Wayfinder

Wayfinder is a fun little app for iPhone/iPad.

It's kind of hard to fit it into a category.  It's not a "game," it's more of a "toy."  As you explore, flowers bloom in your wake and haikus are generated.

It's put out by The National Film Board of Canada, and is free to download and free of advertising.  You can learn about it by visiting their website, HERE.

Fireworks

 I'd call this more of a "toy" than a "game," but I just like it because it's pretty.

If you have an iPhone or iPad, take a look:  https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fireworks-arcade/id435664934

Reading List

Three classic books that are better than any of the movies:

1. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (download)


2. Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (download)


3. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (download)

These three are all far more subtle than any movie interpretation I've seen.  The first two are much more than just "Oh no!  There's a monster running loose!"  The Dicken's story gives the back-story of why Ebeneezer Scrooge became such a bitter, lonely old man;  it paints him as a tragic figure, a man to be pitied.

Project Gutenberg is a repository for books in the public domain, and makes them available in multiple formats, including Epub and Kindle for today's e-readers.  All of their downloads are free.  Always check there first-- I've seen public domain books selling in the Apple store for $6 or $7, and that's just ripping people off.

Moot

President Obama, on cell phone encryption (via ABC News):

"There has to be some concession to the need to be able to get into that information somehow…  It’s fetishizing our phones above every other value and that can’t be the right answer.  I suspect the answer is going to come down to how do we create a system that the encryption is as strong as possible, the key is as secure as possible, it is accessible by the smallest number of people possible for a subset of issues that we agree are important."

That's not going to work.

Once that box is opened, every president is going to find a way to pry it open just a little bit wider.  What do you think Dick Cheney would have done with that privilege?  Or Richard Nixon?  How protective of our privacy do you think President "Bring back waterboarding!" Trump would be, and do you honestly think President Hillary would be any different?  She'd be more discreet, certainly, but I have no doubts that she'd be rooting around in our data just as enthusiastically.

It's either open or it's closed; there is no in-between.

Of course, the point is probably already moot.  Have you noticed the NSA has never once said, "Yes, we need a little help cracking phone encryption, too?"

This could well be just about finding legal cover for what they're already doing.

 

Perks

One thing I learned fairly quickly with Apple products:  Never update an app that works.  There's no way to roll back to a previous version, so wait for the reviews to come in.  Nine out of ten times you'll be glad you held out.

Well, apparently the frustration isn't just on our end, it's also hell on the software companies.  After the latest operating system update one of my most used apps, NoteSuite, threw in the towel.  They provided a free utility to export your data into whatever new app you want, but they aren't updating their program anymore.

Pretty Good Solitaire, the best of the best among solitaire games, is trying to update their software to work with the new OS, but Apple seems to delight in creating new hurdles for them to jump over.  Read their blog HERE - it's a case study in how to shut out developers.

Both programs still work for me.  There are perks to being a late-adopter.