Getting setup at Digital Ocean was easy. One of their preconfigured machine setups is a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP) server which is what NextCloud needs. I had to setup SSH keys, had to install a couple extra PHP packages, and make some apache configuration changes for NextCloud. Doing the NextCloud migration was a bit of a hassle, but that was a NextCloud issue.

Since setting up NextCloud, I’ve also built a stand-alone web app on this server. To do that I installed GIT and the SSH plugin for Visual Studio Code so that I could develop right on the Digital Ocean server, but also have source control and a backup on my home machine.

Everything has been pretty simple and convenient. Their monitoring tools are adequate for diagnosing performance issues and their billing is automatic. I do need to log in occasionally to do software updates, but I was having to do that for my local server anyway. Overall I’m pretty happy and will probably move chadweisshaar.com over to them eventually. I “just” need to re-write my gallery webpage to use AWS instead of storing the photos locally.

Not having a home linux server does have some downsides. For one, it was just cool to have part of the internet in my house. But I also used the server to run my own DHCP and DNS. I had an ad blocking DNS server for my phone and also allowed me to create some short urls (like tt.com) for friends to use to connect to the touch table. I miss both of these capabilities.

Shared Hosting

My websites are near the size limit for what you can put onto a shared webhost and I’d kind of like to switch to a service like DigitalOcean where I have full control of my server. But to do that I’d need to switch my file storage off my webserver to something like Amazon AWS. That is probably something that I’ll be working toward over the next few years, but for now I can still get by with the shared hosting.

Transfer process

HostGator does provide a free website transfer service. I didn’t research it as I wasn’t comfortable with them trying to transfer my sites.

The two sub-domains that I run are darkinfinitysoftware.com and weissoft.com. Dark Infinity is a simple site with static pages listing our public domain touch table games. It was trivial to transfer – just zip up the files, move them over and re-point the DNS. Weissoft is a mix of my desktop software and a suite of tools for a game called Illyriad. The pages for my desktop software are relatively simple php/mySQL and I have a few databases and php scripts to provide cloud services for my applications. The Illyriad tools are more complex with lots of web-services for the in-game web plugin, some query tools for our guild leaders and a dynamic game map. The map is probably the most intense app since it builds the map tiles from data in a large mySQL database.

Transferring weissoft.com took longer, mostly because the tables used by the map were too large to use the phpMyAdmin export/import tool and had to be done on the command line. Also, the mysql database login name changed between the two hosting companies so I had to modify all the php scripts.

My main domain isn’t as complex as weissoft.com. It has this WordPress blog, my photo gallery and a password protected family section with more photos and some genealogy stuff. Moving the photo gallery was mostly just time consuming. I have ~75GB of photos so I moved them directly from my old site to my new one. The connection between my two hosts is >100x faster than the connection between my computer and the internet. Re-uploading would have taken at least a week.

The blog turned out to be the most difficult thing to move. Part of the problem was that I didn’t want much downtime, so I was trying to get the new site running before repointing the DNS so I didn’t have a domain name. WordPress has the domain scattered in its database and it took some work to get it running on the temporary domain name, and then again to switch it back to chadweisshaar.com

Along with all of that, there was getting the new host’s cPanel settings correct, adding SSL certs, setting up SSH and FTP access, creating email accounts, spam rules and forwarders, re-creating re-directs and other .htaccess rules, and re-making my cron jobs. The whole process took a week.

HostGator Experience

It was very quick to create an account and sign up for service. I was given immediate access to the cPanel and was able to start creating sub-domains, email accounts and other account settings.

My first support experience was poor. The tech was able to quickly give me the temporary domain name, but when I asked about file limits I’d noticed on the cPanel I couldn’t get a straight answer. He pointed me to a doc that described how to “optimize” my website, but wouldn’t say what the limits were or how they were enforced. I never did get an answer from support about what the real limits were. I’ve since exceeded the 20G limit by a factor of 4 but haven’t quite passed the 100k file count limit. HostGator will no longer do backups of my site because of its size, but I haven’t seen any other enforcement. Some of their support docs say that the real limit is 250k inodes (there is basically one inode per file).

I used cPanel to turn on SSH access and attempted to use it w/o success. I needed to contact support again to get that turned on. Apparently it normally happens after 24 hours or so. This turned out to be a consistent theme. They have a lot of processes that happen automatically, but slowly. I would have had better luck if I’d signed up and then waited a few days. In fact I got an email from them a week after I’d signed up titled “Learn how to get your site up and running”.

