stuff about stock markets that are indicative of how defunct our world is. Stuff from NOAA that says how fucked up our climate has become already. Stuff in research papers that tell something about the very structure of our universe. Stuff about brain functions, important findings on cellular level to fight disease, etc, etc.. Not that very many people ever reacted to 'my' shared crap. At best, people reacted because I reacted to their posts first.

On Januari 1st 2017, I stopped playing that pathetic me-me game, and went back to my previous behavior: I traded facebook with sleep. I read books. I started to play FinalFantasy again. I still check my news channels, but you know what.. somehow I'm getting better at finding new resources, new pointers. And I'm looking at much more meaningful content. See back of this post.

The date is not coincidental. On December 31st 2016, we were out for new-years-eve at my parents-in-law. It was a fairly modest get together with nice food, cozy dinner, and a bit of fireworks on TV. In Belgium and The Netherlands, there is a tradition to watch comedians that recount how they saw the past year, such as Wim Helsen or Michael Van Peel. Comparing them to John Stewart / Daily Show would do neither party any favors, but in my book they're equally good. In fact they're all best in their class.

While the evening shot past mid-night, we all wished each-other happy new year and stayed up for a while until the inevitable sleep and early morning came around. Nothing very shocking, but little did we know that at that very same time, somebody had cracked open the front door of our house and was going through all our possessions, stealing laptops, cameras, my bike I use daily with mounted child-seat, golden jewelry, and possibly other stuff, making a huge mess in the process. We were literally 100km south.

We arrived home at 7PM, found some people in front of our house gesturing at the break-in. After the initial shock, my cool kicks in. The first thing to do was to verify the house, call the police and go through the whole procedure. Yes, it's nerve wrecking and sleep-inducing at the same time. Our hope that the police finds the culprit is virtually nil, while at the same time you're supposed to be angry and mad, hopeful and rational. I can't do that emotion very convincingly. I just kept going until everyone was asleep.

When I finally sat down for a few minutes (or hours - the door was badly damaged, so I kept guard the whole night in freezing temperatures) I had time go over all the events. Time gives me oxygen. I'm slow like that, I step on the brakes when I'm going too fast. Given that laptops had been stolen, I decided it was time to change passwords. We still had our phones after all, android, so pretty vulnerable if they could hack into our stuff first. And then it suddenly occurred to me that selling this 'event' in my life on facebook was really the last thing I ever would want to do. Much like all the other important events in my life which I did not share. And so I dropped facebook and Google+ overnight. I'm searching with duckduckgo now. I haven't had a single moment of regret. I sometimes am curious of what is going on there of course, but I imagine it's just the same shit again and again, in different colors.

So what makes me share all this here then, you wonder? Well, all of this is old news, it's also much more digested, no images, no screaming. It's a wall of text full of close to logical long sentences. Those looking for quick fixes will be off running to their click pools after half a paragraph. Those reading this will probably not care and never comment. So who is left? It's me. And that's just fine.

Much in concordance with my earlier post, I pledge for us all to go back to earlier times, pick up things that were loved but lost in the fabric of spacetime. Let's go back and be ace at it. Hello world!

Greets, .i

ps: Forget Trump, check this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEwuGHFF7qE&t=10s&index=1&list=LL4dYPyntjgFh1JxPMFxCOsw

Just building stuff, sometimes continuing the following week: Week 1 Week 2

The booklet had a spiral which took some time to figure out. Basically, 2 pieces in the middle, and 1 on each side of it, which makes it look really cool, and more importantly, supports the turned pieces. They do a slow turn though.

After figuring it out, we went for a 3, that is, 3 in the middle, 2 on each side, and 1 on each side of that. With 1000 pieces, that allows 111 levels of 9 pieces each, which is what a friend built in the picture. The last piece might be lost, but there are 3 warped pieces in there. Got to watch out where to put them!

Kapla is expensive, but with a small table, the enjoyment never ends. In only takes a few minutes for even the ardent to give in and start building!

BÃ go maith, a mhuirnÃn.

Why public health worries don't have to ruin your cookie dough This and its ilk have been going around for a little while. I especially liked the part mentioning value judgements:

But the key word of the previous sentence is "unnecessarily." Whether something is necessary or not is not a scientific judgment. It is a value judgment. An FDA official may personally believe that eating raw cookie dough isn't important and choose to never eat it. That is their choice. At the same time, I can believe that eating cookie dough (made from flour known to be not part of the recall and pasteurized eggs) is something that I enjoy enough that I'm willing to put myself and my children at (a very small) risk to do.

Someone ought to tell him that in US English, periods go outside the quotation mark.

Just came across The 50 Most Influential Gadgets of All Time from way back on May 3, 2016, and i can't say that i agree with their subjective decisions. Regardless, it is a fun list. I think i would go play defenders on the 2600 again if i had the chance.