Infinite Serenity

I don't often have games on my smartphone and when I do, I rarely have more than two at a time and I tend to change them up from time to time.

I don't go for the combat games that involve story lines, as I find they take a long time to play and can easily distract me for hours. And, believe me, in these times, when I find myself mostly confined to the home for work and daily life, I can be easily distracted.

I like to go for games where my brain has to be engaged. Off and on over the years, I've downloaded Sudoku on my phone and set it up for the expert level. It can take me between five and 10 minutes to play and I feel a sense of accomplishment when I place the final number in the last vacant square. I'd play a couple of rounds while killing time and then take a break.

When I've found that I've become bored with Sudoku, I've uninstalled it, tried another game, and have later re-installed it. But I've recently uninstalled Sudoku for the last time because of the vast number of ads that pop up. I wasn't overly bothered when an ad would come on every once and a while between games, but ads started popping up in the middle of a game, often when I was in my zone, only to have my concentration broken.

That was enough for me. I'd get too stressed, waiting for the point when I could stop the ad from playing and return to the game.

I've tried some of those games where you pour different colours of sand into bottles in an attempt to sort all of the colours. I find those games relaxing, as there is no time that you're trying to beat and the game is often finished in a matter of minutes. After a couple of rounds, I'm ready to do something else.

But those colour-sorting games get boring for me very quickly and I find that I don't keep those games on my phone for very long. And there seemed to be an ad after every round, which could be frustrating.

I've recently downloaded a game that is challenging, is usually finished in fewer than five minutes, and where the ads seem to be at a minimum (in fact, one of the reviews highlighted the fact that there were so few ads). The accompanying music for the game is also calming, and I find that it's the most relaxing game I've played on my phone to date.

It's called Energy and is made by Infinity Games.

The game is simple: there are various sources of energy, lights, and connections that spin on an axis and are scrambled on the screen. You need to tap each component to move them and connect all of the lights and power sources to complete a pattern and light up your screen.

That's it.

It's not as simple as it sounds but it's also not overly complicated. And as I said, the background music is calming.

There are ads with this game but they don't pop up at the end of every round. In fact, sometimes, I'll play three or four rounds in one sitting without a single ad showing up. Of course, like so many free games, if you need a hint, you'll have to sit through an ad but I've found that those ads don't seem to last for more than about 20 seconds.

If you like games that require a bit of brain work without providing stress, and if you don't like to see ads pop up every few seconds, I recommend giving Energy a try. For me, it's infinite serenity.

What about you? Which games do you like to play on your phone? Do you have any recommendations for calm games? Leave a comment.

Fake Photo

It's another year and another photo project. I found that my Photo of the Day (POTD) project was a constant challenge: taking a new photo every day meant that I had to constantly think about places that I visited and what I had already shot. If I visited more than one place in a day and wanted to use a photo from the second place, I would have to return there again on another day. This would mean me getting in the car to make a special trip.

I don't want to do that again.

I also don't want to feel as though I have to take a photo, even if I'm under the weather or have stayed in the house all day. On days such as those, I felt my photos were forced.

Over 2017, I certainly took some stinker photos.

One such day, I had spent my entire time indoors, performing routine chores and laying low. The day had come and gone, and I hadn't given any thought to my POTD. As the hours came to a conclusion, I had found myself in a crunch.

As the day came to a close, I found myself sitting in my chair in my family room, my Android tablet on my lap, a beer close by. I had been playing a game for more than an hour when I realized that the time was nearing midnight. My camera was in its bag on the other side of the house.

I don't play a lot of games on either my phone or my tablet. In fact, I've never loaded a game on my smartphone and for the last three or four months, I don't have any games on my tablet. But for most of 2017, I had one game on my tablet that tended to occupy any down time that I afforded myself.

The game was CSR2, a drag-racing game where you earn virtual cash for winning quarter-mile and half-mile races against opponents. With your winnings, you can upgrade your vehicle: better tires, new engines, turbo, nitro boosts, exhaust, and more. You can earn points to win new cars. And, you could save up and buy cars from a wide range of makes and models.

For as long as I can remember, I've loved Ferraris. Even before Magnum P.I. made me drool over his red 308 GTS, I loved this exotic Italian sports car. But these days, my favourite Ferrari is the F12berlinetta. The scream of the engine. The lines. The power.

If you want to see a great review of this beautiful machine from Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson, check out this video.



If that didn't make you fall in love, I don't know what does. I just don't want to talk about it.

Actually, that's okay. I have enough love for the both of us.