Shortly after getting SSH access my account was locked for “randomly selected” verification. I sent in a photo of my drivers license and credit card and a few days later (after a little prodding) my account was turned back on.

My final contact with support was to get the free SSL certs added. Again, this is something that would have happened eventually, but you can’t get SSL until you’ve pointed the DNS to the new site, and once I’d pointed DNS, my sites were broken till SSL was turned on.

Overall HostGator is doing a better job than my old host company. The site is a little more responsive, email security settings are better and they have a modern version of cPanel. The tech support is much better, though still not great: English skills are OK but not perfect, and a couple times I had to be transferred to a higher level tech. But I’m still worried about running into file count or size limits and I was frustrated to find that there is no C/C++ compiler and that their version of Python is 5 years old

I rented a Technic Excavator set and the large London Bridge set.

Netbrix

Netbrix.biz offers a couple different ways to rent Legos. The plans are a little confusing, but they have one plan where they will ship you a new set as soon as you return one and another where you keep sets for a two month period.

Pricing

I rented the sets for two months. According to Netbrix, the total cost of my sets is $100+$400. At Amazon, the price is $50 less. It cost $100 for the rental (including 2-way shipping), so I am effectively saving $350 over the cost of buying the sets.

If I’d used the one-at-a-time plan it would cost $50/month plus shipping. If I were planning to do more sets, this is probably the better plan, but it might also make me feel rushed to build a set.

Features

The sets came from Netbrix in good shape. The pieces were clean and the manuals were still in good condition. I was missing three pieces from the Tower Bridge set. Netbrix would send me the missing pieces, but I was able to mostly hide them, so I didn’t bother.

You do have to take the sets apart before returning them (or pay $20 extra for them to do it for you).

Lego

I enjoyed putting the sets together, but I doubt I’ll get any other sets. It was fun, but it isn’t something I’ll continue to be interested in.

The sets were pretty easy to construct. The instructions are quite good and there was never any question about whether I was doing something right. The biggest challenge was finding the pieces I needed in the big piles of other pieces.

Technic Excavator

The excavator set was very satisfying to build because of the gears and how well the pieces connect and work with each other. The connections are very strong and the solid feel of the final product is very satisfying.

I really enjoyed building the gear box and seeing how it all linked up. I also really liked the steps where one sub-part would connect to the main body with pre-prepared pins that you would push in to lock the parts together. It was also very easy to take apart.

If I were going to do more sets I’d definitely do more Technics.

Tower Bridge

Building the Tower Bridge was also fun, but in a different way. It was slightly easier to construct – less 3D visualization, easier connections. And it doesn’t have many moving parts. But it was fun to see the bridge slowly take shape, and the end result is very pretty.

It was also a longer project with more pieces. I didn’t time the excavator, but it took a little less than 10 hours to build the bridge (one piece every 8 seconds). Unfortunately, I’d guess that 75% of that time is hunting for pieces and 25% putting them together.

I haven’t taken the bridge apart yet, but I am expecting it to be quite a bit harder than the excavator. There are quite a few 1×2 and 1×4 stacked pieces that are going to be a pain to separate.

Here is a gallery of the construction steps. I took a picture every 30 minutes. You can kind of see how it took longer to make progress at the beginning because it took longer to find the pieces.

I really like having a fitness tracker that also displays the date/time. I also appreciate having heart rate data for workouts and getting notifications on the watch.

Compared to Jawbone

I had a Jawbone fitness tracker from 3/2015 to 9/2016. I liked the tracker, but the band broke twice in the same spot, and once it was out of warranty I wasn’t willing to buy a new one.

The technology has improved quite a bit over the last couple years. In a device that is physically a little wider, the Fitbit is lighter, has a display, a longer battery life, and tracks heart rate all day.

Fitness Tracking

The Fitbit tracker is very dependent on its connection to the phone. All the data it collects is passed to the phone app, and the app is the primary display for health data. With the app, you can add naps/workouts that the tracker didn’t notice. You can also track food/water and weight.

Workouts

You can manually start a workout on the tracker or app. The app will also detect some workouts and record them automatically. It has a variety of workout types, but I haven’t noticed much difference between them. The interval workout will vibrate the tracker for start/stop of intervals and the walk/run/bike workouts will link up with the phone GPS to give you a track and split data.

Sleep

The Fitbit automatically detects both naps and overnight sleep. I find it a little too aggressive about when it thinks I’m sleeping. If I read before going to bed it almost always counts that as sleeping. It is pretty easy to edit a sleep, but I have to do it a lot.

