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By aaron.axvig, Mon, 01/13/2020 - 20:54

Wacky. It's about people being abducted by aliens for mind control purposes, so basically all of the stereotypical stuff with a mild plot wrapped around it. A little cheesier than I expected.

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By aaron.axvig, Sat, 01/11/2020 - 15:14

I was fortunate to be part of a guided tour of the Sail, Power, and Steam Museum in Rockland, ME that was guided by Captain Jim. Now about 6 months later I finished his book in one day.

Needless to say it is a great read if you love stories about boating.

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By aaron.axvig, Fri, 01/10/2020 - 12:54

I probably read this book back in middle school as I used to read a ton of Star Wars and Star Trek books back then.  Anyways, now I have read it again.

I believe I read a while back that the new Star Wars movies have removed all of the Expanded Universe books from canon.  So it was a little weird to be reading this book and be thinking all along that it isn't really "true."  Of course it is fiction, but now it is like discarded fiction.  Still a quick enjoyable read though.

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By aaron.axvig, Wed, 01/08/2020 - 18:42

This was a nice read about memories and memorization techniques.  The story of the author is woven in pretty well and my interest was held throughout.  He described the techniques used in a good amount of detail--enough to understand but not so specific as to get boring.

Overall I now know a little more about the topic and it was also an interesting story.

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By aaron.axvig, Sat, 01/04/2020 - 14:41

I played the version available on F-Droid. On my third attempt I achieved a 2048 block. The statistics say that I have played for 0.92 hours.

I see that 5x5 grids and larger are available too so I may try that out sometime.

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By aaron.axvig, Fri, 11/22/2019 - 18:38

This is a puzzle game with a UI that is well-suited for a touchscreen.  I did pay for the DLC that removes ads (I almost always do this).

The puzzles are all very well designed.  There are several groups of levels that have some nice variations.  For example some types have new bubbles constantly being added so there is that element of randomness being added.  And others are very carefully designed to play a specific way, even requiring careful timing as the bubbles collapse on a few of them.  On a few of the levels I got impatient and used the hints.  In general, as I played the game I would become tired of it after 6-8 puzzles (30 minutes?).  I think that is fine, as this allowed me to kill time on many different occasions and I always enjoyed playing those 6-8 rounds until I tired of it.  Maybe it means that the game was mentally stimulating and tired me out.

There is one mechanism throughout the game where two bubbles of different colors combine to make a third color of bubbles.  In the normal color mode I believe it is pretty intuitive how they combine, for example yellow+blue=green.  Unfortunately I am color-blind and I had some challenges with the normal color mode.  Fortunately is a colorblind mode and those colors are easy for me to distinguish.  Unfortunately then the colors don't combine very intuitively, for example white+yellow=darker yellow.  After a while I just memorized the combinations, so it isn't a game-ruining issue.

I could maybe see myself replaying some levels in the future.  There is an Infinity mode where you get some moves every few hours.  I did a couple cycles of this but wasn't that interested.  This is probably a mechanic to drive you to purchasing micro-transactions.  I almost universally avoid those.

There are achievements; I don't have any desire to finish them out.

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