This is why I don't like Mines

I'll wait a second while everyone absorbs that screen shot. Just click it and look at it in full size. still waiting... You got it? So yeah, that's a game of Mines (that's minesweeper if you use windows) that I just finished. 99 mines, time is 5:12. That's pretty awesome. Except that I messed up on the last mine. Those who are familiar with Mines will see, though, that the square I picked is equally as valid as the other one. I did not lose due to a logic error, but merely because I was forced to guess.

And that just bothers me. I like Mines because it is a simple logic game that does not take much mind power to solve but does require some thinking. The problem with it is that most of the games I play end up requiring some guessing to finish. This is frustrating. One guess reduces your chances of winning to a mere 5o percent, due to no fault on your part.

Which makes me wonder, is it possible to generate minefields which are ensured to be solvable without guessing? How expensive is that?

Huge block tower

So, while I was browsing through our archives looking for a passable photo to use in my blogger profile, I came across this gem that my brother and sister built last Christmas.

That is one freakin' huge block tower right there. It's not that clear in the picture, but it goes right up to the ceiling. I asked my sister about the exact length, but she couldn't remember anymore. She did, however, remember that there was only about two centimeters left between the ceiling and the top of the tower. Going by the height of our ceiling, that would make the tower about 2.40 m high!

I never actually saw the real thing, since I was not home that morning. My sister told me it took the entire morning to build, and it never fell down once. The biggest problem was breaking it down without damaging the wooden floor. They eventually just put all the cushions they had around it, and then threw a ball at the bottom. My sister told me it went down like the twin towers.

As an aside, I found a somewhat passable picture for my profile as well, and uploaded that. So go ahead and make jokes about how I look.