It tracks wake/light/deep/rem sleep and will show you how you compare to the averages for your age group. While it is hard to know, it does seem accurate: If I wake up groggy I was in deep, if I wake up from a dream I was in REM.

Heart Rate

The Fitbit tracks heart rate all day. It also keeps track of your “resting heart rate”. It is interesting to see the heart rate over the day – I was a little surprised by how much heart rate goes up for very light activity. It was also interesting to see how long it takes for heart rate to recover after a workout and how stress effects heart rate.

It also reports a cardio fitness score which is an estimate of your VO2 Max (the amount of oxygen your body can use during exercise). It gave me a range based on my resting heart rate and then refined it to a single value after I went for a run. I have no way to know if it is accurate.

Steps

Between when the Jawbone broke and getting the Fitbit, I’d been using the Google Fit phone app to track steps. I used both trackers for a couple weeks and found that the Fitbit was reporting 40% more steps than Google Fit. Some of that is certainly due to times when I’m not carrying the phone, but I have my phone on me most of the time and I was surprised by how much difference there was. I don’t know which is more accurate. I did one walk where I counted the steps manually, and both Google Fit and Fitbit were very close to my count.

Weight/Food/Water

The Fitbit app will also let you track your weight, food and water. I use the weight tracking. It is pretty quick to add an entry and it graphs your weight and provides a trend line. I’m not using the food/water tracking. It works fine if you are eating fast-food or pre-packaged foods, but as soon as you go to a restaurant without calorie information or eat at a friend’s house, tracking becomes impossible.

Smartwatch Features

When you raise your arm or double tap the tracker, the screen turns on to display the time and date (you can pick from 15 or so watch faces). It also shows steps and/or heart rate.

When you get a notification on your phone from supported apps (calendar, messaging, phone, email, etc.) the tracker vibrates and displays the message. It even has a couple very simple actions you can take for each notification type. I’ve found this to be a very useful feature, saving me from getting out my phone several times a day.

Other

Fitbit doesn’t have as good of a data privacy policy as Jawbone did. But at least you can download your data using their API. I added code to the Timeline program to download the Fitbit data, so I can use that application to view and backup my data. It is easy to rely on corporations and “the cloud” to save your data, but Jawbone has gone out of business and you can no longer download your data from them.

The Fitbit has a few non-fitness features. There is a countdown timer and silent alarms. You can also have a “reminder to move”, but it went off while I was trying to nap so I disabled it. They also have a “relax” mode that is basically guided breathing.

There is a social and motivational component to the app. You can compare yourself to your friends who have a Fitbit and participate in challenges with them.

Fitbit “Coach” is an optional personalized training app that costs $40/year and has audio/video coaching. I haven’t tried it out.

Desktop

I bought the monitor with programming in mind, and it has been great for that task. I can have a high resolution (1920×2160) Unity window on the left side of the screen and the same amount of space for editing code or graphics on the right. My second monitor is 1920×1200 and shows the game/play screen.

I’m running Windows 10 and use the virtual desktop feature so that I can leave all the programming windows up while keeping web-browsers, email, quicken, Netflix, etc on a separate virtual desktop.

Text Size

When I first looked at the monitor in the store, I was worried about the tiny text on icons and in the windows file explorer. I first tried the scaling feature to increase the size of all text. That seemed to make text in applications look over-sized; so for the first few months I used Window’s personalization settings to change the font size of text on icons, title bars, and tooltips. When I upgraded to Windows 10, those settings no longer worked (they work again now) so I got used to having small text. It doesn’t bother me anymore, and now I recommend not using any special settings and getting used to the smaller text.

Gaming

When I bought the monitor, I didn’t expect to be able to play games at 4K and assumed that I’d play on my old monitor or at a lower resolution on the 4K monitor. I have a three year old Nvidia 660 GTX video card and had read that even the latest 980 GTX couldn’t really handle 4K gaming.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised how well I’ve been able to play games. Over the last 18 months I’ve played:

• Doom (demo)
• Endless Legend
• Endless Space
• Human Resource Machine
• TIS-100
• Offworld Trading Company
• Anno 2070
• Banished
• Space Run
• Torchlight 2
• Skyrim
• Borderlands 2

Most of these games are old and/or not very graphically taxing. With the exception of Doom, Offworld Trading Company, Anno 2070 and Borderlands 2, I’ve been able to play at 4K with most settings turned up. If a game runs slow, anti-aliasing can be turned off without much impact since the resolution is already so high.

Doom was really the only game where I couldn’t play above 1920×1080. It is also the only modern AAA title in the list. So if you are playing older and/or indie games, you can certainly play at 4K even with a mid-level video card.

