Week in review: Week to 11 October
Oct. 12th, 2025 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther. At board game club, we played a string of card games: Thirty-One, Bacon, Psycho Killer, The Mind, and Star Fluxx.
We did much better at The Mind than we did last week, at least for the first two rounds, and then it all fell in a hole.
I won the last game of Star Fluxx using The Power of the Dark Side, a victory condition that involves obtaining the cards for Evil and The Unseen Force - both of which, in a thematically-appropriate move, I stole from another player shortly before he would have won.
. I tried a different picross/nonograms program that I found available on Steam, on a similar basis where the first twenty puzzles are free and then you can pay for extra puzzle packs. With more challenging puzzles (with better-looking outcomes), and without the mouse-decoration business, I got on with it a lot better - rather to the detriment of my free time as well as a fair amount of time that I probably ought to have been spending on something more productive. I didn't get around to opening my next jigsaw puzzle all week because any time I would have considered it I was doing nonograms instead.
I'm going to make an effort to switch back to jigsaw puzzling this week, though, because if I'm going to be losing large chunks of time by immersing myself in a puzzle, I'd rather it be one that involves a bit of manual dexterity and doesn't involve staring at a computer screen the whole time. Jigsaw puzzles are also more flexible in the time investment department; while I have sometimes got lost in a jigsaw puzzle for an hour or more at a stretch, there have also been times when I've just done a piece or two and then felt ready to get back to work, which you don't get with the nonograms: once I start working on a nonogram, I always feel obliged to stick at it until it's done. Or even, if I'm in the wrong kind of mood, like I have to keep at it until I've finished the puzzle with no misclicks - the nonogram program, even in the "relaxed" mode, keeps track of whether you made any mistakes while doing the puzzle, and there have been times during the week when I've found myself stuck in a loop where I restarted the puzzle every time I made a mistake, getting more and more irritated and more and more likely to make another slip. With jigsaw puzzles you can make as many mistakes as you like and they won't notice or care or remember.
. I did not in fact remember to take the fly veil to Parkrun last week, though fortunately the flies were well enough behaved that I didn't need it. I did remember this week, and hopefully will continue to remember as we get into the part of the year where the flies get really friendly.
We did much better at The Mind than we did last week, at least for the first two rounds, and then it all fell in a hole.
I won the last game of Star Fluxx using The Power of the Dark Side, a victory condition that involves obtaining the cards for Evil and The Unseen Force - both of which, in a thematically-appropriate move, I stole from another player shortly before he would have won.
. I tried a different picross/nonograms program that I found available on Steam, on a similar basis where the first twenty puzzles are free and then you can pay for extra puzzle packs. With more challenging puzzles (with better-looking outcomes), and without the mouse-decoration business, I got on with it a lot better - rather to the detriment of my free time as well as a fair amount of time that I probably ought to have been spending on something more productive. I didn't get around to opening my next jigsaw puzzle all week because any time I would have considered it I was doing nonograms instead.
I'm going to make an effort to switch back to jigsaw puzzling this week, though, because if I'm going to be losing large chunks of time by immersing myself in a puzzle, I'd rather it be one that involves a bit of manual dexterity and doesn't involve staring at a computer screen the whole time. Jigsaw puzzles are also more flexible in the time investment department; while I have sometimes got lost in a jigsaw puzzle for an hour or more at a stretch, there have also been times when I've just done a piece or two and then felt ready to get back to work, which you don't get with the nonograms: once I start working on a nonogram, I always feel obliged to stick at it until it's done. Or even, if I'm in the wrong kind of mood, like I have to keep at it until I've finished the puzzle with no misclicks - the nonogram program, even in the "relaxed" mode, keeps track of whether you made any mistakes while doing the puzzle, and there have been times during the week when I've found myself stuck in a loop where I restarted the puzzle every time I made a mistake, getting more and more irritated and more and more likely to make another slip. With jigsaw puzzles you can make as many mistakes as you like and they won't notice or care or remember.
. I did not in fact remember to take the fly veil to Parkrun last week, though fortunately the flies were well enough behaved that I didn't need it. I did remember this week, and hopefully will continue to remember as we get into the part of the year where the flies get really friendly.