When I saw that CSR2 had an F12berlinetta in its lineup of fine automobiles, I wanted one. More than any car than I saw in the showroom, I wanted this car.

So, in the game, I won races. I saved my money, only spending on upgrades to my existing cars if they would ensure that I won more races, earned more cash.

It took a few weeks of playing the game, each day, for an hour or more. I knew that I would earn the money and make the purchase, but it was the slow accumulation from each race that made the anticipation all that great.

And then, one summer evening, when I had stayed at home all day, performing household chores, only to relax in my chair in our family room, had I accumulated enough cash to make my purchase.

In the CSR world, the Ferrari F12berlinetta was not cheap. The base price was $1.5M, plus the license plate, custom paint, trim, brakes, and interior. I admired the pretty pixels that comprised my dream car, and I swiped at the screen to make it spin around, allowing me to view this beautiful machine at all angles.

And then, I remembered that I hadn't captured my POTD.

With midnight fast approaching, with me comfortable in my chair, my camera out of reach, I made a decision: I was going to capture my new acquisition. My dream car.

It was a cheat. To call it a photograph was a stretch of the imagination in which I found myself with this car. I swiped the screen until I found an angle that made it look like I could actually be crouched with my camera. And then, I took a screen shot.

In the image, I had captured the CSR2 logo and other icons that allowed me to control the game. I had to crop them out. When I was finished, I had an image that I had captured, edited, and prepared to share on social media.

Midnight was imminent. I made the decision. This was my favourite car and I had captured it the way I wanted. I was going to use it as my POTD.

Over the course of 2017, on every day, I had used either my D-SLR or my smartphone to capture an image. On Day 199, I captured a real Ferrari that had crashed a short distance from my house. On Day 238, I captured an illustration, not with a camera, but with a device that contained a camera but with I had never actually used as one.

My dream car was an illusion. A fake photo.

Was I wrong? Did I cheat?

You tell me.

I'll probably never sit in a Ferrari F12berlinetta, let alone drive one. There's no chance that I'll ever own a real one. But on that day that I captured a computer-generated image of one, it felt real to me.

The Game

Do you remember that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, entitled "The Game"? How Commander Riker was introduced to an electronic game that rewarded the player with pleasant sensations when a goal in the game was reached?

Remember how Wesley Crusher discovered that the game was detrimental to the crew of the Enterprise and how he resisted the game to save the day?

Yeah, that.

Resistance is futile. You will play the game.

My wife doesn't care for computer games, for the most part. She doesn't think that time should be wasted in non-productive activities for any prolonged period of time. In the past, she has limited the time that any family member spends on a game. If we find ourselves lost in front of a screen, she has been good at bringing us back to the real world.

It was my eldest daughter who first started playing the game, and dear daughter number two was quick to follow suit. It seemed like a harmless game, where the player manages time and resources to reach goals and gain levels. The kids download and play many games, but generally move on after a couple of days.

My wife saw the game, saw the girls engaged, and for the first time since the early days of Angry Birds, downloaded the game onto her own device. That was more than two weeks ago.

I've lost my wife.

Two days after she started playing the game and after seeing all three of my girls engrossed in their screens, I decided to download the free app onto my iPad to see what all the fuss was about.

The game is called Hay Day.

In the game, you inherit a farm and build it up. You grow crops, raise chickens, cows, sheep, and other barnyard animals. You build ovens, grills, weaving equipment. You clear land, you trade produce, you grow.

And you suck the day away.

I played the game for six days. I amassed a pile of wealth. I gained 21 levels. And I stopped writing, stopped drinking beer, for Christ's sake! (Okay, I drank beer, but wouldn't take the time to make notes for Beer O'Clock reviews.)

I saw what the game was doing to my family, to our personal productivity. I was good at keeping my crops growing, my livestock fed, and my property expanding. Only, none of it was real: the grass in my back yard was growing long and the leaves that had fallen from my trees was not being raked up. Laundry was piling up. Chores were falling by the wayside.

Six days into Hay Day, I found myself worrying about feeding the chickens when I was away from the game. I wondered if my pies were baked, if my food orders were ready. I would dream about farm life.

And so, with more than 25,000 coins and 24 diamonds accumulated, with a steam ship filled with crates of produce, I deleted the game from my iPad. I gave it all up. I let my farm disappear into the digital bits that make up the Web.

I have been trying to convince my wife and kids to do the same, to let them know that life is passing them by, to no avail.

I need a Wesley Crusher and a Data.