The hardware and gaming press seem convinced that (like VR) 4K is only for the rich. While the monitors are not cheap, you are getting four times the number of pixels, so the price per pixel is actually lower than a standard 1920×1080 monitor. If you aren’t playing the latest first person games, you don’t need to buy a top of the line video card either.

Just today I read the tomshardware.com review of the new Nvidia 1060 where they concluded that anything above 2560×1440 wasn’t possible. They are correct if you’re trying to play the latest games at the best settings. But for a huge swath of the games that are available, a 1060 would do just fine at 4K.

Hardware requirements

To use a 4K monitor, you do need to have a video card with a Display Port 1.2 or better connection. You can technically do 4K over HDMI, but it is at 30 Hz which is extremely hard on the eyes.

I don’t know if the modern onboard video solutions from Intel would work for 4K. You may have to buy at least a low-end video card.

Conclusion

I strongly recommend a 4K monitor to anyone who has (or wants to have) more than one 1920×1080 monitor. It is like switching from spinning disks to an SSD: I’d never go back to a small monitor, and when I replace my second monitor it will be with another 4K.

Pros

• Huge amount of screen real-estate. Like having four monitors in one. Great for programming and any other task that needs multiple applications.
• No special drivers or setting needed.
• Low price/pixel

Cons

• Small text size. Maybe not for the far-sighted. (Or use the Windows scaling)
• You probably need a graphics card, and you certainly need a Display port 1.2 connection.
• Easy to waste space with over-sized windows and too much white space.

Disclaimers: I’m an adult beginner and amateur player. I’ve owned four violins: two acoustic and two electric. I’m not being paid for this review and haven’t been asked to write it.

Note: I wasn’t able to find an online manual while shopping for this violin, so I’ve scanned it in: Manual

Violin

I chose this violin because of its looks, my desire to have a quieter practice instrument and because the fifth string will let me learn and play viola music.

Getting used to a five string

I’ve been practicing on a muted four string acoustic for seven years. Transitioning from the four string to the five string took several days and I still occasionally have issues when playing on the G string. The spacing between the strings is very similar to a four string and so the neck is wider. The amount of bow travel needed to change strings is a little bit less than the four string and that caused most of my early difficulties. It is also a bit confusing when playing on the D string if I look down at my fingers expecting them to be on the second string.

Size

The instrument size is extremely close to my acoustic. I have two standard shoulder rests and they both fit the Yamaha. The bit of wood that simulates the part of the upper body is placed just right and feels just like an acoustic when shifting into third and higher positions. The Yamaha weighs a bit more than my acoustic: 580 g vs 500 g. (the four string YEV-104 weighs 550 g)

Setup

The Yamaha comes with D’Addario Zyex strings and they are just a bit tighter than the Dominants on my acoustic. But they are very comfortable compared to the steel strings on my other electric. The chin rest is standard and comfortable. The pegs turn and stick as they should and there are fine tuners on all the strings. The violin feels solid except for the thin darker wood that makes up the body shape. That wood feels fragile but holds up fine.

Sound Production

The Yamaha YEV is easy to play. There are no weird resonances or wolf tones, and playing in high positions still gives a full sound. The strings have a similar tone and volume to each other. Of course the E string is noticeably brighter than the A string, but that is expected. I’d also say that the A string is slightly quieter than the D string, but it is a small difference. It is easier to produce a quiet tone on the Yamaha so it has a bigger dynamic range than my acoustic. The Yamaha is responsive and doesn’t have any trouble with tremolo or spiccato. My acoustic is a bit better at producing an accent where the bow hair grips the string before starting the note, but that may be due to the strings.

Electronics

The Yamaha doesn’t have a built in pre-amp. It does have a volume control that you can activate by pushing a button on the back and then twisting a dial. I never use this control.

The output is a standard 1/4″ unbalanced headphone jack. I haven’t been able to find the output impedance, but the manual recommends plugging it into an input with at least a 1 M Ω input impedance.

The pickup is pizo-electric and built into the bridge.

Effects processor

I don’t own a pre-amp or guitar amp, but I do have a receiver and home stereo, so I bought a DigiTech RP360 pre-amp and effects processor to connect the violin to my stereo. The RP360 has a 1 M Ω instrument input and a 500 Ω unbalanced output. It can be used as a pure pre-amp, but it can also apply reverb, modulation, and equalizer effects. I also has a 40 second loop, a USB output for recording on a computer, a metronome and tuner.

