Pikachu standing in front of a pink Nintendo 3DS

Lately I have been putting a great deal of my free time to PokĆ©mon Sun for Nintendo 3DS. So much so that I thought that writing a review was the way to go.Ā šŸ‘

What makes PokĆ©mon Sun so special is that it's a perfect mixture of old and new. Old in the sense that it has surprisingly many old PokĆ©mon from the previous generations. On the first island, you can bump into a Growlithe, Zubat, Slowpoke and so on. This is cool, because you don't feel too lost with the game and all of its new PokĆ©mon. Some old PokĆ©mon have a slightly different form in Alola region to spice them up. (more…)

Train tracks and a full moon

My name is Tom and I am a TCP packet. I was created by the Userā€™s request. My lifeā€™s goal is to serve the User, or at least, thatā€™s what they taught us at the school. All my life thus far has been school at my native server, where I was created. I was made to memorize by heart the content I was to deliver to the User. My whole life Iā€™ve just been waiting for the moment to get out of this hole. I have dreams. I want to see the world and serve the User in doing so.

ā€œAll packets readyā€, I heard the operating system say. I was put a fancy shirt on that had an IP written on it. Itā€™s important to put a lot of clothing on, because the world outside is a cold one. I was already wearing a shirt stating HTTP and another one on top of it saying TCP. Personally, I donā€™t like that we all have to wear similar shirts that put us into categories. I would like to think that all packets are born equal, so why do we have to broadcast our own type, TCP, so vocally?

I saw the port opening; I was sent to the connection. I started to run. All my class mates were running too. We all have a piece of a website to deliver to the User and we all want to be there on time. We ran and we ran, until we hit the first router.

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A Star Wars family with stormtroopers and Darth Vader

Today Iā€™m going to discuss how we become a part of the society. When we are born, we have quite a different moral code we follow, as I described in my earlier post. Other aspects in us are in a continuous development as well, we are dynamic beings who develop over time. And this development doesnā€™t take place in a vacuum. We are what our surrounding world makes of us, but then again we have the power of influencing in what surrounds us. Itā€™s a two-way street.Ā šŸ˜Š

We people are inherently social. When we define ourselves the first things that pop into our minds might be that we are of a certain gender, nationality, occupation and so on, and so on. All these labels through which we identify ourselves are social groups. For it is the social that gives us the sense of who we are. Iā€™m like these people, not like them, and so on. (more…)

Using exposure and avoiding flash to enhance your photos

I am not a master photographer myselfĀ šŸ™„, but back in the days before I started to study at the University, I was very interested in photography. Enough so to read a great book, 101 Top Digital Photography Tips, about the topic.šŸ˜ŠĀ I really enjoyed the book because it's full of nice tricks for better photography and it's suitable even for those who have no knowledge of photography whatsoever.

Today I am going to share with you what I have learned about using flash and exposure in photography. (more…)

Morning sun in the tree foliage in strong fog

Today's post is all about what good means.šŸ˜‡Ā Normally, one would take evil into account as well, but since this blog is ought to be about positive subjects, the evil has only little room here.Ā šŸ˜‰

When a friend does something good to you, let's say gives you a gift, how do you know it is a good deed? Why is it a good deed and is it universally good?šŸ¤”Whether something is good or not is part of the social layer of the reality (see more here). AsĀ Nietzsche nicely put it: moral is only in our judgment – actions aren't good or evil per se. (more…)

A plate of gazpacho with bread

This week Iā€™m going easier on the blog than in the last week's philosophy filled post. Today Iā€™m going to share with you my favorite Spanish dish, gazpacho.šŸ˜‹ If you follow this recipe, youā€™ll get an authentic taste of Spain in the form of a healthy gazpacho. In case you donā€™t already know what gazpacho is, itā€™s a cold tomato soup.šŸ… Purely vegetarian and full of vitamins! Nam, Nam…

 

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cucumber
  • 1/2 kg tomatoes
  • 2 bell peppers
  • 1 onion
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • 1 dry roll of white bread
  • olive oil
  • (apple) vinegar
  • salt

