"A thinking mind is not swallowed up by what it comes to know. It reaches out to grasp something related to itself and to its present knowledge (and so knowable in some degree) but also separate from itself and from its present knowledge (not identical with these). In any act of thinking, the mind must reach across this space between known and unknown, linking one to the other but also keeping visible to difference. It is an erotic space."
Bit of a gadget addict and one of my "one of these days" aspirations is automating everything in the house. I wish I were a electronics/robotics expert so that I could DIY all of that and maybe one day, I'll learn enough.
One thing I've noticed though, just from using off-the-shelf "smart" stuff, that you can be at a point where you've simply swapped the management of physical repetitive to-do's around the house (light switches, locks, etc.) with the management of the devices that manage the physical repetitive to-dos's.
Does that extra layer of abstraction deliver on promised efficiencies? I don't know yet. But I've gotten in the habit of standing in the middle of the room, repeating misunderstood voice commands when I could've accomplished the same task twice over and in less time by just moving my ass.
We cut the cable cord 10 years ago. We have Netflix. And Prime video because it's bundled. Used to have HBO but let it lapse. And the only thing Hulu was good for (for me) was to feed my guilt-ridden Law & Order SVU/OC addiction.
It's death by a thousand subscriptions if you want to capture all the gated content out there. And even then, you'd still be left wanting if you like non-mainstream or obscure stuff. Streaming services cull their non-original content all the time too, so it can be a frustrating experience chasing down an old movie or TV series that you swear was there several months ago.
That "Hello, old friend" meme pretty much describes our experience with streaming. And Bill Watkins was kinda right but wrong, all that storage is also for movies. :-)
Thank you very much. You're not the only one who's been surprised about the iOS 15 thing. We'll be more mindful about version compatibility with the next update. We're not using any cutting-edge features here, so we probably don't need to set compatibility to the latest os version.
Nevertheless, I appreciate that you tried our game even with some UX friction and if I could impose on your kindness a little more, please consider leaving our game a rating and a review if you have extra time.
Thank you. I just remember the early days of mobile gaming when FB had some kind of stranglehold on what passed for social media...and every game wanted you to let everyone on FB know that you successfully raised your 100th chicken. It was some bullshit.
I've gone through the same thought (and emotional) process. I guess if you're enjoying it and it brings you happiness, that is the best reason to do it.
We have some advantages that only accrue with age. It seems you have a nest egg that lets you do what you want to do, that's a major thing. Also, you have a professional, social and experiential foundation that serves you in good stead.
Thank you very much for these links. One reason why I quickly decided to move away from Unity is that it's such a "big" program to make a relatively simple 2D game. I guess the level of abstraction that modern game engines provide is a double-edged sword in that while it is more accessible to users without a background in programming, it also obscures most of what's going on under the hood. So now game devs (as well as game consumers) accept that modern games have a certain amount of overhead that you live with. And bugs. And incompatibilities.
I moved to Godot because you can totally configure it to suit your needs. You can compile the engine yourself, rewrite the editor, etc. When exporting our game to iOS and Android, I was a bit disconcerted that it was around 100MB...and it's just a jumping game! I tried to pare down all the graphical assets to be as light and as undemanding as possible; but ultimately, a good chunk of that was overhead.
There were instructions on how to strip away all the 3D parts of the engine and just recompile...but I chickened out. Not confident enough at the moment but I'm learning. I might try doing that when we push the next update.
Thank you! The "too late" is so pervasive in our culture but I'm beginning to see a definite trend of people who just want to do their own thing, no matter their age. It's heartening.