Connections

The violin is plugged into the input jack on the left and the power cable is on the right. The RP360 provides two analog outputs labeled “left” and “right” I have those plugged into my stereo with a 1/4″ to RCA cable. The other connections on the box are to plug in auxiliary input (for playing along with a accompaniment track), headphone output and USB digital output. The “Control In” is for a pedal.

Effects settings

The RP360 comes with 100 effects settings presets. Most of these are for electric guitars and I didn’t find any of them to be to useful for making the Yamaha sound like an acoustic violin. They are fun to play with though, and you can create lots of interesting sounds.

The settings that I ended up with are:
Equalizer: Low -12db, 70 Hz, Narrow, Mid 0db, High 0db.
Modulation: Pearl chorus level=50 speed=20 depth=50 wave=sin
Reverb: Vintage plate level=30 pre-delay=0 decay=40 liveliness=50

These settings sound good on my home stereo, but when I connect to my computer, it sounds a bit over-processed. So for recording, I use these settings:
Equalizer: Low -12db, 70 Hz, Narrow, Mid 0db, High 0db.
Modulation: Pearl chorus level=40 speed=20 depth=50 wave=sin
Reverb: Lexicon studio level=25, pre-delay=0, decay=60 lieveliness=75

USB

When I connected the RP360 to my computer running Windows 10, I had some issues getting the sound to work. When the device connects, Windows 10 recognizes it and there is no need for a driver. It shows up as both an audio input and output device. It comes with software called “Nexus” for managing your effects settings and installing firmware patches.

To get it to record I had to set it as both the default input and output device. Since it is the default output, if you want to play accompaniment, you need to hook up speakers or headphones to the RP360. Similarly, if you want to hear what you are playing it is best to plug in headphones or your stereo on the RP360 itself. I found that sending the output of the RP360 to my computer sound card had too much delay.

Summary and Review

Overall I am very happy with the violin and the RP360. It is nice to be able to practice without using a mute and the sound quality is good. I’m also excited to learn how to play viola music and take advantage of the fifth string. Having the fifth string hasn’t been too hard to get used to and I can now go back and forth between my acoustic four string and electric five string without much difficulty.

I also really like being able to record the violin directly to my comptuer. I’ve been using my camera to record myself, but the sound quality isn’t great and I can’t have a metronome or accompaniment playing.

I’ve also enjoyed the loop recording capability of the RP360. I’ve been using it to record one violin part and then practice the second part and the 40 second buffer is too short.

The sound quality is not quite as good as my acoustic violin. The acoustic is a fuller and more powerful sound and I’d chose it if I were playing for people. The acoustic was $1800.

I also have a Cecilio electric violin ($120) and the Yamaha is much easier to play and has dramatically better sound.

I’ll probably never play in a band, but the Yamaha would be perfect for playing with other amplified instruments.

Here is a video that I made so that you can hear the differences yourself:

Update

It is coming up on a year with my YEV-105 and I am still happy with it and using it as my primary practice violin. I haven’t had any problems with the violin. The pegs are still good and I haven’t even broken a string.

I’ve taken a trip to Mexico with it and am fairly happy with it as a travel violin. There is a little more equipment to bring along than for an acoustic violin.

If you are looking at buying this violin just for practicing, you could consider using something like the iRig instead of the RP360. It is really just a small amp that converts the output from the violin into input for headphones or computer/phone. This doesn’t provide a good way to play for an audience, but it is smaller and cheaper than the RP360. ($40 at Amazon)

In the game, you run an item shop in a D&D style world. You craft items that you can sell or use to equip heroes. You are responsible for a whole stable of heroes with different equipment needs. You upgrade your shop and even other buildings in the city to allow you to craft better and more powerful items.

There are several things that I like about this game. Some are shared by the whole casual game category:

• I can play these games while I watch a movie, read the news, watch YouTube, etc.
• I can play for just a couple minutes because there isn’t high startup cost (load/boot times).
• These games are fully interuptable; Shop Heroes keeps running all the time, but there are no negative consequences to letting it run unattended or stepping away for a few minutes.
• It is free.

Shop Heroes in particular is fun because of the pacing of actions/rewards and the number of interlocking tasks. The game, especially in the early stages, is always giving you something to do. It starts with a tutorial to get you started, but you quickly start to create your own goals. Say you want to build a fancy sword. The fancy sword needs: a rare rock that can only be gathered by a hero from a quest, some resources generated by the city, and a simpler sword that you craft. So you send a hero off to get the rare rock, you go out to the city and turn on the resource generating buildings, and build the simple sword. When the hero comes back, you get the rare rock and start making the fancy sword. But maybe the hero leveled or broke some equipment, so you need to make them a new hat or boots and those require some other quest item etc.