Preparation

Start by cooking the onion and garlic in a pan. They donā€™t need to be fully cooked, but if you add them raw to your gazpacho, their taste might be too dominating. If you are in a rush and willing to take a risk, this step can be omitted.Ā šŸ™‚

Cut the stem and seeds off of the bell peppers. Blend all the vegetables, oil, vinegar and salt with a blender. I'm not giving any exact quantities for olive oil or vinegar, but my opinion is that there can't be too much olive oil in gazpacho.šŸ˜„Ā You should also add vinegar and salt quite generously.šŸ˜‰Ā Gazpacho is supposed to be a little chunky, so donā€™t over blend the vegetables and turn your gazpacho into a smoothie!šŸ˜®Ā When you have finished this step, tear the roll into small pieces and blend it into the gazpacho with a blender. Note: the bread should be dry, but you can also toast it in a toaster if it's not.

And thatā€™s it! Ā”Que aproveche!Ā šŸ˜ƒ

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Autumn forest with sun

This weekā€™s topic is the social layer of the reality. I like to think that there are different ā€œlayersā€ in the reality we perceive. For instance, thereā€™s the physical reality that exists out there regardless of us humans, there will be atoms, molecules and so on. Another layer is what our perception adds to the physical: we perceive colors, we hear music and so on, although all this is just light or sound waves in the physical layer. The reason why Iā€™m writing about the social layer is because understanding its existence and how it works really changed fundamentally the way I see the world.šŸ˜ŠĀ This discovery also convinced me to study more social psychology which has been a journey of growing as a person. I strongly recommend it!šŸ‘

To open up my idea of different layers, let me give an example: Color red. First of all, colors donā€™t exist in the physical world, different physical objects only reflect light differently and these differences are interpreted by our eyes šŸ‘Ā and brains as colors. So the concept of red only starts to exist once we hit the layer of perception of the reality. Then again, red can have different cultural meanings. It might be linked to love šŸ’—, Christmas šŸŽ…šŸ»Ā or stopping šŸš¦Ā in case that we see it in traffic lights – these all depend on the culture and conventions. It wouldnā€™t be too hard to imagine a culture in which the light making cars stop would be a blue one. I.e. what red means to us is already part of the social layer of the reality. Hopefully this example illustrates well the point Iā€™m making. (more…)

A MacBook Pro with a photo editing software open

This post will include a tutorial for making tiled images by using Photoshop in addition to some of my own tiled images that are free to use. But first, Iā€™ll give some background why this tutorial ended up in the positive blog.Ā šŸ˜ƒ

When I was a kidĀ šŸ‘¦šŸ¼, I made games using a code-free tool called Clickteam Fusion. What games require is, of course, graphics and one way of getting them is by taking photos. šŸ“øĀ Photos donā€™t usually make good game characters, but you can use them as background or texture for 3D objects. In such a use, you donā€™t usually want to use an entire picture but only a part of it, like the wooden material of your kitchen floor for instance. Then it would be nice that the same part of the picture could be repeated endlessly so that you could cover the floor of an entire 3D house with the picture of your own floor in such a way that it looks natural, i.e. that it is tiled. (more…)

people by the Eiffel tower in Paris

Todayā€™s topic will take this blog a bit further away from the language geek theme established in the first posts.šŸ¤“Ā This won't be an in-depth review of the finest classical compositions made in France ā€“ not at all. Instead, Iā€™ll highlight here two of my favorite French singers.šŸ˜ƒ

Itā€™s also worth mentioning that I found these artists by listening to NRJ French. I like that particular internet radio station because they only play French songs.šŸŽµ What could be a better way of improving French than that? (more…)

The flag of Swedish speaking Finns

This weekā€™s post for a thing I like continues with the same ā€œlanguage geekā€ theme I established on my last post.šŸ¤“ Again itā€™s about what a language, namely Swedish, sounds like. But Iā€™m not discussing just any kind of Swedish on this post, but the Swedish native to Finland, aka finlandssvenska.

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