I know it sounds like work, but the game rewards you for each step. The buildings in the town level up and work better. Making a certain quantity of each item unlocks upgrades to that item. Selling items gives you money and personal experience. Your character levels up unlocking shop and town upgrades. The heroes gain levels and skills which makes them able to do harder quests. You can upgrade your shop to have more space for equipment and the individual pieces of equipment within the shop to work better. The craftsmen in the shop level up to make the items faster.

Shop heroes get a lot of its addictive mechanics from MMORPGs. The pacing of rewards (fast at first but constantly getting slower as you improve) is identical. Shop Heroes also uses the idea of having lots of independent abilities that are improving with use. Another aspect that I really admire in a game and would like to be able to replicate, is that the complexity rises slowly as you play. At the beginning there is one type of resource, one build slot, one quest slot, one hero and a couple buildings in town. As the game progresses, everything is slowly unlocked. There are more resources and items require a mix. You can craft several things at once. You get more heroes who need different things. Building an item starts to require different shop equipment and craftsmen and other crafted items. This makes the game easy to learn while allowing a decent amount of complexity by the end. Buildings unlock other buildings which give you more heroes and workers.

There are several mechanisms in the game to encourage you to log in at least daily: There is a weekly weekend quest. There is a daily quest that gives rewards of new equipment to build. There is a wheel you can spin every eight hours for a small bonus. And most everything you do in the game takes some amount of time, so it is most efficient if you come back often enough to keep all the task slots full. The game also rewards “streaks” of daily quests completed and spinning the wheel at least once a day.

Of course there are some compromises for playing a free online game. Almost everything in the game can be sped up by paying “gems”. The gems can be earned playing the game, but they can also be bought with real money.

The complexity of the game doesn’t match “serious” or AAA titles. There may be quite a few steps to accomplishing a task, but there are very few hard decisions to make and there is also very little risk of loss. A mistake is never very serious.

The difficulty curve is exactly like MMORPGs, and at the end you end up “grinding” to get the next reward. For example: the first sword takes about 12 seconds to build, and you need to build 6 of them to unlock the next type of sword. A middle range sword takes 10 minutes to make and you need to build 45 of them. To unlock the best sword you need to build 100 of the previous sword at two hours each.

I am about two thirds of the way through the game. I have a lot of patience for grinding, but not nearly as much as the truly dedicated players, and these games are designed so that the hardcore fans are the only ones who can get to the end. And there are some very hardcore players of this “casual” game. There is a subreddit and a wiki dedicated to the game and after playing for a month I am still ranked 11,000th.

Edit (7/2/2016):

I gave up on Shop Heroes at the end of May. I played the game for three months and got a lot of entertainment from the game. I never bought any gems and didn’t feel like I was way behind the people who did. I stopped playing right as the PvP was staring up. Between the PvP and the weekly city quest the game was staring to feel like an obligation. It was also taking a really long time to make any progress, so maybe I just hit my grinding limit.

I still think about the game and its mechanics when I am writing my own games.

First off, I am not really their target audience. Trafalgar sets up their tours so that you do/see as much as possible, while not requiring anyone to do anything strenuous. Luggage is delivered to the hotel room each night, and the amount of walking and stairs is small and well described before each stop. This attracts an older clientele, and Trafalgar caters to their tastes in some ways.

That being said, there was a lot of flexibility to make the trip what I wanted it to be. There are a lot of optional activities (at an extra cost) and free time. At most of the tour stops there are multiple types of activities: museums, shopping, cafes, etc.

Size

There were fifty people on our tour bus. Fifty people is a lot. Even if everyone was fully mobile (they weren’t), it takes a while to get fifty people off a bus and to a site. Having fifty people trying to do the same thing at the same time was the cause of nearly every problem on the tour:

• Fifty people is too many for a restaurant to serve at once and do a good job.
• Fifty people don’t fit into a room at a museum.
• With fifty people, there is a good chance that one of them is going to be late, or drunk, or sick, or upset.
• I’m not going to like all fifty people.

We really had quite good luck in terms of lateness. The bus was never delayed more than ten minutes by someone sleeping in or getting lost.

Cost

The cost of the tour itself was $225 per person per day. That included the hotel, transportation and any sights the tour covered. It always included a full breakfast, 1/3 of the dinners and never included lunch.

Hotels

The hotels were always nice and centrally located.

Schedule

We got onto the tour bus at 8am most every day and we ended around 6pm. If there was a dinner, that lasted till 8 or 9. Occasionally we would get an afternoon off. The tour was setup so that you never had to take transportation besides the bus, so the bus always started and ended at the hotels.

To get the luggage onto the bus, we had to set our bags outside our room at 7am. To avoid oversleeping, they scheduled a wake-up call for all the rooms at 6am. Two hours is a lot of time to get ready and eat in the morning. If you didn’t like their schedule, you could change the wake-up call, and even carry your own bags down. We usually just followed their schedule, but we’d probably have been better off getting an extra hour of sleep and then rushing a bit.

Optional Excursions

Most days on the tour, you could add an ‘optional’ excursion to the plan. This was at extra cost and often included dinner. I did about 1/2 of the optionals, but skipped most of the optional meals. This is one of the ways that the tour is customizable. This let people decided which activities were worth the cost, and when it would be better to have free time. Unfortunately, there were a few of the optional excursions where there wasn’t really anything for the other people to do.

One problem with the optionals was it was hard to know what would happen if you didn’t go on the optional. Another problem was that you had to decide which optionals you were going on near the start of the trip. For example: one of the optionals was a carriage ride through a park. I skipped it thinking that I could rent a bike or walk through the park instead. As it turned out, the bus dropped us a couple miles from the park into a dull city.

I was generally happy with the choices that I made for the optionals and it is a great way to allow people to customize their vacation. In fact, it would probably improve the trip to make a few more included things optional and to add more optional museum tours.

Food

Breakfast

The breakfasts were generally very good. The buffets had good variety and quality. The only problems with breakfast were not related to the food: Some hotels had a wait-to-be-seated system that was overwhelmed by the size of our group. Other hotels would block off a set of tables that technically had enough seats, but often required sitting with other people on the tour and occasionally split up travelling companions.

Lunch

Lunch was never included, but there was always at least an hour provided in an area with restaurants. Sometimes the guide would suggest a particular restaurant, but the best bet was to pick something far enough away from the bus stop so that our fellow travelers wouldn’t show up.

Dinner

When dinner was included, it was always a three course meal from a limited menu: typically three to five choices per course. There were one or two drinks plus coffee/tea included. The food was always fine, but never great.

Unfortunately, serving 50 people requires some compromises. One was the limited menus. Another was that we usually had to pre-order. The food would then come out by type, and people had to remember what they had ordered. This worked when we ordered at the restaurant, but a couple times we had to call in the order, and in both cases people couldn’t remember what they had ordered and took the wrong items.

The included drink was also from a limited selection: house white/red wine, a couple of the tap beers and soft drinks. When two drinks were included, the restaurant didn’t make the effort to keep track of the drinks per person and instead kept a total for our group. As you would expect, that caused issues.

My main complaint about the included meal was the timing. We finished eating at 8 or 9 and needed to go to bed at least by 10 to get enough sleep before the 6am wake-up call. That meant that I went to bed full anytime dinner was included.

Bus

The bus was very comfortable. The temperature was fine, the driver kept the floors and seats cleaned and the windows washed. They had a great system of rotating the seating (move clockwise 3 rows per day) so that you didn’t always sit in the same place on the bus. The bus had a bathroom that was ‘for emergencies’ as there were plenty of stops.

There were a couple of problems with the bus. One is that you were in-front or behind the same people everyday. If those people were loud, you were stuck with them. We were lucky to be seated around quiet people. The other problem was that they played one movie and one TV episode on the bus entertainment system. These were both awful (‘The Quite Man’ and ‘Fawlty Towers’) and since it was on all the TVs and the PA, I couldn’t ignore them. There was also supposed to be on-bus WiFi, but that worked for the first 10 minutes and never again on the trip.

Sightseeing

Some of the time we would do sightseeing from the bus. In these cases, we would have a guide who would point out the sites. This was the least satisfying, especially when trying to get a photo.

Other times we would all get off the bus and all go to a site. Usually we would be on our own to explore the site, but occasionally there would be a guided tour. The guided tours were generally good. We had little radio boxes so that you could always hear the guide.

The third option would be to get dropped off in a city and have some amount of free time before getting back on the bus.

There were a few ‘sightseeing’ stops that were pretty lack-luster. We stopped at a couple of grave-sites where there wasn’t much else to do, and there were a couple stops where the only thing to do was shop. Part of the problem was just having to come up with something to do on days where we needed to cover a lot of distance. When I am on my own, I know that some days are just going to be travel days. But Trafalgar had to make everyday sound interesting.

Tipping

We were supposed to tip each special guide, the overall tour guide and the bus driver. I didn’t really see this as an optional thing, but there wasn’t much pressure. There was actually less tipping than I expected, but I’d still prefer it be included in the price. I’d say that the ‘expected’ tip added $9 per day to the price of the trip. This is pretty insignificant but meant extra effort to get local currency sooner and keep small change handy.

Overall

Being happy on the Trafalgar tour required a certain mindset that took me a couple days to attain. Part of it is an acceptance of certain, unavoidable, delays: It is going to take a few minutes to get off the bus and a few more minutes to gather everyone so that the tour can start. There are going to be some stops that are just filler so that people can go to the bathroom and get lunch. People are going to have dumb questions, problems, and need things repeated. And with 50 people, it’s going to happen all the time.

The other thing that really helped was to not plan too far ahead. There wasn’t enough information about the exact time we would be arriving, how long we would be staying, and where the bus would park, to accurately plan what I wanted to do at a site/city before getting there. If I planned too much, I’d just be disappointed.

When I compare this Trafalgar trip with a similar trip to Belgium that we did without a tour, there are advantages and disadvantages. We definitely saw more things on the Belgium tour. And the things that we saw were more aligned with our interests. We also ate better. On the other hand, this trip was a lot easier to plan and was more relaxing. It is hard to overstate how much planning and decision making have to be done for a group of four or six to travel to a foreign country for two weeks. Trafalgar made the big decisions about which cities to see and how long to spend in each one. They picked all the hotels and arranged almost all the transportation.

• Would I take another tour? If we are traveling alone, then no, certainly not. But I would not rule it out for traveling with my family.
• Would I take another Trafalgar tour? No. I’d pay more money to travel with a smaller group next time.
• Would I recommend Trafalgar? Depends. I know people who would love it. Trafalgar works very hard to create a good experience under very tough circumstances. If I were in their position, there are very few changes that I would make. All the Trafalgar employees that I dealt with were good and seemed to care.

The first few keyboards that I used were all mechanical keyboards. The Apple II computers at school, and my first Tandy had mechanical keyboards. I remember the Apple II keyboard as having a particularly satisfying feel. My first modern computer was a 386 and it had a mechanical keyboard too. All of these machines were relatively expensive compared to a modern computer, and a nice keyboard was part of that cost.

My next couple of computers came from IBuyPower (a discount computer assembler) and then I started assembling my own. All my keyboards since the 386 have been membrane style. There is nothing really wrong with a membrane keyboard; they work pretty well and are very in-expensive. The main disadvantage of a membrane keyboard is that you have to fully depress (bottom out) each key press. This requires you to use extra force to type and increases strain.

Mechanical keyboards have seen a resurgence in popularity and there are quite a few options. The biggest decision to make is which type of switch to get (there is a switch under each key of a mechanical keyboard). The switch type determines how much force is required to activate the key, how much noise a key press makes and whether there is a tactile bump when the key is activated. There is a really good post summarizing the switch types at http://www.overclock.net/t/491752/mechanical-keyboard-guide

I picked the Cherry MX Brown switch. I wanted there to be a distinct tactile bump prior to activation, and I didn’t want an audible click to sound. That left the brown and the clear. The brown is easier to find and requires a little bit less force than the clear. The other big decisions to make are what layout you want and if you want any back-lighting.

I am really enjoying my keyboard (this blog post is really just an excuse to use it more). I am still getting used to the idea that I don’t have to fully depress the keys. I have used membrane keyboards so long that it is hard to adjust. I would say that I am already faster with the new keyboard, but I am still making a few more errors than I used to.

However, it was over two years before I bought an eBook. At first, I got a “New Yorker” magazine subscription. Next I got into reading library books on the Kindle. Lately I have been using the “Send to Kindle” Chrome app to send long-form articles to the Kindle.

The reason that I hadn’t been willing to buy an eBook was the DRM. I don’t feel like I really own the book if I can’t transfer it to another device. The Kindle is a great product, but I don’t want to be locked into that piece of hardware to read my books. If something happens to the Kindle or a competitor comes out with a better reader, I want to be able to switch and not have to re-buy my books.

Recently, TOR books decided to remove DRM from their eBooks. I am sure that it was a hard decision for them. Without the DRM, it is easy for someone to buy one copy and share it with their friends. Of course, DRM doesn’t protect them from a dedicated pirate. All popular titles are already available to someone who is motivated. But DRM does stop casual sharing. Fortunately, TOR hasn’t seen an increase in piracy and the experience has been positive for them. They have no plans to return to DRM.

So my first eBook was “Ender’s Game” from TOR. I hope that other publishers follow suit and provide a product that I can truly own.